2000-Level Course Descriptions

FALL 2025 | FALL WINTER 2025-26 | WINTER 2026

ENGL-2102-001 | Intro Creative Writing | TBA
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

In this course, students concentrate on developing a portfolio of creative writing, including both poetry and short fiction. The course introduces students to strategies for writing in both genres and to the discipline involved in seeing a project through several drafts to its final stages. Emphasis is placed on the skills involved in self-editing and the professional preparation and submission of manuscripts suitable for a portfolio. Note: This course is recommended for students who plan to enroll in further creative writing courses at the undergraduate level.

ENGL-2102-002 | Intro Creative Writing | TBA
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

ENGL-2102-003 | Intro Creative Writing | TBA
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

ENGL-2102-770 | Intro Creative Writing | TBA
Course Delivery: ONLINE SYNCHRONOUS

ENGL-2113-001 | Picture Books for Children | H. Snell
Course Delivery: IN PERSON AND ONLINE

This course explores picture book elements, industries, and modes of reception and interpretation, involving strategies such as small-group discussions, presentations, oral and written forms of analysis, and the making of picture books. Of particular interest is our exploration of experimental and innovative picture book forms and their contribution to changing concepts of the child, childhood and children's culture. This course may incorporate experiential, community-based and service-learning components.

ENGL-2203-001 | Seventeenth Century | K. Sinanan
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

This course is a study of representative writers (to 1660), with emphasis upon the major poets, dramatists, and prose writers of the period.

ENGL-2220-001 | English Literature and Culture 700 - 1660 | B. Christopher
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

This course addresses the history of literature of England from the 8th century until the Restoration in 1660. The course may comprise an overall survey and/or an exploration of significant literary and cultural moments, movements or topics across this time frame. Reading in the poetry, drama, and prose of the Old and Middle English, Tudor, Elizabethan, and Jacobean periods may be combined with selected theoretical and critical texts from each literary period, to demonstrate changing views about the production, reception, and role of literature in society.

ENGL-2603-247 | Short Fiction | C. Rifkind
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

This section is reserved for students in the CATEP program. The short story is one of the most popular forms of literature and one of the most useful for studying and teaching the craft of writing. It is also one of the most pleasurable and provocative forms for discussion and analysis. This course will introduce students to the depth and breadth of the printed short story, from the 19^th to 21^st centuries, from realism to speculative fiction, and from Africa, Europe, Asia, and North America. We will see how the short story can take on grand themes, such as tragedy, war, colonialism, resistance, and survival, as well as everyday topics, including family, food, school, and work. Each story we read from The Broadview Anthology of Short Fiction (4^th Canadian Edition) will take us into a complete storyworld despite its brevity, and we will situate the works in their historical, cultural, political, generic, and artistic contexts. This is a live online course that requires active participation and regular class work throughout the term, in addition to one short essay and one final research project.

ENGL-2603-290 | Short Fiction | TBA
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

This course considers the short story both in its nineteenth century and contemporary forms. Short fiction in different English-speaking cultures, principally in England, the United States, and Canada, will be discussed.

ENGL-2603-760 | Short Fiction | TBA
Course Delivery: ONLINE ASYNCHRONOUS

ENGL-2613-001 | Fantasy Fiction | P. Melville
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

This course analyzes literary works within the fantasy genre in light of feminist, postcolonial, Marxist, and other cultural theories. While it considers the history of the fantasy genre and the “fantastic” as a literary mode, the course focuses primarily on the poetics and politics of “world-building,” a term that refers to fantasy’s production of imaginary “secondary” worlds whose historical, geographical, ontological, and cultural realities substantially differ from the world(s) inhabited by fantasy’s various readerships. The course covers a range of contemporary fantasy texts from different subgenres, including epic fantasy, urban fantasy, fairytale fantasy, and fantasy for young people. Though it is subject to change, the reading list will likely include (in reading order): N.K. Jemisin's The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, Seanan McGuire's Every Heart a Doorway, Cassandra Clare's City of Bones, Alix E. Harrow's A Spindle Splintered, and Rebecca Roanhorse's Black Sun.

ENGL-2740-001 | African Literature and Culture | C. Anyaduba
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

This course introduces students to the literatures of the African continent, in English, and the cultures from which they emerged, with an extended focus on the literatures of African diasporas. It provides a survey of African literatures, which may be organized by genres, themes, specific national or regional literatures, or particular literary and cultural movements and traditions in Africa. The course also addresses some of the significant debates in the history of African literatures, including definitions of African literature, the languages of African literature, and the connections between African literature and imperialism, colonialism, postcolonialism, decolonization, and globalization.

ENGL-2922-001 | Topics in Women Writers: From Sublime Vistas to Hideous Progeny: Women, Science, and Literature | K. Ready
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

This course focuses on a topic in the field of women writers which varies from year to year. The topic area may be defined by genre; historical period; literary and cultural movement; or local, national, or global communities.

The topic for this section (subtitled “From Sublime Vistas to Hideous Progeny: Women, Science, and Literature”) is women, science, and literature. Historically, science has been a field dominated by men, in which context nature sometimes has been imagined as a woman to be dominated and exploited. At the same time, women, as much as men, have been excited by the possibilities opened up by scientific study and the ways in which science and the technological innovations it inspires might make positive changes in the world, and have imagined non-hierarchal and non-exploitative relationships between science and nature. In this course, we will look at how women writers from the Scientific Revolution to the early twentieth-first century have imaginatively responded to developments in science and technology, thinking about questions connected not only to science and gender, but also to the relationship between the humanities and the sciences, now often regarded as separate and even opposed fields of study, although they were not always thought of in this way.

ENGL-2981-001 | History of the Book | Z. Izydorczyk
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

This course introduces students to the history of the book, the material basis of Western literate/literary culture, by exploring writing and reading technologies from the papyrus scroll to the digital screen. It briefly traces the history of producing, reading, preserving, and controlling material texts and covers such topics as writing as handwork, ideologies of reading, the manuscript codex, the invention of printing, the development of mise-en-page, notions of authorship, the reading public, the economics of book trade, and the digital revolution. The course offers a historical and material perspective on the past and present manifestations of literate/literary culture.

FALL/WINTER 2025-26

ENGL-2003-770 | Field of Children’s Literature | TBA
Course Delivery: ONLINE SYNCHRONOUS

An introduction to the study of children's literature, this course explores the characteristics of this form of literature, unusually named for its readers rather than its producers. We study various strategies for reading young people's texts; cultural assumptions about children and childhood; trends in educational theory and practice; the economic and political contexts of the production, consumption, and marketing of texts for young people; and popular culture and media for young people. Texts from a range of genres, such as poetry, picture books, novels, blogs, and films, are considered. Restrictions: Students may not hold credit for this course and the former ENGL-2003(3)

ENGL-2114-001 | Fairy Tales and Culture | C. Tosenberger
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

In this course we will study fairy tales, focusing not only on collected source material, but on literature written specifically for children based on these borrowed forms. We will trace the history of fairy tales from their origins in oral narrative to their impact on contemporary culture today. Students read and write critically about these tales and engage in comparisons on multiple fronts, exploring major themes and characteristics of these tales as well as the social and psychological aspects of them. The goal is to enrich our appreciation of these tales by strengthening our critical understanding of them as well as to gain insight as to how these tales function in our selves and our society.

ENGL-2142-001 | Field of Literary and Textual Studies: Things of Beauty, Solitary Poets, and Dead Authors: A History of Ideas about Art | K. Ready
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

This particular section of Field of Literary and Textual Studies (subtitled “Things of Beauty, Solitary Poets, and Dead Authors: A History of Ideas about Art”) will explore a variety of questions related to art, including literature, drawing on both literature (poetry, drama, and fiction) and criticism that has addressed the purpose and meaning of art, the requirements for great art, and the relationship between different kinds of art, as well as questions around genius, creativity, and artistry and authorship. Course materials will range from the ancient Greeks and Romans to the twenty-first century, encompassing such intellectual and aesthetic movements as Neoclassicism, Romanticism, Aestheticism, Decadence, Modernism, and Postmodernism, with some attention paid to other critical developments such as Marxism, psychoanalysis, and gender, race, and queer politics.

ENGL-2145-001 | Field of Cultural Studies | B. Cornellier
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

This course is an introductory survey of cultural studies. The course starts with a historical genealogy of the field of cultural studies in post-war Britain. It first introduces students to the field’s particular critical focus on questions related to social class, mass culture, and everyday life as sites where power is negotiated, reproduced, and contested. The course then examines how cultural studies expanded beyond the British context, and how it offers new ways to critically examine a constantly shifting cultural field in which issues of class, race, gender, and sexuality constantly intersect. The course includes readings in theory and criticism and the study of cultural forms and practices, such as literature, film, television, visual and performing arts, popular music, print and digital media, as well as the institutions that shape them. Issues covered may include: capitalism, mass culture, and popular culture; subjectivity, identity, and agency; ethnicity and race; imperialism, postcolonialism, and settler colonialism; diaspora and globalization; gender, sexuality, and intersectionality; audiences and reception; digital media culture; and the politics of representation.

ENGL-2741-001 | Asian North American Literature and Culture | J. Wills
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

This course offers a survey of Asian/North American Literature with a focus on writers from Canada and the United States. Students will read texts by canonical authors as well as contemporary writers across multiple genres. Topics covered will include literary representations of: Asian Exclusion and immigration bans, internment, imperialism, panAsian strategic essentialism, refugeeism, islamophobia, cultural appropriation, intergenerational conflict, cultural nationalism, women and nonbinary experiences, queer Asian/NA, and anti-Black racism/colourism. Authors studied may include Sui Sin Far, John Okada, Maxine Hong Kingston, R. Zamora Linmark, Wayson Choy, Jhumpa Lahiri, Changrae Lee, David Henry Hwang, Vivek Shraya, Kyo Lee, Viet Nguyen, Kim Thúy, and Shani Mootoo.

WINTER 2026

ENGL-2102-004 | Intro Creative Writing | J. Wills
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

ENGL-2102-005 | Intro Creative Writing | TBA
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

ENGL-2102-771 | Intro Creative Writing | TBA
Course Delivery: ONLINE SYNCHRONOUS

ENGL-2603-770 | Short Fiction | TBA
Course Delivery: ONLINE SYNCHRONOUS

ENGL-2703-001 | Play Analysis | J. Riley
Course Delivery: ONLINE SYNCHRONOUS

This is a practical course for actors, directors, and designers in the analysis of plays in rehearsal and pre-rehearsal situations. A variety of interpretive strategies are developed in approaching the problems of form, character, and theme in plays of different styles and periods. The emphasis is on Stanislavsky-derived techniques. Note: This course is strongly recommended for all theatre students in the Honours or the General program. Cross-listed: THFM-2703(3). Restrictions: Students may not hold credit for this course and THFM-2703.

ENGL-2751-001 | Intro to Classical Lit II | M. Racette-Campbell
Course Delivery: ONLINE SYNCHRONOUS

Homer's Iliad is a doom-filled beginning for the literature of war, a literary monument to fate, fear, memory, and loss. Starting from a study of the Iliad, this course traces conflict, politics, and remembrance across an assortment of works from the Ancient Mediterranean world. Students read texts in English translation from Archaic Greece to the Roman Empire, in verse and prose, across the genres of epic poetry, history, tragedy, and comedy, oratory, and more. Cross-listed: CLAS-2751(3). Restrictions: Students may not hold credit for this course and CLAS-2751.

ENGL-2802-001 | Syntax | TBA
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

Syntax is the study of the arrangement of words into groups, clauses and sentences. In this course students use morphological, syntactic, semantic, and lexical criteria to define traditional parts of speech, in order to understand how these combine to form a variety of clauses and sentences types. Form, function, class and structure are introduced from the perspective of systemic functional and communication linguistics. These descriptive frameworks are contrasted with transformational generative models and others. Cross-listed: ANTH-2403(3) and LING-2003(3). Restrictions: Students may not hold credit for this course and ANTH-2403 | LING-2003.

ENGL-2803-050 | Phonetics and Phonology | TBA
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

This course describes all English consonant and vowel sounds in terms of place and manner of articulation. It also identifies how sounds are organized into syllables and words by studying the concepts of phonemes, allophones and phonological rules. Although the course focuses on English phonology, it also draws heavily on other languages to illustrate the key concepts. Students will be required to master characters and diacritics from the International Phonetic Alphabet. Cross-listed: ANTH-2401(3) and LING-2001(3). Restrictions: Students may not hold credit for this course and ANTH-2401 | LING-2001.

ENGL-2806-001 | Semantics | TBA
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

Semantics is the branch of linguistics concerned with how we construct meaning using language. It is arguably the most diverse branch, situated between the highly formalizable "inner layers" of phonology, morphology and syntax and the fuzzier "outer layer" of pragmatics. Key ideas covered in the course include: the difference between sense and reference, the application of basic rules in formal logic, prototype theory, componential analysis, and cognitive semantics; how to identify thematic roles in sentences; the functions of noun classifiers, deictics, and adpositions in different languages; and, the nature of metaphors, metonyms and image schemas. Cross-listed: ANTH-2405(3) and LING-2004(3). Restrictions: Students may not hold credit for this course and ANTH-2405 | LING-2004 | PHIL-2374.

ENGL-2922-002| Topics in Women Writers: Women's Contemporary Literary Nonfiction | C. Lypka
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

This course is a study in women’s contemporary literary nonfiction, exploring the principles and practice of “true stories, well told” while analyzing the ways in which women use language to express their experiences. Readings will range from 20th and 21st-century women writers of personal essays to larger works of memoir and hybrid genres. In examining women’s use of literary forms as aesthetic, personal, and political sites, we will consider how issues of identity and historical context affect and influence writing strategies. Students will engage with the literary, social, and cultural dimensions and contexts of various forms of literary nonfiction while developing skills in literary analysis.