2020-2021 English Courses and Descriptions

Books

*The Course Schedules below are subject to change once the new Academic Calendar is published as well as pending enrolment pattern changes. Detailed course descriptions by instructors are added when available and are also subject to change.

**Please consult the Registrar's Time Table for mode of delivery for courses.


First-Year Courses

Fall Term

Winter Term


Course Title: Effective Writing

Course Code: ENG100H5F | Lecture MWF 9-10

Instructor: Megan Harris

This course provides practical tools for writing in university and beyond. Students will gain experience in generating ideas, clarifying insights, structuring arguments, composing paragraphs and sentences, critiquing and revising their writing and communicating effectively to diverse audiences. This course does not count toward any English program.

Group n/a


Course Title: Effective Writing

Course Code: ENG100H5F | Lecture M 3-5, W 3-4

Instructor: M. Jones

This course provides practical tools for writing in university and beyond. Students will gain experience in generating ideas, clarifying insights, structuring arguments, composing paragraphs and sentences, critiquing and revising their writing and communicating effectively to diverse audiences. This course does not count toward any English program.

Group n/a


Course Title: Effective Writing

Course Code: ENG100H5F | Lecture T 3-5, R 3-4

Instructor: Geoff Bouvier

This course provides practical tools for writing in university and beyond. Students will gain experience in generating ideas, clarifying insights, structuring arguments, composing paragraphs and sentences, critiquing and revising their writing and communicating effectively to diverse audiences. This course does not count toward any English program.

Group n/a

Detailed Description by Instructor:
This course is designed as a comprehensive introduction to writing in multiple scholarly and informal genres, and will provide students with the necessary foundational skills to argue and communicate effectively in writing.

Selected Major Readings:
The Bedford Book of Genres: A Guide and Reader, 2nd Edition; Keys to Great Writing Revised and Expanded: Mastering the Elements of Composition and Revision; They Say/ I Say: The Moves that Matter in Academic Writing

Method of Instruction: Weekly online discussion-based seminars. (Students must be able and available to log on to their computers and attend virtual seminars during class time throughout the semester.) Weekly online reading and writing assignments.

Method of Evaluation:
Discussion Board Reading Responses: 10 per cent
5 Mini Writing Assignments in Multiple Genres: 15 per cent
Informative Genre Paper (2-3 pgs.): 15 per cent
Peer Reviews of Informative Genre Paper: 15 per cent
Persuasive Genre Paper (2-3 pgs.): 15 per cent
Peer Reviews of Persuasive Genre Paper: 15 per cent
Narrative Journal (10-15 pgs.): 15 per cent


Course Title: Effective Writing LEC0101

Course Code: ENG100H5S | Lecture MWF 9-10

Instructor: Thomas Laughlin

This course provides practical tools for writing in university and beyond. Students will gain experience in generating ideas, clarifying insights, structuring arguments, composing paragraphs and sentences, critiquing and revising their writing and communicating effectively to diverse audiences. This course does not count toward any English program.

Group n/a


Course Title: Effective Writing LEC0102

Course Code: ENG100H5S | Lecture T 3-5, R 3-4

InstructorThomas Laughlin

This course provides practical tools for writing in university and beyond. Students will gain experience in generating ideas, clarifying insights, structuring arguments, composing paragraphs and sentences, critiquing and revising their writing and communicating effectively to diverse audiences. This course does not count toward any English program.

Group n/a


Course Title: How to Read Critically

Course Code: ENG101H5F | Lecture TR 9-10 | Tutorials T 10-11, T 12-1, R 10-11, R 12-1

Instructor: Thomas Laughlin

This foundational course serves as an introduction to a wide range and variety of methods for literary and textual analysis, giving students a set of interpretive tools they can use to analyze texts in English classes and beyond. Emphasis will be on developing close, attentive reading skills as ways of thinking not just about, but through texts, and on deploying these skills effectively in essays and discussions. The class will draw on literary works from a variety of countries, centuries, genres and media. We recommend that students considering a Specialist, Major or Minor in English take this course.

Group 1 Literary Theory/Methods


Course Title: How to Research Literature

Course Code: ENG102H5S | Lecture TR 12-1 | Tutorials R 1-2, R 3-4

InstructorDaniela Janes

This foundational course serves as an introduction to conducting research for English courses at the university level. Skills taught will be: reading and engaging with arguments about literature; incorporating the arguments of others into your own; locating and evaluating secondary sources; and conducting primary research. The class will draw on literary works from a variety of countries, centuries, genres and media. The class will normally culminate in a longer research paper, developed over the course of the semester. We recommend that students considering a Specialist, Major or a Minor in English take this course.

Group n/a

Detailed Description by Instructor:
ENG102 is a foundational course that will prepare students to conduct research in their undergraduate English courses. By focusing on the process of developing arguments about literature, and supporting these arguments with scholarly research, this course will help students learn the skills needed to find their own voice within the scholarly conversation. We will focus on locating and evaluating secondary sources; reading and engaging with arguments about literature; and incorporating the arguments of others into our own writing. This course also reinforces the close reading skills students develop in other introductory English classes.

Selected Major Readings:
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818 edition); F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby; Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart; Katherine O. Acheson, Writing Essays About Literature.

First Texts/Authors to be Studied: Acheson, Shelley, Fitzgerald.

Method of Instruction: Lecture (two hours per week) and tutorial (one hour per week). 

Method of Evaluation: Scaffolded assignments (proposal, annotated bibliography) leading to the final research essay, critical engagement test, final exam, weekly writing exercises in tutorial, engaged participation in tutorial.


Course Title: Introduction to World Literatures

Course Code: ENG105H5S | Lecture M 9-11 | Tutorials M 11-12, M 1-2

Instructor: Raji Soni

Students will learn about contemporary creative writing in English from around the world. The course will cover the work of some famous writers, such as Toni Morrison or J.M. Coetzee, and also new and emerging authors, from Canada to New Zealand to Nigeria.

Exclusion: ENG140Y5

Group n/a


Course Title: Narrative

Course Code: ENG110H5F | Lecture MW 10-11 | Tutorials W 11-12, W 12-1, W 1-2, W 2-3

Instructor: Chester Scoville

This course gives students skills for analyzing the stories that shape our world: traditional literary narratives such as ballads, romances and novels, and also the kinds of stories we encounter in non-literary contexts such as journalism, movies, myths, jokes, legal judgments, travel writing, histories, songs, diaries and biographies.

Exclusion: ENG110Y5

Group n/a

Detailed Description by Instructor:
This course will introduce the student to the study of narrative, sometimes known as 'narratology.' The lectures will introduce concepts of narrative and apply them to a variety of texts; the tutorials will provide critical discussion of these concepts and texts. By the end of the course, students should be able to demonstrate a critical understanding of the concepts of narratology and their applicability to a broad range of phenomena. As an introductory English course, ENG110 will also focus on student writing and analytical techniques, so that students may begin to master the art of the scholarly essay. By the end of the course, students should be able to construct and present analytical arguments in forms appropriate to literary studies and other humanistic disciplines.

Selected Major Readings:
H. Porter Abbott, The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative
Ernest Hemingway, "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place"
Henry James, The Turn of the Screw
Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot
Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied:
Abbott, James, TBA

Method of Instruction: Online, asynchronous lecture/synchronous discussion

Method of Evaluation: Essays, submitted in scaffolded stages


Course Title: Traditions of Theatre and Drama

Course Code: ENG121H5F | Lecture MW 11-12 | Tutorials M 12-1, M 2-3

Instructor: Holger Syme

An introductory survey of the forms and history of world drama in its performance context from the classical period to the 19th century. May include later works influenced by historical forms and one or more plays in the Theatre Erindale schedule of production. May include a research performance component. This course is also listed as DRE121H5.

Exclusion: ENG125Y1

Group n/a


Course Title: Modern and Contemporary Theatre and Drama

Course Code: ENG122H5S | Lecture MW 11-12 | Tutorials W 12-1, W 2-3

Instructor: Caitlin Gowans

An introductory survey of the forms and history of world drama from the late 19th century to the present in its performance context. May include film adaptations and one or more plays in the Theatre Erindale schedule of productions. May include a research performance component. This course is also listed as DRE122H5.

Exclusion: ENG125Y1

Group n/a


Second-Year Courses

Fall Term

Winter Term


Course Title: British Literature in the World I: Medieval to Eighteenth-Century

Course Code: ENG202H5F | Lecture MW 12-1 | Tutorials W 1-2, W 3-4

Instructor: Liza Blake

This course serves as an introduction to influential texts that have shaped British literary history from Beowulf and Chaucer to Shakespeare, from Milton and Behn to Burney. Students will focus on questions such as the range and evolution of poetic forms, the development of the theatre and the novel and the emergence of women writers. The course will encourage students to think about the study of English literatures in relationship to history, including the history of world literatures.

Exclusion: ENG202Y5

Prerequisite: Open to students who have successfully completed at least 4.0 full credits.

Students who do not meet the prerequisite but are enrolled in any 100-level ENG or DRE course (except ENG100H5) may petition the department in writing for approval to take the course. See the guidelines for written petitions on the department website.

Group n/a

Detailed Description by Instructor:
What is a world, and what does it mean for something like 'British' literature to be “in” it? This course, a foundational course for the English major, offers an introduction to the major authors of almost nine centuries of British and English literature. We will see how something like 'British' or 'English' literature emerges out of the slow historical colonizations and recolonizations of the British Isles. But we will also see how the literature coming out of these isles imagines and describes other worlds within and without itself. We will focus especially on texts that imagine travel to other words (lands of faerie; distant lands occupied by monsters; utopias that imagine better societies; the New World of the Americas; other planets ruled by women scientists), and will think about how different genres (medieval theater, metaphysical poetry, sci-fi novels) project both author and reader beyond the worlds they typically inhabit.

Throughout the course, we will also question what it means to read literary texts as part of a broad historical survey, considering especially how our modern understandings of the nature of history might warp our perceptions of the past. As a result, we will not only consider the 'origins' of British literature but also question what it means to have an origin at all. We will embed the literary works we read in their historical contexts, but also consider the way each presents its own understanding of history, examining in particular the ways that literary texts situate themselves in times and places.

Selected Major Readings:
Exeter Book Riddles; Marie de France’s lais; The Travels of Sir John Mandeville; Sir Orfeo; Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales; The Second Shepherd’s Play; The Book of Margery Kempe; Thomas More, Utopia; Thomas Hariott, Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia; Margaret Cavendish, Blazing World; Aphra Behn, Oroonoko; Olaudah Equiano, Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano; romantic, erotic, political, and metaphysical poetry by Thomas Wyatt, Queen Elizabeth I, Mary Sidney Herbert, Walter Raleigh, Philip Sidney, Mary Wroth, William Shakespeare, John Donne, George Herbert, Margaret Cavendish, Hester Pulter, Thomas Traherne, Phillis Wheatley, and more.

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied:
Jorge Luis Borges, “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote”; (from) Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People; (from) Gildas, On the Ruin of Britain; (from) Geoffrey of Monmouth, History of the Kings of Britain

Method of Instruction: fully online: synchronous and asynchronous lectures; virtual discussion sections; virtual office hours

Method of Evaluation: creative and analytical writing assignments; quizzes (nature TBD depending on COVID); take-home exam; participation in discussion-oriented tutorials (nature TBD depending on COVID)


Course Title: British Literature in the World II: Romantic to Contemporary

Course Code: ENG203H5S | Lecture TR 11-12 | Tutorials T 12-1, T 2-3

Instructor: Chris Koenig-Woodyard

An introduction to influential texts that have shaped British literary history from the Romantic period to the present, covering developments in poetry, drama and prose, from William Wordsworth to Zadie Smith and beyond. The course will address topics such as revolution and war; the increasing diversity of poetic forms; the cultural dominance of the novel; romanticism, Victorianism, modernism and postmodernism; feminism; colonialism and decolonization; the ethnic and cultural diversity of Anglophone literature in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries; literature and sexual identity; the AIDS epidemic; and technology and the digital age. The course will encourage students to think about the study of English literatures in relationship to history, including the history of world literatures.

Exclusion: ENG203Y5

Prerequisite: Open to students who have successfully completed at least 4.0 full credits.

Students who do not meet the prerequisite but are enrolled in any 100-level ENG or DRE course (except ENG100H5) may petition the department in writing for approval to take the course. See the guidelines for written petitions on the department website.

Group n/a


Course Title: How to Read Poetry

Course Code: ENG204H5F | Lecture M 3-5, W 3-4

Instructor: Brent Wood

This course gives students the tools they need to appreciate and understand poetry's traditional and experimental forms, specialized techniques and diverse ways of using language. The course asks a fundamental question for literary studies: why is poetry such an important mode of expression in so many different time periods, locations and cultures?

Exclusion: ENG201Y5

Prerequisite: Open to students who have successfully completed at least 4.0 full credits.

Students who do not meet the prerequisite but are enrolled in any 100-level ENG or DRE course (except ENG100H5) may petition the department in writing for approval to take the course. See the guidelines for written petitions on the department website.

Group 1 Literary Theory/Methods

Detailed Description by Instructor:
This course introduces students to poetry in English in the context of North America (Turtle Island). Elements of poetry such as rhythm, metaphor and image are explored along with topical poems linking colonial history to the here-and-now. Poems for performance as well as the page will be studied, covering a range of cultural perspectives.

Selected Major Readings: Poems collected and analytical tools prepared by instructor, all posted on Quercus.

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied: Texts on the elements of poetry along with contemporary illustrations.

Method of Instruction: Weekly podcast-style lectures and virtual group discussions, all online.

Method of Evaluation: Short analytical assignments, tests, participation.


Course Title: Rhetoric

Course Code: ENG205H5F | Lecture MW 11-12, F 12-1

Instructor: Chester Scoville

An introduction to the rhetorical tradition from classical times to the present with a focus on prose as strategic persuasion. Besides rhetorical terminology, topics may include the discovery and arrangement of arguments, validity in argumentation, elements of style and rhetorical criticism and theory.

Exclusion: WRI305H5

Prerequisite: Open to students who have successfully completed at least 4.0 full credits.

Students who do not meet the prerequisite but are enrolled in any 100-level ENG or DRE course (except ENG100H5) may petition the department in writing for approval to take the course. See the guidelines for written petitions on the department website.

Group 1 Literary Theory/Methods

Detailed Description by Instructor:
An introduction to the major concepts and theories of rhetoric from the ancient world to the present day. We will explore the roots of rhetoric in Athenian political culture, trace its development through Roman law and medieval religion and literature, and consider some of its modern and postmodern varieties. Along the way, we will see the centrality in Western thought of the study and practice of persuasive speech and writing, and its relationship to politics, science, history, literature and more.

Selected Major Readings:
We will be reading both theoretical and pedagogical texts from Ancient Greece to the present day, as well as literary and political examples of rhetoric in action from Homer to Shakespeare to King. Major texts will include the anonymous Dissoi Logoi, Aristotle's Rhetoric, Lloyd Bitzer's "The Rhetorical Siutation," selections from Kenneth Burke's A Rhetoric of Motives, and more.

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied:
Dissoi Logoi, Aristotle, Bitzer

Method of Instruction: Online; asynchronous lecture/synchronous discussion

Method of Evaluation: Participation, group project, short weekly writing assignments, midterm test, final essay.


Course Title: Rhetorical Criticism

Course Code: ENG206H5S | Lecture MWF 10-11

Instructor: Chester Scoville

This course will use the tools and perspectives of rhetoric, from the Sophists to the postmodern, to analyze and critique the texts and other cultural artifacts that surround us. Much of what we encounter in the cultural realm is an argument; the task in this course will be to understand and engage with those arguments. Students will analyze the rhetoric of poetry, fiction and drama, as well as of news stories, speeches, video, images and more

Prerequisite: Open to students who have successfully completed at least 4.0 full credits.

Students who do not meet the prerequisite but are enrolled in any 100-level ENG or DRE course (except ENG100H5) may petition the department in writing for approval to take the course. See the guidelines for written petitions on the department website.

Group 1 Literary Theory/Methods

Detailed Description by Instructor:
The world that surrounds us is not neutral; it is replete with designed objects, textual and otherwise, that seek to persuade, move, and teach us. This course will build on the base of ENG205 Rhetoric to focus on detailed analysis of texts, their persuasive methods and their grounding in the power structures and struggles of their day. Students will use the tools of analysis to conduct rhetorical readings of a variety of texts, in order to reveal their agendas and techniques. This experience will both lay the groundwork for other forms of analysis in English courses, and foster skills of reading and critical thought that are applicable in a wide variety of fields and situations.

Selected Major Readings:
Much of our work will rely on Foss, Rhetorical Criticism, 5th edition, which will be available at the UTM bookstore; and on Hart et al., Modern Rhetorical Criticism, 4th ed., available through the U of T Library system. Students will also choose texts from a variety of sources to analyze using the tools we study.

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied: Foss, Hart, Aristotle.

Method of Instruction: Online, asynchronous lecture/synchronous discussion; unless we have returned to classrooms by then.

Method of Evaluation: Short analytical writing assignments capped by a substantial final paper. Participation will also be counted.


Course Title: The Short Story

Course Code: ENG213H5F | Lecture T 1-2, R 1-3

Instructor: Daniela Janes

This course explores shorter works of 19th- and 20th-century writers. Special attention will be paid to formal and rhetorical concepts for the study of fiction as well as to issues such as narrative voice, allegory, irony and the representation of temporality.

Prerequisite: Open to students who have successfully completed at least 4.0 full credits.

Students who do not meet the prerequisite but are enrolled in any 100-level ENG or DRE course (except ENG100H5) may petition the department in writing for approval to take the course. See the guidelines for written petitions on the department website.

Group n/a

Detailed Description by Instructor:
This course examines the development of the short story from the 19th century to the present. We will explore stories drawn from a range of national literatures, including several works that will be studied in translation. The goal of the course is to develop your knowledge of the literary short story by examining major writers, and to build a sense of historical and theoretical context. We will consider the short story in terms of the formal features of the genre, and will seek to define some of the essential characteristics of the short story as more than, simply, a story that is short.

Selected major readings: The recommended course text is The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction, Shorter 8th Edition which is available to be ordered online via the UTM Bookstore. Some of the authors to be covered include Baldwin, Carver, Chekhov, Chopin, Faulkner, Hawthorne, Hemingway, Joyce, Kafka, Kincaid, Lahiri, Le Guin, Mansfield, de Maupassant, Melville, Munro, Oates, Poe, and Woolf.

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied: Hawthorne, “Young Goodman Brown”; Poe, “The Fall of the House of Usher”; Melville, “Bartleby, the Scrivener.”

Method of instruction: This class will be conducted fully online, in a combination of asynchronous and synchronous modes. Students should anticipate investing time in preparing readings, engaging with course material independently and collaboratively, contributing to online discussion and completing several substantial writing projects.

Method of evaluation: written projects, online discussion and engaged participation.


Course Title: The Canadian Short Story

Course Code: ENG215H5F | Lecture T 1-3, R 2-3

Instructor: Colin Hill

An introduction to the Canadian short story, this course emphasizes its rich variety of settings, subjects and styles.

Prerequisite: Open to students who have successfully completed at least 4.0 full credits.

Students who do not meet the prerequisite but are enrolled in any 100-level ENG or DRE course (except ENG100H5) may petition the department in writing for approval to take the course. See the guidelines for written petitions on the department website.

Group 5 Canadian Literature

Detailed Description by Instructor:
This course introduces students to some of Canada’s best short fiction. We will discuss short stories by a diverse assortment of writers who engage the cultural conditions of modern Canada. Topics will include, but are certainly not limited to, modernism, urban / rural tensions, the artist figure, gender, Canadian postmodernism and postcolonialism, multiculturalism, psychological and spiritual self-discovery, and Canadian social, cultural, regional and national identities. Students will be expected to attend regularly and to complete readings thoughtfully and on time, and are also strongly encouraged to participate in class discussions. This course aims to build knowledge and appreciation of Canadian short fiction and to introduce students to a wide range of theoretical, critical and literary-historical approaches relevant to the study of Canadian and other modern and contemporary literatures. This course also aims to improve the quality of student writing. Engaged students should expect to come away from the course with a good understanding of the subjects and forms of the Canadian short story and many of its important literary, historical, cultural and theoretical contexts.

Selected Major Readings:
All of the course readings are available in a course pack, edited by the professor, and available in the UTM Bookstore.

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied: Grove, Leacock, Sime

Method of Instruction: Lecture / Discussion

Method of Evaluation: TBA


Course Title: Introduction to Shakespeare

Course Code: ENG223H5S | Lecture MW 11-12 | Tutorials M 12-1, M 2-3

Instructor: Holger Syme

This course introduces students to Shakespeare. Lectures equip them with historical knowledge about literature, politics, and the theatre in Shakespeare's time. Tutorials help them to grapple with Shakespeare's language, versification and stagecraft. By the end of the course students will have a new framework within which to understand — and interrogate — the enduring power of Shakespeare's work.

Exclusion: ENG220Y5, DRE221Y5, DRE224H5

Prerequisite: Open to students who have successfully completed at least 4.0 full credits.

Students who do not meet the prerequisite but are enrolled in any 100-level ENG or DRE course (except ENG100H5) may petition the department in writing for approval to take the course. See the guidelines for written petitions on the department website.

Group 3 Literature pre-1700


Course Title: Children's Literature

Course Code: ENG234H5S | Lecture T 1-3, R 1-2

Instructor: Siobhan O'Flynn

A critical and historical study of poetry and fiction written for or appropriated by children, this course may also include drama or non-fiction. The authors studied may include Bunyan, Stevenson, Carroll, Twain, Alcott, Nesbit, Montgomery, Milne, Norton, Fitzhugh and Rowling.

Prerequisite: Open to students who have successfully completed at least 4.0 full credits.

Students who do not meet the prerequisite but are enrolled in any 100-level ENG or DRE course (except ENG100H5) may petition the department in writing for approval to take the course. See the guidelines for written petitions on the department website.

Group n/a


Course Title: Comics and the Graphic Novel

Course Code: ENG235H5S | Lecture MWF 12-1

Instructor: Chester Scoville

An introduction to the writing and sequential art of comics and graphic novels, this course includes fictional and nonfictional comics by artists such as Will Eisner, Art Spiegelman, Frank Miller, Alan Moore, Chris Ware, Daniel Clowes, Julie Doucet, Marjane Satrapi, Chester Brown and Seth.

Prerequisite: Open to students who have successfully completed at least 4.0 full credits.

Students who do not meet the prerequisite but are enrolled in any 100-level ENG or DRE course (except ENG100H5) may petition the department in writing for approval to take the course. See the guidelines for written petitions on the department website.

Group n/a

Detailed Description by Instructor:
The graphic novel, comic books, sequential art — whatever its name, this popular but long-marginalized art form has been rapidly gaining cultural respectability. Over the past twenty years, artists and writers in this medium have departed from its traditional subject matter to create graphic autobiographies, journalism, political analyses, philosophical arguments and histories, as well as revisiting, critiquing and reinventing such familiar subjects as magic, science fiction and the superhero. This course will examine the range of the current graphic novel, focusing on the medium’s rhetoric, narration and socio-political range.

Selected Major Readings:
We will be reading such literary graphic texts as Seth’s It’s a Good Life If You Don’t Weaken, Meags Fitzgerald's Photobooth, and Jillian and Mariko Tamki's This One Summer, as well as some mainstream comics such as G. Willow Wilson’s Ms. Marvel. We will also use such resources as Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics as theoretical and historical background.

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied: Seth, Fitzgerald, McCloud

Method of Instruction: Online, asynchronous lecture/synchronous discussion, unless we will have returned to classrooms by then.

Method of Evaluation: There will be several short writing assignments, leading up to a substantial final essay.


Course Title: Fantasy Literature

Course Code: ENG238H5F | Lecture W 1-3, F 2-3

Instructor: Chris Koenig-Woodyard

This course focuses on fantasy literature, film and television, and draws on a wide range of critical, cultural and theoretical approaches. As it explores the magical and supernatural, it may consider such genres as alternative histories, animal fantasy, epic, fairy tales, magic realism and swords and sorcery. Authors and texts covered will survey the history of fantasy across American, British and Canadian literature, and may include Beowulf, Butler, Carroll, Gaiman, Le Guin, Lewis, Martin, Ovid, Rowling, Shakespeare, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Swift and Tolkien.

Prerequisite: Open to students who have successfully completed at least 4.0 full credits.

Students who do not meet the prerequisite but are enrolled in any 100-level ENG or DRE course (except ENG100H5) may petition the department in writing for approval to take the course. See the guidelines for written petitions on the department website.

Group n/a

Detailed Description by Instructor:
This course explores fantasy literature from a variety of theoretical and critical approaches. As we read novels that treat the magical, the supernatural, epic, fairy tales and magic realism, we will be interested in intersections between fantasy and a wide range of themes: gender and sexuality, culture, politics, philosophy and race — to name a few.

Required Reading (available at Amazon; NOTE: I have NOT ordered books through the UTM Bookstore):

Tolkien, J.R.R., Hobbit ISBN: 978-0261102217

Collins, Suzanne, Hunger Games ISBN: 978-0439023528

Rowling, JK, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban ISBN: 978-1408855676

Liu, Marjorie, Monstress Vol 1. Awakening ISBN: 978-1632157096

Adeyemi, Tomi, Children of Blood and Bone ISBN: 978-1250170972

Other readings posted to the PORTAL or in a course pack

First Three Text/Authors to be Studied: Beowulf, The Hobbit, The Hunger Games

Method of Instruction: lecture and discussion

Method of Evaluation: essays (with a creative writing option), tests and exam


Course Title: Introduction to American Literature

Course Code: ENG251H5F | Lecture M 1-3, W 1-2

Instructor: Melissa Gniadek

This course introduces students to major works in American literature in a variety of genres, from poetry and fiction to essays and slave narratives.

Exclusion: ENG250Y5

Prerequisite: Open to students who have successfully completed at least 4.0 full credits.

Students who do not meet the prerequisite but are enrolled in any 100-level ENG or DRE course (except ENG100H5) may petition the department in writing for approval to take the course. See the guidelines for written petitions on the department website.

Group 6 American Literature

Detailed Description by Instructor:
In recent months and years we have again been reminded that the ideals espoused in the founding documents of the United States are not, in fact, realities. Inequalities and systemic racism surface again and again as America constantly reassesses its present in relation to its past. While protests have taken on new urgency recently, protest itself is not new. Since the beginnings of the U.S. as a nation, writers have used various genres to point to the limitations of practices of freedom and equality in the U.S. In this course we will examine examples of these writings, from Phillis Wheatley’s late 18th-century poems to Claudia Rankine’s 21st-century prose poem. Along the way we’ll think about how the experiment of the United States is constantly being revised and critiqued. As we investigate forms of protest, some overt and radical and others more quiet, we’ll carefully close read texts to think about how authors position their readers in order to raise political and ethical questions. At the same time, we’ll develop a sense of major literary periods and movements that will provide a groundwork for future study of American literature.

Selected Major Readings:
Phillis Wheatley poems
Hannah Foster, The Coquette
David Walker’s Appeal
Herman Melville, Benito Cereno
Charles Chesnutt short stories
Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied:
Lemuel Haynes, “Liberty Further Extended: Or Free Thoughts on the Illegality of Slave-keeping”
Phillis Wheatley poems
Hannah Foster, The Coquette

Method of Instruction: lecture and discussion

Method of Evaluation: online discussion and written chat, short writing assignments, essays (4-6 pages).


Course Title: Introduction to Canadian Literature

Course Code: ENG255H5S | Lecture T 9-11, R 10-11

Instructor: Daniela Janes

This course introduces students to Canadian literatures, from the oral narratives of Canada's early Indigenous communities to new writing in a digital age.

Exclusion: ENG252Y5

Prerequisite: Open to students who have successfully completed at least 4.0 full credits.

Students who do not meet the prerequisite but are enrolled in any 100 level ENG or DRE course (except ENG100H5) may petition the department in writing for approval to take the course. See the guidelines for written petitions on the department website.

Group 5 Canadian Literature

Detailed Description by Instructor:
This course introduces students to the breadth and diversity of Canadian literature through an examination of representative works in a range of genres, including novels, short stories, poetry and a play. Students will read a selection of Canadian literature across its history, paying attention to formal developments and stylistic innovations. We will consider how ideas about the nation are shaped through stories, and how national narratives are constructed, challenged and rewritten.

Selected Major Readings: L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables; John MacLachlan Gray with Eric Peterson, Billy Bishop Goes to War; Richard Wagamese, Indian Horse; selected shorter works by authors including Austin Clarke, Edith Eaton, Pauline Johnson, Brian Maracle, Rohinton Mistry, Susanna Moodie, Alice Munro, Marjorie Pickthall, and Madeleine Thien. A final reading list will be shared before the class begins.

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied: Maracle, Moodie, Johnson.

Method of Instruction: Lecture and discussion. This course is currently scheduled to take place in person.

Method of Evaluation: close reading, essay, tests, in-class exercises and informed participation.


Course Title: Literature and Environmental Criticism

Course Code: ENG259H5F | Lecture T 11-1, R 11-12

Instructor: Stanka Radovic

This course is an introduction to the field of ecocriticism: the study of literary writing about nature and of literature's role in thinking about environment. Students will read work by prominent theorists of the field and by major literary writers such as Shakespeare, Marvell, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Thoreau, Emerson, Whitman, Dickens, Hardy, Pratt, Lawrence, Frost and Atwood.

Prerequisite: Open to students who have successfully completed at least 4.0 full credits.

Students who do not meet the prerequisite but are enrolled in any 100-level ENG or DRE course (except ENG100H5) may petition the department in writing for approval to take the course. See the guidelines for written petitions on the department website.

Group 1 Literary Theory/Methods

Detailed Description by Instructor:
This course will explore environmental criticism by focusing on climate change fiction, popularly known as "cli-fi." In recent years, the polarizing political debate about the nature and extent of climate change has resulted in increased popular awareness about the importance and fragility of our environment. Scientific, technological, economic and political concerns that fuel this discussion have also been reflected in climate fiction. More often than not, this type of fiction takes a dystopian and speculative perspective on the relationship between humans and their physical environment. We will examine the ways in which climate fiction imagines environmental crisis and what it has to contribute to the larger debate about the environment. Scholarly texts and works of fiction will help us engage climate change and environmental degradation as central to the ways we imagine our future and reconsider our past on this planet.

Selected Major Readings:
Timothy Clark The Cambridge Introduction to Literature and Environment; Mark Maslin Climate Change: A Very Short Introduction; J.G. Ballard The Drought; Octavia Butler Parable of the Sower; China Mieville Un Lun Dun

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied:
Timothy Clark The Cambridge Introduction to Literature and Environment; J.G. Ballard The Drought; Octavia Butler Parable of the Sower

Method of Instruction: lectures and class discussion

Method of Evaluation: class participation (15 per cent); assignment 1, reading response (25 per cent); assignment 2, close reading essay (25 per cent); assignment 3, final essay (35 per cent).


Course Title: Music and Literature

Course Code: ENG261H5F | Lecture M 1-2, W 1-3

Instructor: Brent Wood

This course introduces students to the intersection of music and literature. We will study how melody, rhythm and texture interact with language, story and performance using examples from folk ballads and blues, art-songs, popular songs, musical theatre, jazz and hiphop, as well as poems inspired by musical styles and performers. Works to be covered may include folksongs collected by Francis Child and Alan Lomax, Thomas Moore’s Irish Melodies, popular songs by Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell, theatrical works by Bertolt Brecht, Stephen Sondheim and Lin-Manuel Miranda, performances by The Last Poets, hiphop lyrics by Public Enemy, and poems by William Blake, William Wordsworth, Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes and Don McKay.

Prerequisite: Open to students who have successfully completed at least 4.0 full credits.

Group n/a

Detailed Description by Instructor:
This course introduces students to the intersection of music and literature in the context of North America (Turtle Island). We will study how melody, rhythm and texture have interacted with language, story and performance in the North American milieu using examples from folk ballads and blues, art-songs, popular songs, musical theatre, jazz and hiphop, as well as poems inspired by musical styles and performers. Works to be covered may include popular songs by Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell and Buffy Sainte-Marie, theatrical works by Stephen Sondheim and Lin-Manuel Miranda, performances by The Last Poets, hiphop lyrics by Public Enemy, fiction by James Baldwin and poems by William Blake, John Keats, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Langston Hughes and Don McKay.

Selected Major Readings: Listening will have equal priority with reading. Aside from short poems and songs, larger pieces will include musical theatre works Hair, Hamilton and Sweeney Todd.

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied: Literary ballads by the English Romantics, national myth songs of Canada and the USA, and the musical theatre work Hamilton.

Method of Instruction: Weekly podcast-style lectures and remote group discussion sessions.

Method of Evaluation: Essay, short commentaries, test.


Course Title: Literatures of Immigration and Exile

Course Code: ENG273H5S | Lecture M 3-5, W 3-4

Instructor: TBA

In this course we will study literary and non-literary texts in English from the 19th century to the present day that come from colonial and postcolonial contexts and that speak to the experience of those affected by colonization, immigration, exile, war and globalization. Students will be introduced to postcolonial theory and questions about race, ethnicity, religious difference and diasporas in Anglophone literary studies. They may study texts by Conrad, James, Beckett, Joyce, Rhys, Pound, Ionesco, Nabokov, Koestler, Brodsky, Naipaul, Achebe, Kundera, Skvorecky, Rushdie, Gallant, Sebald, Ondaatje, Danticat, Ali and Nafisi.

Exclusion: ENG253Y5, ENG270Y1, ENG270Y5, ENG272H5

Prerequisite: Open to students who have successfully completed at least 4.0 full credits.

Students who do not meet the prerequisite but are enrolled in any 100-level ENG or DRE course (except ENG100H5) may petition the department in writing for approval to take the course. See the guidelines for written petitions on the department website.

Group 2 Race, Ethnicity, Diaspora, Indigeneity


Course Title: Indigenous Literatures

Course Code: ENG274H5F | Lecture T 3-5, R 4-5

Instructor: Daniela Janes

An introduction to Indigenous literature with emphasis on writers from Canada's First Nations. Readings will be considered in the context of global aboriginal cultures and oral traditions. Texts may include fiction, poetry, drama and non-fiction by writers such as Sherman Alexie, Jeannette Armstrong, Michael Dorris, Tomson Highway, Basil Johnston, Thomas King, Lee Maracle, Daniel David Moses, Eden Robinson  andLeslie Marmon Silko.

Prerequisite: Open to students who have successfully completed at least 4.0 full credits.

Students who do not meet the prerequisite but are enrolled in ENG101H or ENG102H5 or ENG110H5 or ENG140Y5 or DRE/ENG121H5 and DRE/ENG122H5 may petition the department in writing for approval to take the course. See the guidelines for written petitions on the department website.

Group 2 Race, Ethnicity, Diaspora, Indigeneity

Detailed Description by Instructor:
In Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future: Summary of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (2015), the TRC authors observe that “History plays an important role in reconciliation; to build for the future, Canadians must look to, and learn from, the past” (8). This course invites students to participate in the work of reconciliation by building their knowledge of the history of Indigenous peoples in the part of Turtle Island called Canada, and by reading the vibrant and innovative work of contemporary Indigenous authors. Our reading list for this course covers a range of genres such as poetry, short stories, novels and Indigenous-authored literary criticism from the 19th century to the present. In addition to a careful attention to historical contexts, this course engages with issues of identity, representation, and power; language, spirituality, and culture; and geographical and political borders. We will also explore formal and theoretical questions relating to orature, historiography, representation, appropriation and textual and political resistance. Our reading of Indigenous-authored literary and cultural criticism will give us tools and vocabulary to build decolonial critical approaches and reading strategies.

Selected Major Readings: Heather Macfarlane and Armand Garnet Ruffo, editors, Introduction to Indigenous Literary Criticism in Canada;
Pauline Johnson, Tekahionwake: E. Pauline Johnson’s Writings on Native North America;
Thomas King, Truth and Bright Water; Eden Robinson, Monkey Beach;
Richard Wagamese, Indian Horse; Cherie Dimaline, The Marrow Thieves.

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied: N. Scott Momaday, “The Man Made of Words” (Introduction to Indigenous Literary Criticism in Canada); Basil Johnston, “One Generation from Extinction” (Introduction to Indigenous Literary Criticism in Canada); Pauline Johnson, “A Strong Race Opinion: On the Indian Girl in Modern Fiction” (Tekahionwake: E. Pauline Johnson’s Writings on Native North America).

Method of Instruction: This class will be conducted as a synchronous online course. Students should anticipate investing time in preparing readings, engaging with course material independently and collaboratively, contributing to online discussion and completing several substantial writing projects.

Method of Evaluation: written projects, online discussion, engaged participation


Course Title: Feminist Approaches to Literature

Course Code: ENG275H5F | Lecture M 9-10, W 9-11

Instructor: Sarah Star

This course will consider the implications, for literary studies and for literary writing, of modern traditions of feminist and gender theory. Students will encounter the work of major feminist thinkers — e.g., Mary Wollstonecraft, Simone de Beauvoir, Alice Walker, Julie Kristeva, and Judith Butler — and texts by major women writers. The course will explore feminist approaches to literature, including those that borrow from post-structural, psychoanalytic, and contemporary gender, race and queer theories.

Prerequisite: Open to students who have successfully completed at least 4.0 full credits.

Students who do not meet the prerequisite but are enrolled in ENG101H or ENG102H5 or ENG110H5 or ENG140Y5 or DRE/ENG121H5 and DRE/ENG122H5 may petition the department in writing for approval to take the course. See the guidelines for written petitions on the department website.

Group 1 Literary Theory/Methods


Course Title: Video Games

Course Code: ENG279H5F | Lecture F 3-5 | PRA: W 3-4, W 4-5

Instructor: Siobhan O'Flynn

What is the literary history of video games? This course considers how some novels and plays work like games; how games have evolved complex and often non-verbal means of conveying narratives; and whether narrative in fiction, theatre and film can or should be a model for storytelling in the rule-bound, interactive worlds of video games.

Prerequisite: Open to students who have successfully completed at least 4.0 full credits.

Students who do not meet the prerequisite but are enrolled in ENG101H or ENG102H5 or ENG110H5 or ENG140Y5 or DRE/ENG121H5 and DRE/ENG122H5 may petition the department in writing for approval to take the course. See the guidelines for written petitions on the department website.

Group n/a


Course Title: Critical Approaches to Literature

Course Code: ENG280H5F | Lecture F 9-11 | Tutorials F 11-12, F 1-2

Instructor: Tom Laughlin

An introduction to literary theory and its central questions, such as the notion of literature itself, the relation between literature and reality, the nature of literary language, the making of literary canons and the roles of the author and the reader.

Exclusion: ENG267H5

Prerequisite: Open to students who have successfully completed at least 4.0 full credits.

Students who do not meet the prerequisite but are enrolled in any 100-level ENG or DRE course (except ENG100H5) may petition the department in writing for approval to take the course. See the guidelines for written petitions on the department website.

Group n/a

Detailed Description by Instructor:
This course introduces students to some of the major authors who have inspired or directly contributed to the unique field of investigation called literary theory. Literary theory raises questions about literature’s relationship to reality, its ability or inability to reflect that reality and intervene in it, by shaping and re-shaping an audience’s social and cultural values. At the heart of literary theory is an interrogation of how meaning is made, which investigates the surface meaning of a text as much as the deeper and more coded meanings for which it might be a vehicle. Insofar as it is through the stories we tell each other and ourselves that we primarily construct a concept of self, literary theory asks how the study of literature might shed light on the nature of subjectivity as well. Students can expect to gain a working knowledge of important theorists and their contexts, improve their reading comprehension and learn to parse the differences between opposing theories and schools of thought and how these apply to the study and analysis of literature.

Selected Major Readings:
Excerpted readings from: Plato; Aristotle; Friedrich Nietzsche; Ferdinand De Saussure; Sigmund Freud; Jacques Lacan; Georg Lukács; Walter Benjamin; Jacques Derrida; Roland Barthes; Hélène Cixous; Michel Foucault; Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar; Edward W. Said; Judith Butler; bell hooks; Stephen Best and Sharon Marcus; Rita Felski; Lauren Berlant.

First Three Texts /Authors to be Studied: Plato; Aristotle; Friedrich Nietzsche

Method of Instruction: Online synchronous: lectures and discussion-based tutorials

Method of Evaluation: Participation; Reading Reports x 2; Essay x 2


Course Title: Creative Writing

Course Code: ENG289H5S | Lecture MW 11-12 | Tutorials M 12-1, M 2-3

Instructor: Brent Wood

Students will engage in a variety of creative exercises, conducted across a range of different genres of literary writing.

Prerequisite: Open to students who have successfully completed at least 4.0 full credits.

Students who do not meet the prerequisite but are enrolled in ENG101H or ENG102H5 or ENG110H5 or ENG140Y5 or DRE/ENG121H5 and DRE/ENG122H5 may petition the department in writing for approval to take the course. See the guidelines for written petitions on the department website.

Group n/a


Course Title: Reading for Creative Writing

Course Code: ENG291H5S | Lecture TR 1-2 | Tutorials T 2-3,T 4-5

Instructor: Geoff Bouvier

This course will help students to see connections between their reading and their work as creative writers. They will read texts in a variety of literary and non-literary genres and consider the way that writers learn their craft from other writers. Practical assignments will encourage students to find creative ways to critique, imitate, speak to and borrow responsibly from the work they read.

Prerequisite: Open to students who have successfully completed at least 4.0 full credits.

Students who do not meet the prerequisite but are enrolled in ENG101H or ENG102H5 or ENG110H5 or ENG140Y5 or DRE/ENG121H5 and DRE/ENG122H5 may petition the department in writing for approval to take the course. See the guidelines for written petitions on the department website.

Group n/a


Third-Year Courses

Fall Term

  • ENG301H5F Making Love in the Sixteenth Century
  • ENG311H5F Medieval Literature
  • ENG314H5F Special Topic in Eighteenth-Century British Literature (Jane Austen and Horrid Novels)
  • ENG316H5F Special Topic in Modern and Contemporary Literature (Artificial Persons)
  • ENG325H5F The Victorian Novel
  • ENG341H5F Modern Drama
  • ENG349H5F Contemporary Poetry
  • ENG358H5F Special Topic in Canadian Literature (Representations of Writers and Readers in Canadian Literature)
  • ENG366H5F Special Topic in American Literature (African American Literature)
  • ENG370H5F Global Literatures in English
  • ENG373H5F Creative Writing: Poetry
  • ENG392H5F Canadian Fiction

Winter Term

  • ENG305H5S Swift, Pope, and Their Contemporaries
  • ENG307H5S Women Writers before Austen
  • ENG312H5S Special Topic in Medieval Literature (Piers Plowman, Working-Class Hero)
  • ENG316H5S Special Topic in Modern and Contemporary Literature (Sick Books and Bodies: Pandemics, Viruses, and Literature)
  • ENG323H5S Austen and Her Contemporaries
  • ENG330H5S Medieval Drama
  • ENG344H5S Spy Fiction
  • ENG352H5S Canadian Drama
  • ENG366H5S Special Topic in American Literature (The 19th-Century American Novel)
  • ENG371H5S Special Topic in World Literature (Modernity and Trauma)
  • ENG372H5S Special Topic in Literary Theory (AI and Critical Theory)
  • ENG374H5S Creative Writing: Prose
  • ENG381H5S Digital Texts
  • ENG385H5S British Romanticism, 1770-1800
  • ENG394H5S American Literature from the Revolution to 1900

Year-Long


Course Title: Making Love in the Sixteenth Century

Course Code: ENG301H5F | Lecture M 3-5, W 4-5

Instructor: Chris Koenig-Woodyard

In this course, students will follow the changing constructions of love and love poetry in the sixteenth century, starting with Wyatt and Surrey, passing through Tottel, to the Elizabethan court, and ending with the erotic love poetry that served as a backlash against the Petrarchanism of the early 16th century.

Prerequisite: 1.0 credit in ENG and 3.0 additional credits.

Group 3 Literature pre-1700

Detailed Description by Instructor:
In a moment of artistic self-awareness that will become a methodological practice and a thematic focus in our study of 16th century love poetry, John Donne’s narrator observes in “The Triple Fool” that “I am two fools, I know, / For loving, and for saying so / In whining poetry.” Donne’s diction choice is deliberate: the self-aware (and self-deprecating) “whine” is illuminates the popularity and cultural self-referentiality of Early Modern poetry that spans human, sexual, romantic, platonic and divine love (among other modes). The 16th century sees the production of copious amounts of love poetry, making it an aesthetic site for political and cultural engagement among (often competing) poets. Thus, as we study the history and aesthetics of love poetry (the sonnet, for instance), we will also explore a wide range of cultural, political, sexual, racial, scientific and cultural matters.

Selected Major Readings:
Shakespeare, Wyatt, Sidney

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied: TBA

Method of Instruction: Online lectures and discussion

Method of Evaluation: Written assignments

Textbook: I have not ordered texts through the UTM bookstore. Please order the following (in print or electronic form, for $68.25 and $47.95 respectively) directly from the publisher:
The Broadview Anthology of Sixteenth-Century Poetry and Prose. Eds. Loughlin, Bell, and Brace.

You may also find copies at (but be mindful of shipping times) Amazon and 
Abebooks.


Course Title: Swift, Pope, and Their Contemporaries

Course Code: ENG305H5S | Lecture W 11-1, F 11-12

Instructor: Adleen Crapo

Selected works in prose and verse by Swift and Pope studied alongside works by their contemporaries. Topics may include the legitimacy of satire, the role of criticism and the growing importance of writing by women.

Exclusion: ENG306Y5

Prerequisite: 1.0 credit in ENG and 3.0 additional credits

Group 4 Literature 1700-1900


Course Title: Women Writers before Austen

Course Code: ENG307H5S | Lecture M 1-3, W 2-3

Instructor: Liza Blake

A study of mystical writings, poems, plays, novels, letters, periodical essays, polemical works and books for children by such writers as Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe, Mary Sidney, Emilia Lanyer, Margaret Cavendish, Aphra Behn, Fanny Burney and Mary Wollstonecraft. Topics may include patronage and publishing; nationality, class, and gender; and generic conventions.

Prerequisite: 1.0 credit in ENG and 3.0 additional credits

Group 3 Literature pre-1700

Detailed Description by Instructor:
Though women wrote a great number and variety of poetic, fictional, and dramatic texts in the early modern period, few actually appear in grand surveys of British literature, and only in the past couple decades have they been taken seriously at all as writers or thinkers. This class corrects that omission. We will read a wide range of writing by women from the English Renaissance. Many women wrote explicitly on female rights, addressing from the inside the querelle des femmes or the “question of women” — their rights, their relationships to men, their abilities to reign as queen (as did Mary I and then Elizabeth I in the second half of the sixteenth century), what the story of Eve’s fall in the Garden of Eden is really about. We will read many works on women by women, alongside foundational works of feminist criticism about early modern texts (for example, Virginia Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own”), as well as more recent feminist approaches.

However, we will also grant women the right to be as interested in a range of topics as their male counterparts. We will therefore also read, for example, Anne Askew’s fierce political and religious beliefs that got her burned as a heretic; Aemelia Lanyer and Mary Sidney Herbert, on class and patronage; Katherine Philips on the metaphysics of friendship; Aphra Behn on erotic sexualities; Lucy Hutchinson on atoms and the chaotic universe; Margaret Cavendish’s imaginary journeys to other, scientific worlds; and Hester Pulter’s poetic fantasies of being completely annihilated by God.

Selected Major Readings:
Anne Askew, Examinations of Anne Askew; Mary Wroth, Pamphilia to Amphilanthus, Isabella Whitney, social critique poems; Queen Elizabeth, poems; Mary Sidney Herbert, poems; Amelia Lanyer, Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum, Katherine Philips, metaphysical poems; Aphra Behn, erotic poems; Lucy Hutchinson, elegies, Order and Disorder; religious writing by Priscilla Cotton, Mary Cole, and Hester Biddle; Margaret Cavendish, Convent of Pleasure (play), Poems and Fancies, Blazing World (sci-fi novel), Hester Pulter, metaphysical poems

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied:
Anne Southwell, “All married men desire to have good wifes” ; Virginia Woolf, “A Room of One’s Own”; Margaret Cavendish, “To All Noble and Worthy Ladies”

Method of Instruction: TBD depending on COVID

Method of Evaluation: Three editorial assignments; participation in a class-wide “transcribathon”; two analytical writing assignments; quizzes (nature TBD depending on COVID); participation (nature TBD depending on COVID)


Course Title: Medieval Literature

Course Code: ENG311H5F | Lecture MWF 2-3

Instructor: Chester Scoville

This course explores a selection of writings in from medieval Britain, excluding the works of Chaucer.

Prerequisite: 1.0 credit in ENG and 3.0 additional credits.

Group 3 Literature pre-1700

Detailed Description by Instructor:
This course will introduce students to some of the major texts and literary forms of the Middle Ages in Britain, beginning with Old English poetry and ending in the fourteenth century with the Gawain-poet, one of Chaucer's greatest contemporaries. We will explore the forms and motifs of some of the earliest English poems, investigate the language and literary development of Middle English, and consider how this early literature can speak to contemporary issues such as illness and dissent. Old English poems will be read in translation; Middle English poems will be read in their original language. Previous experience reading Middle English (such as a course on Chaucer) is recommended but not necessary.

Selected Major Readings:
The readings in this course will nearly all be by anonymous poets, and will include The Dream of the Rood, The Wanderer, The Ruin, The Seafarer, Exeter Book riddles, Pearl, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied:
The Dream of the Rood, The Wanderer, The Ruin

Method of Instruction: Online, asynchronous lecture/synchronous discussion

Method of Evaluation: Essays, submitted in scaffolded stages


Course Title: Special Topic in Medieval Literature (Piers Plowman, Working-Class Hero)

Course Code: ENG312H5S | Lecture MWF 3-4

Instructor: Chester Scoville

A concentrated study of one aspect of medieval literature or literary culture, such as a particular genre or author, a specific theme or the application of a particular critical approach.

Prerequisite: 1.0 credit in ENG and 3.0 additional credits.

Group 3 Literature pre-1700

Detailed Description by Instructor:
William Langland’s Piers Plowman was the most popular work of English poetry in the fourteenth century; revised three times, quoted by peasants and revolutionaries, inspiring a host of imitations, it was a central statement of politics, piety and morality for its contemporaries. We will conduct an examination of this challenging and powerful poem, situating it in its context and exploring how it ramified through English vernacular culture at the end of the Middle Ages. We will also make extensive use of the Piers Plowman Electronic Archive (http://piers.chass.ncsu.edu), using its resources to examine the poem's complex manuscript tradition and to uncover and reconstruct the complex work of editing and interpretation that modern scholars use when determining even the most basic facts of this protean and extraordinary poem.

Selected Major Readings:
Our text of the poem will be the Norton Critical Edition, edited by Elizabeth Robertson and Stephen H. A. Shepherd. In addition to the critical writings found therein, we will also use The Cambridge Companion to Piers Plowman, edited by Andrew Cole and Andrew Galloway. We will also make extensive use of the Piers Plowman Electronic Archive.

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied: Langland, Cole, Galloway.

Method of Instruction: Online, asynchronous lecture/synchronous discussion, unless we will have returned to classrooms by then.

Method of Evaluation: This course will use numerous small assignments to lead up to a substantial final essay. Participation will be an important component, as will group presentations. There will be no final exam.


Course Title: Special Topic in Eighteenth-Century British Literature (Jane Austen and Horrid Novels)

Course Code: ENG314H5F | Lecture W 12-1, F 11-1

Instructor: Chris Koenig-Woodyard

A concentrated study of one aspect of 18th-century British literature or literary culture, such as a particular subgenre or author, specific theme or the application of a particular critical approach.

Prerequisite: 1.0 credit in ENG and 3.0 additional credits.

Group 4 Literature 1700-1900

Detailed Description by Instructor:
A study of selected gothic novels from the 1790's and early 19th century that form what is often referred to as the “Northanger Canon”—the “horrid novels” that characters read in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey. We will be particularly interested in the relationship of genre and gender, as well as aesthetics, history, cultural, class and economics.

Required Reading: (order through, or locate, texts as indicated below; I have not ordered any texts through the UTM bookstore)

1. Matthew Lewis, The Monk. Broadview. 
2. Austen, Northanger Abbey 2nd edition. Broadview.
3. Eliza Parsons, Castle of Wolfenbach (1793) from the northangerlibrary.com project, a free edition.
4. Others Readings to be posted on Quercus

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied: Parsons, Castle of Wolfenbach; Austen, Northanger; Lewis, The Monk

Method of Instruction: Lecture and Discussion

Method of Evaluation: Essays and written assignments


Course Title: Special Topic in Modern and Contemporary Literature (Artificial Persons)

Course Code: ENG316H5F | Lecture M 1-2, W 1-3

Instructor: Lawrence Switzky

A concentrated study of one aspect of modern or contemporary literature or literary culture, such as a particular subgenre or author, specific theme or the application of a particular critical approach.

Prerequisite: 2.0 credit in ENG, including ENG202Y5 or ENG203Y5, and 4.0 additional credits

Group n/a

Detailed Description by Instructor:
Artists, scientists, and engineers have long shared a dream of creating life out of non-living materials. Today we are surrounded by speaking, 'thinking' technology, from personal digital assistants to artificial intelligence that suggests how to reach your destination, what to buy and how to vote. But if your Smartphone is alive in some sense, is it alive in the same way as you are, or as an animal is?

This course offers an exploration through literature, drama, and film of the artistic, ethical and political questions raised by anthropomorphic (humanlike) technology, from automata, puppets and robots to chatbots and contemporary computational intelligence. We regularly engage in imaginative projection to animate fictional characters in books and video games. This class asks what these familiar vivifying acts can tell us about our encounters with personified technology and digital entities — our “evocative but not relationally authentic companions,” as Sherry Turkle has called them. We will also examine the persistence of magical and animistic tendencies in science and technoscience, our moral and emotional obligations to animate technology (and its responsibilities to us) and what artificial persons demonstrate about the thresholds and capabilities of human minds and bodies. We will focus in particular on questions of labor, language use, gender, race, enslavement, sincerity and enchantment.

Note: This course includes several short creative projects. Please be prepared to play.

Selected Major Readings:
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
Carel Capek, R. U. R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots)
Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion
Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go
Caryl Churchill, A Number
Zachtronics, ELIZA (video game)
Stanley Kubrick (director), 2001 (film)
Alex Garland (director), Ex Machina (film)

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied:
Edgar Allan Poe, “Maelzel’s Chess Player”
Heinrich von Kleist, “On the Marionette Theatre”
ETA Hoffmann, “The Sandman”

Method of Instruction: Mixed lecture/discussion

Method of Evaluation: Journal/blog entries, brief creative assignments, an analytical essay, discussion questions


Course Title: Special Topic in Modern and Contemporary Literature (Sick Books and Bodies: Pandemics, Viruses, and Literature)

Course Code: ENG316H5S | Lecture T 1-3, R 2-3

Instructor: Chris Koenig-Woodyard

A concentrated study of one aspect of modern or contemporary literature or literary culture, such as a particular subgenre or author, specific theme or the application of a particular critical approach.

Prerequisite: 2.0 credit in ENG, including ENG202Y5 or ENG203Y5, and 4.0 additional credits

Group n/a

Detailed Description by Instructor:
In her 1912 essay “On Being Ill,” Virginia Woolf remarks that Considering how common illness is, how tremendous the spiritual change that it brings, how astonishing, when the lights of health go down, the undiscovered countries that are then disclosed, what wastes and deserts of the soul a slight attack of influenza brings to light . . . it becomes strange indeed that illness has not taken its place with love, battle, and jealousy among the prime themes of literature.

This course takes illness—pandemics, plagues, and viruses—as its primary focus, while we live through/with the Coronavirus. We will read a small handful of novels (print and perhaps graphic), accompanied by critical and secondary articles and material that help us to think about aesthetics, ethics, and genre of what has been dubbed “flu lit,” as we widen the circumference of our interests and consider race, gender, faith, politics, and culture.

Our historical focus is post-WW II (with the flu outbreaks of the 1950s), although we will be mindful of plagues, pandemics and epidemics that go back to antiquity. We will concentrate on 21st century fictional engagements (and imaginings) of life (and death) during pandemics and plagues; that is, to say, we will reflect on our lives and historicity as we live through a pandemic.

Selected Major Readings: (order through, or locate, texts as indicated below; I have not ordered any texts through the UTM bookstore)

Matheson, Richard. I am Legend (1954). Tor. ISBN 13: 978-0765357151
Mandel, Emily St. John Station 11 (2014). Harper Perennial. ISBN-13: 978-1443434874
Ma, Ling Severance (2018). Farrar, Strauss and Giroux. ISBN-13 978-0374261597
Schwartz, ed. Ethics of Pandemics. Broadview. 978-155481544-9
Other texts and material to be announced

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied: Matheson; TBA

Method of Instruction: Lecture and Discussion

Method of Evaluation: Written assignments


Course Title: Austen and Her Contemporaries

Course Code: ENG323H5S | Lecture W 2-3, F 1-3

Instructor: Terry Robinson

A study of selected novels by Austen and of works by such contemporaries as Radcliffe, Godwin, Wollstonecraft, Wordsworth, Edgeworth, Scott and Shelley, in the context of the complex literary, social and political relationships of that time.

Prerequisite: 1.0 credit in ENG and 3.0 additional credits

Group 4 Literature 1700-1900

Detailed Description by Instructor:
Jane Austen’s novels have long been valued for their ability to offer readers a respite from the tension and weight of worldly cares. With their focus on the rural and the domestic, they can seem to provide a buffer against socio-political and cultural turbulence. As a result, they have often been and are read separately from their historical context. This class challenges such an approach. By reading a selection of Austen's novels alongside the publications of other contemporary writers, such as Edmund Burke, Ann Radcliffe, Mary Wollstonecraft, Charlotte Smith, Mary Robinson, William Wordsworth, Lord Byron and Walter Scott, we will situate her work within the complex artistic, social, and political realities of her time.

Selected Major Readings:
Austen, Jane. Emma.
Ed. Kristin Flieger Samuelian. Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press.
Austen, Jane. Northanger Abbey.
Ed. Claire Grogan. Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press.
Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice.
Ed. Robert Irvine. Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press.

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied:
Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
Edmund Burke, from A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful
William Gilpin, from Three Essays on Picturesque Beauty, on Picturesque Travel, and on . . . Landscape

Method of Instruction: Mixed Lecture / Discussion

Method of Evaluation: (Percentages TBD)
Participation / Quizzes / Group Presentation / Term Paper / Term Test


Course Title: The Victorian Novel

Course Code: ENG325H5F | Lecture M 11-1, W 11-12

Instructor: Chris Koenig-Woodyard

This course surveys several major novels in order to understand the genre that came to dominate literary culture in the Victorian era. Topics may include realism, the marriage plot, the social-problem novel, feminism and sexual identity, novels of growing up, the city and seriality. Authors may include Dickens, Thackeray, E. Bronte, C. Bronte, Gaskell, Trollope, Eliot, Collins, Hardy, Gissing and Wilde, among others.

Prerequisite: 1.0 credit in ENG and 3.0 additional credits

Group 4 Literature 1700-1900

Detailed Description by Instructor:
This course position four 19th century novels as aesthetic and cultural lens through which we can study the novel during the Victorian era, and consider a wide range of topics from genre to gender, race, religion, philosophy, class and culture (to name a few). In Silas Marner (1861), George Eliot presents a view of England as it shifts from an agrarian to an industrialized society. As Eliot bridges Romanticism and Victorianism (through Charles Darwin), she merges the pastoral and the Bildungsroman with a crime novel and a study of solitude (and religious persecution) at the very time in her life when, given the celebrity and scandal of her life, she sought solitude from the public eye. In the climatologically, emotionally and melodramatically intense moors of Wuthering Heights (1847), Emily Brontë studies (scandalously, to some readers’ minds) class, race and romance, leading her sister Charlotte to question “Whether it is right or advisable to create beings like Heathcliff.” In a bleak and direct treatment of marriage and sexuality, Thomas Hardy explores “feelings which might almost have been called those of the age —the ache of modernism” in Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891). Published first as a serialised novel and then quickly in book form, Hardy offers a study of Tess (“A Pure Woman,” as Hardy deems in the novel’s subtitle) as she comes of age and has to navigate the worlds of romance and class, patriarchal domains in the text. A story of marvels and wonders, of strangeness, fear and dread, Rider Haggard combines an action adventure novel with the “New Woman Debate” through the lens of British colonialism in She: A History of Adventure (1897). Haggard’s portrait of the supernaturally-powerful “She who mush be obeyed” reveals the racial and gothic anxieties of the fin de siècle; She embodies the British colonialization (and fetishization) of Africa through the framework of an Egyptian mummy story.

Selected Major Readings (I have NOT ordered books through the UTM book store.
You can purchase paper and e-copies through Amazon and Broadview at the following links:

George Eliot, Silas Marner. Penguin ~ ISBN: 978-0141439754
Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d’Urbervilles. Broadview. 2nd ed. ~ ISBN: 9781551117515
Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights. Broadview ~ ISBN 978-1-55111-532-0
Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure. Broadview ~ ISBN: 9781551116471

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied: Eliot, Brontë, Hardy and Haggard (in this order)

Method of Instruction: Lecture and Discussion

Method of Evaluation: Essays and Written Assignments


Course Title: Medieval Drama

Course Code: ENG330H5S | Lecture M 11-12, W 11-1

Instructor: Liza Blake

Texts and performances preceding and underlying the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, including creation-to-doomsday play cycles; plays performed in parishes, inns, great halls, outdoor arenas and at court; religious and political propaganda plays; political pageants. Attention is given to social, political and theatrical contexts.

Prerequisite: 1.0 credit in ENG and 3.0 additional credits

Group 3 Literature pre-1700

Detailed Description by Instructor:
“I am maker unmade, all mighte es in Me[!]” In the beginning of the York play The Fall of the Angels, God steps forward and declares his power and his timelessness. The appearance of a self-confident and enthusiastic supernatural character was not unusual in medieval drama, which afforded a number of opportunities for the everyday world of medieval England to open into another. Metrically adventurous, theatrically complicated, gleefully metatheatrical and socially critical, medieval drama in all its forms explores the aesthetic, philosophical, social and satirical possibilities of theatre.

This course will serve as an introduction to medieval drama in all its variety. We will explore the full range of medieval drama, including mystery plays, conversion plays, morality plays and interludes. The course will focus on medieval dramatic texts in performance, including both their original performance conditions and modern performance possibilities. Through writing and performance assignments, students will improve their abilities to interpret the ambiguities of dramatic texts, closely analyze language and create clear and cogent written arguments.

Selected Major Readings: Biblical “cycle” drama; Conversion of St. Paul; Croxton Play of the Sacrament; Mankind; Everyman; Henry Medwall, Fulgens and Lucres; Henry Medwall, Nature; John Skelton, Magnyfycence; John Heywood, The Play of the Weather

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied:
Short Biblical drama from York, Chester, and N-Town

Method of Instruction: TBD depending on COVID

Method of Evaluation: Reading quizzes (nature TBD depending on COVID); various creating and analytical writing assignments; scene performance (nature TBD depending on COVID); participation (nature TBD depending on COVID)


Course Title: Modern Drama

Course Code: ENG341H5F | Lecture M 3-5, W 4-5

Instructor: Lawrence Switzky

A study of plays by such dramatists as Beckett, Miller, Williams, Pinter, Soyinka and Churchill, with background readings from other dramatic literatures.

Exclusion: ENG338Y5

Prerequisite: 1.0 credit in ENG and 3.0 additional credits.

Group n/a

Detailed Description by Instructor:
This course surveys American, British, and other Anglophone drama in a dizzyingly changing world, from the 1950s through 2017. We will focus in particular on how plays from this era pair radically different registers of experience: the mundane present and the eventful past; the protected world of domestic interiors and the outer world of catastrophic events; love and science; collisions between rich and poor, the powerful and the marginalized. We will examine the influence of social and political movements on dramatic form and content, from the Cold War through the sexual revolution, decolonization through the AIDS Crisis, the 24/7 news cycle and the emergence of Black Lives Matter. This year we will concentrate in particular on the formal and thematic audacity of plays by Black women, which have been central to the development of modern drama.

The topics we will consider include: the Theatre of the Absurd, its philosophical foundations, and its influence and opponents; American realism and the performance of personal and cultural memory; comedies of menace; In-Yer-Face Theatre and the uses of violence on stage; and revivals of fantasy and anti-realism in theatre and drama.

Selected Major Readings:
Samuel Beckett, Endgame
Adrienne Kennedy, “Funnyhouse of a Negro”
Edward Albee, “Zoo Story”
Harold Pinter, The Homecoming
Tom Stoppard, Arcadia
Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire
Alice Childress, Trouble in Mind
Tony Kushner, Angels in America
Sarah Kane, Blasted
Caryl Churchill, Far Away
Suzan-Lori Parks, Topdog/Underdog
Antoinette Nwandu, Pass Over

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied:
Beckett, Endgame; “Play”; “Not I”
Edward Albee, “Zoo Story”
Adrienne Kennedy, “Funnyhouse of a Negro”

Method of Instruction: Mixed Lecture/Discussion

Method of Evaluation: Blog Posts, Performance/Creative Projects, Take-Home Exam, Analytical Essay or Performance Writing Project


Course Title: Spy Fiction

Course Code: ENG344H5S | Lecture T 1-3, R 2-3

Instructor: Richard Greene

This course examines the rise and popularization of spy fiction in the twentieth century. It focuses on authors such as Graham Greene and John le Carré within the context of the Cold War and the nuclear stand-off between the Soviet Union and the West.

Group n/a


Course Title: Contemporary Poetry

Course Code: ENG349H5F | Lecture T 11-1, R 12-1

Instructor: Avery Slater

Works by at least six contemporary poets, such as Dickey, Ginsberg, Heaney, Howard, Hughes, Larkin, Lowell, Plath, Warren.

Prerequisite: 1.0 credit in ENG and 3.0 additional credits.

Group n/a


Course Title: Canadian Drama

Course Code: ENG352H5S | Lecture M 1-2, W 1-3

Instructor: Daniela Janes

Canadian plays, with emphasis on major playwrights and on developments since 1940, but with attention also to the history of the theatre in Canada.

Exclusion: ENG223H5

Prerequisite: 1.0 credit in ENG and 3.0 additional credits.

Group 5 Canadian Literature


Course Title: Special Topic in Canadian Literature (Representations of Writers and Readers in Canadian Literature)

Course Code: ENG358H5F | Lecture T 10-11, R 9-11

Instructor: Daniela Janes

A concentrated study of one aspect of Canadian literature or literary culture, such as a particular subgenre, author, period, or theme, or the application of a particular critical approach.

Prerequisite: 1.0 credit in ENG and 3.0 additional credits.

Group 5 Canadian Literature

Detailed Description by Instructor:
This course invites students to engage with literary representations of writers and readers in a selection of texts by Canadian authors. Our reading will begin with an introduction to the Künstlerroman, the narrative of the growth and development of the artist. We will then explore postmodern novels that shift the focus to the figure of “the reader” — as scholar, critic, editor, publisher or fan — and present the writer as quest object or mystery. We will conclude with a tale of writer’s block and narrative redemption that invites us to interrogate the ethics of storytelling and the dynamics of reader-writer interactivity.

Selected Major Readings: The reading list will be confirmed before class begins, but may include works by L.M. Montgomery, Margaret Laurence, Rohinton Mistry, Carol Shields, André Alexis and Yann Martel.

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied: Montgomery, Laurence, Mistry.

Method of Instruction: This class will be conducted as a synchronous online course. Students should anticipate investing time in preparing readings, engaging with course material independently and collaboratively, contributing to online discussion, and completing several substantial writing projects.

Method of Evaluation: written projects, online discussion and engaged participation.


Course Title: Special Topic in American Literature (The 19th-Century American Novel)

Course Code: ENG366H5S | Lecture M 11-1, W 11-12

Instructor: Melissa Gniadek

A concentrated study of one aspect of American literature or literary culture, such as a particular subgenre, author, period or theme, or the application of a particular critical approach.

Prerequisite: 2.0 credit in ENG, including ENG250Y5, and 4.0 additional credits

Group 6 American Literature

Detailed Description by Instructor:
What forms did the novel take in 19th-century America? How did non-fictional texts engage with and adapt evolving novelistic sub-genres and narrative expectations? In this course we’ll think about how traditions of the Gothic, the domestic, the sentimental and the sensational were deployed in novels of this period. And we’ll think about how issues of race, histories of enslavement and the violence of settler colonialism shaped this literary and cultural production. Over the course of the semester we’ll focus on five novels, but we’ll also read some shorter texts that will help to provide context for these novels. The authors that we’ll read will include Charles Brockden Brown, William Apess, Fanny Fern, Harriet Jacobs, Charles Chesnutt and Edith Wharton.

This course will provide a foundation in 19th-century American literature and history as it encourages students to think about the form of the novel across periods and nations.

Selected Major Readings:
Charles Brockden Brown, Edgar Huntly (1799)
William Apess, “An Indian's Looking-Glass for the White Man” (1833)
Fanny Fern, Ruth Hall (1854)
Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861)
Henry James, Daisy Miller (1878)
Charles Chesnutt, The Marrow of Tradition (1901)
Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth (1905)

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied:
Charles Brockden Brown, Edgar Huntly (1799)
William Apess, “An Indian's Looking-Glass for the White Man” (1833)
Fanny Fern, Ruth Hall (1854)

Method of Instruction:
Lecture and discussion

Method of Evaluation:
Short writing assignments, essays, active participation.


Course Title: Special Topic in American Literature (African American Literature)

Course Code: ENG366H5F | Lecture T 1-2, R 1-3

Instructor: Anna Thomas

A concentrated study of one aspect of American literature or literary culture, such as a particular subgenre, author, period or theme, or the application of a particular critical approach.

Prerequisite: 2.0 credit in ENG, including ENG250Y5, and 4.0 additional credits

Group 6 American Literature

Detailed Description by Instructor:
This class is an advanced introduction to the field of African American literary studies, tracing its origins and emergence through the slave trade to the present day, with particular focus on 19th- and 20th-century writing, and the criticism and theory to which it gives rise. Authors studied may include: Harriet Jacobs, Charles Chesnutt, Pauline Hopkins, James Baldwin, Gayl Jones, Toni Morrison.

Selected Major Readings: Harriet Jacobs, Charles Chesnutt, Pauline Hopkins, James Baldwin, Gayl Jones, Toni Morrison.

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied: Harriet Jacobs, Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells

Method of Instruction: lecture and discussion

Method of Evaluation: short essays


Course Title: Global Literatures in English

Course Code: ENG370H5F | Lecture T 2-3, R 1-3

Instructor: Stanka Radovic

This course involves in-depth study, within the framework of postcolonial and transnational studies, of literatures in English from around the world. It includes fictional and non-fictional texts and contemporary films and media representations.

Prerequisite: 1.0 credit in ENG and 3.0 additional credits

Group 2 Race, Ethnicity, Diaspora, Indigeneity

Detailed Description by Instructor:
We are often told that we now life in an era of globalization. The second half of 20th century is marked by a historical shift from the local and national to the global and multicultural understanding of the world. In this course, we will examine what it means to think of the world as “global” and how the histories of exploration, colonialism and tourism have contributed to the idea that the world is a network of connected cultural practices. We will look at some aspects of postcolonial, transnational and globalization discourses through relevant theoretical and literary texts. Our goal is to understand how the time and space we live in are shaped by the process of globalization and its related discourses of postcolonialism and transnationalism. All of these discourses challenge the idea of simple and firmly grounded identity in favour of our multiple, complex and often fragmented relation to the global world. Our readings will focus on the problems of migration, travel and tourism, multilingualism and fragmented identity in contemporary literature.

Selected Major Readings:
Rohinton Mistry, “Squatter,” Manfred B. Steger, Globalization: A Very Short Introduction; Jamaica Kincaid, A Small Place; Caryl Phillips, Crossing the River; Xiaolu Guo, A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers; Salman Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands: Essay and Criticism 1981-1991 (select essays).

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied:
Rohinton Mistry, “Squatter,” Manfred B. Steger, Globalization: A Very Short Introduction; Jamaica Kincaid, A Small Place

Method of Instruction: Lectures and class discussions

Method of Evaluation: Participation (15 per cent), Assignment 1 (Reading Response) (25 per cent), Assignment 2 (Close Reading) (25 per cent), Assignment 3 (Final Essay) (35 per cent).


Course Title: Special Topic in World Literature (Modernity and Trauma)

Course Code: ENG371H5S | Lecture T 9-10, R 9-11

Instructor: Avery Slater

A concentrated study of one aspect of postcolonial literature or literary culture, such as a particular genre, author, period, regional or national context, or theme, or the application of a particular critical approach.

Prerequisite: 1.0 credits in ENG and 3.0 additional credits.

Group 2 Race, Ethnicity, Diaspora, Indigeneity

Detailed Description by Instructor:
Around the turn of the 20th century, medical and sociological theories of psychological trauma first came into widespread circulation. These theories were investigating new forms of 'invisible wounds' caused by human exposure to technological shock: railway accidents, urban industrialization and the mechanized horrors of trench warfare. From these early explorations of the problem of technological 'shock,' new aspects of the human mind were opened for research — the unconscious, the status of human memory, psychological alternatives to instinct, and, most challenging of all, a new concept that Sigmund Freud first named 'the death drive.' 

Leaving imprints not only on psychology but on literature, philosophy, political theory, sociology and historiography, the legacies of these theories of trauma will form the intellectual framework of this course. Keeping in mind the profound breadth of influence that 'trauma theory' has had on so many fields and sciences, we will focus on trauma's interplay with literary works from the global 20th century. Because theories of trauma seriously challenged existing ideas of human knowledge and expression, its appearance within the artistic realm raises complex questions. How can trauma theory serve to help us understand wider histories of harm and violence on global, collective scales?

This course will give students an introduction to key theoretical texts and historical shifts in trauma theory from its origins to the present day. Students will also investigate how these theories interact with literary texts. Rather than any focus on the 'essence' of trauma and the human mind, we will be exploring the way that these theories and texts help to create historically specific conversation about modernity.

Selected Major Readings:The Return of the Soldier, Rebecca West; The Reawakening, Primo Levi; Ceremony, Leslie Marmon Silko; The Dew Breaker, Edwidge Danticat; Dien Cai Dau, Yusef Komunyakaa

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied:The Return of the Soldier, Rebecca West; Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Sigmund Freud; Under Fire (selections), Henri Barbusse

Method of Instruction: seminar, discussion

Method of Evaluation: short papers, student presentations, course engagement, final paper


Course Title: Special Topic in Literary Theory (AI and Critical Theory)

Course Code: ENG372H5S | Lecture T 11-1, R 12-1

Instructor: Avery Slater

A concentrated study of one aspect of literary or critical theory, such as a particular school of theory, an important author, or a contemporary theoretical debate.

Prerequisite: 1.0 credit in ENG and 3.0 additional credits.

Group 1 Literary Theory/Methods

Detailed Description by Instructor:
Critical theory takes as its intellectual task the analysis of how human subjects and societies come to be organized by their systems of signs, symbols, and meanings. One fundamental goal of artificial intelligence is to engineer machines that can make use of these human languages and sign-systems at levels of sophistication indistinguishable from our own. Is there a critical theory uniquely suited for the rise of A.I.? This course will examine the importance of the question of artificial intelligence to critical thinking in the humanities. We will also consider how computer scientists, philosophers and A.I. historians have described the social and theoretical stakes of these new machines. In addition to theoretical discussions of A.I., we will examine cultural representations of A.I. in film, literature and recent experiments in computational creativity. This course will encourage students to examine what intertwined questions, risks and possibilities connect the quest for artificial intelligence with the work of critical theorists, philosophers and artists of the last century.

Selected Major Readings: "Performative Code and Figurative Language," N. Katherine Hayles; "The Artificial Intelligence of World War" Friedrich Kittler; "Computing Machinery and Intelligence," Alan Turing; Superintelligence, Nick Bostrom; Bladerunner, Ridley Scott; Bladerunner 2049, Denis Villeneuve; Ex Machina, Alex Garland; The Cyberiad, Stanislaw Lem

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied: "Can Digital Computers Think?" Alan Turing; "An Imitation of Life," W. Grey Walter; Bladerunner, Ridley Scott

Method of Instruction: seminar, discussion

Method of Evaluation: short papers, in-class writing, student presentations, final paper


Course Title: Creative Writing: Poetry

Course Code: ENG373H5F | Lecture TR 1-2

Instructor: Goeff Bouvier

This course will involve a wide variety of experiments with poetic expression and poetic forms.

Prerequisite: ENG289H5/ENG291H5

Group n/a

Detailed Description by Instructor:
This course is for undergraduate students interested in writing poetry. We will read poems out loud, discuss poetry and poetic theory, explore imaginative ways of using language to create unique linguistic experiences, and then we’ll put specific poetic techniques into practice and write and workshop our own poems. There will be extensive reading and writing assignments every week, and you will be expected to produce, revise, and turn in at least five original poems this semester, as well as a short essay on poetic theory. The core tenet of the course is this: writing is an ongoing process, not merely expression, and so it requires time and revision. This is especially true of poems.

Selected Major Readings: The “textbook” is a lengthy PDF that I will provide. It includes a diverse range of late 20th century and early 21st century poets and a few essays on poetic craft.

Method of Instruction: Weekly online discussion-based seminars and workshops. (Students must be able and available to log on to their computers and attend virtual seminars during class time throughout the semester.) Weekly online writing and reading assignments.

Method of Evaluation: quizzes 5 per cent; poetic theory essay, first draft 10 per cent; two poem, first drafts 5 per cent; discussion board, read/responds 20 per cent; workshop responses 30 per cent; final chapbook of five revised poems and one revised essay 30 per cent


Course Title: Creative Writing: Prose

Course Code: ENG374H5S | Lecture MW 4-5

Instructor: Brent Wood

Students will experiment with fiction and non-fiction prose writing, including autobiography, biography and narrative for new visual, digital and interactive media.

Prerequisite: ENG289H5/ENG291H5

Group n/a


Course Title: Digital Texts

Course Code: ENG381H5S | Lecture R 3-5 | PRA T 3-4

InstructorSiobhan O'Flynn

This course considers the ways in which digital technologies are transforming texts, reading, readerships and the idea of the literary. Students will study a wide variety of digital texts, e.g., fanfiction, webcomics, viral Tumblr posts and tweets and video games. They will also learn about the use of digital tools to read, study and preserve texts. The course may include a practical project, e.g., the design of a narrative game using Twine; the curation of a digital exhibit using Omeka; or an argument about some text(s) using visualization software.

Prerequisite: 1.0 credit in ENG and 3.0 additional credits.

Group n/a


Course Title: British Romanticism, 1770-1800

Course Code: ENG385H5S | Lecture W 6-9

InstructorChris Koenig-Woodyard

This course covers the early Romantic period in British Literature. Students may read novels such as Frances Burney's Evelina; plays such as Richard Brinsley Sheridan's School for Scandal; writing on the French and American Revolutions; William Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience; and ballads by William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Hannah More and Mary Robinson.

Exclusion: ENG308Y5

Prerequisite: 1.0 credit in ENG and 3.0 additional credits.

Group 4 Literature 1700-1900


Course Title: Individual Studies

Course Code: ENG390Y5

Instructor: TBA

A scholarly project chosen by the student and supervised by a faculty member. The form of the project and the manner of its execution will be determined in consultation with the supervisor. All project proposals must be submitted to the Undergraduate Advisor, who can also provide the proposal form.

Exclusion: ENG490Y5

Prerequisite: 1.0 credits in English and 3.0 additional credits.


Course Title: Individual Studies (Creative)

Course Code: ENG391Y5

Instructor: TBA

A project in creative writing chosen by the student and supervised by a faculty member. The form of the project and the manner of its execution will be determined in consultation with the supervisor. All project proposals must be submitted to the Undergraduate Advisor who can also provide the proposal form.

Prerequisite: 1.0 credits in English and 3.0 other credits.


Course Title: Canadian Fiction

Course Code: ENG392H5F | Lecture T 11-12, R 11-1

Instructor: Colin Hill

Students will read novels and/or short stories of importance for Canadian literary history: these may include, for example, L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables, Hugh MacLennan’s Two Solitudes, Lawrence Hill’s Book of Negroes, and Alice Munro’s Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage.

Exclusion: ENG353Y

Group 5 Canadian Literature

Detailed Description by Instructor:
This course offers students an exploration of the development of the Canadian novel. We will discuss texts by a diverse assortment of writers who engage the cultural conditions of Canada from the early 20th century to the present. Topics will include, but are not limited to, modernism, realism, urban/rural tensions, the artist figure, gender, Canadian postmodernism and postcolonialism, multiculturalism, psychological and spiritual self-discovery, various “schools” of Canadian literary theory, and Canadian social, cultural and national identity. Students will be expected to attend regularly and to complete readings thoughtfully and on time. Students are also strongly encouraged to participate in class discussions in a respectful and intellectually rigorous atmosphere. This course aims to build knowledge and appreciation of Canadian writing and to introduce students to a wide range of theoretical, critical, and literary-historical approaches relevant to the study of Canadian and other literatures. Engaged students should expect to come away from the course with a good understanding of the subjects and forms of the Canadian novel and many of its important literary, historical, cultural and theoretical contexts.

Selected Major Readings:
1. Sinclair Ross, As for Me and My House
2. Hugh MacLennan, Two Solitudes
3. Margaret Atwood, Surfacing
4. Michael Ondaatje, In the Skin of a Lion
5. Thomas King, Green Grass, Running Water
6. Camilla Gibb, Sweetness in the Belly

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied:Ross, MacLennan, Atwood

Method of Instruction: lecture/discussion

Method of Evaluation: TBA


Course Title: American Literature from the Revolution to 1900

Course Code: ENG394H5S | Lecture M 2-3, W 1-3

Instructor: Melissa Gniadek

Students will read a selection of American writings from the late 18th and 19th centuries; these may include the stories of Edgar Allan Poe, the poetry of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, Harriet Beecher Stowe's novels, and slave narratives such as those of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs.

Exclusion: ENG363Y5

Prerequisite: 1.0 credit in ENG and 3.0 additional credits.

Group 6 American Literature

Detailed Description by Instructor:
A subtitle for this course this semester might be “Reading Minds in the 19th Century.” In this course we’ll think about how 19th-century scientific and pseudo-scientific ideas about minds, identity and the self played out in fictional texts. We’ll think about such histories in relationship to tensions and anxieties about politics and democracy as well as complicated histories of racism and gender. We’ll also explore how ideas about the self and interiority manifest themselves in the formal qualities of the texts we read and how they intersect with emergent genres like detective fiction. By the end of the course you’ll have a deeper understanding of aspects of 19th-century America and 19th-century American literature and you’ll have further developed critical reading and writing skills.

Selected Major Readings:
Readings may include:
Charles Brockden, Brown, Wieland
Edgar Allan Poe, “The Man of the Crowd,” “The Purloined Letter”
Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The Birthmark”
Herman Melville, “Bartleby the Scrivener”
Mark Twain, Puddn’head Wilson
Francis Harper, Iola Leroy, or Shadows Uplifted
Pauline Hopkins, Of One Blood: Or, the Hidden Self
Henry James, Daisy Miller
Kate Chopin, The Awakening

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied: (tentative)
Charles Brockden, Brown, Wieland
Edgar Allan Poe, “The Man of the Crowd,” “The Purloined Letter”

Method of Instruction: Lecture and discussion

Method of Evaluation: Short writing assignments, essays, active participation.


Fourth-Year Ccourses

Fall Term

  • ENG426H5F Seminar: Race, Ethnicity, Diasporas, Indigeneity (Black Feminist Poetics)
  • ENG460H5F Seminar: Literature Pre-1700 (Humour and Transgression in European Dramatic Comedy)

Winter Term

  • ENG416H5S Seminar: Literary Theory / Methods (Writers on Reading and Writing)
  • ENG424H5S Seminar: Canadian Literature (Multiculturalism and Canadian Literature)
  • ENG463H5S Seminar: Literature 1700-1900 (Reading Frankenstein's Reading)

Year-Long


Course Title: Seminar: Literary Theory / Methods (Writers on Reading and Writing)

Course Code: ENG416H5S | Seminar R 1-3

Instructor: Stanka Radovic

Prerequisite: 5.0 credits in ENG and 4.0 additional credits

Group 1 Literary Theory/Methods

Detailed Description by Instructor:
This seminar will explore reading and writing through the select statements that eminent 20th century writers have made about these practices. As students of literature, we often take for granted the fact that words shape our worldview, in both private and professional settings. In this course, we will seek to problematize the acts of reading and writing not only as parts of a literary practice but also as ways of making sense of our environment, traditions and history. Because of their chosen profession, writers in particular often reflect on the complex relationship between words and the world. By exploring our selected authors’ statements about reading and writing, we will try to define and refine our own understanding of these practices and their social impact.

Selected Major Readings:
Virginia Woolf “How to Read a Book,” Stephen King On Writing (selections), V.S. Naipaul “Reading and Writing,” T.S. Eliot “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” Sartre The Words, Orwell “Politics and the English Language” and “Why I Write,” Henry Miller “Reflections on Writing” from The Wisdom of the Heart, Robert Frost “The Figure a Poem Makes,” Kurt Vonnegut “How to Write with Style” from How to Use the Power of the Written Word, Rilke Letters to the Young Poet, Kafka “Written Kisses” (a letter to Milena Jesenska).

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied: Kurt Vonnegut “How to Write with Style,” Kafka “Written Kisses” (a letter to Milena Jesenska), Robert Frost “The Figure a Poem Makes.”

Method of Instruction: seminar discussions

Method of Evaluation: participation (15 per cent); reading responses (10 per cent each, total of 4); short essay (20 per cent); final essay (25 per cent)


Course Title: Seminar: Canadian Literature (Multiculturalism and Canadian Literature)

Course Code: ENG424H5S | Seminar T 11-1

Instructor: Colin Hill

Prerequisite: 5.0 credits in ENG and 4.0 additional credits

Group 5 Canadian Literature

Detailed Description by Instructor:
This course will explore the representation of multicultural experience and identities in Canadian literature, and issues affecting the production and reception of "ethnic" Canadian writing, through a reading of texts by writers such as Pauline Johnson, A. M. Klein, Roy Kiyooka, Joy Kogawa, Wayson Choy, Evelyn Lau, David Bezmozgos, Austin Clarke, Makeda Silvera, Shyam Selvadurai, Judy Fong Bates, Rohinton Mistry, Neil Bissoondath, Thomas King, and others. Our seminars will consider creative and critical texts by a diverse selection of Canadian writers in various relevant critical, cultural, social, theoretical, and political contexts. Topics for discussion will include but are not limited to multiculturalism as a government policy, canonization, the "material production" of Canadian literature, gender, racism and anti-racism, postcolonialism, and how recent multicultural writing in Canada presents a challenge to established notions of our national literature. Students will be expected to attend regularly and to complete readings thoughtfully and on time. Students are also required to participate in the seminar discussions.

Required Reading: Selections from Making a Difference: An Anthology of Ethnic Canadian Writing (ed. Smaro Kamboureli); David Bezmozgis, Natasha and Other Stories; Judy Fong Bates, Midnight at the Dragon Cafe; Shayam Selvadurai, The Hungry Ghosts

Method of Instruction: Seminar discussion; short lecture segments; student seminar presentations

Method of Evaluation: Short seminar presentation (20%); mid-term writing assignment (25%); research paper (40%); participation (15%)


Course Title: Seminar: Race, Ethnicity, Diasporas, Indigeneity (Black Feminist Poetics)

Course Code: ENG426H5F | Seminar T 9-11

Instructor: Anna Thomas

Prerequisite: 5.0 credits in ENG and 4.0 additional credits

Group 2 Race, Ethnicity, Diaspora, Indigeneity

Detailed Description by Instructor:
This course considers the relationship between poetry written by Black women (particularly June Jordan, Audre Lorde and Lucille Clifton) and Black feminist theory (bell hooks, Angela Davis, the Combahee River Collective). In addition to a grounding in this 20th-century moment, the course will also consider 19th-century example (including Sojourner Truth and Ida B. Wells) and the contemporary moment, consider a wide arc of how Black feminism produces and arises from Black poetics.

Selected Major Readings: June Jordan, Audre Lorde, Lucille Clifton, bell hooks

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied: bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Sylvia Wynter

Method of Instruction: seminar-based discussion

Method of Evaluation: Weekly response posts in a commonplace book, final essay with staged assignments including drafting.


Course Title: Seminar: Literature Pre-1700 (Humour and Transgression in European Dramatic Comedy)

Course Code: ENG460H5F | Seminar W 11-1

Instructor: Natasha Vashisht

Prerequisite: 5.0 credits in ENG and 4.0 additional credits

Group 3 Literature pre-1700

Detailed Description by Instructor:
This course considers the dissident potential of humour as a serious mode of interrogating dominant cultural discourses through a study of selected drama from attic comedies and medieval morality plays to renaissance commedia dell’ arte and English comedies to Restoration drama. Our analysis will be will be rooted in an understanding of the subversive performance traditions such as the Roman Saturnalias, the giullarata and Feast of Fools, and the commedia dell’arte, our focus continually being on understanding their historical relevance and enduring value as literature of ideological commitment and social protest. There will be special focus on tracing the evolution of Aristophanes’ and Plautus’ clever trickster/slave to his development and distortion into the jester/fool and Harlequin in early Tudor drama and the commedia dell’arte to his relative disappearance in Restoration Comedy. While it would be interesting to scrutinize the theories of humour that have come down to us from antiquity, our emphasis will be more on Bergson’s view that laughter must have ‘social signification’ and further, on Bakhtin’s carnivalesque assessment of comedy as representative of a form of disagreement, a peripheral form of cultural and political opposition rooted in seeing things from the perspective of the ‘other.’ In disinterring the supposedly improper practice of melding the high and low, the serious and irreverent, the sacred, profane and grotesque elements of everyday experience, we will discover how the revolutionary politics of laughter deflects catharsis, thereby, driving its audiences towards visions of alternate realities.

Selected Major Readings:
1. Aristophanes, Lysistrata
2. Plautus, Pseudolus
3. Mankind
4. William Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice
5. William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
6. Flaminio Scala, Scenarios of the Commedia dell’Arte (The Tragic Events, The Jealousy of Isabella, The Enchanted Wood)
7. Ben Jonson, Bartholomew Fair
8. Aphra Behn, The Rover

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied:
1. Aristophanes, Lysistrata
2. Plautus, Pseudolus
3. Mankind

Method of Instruction: lectures and discussions

Method of Evaluation: active class participation, short writing assignments, final essay.


Course Title: Seminar: Literature 1700-1900 (Reading Frankenstein's Reading)

Course Code: ENG463H5S | Seminar W 3-5

Instructor: Dan White

Prerequisite: 5.0 credits in ENG and 4.0 additional credits

Group 4 Literature 1700-1900

Detailed Description by Instructor:
Anyone who reads Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and considers how the creature acquires language will immediately be struck by the sheer intertextual energy of the novel. In this course, we will first read Frankenstein. After exploring ancient and modern versions of the Prometheus myth, we will then read all the books that the creature reads (selections from or the entirety of Milton’s Paradise Lost, Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther, Volney’s The Ruins of Empires, and Plutarch’s Lives) along with other works that Shelley weaves into her tale (Genesis, Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” Wollstonecraft’s The Wrongs of Woman: or Maria, Byron’s Manfred). Then we will read Frankenstein again. And along the way, we will watch five awesome movies -- Ex Machina (2015), Blade Runner (1982), Get Out (2017), Never Let Me Go (2010), and Her (2014) -- that “read” Frankenstein too!

Selected Major Readings: Selections from or the entirety of Milton's Paradise Lost, Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther, Volney's The Ruins of Empires, Plutarch's Lives, Genesis, Coleridge's “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” Wollstonecraft's The Wrongs of Woman: or Maria, and Byron's Manfred

First Three Texts / Authors to be Studied: Frankenstein, Genesis, Paradise Lost

Method of Instruction: discussion-based seminar

Method of Evaluation: Three "Creature Features" (short, creative essays written in the voice of the creature about his reading, 10% each); two film analyses (2 pp. / 10% each), one term paper (35%); class participation (15%)


Course Title: Creative Writing Workshop

Course Code: ENG489Y5Y | Seminar R 11-1

Instructor: Richard Greene

The course allows students to workshop their own creative project/s with the instructor and their peers. Restricted to students who in the opinion of the department show special aptitude. Detail requirements will be posted in advance of this date. Students should contact the instructor or the undergraduate advisor for more information.

Exclusion: ENG389Y5

Prerequisite: permission of instructor; portfolio must be submitted by 30 June; contact undergraduate advisor for more information.

Group n/a