2023 Summer English Courses and Descriptions

 

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*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


Course Title: Effective Writing

Course Code: ENG100H5F | Lecture MW 6-9 (ONLINE)

Instructor: Julia Boyd

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: ENG100H5S | Lecture MW 3-6

Instructor: TBD

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: Narrative

Course Code: ENG110H5F | Lecture MW 1-3 | Tutorials W 3-4, W 5-6 

InstructorDaniela Janes

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.

Group n/a


Second-Year Courses


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

Course Code: ENG202H5F | Lecture TR 9-11 | Tutorials R 11-12, R 1-2

Instructor: Iona Lister

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


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

Course Code: ENG203H5S | Lecture TR 9-11 | Tutorials R11-12, R 1-2

InstructorChris 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

Detailed Description by Instructor: A survey of influential texts that have shaped the British literary heritage, covering poetry, drama, and prose from the Romantic period (1789-1832) to the 21st century. The course is intended to

1) familiarize students with selected major works of the history of British literature; 2) expand interpretative skills through a range of comparative and cultural studies approaches; and
3) focus on honing close reading, and critical writing and thinking skills.

All three serve to help with other courses, to broaden your historical sense of literature, and to polish critical and interpretative skills.

Course Texts: The following have been ordered through the UTM Bookstore, and are available through Google Play:

1] Broadview Anthology of British Literature: One-Volume Compact Edition: The Medieval Period through the Twenty First Century.
(Print: $75.95; E-edition: $44.95) 

2] Other material posted to Quercus, under modules.

Recommended Texts:
1) A good glossary, such as The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms. (Ed. Murfin and Ray) Bedford.
2) A good dictionary: Oxford English Dictionary

First Texts/Authors to be Studied: TBA and Blake, “London”

Method of Instruction: In Person lectures and tutorials; class discussion

Method of Evaluation: Written Assignments; Exam

Website: Quercus


Course Title: Literature and Environmental Criticism

Course Code: ENG259H5S | Lecture TR 12-3

Instructor: Stanka Radovic

This course examines the relationship between writing and the environment. Students will examine the role of the written word in defining, thinking about, and acting in the interest of the planet and its climate, while considering literary genres, theoretical frameworks, and contemporary and multidisciplinary debates. Readings will vary but may include Wordsworth, Thoreau, Whitman, Carson, Glissant, Butler, Kincaid, and Ghosh.

Group 1 


Course Title: Video Games

Course Code: ENG279H5S | Lecture MW 9-12 

Instructor: Alexandre Paquet

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.

Group n/a


Course Title: Critical Approaches to Literature

Course Code: ENG280H5S | Lecture MW 1-3 | Tutorials W 3-4, W 5-6

InstructorThomas 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

Prerequisites: 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: Creative Writing

Course Code: ENG289H5F | Lecture TR 11-1 | Tutorials TR 1-2

InstructorBrent 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: Creative Writing (Online)

Course Code: ENG289H5S | Lecture TR 1-3 | Tutorials TR 3-4

Instructor: Blair Hurley

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


Third-Year Courses

  • ENG301H5S Making Love in the Sixteenth Century
  • ENG315H5F Special Topic in 19th-C. Brit. Lit: The Gothic
  • ENG317H5F Drama of the Global South
  • ENG323H5S Austen and Her Contemporaries
  • ENG362H5F Canadian Literature,1920 to the Present

Course Title: Making Love in the Sixteenth Century

Course Code: ENG301H5S | Lecture MW 9-12

Instructor: Liza Blake

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 sixteenth century.

Group n/a

Detailed Description by Instructor:

Reading sixteenth-century literature (poetry written from the age of Henry VIII – he of the many beheaded wives – to the age of Queen Elizabeth I) means reading a great deal of love poetry. This is the age of the sonnet, of the Petrarchan lyric, of John Donne’s love poems. But as we will see in this course, love poetry was frequently about much more than love: it was about patronage, politics, immigration, exile, selling books, nature, God, redefining “Englishness”, the status of women, poetry itself. In the sixteenth century literary texts make love: they construct a weird new idea of love, an idea that was frequently modified and contested, an idea that shapes the way literature, especially poetry, is written for centuries after.

Together we will follow the changing constructions of love in the sixteenth century, starting with Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, passing through the anthologizer and publisher Richard Tottel, and moving to the great explosion of love poetry in the Elizabethan court, including the sonnets and poems of William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Walter Raleigh, Philip Sidney, Mary Sidney Herbert, Edmund Spenser, Mary Wroth, and Elizabeth I herself. Along the way we will read authors whose works define love in radical and new ways, including the secretive love narratives of George Gascoigne, the wild romances of Robert Greene, the foundational transformative love of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and the erotic satirical love of John Donne, John Marston, Thomas Nashe, and others. By the end of the course students will have had a thorough introduction to the major authors of the sixteenth century.

Selected Major Readings:
poetry and prose of Wyatt, Surrey, Elizabeth I, Raleigh, Wroth, and others, including Tottel’s Miscellany, Shakespeare’s Sonnets, Spenser’s Amoretti, Gascoigne’s The Tale of F.J., Donne’s Songs and Sonnets, Marston’s Metamorphosis of Pygmalion’s Image, Nashe’s “Choise of Valentines”.

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied: poetry of Wyatt and Surrey; scenes from The Tudors (TV series)

Method of Instruction: lecture, discussion

Method of Evaluation: close reading paper, final paper, class presentation, three substantial quizzes


Course Title: Special Topic in 19th-C. Brit. Lit: The Gothic

Course Code: ENG315H5F | Lecture TR 3-6

InstructorChris Koenig-Woodyard

A concentrated study of one aspect of nineteenth-century British literature or literary culture, such as a particular subgenre or author, specific theme, or the application of a particular critical approach. Topics may vary from year to year.

Group 4

Detailed Description by Instructor: This course explores 19th to 21st vampire stories. We begin with Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), which frames a discussion of the mechanics and history of vampire narratives. Exploring the aesthetic, cultural, political, gender and racial matter that freights the late Victorian Dracula, we then turn to Richard Matheson’s I am Legend (1954) and Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight (2005) in order to explore a critical and cultural turn in the 20th century: when (and how) did we learn to love vampires? That is to say, in the history of vampire literature and mythology there was a clear agon—vampires were anathema, and thus to be eradicated by humans. By the middle of the 20th century, however, vampires were depicted more sympathetically and emotionally—creatures not to be killed only, but to be empathized with and loved. The course is intended to 1) familiarize students with selected the history and aesthetics of vampire narratives; 2) expand interpretative skills through a range of comparative and cultural studies approaches; and 3) focus on honing close reading, and critical writing and thinking skills. All three serve to help with other courses, to broaden your historical sense of literature, and to polish critical and interpretative skills.

Course Texts (I have ordered texts through the UTM Bookstore; but the quickest and least expensive to obtain copies will be through Amazon and google play):

1] Richard Matheson, I am Legend          
ISBN 978-0765357151
Please note that the UTM bookstore has ordered about 12 copies only: Amazon

2] Stephanie Meyer, Twilight                   
ISBN 978-0-316-01584-4
Google Play

3] Stoker, Dracula Broadview Edition
ISBN 978-1-55111-136-0
Broadview
Google Play

4] Other material posted to Quercus, under modules.

Recommended Texts:
1] A good glossary, such as The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms. (Ed. Murfin and Ray) Bedford.
2] A good dictionary: Oxford English Dictionary

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied: Dracula

Method of Instruction: In Person lectures and class discussion

Method of Evaluation: Written Assignments

Website: Quercus


Course Title: Drama of the Global South

Course Code: ENG317H5F | Lecture MW 3-6

Instructor: Natasha Vashisht

This course compares works of selected playwrights of the Global South in an effort to understand their refashioning of postcolonial perspectives and subaltern histories. Ranging beyond the West and its theatrical traditions, the course will explore innovative theatrical performances that focus on South-South affiliations and link discourses, places, and people positioned between peripheries. Students will learn about traditions of orality, cultural pluralities, and indigenous mythic/folk styles that constitute the unique syncretism of South-South theatre cultures. Writers may include Padmanabhan, Nadeem, Jinghui, Taha, Fugard, Aidoo, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Miri, Walcott, Triana, and Dorfman.

Group 2


Course Title: Austen and Her Contemporaries (Online)

Course Code: ENG323H5S | TR 6-9

Instructor: Chris Koenig-Woodyard

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

Prerequisites: 1.0 credit in ENG and 3.0 additional credits.

Group 4

Required Reading:
All editions are published by Broadview, and we will use the introductions and appendixes of these books. I have ordered texts through the UTM bookstore. Electronic versions of the Broadview editions are available at Google Play; paper copies are available through Broadview and Amazon).

Book info at UT bookstore:

1. Austen, Northanger Abbey (2nd edition) ISBN: 9781551114798 / 1551114798 Broadview (paper copy)
Google Play 

2. Lewis, The Monk Broadview
Google Play

3.  Austen, Pride and Prejudice (2nd edition) ISBN: 9781554814893 / 1554814898 Broadview:
Google Play

4. Other material on Quercus, under Modules

First three texts/Authors to be studied: Austen, Northanger Abbey; The Monk; Pride and Prejudice

Method of Instruction: Lecture and Discussion

Method of Evaluation: Essays and Written Assignments

Website: Quercus


Course Title: Canadian Literature,1920 to the Present

Course Code: ENG362H5F | MW 9-12

Instructor: Daniela Janes

This course explores Canadian literature from the 1920s to the contemporary period. Students will examine the work of major authors in their cultural, social, and historical contexts. Topics may include the development of literary modernism in Canada, regional literary geographies, postmodern innovations, multiculturalism and hybridity, and Indigenous literary and cultural production in the part of Turtle Island that is called Canada.

Group 5