300-Level English Courses

F=Fall term

W=Winter term

300 level English courses are open to all students who have completed 5 full credits (the equivalent of first year).

301B Literary Theory F TR 11:30 - 12:50 4206 Dr. M. Poetzsch

A comparative survey of the principles underlying today’s most prominent critical approaches to literary and cultural

studies. We explore such contested territories as historicisms, formalism, structuralism, psycho-analytical

interpretation, deconstruction, feminism and gender studies, post-coloniality, and popular literary culture.

Exclusion: EN291

Note: This course is required for Honours English majors and counts in Category 4 of the Honours program.

301C Literary Theory W TR 2:30 - 3:50 3945 Dr. M. Hron

This course aims to introduce students to key critical approaches in literary and cultural studies, and to apply theoretical terms and methodologies in practical ways. We will therefore explore a varied array of theoretical

frameworks (e.g., structuralism, psychoanalysis, postcolonialism) and seminal theorists (e.g., Freud, Marx, Derrida),

and apply them to the study of fairy tales. To prepare for this course, students are encouraged to read as many fairy

tales/rewritings as possible (e.g., Zipes’ Spells of Enchantment) and to browse through some literary theory readers

(e.g., Richter’s Critical Tradition).

Exclusion: EN291

Note: This course is required for Honours English majors and counts in Category 4 of the Honours program.

309m Post-9/11 American Fiction F M 7:00 - 9:50 3880 Sylvia Terzian

Using a multimedia approach that incorporates film, graphic novels, and photography, this survey of post-9/11

American fiction will investigate how 9/11 has changed socio- and geopolitical relations in American culture. In

conjunction with critical scholarship on gender (feminist/masculinities studies), race, class, trauma, existential

psychology, and discourse analysis, this course will examine novels such as Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly

Close, DeLillo’s Falling Man, and Messud’s The Emperor’s Children, and will foster the critical reading skills

needed to identify how this fiction both perpetuates and subverts discourses circulating in post-9/11 American culture.

Note: This course counts in Category 3 of the Honours and Combined Honours programs.

309N Working Canadian Writer in the 21st Century W TR5:30-6:50

310 The Politics of Transgression and Desire F MWF 8:30 - 9:20 3973 Michele Kramer

An examination of literary representations of physical, economic, social, and political instabilities and upheavals.

The course will consider ways in which transgressive acts against authority of the law serve to interrogate the

boundaries between self and other, between a culture’s desires and fears.

322 Origins of Modern Drama W MWF 10:30 - 11:20 3145 Andrew Bretz

Plays by selected 19 - and early 20 -century dramatists. Special emphasis will th th be placed on Ibsen and Strindberg.

324 Canadian Women’s Writing F MW 4:00 - 5:20 2895 Michele Kramer

Recent prose, poetry, drama and fiction-theory contributions to literature in Canada by women from various

communities and perspectives. Questions of gender and sexuality, ethnicity, race and class considered alongside

contemporary developments in literary theory and practice.

325 Feminist Theory and Cultural Practice: Fiction by Minority Women

W MW 4:00 - 5:20 3595 Michele Kramer

A study of fiction by 20th-century women writers of racial minorities in America and Canada in light of current

feminist theory.

326 Contemporary Drama F MWF 1:30 - 2:20 3881 Dr. Bruce Wyse

An examination of developments in realism, expressionism, and absurdist theatre in the 20th century.

330 Human Rights in Contemporary Cultural Forms F TR 5:30 - 6:50 3882 Dr. M. Hron

This course offers a cross-cultural and interdisciplinary examination of current human rights discourse through a

variety of cultural forms (eg. literature, film, photos, Webmedia, music, legal documents, etc). We may explore such

human rights issues as civil & political rights (imprisonment, torture, censorship), economic social & cultural rights

(women's, children's, refugee rights, modern slavery, environmental rights), genocide and conflict resolution.

Humanitarianism and activism will be of particular concern. Summer Reading Suggestions: Loeb's The Impossible

Will Take a While, Ben Jelloun's Blinding Absence of Light, Ishmael Beah’s A Long Way Gone, Hatzfeld's Machete

Season.

344 18th-Century Fiction W TR 10:00 - 11:20 2673

A study of the rise of the novel from its beginning as “true history,” factual fiction, travel narrative, and romance to

the development of genres such as memoirs, the comic, the picaresque, the sentimental, and the gothic. This course

explores the connections between cultural history and literature, between Enlightenment thinking and subjectivity,

and between sensibility, sentiment, and representation. Authors to be studied may include Samuel Johnson, Jane

Austen, Laurence Sterne, Ann Radcliffe, Samuel Richardson, Horace Walpole, Frances Burney, and Henry Fielding.

345 British Novel in the 19th Century F TR 1:00 - 2:20 2643 Ada Sharpe

A critical and cultural survey of the flourishing of the novel as a literary form during the Romantic and Victorian

periods. We will study five representative works: Maria Edgeworth’s Belinda, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice,

Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist, Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Our course will

pursue three interconnected lines of focus in reading the nineteenth-century novel: narratives of individual

development (growing up, becoming mature, learning from one’s errors); the courtship or romance plot (learning

about love, falling in love, feeling desire); and changes and upheavals in Britain’s socioeconomic landscape in

relation to the self (industrialization, urban growth, imperialism). Please read at least two of the novels over the

summer.

346 The Novel After 1900 W M 7:00 - 9:50 997

Development of the novel since 1900 with emphasis on social context and on developments in theme and technique.

390 Chaucer I: The Canterbury Tales W TR 4:00 - 5:20 2251Dr. Renee Ward

A study of selected comic and romance episodes from The Canterbury Tales, typically including The General

Prologue, The Knight’s Tale, The Miller’s Tale, The Reeve’s Tale, The Wife of Bath’s Tale, and other related tales.

392 Writers of the Middle Ages W TR 1:00 - 2:20 3596 Dr. R. Waugh

This course examines key non-Chaucerian literary compositions of the Middle Ages. We shall examine influential

works such as the spectacular medieval mystery plays, the often absurdly comic medieval lyrics, the profoundly

moving romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the powerful religious writings of Langland and Margery Kempe,

and the deeply provocative romances of Sir Thomas Malory and other writers, both male and female.

393 Literature of the 16 Century F th TR 11:30 - 12:50 2897 Dr. V. Comensoli

A study of selected poetry, drama, and prose from the 16th century. The major point of inquiry involves the texts’

intersections with cultural representations of the ideal society, gender relations, and subjectivity. Works to be studied

include Thomas More’s Utopia, selections from Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, Christopher Marlowe’s

Doctor Faustus; and poetry by Shakespeare and by English and continental women writers.

394 Studies in the 17th-Century: Drama W TR 2:30 - 3:50 3597 Dr. A. Russell

The period from the1580s until 1642, when Parliament ordered theatres to close, was a time of great energy and

diversity in English commercial theatre. Shakespeare is now the best-known playwright of the time, but he was

influenced by, and an influence upon, many other dynamic and popular writers. The comedies and tragedies we will

read explore issues such as gender roles and relations, social inclusion and/or isolation, and power in the family and

the state. As we consider these thematic issues, we will also analyze how language, dramatic techniques, and

performance practices produced particular intellectual, emotional, theatrical, and political effects. Works to be

studied include plays by Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Kyd, Thomas Middleton, Thomas Dekker, John Webster,

and John Ford.

395 17th-Century Literature F TR 2:30 -3:50 3874 Dr. A. Russell

The course focuses on seventeenth-century literary texts, from a variety of genres, written shortly before, during, and

after the English Civil Wars between King and Parliament. Issues debated during the period include the origins of

political power; the place of religion in society; gender, class and race; colonization; and the interrelations of love,

sex, and desire. Many of the texts we will read illuminate or reflect upon this period of great political and social

instability. Texts include works by John Donne, Ben Jonson, George Herbert, Andrew Marvell, Katherine Philips,

and Mary Wroth. We will conclude the course by reading John Milton’s epic, Paradise Lost (1666), which

addresses all of the themes outlined above.

397 Later Victorian Literature:Dissonance and Decadence W MWF 11:30 - 12:20 3598

Dr. Bruce Wyse

Critical study of change and resistance in later 19th-century English literature (1860-1900), with some emphasis on

writings involved in symptomatic critical and public controversies, from the so-called "fleshly school of poetry" (the

PreRaphaelites) to the notorious Decadent Nineties and the trial of Oscar Wilde. The exploration of other literary

cultures or communities might include the Aesthetic Movement, the pseudonymous "Michael Field" (a collaboration

of two women poets), the cult of sensation fiction, and the increasingly sharp tensions between writers and the

"Victorianism" of their public readership and reviewers. Authors often selected for study include Christina and Dante

Rossetti, George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans), Wilkie Collins, Gerard Manley Hopkins, "Michael Field" (Katherine

Bradley and Edith Cooper), Lionel Johnson, Oscar Wilde and Thomas Hardy.

398 Modernism to Postmodernism F MWF 12:30 - 1:20 3876 Dr. E. Jewinski

This course studies the shifts in aims, structures, and techniques that revolutionized literary writing in the Englishspeaking

world from roughly 1920 to 1980. Particular emphasis will be placed on tracing how and why the ideal of

the beautifully-crafted literary work was rejected and replaced by new forms of freedom and exploration.

399 Postmodernism and the Role of the Reader W MWF 12:30 - 1:20 3599

This course places emphasis on "contemporary writing," the writing of 1980 to today. Particular attention will be

given to the increasing emphasis on the "role of the reader" as an active participant in the experience of reading.