2025-2026 English Courses and Descriptions

*The Course Schedules below are subject to change pending enrolment 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
• Second-Year Courses
• Third-Year Courses
• Fourth-Year Courses

First-Year Courses

Fall Term

• ENG100H5F LEC0101 Effective Writing
• ENG100H5F LEC0102 Effective Writing
• ENG100H5F LEC0103 Effective Writing
• ENG102H5F How to Research Literature
• ENG107H5F Literature and AI
• ENG110H5F Narrative
• ENG121H5F Traditions of Theatre and Drama

Winter Term

• ENG100H5S LEC0101 Effective Writing
• ENG100H5S LEC0102 Effective Writing
• ENG100H5S LEC0103 Effective Writing
• ENG101H5S How to Read Critically
• ENG105H5S Introduction to World Literatures
• ENG110H5S Narrative
• ENG122H5S Modern and Contemporary Theatre and Drama

Course Title: Effective Writing LEC0101

Course Code: ENG100H5F | Lecture MWF 9-10 (Online)

Instructor: Tracy O'Brien

Group n/a

Detailed Description by Instructor: 
English 100: Effective Writing is a foundational course at University of Toronto. In this course, you will learn practical tools for writing in university and beyond. You will gain experience in generating ideas, clarifying insights, structuring arguments, composing paragraphs and sentences, critiquing and revising your writing, and communicating effectively to diverse audiences. Please note: this course may not be counted toward any English program. This section will use discussions and online & in-class writing exercises to learn about the writing process, grammar, and technical writing skills. We will also put those skills into practice. Students will be required to read texts before classes, participate in in-class exercises, and complete quizzes on Quercus to help solidify understanding of foundational English grammatical tools and techniques. By the end of this writing-intensive course students will be able to:

· Demonstrate the rhetorical awareness necessary for addressing diverse audiences, genres, and contexts;
· Express arguments clearly with sound support;
· Construct a short essay using university-level conventions;
· Perform research and evaluate the validity of sources;
· Apply consistent strategies for producing written communication at the university level;
· Correctly use MLA and Chicago citation styles.

Selected Major Readings:
Course texts cover writing mechanics, English grammar, and effective argumentation. Many of these readings will come from “They Say / I Say” by Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein (Author). I will also provide excerpts of texts in a variety of genres that illustrate the concepts we discuss in class.

Method of Instruction:
This section is entirely online. We will look at and apply each stage of the writing process in our classes, as you develop your own academic essay for submission at the end of term. Since our discussions and writing exercises are based on the weekly readings, you are expected to have the scheduled texts completed before coming to class.

On Mondays, we will focus on writing mechanics and grammar. This lesson is crucial for many of your Quercus quizzes, each of which I will release on the Monday before its due date. On Tuesdays, we will focus on the steps of argumentation with a particular focus on our course readings.

On Fridays, we will put it all together! We will discuss and practice how to get your point across effectively; that is, how to write coherently, concisely, and convincingly.

Method of Evaluation:
10 quizzes on Quercus, each worth 2% (for a total of 20% of the final grade)
1 Analysis paper worth 20%
1 Introduction and Annotated Bibliography worth 20%
1 Final Essay worth 40%

Does this course feature an assessed creative writing component? No

Course Title: Effective Writing LEC0102

Course Code: ENG100H5F | Lecture T 9-11, R 9-10 

Instructor: Natasha Vashisht

Group n/a

Course Title: Effective Writing LEC0103

Course Code: ENG100H5F | Lecture T 6-9 (Online)

Instructor: Sarah Howden

Group n/a

Course Title: Effective Writing LEC0101

Course Code: ENG100H5S | Lecture MWF 9-10

Instructor: Julia Boyd

Course Title: How to Read Critically

Course Code: ENG101H5S | Lecture TR 9-10 | Tutorials T 10-11, T 12-1, T 1-2, T 3-4, T4-5

Instructor: Michael Raby 

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

Group 1 Literary Theory/Methods

Course Title: How to Research Literature

Course Code: ENG102H5F | Lecture MW 9-10 | Tutorials M 10-11, W 12-1

Instructor:  Daniella Janes

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

Group n/a

Course Title: Introduction to World Literatures

Course Code: ENG105H5S | Lecture TR 10-11 | Tutorials R 11-12, R 1-2, R 3-4

Instructor: Anna Thomas

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

Group n/a

Course Title: Literature & AI

Course Code: ENG107H5F | Lecture T 11-1 | Tutorials T 1-2, T 3-4, T 4-5, T 5-6

Instructor: Avery Slater

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

Group n/a

Course Title: Narrative

Course Code: ENG110H5F | Lecture MW 1-2 | Tutorials W 2-3, W 4-5, W 5-6, W 6-7

Instructor: Chester Scoville

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

Group n/a

Detailed Description by Instructor: 
Thomas King says, “The truth about stories is that’s all we are.” This course will examine the phenomenon of the story both as an art form and as a tool that people use to make sense of their lives in the world. We will focus on literary narrative as a particularly rich variety, but our analyses will apply broadly, to narratives found in history, law, politics, and more. 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: 
Hemingway, “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”; James, The Turn of the Screw; Clarke, Piranesi; Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway.

First three texts / authors to be studied: Hemingway, James, Le Guin

Method of instruction: Lecture with mandatory weekly tutorials

Method of evaluation: Scaffolded short writing assignments capped by a final paper and final exam. Participation in tutorials will also be counted.

Does your course feature an assessed creative writing component? No

Course Title: Narrative

Course Code: ENG110H5S | Lecture MW 12-1 | Tutorials W 1-2, W 3-4

Instructor: Chester Scoville

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

Group n/a 

Detailed Description by Instructor: 
Thomas King says, “The truth about stories is that’s all we are.” This course will examine the phenomenon of the story both as an art form and as a tool that people use to make sense of their lives in the world. We will focus on literary narrative as a particularly rich variety, but our analyses will apply broadly, to narratives found in history, law, politics, and more. 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: Hemingway, “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”; James, The Turn of the Screw; Clarke, Piranesi; Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway.

First three texts / authors to be studied: Hemingway, James, Le Guin

Method of instruction: Lecture with mandatory weekly tutorials

Method of evaluation: Scaffolded short writing assignments capped by a final paper and final exam. Participation in tutorials will also be counted.

Does this course feature an assessed creative writing component? No

Course Title: Traditions of Theatre and Drama

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

Instructor: Holger Syme

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

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: Signy Lynch

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

Group n/a

Detailed Description by Instructor: 
An introductory survey of the forms and history of world theatre and drama from the late nineteenth 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.

Selected Major Readings: TBD

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied: TBD

Method of Instruction: Mainly lecture, with some discussion and combination of lecture, discussion, and participatory learning activities.

Method of Evaluation: TBD

Does your course feature an assessed creative writing component? No

Second-Year Courses

Fall Term

• ENG202H5F British Literature in the World I: Medieval to Eighteenth-Century
• ENG204H5F How to Read Poetry
• ENG223H5F Introduction to Shakespeare
• ENG234H5F Children's Literature
• ENG236H5F Detective Fiction
• ENG238H5F Science Fiction
• ENG255H5F Introduction to Canadian Literature
• ENG259H5F Imagining Nature: Literature & the Enviro.
• ENG263H5F Play and Games
• ENG269H5F Queer Writing
• ENG273H5F Literatures of Immigration & Exile
• ENG279H5F History of Video Games
• ENG289H5F Creative Writing

Winter Term

• ENG203H5S British Literature in the World II: Romantic to Contemporary
• ENG211H5S Introduction to the Novel
• ENG215H5S The Canadian Short Story
• ENG235H5S Comics and the Graphic Novel
• ENG237H5S Science Fiction
• ENG251H5S Introduction to American Literature
• ENG261H5S Music and Literature
• ENG263H5S Play and Games
• ENG271H5S Toronto's Multicultural Literatures
• ENG275H5S Feminist Approaches to Literature
• ENG280H5S Critical Approaches to Literature
• ENG289H5S Creative Writing
• ENG291H5S Reading for Creative Writing

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

Course Code: ENG202H5F | Lecture MW 9-10 | Tutorials W 10-11, W 12-1, W 1-2

Instructor: Julia Boyd

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

Group n/a

Detailed Description by Instructor:
How does literature shape our world—and our understanding of how we fit in that world? How can it root communities in place and history, and imagine connections with other lands, peoples, and species? Alternatively, how can literary canons retrench domination and exclusion?

This course investigates these questions and more by exploring some of the pivotal texts in the British literary tradition from the Middle Ages to the eighteenth century: a span of over 900 years! We’ll explore poetry, prose, drama, an early novel, life writing, activist pamphlets and songs, and contemporary adaptations reimagining those texts for our own cultural and political moments. Our journey begins with Beowulf’s account of its titular warrior’s epic battle with the monster Grendel (and Grendel’s mother), stretching forward to contemporary battles over the control—and misuse—of medieval literatures. From there, our themes and texts range from the adventures of gender nonbinary Arthurian knight Silence, to colonial encounters in Shakespeare’s The Tempest; from Margaret Cavendish’s 17th century feminist sci fi utopia, to writing, poetry, and songs from socialist environmentalists and labouring class poets; from Afrofuturist lyrics by the first African American woman to publish her own book of poetry, to abolitionists determined to end the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

As we read these varied texts together, we’ll both explore and critically pressure the “British Literary Canon,” probing how literatures emerging in and around what we now know as the “British Isles” negotiate class, social hierarchy, political upheaval, gender and sexuality, race, colonialism, and environmental sustainability. Assignments, lectures, and tutorials will help you build your confidence reading, interpreting, and developing your own arguments about historic literary texts. If you choose, you’ll also have the opportunity to practice communicating scholarly knowledge to wider public audiences by adapting your major essay into a multimedia form.

Selected Major Readings:

• Old English and Old Irish elegies and lyrics: “The Wanderer,” “The Wife’s Lament,” “The Lament of the Old Woman of Beare,” “The Scholar and His Cat (Pangur Bán)”
• Beowulf
• Breton Lais by Marie de France: “Prologue,” “Guigemar,” “Le Fresne,” “Bisclavret,”  “Lanval,” ‘Milun,” “Chevrefoil,” “Eliduc”
• Excerpts from Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales
• Select stories from the Refugee Tales
• Environmental, Critical Race, and Queer readings of Arthurian romances: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Le Roman de Silence, and Sir Morien
• Julian of Norwich, excerpts from Revelations of Divine Love
• Shakespeare, The Tempest
• Suniti Namjoshi, “Snapshots of Caliban”
• Margaret Cavendish, excerpts from The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing World
• Gerrard Winstanley, “A Declaration from the Poor and Oppressed People of England,” “The Digger’s Song,” and other texts from The Diggers
• Selectons from 18th century labouring class poets: Mary Leapor, “Crumble-Hall”; Stephen Duck, “The Thresher’s Labour”; Mary Collier, “The Woman’s Labour: To Mr. Stephen Duck”
• Anna Laetitia Barbauld, “Washing Day”
• Phillis Wheatley, selections from Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral
• Aphra Behn, Oroonoko: or, the Royal Slave
• Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied:
Old English lyrics and elegies; Beowulf; Marie de France.

Method of Instruction: Lectures, class discussions, and tutorials.

Method of Evaluation:

Welcome Survey: 2%
Keyword Essay: 5%
4 Public Think Pieces (4 weeks throughout term, 2 medieval and 2 early modern): 20%
Major Project (submitted in stages):
Interpretive questions, rough theses, and outline: 10%
Draft introduction and first body paragraph: 10%
Polished First Draft: 15%
Revision Plan: 5%
Polished Final Version / Multimedia Adaptation: 20%
Class and Tutorial Participation: 13%

Does your course feature an assessed creative writing component? 
You’ll have the opportunity to adapt your Major Project into a multimedia or creative form if you choose.

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

Course Code: ENG203H5S | Lecture TR 10-11 | Tutorials R 11-12, R 1-2, R 2-1

Instructor: Chris Koenig-Woodyard

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

Group n/a

Course Title: How to Read Poetry

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

Instructor: Brent Wood

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

Group 1 Literary Theory/Methods

Detailed Description by Instructor: This course provides a strong foundation for the study, practice, and enjoyment of poetry by focusing on the basic elements of rhythm, repetition, diction, image, and metaphor. Of benefit to those studying subjects other than English literature will be the historical overview of the evolving world and consideration of cultural and political issues through the prism of poetry, including the dawn of the Anthropocene era.

Selected Major Readings: Various poems primarily from North America

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied: Poems by Stanley Kunitz, Joy Harjo, Billy Collins

Method of Instruction: Lecture and discussion

Method of Evaluation: Short assignments, tests, participation

Does your course feature an assessed creative writing component? No

Course Title: Introduction to the Novel

Course Code: ENG211H5S | Lecture MWF 10-11

Instructor: TBD

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

Group n/a

Course Title: The Canadian Short Story

Course Code: ENG215H5S | Lecture MWF 9-10

Instructor: Daniela Janes

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

Group 5 Canadian Literature

Detailed Description by Instructor: This course examines the development of the short story in Canada from the nineteenth century to the present. We will explore the formal features of the short story and its critical contexts as we move through nearly two hundred years of Canadian short fiction. Readings will cover a range of styles and forms including the sketch, the realist short story, and the various formal experiments of the twentieth and twenty-first century. Through our readings, we will build a sense of historical and theoretical context and chart the shifting themes and techniques of the short story form in Canada. Through readings, lecture, and discussion, students in this course will build a foundational knowledge of the history and form of the short story in Canada, and of related short story theory and criticism. This course will reinforce disciplinary skills in close reading and literary analysis, and hone critical reading and writing skills.

Selected Major Readings: Students will read twenty-five short stories over the term, mainly drawn from our two anthologies: Misao Dean’s Early Canadian Short Stories: Short Stories in English before World War I and Atwood and Weaver’s The New Oxford Book of Canadian Short Stories in English.

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

Method of Instruction: Lecture, discussion, in-class writing, and small group activities

Method of Evaluation: In-class activities, quizzes, two tests, and a major project.

Does your course feature an assessed creative writing component? Optional

Course Title: Introduction to Shakespeare

Course Code: ENG223H5F | Lecture MW 1-2 | TUT W 4-5, W 5-4

Instructor: Erin Rose Grant

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

Group 3 Literature pre-1700

Course Title: Children's Literature

Course Code: ENG234H5F | Lecture MWF 10-11

Instructor:  Daniela Janes

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

Group n/a

Detailed Description by Instructor: Students in this class will study a broad range of texts written for (or appropriated by) children. Our readings will begin with songs and verse for pre-literate infants and young children and texts for emerging readers. However, the bulk of the course will be devoted to texts written for independent older readers. Exploring a variety of forms and genres, we will map the history of children’s literature through our readings of poetry, songs, picture books, short stories, novels, and graphic novels. Topics for analysis will include the historical contexts of the development of children’s literature; shifting representations of childhood in fiction; the “Golden Age” of children’s literature; the recurrence of archetypal characters and motifs; and the relationship between words and images.

Selected Major Readings:

Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) (Norton [4th edition], ISBN. 9781324059608)

L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables (1908) (Norton, ISBN. 9780393926958)

C.S. Lewis, The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe (1950) (HarperCollins, ISBN. 9780064471046)

Jerry Craft, New Kid (2019) (HarperCollins, ISBN. 9780062691194)

Ivy Noelle Weir, Anne of West Philly (2022) (Little, Brown, ISBN. 9780316459778)

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied: We will begin with a series of short pieces that will be shared via Quercus (poems by Isaac Watts; excerpts from A Little Pretty Pocket-book and from Anna Laetitia Barbauld’s Lessons for Children). You are encouraged to begin reading the novels early.

Method of Instruction: Lecture, discussion, in-class writing, and small group activities

Method of Evaluation: In-class activities, quizzes, two tests, and a major project.

Does your course feature an assessed creative writing component? No

Course Title: Comics and the Graphic Novel

Course Code: ENG235H5S | Lecture MWF 11-12

Instructor: Chester Scoville

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

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 and Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki’s This One Summer; as well as some mainstream comics such as Moore and Gibbons’s Watchmen.

First three texts / authors to be studied: Seth, Tamaki/Tamaki, Moore/Gibbon

Method of instruction: Interactive lecture/discussion, with much close reading done in class.

Method of evaluation: Short tests, final essay, exam.

Does this course feature an assessed creative writing component? Yes

Course Title: Detective Fiction

Course Code: ENG236H5F | Lecture MWF 12-1

Instructor:  Daniela Janes

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

Group n/a

Detailed Description by Instructor: This course introduces students to the British and American form of the detective story. With a dual focus on close reading of primary texts and theoretical approaches to the genre of the detective narrative, students will build their knowledge of the conventions that characterize the form and the innovations that challenge it. Students will develop their understanding of periods and styles of detective fiction and will be able to pose informed arguments in their coursework. As we examine narrative constructions of criminality and detection, we will also consider how the genre of the detective story positions its protagonist as a reader. By the end of the course, students will be able to reflect on the emergence of the genre of the detective narrative, the development of its formal features, and the ways that writers have sought to challenge their detectives and the genre itself through subversion and reinvention.

Selected Major Readings:

Edgar Allan Poe, The Murders in the Rue Morgue: The Dupin Stories

Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles and “The Adventure of the Speckled Band”

Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep

Agatha Christie, A Murder is Announced

Josephine Tey, The Daughter of Time

Steph Cha, Follow Her Home

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied: Short stories by Edgar Allan Poe (“The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt,” and “The Purloined Letter”).

Method of Instruction: Lecture, discussion, in-class writing, and small group activities

Method of Evaluation: In-class activities, quizzes, two tests, and a major project.

Does your course feature an assessed creative writing component? No

Course Title: Science Fiction

Course Code: ENG237H5S | Lecture T 11-12, R 11-1

Instructor: Stanka Radovic

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

Group n/a

Course Title: Fantasy Literature

Course Code: ENG238H5F | Lecture MWF 11-12

Instructor: Chester Scoville

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

Group n/a

Detailed Description by Instructor: 
Fantasy literature is, as Brian Attebery puts it, the literature of making the oldest stories say new things. Or, to look at it from Seo-Young Chu’s perspective, it is the art of making literary techniques themselves into the story. These two critical perspectives will begin our reading of fantasy fiction, which will range from early modern fairy and folk tales through some classics of 19th and 20th-century literary fantasy, to contemporary tales of the fantastic in modern settings. Along the way, we will focus on how fantasy transforms the concrete realities of place, space, and everyday life into something unfamiliar, and how readers experience and interact with its complex rhetorical modes. We will also consider fantasy as a popular and cultural phenomenon, asking why it has become so important to so many people in our modern, technological, apparently disenchanted age.

Selected major readings: 
We will read a number of fantasies old and new, including fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen, Tolkien’s The Hobbit, and LeGuin’s The Tombs of Atuan, as well as locally-situated texts such as Hopkinson’s Brown Girl in the Ring. Our focus will be on how fantasy narratives shape and are shaped by their imagined environments. We will end with a text – Chambers’s Monk and Robot – that might more conventionally be thought of as science fiction rather than fantasy, to interrogate whether the distinction between those two genres can really hold.

First three texts / authors to be studied: Andersen, Tolkien, LeGuin

Method of instruction: Interactive lecture/discussion, with much close reading done in class.

 Method of evaluation: Short tests, final essay, exam.

Does this course feature an assessed creative writing component? Yes

Course Title: Introduction to American Literature

Course Code: ENG251H5S | Lecture T 1-3, R 1-2

Instructor: Melissa Gniadek

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

Group 6 American Literature

Course Title: Introduction to Canadian Literature

Course Code: ENG255H5F | Lecture T 11-12, R 11-1

Instructor: Colin Hill

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

Group 5 Canadian Literature

Detailed Description by Instructor: 
This course is an introduction to some of Canada’s best writing from pre-confederation to the present. Our writers are from diverse backgrounds and engage the cultural conditions of their evolving country from various perspectives. Class topics will include (but are not limited to) exploration and immigration narratives, Canadian literary history and development, realism, modernism, urban / rural tensions, the artist figure, gender and sexuality, Canadian postmodernism and postcolonialism, multiculturalism, racism and anti-racism, psychological and spiritual self-discovery, and personal, social, cultural, and national identities.

Selected Major Readings:
This course consists of short readings from An Anthology of Canadian Literature in English, ed. Bennett and Brown, 4th edition.

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied: 
Saukamappee; Samuel Hearne; Susanna Moodie

Method of Instruction: Lecture and discussion

Method of Evaluation:

1. Participation 10%

2. Term Paper 30%

3. Mid-term Test 30%

4. Final exam 30%

Does your course feature an assessed creative writing component? No

Course Title: Imagining Nature: Literature & the Enviro.

Course Code: ENG259H5F | Lecture M 1-3, W 2-3

Instructor: Julia Boyd

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

Group 1 Literary Theory/Methods

Detailed Description by Instructor:
“We need critical hope the way a fish needs unpolluted water.”
— Paulo Freire. Pedagogy of Hope: Reliving Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1992)

How can narrative inspire practical solutions to environmental challenges? How can it balance exposing crisis with inspiring restoration? Why does literature matter when we’re raising awareness about environmental justice—and building the sustainable world Vandana Shiva calls “Earth Democracy”?

This course investigates these questions and more question by introducing you to a selection of environmental writing from around the world, including fiction, memoir, essays, oratory, poetry, comic, film, digital publications, and public science writing. We’ll explore how literature and narrative shaped and inspire our relationship with and responsibilities to the environments surrounding us, including working class, Indigenous, feminist, Global South, and postcolonial environmental movements.

We’ll begin by grounding our work in two core texts for historic and contemporary environmental thinking: the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address and the Indigenous-led Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth. With this foundation in oratory and writing as tools to build respectful environmental relationships, we’ll then launch into a breadth of environmental literatures from the nineteenth century to the present, including works from Turtle Island/North America, India, Ecuador, Oceania, Palestine, and Japan. Our readings include eighteenth and nineteenth-century writers defending the commons against privatization; a contemporary Indian seed sovereignty activist updating Gandhi’s nonviolence for contemporary farmers’ rights struggles; essays by Arundhati Roy that helped define the global environmental movement; climate and nuclear justice works by Indigenous artists, poets, and filmmakers from Turtle Island and Oceania; Afrofuturist Octavia Butler’s cli fi vision of community leadership in the face of environmental crisis; comics journalism and anime about the risks of unfettered resource extraction, and more. Along the way, we’ll analyze the techniques environmental writers use to build concrete legal, policy, and cultural sustainability—including how they negotiate cross-cultural solidarity, environmental racism, “slow violence” (Nixon), and the uneven impacts of climate change.

We study environmental literatures with an eye to developing your own writing and communication skills. The major assignment in this course is a self-directed environmental humanities project communicating a key concept from our course in a format useful to an audience beyond the university’s walls, culminating in a “public intellectual” essay or multimedia communications materials (options include a scripted podcast or video essay, digital communications package, educational package, set of short articles for a public outlet, and more). If you choose, you’ll also have an opportunity to develop your academic editorial skills by co-editing our “Literature, Arts, and Environment”-themed special journal issue.

Selected Major Readings (subject to change):

• Robin Wall Kimmerer, selections from Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants
• Ross Gay, selections from Catalogue of Unabashed Gratitude and The Book of Delights
• Poems by William Wordsworth and essays by Henry David Thoreau
• Mohandas K. Gandhi, selections from Hind Swaraj and Constructive Programme: Its Meaning and Place
• Vandana Shiva, selections from Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace
• Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony
• Rachel Carson, selections from The Sea Around Us
• Witi Ihimaera, Whale Rider
• Arundhati Roy, “The Greater Common Good”
• Pablo Fajardo, Sophie Tardy-Joubert, and Damien Roudeau, Crude: A Memoir
• Amitav Ghosh, selections from Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable
• Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower
• Select video poems from Audrey Brown-Pereira, Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner, and other Oceanian multimedia poets
• Other shorter documents including the “Principles of Environmental Justice” (First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit), Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth, Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address

Films and Multimedia:

• Alethea Arnaquq-Baril, Angry Inuk
• Franny Armstrong, Drowned Out
• Niki Caro, Whale Rider
• Larissa Sansour, In Vitro
• Hayao Miyazaki, Princess Mononoke

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied:

Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address (“The Words that Come Before All Else”); Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth; Kimmerer, “The Gift of Strawberries”; Gay, “To the Fig Tree on 9th and Christian.”

Method of Instruction: In-person lectures and class discussions.

Method of Evaluation:

Welcome Survey: 2%
Land Writing Pieces / Editorial Project: 25%
Annotation and Polished Land Writing Piece: 5%
Proposal and Annotated Bibliography: 20%
Major Praxis Project (submitted in stages): 35%
In-Class Participation: 13%

Does your course feature an assessed creative writing component? 

Opportunity to present major project in creative format, and to co-edit and/or contribute to “Literature, Arts, and Environment”-themed special journal issue

Course Title: Music and Literature

Course Code: ENG261H5S | Lecture M 4-5, W 3-5

Instructor: Brent Wood

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

Group n/a

Detailed Description by Instructor: This course introduces students to the musical literature of North America (aka Turtle Island). We will study how melody, harmony, rhythm and texture have interacted with language, story and performance in a historical context using examples from folk ballads and blues, art-songs, popular songs, theatre, and literature inspired by such music.

Selected Major Readings: James Baldwin “Sonny’s Blues,” Hair: The American Tribal Love Rock Musical, Hamilton: An American Musical.

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied: Baldwin, Dylan, Hair

Method of Instruction: Lecture and discussion

Method of Evaluation: Critical writing assignments, tests, participation

Does your course feature an assessed creative writing component? No

Course Title: Play and Games

Course Code: ENG263H5F | Lecture T 1-3 | TUT R 1-2, R 2-3

Instructor: Bruno R. Véras

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

Group n/a

Course Title: Play and Games

Course Code: ENG263H5S | Lecture MW 1-2 | TUT W 2-3, W 4-5

Instructor: Lawrence Switzky

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

Group n/a

Course Title: Queer Writing

Course Code: ENG269H5F | Lecture T 1-3, R 1-2

Instructor: Cassandra Olsen

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

Group n/a

Course Title: Toronto's Multicultural Literatures

Course Code: ENG271H5S | Lecture T 11-1, R 12-1

Instructor: Colin Hill

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

Group 5 Canadian Literature

Course Title: Literatures of Immigration & Exile

Course Code: ENG273H5F | Lecture W 6-9

Instructor: Raji Soni

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

Group 2 Race, Ethnicity, Diaspora, Indigeneity

Detailed Description by Instructor:
In its 2024 Global Trends report on forced displacement—an annual study that tracks the number of refugees, internally displaced persons, asylum seekers, and stateless populations worldwide—the UN Refugee Agency determined that more than 1 in every 67 people on our planet has been displaced from their homes, regions, and countries. If we include those displaced before 2024, we arrive at a total of 123.2 million people displaced by the year’s end: “the largest ever increase between years according to UNHCR’s statistics on forced displacement.” By comparison, 60 million people were displaced during WWII.

Causes of forced displacement are often interrelated: war, civil unrest, persecution, ethnic cleansing and genocide, human trafficking and enslavement, land grabs, natural disasters, the accelerating violence of climate change, and extreme poverty from collapsing economies. Generally, political responses to contemporary crises of displacement, migration, and exile have been quite troubling: the mainstreaming of xenophobic nationalism, efforts to criminalize asylum seekers, “zero tolerance” policies of family separation and child incarceration, collective punishment, indefinite and/or offshore detention, and the weaponizing of humanitarian aid.

Our aims in this course are: (1) to understand these crises and the political responses to them by way of their sociohistorical, literary, cinematic, documentary, and journalistic contexts and (2) to explore multiple tensions between political and literary perspectives on displacement, statelessness, immigration, and exile. If literary responses to dire circumstances of immigration and exile are frequently more solicitous than their political counterparts, what might politics learn from literature and the arts? Why are politics and literature at such loggerheads over immigration and exile?

As groundwork for responding to these and other questions, our case studies will include the decrepit state of citizenship and human rights after WWII; genocidal state-sponsored pogroms in postcolonial India; brutal barriers to French citizenship for Africans; legacies of forced migration and slavery in the United States; Haiti in an era of dictatorships; violence and survival throughout the history of Canada’s residential schools; and questions of citizenship and belonging arising from the Caribbean diaspora. In our discussions of these case studies and their interconnections, finer points of genre, style, and literary form will be as crucial as sociohistorical contexts and thematic content.

Selected Major Readings:
Arendt, Hannah. “Preface to the First Edition,” “Preface to Part Two: Imperialism,” and “The Decline of the Nation-State and the End of the Rights of Man” from The Origins of Totalitarianism (Penguin Modern Classics, 2017 [1951]).

Singh, Jaspreet. Helium (Bloomsbury, 2013). We’ll also read Singh’s article, “Thomas Bernhard in New Delhi,” and study news clips about November 1984.

Haneke, Michael, dir. Caché (Sony, 2006). We’ll also read an article on Caché and selections from works by Frantz Fanon (Quercus).

Morrison, Toni. Beloved (Vintage, 2004 [1987]).

Danticat, Edwidge. The Dew Breaker (Vintage, 2002). For a deeper historical understanding of Haiti and its diaspora, we will also read journalism.

Highway, Tomson. Kiss of the Fur Queen (Anchor Canada, 2005 [1998]). We will also discuss a documentary on Canada’s residential schools.

Walcott, Derek. From Midsummer in Collected Poems, 1948-1984 (FSG, 1986).

Brand, Dionne. Land to Light On in Nomenclature: New and Collected Poems (Duke University Press, 2022) and related poems.

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied: Arendt, Singh, Haneke
Method of Instruction: participation, critical response, collaborative presentation, final paper, final exam

Method of Evaluation: blended lecture and discussion

Does this course feature an assessed creative writing component? No

Course Title: Feminist Approaches to Literature

Course Code: ENG275H5S | Lecture W 11-12, F 11-1

Instructor: Sarah Star

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

Group 1 Literary Theory/Methods

Course Title: History of Video Games

Course Code: ENG279H5F | Lecture T 9-11 | Tutorials R 9-10, R 10-11

Instructor: Chris Young

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

Group n/a

Detailed Description by Instructor: This course introduces students to the history of video games from early arcade cabinets and personal computers to home video game consoles and mobile devices in everyday life. It considers the role of culture, technology, and marketing in the formation of interactive texts, genres, and play experiences. Students will be exposed to unique primary sources in the Syd Bolton Collection of video games and the Electric Playground Media Archive of historical game industry footage through course content, lectures, and assignments.

Selected major readings: Lowood, Henry and Raiford Guins. Debugging Game History: A Critical Lexicon. MIT Press, 2016. McDonald, Peter. Run and Jump: The Meaning of the 2D Platformer. MIT Press, 2024.

First three texts / authors to be studied: We will look at the genres of video games, such as adventure, platformer, and role-playing.

Method of instruction: Lecture and practical lab

Method of evaluation: Close reading, watching, and playing assignments, participation in practical lab, and final exam.

Does this course feature an assessed creative writing component? No

Course Title: Critical Approaches to Literature

Course Code: ENG280H5S | Lecture M 11-1 | Tutorials M 1-2, M 2-3, M3-4

Instructor: Danny Wright

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

Group n/a

Detailed Description by Instructor: What does it mean to adopt a "critical approach" to literature, and why is it any better than simply ... reading? Why does it seem that a "theory" is required in order to turn reading into interpretation? In this course we will hold these fundamental questions in mind as we survey a range of theoretical schools and movements that have shaped the modern history of literary studies, from formalism to deconstruction to Marxism to feminist theory.

Selected Major Readings:

Authors likely to include some of the following: Barbara Christian, Lee Maracle, bell hooks, John Crowe Ransom, Cleanth Brooks, Roland Barthes, Barbara Johnson, Karl Marx, Raymond Williams, Audre Lorde, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Susan Stryker, Saidiya Hartman, Sara Ahmed, Sigmund Freud, Anne Cheng, Chinua Achebe, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Amitav Ghosh, Stephen Best, Sharon Marcus, Toril Moi

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied: TBD

Method of Instruction: Lectures and weekly discussion-based tutorials

Method of Evaluation: Writing assignments, active participation, final exam

Does your course feature an assessed creative writing component? No

Course Title: Creative Writing

Course Code: ENG289H5F | Lecture MW 1-2 | Tutorials F 1-2, F 2-3 

Instructor: Brent Wood

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

Group n/a

Detailed Description by Instructor: 
Students will work individually and co-operatively to develop a recitable poem, a performable dialogue, and a publishable work of prose fiction. Lecture time will be devoted to techniques, principles and examples of poetics, rhetoric, character, drama, narrative, description, and prose technique.

Course Title: Creative Writing

Course Code: ENG289H5S | Lecture T 9-11 | Tutorials T 11-12, T 1-2 (ONLINE)

Instructor: TBD

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

Group n/a

Course Title: Reading for Creative Writing

Course Code: ENG291H5S | Lecture MW 1-2 | Tutorials M 2-3, M 4-5

Instructor: Brent Wood

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

Group n/a

Detailed Description by Instructor: Students will learn the elements of narrative, poetry and drama by studying contemporary and classic literary texts and responding to them creatively.

Lecture time will be devoted to studying the principles and techniques of dramatic conflict, character, narration, description, rhetoric and poetics across a variety of texts.

Tutorial sessions will consist of focused sharing of student writing as well as discussion of texts.

Selected Major Readings: Various poems, short stories and a script for the stage

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied: Poems by Jimmy Santiago Baca, Sharon Olds, Agha Shahid Ali

Method of Instruction: Lecture, discussion, tutorial

Method of Evaluation: Short assignments, tests, participation

Does your course feature an assessed creative writing component? Yes

Third-Year Courses

Fall Term

• ENG300H5Y Chaucer
• ENG317H5F Drama of the Global South
• ENG323H5F Austen and Her Contemporaries
• ENG326H5F Premodern World Literatures
• ENG328H5F Writing for Games and Narrative Design
• ENG349H5F Contemporary Poetry ("Ecopoetry")
• ENG351H5F Toni Morrison: Texts and Contexts
• ENG360H5F Early American Literature
• ENG373H5F LEC0101Creative Writing: Poetry
• ENG373H5F LEC0102 Creative Writing: Poetry
• ENG383H5F British Romanticism and Its Contexts
• ENG388H5F Spaces of Fiction
• ENG392H5F Canadian Fiction

Winter Term

• ENG302H5S Magical Realism
• ENG316H5S Spec. Top. Mod. Contemp. Lit (Virginia Woolf)
• ENG319H5S Sexuality, Race, & Gender in VG & Gaming Culture
• ENG324H5S Spec. Top. Game Studies (Classic Games)
• ENG325H5S The Victorian Novel
• ENG332H5S Restoration and 18th Century Literature
• ENG344H5S Spy Fiction
• ENG352H5S Canadian Drama
• ENG356H5S Caribbean Literature
• ENG374H5S Creative Writing: Prose
• ENG374H5S Creative Writing: Prose
• ENG376H5S Creative Writing: Nonfiction
• ENG378H5S Special Topic in Writing for Performance
• ENG396H5S Literary Theory Now

Course Title: Chaucer  

Course Code: ENG300H5SY | Lecture MWF 2-3

Instructor: Chet Scoville

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

Group n/a

Detailed Description by Instructor: 
The poems of Geoffrey Chaucer are among the greatest works of world literature.  We will consider them in the context of his life in the courts of 14th-century England, as both a reflection and a critique of the major intellectual, political, and cultural issues of his time.  We will also consider his pioneering use of the English language, his use of philosophical ideas and of popular story genres, and his consideration of matters such as class and gender in the creation of a uniquely vibrant fictional world.

Selected major readings: All texts will be available at the UTM bookstore in The Norton Chaucer. 

First three texts / authors to be studied: The Book of the Duchess, The Parliament of Fowls, Troilus and Criseyde

Method of instruction: Close reading and discussion, with some lecture when needed.

Method of evaluation: Multiple short tests and two long essays. No final exam.

Does this course feature an assessed creative writing component? No

Course Title: Magical Realism

Course Code: ENG302H5S | Lecture T1-3, R 2-3

Instructor: Stanka Radovic

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

Group n/a

Course Title: Spec. Top. Mod. Contemp. Lit (Virginia Woolf)

Course Code: ENG316H5S | Lecture MWF 12-1 

Instructor: Daniella Janes

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

Group n/a

Detailed Description by Instructor: This course offers you the opportunity to plunge into the world of Virginia Woolf, developing your knowledge of her work in a range of genres (novels, short stories, essays, diaries, and letters). Reading Woolf in relation to the development of literary modernism and the creative and intellectual community of the Bloomsbury Group, we will consider the social, cultural, and literary contexts in which Woolf wrote and published her work. We will examine her formal experiments in the representation of voice, subjectivity, and temporality, and her treatment of gender, the body, nature, and the non-human animal. We will build our knowledge of the historical contexts in which she wrote, a period bracketed by the First and Second World Wars, to examine her pacifism and political activism. We will also attend to Woolf’s interest in the book arts, reflecting on books as material objects. Reading Woolf’s literary criticism as well as critical responses to Woolf’s work will allow us to apply a range of interpretive methodologies and approaches in our own reading, discussion, and writing.

Selected Major Readings: Several novels (which will include Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse), assorted short stories, and essays.

First Three Texts to be Studied: “How Should One Read a Book?” (essay), “Modern Fiction” (essay), “Kew Gardens” (short story).

Method of Instruction: Lecture and seminar-style discussion

Method of Evaluation: short writing assignments, tests, presentations, and a major project.

Does your course feature an assessed creative writing component? No

Course Title: Drama of the Global South

Course Code: ENG317H5F | Lecture W3-5, F3-4 

Instructor: Natasha Vashisht

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

Group 2 Race, Ethnicity, Diaspora, Indigeneity

Detailed Description by Instructor: This course examines the refashioning of postcolonial and subaltern histories in dramatic performances in the Global South and interrogates the binaries of the colonizer-colonized, ‘the west and the rest,’ the core and periphery. In going beyond the ‘distraction’ of the west and its theatrical traditions, we will integrate innovative theatrical performances that focus more on south-south affiliations that link discourses, places, and people ‘positioned between peripheries’ (Boehmer 2001). Within this context Boehmer (1998) suggests how different parts of the globe were connected by ‘nexuses of communication and exchange,’ which facilitated a ‘nationalist interconnection’ of Southern practices of anti-colonial resistance shared as a ‘series of multilaterally linked, parallel systems.’ Therefore, selected plays from Palestine, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, South Africa, Algeria, Uganda, Jamaica & Venezuela will reveal cogent material realities of postcolonial trauma, armed conflicts, religious, ethnic and linguistic fissures, migrant and refugee crisis, human trafficking, and inequitable class positions in global capitalism resulting from the deleterious political economy of colonialism and neo colonialism. On the way we will discover

Selected major readings: 
1. Shahid Nadeem, Barri 
2. Manjula Padmanabhan, Harvest 
3. Ahmed Masoud, The shroud Maker 
4. WS Rendra, The Struggle of the Naga Tribe

First three texts / authors to be studied: 
1. Shahid Nadeem, Barri 
2. Manjula Padmanabhan, Harvest 
3. Ahmed Masoud, The shroud Maker

Method of instruction: Lectures and discussions.

Method of evaluation: Discussion posts; Presentations; Midterm essay; Endterm essay; Class participation

Does this course feature an assessed creative writing component? No

Course Title: Sexuality, Race, & Gender in VG & Gaming Culture

Course Code: ENG319H5S | Lecture M 9-11, W 10-11

Instructor: Bruno R. Véras

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

Group n/a

Course Title: Austen and Her Contemporaries

Course Code: ENG323H5F | Lecture T 3-5, R 3-4

Instructor: Kate Frank

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

Group 4 Literature 1700-1900

Detailed Description by Instructor:
This course examines three novels by Jane Austen within the larger contexts of her life, literary era, and social and cultural surroundings. We will observe the entire arc of Austen’s development as a writer – from her letters to family, to her first teenage fictions, through to her final published novel, and the work she left incomplete at her death. Throughout, we will analyse how Austen engaged in literary “conversation” with fellow writers of her day. Finally, we will think about Austen’s ongoing role in our own contemporary cultural and literary landscape.

Selected Major Readings:
Austen, Jane. Northanger Abbey
Austen, Jane. Persuasion
Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied:
Selections from Jane Austen’s teenage writings
Austen, Jane. Northanger Abbey
Selections from Frances Burney’s Evelina

Method of Instruction: In-Person

Method of Evaluation:
10% In-class participation across the term
15% Mid-term test on October 2
20% Shorter comparative close reading essay, due October 17
5% In-class final essay planning activity on November 11
25% Final essay, due November 25
25% Final exam, date TBA (during the final exam period, December 5-18)

Does this course feature an assessed creative writing component? Yes
Creative writing options are available for the “Shorter comparative close reading essay” and the “Final essay” assignments.

Course Title: Spec. Top. Game Studies (Classic Games)

Course Code: ENG324H5S | Lecture T 3-5

Instructor: Chris Young

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

Group n/a

Course Title: The Victorian Novel

Course Code: ENG325H5S | Lecture T 3-5, R 3-4

Instructor: Chris Koenig-Woodyard

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

Group 4 Literature 1700-1900

Course Title: Premodern World Literatures 

Course Code: ENG326H5F | Lecture W 11-12, F 11-1

Instructor: Sarah Star

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

Group 3 Literature pre-1700

Detailed Description by Instructor: 

“The opposition of ‘the Islamic world’ and ‘Europe’ is a modern invention: it was not the way medieval people described themselves or the world they lived in.”
          - Suzanne Conklin Akbari, Norton Anthology of World Literature.

In this course we will analyze the often-overlooked cultural connections among pre-modern literatures from around the world, paying particular attention to the ways that texts written in various languages—Latin, Persian, Arabic, Hebrew, Ge’ez, Chinese, Japanese, Sanskrit, Italian, French—influence each other both explicitly and implicitly. Reading texts generically rather than chronologically or geographically, we will discover together how literatures belonging to the same genre (epic, frame tale, lyric poetry, narrative poetry, self-writing, and "the first novel") connect with each other across linguistic, cultural, and geographical borders. In doing so, we will collectively analyze and sometimes dismantle narratives of radical alterity among various literary languages. Students will come out of this course with valuable insight into the relationships among literary traditions, with a sophisticated understanding of pre-modern identity and diversity, and with an appreciation for the ways that traditions from the past continue to influence literary culture in the present.

Selected Major Readings:
The Tale of Princess Fatima, Warrior Woman
Dante, Inferno
The Thousand and One Nights

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied:
Xuanzang, The Great Tang Dynasty Record of the Western Regions
Ennin, The Record of a Pilgrimage to China in Search of the Law
Marco Polo, The Diversity of the World

Method of Instruction:
Lecture and Discussion

Method of Evaluation:

Does this course feature an assessed creative writing component? Yes
*There is a creative writing option for one assignment 

Course Title: Writing for Games and Narrative Design

Course Code: ENG328H5F | Lecture M 3-5, W 3-4

Instructor:  Bruno R. Véras

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

Group n/a
 

Course Title: Restoration and 18th Century Literature

Course Code: ENG332H5S | Lecture T 9-11, R 10-11

Instructor: TBD

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

Group 4 Literature 1700-1900

Course Title: Spy Fiction

Course Code: ENG344H5S | Lecture T6-9

Instructor: Richard Greene

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

Group n/a

Detailed Description by Instructor: This course will look at the sophisticated and popular genre of spy fiction as it was practiced in the past seventy years by Graham Greene, John le Carré (pseudonym of David Cornwell), and Viet Thanh Nguyen. All of the stories we will be studying are deeply connected to the history of the Cold War, during which the world hung precariously on the verge of nuclear annihilation, a time when information about the enemy's technical capabilities or order of battle could make the difference between life and death for millions. Both East and West devoted an enormous effort to obtaining that information. Intelligence agents sought to encourage well-placed persons on the other side to betray their country and were often enough guilty of their own betrayals. The course will spend a great deal of time considering the ideological confrontation between capitalism and communism, the aftermath of colonialism, the ethics of disguise and deep cover, and the suppression or fracturing of personal identity.

Selected Major Readings:
Graham Greene, The Quiet American (1955).
Graham Greene, Our Man in Havana (1958).
Graham Greene, The Human Factor (1978).
John le Carré, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963).
John le Carré, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1974).
Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer (2015).

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied:
Graham Greene, The Quiet American (1955).
Graham Greene, Our Man in Havana (1958).
Graham Greene, The Human Factor (1978).

Method of Instruction:
Seminar and discussion.

Method of Evaluation:
Three short essays worth 25% each and six reading quizzes worth a total of 25%.

Does this course feature an assessed creative writing component? Yes

Course Title: Contemporary Poetry ("Ecopoetry")

Course Code: ENG349H5F | Lecture T 3-6

Instructor: Avery Slater

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

Group n/a

Course Title: Toni Morrison: Texts and Contexts

Course Code: ENG351H5F | Lecture T 9-11, R 10-11

Instructor: Anna Thomas

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

Group 6 American Literature

Course Title: Canadian Drama

Course Code: ENG352H5S | Lecture MWF 10-11

Instructor: Daniela Janes

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

Group 5 Canadian Literature

Detailed Description by Instructor: Students in this course will read a selection of Canadian drama across its history, paying attention to the material conditions of production as well as formal developments and stylistic innovations. Through our reading of an eclectic group of texts—including radio plays, closet dramas, musicals, comedies, dramas, tragedies, and tragicomedies—we will build our understanding of the shape and development of Canadian theatre. This course will reinforce disciplinary skills in close reading and literary analysis, and hone critical reading and writing skills.

Selected Major Readings: Our main text is Jerry Wasserman’s Modern Canadian Plays. You will also need to purchase two additional texts: Len Peterson’s Burlap Bags and Andrea Scott’s Controlled Damage.

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied: Curzon, Denison, Voaden

Method of Instruction: Lecture, discussion, in-class writing, and small group activities

Method of Evaluation: In-class activities, two tests, and a major project.

Does your course feature an assessed creative writing component? No

Course Title: Caribbean Literature

Course Code: ENG356H5S | Lecture T 11-1, R 12-1

Instructor: Anna Thomas

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

Group 2 Race, Ethnicity, Diaspora, Indigeneity

Course Title: Early American Literature

Course Code: ENG360H5F | Lecture T 12-1, R 11-1

Instructor: Melissa Gniadek

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

Group 6 American Literature

Detailed Description by Instructor: 
When you think of early seventeenth-century literature you might first turn to England, imagining Shakespeare, who died in 1616, or perhaps John Donne, who died in 1631. You might not think about the Americas, but these same decades saw increasing European contact with lands across the Atlantic and various forms of textual, visual, and cultural engagements with these spaces. For example, the Jamestown settlement was established in the English colony of Virginia in 1607. Governor John Winthrop famously brought a group of Puritans to Massachusetts Bay in 1630. Such events produced various types of writing that established the early American literary traditions that we will explore in this course, even as we will emphasize Indigenous traditions that existed in the Americas before European “contact” and that continue through the present.

In Early American Literature we will approach the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries with a focus on the geographies that would become the United States, though we will also acknowledge the contingency of borders and boundaries in this pre-national period of settler colonial violence. We will consider literature emerging from a range of contexts, from journeys of exploration to the religious world of New England Puritans. We will read a variety of genres, including captivity narratives, poetry, autobiography, journals, sermons, and a novel. We will work to develop a sense of some of the earliest literatures emerging from what is now the U.S. And we will think about how many of these narratives are still with us, in different ways, today.

Selected Major Readings:

Anne Bradstreet, poems
Mary Rowlandson, A Narrative of the Captivity and Restauration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson 
Unca Eliza Winkfield (pseudonym), The Female American 
Phillis Wheatley, poems

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied:
Indigenous oral traditions; Selections from Cabeza de Vaca’s Relación; John Smith, from The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles

Method of Instruction: Lecture and discussion

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

Creative writing component: No

Course Title: Creative Writing: Poetry 

Course Code: ENG373H5F LEC0101 | Lecture M 6-8

Instructor: Andrea Thompson

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

Group n/a

Detailed Description by Instructor: 
In this course you will explore the art of poetry and work on your writing through experimentation with a wide variety of poetic forms, styles and approaches. You will also have the opportunity to take a deep dive into the writing of selected contemporary poets.

This course will take place in person, with the use of Quercus required to submit and share your work. Each class will consist of lecture, discussion and workshopping. With a focus on process as well as product, this course will help you learn how to recognize and discuss poetic techniques while learning how to create powerful, beautiful, well crafted poetry.

Learning Outcomes
The goal of this course is to not only advance your writing while exploring a variety of contemporary poetic forms, but to practice all elements required for the development of a successful poetry practice. These elements include:

· Learning to give insightful, constructive feedback that compassionately encourages others towards excellence.
· Learning how to use the feedback of others to edit and refine your own work.
· Learning how to master the art of sharing your poetry before a live audience.
· Learning how to order and shape a poetry collection intended for professional publication.

Selected Major Readings:
There will be required readings and online viewing samples assigned each week that will be the basis for your weekly assignments. All required readings, video samples and links will be available via Quercus. The books we will exploring this term are:

· Bird By Bird, Anne Lamont (Anchor ‘Books, 2019)

· Crafting Poems: A Guide to Creative Writing, Ethel Rackin (Broadview Press, 2024)

· Gold, George Elliott Clarke (Gaspereau Press)

· Great Silent Ballad, A.F. Moritz (House of Anansi, 2024)

· A Selected History of Soul Speak, Andrea Thompson (Frontenac House, 2022)

· In The Palm Of Your Hand: A Poet’s Portable Workshop, Steve Kowit (Down East Books, 1995) Ebook, second edition, 2017

· Float and Scurry, Heather Birrell (Anvil Press Publishers, 2019)

· Dream of No One But Myself, David Bradford (Brick Books, 2021)

· Impact Statement, Jody Chan (Brick Books, 2024)

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied:

· Bird By Bird, Anne Lamont (Anchor ‘Books, 2019)

· Crafting Poems: A Guide to Creative Writing, Ethel Rackin (Broadview Press, 2024)

· Gold, George Elliott Clarke (Gaspereau Press)

Method of Instruction:
Lecture / Workshop (in person)

Method of Evaluation:
Participation 15%
Assignments 10%
In-Class Presentation 20%
Peer Evaluation 15%
Final Portfolio 40%

Does this course feature an assessed creative writing component? Yes

Course Title: Creative Writing: Poetry [Spoken Word]

Course Code: ENG373H5F LEC0101 | Lecture F 1-3

Instructor: Andrea Thompson

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

Group n/a

Detailed Description by Instructor:
This course offers a critical study of spoken word poetry, with a focus on providing an opportunity to practice writing and performing in a workshop environment. Through a combination of assignments, readings, presentations, discussions and peer feedback, students are invited to develop their unique poetic voice and explore a variety of spoken word approaches and influences.

Learning Outcomes:
Completion of this course will leave students well-prepared oral presentations of all kinds. It will supply students with an understanding of the workshopping process, and how to give insightful, constructive feedback that encourages other students towards excellence. This course will also provide students with an appreciation of the place of spoken word orature within the greater realm of contemporary literature, as well as the cross-cultural roots of spoken word as vehicle for both creative artistry and social agency.

Course Materials:
There will be required readings and online viewing samples assigned each week that will be the basis for your assignments throughout the course.

All required texts and video links will be available via Quercus.
The books we will be exploring this term are:

· “Spoken Word: A Gesture Towards Possibility”, Andrea Thompson
Writing Creative Writing: Essays From the Field (Dundurn Press, 2018)
Ed. Rishma Dunlop, Daniel Scott Tysdal & Priscila Uppal

· Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott (Anchor Books, 1994)

· Wild Mind: Living the Writer’s Life, Natalie Goldberg Bantam Books, 1990)

· Spoken Word Poetry: A Definition And Examples (Video links included). https://poemanalysis.com/genre/spoken-word-poetry/ · Interpreting Figurative Language & Poetic Devices: https://www.albert.io/blog/interpreting-figurative-language-and-poetic-devices/

· Extended Metaphor: https://poemanalysis.com/literary-device/extended-metaphor/

· Take the Mic: The Art of Performance Poetry, Slam and Spoken Word

Marc Kelly Smith, (Sourcebooks, 2009)

· Indigenous Poetics in Canada, ed. Neal McLeod

(Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2014)

· Toni Morrison, 1993 Nobel Lecture. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1993/morrison/lecture/

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied:

· “Spoken Word: A Gesture Towards Possibility”, Andrea Thompson

Writing Creative Writing: Essays From the Field (Dundurn Press, 2018)

Ed. Rishma Dunlop, Daniel Scott Tysdal & Priscila Uppal

· Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott (Anchor Books, 1994)

· Wild Mind: Living the Writer’s Life, Natalie Goldberg Bantam Books, 1990)

Method of Instruction:

Lecture / Workshop (in person)

Method of Evaluation:
Participation 15%
Assignments 15%
Mid-Term Performance 20%
Peer Evaluation 20%
Final Performance 30%

Does this course feature an assessed creative writing component? Yes

Course Title: Creative Writing: Prose

Course Code: ENG374H5S LEC0101 | Lecture W 3-5

Instructor: TBD

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

Group n/a

Course Title: Creative Writing: Prose

Course Code: ENG374H5S LEC0102 | Lecture W 6-8 (Online)

Instructor: TBD

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

Group n/a

Course Title: Creative Writing: Nonfiction

Course Code: ENG376H5S LEC0101 | F 11-1 (Online)

Instructor: TBD

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

Group n/a

Course Title: Special Topic in Writing for Performance (TBA)

Course Code: ENG378H5S LEC0101 | M 3-5

Instructor: TBD

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

Group n/a

Course Title: British Romanticism and Its Contexts

Course Code: ENG383H5F | Lecture R 6-9

Instructor: WIlliam Layng

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

Group 4 Literature 1700-1900

Detailed Description by Instructor: This course analyzes the major authors, genres, and texts of British Literature from the 1780s to the 183 0s, broadly acknowledged as the Romantic period. Such authors include Percy Bysse Shelley, Robert Wedderburn, Lord Byron, John Keats, Mary Shelley, Jane Austen, Samuel Coleridge, William Blake, William Wordsworth, and Olaudah Equiano. Of particular importance to this course is the analysis of how literature of this period both reacted to, and shaped, the ideological, political, infrastructural, and social changes effected in British history. Among these changes are revolutions in America, France, and Haiti, the industrial revolution, the scientific revolution, increasing demand to abolish the slave trade, a growing belief in human rights and the importance of individual lives, and prioritizing the spontaneity and depth of feelings over an Enlightenment tradition of valuing reason and logic. 

Selected Major Readings:

Essay and Poetry selections from "The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Romantic Period, Vol. D" 
Jane Austen - "Northanger Abbey" 
Mary Shelley- "Frankenstein" 

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied:

Mary Wollstonecraft - "A Vindication of the Rights of Men" 
Edmund Burke - "Reflections on the Revolution in France" 
William Blake - "Songs of Innocence and Experience" 

Method of Instruction: Mix of lectures and guided discussions by the instructor aimed at developing attention to poetic forms and techniques

Method of Evaluation: Short writing response Essay 

Does this course feature an assessed creative writing component? No

Course Title: Spaces of Fiction

Course Code: ENG388HF | Lecture T 11-1, R 11-12

Instructor: Stanka Radovic

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

Group n/a

Course Title: Canadian Fiction

Course Code: ENG392HF | Lecture T 1-3, R 2-3

Instructor: Colin Hill

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

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 novelists 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 Indigenous novel in Canada, the artist figure, gender and sexuality, Canadian postmodernism and postcolonialism, multiculturalism, racism and antiracism, psychological and spiritual self-discovery, various “schools” of Canadian literary theory, and personal, social, cultural, and national identities. 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. Margaret Atwood, Surfacing
3. Thomas King, Green Grass, Running Water
4. André Alexis, Days by Moonlight
5. Souvankham Thammavongsa, How to Pronounce Knife

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied:

Ross, Atwood, King

Method of Instruction: Lecture / discussion

Method of Evaluation:

1. Participation 10%
2. Term Paper 35%
3. Mid-term Test 25%
4. Final exam 30%

Course Title: Literary Theory Now

Course Code: ENG396HS | Lecture R 9-12

Instructor: Avery Slater

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

Group 1 Literary Theory/Methods

Fourth-Year Courses

Fall Term

• ENG410H5F Seminar: Critical Game Studies: Topic TBA
• ENG472H5F Seminar: Modern/Cont.: "Canadian Comics & The Second World War"
• ENG489H5Y Creative Writing Workshop

Winter Term

• ENG460H5S Sem: Literature Pre-1700: "Medieval Race-Thinking"
• ENG463H5S Seminar: Literature 1700-1900: "Reading Frankenstein's Reading"

Course Title: Seminar: Critical Game Studies: Topic TBA

Course Code: ENG410H5F | Lecture R 1-3

Instructor: Leticia Ridley

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

Group n/a

Detailed Description by Instructor: THE GAMES WE PLAY ON TV: REALITY TV, SOCIETY, AND POWER will examine social strategy-based reality television in a broad yet sophisticated manner. We will explore the genre’s formal traits and its increasingly dominant position as a cultural and industrial force. Our focus will be on how this gaming and reality television meet to communicate values and are sites of dynamic negotiations of meaning. We will take this genre of gaming seriously, asking what messages about race, class, gender, disability, sexuality these shows promote and grapple with? What are the social impacts of these shows? How do they reflect social, cultural, and political issues of the moment? Over the semester, we will use cultural studies, performance studies, and critical gaming studies to analyze a wide range of programs categorized as social strategy games, such as Survivor, Big Brother, Traitors, and the Circle. This course will primarily be discussion and participation-based.

Selected Major Readings: TBD

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied: TBD

Method of Instruction: Discussion and Lecture

Method of Evaluation: Quizzes, Participation, Essay, Final Creative Project

Does your course feature an assessed creative writing component? No

Course Title: Sem: Literature Pre-1700: "Medieval Race-Thinking"

Course Code: ENG460H5S | Lecture W 1-3

Instructor: Sarah Star 

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

Group 3 Literature pre-1700

Course Title: Sem: Literature 1700-1900: "Women, Comedy, Theatre: 1660-1800"

Course Code: ENG463H5S | Lecture F 2-4

Instructor:  Terry Robinson

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

Group 4 Literature 1700-1900

Detailed Description by Instructor: This course engages in a focused exploration of comedic dramas authored by women ca. 1660-1790. We’ll read examples of comedy, closet drama, satire, and farce by top Restoration and eighteenth-century playwrights such as Aphra Behn, Margaret Cavendish, Susannah Centlivre, Frances Burney, Hannah Cowley, and Elizabeth Inchbald. In addition to considering eighteenth-century and feminist comedic theory, we’ll think through differences between comedies written for the stage and those written for the page; explore how authors address matters cultural and sexual; learn about the professionalization of the woman writer in the eighteenth century; and analyze scholarly criticism in relation to the comedies studied. Subjects to be addressed include the articulation of desire; the construction and performance of gender; the navigation of heteropatriarchal society through systems of courtship and marriage; socio-political engagement; genre and generic experimentation, and more.

Perquisites/ Course Materials: 

5.0 credits in ENG and 4.0 additional credits

Selected Major Readings: Dramas may include the following:
Aphra Behn, The Rover; or, The Banished Cavaliers (1677)
Margaret Cavendish, The Convent of Pleasure (1688)
Susanna Centlivre, The Busy Body (1709)
Frances Burney, The Witlings (comp. 1778-1779)

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied:
See above.

Method of Instruction:
Lecture / In-Class Discussion

Method of Evaluation:
Reading and Participation Required. Other assessments TBD.

Does this course feature an assessed creative writing component? Yes

Course Title: Sem: Modern and Contemporary Lit: "Brontë and Ishiguro" 

Course Code: ENG472H5F| Lecture M 11-1

Instructor:  Danny Wright

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

Group n/a

Detailed Description by Instructor: In a 2015 interview, the Nobel-prize-winning novelist Kazuo Ishiguro named Charlotte Brontë as his favourite novelist of all time, even going as far as to say “I owe my career, and a lot else besides, to Jane Eyre and Villette,” Brontë’s two best-known masterpieces.

In this seminar we will put these two novelists into conversation across the centuries, from Brontë’s novels of the 1840’s and 1850’s to Ishiguro’s novel, which span 1989 to the present. We’ll consider what Ishiguro might have meant when he named Brontë as his most important influence, and how tracing this kind of influence can help us understand how novels work. What features and techniques of the novel persist across time, transmitted from Brontë as teacher to Ishiguro as student; and how does Ishiguro make his own use of that influence to pursue new and unique and modern experiments in fition, especially with his interest in genres such as dystopian fiction, science fiction, and historical fiction? What can we learn about the novel form by taking as a case study these two novelists and the relationship between them?

One special area of focus for our seminar will be first-person narration. Brontë and Ishiguro are known for their mastery of this narrative form, and it is one of the clearest aspects of Brontë’s influence. Ishiguro himself relates how Jane Eyre taught him “to write first-person narrators who hide their feelings from themselves but are transparent to other people.” We will ask, how do these two novelists make use of first-person narration to explore affect and emotion; the representation of consciousness and interiority in fiction; suspense, narrative twists, and the limitations of individual knowledge; the ethics of sincerity and authenticity; and embodiment, desire, and sexuality?

Selected Major Readings:
Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (1847)
Charlotte Brontë, Villette (1853)
Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day (1989)
Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go (2005)
Kazuo Ishiguro, Klara and the Sun (2021)

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied: See above.

Method of Instruction: Discussion-based seminar

Method of Evaluation: Writing assignments and active participation

Does your course feature an assessed creative writing component? No

Course Title: Creative Writing Workshop

Course Code: ENG489H5Y| Lecture R 1-3

Instructor:  Richard Greene

For the UTM calendar description of this course, click here. 

Group n/a

Detailed Description by Instructor: A workshop in writing fiction and poetry. Students will be expected to write poetry (in strict forms and free verse) and narrative prose. They will submit their work on a regular basis for group discussion. Admission to the course is limited. Students should submit a portfolio of their best creative writing (not academic essays) in advance of registration, and the professor will choose those most likely to benefit from the work-shop.

Selected Major Readings:
William Strunk and E.B White, The Elements of Style.
David Lodge, The Art of Fiction.

First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied:
William Strunk and E.B White, The Elements of Style.
David Lodge, The Art of Fiction.

Method of Instruction: 
Seminar and discussion

Method of Evaluation:
Tests and small assignments, 20%; journal, 20%; class participation, 10%; portfolio submitted at the end of the course, 50%.

Does this course feature an assessed creative writing component? Yes