Courses at the 3000 or 4000 level require successful completion of at least one unit of literature at the 1000 level. At least one unit at the 2000 level is recommended.
English Department seminar. Photo: Krista Hill
ENGL 3211 Special Topic: Vikings! / 0.5 unit
Fall term
MW 12:00 – 1:15
Instructor: Prof. M. Roby
From “The Last Kingdom” and “Northman” to “Skyrim” and “God of War: Valhalla,” our cultural fascination with the figure of the Viking is undeniable. This course will study the portrayal of medieval Scandinavian culture in literary texts and other media from the Viking Age to the present. By analysing sources ranging from medieval runestones, sagas, and chronicles to more contemporary graphic novels, video games, and cinema, we will consider how the idea of the Viking has shifted over the centuries.
This course meets the Medieval (Group F) requirement for the Honours English degree.
ENGL 3212 Special Topic: Hauntology / 0.5 unit
Winter term
MW 9:00 – 10:15
Instructor: Prof. G. Fraser
No time has been more haunted than our own. Hauntology gives us a way to speak about it.
Hauntology is the theory of the spectrality of literature and of everyday life, of those moments when the present wavers uneasily with a past that won’t stay buried or with a future that never happened, of those moments when we feel haunted or ghostlike. Ghosts and haunting are common metaphors to describe trauma, loss, repetition, commodified nostalgia, unredressed injustice, cultural dislocation, or a sense of futurelessness. Hauntology reveals that these metaphors and the works of art that unfold them are not simply figures of speech but rather windows that open onto the fundamental ghostliness of the modern world. The works we will read will are thus all ghost stories, although not necessarily supernatural or gothic. Rather, they are stories about ghostliness, stories whose forms are ghostly, stories that can only be told in the mode of haunting, whether they are told as literature, film, photography, or music.
Tentative course texts include Henry James, Turn of the Screw; Jean Rhys, Good Morning, Midnight; Stephen King/Stanley Kubrick The Shining; Toni Morrison, Beloved; Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior; Leanne Shapton, Guestbook. We will be guided by theoretical readings from Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx; Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life; Avery Gordon, Ghostly Matters; and Freud, “The Uncanny.”
This course meets the Theory (Group A) and the 20th Century and Contemporary Literature (Group F) requirement for the Honours English degree.
ENGL/WRIT 3221 Creative Nonfiction Writing / 0.5 unit
Fall term
TTh 12:00 – 1:15
Instructor: Prof. N. Street
Prerequisite(s): 5.0 units of university study, including one of the following: ENGL/WRIT 2220 or ENGL/WRIT 2221
A practical study of creative nonfiction writing. This course explores creative nonfiction through its subgenres (e.g., collage, memoir, and/or literary journalism) and rhetorical techniques and practices (e.g., style, arrangement, tropes, schemes, and/or progymnasmata). The course is driven by workshops, wherein students will share, refine, and generally practice their craft.
ENGL 3307 Romanticism and Revolution / 0.5 unit
Winter term
TTh 1:30 – 2:45
Instructor: Prof. D. Piccitto
The Romantic period (c. 1785-1835) in Britain was one shaped by the revolutions in America and in France, provoking a rethinking of socio-political structures and the rights of individuals. This course focuses on the first half of this period (roughly 1785-1810), for which the French Revolution, in particular, was a defining event that prompted numerous and varied responses, including the general demand for freedom, proto-feminist statements, and the abolition of the slave trade. We will explore the heated debates that emerged from these reactions, as well as what the idea of revolution (in practice and in art) meant to and offered writers of the time, paying special attention to issues of liberty, oppression, imagination, race, gender, sexuality, class, and large-scale change. Beginning with key political philosophies about revolutionary action, this course will focus on the poetry and prose of the first-generation Romantics, including Phyllis Wheatley, Mary Wollstonecraft, William Blake, Olaudah Equiano, Joanna Baillie, and William Wordsworth as well as the genre of the Gothic and its relation to the period’s concerns.
ENGL 3311 Indigenous Feminisms and Sexualities / 0.5 unit
Winter term
MW 1:30 – 2:45
Instructor: Prof. B. Russo
The primary focus of this course will be the intersectional consideration of Indigenous feminisms and sexualities at the interstices of race and class. What are Indigenous feminisms? How are Indigenous feminisms different from other forms of feminism? Is there more than one form of Indigenous feminism? Why study Indigenous feminisms? What does the term Indigenous sexualities mean, and what does it encompass? How are Indigenous feminisms and Indigenous sexualities influenced by and performed at the intersections of race and class in North America? How is sexual violence institutionalized and institutionally weaponized and deployed to preserve settler and patriarchal positionality. These contested issues provide a springboard into the complex realm of Indigenous expression. As these topics broadly encompass an array of Indigenous experience, expression, and scholarship, this course will consider specific areas, forms, and issues within each area. However, regardless of the focus, the course will consistently employ an Indigenous epistemology and an Indigenous critical framework. The course will also place Indigenous feminist and sexuality theories in dialogue with their contemporaries of the Western-European canon.
ENGL 3319 Modern Poetry / 0.5 unit
Fall term
MW 9:00 – 10:15
Instructor: Prof. G. Fraser
The Modernist period (1900-1945) was a time of radical artistic change, crisis, and invention. In this course we will examine a range of Modernist poems and poetics in order to understand the innovations of Modernist literature against the background of 19th century poetry, and we will look into connections between Modernist poetry and other Modernist movements in art (especially visual art) and the larger cultural, scientific, philosophical, and political shifts and crises which shaped the first decades of the Twentieth century.
Modernist poetry is often intentionally difficult in terms of both its poetic form and the complexity of its ideas. It expects much of its audience and demands that its readers rise to its level and meet it on its own terms. This course is designed to confront, understand, and enjoy these difficulties (and perhaps even to reveal them to be not so difficult after all). Some of the poets and poetic movements addressed will include: Imagism, Vorticism, Surrealism, Loy, Williams, Yeats, Pound, Eliot, H.D., Stevens, Stein, Moore, Riding, and Bishop.
Text: Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry Volume 1. 3rd ed.
ENGL 3347 Imagining America / 0.5 unit
Winter term
MW 3:00 – 4:15
Instructor: Prof. K. Collier-Jarvis
In 2021, U2 frontman, Bono, posted on Twitter/X: “As an Irishman, I’ve always believed America isn’t just a country, it’s an idea, one the whole world has a stake in…” This course is a close study of literature and culture that imagines and reimagines America since 1900. We will examine works both by and about Americans with a focus on such topics as border crossings, the American Dream, Hollywood, immigration, Indigenous sovereignty, and the effects of slavery.
ENGL 3355 Sixteenth-Century Literature / 0.5 unit
Fall term
TTh 3:00 – 4:15
Instructor: TBA
A study of non-dramatic literature written or translated into English during the sixteenth century through an examination of poetry and prose by a variety of authors with particular attention to the historical and cultural context of the works.
ENGL 3367 Nineteenth-Century American Literature / 0.5 unit
Fall term
MW 3:00 – 4:15
Instructor: Prof. K. Collier-Jarvis
The American Declaration of Independence (1776) states, “We hold these truths to be selfevident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” With these words, America created its self-image, but how well did it uphold this image? This course is a close study of American literature and culture from 1776-1900. We will examine constructions of a national identity from the Declaration of Independence to the literature of social revolt with a focus on topics of gender, slavery, Emancipation, Indigenous relations, the frontier, and American exceptionalism.
ENGL 44o7/WOMS 4407/GWGS: Queer Theory / 0.5 unit
Fall term
TTh 1:30 – 2:45
Instructor: Prof. D. Piccitto
As a theory of otherness, disruption, and alternative ways of being and acting in the world, Queer Theory offers a mode of resisting and deconstructing normative – especially heteronormative – ideologies, discourses, and practices. Addressing representations of marginal identities and experiences, it is a rich theory that continues to develop and be reshaped with contemporary investments, particularly in the context of sexuality, sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression, as well as numerous constellations of performance, articulation, and desire. In this course, we will explore the origins of queer cultural criticism as well as more recent theorizations, interrogating the relationship between theory and practice, knowledge and being, identity and embodiment. Please note that ENGL courses at the 3000 and 4000 levels typically require 1.0 unit of ENGL at the 1000 level. In addition, for Queer Theory, 1.0 unit of ENGL at the 2000 level or above or 1.0 unit of WOMS at the 3000 level is normally required. Students are strongly encouraged to take ENGL 2202: Introduction to Critical Methods before taking this course.
This course may also count as a 0.5 elective in the Cultural Studies program.
ENGL 4446 Studies in Contemporary Culture / 0.5 unit
Winter term
TTh 3:00 – 4:15
Instructor: Prof. K. Macfarlane
This course will focus on the Gothic — a mode that explores and exposes cultural anxieties, elisions in cultural and national narratives, and contradictions in cultural practice— in selected texts produced between the 1980s and the present. Our emphasis will be on the ways in which the body becomes a site of conflict and concern in popular narratives. We will use the lenses of monster theory, queer theory and critical race theory in relation to Gothic texts to explore the ways in which the Gothic exposes what it is that terrifies us most.
This course will require significant number of theoretical readings which will allow us to examine works that focus on vampires, zombies, haunted houses and unstable bodies.
