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Reading and Writing about Language and Literatures
ENGL 100
keyboard_arrow_downA writing-intensive introduction to language and literary studies through the exploration of texts in their critical and theoretical contexts. Fulfils the first-year component of the Faculty of Arts Writing and Research Requirement. Open only to students in the Faculty of Arts. Recommended for students intending to become English majors. Essays are required.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
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001 | 1 | Lecture | M, W, F | 9:00 - 10:00 | Mclachlan, Torin | Section DescriptionLiterary Criticism: A Sleepwalker’s GuideWhat is “literary criticism” and how is it related to political and social life? What do English professors do when they’re not teaching? How and why do we constantly invent new ways to talk about old books? This course offers students a chance to preview and practice the research and writing skills that go into upper-year and graduate-level studies in English literature, by studying one text over the entire semester: Djuna Barnes’ Nightwood. At the centre of the text is our guide and sleepwalker, Robin Vote, who carves a path of loss and independence through multiple lovers. Jeanette Winterson’s preface to the 2008 New Directions edition of Nightwood calls it “a bleak picture of love between women” (xi), though since being published in 1936, it has been read by successive generations of scholars as an example of many different kinds of writing: carnivalesque, gothic, psychoanalytic, metafictional, modernist, postmodernism, lesbian, posthuman. Surveying key trends in the scholarship on one novel will help us question the ways that literature maps onto life: What happens when a fake doctor, a trapeze artist, and a baron haunted by the past walk into a bar? Our semester-long study of Nightwood will foreground its many critical contexts and consider several key ideas about modernism and modernity along the way. The course is writing intensive, and the assignments – which include critical peer responses – will build step-by-step towards a required final essay. We will practice finding and analyzing secondary sources through the UBC Library and participate in structured in-class discussion often. Sleepwalkers are, of course, welcome. Required Text: Barnes, Djuna. Nightwood. New Directions, 2008. | |||
002 | 1 | Lecture | M, W, F | 10:00 - 11:00 | Giffen, Sheila | Section DescriptionBetween You and I: Exploring Selfhood in Contemporary U.S. LiteratureWhat makes ‘you’ you? How does the ‘I’ in speech and writing relate to the living person? How do markers of identity and belonging come alive in the space between ‘you’ and ‘I’? This course asks how poets and fiction writers experiment with language to explore selfhood and relationality. Far from the unique expression of individuality and interiority, writers are preoccupied with how our sense of self is shaped by politics, conceptions of nationality and citizenship, and the imprint of mass media. In this course, we will explore these topics through contemporary American writing that comments on life under late-stage global capitalism. Guided by close readings of texts by Patricia Lockwood, Claudia Rankine, and Ling Ma, we will consider how writing can provide solace and sublimity faced with compounding crises of familial loss, state violence, and pandemic apocalypse. These authors variously track the effect of globalization, racial capitalism, and state governance on our social, psychic, and political lives. They do so by creatively deploying different literary genres and forms—from the confessional lyric, to the social media prose poem, to the speculative fiction novel. This course will also introduce students to the basics of academic research and writing, with an emphasis on how to make arguments about literature. With reference to secondary readings on our three main authors, we will take up different stylistic approaches to writing about poetry and prose, including: book review essays, academic literary criticism, and collaborative research clusters. Together, we will engage in conversations about texts in their social and political contexts and ask what writing can do –to express relations of self and other, to build critical consciousness, and to make a world that is liveable. Required Texts: Patricia Lockwood, No One is Talking About This (2021), Claudia Rankine, Citizen (2014), Ling Ma, Severance (2018)
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003 | 1 | Lecture | M, W, F | 11:00 - 12:00 | Baxter, Gisele Marie | Section DescriptionHaunted Houses
“What is a ghost? A tragedy condemned to repeat itself time and again? An instant of pain, perhaps. Something dead which still seems to be alive. An emotion suspended in time. Like a blurred photograph. Like an insect trapped in amber.” – The Devil’s Backbone (dir. Guillermo Del Toro) Where is the fascination, even when the deepest mysteries of the universe are being scientifically unlocked, in stories of haunted houses? What accounts for the lure, and even the enjoyment, of tales of terror and horror, even in the 21st century? This course examines the Gothic influence in texts where collisions of past and present, and implications of the uncanny, allow fascinating investigations of social codes and their transgression. Core texts include Henry James, The Turn of the Screw; Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House; Sarah Waters, The Little Stranger; Helen Oyeyemi, White is for Witching; and The Others (dir. Alejandro Amenábar), as well as Gardner and Diaz, Reading and Writing About Literature (5th edition). Through readings in current criticism and theory, we will develop strategies for textual analysis in literary and cultural studies. We will also consider the difficulty, if not impossibility, of reaching a “fixed” or consensus reading of any text. Evaluation will be based on a midterm essay, a term paper requiring secondary academic research, a final examination, and participation in discussion. Keep checking my blog (https://blogs.ubc.ca/drgmbaxter/) for updates concerning texts and requirements. | |||
004 | 1 | Lecture | M, W, F | 12:00 - 13:00 | Sharpe, Jillian | Section DescriptionINSTRUCTOR: SHARPE, JAE Focused on literary texts in their critical and theoretical contexts, ENGL 100 is a course in academic writing that fulfills the first-year component of the Faculty of Arts Writing Requirement. This course offers an introduction to literary studies and the disciplines of academic reading and writing. In additional to the assigned texts, we will be reading essays and scholarly articles in order to introduce students to different critical approaches. This section’s theme is about American literature of the late 20th century (from approximately 1950 to 2001), and we will consider how various texts attempted to grapple with such historical events as the aftermath of World War II, the Civil Rights movement, the Cold War, and the development of nuclear weapons. Texts are likely to include Joan Didion’s Play It As It Lays, Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son,Sam Shepard’s Buried Child, and selections from Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Franz Wright’s Ill Lit, and Raymond Carver’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.
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005 | 1 | Lecture | M, W, F | 13:00 - 14:00 | Zeitlin, Michael | Section DescriptionThis course offers a writing-intensive introduction to the disciplines of literary studies through the exploration of texts in their critical and theoretical contexts. The course fulfils the first-year component of the Faculty of Arts Writing and Research Requirement and is open only to students in the Faculty of Arts. The course is recommended for students intending to become English majors. Essays are required.
Primary texts will include the following:
In our writing assignments (short essays, a final exam) and classroom discussions we will practice the art of interpretation and close reading. | |||
006 | 1 | Lecture | M, W, F | 14:00 - 15:00 | Mccormack, Brendan | Section DescriptionStorying Conflict: Narrative in Canadian Literary ContextsAccording to narratologist H. Porter Abbott, “the representation of conflict in narrative provides a way for a culture to talk to itself about, and possibly resolve, conflicts that threaten to fracture it (or at least make living difficult).” In an increasingly polarized, fractured, and wounded world beset by crises both global and local, Canada remains, as it has always been, a site of struggle and a space of multiple conflicts. In this section, we will explore contemporary Canadian and Indigenous literatures in multiple genres (short stories, poetry, a novel, and life writing) that share an interest in turning to literature and storytelling as creative spaces to ask the hard questions and explore conflicts. Some of these texts take on challenges that are public and political: pandemic, climate change, medical ethics, (neo)colonialism, racism, and inequity, among multiple other concerns and injustices. Others explore the intimacies of private crises over relationships, identity, responsibilities, family, belonging, and community. All, in fact, do both. Approaching literature as an art where private life and public history merge, we will turn to a variety of Canadian texts to investigate how conflict—whether personal, communal, national, and/or global in scale— structures narrative. How and why do writers narrate conflict? What does literature offer to the difficult conversations prompted by conflict and crisis? How do different forms and genres of writing function to engage readers in these conversations? We’ll take up these and other questions prompted by narratives that invite us to consider the different ways literature engages dilemmas, embraces uncertainty, opens debate, entertains ambiguity, asks “what if?”, and locates hope. Want to get reading this summer? Start with Cherie Dimaline’s The Marrow Thieves. N.B.: The texts we will read emerge from Canadian contexts and narrate lived and imagined experiences that ask us to critically consider, among other things, the politics of history, identity, gender, sexuality, colonialism, race, diaspora, multiculturalism, belonging, nationhood, land, Indigeneity, and ecology. Please be aware that some readings openly address material from these contexts that can be challenging, including racial, colonial, and gendered violence.
About ENGL100 and Course Objectives ENGL 100 is a writing-intensive introduction to the disciplines of literary studies through the exploration of texts in their critical and theoretical contexts, and is recommended for students intending to become English majors. In lectures, workshops, and group activities with peers, we will work on developing the skills needed to think critically, read inquisitively, and write persuasively about literary texts. You will learn and practice methods of textual analysis, research, and essay composition. Special focus will be placed on learning the foundations of narrative theory and cultivating the skills of close reading, with particular attention to the relationship between form and content in literary texts. By the end of the course, you will (a) be familiar with a range of narrative forms and literary genres used by contemporary authors in Canada; (b) understand some of the cultural, political, historical, and theoretical contexts that inform these literatures and their interpretation; (c) appreciate the ways form and style shape content to produce meaning in literary texts; (d) understand how to find, evaluate, and use research in literary criticism; and (e) have facility with academic essay-writing in the English discipline. | |||
007 | 1 | Lecture | T, Th | 9:30 - 11:00 | Fox, Lorcan Francis | Section DescriptionIn this section of English 227 we will study an assortment of short stories by authors of various nationalities and historical eras. After briefly exploring reasons for the emergence of the modern short story we will proceed chronologically by examining short fiction written over the span of roughly a century, from the late nineteenth to the early twenty-first centuries. Apart from identifying each story’s literary elements, we will note how it may reflect one or more literary movements: for instance, realism. How to define the term “short story” is a question that will almost certainly arise from our close study of so broad a range of short fiction. The short stories we study in the course will be selected from the following list: Kate Chopin, “The Story of an Hour”; Guy de Maupassant, “The False Gems”; Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper”; James Joyce, “The Dead”; Franz Kafka, “Metamorphosis”; Katherine Mansfield, “The Garden Party”; Ernest Hemingway, “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”; Chinua Achebe, “Dead Men’s Path”; Alice Munro, “Friend of My Youth”; Alistair MacLeod, “As Birds Bring Forth the Sun”; Raymond Carver, “Cathedral”; Margaret Atwood, “Happy Endings”; Thomas King, “A Short History of Indians in Canada”; Kazuo Ishiguro, “A Family Supper”; Jhumpa Lahiri, “Interpreter of Maladies”; Hassan Blasim, “The Nightmare of Carlos Fuentes”; Madeleine Thien, “Simple Recipes” Text: The Broadview Introduction to Literature: Short Fiction, 2nd ed. (Broadview) Course requirements: two quizzes, each worth 20%; research essay (1500 words), 30%; final exam, 30% | |||
008 | 1 | Lecture | T, Th | 11:00 - 12:30 | Culbert, John | ||||
009 | 1 | Lecture | T, Th | 12:30 - 14:00 | Sheppard, Rebecca | ||||
010 | 1 | Lecture | T, Th | 14:00 - 15:30 | Jackson, Sarah Nelle | Section DescriptionThe Ends of the Earth: Imagining Terrestrial FuturesThe purpose of this course is to explore and engage with contemporary environmental concerns by asking critical questions about the relationship between humans and the planet we live on. These questions include: Besides the contemporary economic view of land as property or natural resource, how have humans imagined our relationship to our environment? What are the boundaries between humans and earth/Earth? Why do some texts use environmental imagery as foreboding and apocalyptic, while others use it to figure utopian, post-apocalyptic resurgence? How does our language about environment — “the natural world,” for example — shape how we perceive it? Taking literary texts in their critical and theoretical contexts, this section will study representations of the relationship between humans and Earth, with special attention to speculative fiction. We will analyze, engage with, and respond to a variety of texts in a variety of media, including a long poem (Robert Kroetsch’s Seed Catalogue), a selection of short comics (from Elizabeth LaPensée and Michael Sheyahshe’s Moonshot: The Indigenous Comics Collection, Vol. 3), a novel (Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein), and a video game (Four Quarters’ Loop Hero). We will also read complementary critical and creative pieces. As we engage with these texts, and with other scholars’ responses to them, students will develop strategies for writing critical, specific, and significant literary analysis. | |||
011 | 1 | Lecture | T, Th | 15:30 - 17:00 | Al-kassim, Dina | ||||
012 | 2 | Lecture | M, W, F | 9:00 - 10:00 | Fox, Lorcan Francis | Section DescriptionFocused around literary texts in their critical and theoretical contexts, ENGL 100 is a course in academic writing that fulfils the first-year component of the Faculty of Arts Writing Requirement. In this section of English 100 we will study a selection of poetry from the Renaissance up to the present (see the provisional list below). Since one purpose of the course is to introduce students to literature’s various critical approaches, we will also examine scholarly articles (available online) on some of the assigned poetry. In both their proposal for the research essay and the essay itself, students will be expected not only to offer their own interpretations of a poem not discussed in class, but also to cite, demonstrate their familiarity with, and above all respond to a minimum number of secondary sources. Ideally, then, this course will teach students the skills they need to write research essays in upper-level English courses. Course requirements: two in-class essays (each worth 15%), proposal for research essay (15%), research essay (25%), final exam (30%) Texts: The Broadview Introduction to Literature: Poetry, 2nd edition (Broadview); Reading and Writing about Literature: A Portable Guide, 5th edition (Bedford/St. Martin’s) A provisional list of poems: Shakespeare, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”; John Donne, “The Flea”; William Blake, “The Chimney Sweeper”; Christina Rossetti, “Goblin Market”; W.B. Yeats, “The Second Coming”; Ezra Pound, “The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter”; T.S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”; W.H. Auden, “Musée des Beaux Arts”; Adrienne Rich, “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers”; Margaret Atwood, “Death of a Young Son by Drowning”; Jackie Kay, “In My Country” | |||
013 | 2 | Lecture | M, W, F | 10:00 - 11:00 | Culbert, John | ||||
014 | 2 | Lecture | M, W, F | 11:00 - 12:00 | Partridge, Stephen | Section DescriptionAmerican Literature of the 1950sThis course will introduce various ways of analyzing literary works of several kinds and offer practice in writing essays that articulate such analysis. By focusing on a particular place and period, America in the “long 1950s” (up to about 1963), for the term, we will develop familiarity with the historical and cultural contexts that inform the works we are reading. The goal of this approach is to enable us to learn more effectively about formal and theoretical approaches to literature, which can be employed in subsequent courses with other historical frames. Recurrent themes in the works we consider will include race relations and Civil Rights; the status of women; same-sex desire; relations between literature and music and the visual arts; changes in technology and material culture. We will read poetry by Adrienne Rich, Sylvia Plath, Gwendolyn Brooks, Frank O’Hara, Robert Hayden, and others; fiction by James Baldwin, Flannery O’Connor, John Cheever, and others; and the drama of Tennessee Williams. Despite the stereotypes about “Fifties America,” this was a period of great cultural diversity, innovation, and accomplishment. Assignments will include essays and a final exam, along with shorter exercises in observation and brainstorming.
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015 | 2 | Lecture | M, W, F | 12:00 - 13:00 | Scholes, Judith | Section DescriptionDear ReaderMany works of literature ask something of their readers; the texts we are studying this term all ask their readers to see differently. They alert us to things we have, perhaps, never seen, provoking recognition, understanding, and even empathy. In our reading and writing this term we will ask: how might literature affect readers? How do literary texts encourage readers to think and feel? How do they shift our perspective, decenter us, or move us into new relation with ourselves and others? Reading across genre (poetry, fiction, nonfiction) and time (1860-2018), we will focus our analysis on the following works: selected poems by Emily Dickinson; Harriet Jacobs’ slave narrative, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl; A. S. Byatt’s novel Possession; and Terrance Hayes’ collection of sonnets, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin. We will deepen our understanding of these texts and their contexts with scholarly articles that explore the historical production and circulation of texts, literature’s role in the creation of empathy, and the affective dimensions of the reading experience. Over the term, students will be able to develop their own conclusions about literary address and the role readers play in the construction of literature, while developing their skills as academic writers. | |||
016 | 2 | Lecture | M, W, F | 13:00 - 14:00 | Gooding, Richard | ||||
018 | 2 | Lecture | M, W, F | 14:00 - 15:00 | Smilges, Johnathan Logan | ||||
019 | 2 | Lecture | T, Th | 9:30 - 11:00 | Bain, Kimberly | ||||
01W | 1 | Waiting List | M, W, F | 9:00 - 10:00 | |||||
020 | 2 | Lecture | T, Th | 11:00 - 12:30 | Deer, Glenn | Section DescriptionStorying the Social Self: Life Narratives of Artists and Their Communities
What role does storytelling play in the development of the private and public self? We all share stories or even imagine ourselves as the audience for our internal meditations. We share life experiences through conversations, email, social media, and other forms of communication. Many of us write about our experiences in diaries or journals to track our lives, record travel, work out problems, and find solutions. More importantly, we often find special connections and inspiring points of commonality by reading writers who disclose their inner lives through public platforms such as autobiography, literary essays, confessional poetry, Youtube vlogs, or music videos. In this section of English 100, we will read fiction, memoir, poetry, and a graphic novel that explore the development of a creative persona that often resists social restrictions. The narrators of these coming-of-age life narratives confront and challenge oppressive social judgements and restrictions based on class, gender, race, and normative embodiment. In addition to the primary readings, we will study theories of narrative and scholarly research on life narrative across genres. You will acquire research knowledge in life narrative studies and practice essay writing skills in the interdisciplinary fields of English language and literature studies. Secondary readings that demonstrate interdisciplinary approaches to life narratives will be available as e-texts through the UBC library.
Required readings will include the following:
Plus: Selected poems and contemporary songs that feature life narratives, true confessions, and exemplary voices on contemporary social issues. | |||
021 | 2 | Lecture | T, Th | 12:30 - 14:00 | Briggs, Marlene | Section DescriptionLiterature of the First World War: Comparative Approaches - Marlene BriggsEnglish 100 offers a writing-intensive introduction to the discipline of literary studies through the exploration of texts in their critical contexts: it focuses on foundational skills in literary analysis and scholarly research. This section highlights fiction and poetry inspired by the First World War (1914-1918). We will read writers from different countries (Britain, America, Canada, and Ireland) and distinct generations (participants and descendants). In particular, we will examine selected poems (1918) by Wilfred Owen; and three novels, namely The Sun Also Rises (1926) by Ernest Hemingway; The Wars (1977) by Timothy Findley; and A Long Long Way (2005) by Sebastian Barry. The issues of trauma, mourning, memory, and history shaping modern and contemporary controversies on war and society will organize our studies of celebrated texts. Critical readings and audio-visual materials will guide our conversations. Students will develop analytic and synthetic skills in reading and writing about literature through the investigation of relevant contexts, formal features, and academic discourses. In addition to several writing assignments, the requirements for this course may include a final examination.
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022 | 2 | Lecture | T, Th | 14:00 - 15:30 | Te Punga Somerville, Alice | Section DescriptionIndigenous Reading and Writing at the Edge of an OceanWhat happens when we think about Vancouver not as a city on the West Coast of a continent but as a city on the East Coast of an ocean? How can engaging with creative and critical writing by Indigenous people enable us to rethink, remap, and reimagine? What does it mean to be Indigenous – here, there, anywhere? How are Indigenous writers thinking about some of the most pressing issues of 2023: the climate crisis, social cohesion and justice, Indigenous rights, racism, colonialism/ capitalism, falling in love? This course will focus on a wide range of short texts: poems, short fiction, short films, essays, blogposts. Students will also read texts of your choosing that connect our class discussions and readings with your own communities and networks. Evaluation will include short and long writing and research tasks, a reading log, a short presentation, and active participation. | |||
02W | 1 | Waiting List | M, W, F | 10:00 - 11:00 | |||||
03W | 1 | Waiting List | M, W, F | 11:00 - 12:00 | |||||
04W | 1 | Waiting List | M, W, F | 12:00 - 13:00 | |||||
05W | 1 | Waiting List | M, W, F | 13:00 - 14:00 | |||||
06W | 1 | Waiting List | M, W, F | 14:00 - 15:00 | |||||
07W | 1 | Waiting List | T, Th | 9:30 - 11:00 | |||||
08W | 1 | Waiting List | T, Th | 11:00 - 12:30 | |||||
09W | 1 | Waiting List | T, Th | 12:30 - 14:00 | |||||
10W | 1 | Waiting List | T, Th | 14:00 - 15:30 | |||||
11W | 1 | Waiting List | T, Th | 15:30 - 17:00 | |||||
12W | 2 | Waiting List | M, W, F | 9:00 - 10:00 | |||||
13W | 2 | Waiting List | M, W, F | 10:00 - 11:00 | |||||
14W | 2 | Waiting List | M, W, F | 11:00 - 12:00 | |||||
15W | 2 | Waiting List | M, W, F | 12:00 - 13:00 | |||||
16W | 2 | Waiting List | M, W, F | 13:00 - 14:00 | |||||
18W | 2 | Waiting List | M, W, F | 14:00 - 15:00 | |||||
19W | 2 | Waiting List | T, Th | 9:30 - 11:00 | |||||
20W | 2 | Waiting List | T, Th | 11:00 - 12:30 | |||||
21W | 2 | Waiting List | T, Th | 12:30 - 14:00 | |||||
22W | 2 | Waiting List | T, Th | 14:00 - 15:30 |
Reading and Writing about Language and Literatures
ENGL 100
keyboard_arrow_downA writing-intensive introduction to language and literary studies through the exploration of texts in their critical and theoretical contexts. Fulfills the first-year component of the Faculty of Arts Writing and Research Requirement. Open only to students in the Faculty of Arts. Recommended for students intending to become English majors. Essays are required.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
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001 | 1 | Lecture | M, W, F | 9:00 - 10:00 | Guy-bray, Stephen | Section DescriptionIn this course we’ll read a selection of short stories from the last 200 years or so. We’ll be especially concerned with narrators, perspectives, and the relationship of description to story-telling. Students will have the opportunity to practise essay writing and research skills. Required Text: The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction, 8th edition. | |||
002 | 1 | Lecture | M, W, F | 10:00 - 11:00 | Baxter, Gisele Marie | Section DescriptionHaunted Houses“What is a ghost? A tragedy condemned to repeat itself time and again? An instant of pain, perhaps. Something dead which still seems to be alive. An emotion suspended in time. Like a blurred photograph. Like an insect trapped in amber.” – The Devil’s Backbone (dir. Guillermo Del Toro) Where is the fascination, even when the deepest mysteries of the universe are being scientifically unlocked, in stories of haunted houses? What accounts for the lure, and even the enjoyment, of tales of terror and horror, even in the 21st century? This course examines the Gothic influence in texts where collisions of past and present, and implications of the uncanny, allow fascinating investigations of social codes and their transgression. Texts: Core texts include a small selection of public-domain short stories (to be announced) Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House; Sarah Waters, The Little Stranger; Helen Oyeyemi, White is for Witching; and The Others (dir. Alejandro Amenábar); possibly another film; as well as Gardner and Diaz, Reading and Writing About Literature (5th edition). Through readings in current criticism and theory, we will develop strategies for textual analysis in literary and cultural studies. We will also consider the difficulty, if not impossibility, of reaching a “fixed” or consensus reading of any text. Course Evaluation: Evaluation will be based on a short focused analysis, a midterm essay, a term paper requiring secondary academic research, a short final reflection essay, and participation in discussion. Keep checking my blog (https://blogs.ubc.ca/drgmbaxter/) for updates concerning texts and requirements. | |||
003 | 1 | Lecture | M, W, F | 11:00 - 12:00 | Sharpe, Jillian | Section DescriptionFocused on literary texts in their critical and theoretical contexts, ENGL 100 is a course in academic writing that fulfills the first-year component of the Faculty of Arts Writing Requirement. This course offers an introduction to literary studies and the disciplines of academic reading and writing. In additional to the assigned texts, we will be reading essays and scholarly articles in order to introduce students to different critical approaches. This section’s theme is about American literature of the 20th century, and we will consider how various texts attempt to grapple with such historical events as the aftermath of World War II, the Civil Rights movement, and the Cold War. Texts: Texts are likely to include John Berryman’s Dream Songs, Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh, Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep, short fiction from Liberation Day by George Saunders, Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, and Joan Didion’s Democracy. | |||
004 | 1 | Lecture | M, W, F | 12:00 - 13:00 | Ho, Janice | Section DescriptionThis course is designed for students interested in the discipline of English literary studies and aims to cultivate in students the practice of reading and writing about literary texts. We will cover the basic concepts and vocabularies of literary criticism, and familiarize ourselves with the central forms and genres of literature—poetry, plays, and prose—and the specific methods involved in analyzing them. We will ask not just what the meaning of a literary work is, but how meaning is conveyed, and why it is conveyed in such a way. That is to say, we will look at the formal elements of a text and the way they interact with, reinforce, or subvert a text’s thematic content. Additionally, we will learn about the conventions of essay writing and how to write good prose. Texts to be studied may include a variety of poems, William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and Titus Andronicus; Bertolt Brecht’s The Good Person of Szechuan, and Nella Larsen’s Passing. | |||
005 | 1 | Lecture | M, W, F | 13:00 - 14:00 | Fox, Lorcan Francis | Section DescriptionFocused around literary texts in their critical and theoretical contexts, ENGL 100 is a course in academic writing that fulfils the first-year component of the Faculty of Arts Writing Requirement. In this section of English 100 we will study a selection of poetry from the Renaissance up to the present (see the provisional list below). Since one purpose of the course is to introduce students to literature’s various critical approaches, we will also examine scholarly articles (available online) on some of the assigned poetry. In both their proposal for the research essay and the essay itself, students will be expected not only to offer their own interpretations of a poem not discussed in class, but also to cite, demonstrate their familiarity with, and above all respond to a minimum number of secondary sources. Ideally, then, this course will teach students the skills they need to write research essays in upper-level English courses. Course requirements: two in-class essays (each worth 15%), proposal for research essay (15%), research essay (25%), final exam (30%) Texts: The Broadview Introduction to Literature: Poetry, 2nd edition (Broadview); Reading and Writing about Literature: A Portable Guide, 5th edition (Bedford/St. Martin’s) A provisional list of poems: Shakespeare, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”; John Donne, “The Flea”; William Blake, “The Chimney Sweeper”; Christina Rossetti, “Goblin Market”; W.B. Yeats, “The Second Coming”; T.S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”; W.H. Auden, “Musée des Beaux Arts”; Adrienne Rich, “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers”; Margaret Atwood, “Death of a Young Son by Drowning”; Jackie Kay, “In My Country” | |||
006 | 1 | Lecture | M, W, F | 14:00 - 15:00 | Mccormack, Brendan | Section DescriptionStorying Conflict: Narrative in Canadian Literary ContextsAccording to narratologist H. Porter Abbott, “the representation of conflict in narrative provides a way for a culture to talk to itself about, and possibly resolve, conflicts that threaten to fracture it (or at least make living difficult).” In an increasingly polarized, fractured, and wounded world beset by crises both global and local, Canada remains, as it has always been, a space of multiple conflicts. This section of ENGL100 will focus on contemporary Canadian and Indigenous literatures, exploring works in multiple genres (short stories, short film, poetry, a novel, and life writing) that share an interest in turning to narrative and storytelling as creative spaces to ask the hard questions and explore conflicts. Some of our texts will take on conflicts that are public and political: pandemic, climate change, medical ethics, (neo)colonialism, racism, and inequity, among other concerns and injustices. Others explore the intimacies of private crises over relationships, identity, responsibilities, family, grief, belonging, and community. Most, in fact, do both. Approaching literature as an art where private life and public history merge, we will turn to a variety of Canadian texts to investigate how conflict—whether personal, communal, national, and/or global in scale— structures narrative. How and why do writers narrate conflict? What does literature offer to the difficult conversations prompted by conflict and crisis? How do different forms and genres of writing function to engage readers in these conversations? We’ll take up these and other questions prompted by narratives that invite us to consider the ways literature engages dilemmas, embraces uncertainty, opens debate, entertains ambiguity, asks “what if?”, and locates hope. N.B.: The texts we will read emerge from Canadian contexts and narrate lived and imagined experiences that ask us to critically consider, among other things, the politics of history, identity, gender, sexuality, colonialism, race, diaspora, multiculturalism, belonging, nationhood, land, Indigeneity, and ecology. Please be aware that some readings openly address material from these contexts that can be challenging, including racial, colonial, and gendered violence. About ENGL100 and Course ObjectivesENGL 100 is a writing-intensive introduction to English literature and language studies through the exploration of texts in their critical and theoretical contexts, and is recommended for students intending to become English majors. In lectures, workshops, and group activities with peers, we will work on developing the skills needed to think critically, read inquisitively, and write persuasively about literary texts. You will learn and practice methods of textual analysis, research, and essay composition. Special focus will be placed on learning the foundations of narrative theory and cultivating the skills of close reading, with particular attention to the relationship between form and content in literary texts. By the end of the course, you will (a) be familiar with a range of narrative forms and literary genres used by contemporary authors in Canada; (b) understand some of the cultural, political, historical, and theoretical contexts that inform these literatures and their interpretation; (c) appreciate the ways form and style shape content to produce meaning in literary texts; (d) understand how to find, evaluate, and use research in literary criticism; and (e) have facility with academic essay-writing in the English discipline. | |||
007 | 1 | Lecture | T, Th | 9:30 - 11:00 | Gooding, Richard | Section DescriptionWhy Fairy Tales Still Matter“People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are at the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth.” (Greta Thunberg) When Greta Thunberg spoke of fairy tales at the UN Climate Action Summit, she used the term in a way that dates to at least the 1740s—to refer to a deceptive, idealized fantasy that ignores the harsher realities of life. But is that characterization entirely fair? And what, exactly, is a fairy tale anyway? Why do some remain popular even two or three hundred years after they were first published? And why do modern writers so often return to the form, sometimes to rewrite old tales and sometimes to compose brand-new ones? In this course, we will address these questions by reading and discussing a variety of classic tales by the Brothers Grimm, Charles Perrault, and Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont as well as modern versions of those tales by Emma Donoghue, Francesca Lia Block, and Donna Jo Napoli. We’ll end the term by examining a graphic novel by Bill Willingham in which fairy tale characters figure prominently. In lectures and discussions, we’ll consider how fairy tales have been adapted to meet the needs of different historical periods, and how different critical approaches to the same text can yield entirely different—even competing—interpretations.
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008 | 1 | Lecture | T, Th | 11:00 - 12:30 | Smilges, Johnathan Logan | Section DescriptionA writing-intensive introduction to language and literary studies through the exploration of texts in their critical and theoretical contexts. Fulfills the first-year component of the Faculty of Arts Writing and Research Requirement. Open only to students in the Faculty of Arts. Recommended for students intending to become English majors. Essays are required. | |||
009 | 1 | Lecture | T, Th | 12:30 - 14:00 | Echard, Sian | Section DescriptionIn this writing-intensive introduction to language and literary studies, we will look at how literary artists themselves think about literature, something they often reveal when they place themselves in line with (or in opposition to) previous texts and traditions. We will read 3 clusters of texts that allow us to explore ideas of writing in, and writing back. Our first cluster is built around a medieval literary figure who has also been persistently fascinating to modern audiences, Geoffrey Chaucer’s Wife of Bath. We will read selections from Chaucer (in translation), alongside two modern poetic responses (by Jamaican poet Jean “Binta” Breeze and British poet and spoken-word performer Patience Agbabi), as well as the very recent play by British writer Zadie Smith, called The Wife of Willesden. Our second cluster begins with the tradition of “carpe diem” poetry as reflected in some of its most iconic poems, by Christopher Marlowe, Walter Ralegh, Andrew Marvell, and John Donne, and then considers how early modern poetry like this is refracted and repurposed in the Oji-Cree writer Joshua Whitehead’s 2017 poetry collection Full-Metal Indigiqueer. Finally, we will read William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and consider two very different reimaginings of the play, the first a 1968 Royal Shakespeare Company theatrical production (filmed and available complete on YouTube) that vibrates with the energy of 60s pop culture, and the second, Neil Gaiman’s retelling as part of his monumental graphic novel series, The Sandman. A range of readings and scaffolded assignments throughout the term will offer you the tools to think through how and why literature works - when, where, and for whom. | |||
010 | 1 | Lecture | T, Th | 14:00 - 15:30 | Deer, Glenn | Section DescriptionStorying the Social Self: Life Narratives of Artists and Their CommunitiesWhat role does storytelling play in the development of the private and public self? We all share stories or even imagine ourselves as the audience for our internal meditations. We share life experiences through conversations, email, social media, and other forms of communication. Many of us write about our experiences in diaries or journals to track our lives, record travel, work out problems, and find solutions. More importantly, we often find special connections and inspiring points of commonality by reading writers who disclose their inner lives through public platforms such as autobiography, literary essays, confessional poetry, Youtube vlogs, or music videos. In this section of English 100, we will read fiction, memoir, poetry, and a graphic novel that explore the development of a creative persona that often resists social restrictions. The narrators of these coming-of-age life narratives confront and challenge oppressive social judgements and restrictions based on class, gender, race, and normative embodiment. In addition to the primary readings, we will study theories of narrative and scholarly research on life narrative across genres. You will acquire research knowledge in life narrative studies and practice essay writing skills in the interdisciplinary fields of English language and literature studies. Secondary readings that demonstrate interdisciplinary approaches to life narratives will be available as e-texts through the UBC library. Required readings will include the following:
Selections from the following E-Texts available through the UBC Library:
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011 | 1 | Lecture | T, Th | 15:30 - 17:00 | Al-kassim, Dina | ||||
012 | 2 | Lecture | M, W, F | 9:00 - 10:00 | Paltin, Judith | Section DescriptionBooks and FriendshipAristotle says, “Without friends no one would choose to live, though they had all other goods.” Friendship claims to exist upon a principle of perfect equality. It promises a private intimacy free from masquerade and convention; only a friend knows and loves your “true portrait,” proposes Montaigne. But what would a cultural history of friendship show? Is modern friendship a different kind of thing than friendships in the past? Could you have a friend at first sight, or briefly, or must a friendship be built with labour over time? Is group friendship possible? Can friendship be erotic or romantic? This course thinks about “two [or more] going together,” exemplary and distinctive friendships in fiction, in drama, in poetry, in life. We consider topics including friends as companions, friends and self-growth, friendships with animals, philosophy of friendship, heroic friendships, queer and romantic friendships, friendship and the nation, doomed and difficult friendships. Writers include Ursula Le Guin, Nella Larsen, Samuel Beckett, John Steinbeck, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Kazuo Ishiguro. | |||
013 | 2 | Lecture | M, W, F | 10:00 - 11:00 | Frank, Adam | Section DescriptionMad Science: An Introduction to CriticismThis course offers an introduction to the skills of literary criticism. Our theme is mad science, a concept we will explore by reading a handful of literary works, ancient, modern, and contemporary. Each of these works raises important questions about the relations between scientific knowledge and human culture more generally. Examples of these questions include: What are the relations between scientific knowledge and power? How should we understand the relations between scientific practice and the emotions? What are the consequences, both for humankind and for nonhumans, of scientific invention? In addition to these and other questions, we will discuss critcism itself as science or technical knowledge. We begin with Aristotle's Poetics, one of the most influential books of literary criticism, which will help us define terms for our course. We move to Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound, an ancient Greek tragedy that describes the fate of the god Prometheus who is punished by Zeus for teaching humans how to use fire and other basic arts. We continue with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; or the Modern Prometheus (1818), which tells the story of a scientist who creates a technology (the Creature) that is sentient and intelligent; Shelley's novel becomes the template for many subsequent treatments of the urge to create and control life. R.L. Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), like Shelley's novel, has been enormously influential for twentieth- and twenty-first century readers, as it sets forth a basic theme of (the scientist's) dual personality. Finally, we conclude with Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go (2005) and its narrative of a group of young men and women in a dystopian near-future. We will explore each of these texts in their critical, historical, and theoretical contexts, reading secondary sources that will help us to understand these texts and serve as examples of literary criticism. The course will be taught as a mix of lecture and classroom discussion. | |||
014 | 2 | Lecture | M, W, F | 11:00 - 12:00 | Partridge, Stephen | ||||
015 | 2 | Lecture | M, W, F | 12:00 - 13:00 | Macdonald, Anna | Section DescriptionINSTRUCTOR: ANNA MACDONALD Identity and BelongingHow do we discover who we are and where we belong? How much of who we are is determined by where we come from, who we surround ourselves with, and what we do? What are the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves? These are some of the questions that the selected authors in this course ask us to contemplate. In this course, we will explore what it means to belong in a variety of contexts within modern North-American society, focusing on the ways that some communities (such as Indigenous, immigrant, and queer communities) experience marginalization and come to reconfigure their own sense of belonging. | |||
016 | 2 | Lecture | M, W, F | 13:00 - 14:00 | Dinat, Deena | Section DescriptionGrowing Up New : Reading the Contemporary African BildungsromanWhy has the bildungsroman, the coming-of-age narrative, been such a dominant part of post-independence African writing? Do children witness large-scale social changes in radically new ways? What does the genre tell us about the pressures shaping young African subjects? And what possibilities might the genre allow for? In this course we’ll turn to a range of texts from the African continent that explore the complexities of growing up in rapidly changing societies. From the darkly comic Zambian film I Am Not a Witch, to J.M. Coetzee’s sly, pseudo-autobiographical Boyhood, we’ll encounter a wide range of stories that challenge the idea of what “growing up” means on the world’s “youngest” continent. Other texts include (subject to change):
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017 | 2 | Lecture | M, W, F | 14:00 - 15:00 | Zeitlin, Michael | Section DescriptionThis course offers a writing-intensive introduction to the disciplines of literary studies through the exploration of texts in their critical and theoretical contexts. The course fulfils the first-year component of the Faculty of Arts Writing and Research Requirement and is open only to students in the Faculty of Arts. The course is recommended for students intending to become English majors. Essays are required. The readings, organized broadly according to genre, may include the following: Short Stories
Novel
Personal Narratives
Poetry
Drama
Assignments and Procedures: Our main activity will be to practice the art of interpretation and close reading. Each student will be asked to deliver a short (five-minute) informal presentation: "Open the book, read something aloud, make an observation or formulate a question--discussion will follow." Our writing assignments will be based on a similar procedure, namely to let our writing flow up from our reading. Students will be expected to make notes in their books (underlining passages of interest or fascination, marking key images, collating scenes and pages, mapping internal relational patterns, and so on). Students will also write three short essays (one in class) based on close reading of a literary text. There will also be a final exam. Classroom conversation will be encouraged. Attendance will be taken. | |||
018 | 2 | Lecture | T, Th | 9:30 - 11:00 | Fox, Lorcan Francis | Section DescriptionFocused around literary texts in their critical and theoretical contexts, ENGL 100 is a course in academic writing that fulfils the first-year component of the Faculty of Arts Writing Requirement. In this section of English 100 we will study a selection of poetry from the Renaissance up to the present (see the provisional list below). Since one purpose of the course is to introduce students to literature’s various critical approaches, we will also examine scholarly articles (available online) on some of the assigned poetry. In both their proposal for the research essay and the essay itself, students will be expected not only to offer their own interpretations of a poem not discussed in class, but also to cite, demonstrate their familiarity with, and above all respond to a minimum number of secondary sources. Ideally, then, this course will teach students the skills they need to write research essays in upper-level English courses. Course requirements: two in-class essays (each worth 15%), proposal for research essay (15%), research essay (25%), final exam (30%) Texts: The Broadview Introduction to Literature: Poetry, 2nd edition (Broadview); Reading and Writing about Literature: A Portable Guide, 5th edition (Bedford/St. Martin’s) A provisional list of poems: Shakespeare, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”; John Donne, “The Flea”; William Blake, “The Chimney Sweeper”; Christina Rossetti, “Goblin Market”; W.B. Yeats, “The Second Coming”; T.S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”; W.H. Auden, “Musée des Beaux Arts”; Adrienne Rich, “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers”; Margaret Atwood, “Death of a Young Son by Drowning”; Jackie Kay, “In My Country” | |||
019 | 2 | Lecture | T, Th | 11:00 - 12:30 | Rosenberg, Jordy | Section DescriptionWriting Trans ResistanceIn a time of relentless and direct attacks on transgender people and transgender rights, transgender people have continued to write into the storm. This class will explore the ways in which trans writing has been and can be a companion in struggle. Looking at poetry, prose, political writing, and memoir from the 20th and 21st centuries, we will learn about different representational strategies in historical perspective, and formulate our own conceptions of what resistance and solidarity looks like now. We will read broadly across aesthetic forms, as well as from works of political-economic theory, transgender theory, legal analysis, and manifesto. Authors will include jos charles, Kai Cheng Thom, Jules Gill-Peterson, Cameron Awkward-Rich, Treva Ellison, Leslie Feinberg, C. Riley Snorton, Susan Stryker, and Casey Plett. | |||
01W | 1 | Waiting List | M, W, F | 9:00 - 10:00 | |||||
020 | 2 | Lecture | T, Th | 12:30 - 14:00 | Nardizzi, Vincent | Section DescriptionOn First ReadingThis course is an adventure. I have placed on the syllabus a novel, plays, poems, and scholarship that I have never read before. It is my presumption that we will all be reading these texts for the first time. These will be our questions: What do we need to know (in advance) in order to read a text? Do we need biography, history, theory, and scholarship to frame our encounter with these texts? With what feelings do we encounter a text for the first time? And how do we turn our feelings into literary analysis? There are several short writing assignments and a final research paper. There is no final exam. | |||
021 | 2 | Lecture | T, Th | 14:00 - 15:30 | Mcneilly, Kevin | ||||
022 | 1 | Lecture | M, W, F | 15:00 - 16:00 | Sharpe, Jillian | Section DescriptionFocused on literary texts in their critical and theoretical contexts, ENGL 100 is a course in academic writing that fulfills the first-year component of the Faculty of Arts Writing Requirement. This course offers an introduction to literary studies and the disciplines of academic reading and writing. In additional to the assigned texts, we will be reading essays and scholarly articles in order to introduce students to different critical approaches. This section’s theme is about American literature of the 20th century, and we will consider how various texts attempt to grapple with such historical events as the aftermath of World War II, the Civil Rights movement, and the Cold War. Texts: Texts are likely to include John Berryman’s Dream Songs, Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh, Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep, short fiction from Liberation Day by George Saunders, Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, and Joan Didion’s Democracy. | |||
023 | 2 | Lecture | M, W, F | 15:00 - 16:00 | Fox, Lorcan Francis | Section DescriptionFocused around literary texts in their critical and theoretical contexts, ENGL 100 is a course in academic writing that fulfills the first-year component of the Faculty of Arts Writing Requirement. In this section of English 100 we will study a selection of poetry from the Renaissance up to the present (see the provisional list below). Since one purpose of the course is to introduce students to literature’s various critical approaches, we will also examine scholarly articles (available online) on some of the assigned poetry. In both their proposal for the research essay and the essay itself, students will be expected not only to offer their own interpretations of a poem not discussed in class, but also to cite, demonstrate their familiarity with, and above all respond to a minimum number of secondary sources. Ideally, then, this course will teach students the skills they need to write research essays in upper-level English courses. Course requirements:
Texts:
A provisional list of poems: Shakespeare, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”; John Donne, “The Flea”; William Blake, “The Chimney Sweeper”; Christina Rossetti, “Goblin Market”; W.B. Yeats, “The Second Coming”; T.S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”; W.H. Auden, “Musée des Beaux Arts”; Adrienne Rich, “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers”; Margaret Atwood, “Death of a Young Son by Drowning”; Jackie Kay, “In My Country” | |||
02W | 1 | Waiting List | M, W, F | 10:00 - 11:00 | |||||
03W | 1 | Waiting List | M, W, F | 11:00 - 12:00 | |||||
04W | 1 | Waiting List | M, W, F | 12:00 - 13:00 | |||||
05W | 1 | Waiting List | M, W, F | 13:00 - 14:00 | |||||
06W | 1 | Waiting List | M, W, F | 14:00 - 15:00 | |||||
07W | 1 | Waiting List | T, Th | 9:30 - 11:00 | |||||
08W | 1 | Waiting List | T, Th | 11:00 - 12:30 | |||||
09W | 1 | Waiting List | T, Th | 12:30 - 14:00 | |||||
10W | 1 | Waiting List | T, Th | 14:00 - 15:30 | |||||
11W | 1 | Waiting List | T, Th | 15:30 - 17:00 | |||||
12W | 2 | Waiting List | M, W, F | 9:00 - 10:00 | |||||
13W | 2 | Waiting List | M, W, F | 10:00 - 11:00 | |||||
14W | 2 | Waiting List | M, W, F | 11:00 - 12:00 | |||||
15W | 2 | Waiting List | M, W, F | 12:00 - 13:00 | |||||
16W | 2 | Waiting List | M, W, F | 13:00 - 14:00 | |||||
17W | 2 | Waiting List | M, W, F | 14:00 - 15:00 | |||||
18W | 2 | Waiting List | T, Th | 9:30 - 11:00 | |||||
19W | 2 | Waiting List | T, Th | 11:00 - 12:30 | |||||
20W | 2 | Waiting List | T, Th | 12:30 - 14:00 | |||||
21W | 2 | Waiting List | T, Th | 14:00 - 15:30 | |||||
22W | 1 | Waiting List | M, W, F | 15:00 - 16:00 | |||||
23W | 2 | Waiting List | M, W, F | 15:00 - 16:00 |
Reading and Writing about Language and Literatures
ENGL 100
keyboard_arrow_downA writing-intensive introduction to language and literary studies through the exploration of texts in their critical and theoretical contexts. Fulfills the first-year component of the Faculty of Arts Writing and Research Requirement. Open only to students in the Faculty of Arts. Recommended for students intending to become English majors. Essays are required. This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
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019 | 2 | In-Person | Lecture | T, Th | 11:00 - 12:30 | Dalziel, Pamela | Section DescriptionThe Stories We Tell“We’re all storytellers, really. That’s what we do. That is our power as human beings.”-- Richard Wagamese, Embers: One Ojibway’s Meditations Why do we tell stories? In this course we will explore the nature and significance of the stories that we tell—and retell—as authors, readers, and critics. Why are some stories more frequently retold than others? Why—and how—do some stories, such as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, become culture-texts, texts that occupy such prominent places in the popular imagination that they are collectively known and “remembered” even when the original works have never been read? What difference does it make when stories are based on actual historical events? What makes stories true? Some of the texts that we will be studying self-consciously question concepts of “story,” “history,” and “truth”; all raise questions about the nature of story-telling, interpretation, identity, and society. Our texts: Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Broadview); a selection of twentieth- and twenty-first-century illustrated editions of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Rare Books and Special Collections, UBC Library); Elizabeth LaPensée and K.C. Oster, Rabbit Chase (Annick Press, UBC Library ebook); Michael Ondaatje, Anil’s Ghost (Vintage); selections from Tekahionwake (E. Pauline Johnson), Lixwelut (Mary Agnes Capilano), and Sahp-luk (Chief Joe Capilano), Legends of the Capilano (University of Manitoba Press, UBC Library ebook ); selections from Richard Wagamese, Embers: One Ojibway’s Meditations (Douglas & McIntyre, UBC Library ebook (the ebook does not include the splendid photographs)); a selection of poems (all available online) by Susan Alexander, Sarah Howe, Roy Miki, Kei Miller, Theresa Muñoz, Arundhathi Subramaniam, and Alice Te Punga Somerville. | ||
003 | 1 | In-Person | Lecture | M, W, F | 11:00 - 12:00 | Pareles, Mo | Section DescriptionDancing in Chains: Writing and Reading TranslationIf creation is a dance, translation is a dance in chains. –Bijan Elahi (trans. from Persian by Rebecca Ruth Gould and Kayvan Tahmasebian) Obviously, all translators need not be nonbinary…--Suneela Mubayi What is the mysterious work of literary translation, and how does this unsung practice shape how we read and hear texts ancient and modern? How should we read translated texts? Who are translators—and should a translator’s gender, race, or politics affect our readings? Is translation queer, trans, nonbinary? Can the act of translation be imperialist or otherwise unethical? Could you, yourself, translate literature into or out of English, or from one medium to another? This first-year writing course prepares students for the English and other humanities majors through intensive reading and writing, lots of conversation, and (optional) creative work with language and media. | ||
001 | 1 | In-Person | Lecture | M, W, F | 09:00 - 10:00 | James, Suzanne | Section DescriptionThe Madwoman in the Attic: Literary Explorations of MadnessHow do we define madness, and how can it be conveyed in literary texts? Who decides when someone is mad, and how is it linked to gender, class and ethnicity? When and how has madness been historically weaponized, especially against women? In this course, we will study a range of novels and poetry from the nineteenth through to the twenty-first century, developing skills of close critical analysis as well as exploring the historical and cultural contexts in which these works were produced. We will also consider a range of theoretical and critical approaches to interpreting these texts. The course will begin with Edgar Allen Poe’s classic short story, “The Tell-Tale Heart” (our token male writer!) and then shift to Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s novella, The Yellow Wallpaper, skip forward to the mid-twentieth century to discuss Sylvia Plath’s novel, The Bell Jar, as well as a selection of her poetry, take another jump forward to Margaret Atwood’s 1996 novel, Alias Grace, and wind up in the twenty-first century with Freshwater, a ground-breaking novel by Akwaeke Emezi, an American writer of Nigerian/Tamil descent. | ||
018 | 2 | In-Person | Lecture | T, Th | 09:30 - 11:00 | Mcneilly, Kevin | Section DescriptionMaking TroubleWe live in troubled and troubling times; our life-worlds are often characterized by disenfranchisement, social unease, and anxiety. Media and the literary arts represent that trouble, but also engage with it, whether to provoke or to ameliorate, to confront or to repair. In this section of English 100, we will read work that challenges our senses of self-understanding and of belonging in the contemporary world. How and what do we learn from texts that resist easy interpretation, or that articulate a staunch refusal to accept the terms and conditions of their given place? How do we make art in the wake of catastrophe and disaster? What are the risks and benefits of what the cultural and media theorist Donna Haraway has called "staying with the trouble"? In this section of English 100, we will examine the challenging work of five writers (Adrienne Rich, Kathleen Jamie, Kate Beaton, Alice Munro, and Claudia Rankine) to begin to think through the imperatives offered by unsettling, resistant, resilient, troubling art. Students should be cautioned that the works on this course syllabus confront sexual violence, misogyny, racism, settler colonialism, national and class prejudice, suicidal ideation, and other troubling—and very real—issues; you should be prepared to be challenged and disturbed by what you read and witness. | ||
007 | 1 | In-Person | Lecture | T, Th | 09:30 - 11:00 | Gooding, Rick | Section DescriptionWhy Fairy Tales Still MatterWhen Greta Thunberg spoke of fairy tales at the UN Climate Action Summit, she used the term in a way that dates to at least the 1740s—to refer to a deceptive, idealized fantasy that ignores the harsher realities of life. But is that characterization entirely fair? And what, exactly, is a fairy tale? Why do some remain popular even two or three hundred years after they were first published? And why do modern writers so often return to the form, sometimes to rewrite old tales and sometimes to compose brand-new ones? In this course, we will address these questions by reading and discussing a variety of classic tales by the Brothers Grimm, Charles Perrault, and Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont as well as modern versions of those tales by Emma Donoghue, Francesca Lia Block, and Donna Jo Napoli. We’ll end the term by examining a graphic novel by Bill Willingham in which fairy tale characters figure prominently. In lectures and discussions, we’ll consider how fairy tales have been adapted to meet the needs of different historical periods, and how different critical approaches to the same text can yield entirely different—even competing—interpretations. | ||
022 | 1 | In-Person | Lecture | M, W, F | 15:00 - 16:00 | Brown, Cody | |||
023 | 2 | In-Person | Lecture | M, W, F | 15:00 - 16:00 | Akinwole, Tolulope | Section DescriptionThuggery across Literary Space and TimeThe Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary defines a thug as “a violent person, especially a criminal.” Merriam-Webster offers synonyms such as “gangster,” “ruffian,” “bully,” “goon.” Interestingly, Merriam-Webster includes “villain” in its list. What do the thug and the villain have in common? What do we really mean when we use the term? How does the term travel through space, time, and genre to generate ideas for contemplating place, race, gender, and personhood from the nineteenth century to the present? In answering these questions, this course will challenge the received notions of similarity between both terms, on the one hand, and relocate the thug in its mytho-political origin in British-dominated India. Commencing in media res with a brief examination of the thug in popular imagination, the class will zoom out from this popular portrayal of thuggery to track the figure of the thug from nineteenth-century British literature to Indian historical and journalistic accounts of thuggery. We will examine the colonial power structure that determined the meaning of the term and identify the contestations inherent in its use in its origin spaces. Bringing insight from this historical account to our reading of the manifestations of the thug in contemporary African, African American, and Caribbean literature and popular culture (comprising sonic and visual texts), we will generate a more capacious working definition of thuggery that retains its originary implication of the British colonial enterprise and recasts it as a socio-spatial strategy. Evaluation will include two analytical essays and a final project that requires secondary academic research. | ||
014 | 2 | In-Person | Lecture | M, W, F | 11:00 - 12:00 | ||||
012 | 2 | In-Person | Lecture | M, W, F | 09:00 - 10:00 | Paltin, Judith | Section DescriptionBooks and FriendshipAristotle says, “Without friends no one would choose to live, though they had all other goods.” Friendship claims to exist upon a principle of perfect equality. It promises a private intimacy free from masquerade and convention; only a friend knows and loves your “true portrait,” proposes Montaigne. But what would a cultural history of friendship show? Is modern friendship a different kind of thing than friendships in the past? Could you have a friend at first sight, or briefly, or must a friendship be built with labour over time? Is group friendship possible? Can friendship be erotic or romantic? This course thinks about “two [or more] going together,” exemplary and distinctive friendships in fiction, in drama, in poetry, in life. We consider topics including friends as companions, friends and self-growth, friendships with animals, philosophy of friendship, heroic friendships, queer and romantic friendships, friendship and the nation, doomed and difficult friendships. Writers include Ursula Le Guin, Nella Larsen, Samuel Beckett, John Steinbeck, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Kazuo Ishiguro. | ||
002 | 1 | In-Person | Lecture | M, W, F | 10:00 - 11:00 | Roukema, Aren | |||
021 | 2 | In-Person | Lecture | T, Th | 14:00 - 15:30 | Al-kassim, Dina | |||
010 | 1 | In-Person | Lecture | T, Th | 14:00 - 15:30 | Bose, Sarika | Section DescriptionIn this section of English 100, we will examine a taster of different genres of English literature, including Afrofuturism and speculative fiction, Indigenous life writing, fantasy and children’s literature, as well as classic works of Victorian sensational fiction, and comedy. The path to selfhood takes unexpected turns as protagonists encounter lessons from ghosts and monsters, confront or try to escape alternate or entirely imaginary versions of themselves, and generally avoid the familiar and the conventional. In addition to our core texts, we will read some short works and excerpts, as well as scholarly essays that provide contexts and theoretical frameworks to guide our own analysis of the texts. Students will be trained in introductory critical literary analysis, research and academic writing through writing short essays. This course encourages active learning through presentations, team work and flipped classroom exercises. Our core texts will include the following:
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004 | 1 | In-Person | Lecture | M, W, F | 12:00 - 13:00 | Culbert, John | |||
005 | 1 | In-Person | Lecture | M, W, F | 13:00 - 14:00 | Hunt, Dallas | Section DescriptionGenres of IndigeneityThis course is a writing-intensive introduction to the discipline of Indigenous literary studies, specifically through an engagement with a text's (a book, a poem, a play, et cetera) critical and theoretical contexts. This course is recommended for students considering English as a major in particular. The focus of this course will be contemporary Indigenous literatures from the context of what is currently called Canada, with a emphasis placed on the notion of "genre" and its possibilities, limits, and/or constraints. What does the form of the novel enable? What can it prohibit, delimit, or foreclose? What political work is a poem doing (if any), especially in and for Indigenous communities? This course takes these questions seriously and asks what worlds Indigenous literatures can create? | ||
013 | 2 | In-Person | Lecture | M, W, F | 10:00 - 11:00 | James, Suzanne | Section DescriptionThe Madwoman in the Attic: Literary Explorations of MadnessHow do we define madness, and how can it be conveyed in literary texts? Who decides when someone is mad, and how is it linked to gender, class and ethnicity? When and how has madness been historically weaponized, especially against women? In this course, we will study a range of novels and poetry from the nineteenth through to the twenty-first century, developing skills of close critical analysis as well as exploring the historical and cultural contexts in which these works were produced. We will also consider a range of theoretical and critical approaches to interpreting these texts. The course will begin with Edgar Allen Poe’s classic short story, “The Tell-Tale Heart” (our token male writer!) and then shift to Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s novella, The Yellow Wallpaper, skip forward to the mid-twentieth century to discuss Sylvia Plath’s novel, The Bell Jar, as well as a selection of her poetry, take another jump forward to Margaret Atwood’s 1996 novel, Alias Grace, and wind up in the twenty-first century with Freshwater, a ground-breaking novel by Akwaeke Emezi, an American writer of Nigerian/Tamil descent. | ||
006 | 1 | In-Person | Lecture | M, W, F | 14:00 - 15:00 | Mccormack, Brendan | Section DescriptionStorying Conflict: Narrative in Canadian Literary ContextsAccording to narratologist H. Porter Abbott, “the representation of conflict in narrative provides a way for a culture to talk to itself about, and possibly resolve, conflicts that threaten to fracture it (or at least make living difficult).” In an increasingly polarized, fractured, and wounded world beset by crises both global and local, Canada remains (as it has always been) a space of multiple conflicts. This section of ENGL100 will focus on contemporary Canadian and Indigenous literatures, exploring works in different genres (short stories, short film, poetry, a novel, and life writing) that share an interest in turning to narrative and storytelling as creative spaces to ask the hard questions and explore conflicts. Some of our texts will take on conflicts that are public and political: climate change, pandemic, medical ethics, (neo)colonialism, racism, and inequity, among other concerns and injustices. Others explore the intimacies of private crises over relationships, identity, responsibilities, family, illness, grief, mourning, belonging, and community. Most, in fact, do both. Approaching literature as an art where private life and public history merge, we will turn to a variety of Canadian texts to investigate how conflict—whether personal, communal, national, and/or global in scale— structures narrative. How and why do writers narrate conflict? What does literature offer to the difficult conversations prompted by conflict and crisis? How do different forms and genres of writing function to engage readers in these conversations? We’ll take up these and other questions prompted by narratives that invite us to consider the ways literature engages dilemmas, embraces uncertainty, opens debate, entertains ambiguity, asks “what if?”, and locates hope. N.B.: The texts we will read emerge from Canadian contexts and narrate lived and imagined experiences that ask us to critically consider, among other things, the politics of history, identity, gender, sexuality, colonialism, race, diaspora, multiculturalism, belonging, nationhood, land, Indigeneity, and ecology. Please be aware that some readings openly address material from these contexts that can be challenging, including racial, colonial, and gendered violence. About ENGL100 and Course Objectives ENGL 100 is a writing-intensive introduction to English literature and language studies through the exploration of texts in their critical and theoretical contexts, and is recommended for students intending to become English majors. In lectures, workshops, and group activities with peers, we will work on developing the skills needed to think critically, read inquisitively, and write persuasively about literary texts. You will learn and practice methods of textual analysis, research, and essay composition. Special focus will be placed on learning the foundations of narrative theory and cultivating the skills of close reading, with particular attention to the relationship between form and content in literary texts. By the end of the course, you will (a) be familiar with a range of narrative forms and literary genres used by contemporary authors in Canada; (b) understand some of the cultural, political, historical, and theoretical contexts that inform these literatures and their interpretation; (c) appreciate the ways form and style shape content to produce meaning in literary texts; (d) understand how to find, evaluate, and use research in literary criticism; and (e) have facility with academic essay-writing in the English discipline. | ||
016 | 2 | In-Person | Lecture | M, W, F | 13:00 - 14:00 | Dinat, Deena | Section DescriptionGrowing Up New : Reading the Contemporary African BildungsromanWhy has the bildungsroman, the coming-of-age narrative, been such a dominant part of post-independence African writing? Do children witness large-scale social changes in radically new ways? What does the genre tell us about the pressures shaping young African subjects? And what possibilities might the genre allow for? In this course we’ll turn to a range of texts from the African continent that explore the complexities of growing up in rapidly changing societies. From the darkly comic Zambian film I Am Not a Witch, to J.M. Coetzee’s sly, pseudo-autobiographical Boyhood, we’ll encounter a wide range of stories that challenge the idea of what “growing up” means on the world’s “youngest” continent. Other texts include (subject to change):
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009 | 1 | In-Person | Lecture | T, Th | 12:30 - 14:00 | Sharpe, Jae | |||
017 | 2 | In-Person | Lecture | M, W, F | 14:00 - 15:00 | Roukema, Aren | |||
020 | 2 | In-Person | Lecture | T, Th | 12:30 - 14:00 | Baxter, Gisele | Section DescriptionHaunted Houses“What is a ghost? A tragedy condemned to repeat itself time and again? An instant of pain, perhaps. Something dead which still seems to be alive. An emotion suspended in time. Like a blurred photograph. Like an insect trapped in amber.” – The Devil’s Backbone (dir. Guillermo Del Toro) Where is the fascination, even when the deepest mysteries of the universe are being scientifically unlocked, in stories of haunted houses? What accounts for the lure, and even the enjoyment, of tales of terror and horror, even in the 21st century? This course examines the Gothic influence in texts where collisions of past and present, and implications of the uncanny, allow fascinating investigations of social codes and their transgression. Core texts tentatively include a small selection of public-domain short stories (to be announced); Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House; Sarah Waters, The Little Stranger; Helen Oyeyemi, White is for Witching; and The Others (dir. Alejandro Amenábar); possibly another film; as well as Gardner and Diaz, Reading and Writing About Literature (5th edition). Through readings in current criticism and theory, we will develop strategies for textual analysis in literary and cultural studies. We will also consider the difficulty, if not impossibility, of reaching a “fixed” or consensus reading of any text. Evaluation will tentatively be based on a short primary-text analysis, a midterm essay, a term paper requiring secondary academic research, a final reflection essay, and participation in discussion. Keep checking my blog (https://blogs.ubc.ca/drgmbaxter/) for updates concerning texts and requirements. | ||
008 | 1 | In-Person | Lecture | T, Th | 11:00 - 12:30 | Sharpe, Jae | |||
011 | 1 | In-Person | Lecture | T, Th | 15:30 - 17:00 | Bose, Sarika | Section DescriptionIn this section of English 100, we will examine a taster of different genres of English literature, including Afrofuturism and speculative fiction, Indigenous life writing, fantasy and children’s literature, as well as classic works of Victorian sensational fiction, and comedy. The path to selfhood takes unexpected turns as protagonists encounter lessons from ghosts and monsters, confront or try to escape alternate or entirely imaginary versions of themselves, and generally avoid the familiar and the conventional. In addition to our core texts, we will read some short works and excerpts, as well as scholarly essays that provide contexts and theoretical frameworks to guide our own analysis of the texts. Students will be trained in introductory critical literary analysis, research and academic writing through writing short essays. This course encourages active learning through presentations, team work and flipped classroom exercises. Our core texts will include the following:
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015 | 2 | In-Person | Lecture | M, W, F | 12:00 - 13:00 | Britton, Dennis | Section DescriptionLiterature and (Re)creationLiterature is a powerful tool for recreation. Reading literature can be a pleasurable pastime that provides respite from the stresses of living in this world, even as authors use literature to help recreate this world, help us see this world differently, and help us imagine other worlds. This course will examine how a variety of stories, plays, and poems engage in and with (re)creation: how they depict recreation, people (re)creating themselves, and people (re)creating the world. Our texts will likely include William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, selections from Olaudah Equiano’s The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Quiara Alegria Hudes’s Water by the Spoonful, Octavia E Butler’s Blood Child and Other Stories, and others. | ||
024 | 2 | In-Person | Lecture | T, Th | 15:30 - 17:00 | Mackie, Gregory | Section DescriptionBad MannersWhat are bad manners? The idea of manners, broadly construed, captures not only what we expect from others in society, but also what we expect from ourselves. This section of ENGL 100 takes up literary representations of civility and decorum – and their (often comic) violations. Why, for instance, do we behave the way we do in social situations? What are the rewards of being polite – and of avoiding being perceived as rude? Does politeness come ‘naturally’? We will pursue these and further questions in a term-long inquiry into the unarticulated assumptions and expectations that underlie everyday social rituals and performances. Our texts include eighteenth-century insult poems, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, Noël Coward’s Hay Fever, Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day, and short stories by Zadie Smith |
Approaches to Literature and Culture
ENGL 110
keyboard_arrow_downStudy of selected examples of literary and cultural expression: examples may include poetry, fiction, drama, life narratives, essays, graphic novels, screenplays, and narrative adaptations in film and other media. Essays are required.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
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JL1 | 2 | Lecture | M, W | 12:00 - 15:00 | Sheppard, Rebecca | Section DescriptionWho’s to Blame? Bad Behaviour, Responsibility, and Punishment
When something goes wrong, often the first thing we do is unjustly point the finger of blame (sometimes away from ourselves, sometimes towards ourselves). In this section of English 110, we will investigate how various kinds of literary texts—poetry, the short story, drama, the novel—navigate assignations of blame, as well as the difficulties in isolating behaviour from context. We will consider the ways in which people take responsibility, or not, for their misdeeds, as well as the types of punishments that ensue for causing harm to others. In determining these complex issues of culpability, we will situate our texts within various theoretical perspectives, such as feminism, postcolonial theory, and ecocriticism. Texts will include a selection of short stories (available free online), the horror film Heredity (available through Criterion), Robert Louis Stevenson’s novella Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (UBC Bookstore) and Shirley Jackson’s novel The Haunting of Hill House (UBC Bookstore). Evaluation will be based on two in-class essays, one take-home essay, and participation in both classroom and online discussions. | |||
JL2 | 2 | Lecture | M, W | 18:00 - 21:00 | Fox, Lorcan Francis | Section Description* Any classes not taught in person will be held synchronously on Zoom * This section of English 110 will introduce students to basic elements of university-level literary study by examining a wide range of works in three genres: poetry, prose fiction, and drama. These works are of various literary eras and by authors from diverse cultural backgrounds. Students will be taught methods of literary analysis that should enable them to read each work with care, appreciation, and (one hopes) enjoyment.
Text: Lisa Chalykoff, Neta Gordon, Paul Lumsden, eds. The Broadview Introduction to Literature: Concise Edition, 2nd ed. (Broadview, 2019) Provisional Reading List: POEMSEmily Dickinson, “Tell all the Truth but tell it slant”; Ezra Pound, “The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter”; Theodore Roethke, “My Papa’s Waltz”; Elizabeth Bishop, “One Art”; Adrienne Rich, “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers”; Margaret Atwood, “Death of a Young Son by Drowning”; George Eliot Clarke, “Casualties”; Jackie Kay, “In My Country”; Karen Solie, “Nice” SHORT STORIESKate Chopin, “The Story of an Hour”; Chinua Achebe, “Dead Men’s Path”; Alistair MacLeod, “As Birds Bring Forth the Sun”; Alice Munro, “Friend of My Youth”; Margaret Atwood, “Happy Endings”; Thomas King, “A Short History of Indians in Canada”; Kazuo Ishiguro, “A Family Supper” PLAYSWilliam Shakespeare, Twelfth Night; Henrik Ibsen, A Doll’s House | |||
JL3 | 2 | Lecture | T, Th | 12:00 - 15:00 | Section DescriptionINSTRUCTOR: Craig Stensrud Words to Change the WorldThis course poses some fundamental questions about reading and writing literature: Why read? Why write? Why study literature? Does literature offer us a way to make sense of—or even change—the world? Students will tackle these questions by discussing literary texts and completing assignments that introduce university research and writing practices. Rather than looking at reading and writing as unchanging acts, we will think about them as practices that are shaped by and help to shape different cultural, political, and artistic moments across history. We will consider how authors have thought their work could fight social evils like slavery, racism, sexism, capitalist exploitation, and environmental destruction. Different authors at different times have held contrasting views of literature’s role in the world – from those who insist that reading and writing are essential for political liberation to those who lament literature’s powerlessness in the face of life’s absurdity. Course texts include Frederick Douglass’s anti-slavery novella The Heroic Slave, Samuel Beckett’s “tragicomedy” Waiting for Godot, and a selection of contemporary and classic poetry and short stories. | ||||
JL4 | 2 | Lecture | T, Th | 18:00 - 21:00 | Culbert, John | ||||
MA1 | 1 | Lecture | M, W | 12:00 - 15:00 | Scholes, Judith | Section DescriptionReading Humans in NatureIn this section of ENGL 110, we will read, think, and write about literature that explores the human experience of being in nature and among non-humans. Several questions will guide us in this work: how do humans and non-humans figure, interact, or mesh in these texts? What relations and differences between the human and non-human do these literary works grapple with, define, or deconstruct? How does language come to shape these relations? Spanning multiple genres (fiction, poetry, drama) and two centuries (1818-2018), our literary selections will include works by Mary Shelley, Emily Dickinson, William and Dorothy Wordsworth, Walt Whitman, Virginia Woolf, Camille Dungy, Joy Harjo, Allison Adelle Hedge Coke, and Matthew McKenzie, among others. | |||
MA2 | 1 | Lecture | M, W | 18:00 - 21:00 | Newell, Jonathan | Section DescriptionThe renowned writer of weird fiction H.P. Lovecraft famously claimed that “the true weird tale has something more than secret murder, bloody bones, or a sheeted form clanking chains according to rule” – rather “a certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces must be present.” This section of English 110 will consider drama, poetry, and prose fiction that meets these criteria: stories of monsters, demons, unfathomable horrors, metaphysical mystery, and cosmic awe. We will examine the ways that “weird” literature evokes emotions of wonder, fear, and disgust while engaging with political, social, and philosophical questions, interrogating boundaries, norms, and categories. Beginning with theepic poem Beowulf, a blood-soaked tale of monster-hunting in a world governed by a cruel, inhuman fate or “wyrd,” we will trace the literary history of the weird, following it through the fallen, omen-haunted tragedy of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s eerie poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” and Christina Rossetti’s sensuously malevolent “Goblin Market,” and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s chilling tale “The Yellow Wallpaper.” The course concludes with a consideration of twentieth-century weird fiction, including the short stories of Angela Carter and Octavia Butler and the novel The City & The City by China Miéville. | |||
MA3 | 1 | Lecture | T, Th | 12:00 - 15:00 | Hart, Alexander | Section DescriptionThrough the study of selected examples of poetry, fiction, and drama, this course will introduce students to the fundamentals of university-level literary study, and furnish them with the skills to think and write critically about literature. Students will be taught the basic concepts of genre and form in literature and methods of literary analysis in order to prepare them for future courses (in English and other disciplines) which require close reading, critical thinking, open discussion, and analytical writing. The emphasis in this section will be on Canadian authors and their works. Each student is expected to participate fully in all class activities (reading, writing, discussion, groups, etc.). Each student will write three essays (in-class and home), keep a Response Journal, and sit the Final Examination. Attendance: Because English 110 is conducted as a participatory, hands-on course, regular and punctual attendance is mandatory. To succeed in this course, students must attend every class, on time, and well prepared, participate co-operatively in group work, and consistently contribute to the initiating and sustaining of small-group and class discussions. Please register for this course only if you are able to make this commitment. Required Texts:
Optional Text (If You Do Not Own a Good Handbook of English which Contains Updated [2016 or 2021] MLA Formatting Style):
This three-unit course has been compressed into a brief six-week format. The readings are extensive. It is, therefore, recommended that you pre-read the novel. | |||
MA4 | 1 | Lecture | T, Th | 18:00 - 21:00 | Thieme, Katja | ||||
MA5 | 1 | Lecture | W, F | 9:30 - 12:30 | Macdonald, Anna | Section DescriptionINSTRUCTOR: Anna MacDonald Zombies. Otherness, and Global CapitalismThe figure of the zombie has taken over twenty-first century popular culture, from AMC's smash hit The Walking Dead (2010-2022) to the most cutting-edge scientific advancements in the realm of brain transplants which are making the boundaries between life and death ever-murkier. The story of a dead corpse returning from the grave, often part of a larger story of a zombie apocalypse, has been a productive (we might even say viral) site for cultural critique; the zombie narrative speaks to broad questions about otherness (in terms of race, colonialism, and nationhood) as well as economy (in terms of consumerism and capitalism), while the zombie apocalypse as a whole raises questions about our connections with one another in the modern world, from contagious disease to globalization, sustainability to intergenerational trauma. This course will explore a range of genres on the topic of the zombie; we will study a series of novels, films, and poetry on the zombie in order to examine the figure as a way into questions about identity, otherness, and danger. Examining this genre will provide students with an introduction to literary analysis at the university level. Students will develop the skills necessary to think critically and argue effectively on a variety of literary texts (broadly understood) through a combination of lecture and discussion. Content Warning: Please be advised this class will engage with texts and films that convey graphic scenes of violence and gore. | |||
WJ1 | 2 | Waiting List | M, W | 12:00 - 15:00 | |||||
WJ2 | 2 | Waiting List | M, W | 18:00 - 21:00 | |||||
WJ3 | 2 | Waiting List | T, Th | 12:00 - 15:00 | |||||
WJ4 | 2 | Waiting List | T, Th | 18:00 - 21:00 | |||||
WM1 | 1 | Waiting List | M, W | 12:00 - 15:00 | |||||
WM2 | 1 | Waiting List | M, W | 18:00 - 21:00 | |||||
WM3 | 1 | Waiting List | T, Th | 12:00 - 15:00 | |||||
WM4 | 1 | Waiting List | T, Th | 18:00 - 21:00 | |||||
WM5 | 1 | Waiting List | W, F | 9:30 - 12:30 |
Approaches to Literature and Culture
ENGL 110
keyboard_arrow_downStudy of selected examples of literary and cultural expression: examples may include poetry, fiction, drama, life narratives, essays, graphic novels, screenplays, and narrative adaptations in film and other media. Essays are required.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
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001 | 1 | Lecture | M, W | 9:00 - 10:00 | Potter, Tiffany | Section Description400 years of asking the Big QuestionsThere will be shipwrecks, magic, mad scientists, beast-people, and a garden party. As we read stories of wrecks and disasters—structural, personal, and social— we will consider the significance of the ways in which these stories ask some of the big questions with which human beings have struggled for centuries: What makes us human and not animal? What is human nature, and is it really natural? What about gender, race, and other kinds of difference? Who has power and why? Do we just reflect reality with the stories we tell ourselves, or are we actually creating reality? Along with substantial work on poetry, this section of English 110 will focus on one play, one novel, and a group of short stories that engage in different ways how people respond to circumstances that challenge what they thought was “natural” or “universal.” This course introduces students to the analytical skills and critical thinking essential to university-level literary reading, thinking and writing. In large lectures and 30-student Friday discussion groups, students pursue hands-on practice of methods of literary analysis. Please note that this is not a writing class (that’s ENGL 100 or WRDS 150): we’ll spend our time on fabulous literature rather than essay writing technicals. Want a head start this summer? Choose HG Wells’ creepy mad scientist novel, The Island of Dr. Moreau or Shakespeare’s classic shipwreck+magic play, The Tempest. You can see videos of different productions of Tempest for free through the UBC library or stream the great 2010 film starring Helen Mirren and Djimon Hounsou (but take a pass on the really really terrible Island of Dr Moreau movie, trust me!). | |||
002 | 1 | Lecture | M, W | 10:00 - 11:00 | Luger, Moberley | Section DescriptionWhat can Literature do?: Counternarratives of the 21st CenturyScientists use data—gathered through experimentation, for example, or measurement—to discover and interpret the world around them. What do literary scholars use? What kind of “data” is a graphic narrative, a novel, or a poem? And what can the study of literature tell us about how we interpret the world we live in? In particular, what might we learn from literature that we can’t learn by other means? The texts on this course include local and global stories written in this century. They will show us contemporary lives lived in different corners of the world—for example, a Pakistani university student in New York, an Indigenous hockey player in Ontario. These are personal stories about public events, and they are the stories that have generally been less discovered, measured, or recorded. They reveal the sometimes invisible, even erased, narratives and lives that lurk behind the headlines or history books. They invite us to ask, who gets to speak and who may be silenced? What kind of knowledge does literature give us access to—and what should we do with that knowledge? Possible texts include The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui, The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid, Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese, Injun by Jordan Abel.
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003 | 1 | Lecture | M, W | 11:00 - 12:00 | Mcneilly, Kevin | Section DescriptionBelongingIn our heavily-mediated, pandemic-stricken world, senses of self and of place have become increasingly fraught and uncertain. In this course, we will investigate how various kinds of literary texts—poetry, the novel, multi-media collage, film, comics, the lyric essay—confront questions of human belonging. How do we write ourselves into and out of place? How do we identify and document ourselves creatively through writing? What are the demands of placing ourselves in particular discourses and locations? We will deal with ideas of the human subject and the depiction of others; with the creation of various forms of community; with the complex relationships between art and lived realities; and with the interconnections of the performative and the graphic with spoken or written language. Questions of representation and self-fashioning will form a crucial part of our investigations of how literacy, agency and community constitute themselves. Some of the readings on this course contain material that students may find challenging and unsettling. Core texts for this section include Ms. Marvel: No Normal by G. Willow Wilson and Adrian Alphona, Geography III: Poems by Elizabeth Bishop, Lives of Girls and Women by Alice Munro, Findings by Kathleen Jamie, and Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine, as well as a short film directed by Alanis Obomsawin.
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004 | 1 | Lecture | M, W | 12:00 - 13:00 | Mota, Miguel | Section DescriptionIdentity and PlaceThis section of ENGL 110 will focus on issues of identity and place. How does place (geographical, social, psychological, textual) shape our identities, how we imagine ourselves as human beings in the world? And how does literature both define and mediate the relationship between identity and place? In our readings, we will address questions of class, gender, sexuality, nationality, and race, as they intersect with our main categories. We’ll explore these questions in poetry (by Thomas Wyatt, Christina Rossetti, William Blake, Linton Kwesi Johnson, David Dabydeen, Jackie Kay, and others), drama (Ayub Khan-Din’s East Is East and Tomson Highway’s The Rez Sisters), short stories (by Angela Carter, Alice Munro, William Faulkner, and Haruki Murakami), and a film, Lee Chang-dong’s Burning, an adaptation of the stories by Faulkner and Murakami). | |||
005 | 1 | Lecture | M, W | 13:00 - 14:00 | Baxter, Gisele Marie | Section DescriptionLiterary Monsters and Monstrous Literature
Rey: “You are a monster.” “Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time into this breathing world” – Richard III 1.i What is a monster? We know monsters from myths and legends, folktales, horror fiction and film. We know their variety: the grotesque, the beautiful, the terrifying, the pitiable, the sports of nature and the forces of evil. Dragons, werewolves, vampires, zombies, Frankenstein’s Creature, Dorian Gray, the Joker, Hannibal Lecter, Marisa Coulter, many of the characters in The Walking Dead or Game of Thrones: they’re everywhere, from under the bed to the house next door to the battlefield, and right into a great deal of literature. Which leaves us here: in this section of 110 we’ll focus on how literary texts across the genres use representations of monstrosity in ways that inspire both terror and horror, as well as (let’s be honest) fascination and even enjoyment. We’ll look at William Shakespeare’s Richard III (a play that meditates on villainy and ambition in demonizing its subject for Tudor audiences, yet still fascinates contemporary ones) and at Ian McKellen’s 1995 film adaptation, which shifts the setting to an alternate-reality 1930s England where fascism takes hold. We will also consider various stage and screen adaptations as approaches to the play, including recent ones using race and gender-diverse casting, and casting as Richard actors who are themselves physically disabled or disfigured. Other core texts include two novels: Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle, as well as selected poetry (with a focus on the sonnet form). Evaluation will be based on two timed essays, a home paper, and a final exam, plus participation in discussion. Each week (except where holidays and timed essays take place) I will deliver two lectures to the whole class, and you will have one small-group meeting with one of our Teaching Assistants. Keep checking my blog (https://blogs.ubc.ca/drgmbaxter/) for updates concerning texts and requirements. | |||
006 | 1 | Lecture | T, Th | 9:30 - 11:00 | Culbert, John | ||||
007 | 2 | Lecture | M, W | 9:00 - 10:00 | James, Suzanne | Section DescriptionDefining the SelfHow do we define ourselves – as Canadians, as artists, as lovers, as survivors? These are some of the broad issues of identity and belonging we will explore through a selection of fiction, drama and poetry in this section of English 110. We will consider ways in which individuals craft and perform the "selves" they wish to be, and the multiplicity of ways in which writers convey these identities through literary texts. To what extent do we control the person we become and to what extent are we shaped by our community? How meaningful are the concepts of ethnicity, gender and nationality in the creation of identity? How can a writer convey the complex and shifting nature of individual and group identity through the permanence of written discourse? Texts studied will include a novel (Brother by David Chariandy), a play (The Rez Sisters by Tomson Highway), and a selection of short stories and poetry. In lectures and seminars, students will engage with concepts of genre and form in literature and will pursue hands-on practice of methods of literary analysis. Students will be encouraged to develop independent critical responses to the works studied. Assessment will include two in-class essays, a term paper and a final examination. | |||
008 | 2 | Lecture | M, W | 11:00 - 12:00 | Cavell, Richard Anthony | Section DescriptionLiterature and MediaThis course explores the relationships between literature and media, introducing students to the role of media in the understanding of literature through a focus on an international reading list that highlights our relationship to media in contemporary social settings. | |||
009 | 2 | Lecture | M, W | 12:00 - 13:00 | Hudson, Nicholas James | Section DescriptionThe Gothic in Literary HistoryAlthough the modern term “gothic” was not coined until the late eighteenth century, tales of horror and aberrant human (or non-human) behaviour form a consistent tradition from ancient times to the present. This section of English 110 will trace the history of these tales of horror in drama, poetry and prose fiction (both short stories and the novel) in the European and American literary traditions. We will find that from classical Greece to the present, theatre-goers and readers have been horrified by a fairly consistent set of themes and tropes (figurative images). These themes and tropes relate to a wide range of concerns from deviant sexual behavior, confusions of gender, dysfunctional family relationships, the fear of foreigners, human relations with the natural world, and fears of political or social upheaval. Texts: Euripides, Medea; Shakespeare, Macbeth; Stoker, Dracula; Baldick, Oxford Book of Gothic Tales; a selection of gothic poetry | |||
010 | 2 | Lecture | M, W | 13:00 - 14:00 | Rouse, Robert | Section DescriptionEnvironmental ReadingAs we enter the third decade of the twenty-first century, the impact of the human race on the global climate is increasingly undeniable. From the beginning of the European Industrial Revolution in the nineteenth century, human civilization has entered what scientists now term the Anthropocene: the period of time when human activity is leaving indelible marks on the geological history of the earth. Global warming looms over our early twenty-first century civilization, with dire warnings of future catastrophe appearing on a weekly basis. But what is the average citizen supposed to do in the face of such impending doom? Recycle? Cycle? Buy a Tesla? Remember to turn your lights off when you go out? Vote Green? Take transit? Buy eco-soap? Shop local? Become vegetarian? So many small possibilities, but all seemingly insignificant in the face of the onrushing apocalyptic storm. Instead we are faced with the question of how we will experience dramatic climate change? How we will survive it? How we will witness it? In the first section of this course we will examine how “nature writing” began in the nineteenth century, and encoded a romantic view of Nature that still impacts how western society views the environment today. We will then move on to examine how cli-fi (or climate fiction) writers of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have addressed our fears of global climate change. Texts will include: Romantic and Victorian Poetry (online selections), Learning to Die in the Anthropocene (Roy Scranton), Cli-Fi: Canadian Tales of Climate Change (short fiction), The Parable of the Sower (Octavia Butler), The Water Knife (Paola Bacigalupi), and American War (Omar El Akkad). ENGL 110 counts as 3 credits toward most faculties’ English/Writing requirements, and also can count as 3 credits of the Faculty of Arts Literature requirement. | |||
011 | 2 | Lecture | M, W | 14:00 - 15:00 | Anger, Suzy | Section DescriptionStrange Science, Ghosts, and Literary TheoryIn this section of English 110, we will read literary texts depicting ghosts, the fantastic, and strange science. The course will teach you to think and write critically about literature at the university level. It will also introduce you to contemporary literary theories. We will examine a range of approaches to the interpretation of literature, including psychoanalytical, Marxist, feminist, and postcolonial, and use the theories to analyze the literature we study. Texts read will include Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, George Eliot’s “The Lifted Veil,” and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. | |||
012 | 2 | Lecture | T, Th | 9:30 - 11:00 | Inniss, Scott | ||||
013 | 2 | Lecture | T, Th | 11:00 - 12:30 | Giffen, Sheila | ||||
015 | 2 | Lecture | T, Th | 14:00 - 15:30 | Sharpe, Jillian | Section DescriptionINSTRUCTOR: SHARPE, JAE Experimental Representations of Consciousness in Literary FormsHow have authors grappled with the problem of representing consciousness and qualia in writing? In this course, we will consider how prose, poetry, and dramaturgy have endeavored to depict human thought, considering how particular forms of experimental or postmodern writing allow us to represent different kinds of thoughts, like memory and association. We will consider how these authors use form and content in tandem to comment on human subjectivity and the question of how faithfully thought can be conveyed through literature. Texts are likely to include Samuel Beckett’s Endgame, Joan Didion’s Play It As It Lays, Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, poems from William Blake, Wallace Stevens, Dionne Brand, Anne Sexton, and W.B. Yeats, and short stories from James Joyce, Edgar Allan Poe, and Franz Kafka.
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01W | 1 | Waiting List | M, W, F | 9:00 - 10:00 | |||||
02W | 1 | Waiting List | M, W, F | 10:00 - 11:00 | |||||
03W | 1 | Waiting List | M, W, F | 11:00 - 12:00 | |||||
04W | 1 | Waiting List | M, W, F | 12:00 - 13:00 | |||||
05W | 1 | Waiting List | M, W, F | 13:00 - 14:00 | |||||
06W | 1 | Waiting List | T, Th | 9:30 - 11:00 | |||||
07W | 2 | Waiting List | M, W, F | 9:00 - 10:00 | |||||
08W | 2 | Waiting List | M, W, F | 11:00 - 12:00 | |||||
09W | 2 | Waiting List | M, W, F | 12:00 - 13:00 | |||||
10W | 2 | Waiting List | M, W, F | 13:00 - 14:00 | |||||
11W | 2 | Waiting List | M, W, F | 14:00 - 15:00 | |||||
12W | 2 | Waiting List | T, Th | 9:30 - 11:00 | |||||
13W | 2 | Waiting List | T, Th | 11:00 - 12:30 | |||||
15W | 2 | Waiting List | T, Th | 14:00 - 15:30 | |||||
LA1 | 1 | Discussion | F | 9:00 - 10:00 | |||||
LA2 | 1 | Discussion | F | 9:00 - 10:00 | |||||
LA3 | 1 | Discussion | F | 9:00 - 10:00 | |||||
LA4 | 1 | Discussion | F | 9:00 - 10:00 | |||||
LA5 | 1 | Discussion | F | 9:00 - 10:00 | |||||
LA6 | 1 | Discussion | F | 9:00 - 10:00 | |||||
LB1 | 1 | Discussion | F | 10:00 - 11:00 | |||||
LB2 | 1 | Discussion | F | 10:00 - 11:00 | |||||
LB3 | 1 | Discussion | F | 10:00 - 11:00 | |||||
LB4 | 1 | Discussion | F | 10:00 - 11:00 | |||||
LB5 | 1 | Discussion | F | 10:00 - 11:00 | |||||
LB6 | 1 | Discussion | F | 10:00 - 11:00 | |||||
LC1 | 1 | Discussion | F | 11:00 - 12:00 | |||||
LC2 | 1 | Discussion | F | 11:00 - 12:00 | |||||
LC3 | 1 | Discussion | F | 11:00 - 12:00 | |||||
LC4 | 1 | Discussion | F | 11:00 - 12:00 | |||||
LC5 | 1 | Discussion | F | 11:00 - 12:00 | |||||
LE1 | 1 | Discussion | F | 13:00 - 14:00 | |||||
LE2 | 1 | Discussion | F | 13:00 - 14:00 | |||||
LE3 | 1 | Discussion | F | 13:00 - 14:00 | |||||
LE4 | 1 | Discussion | F | 13:00 - 14:00 | |||||
LE5 | 1 | Discussion | F | 13:00 - 14:00 | |||||
LE6 | 1 | Discussion | F | 13:00 - 14:00 | |||||
LF1 | 1 | Discussion | F | 12:00 - 13:00 | |||||
LF2 | 1 | Discussion | F | 12:00 - 13:00 | |||||
LF3 | 1 | Discussion | F | 12:00 - 13:00 | |||||
LF4 | 1 | Discussion | F | 12:00 - 13:00 | |||||
LF5 | 1 | Discussion | F | 12:00 - 13:00 | |||||
LF6 | 1 | Discussion | F | 12:00 - 13:00 | |||||
LP1 | 2 | Discussion | F | 9:00 - 10:00 | |||||
LP2 | 2 | Discussion | F | 9:00 - 10:00 | |||||
LP3 | 2 | Discussion | F | 9:00 - 10:00 | |||||
LP4 | 2 | Discussion | F | 9:00 - 10:00 | |||||
LP5 | 2 | Discussion | F | 9:00 - 10:00 | |||||
LQ1 | 2 | Discussion | F | 11:00 - 12:00 | |||||
LQ2 | 2 | Discussion | F | 11:00 - 12:00 | |||||
LQ3 | 2 | Discussion | F | 11:00 - 12:00 | |||||
LQ4 | 2 | Discussion | F | 11:00 - 12:00 | |||||
LQ5 | 2 | Discussion | F | 11:00 - 12:00 | |||||
LR1 | 2 | Discussion | F | 12:00 - 13:00 | |||||
LR2 | 2 | Discussion | F | 12:00 - 13:00 | |||||
LR3 | 2 | Discussion | F | 12:00 - 13:00 | |||||
LR4 | 2 | Discussion | F | 12:00 - 13:00 | |||||
LR5 | 2 | Discussion | F | 12:00 - 13:00 | |||||
LR6 | 2 | Discussion | F | 12:00 - 13:00 | |||||
LS1 | 2 | Discussion | F | 13:00 - 14:00 | |||||
LS2 | 2 | Discussion | F | 13:00 - 14:00 | |||||
LS3 | 2 | Discussion | F | 13:00 - 14:00 | |||||
LS4 | 2 | Discussion | F | 13:00 - 14:00 | |||||
LS5 | 2 | Discussion | F | 13:00 - 14:00 | |||||
LS6 | 2 | Discussion | F | 13:00 - 14:00 | |||||
LT1 | 2 | Discussion | F | 14:00 - 15:00 | |||||
LT2 | 2 | Discussion | F | 14:00 - 15:00 | |||||
LT3 | 2 | Discussion | F | 14:00 - 15:00 | |||||
LT4 | 2 | Discussion | F | 14:00 - 15:00 | |||||
LT5 | 2 | Discussion | F | 14:00 - 15:00 |
Approaches to Literature and Culture
ENGL 110
keyboard_arrow_downStudy of selected examples of literary and cultural expression: examples may include poetry, fiction, drama, life narratives, essays, graphic novels, screenplays, and narrative adaptations in film and other media. Essays are required.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
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JL1 | 2 | Lecture | M, W | 12:00 - 15:00 | Sharpe, Jillian | Section DescriptionLiterary ExperimentsHow have authors grappled with the problem of representing consciousness and qualia in writing? In this course, we will consider how prose, poetry, and dramaturgy have endeavored to depict human thought and will examine how particular forms of experimental or postmodern writing allow us to represent different kinds of thoughts, like memory and association. We will consider how these authors use form and content in tandem to comment on human subjectivity and the question of how faithfully thought can be conveyed through literature. Texts: Texts are likely to include Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, Charles Portis’s The Dog of the South, Sam Shepard’s Suicide in B♭, and poems from T.S. Eliot and Frank O’Hara. | |||
JL2 | 2 | Lecture | M, W | 18:00 - 21:00 | Fox, Lorcan Francis | Section DescriptionThis section of English 110 will introduce students to basic elements of university-level literary study by examining a wide range of works in three genres: poetry, prose fiction, and drama. These works are of various literary eras and by authors from diverse cultural backgrounds. Students will be taught methods of literary analysis that should enable them to read each work with care, appreciation, and (one hopes) enjoyment.
Text: Lisa Chalykoff, Neta Gordon, Paul Lumsden, eds. The Broadview Introduction to Literature: Concise Edition, 2nd ed. (Broadview, 2019) A Provisional Reading ListPOEMS: Emily Dickinson, “Tell all the Truth but tell it slant”; Ezra Pound, “The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter”; Theodore Roethke, “My Papa’s Waltz”; Elizabeth Bishop, “One Art”; Adrienne Rich, “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers”; Margaret Atwood, “Death of a Young Son by Drowning”; George Eliot Clarke, “Casualties”; Jackie Kay, “In My Country”; Karen Solie, “Nice” SHORT STORIES: Kate Chopin, “The Story of an Hour”; Chinua Achebe, “Dead Men’s Path”; Alistair MacLeod, “As Birds Bring Forth the Sun”; Alice Munro, “Friend of My Youth”; Margaret Atwood, “Happy Endings”; Thomas King, “A Short History of Indians in Canada”; Kazuo Ishiguro, “A Family Supper” PLAYS: William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night; Henrik Ibsen, A Doll’s House | |||
JL3 | 2 | Lecture | T, Th | 12:00 - 15:00 | Baxter, Gisele Marie | Section DescriptionLiterary Monsters and Monstrous Literature
Rey: “You are a monster.” “Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time into this breathing world” – Richard III 1.i
What is a monster? We know monsters from myths and legends, folktales, horror fiction and film. We know their variety: the grotesque, the beautiful, the terrifying, the pitiable, the sports of nature and the forces of evil. Dragons, werewolves, vampires, zombies, Frankenstein’s Creature, Dorian Gray, the Joker, Hannibal Lecter, Marisa Coulter, many of the characters in The Walking Dead or Game of Thrones: they’re everywhere, from under the bed to the house next door to the battlefield, and right into a great deal of literature. Which leaves us here: in this section of 110 we’ll focus on how literary texts across the genres use representations of monstrosity in ways that inspire both terror and horror, as well as (let’s be honest) fascination and even enjoyment. We’ll look at William Shakespeare’s Richard III (a play that meditates on villainy and ambition in demonizing its subject for Tudor audiences, yet still fascinates contemporary ones) and at Ian McKellen’s 1995 film adaptation, which shifts the setting to an alternate-reality 1930s England where fascism takes hold. We will also consider various stage and screen adaptations as approaches to the play, including recent ones using race and gender-diverse casting, and sometimes featuring as Richard actors who are themselves physically disabled or disfigured. Other core texts include selected poetry (with a focus on the sonnet form) and two novels: Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Evaluation will be based on two timed essays, a home paper, and a final exam, plus participation in discussion both in class and on our Canvas site. Please keep checking my blog for updates: https://blogs.ubc.ca/drgmbaxter/ | |||
JL4 | 2 | Lecture | T, Th | 18:00 - 21:00 | Culbert, John | Section DescriptionLiterature plays an important role in the representation of human experience and cultural identities. For this same reason, literature also gives rise to different readings, re-readings and debates – interpretations that reflect changing historical contexts, different cultural values, and contrasting standpoints. Our assigned readings for this term will include texts that dramatize the politics of representation in cross-cultural situations, with themes that range from the discovery of the “New World,” modern colonization, and current issues of migration and asylum. As we explore these themes, you will learn some of the distinctive interpretive methods of literary analysis and critical argument. Texts include Shakespeare, The Tempest; Conrad, Heart of Darkness; and Boochani, No Friend but the Mountains. | |||
MA1 | 1 | Lecture | M, W | 12:00 - 15:00 | Scholes, Judith | Section DescriptionReading Humans in NatureIn this section of ENGL 110, we will read, think, and write about literature that explores the human experience of being in nature among nonhumans. Several questions will guide us in this work: how is the human and nonhuman conceptualized in these texts; how do humans and nonhumans figure, interact, differentiate, or mesh? What human-nonhuman relations do these literary works grapple with, articulate, or deconstruct? How might language shape these relations? What does it mean to read, write, or perform these relations? Spanning multiple genres (fiction, poetry, drama) and two centuries (1818-2018), our literary selections will include works by Mary Shelley, Emily Dickinson, William and Dorothy Wordsworth, Walt Whitman, Virginia Woolf, Camille Dungy, Joy Harjo, Allison Adelle Hedge Coke, and Matthew McKenzie, among others. Over the term, students will develop their own conclusions about literary representations of humans in nature, while honing their skills as a readers, writers, and critical thinkers. In every class, students will participate in full-class and small-group discussions on the literature we are reading. They will also complete two in-class analysis assignments, and write a final take-home essay that will critically and comparatively analyze texts we’ve read this term. A cumulative final exam will be held at the end of term.
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MA2 | 1 | Lecture | M, W | 18:00 - 21:00 | Giffen, Sheila | Section DescriptionPandemic Writing in Sacred and Secular WorldsThis course provides an introduction to literary analysis with a focus on literature about epidemics. In particular, we will consider how writers respond to states of pandemic crisis by exploring the dynamic relationship between sacred and secular worlds. What’s the use of turning to literature in the time of a deadly epidemic? How do artists and writers reckon with the social, political, spiritual, and epistemological impacts of health crises? Taking up selected poetry (Assotto Saint, Jack Spicer), drama (Tony Kushner) and fiction (Lee Maracle), we will consider how religion, spirituality, and secularism are theorized in pandemic art and writing. Over the course of the term, we will explore: the reclamation of sacred knowledge in response to settler colonialism and disease; the entanglement of sexuality and spirituality in HIV/AIDS narratives; and the capacity for creative expression to enact healing and resistance. In doing so, we will consider how pandemic writing conveys embodied experiences of gender, race, sexuality, and health in the context of colonial and racial histories. Our course will primarily consist of seminar-style discussions, guided by close readings of the literature. Students will develop critical strategies for analysing poetry, fiction, and drama, and will learn how to make arguments about literature in academic writing. Texts: Assotto Saint, selected poetry; Tony Kushner, Angels in America; Lee Maracle, Ravensong | |||
MA3 | 1 | Lecture | T, Th | 12:00 - 15:00 | Culbert, John | Section DescriptionLiterature plays an important role in the representation of human experience and cultural identities. For this same reason, literature also gives rise to different readings, re-readings and debates – interpretations that reflect changing historical contexts, different cultural values, and contrasting standpoints. Our assigned readings for this term will include texts that dramatize the politics of representation in cross-cultural situations, with themes that range from the discovery of the “New World,” modern colonization, and current issues of migration and asylum. As we explore these themes, you will learn some of the distinctive interpretive methods of literary analysis and critical argument. Texts include Shakespeare, The Tempest; Conrad, Heart of Darkness; and Boochani, No Friend but the Mountains. | |||
MA4 | 1 | Lecture | T, Th | 18:00 - 21:00 | Jerome, Gillian | Section DescriptionLiterature and Love: How do love stories shape us?What do we talk about when we talk about love? In this course we’ll ask this question in various ways by taking a look at how a variety of texts approach questions of loving, and writing about love—different kinds of love—in different ways. If love is constituted, in part, by the language used to describe it, how does the language of love stories shape how we perceive and experience it? How do our love stories shape our expectations and experiences of love? How do the metaphors we use shape the way we think about love? What do our conventional love narratives suggest about gender, sexuality, and marriage? How do individual experiences of love deviate from these narratives--and why should we care? Is love merely personal, intense, private or is it also socially and politically useful? What does literature have to say about this? This course introduces you to the skills and practices of literary criticism by inviting you, and equipping you, to interrogate details of language and form, and to pull together and analyze research sources in order to support sound and interesting arguments, i.e. to “read” these primary texts in new and deeper ways. You will be invited to ask rich and provocative questions about literary texts, find and analyze research sources and write good, clear arguments. Lively engagement is a basic requirement. You will be asked to write two close readings and a research paper in this course. Texts are likely to include short stories by Kim Fu, an essay about friendship by Ann Patchett, the film Rocks by Sarah Gavron, David Chariandy’s Brother, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s Islands of Decolonial Love, as well as other contextual readings.
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WJ1 | 2 | Waiting List | M, W | 12:00 - 15:00 | |||||
WJ2 | 2 | Waiting List | M, W | 18:00 - 21:00 | |||||
WJ3 | 2 | Waiting List | T, Th | 12:00 - 15:00 | |||||
WJ4 | 2 | Waiting List | T, Th | 18:00 - 21:00 | |||||
WM1 | 1 | Waiting List | M, W | 12:00 - 15:00 | |||||
WM2 | 1 | Waiting List | M, W | 18:00 - 21:00 | |||||
WM3 | 1 | Waiting List | T, Th | 12:00 - 15:00 | |||||
WM4 | 1 | Waiting List | T, Th | 18:00 - 21:00 |
Approaches to Literature and Culture
ENGL 110
keyboard_arrow_downStudy of selected examples of literary and cultural expression: examples may include poetry, fiction, drama, life narratives, essays, graphic novels, screenplays, and narrative adaptations in film and other media. Essays are required.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
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001 | 1 | Lecture | M, W | 9:00 - 10:00 | Potter, Tiffany | Section Description400 Years of Asking the Big QuestionsThere will be shipwrecks, magic, mad scientists, beast-people, a garden party, and his first ball. As we read stories of wrecks and disasters—structural, personal, and social— we will consider the significance of the ways these stories ask some of the big questions human beings have struggled with for centuries: What makes us human and not animal? What is human nature, and is it really natural? What about gender, race, and other kinds of difference? Who has power and why? Do we just reflect reality with the stories we tell ourselves, or are we actually creating reality? Along with substantial work on poetry, this section of English 110 will focus on one play, one novel, and a group of short stories that engage the different ways that people respond to circumstances that challenge what they thought was “natural” or “universal.” This course introduces students to the analytical skills and critical thinking essential to university-level literary reading, thinking and writing. In large lectures and 30-student Friday discussion groups, students pursue hands-on practice of methods of literary analysis. Please note that this is not a course on writing (that’s ENGL 100 or WRDS 150): we’ll spend our time on fabulous literature rather than essay-writing technicals. Want a head start this summer? Choose HG Wells’ short but creepy mad scientist novel, The Island of Dr. Moreau or Shakespeare’s classic shipwreck+magic play, The Tempest. You can see videos of different productions of Tempest for free through the UBC library or stream the great 2010 film, starring Helen Mirren and Djimon Hounsou (but take a pass on the really, really terrible Island of Dr Moreau movie, trust me!). | |||
002 | 1 | Lecture | M, W | 10:00 - 11:00 | Chapman, Mary Ann | Section DescriptionImitation is at the heart of most works of literature. Even as critics and scholars celebrate authors’ originally, the truth is that all writers copy: They make allusions to other works of literature. They embed quotation in their works. They parody other writers and forms for satirical purposes. This particular section of ENGL 110 explores how a diverse range of US writers--poets, fiction writers, even rappers--find their original voices, paradoxically, by imitating earlier writers and genres. Students will explore how allusions--to both Broadway musicals and rap lyrics--inform the meaning of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s 2016 musical Hamilton. We will also consider how 20th-century African American poets parody Shakespeare and other poets in order to cultivate a distinctly African American poetic tradition. We will analyze how literal and literary inheritance are at the heart of the American novel. Finally, we will reflect on how artificial intelligence chatbots generate content through imitation. Works will include:
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003 | 1 | Lecture | M, W | 12:00 - 13:00 | Burgess, Miranda | Section DescriptionIn relation: Identity, Inheritance, Survival, LoveThe founding idea of western European and North American settler colonial versions of democracy is the primacy of the person (the self-identical subject, the distinctly human, the autonomous individual.) Yet societies considered globally offer many understandings of actual and ideal relationships between the thinking, feeling one and the gifts, obligations, and lived experience of the many. Even those European and Euro-American philosophers and poets who have longed for and celebrated the singular self-sufficient person have, inevitably, also uneasily acknowledged that people intrinsically and necessarily exist in relation to other people. Drawing on and considering works by Indigenous (Métis), Black (American), Vietnamese American, and Anglo-British authors, from the 19th century to the present, we’ll focus on four specific and elaborate investigations of identities and persons in relation to others. We’ll consider the way these texts represent relations between identity and community in the context of war, colonization, enslavement, and the rise of western European science. We’ll ask questions such as: what is kinship, and what do these texts propose it could be? How do these texts, and how should we, understand the connections between family and political understandings of community? What does, and what might, community look like in the continuing wake of genocide? How are identities shaped by inheritance—and what does an individual owe to ancestors and to history? How has, and how can, writing, and the writer’s art, critique, repair, and build community? We’ll focus, especially, on considering these ideas in conjunction with our own understandings of identity in relation to family, kinship, community, and society. Major texts:
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004 | 1 | Lecture | M, W | 13:00 - 14:00 | Wong, Danielle | Section DescriptionThe Body at the BorderThis course introduces students to methods for studying literature, media, and critical theory by focusing on the body’s relationship to borders. Through our engagement with North American cultural productions, students will develop skills essential to university-level reading, writing, and analysis by engaging contemporary North American cultural productions. We will focus on the relationships between race, gender, sexuality and narratives of migration within ongoing histories of imperialism and settler colonialism. The course uses the frameworks of literary theory, cultural studies, postcolonial theory, and diaspora studies in order to attend to formal and thematic components of cultural productions, and to put them in conversation with questions about borders and migration. | |||
005 | 1 | Lecture | M, W | 14:00 - 15:00 | Luger, Moberley | Section DescriptionWhat can Literature do?: Counternarratives of the 21st CenturyScientists use data—gathered through experimentation, for example, or measurement—to discover and interpret the world around them. What do literary scholars use? What kind of “data” is a graphic narrative, a novel, or a poem? And what can the study of literature tell us about how we interpret the world we live in? In particular, what might we learn from literature that we can’t learn by other means? The texts on this course include local and global stories written in this century. They will show us contemporary lives lived in different corners of the world—for example, a Pakistani university student in New York, an Indigenous hockey player in Ontario. These are personal stories about public events, and they are the stories that have generally been less discovered, measured, or recorded. They reveal the sometimes invisible, even erased, narratives and lives that lurk behind the headlines or history books. They invite us to ask, who gets to speak and who may be silenced? What kind of knowledge does literature give us access to—and what should we do with that knowledge? Texts: Possible texts include The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui, The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid, Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese, Injun by Jordan Abel. | |||
006 | 1 | Lecture | T, Th | 11:00 - 12:30 | Pareles, Mo | Section DescriptionFictions of the Queer PastUs. The word glided through her mind like a leaf, or a stone, troubling the waters. Over the years, she’d encountered a range of women who could be seen as part of this us, whether they’d admit to it or not…but wasn’t joining the trip a kind of incrimination? Five, together. She’d never heard of such a thing. --Carolina de Robertis, Cantoras Who and what is queer? What counts as queer history and queer historical fiction? Focusing on two recent novels about the queer 20th century (Carolina de Robertis’s Cantoras and Michael Nava’s Carved in Bone), and reading other short fiction and poetry, we will explore these questions and pursue the pleasures of critical reading and writing. By the end of this first-year writing course, students will have developed the tools to succeed in humanities courses. | |||
007 | 2 | Lecture | M, W | 9:00 - 10:00 | James, Suzanne | Section DescriptionDefining the SelfHow do we define ourselves – as Canadians, as artists, as lovers, as survivors? These are some of the broad issues of identity and belonging we will explore through a selection of fiction, drama and poetry in this section of English 110. We will consider ways in which individuals craft and perform the "selves" they wish to be, and the multiplicity of ways in which writers convey these identities through literary texts. To what extent do we control the person we become and to what extent are we shaped by our community? How meaningful are the concepts of ethnicity, gender and nationality in the creation of identity? How can a writer convey the complex and shifting nature of individual and group identity through the permanence of written discourse? Texts studied will include a novel (Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi), a play (The Rez Sisters by Tomson Highway), and a selection of short stories and poetry. In lectures and seminars, students will engage with concepts of genre and form in literature and will pursue hands-on practice of methods of literary analysis. Students will be encouraged to develop independent critical responses to the works studied. Assessment will include two in-class essays, a term paper and a final examination. | |||
008 | 2 | Lecture | M, W | 11:00 - 12:00 | Cavell, Richard Anthony | Section DescriptionThe course provides students with an understanding of relationships between literature and media. It further provides them with an understanding of literary genre, and of the ways in which different media function. There are modules on the electronic book, on the relationship between photography and narration, on information culture, on media history, on media metafictions, and on Indigenous media. In addition, the course encourages students in reading and writing strategies that will enhance their ability to communicate ideas effectively. | |||
009 | 2 | Lecture | M, W | 12:00 - 13:00 | Gooding, Richard | Section DescriptionLiterature for a Warming World“People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are at the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth.” (Greta Thunberg, address to the United Nations General Assembly, 2019) When we think about climate change, we may feel torn between concern for the fate of our planet and our desire for an unending supply of consumer goods. Depending on our politics, respect for scientific expertise, and ecological sensibility, we are likely to admire figures like Greta Thunberg or throw our lot in with her critics and plead the necessity of continued economic growth. Wherever our allegiances lie, we may wonder what potential worlds await us. In this course we will read a variety of literary representations of worlds altered by climate change. Readings will include a selection of poems and short stories, a novel (Catherynne M. Valente’s The Past is Red), and a graphic novel (Jacques Lob and Jean-Marc Rochette’s Snowpiercer: The Escape). | |||
010 | 2 | Lecture | M, W | 13:00 - 14:00 | Rouse, Robert | Section DescriptionFantastic Pasts and Science Futures: Speculative Fictions and HistoriesWhere have we been, and where are we going? Fantasy and Science Fiction – two of the genres that fit into the capacious mode of Speculative Fiction – have been at the centre of addressing these questions since the middle of the 20th century. This course is structured in two parts: first examining the history and development of the genre of Fantasy – from JRR Tolkien to GRR Martin and beyond – and its role in mediating the multiple pasts of western society, and second an introduction to the ever-moving genre of Science Fiction and its probing speculations about our future. We will read a range of novels and short stories – and watch some film and TV – both classics and lesser known works, as we examine the role of these two genres in the exploration of how literature reflects, shapes, and reshapes our sense of our past as a society, and poses questions as to our possible futures. Please note that this is not a course on writing (that would be ENGL 100 or WRDS 150): we will spend our time on fantastic literature rather than essay-writing technical skills. | |||
011 | 2 | Lecture | M, W | 14:00 - 15:00 | Anger, Suzy | Section DescriptionStrange Science, Ghosts, Robots, and Literary TheoryIn this section of English 110, we will read literary texts depicting ghosts, artificial life, and strange science. The course will teach you to think and write critically about literature at the university level. It will also introduce you to contemporary literary theories. We will examine a range of approaches to the interpretation of literature, including psychoanalytical, Marxist, feminist, and postcolonial, and use the theories to analyze the literature we study. Texts: Texts read will include Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, George Eliot’s “The Lifted Veil,” and Karel Čapek’s R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots). | |||
012 | 2 | Lecture | T, Th | 9:30 - 11:00 | Basile, Jonathan | Section DescriptionModernism, Science, and the EnvironmentThe early twentieth century was a period of rapid technological change, coupled with unprecedented experimentation by artists reflecting on the transformations around them. We will read novels, poems, plays, and short stories from this time period with an eye toward how scientific authority and technological power is imitated, placed on stage, interrogated, and parodied. Themes to include: scientific experimentation and the scientist as cultural figure, representations of race, gender, and sexuality, ideas of heredity and evolution, fears of technology and apocalyptic imaginaries, environmental degradation and foreshadowings of climate change, and the changing relationship to nature, nonhuman life, and historical memory. Readings from Virginia Woolf, Ralph Ellison, George Schuyler, Samuel Beckett, Jorge Luis Borges, and others. | |||
013 | 2 | Lecture | T, Th | 11:00 - 12:30 | Baxter, Gisele Marie | Section DescriptionLiterary Monsters and Monstrous LiteratureRey: “You are a monster.” “Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time into this breathing world” – Richard III 1.i What is a monster? We know monsters from myths and legends, folktales, horror fiction and film. We know their variety: the grotesque, the beautiful, the terrifying, the pitiable, the sports of nature and the forces of evil. Dragons, werewolves, vampires, zombies, Frankenstein’s Creature, Dorian Gray, the Joker, Hannibal Lecter, Marisa Coulter, many of the characters in The Walking Dead or Game of Thrones: they’re everywhere, from under the bed to the house next door to the battlefield, and right into a great deal of literature. Which leaves us here: in this section of 110 we’ll focus on how literary texts across the genres use representations of monstrosity in ways that inspire both terror and horror, as well as (let’s be honest) fascination and even enjoyment. We’ll look at William Shakespeare’s Richard III (a play that meditates on villainy and ambition in demonizing its subject for Tudor audiences, yet still fascinates contemporary ones) and at Ian McKellen’s 1995 film adaptation, which shifts the setting to an alternate-reality 1930s England where fascism takes hold. We will also consider various stage and screen adaptations as approaches to the play, including recent ones using race and gender-diverse casting, and casting as Richard actors who are themselves physically disabled or disfigured. Other core texts include two novels: Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle, as well as selected poetry (with a focus on the sonnet form). Evaluation will be based on two timed essays, a home paper, and a final exam, plus participation in discussion. Keep checking my blog (https://blogs.ubc.ca/drgmbaxter/) for updates concerning texts and requirements. | |||
014 | 2 | Lecture | T, Th | 14:00 - 15:30 | Fox, Lorcan Francis | Section DescriptionThis section of English 110 will introduce students to basic elements of university-level literary study by examining a wide range of works in three genres: poetry, prose fiction, and drama. These works are of various literary eras and by authors from diverse cultural backgrounds. Students will be taught methods of literary analysis that should enable them to read each work with care, appreciation, and (I hope) enjoyment.
Provisional Reading List: poetry by Elizabeth Bishop, Gwendolyn MacEwen, Michael Ondaatje, Jackie Kay, Hai-Dang Phan, and others (available online) short fiction by Kate Chopin, Anton Chekhov, Margaret Atwood, Kazuo Ishiguro, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and others (available online) Shakespeare, King Lear (Broadview) Samuel Beckett, Endgame (Grove) | |||
01W | 1 | Waiting List | M, W, F | 9:00 - 10:00 | |||||
02W | 1 | Waiting List | M, W, F | 10:00 - 11:00 | |||||
03W | 1 | Waiting List | M, W, F | 12:00 - 13:00 | |||||
04W | 1 | Waiting List | M, W, F | 13:00 - 14:00 | |||||
05W | 1 | Waiting List | M, W, F | 14:00 - 15:00 | |||||
06W | 1 | Waiting List | T, Th | 11:00 - 12:30 | |||||
07W | 2 | Waiting List | M, W, F | 9:00 - 10:00 | |||||
08W | 2 | Waiting List | M, W, F | 11:00 - 12:00 | |||||
09W | 2 | Waiting List | M, W, F | 12:00 - 13:00 | |||||
10W | 2 | Waiting List | M, W, F | 13:00 - 14:00 | |||||
11W | 2 | Waiting List | M, W, F | 14:00 - 15:00 | |||||
12W | 2 | Waiting List | T, Th | 9:30 - 11:00 | |||||
13W | 2 | Waiting List | T, Th | 11:00 - 12:30 | |||||
14W | 2 | Waiting List | T, Th | 14:00 - 15:30 | |||||
LA1 | 1 | Discussion | F | 9:00 - 10:00 | |||||
LA2 | 1 | Discussion | F | 9:00 - 10:00 | |||||
LA3 | 1 | Discussion | F | 9:00 - 10:00 | |||||
LA4 | 1 | Discussion | F | 9:00 - 10:00 | |||||
LA5 | 1 | Discussion | F | 9:00 - 10:00 | |||||
LA6 | 1 | Discussion | F | 9:00 - 10:00 | |||||
LB1 | 1 | Discussion | F | 10:00 - 11:00 | |||||
LB2 | 1 | Discussion | F | 10:00 - 11:00 | |||||
LB3 | 1 | Discussion | F | 10:00 - 11:00 | |||||
LB4 | 1 | Discussion | F | 10:00 - 11:00 | |||||
LB5 | 1 | Discussion | F | 10:00 - 11:00 | |||||
LB6 | 1 | Discussion | F | 10:00 - 11:00 | |||||
LC1 | 1 | Discussion | F | 12:00 - 13:00 | |||||
LC2 | 1 | Discussion | F | 12:00 - 13:00 | |||||
LC3 | 1 | Discussion | F | 12:00 - 13:00 | |||||
LC4 | 1 | Discussion | F | 12:00 - 13:00 | |||||
LC5 | 1 | Discussion | F | 12:00 - 13:00 | |||||
LC6 | 1 | Discussion | F | 12:00 - 13:00 | |||||
LE1 | 1 | Discussion | F | 14:00 - 15:00 | |||||
LE2 | 1 | Discussion | F | 14:00 - 15:00 | |||||
LE3 | 1 | Discussion | F | 14:00 - 15:00 | |||||
LE4 | 1 | Discussion | F | 14:00 - 15:00 | |||||
LE5 | 1 | Discussion | F | 14:00 - 15:00 | |||||
LF1 | 1 | Discussion | F | 13:00 - 14:00 | |||||
LF2 | 1 | Discussion | F | 13:00 - 14:00 | |||||
LF3 | 1 | Discussion | F | 13:00 - 14:00 | |||||
LF4 | 1 | Discussion | F | 13:00 - 14:00 | |||||
LF5 | 1 | Discussion | F | 13:00 - 14:00 | |||||
LF6 | 1 | Discussion | F | 13:00 - 14:00 | |||||
LP1 | 2 | Discussion | F | 9:00 - 10:00 | |||||
LP2 | 2 | Discussion | F | 9:00 - 10:00 | |||||
LP3 | 2 | Discussion | F | 9:00 - 10:00 | |||||
LP4 | 2 | Discussion | F | 9:00 - 10:00 | |||||
LP5 | 2 | Discussion | F | 9:00 - 10:00 | |||||
LQ1 | 2 | Discussion | F | 11:00 - 12:00 | |||||
LQ2 | 2 | Discussion | F | 11:00 - 12:00 | |||||
LQ3 | 2 | Discussion | F | 11:00 - 12:00 | |||||
LQ4 | 2 | Discussion | F | 11:00 - 12:00 | |||||
LQ5 | 2 | Discussion | F | 11:00 - 12:00 | |||||
LR1 | 2 | Discussion | F | 12:00 - 13:00 | |||||
LR2 | 2 | Discussion | F | 12:00 - 13:00 | |||||
LR3 | 2 | Discussion | F | 12:00 - 13:00 | |||||
LR4 | 2 | Discussion | F | 12:00 - 13:00 | |||||
LR5 | 2 | Discussion | F | 12:00 - 13:00 | |||||
LR6 | 2 | Discussion | F | 12:00 - 13:00 | |||||
LS1 | 2 | Discussion | F | 13:00 - 14:00 | |||||
LS2 | 2 | Discussion | F | 13:00 - 14:00 | |||||
LS3 | 2 | Discussion | F | 13:00 - 14:00 | |||||
LS4 | 2 | Discussion | F | 13:00 - 14:00 | |||||
LS5 | 2 | Discussion | F | 13:00 - 14:00 | |||||
LS6 | 2 | Discussion | F | 13:00 - 14:00 | |||||
LT1 | 2 | Discussion | F | 14:00 - 15:00 | |||||
LT2 | 2 | Discussion | F | 14:00 - 15:00 | |||||
LT3 | 2 | Discussion | F | 14:00 - 15:00 | |||||
LT4 | 2 | Discussion | F | 14:00 - 15:00 | |||||
LT5 | 2 | Discussion | F | 14:00 - 15:00 |
Approaches to Literature and Culture
ENGL 110
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Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
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JL1 | 2 | Lecture | M, W | 12:00 - 15:00 | Sharpe, Jillian | Section DescriptionLiterary ExperimentsHow have contemporary U.S. authors grappled with the problem of representing consciousness, subjectivity, and qualia in writing? In this course, we will consider how prose, poetry, and dramaturgy have endeavored to depict human thought and will examine how specific forms of experimental or postmodern writing allow us to represent internal experiences like memory and association. We will also consider how these authors use form and content in tandem to comment on human subjectivity and the question of how faithfully thought can be conveyed through literature. This course will introduce students to a range of literary genres and to the principles of academic close reading, analysis and writing at a university level. Texts: Texts are likely to include Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses, Tracy Letts’s August: Osage County, and poems from T.S. Eliot and Marianne Moore. | |||
JL2 | 2 | Lecture | M, W | 18:00 - 21:00 | Roukema, Aren | Section DescriptionINSTRUCTOR: AREN ROUKEMA Narrating RealitiesWhat does it mean to “represent” a real-world fact, experience, or belief in fiction? What happens to that “real” thing once it becomes part of a story? Why do we use stories — instead of more clearly factual modes of communication — to describe our perceptions and experiences of reality? What are the signals we use to differentiate fact from fiction in the first place? If we accept that the lines between story and reality are blurry, how can fiction be used to propose alternative realities, or challenge the “truths” and perceptions of this one? This course will analyze themes of fictional reality in texts from authors including Jorge Luis Borges, Lana and Lilly Wachowski, and Tim O’Brien. We will particularly focus on texts by racially marginalized authors in North America, including Eden Robinson, Audre Lorde, and Octavia Butler, who have used fiction as a space in which to challenge the realities asserted by colonizer knowledge and stories. We will encounter texts in various formal genres — a novel, short fiction, poetry, graphic narratives, a film — and ask how varying approaches to narrating reality mark the differences between these genres. Texts: Texts will include Robinson's Monkey Beach (Vintage, 2000), graphic narratives from Moonshot: The Indigenous Comics Collection, Volume 3 (Avani, 2020), the Wachowskis’ first Matrix film (1999), and various poems and short stories. | |||
JL3 | 2 | Lecture | T, Th | 12:00 - 15:00 | Section DescriptionINSTRUCTOR: MIKE WILKINSON Imagining the Human in ScienceThrough the nineteenth century, intellectuals frequently blended scientific facts with literary genres and modes not only to express scientific discoveries to the public, but to pose the question: what is the role of subjectivity in science? This course will present a range of works that imagine the human in science from a variety of perspectives and consider the impact of culture, race, class, and gender. We will examine how genres like the gothic, poetry, the essay, and the memoir explore what H.G Wells called the “human interest and passion” of science. Students will close read and analyze both non-fiction and fiction from the nineteenth century, and then move to consider how questions of the human in science take shape today, particularly with concerns surrounding artificial intelligence. Assignments will involve peer collaboration work, close reading and analysis, and a written essay. Texts: Many of our readings (essays, poems, and short stories) are from the nineteenth century and exist in the public domain and are freely available online. Possible authors include H.G. Wells, H.P. Lovecraft, Alfred Tennyson, and Edgar Allan Poe. The only two texts you will need to purchase will be Catherine Wynne’s 2009 edited collection of The Parasite and the Watter’s Mou and Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass (2013). We will also watch Alex Garland’s Ex Machina (2014), which is available through the UBC library, Netflix, and other online platforms. | ||||
MA1 | 1 | Lecture | M, W | 12:00 - 15:00 | Dinat, Deena | Section DescriptionPower and Protest in South African LiteratureThis 6-week course introduces students to key voices in the relationship between South African literature and South African politics. How did writers living under the oppressive, violent system of apartheid (1948-1990) use literature to subvert, critique and challenge the state? What literary strategies were used to turn poetry into a “weapon of struggle?” And how did writers respond when the struggle for freedom was won, and literature no longer needed to function as a “weapon?” In exploring these questions students will encounter a selection of poetry and short stories from a wide range of South African writers, including Chris van Wyk, Mongane Wally Serote, Zoë Wicomb, Ivan Vladislavić, Gabeba Baderoon and Pravasan Pillay. Our meetings will involve a combination of lectures, seminar-style discussions, and in-class writing activities. Over the course of the semester students will refine their close reading skills, learn to identify and analyze literary techniques in prose and poetry, and develop their argumentation skills through a focus on the essay. | |||
MA2 | 1 | Lecture | M, W | 18:00 - 21:00 | Inniss, Scott | Section DescriptionThis course serves as an introduction to three core literary genres: the short story, poetry, and the novel. Its aim is to identify the (formal, social) conventions and traits that define these genres in order to consider how writers use, modify, and subvert them and to what ends. What does is mean for a Jamaican American poet to turn to the sonnet as a literary and cultural vehicle for interrogating Black experience in America at the time of the Harlem Renaissance? What resources does science fiction offer as a narrative mode for figuring post-globalization finance capitalism? Why would a writer choose detective fiction and the murder mystery as genres for critiquing right-wing nationalism in Argentina during the Second World War? The syllabus for this class includes stories and poems by Jorge Luis Borges, William Gibson, Liz Howard, Franz Kafka, Jamaica Kincaid, Thomas King, and Claude McKay. As a group of literary texts, these stories and poems emerge from varying historical contexts, and their authors write from a range of social positions, in terms of nationality but also identity (gender, race, class, sexuality). Not surprisingly, the texts are unique in their content and meaning and compel us to consider a variety of issues: colonialism, Indigeneity, land and ecology, the role of the artist, capitalism, slavery, diaspora (among others). What they perhaps share, however, is a commitment to using literary forms as frameworks for narrating, investigating, and contesting the dominant political histories of the past century. | |||
MA3 | 1 | Lecture | T, Th | 12:00 - 15:00 | Sharpe, Jillian | Section DescriptionLiterary ExperimentsHow have contemporary U.S. authors grappled with the problem of representing consciousness, subjectivity, and qualia in writing? In this course, we will consider how prose, poetry, and dramaturgy have endeavored to depict human thought and will examine how specific forms of experimental or postmodern writing allow us to represent internal experiences like memory and association. We will also consider how these authors use form and content in tandem to comment on human subjectivity and the question of how faithfully thought can be conveyed through literature. This course will introduce students to a range of literary genres and to the principles of academic close reading, analysis and writing at a university level. Texts: Texts are likely to include Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses, Tracy Letts’s August: Osage County, and poems from T.S. Eliot and Marianne Moore.
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MA4 | 1 | Lecture | T, Th | 18:00 - 21:00 | Culbert, John | ||||
WJ1 | 2 | Waiting List | M, W | 12:00 - 15:00 | |||||
WJ2 | 2 | Waiting List | M, W | 18:00 - 21:00 | |||||
WJ3 | 2 | Waiting List | T, Th | 12:00 - 15:00 | |||||
WM1 | 1 | Waiting List | M, W | 12:00 - 15:00 | |||||
WM2 | 1 | Waiting List | M, W | 18:00 - 21:00 | |||||
WM3 | 1 | Waiting List | T, Th | 12:00 - 15:00 | |||||
WM4 | 1 | Waiting List | T, Th | 18:00 - 21:00 |
Approaches to Literature and Culture
ENGL 110
keyboard_arrow_downStudy of selected examples of literary and cultural expression: examples may include poetry, fiction, drama, life narratives, essays, graphic novels, screenplays, and narrative adaptations in film and other media. Essays are required. This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
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004 | 1 | In-Person | Lecture | M, W | 13:00 - 14:00 | Cavell, Richard Anthony | Section DescriptionLiterature and the MediaThis course provides students with an understanding of relationships between literature and media. It further provides them with an understanding of literary genre, and of the ways in which different media function. There are modules on electronic media and the book, on information culture, networks, surveillance capitalism, media metafiction, and on Indigenous cosmography. In addition, the course encourages students in reading and writing strategies that will enhance their ability to communicate ideas effectively. | ||
001 | 1 | In-Person | Lecture | M, W | 09:00 - 10:00 | Potter, Tiffany | Section Description400 Years of Humanity’s Big QuestionsThere will be shipwrecks, magic, mad scientists, beast-people, a garden party, and his first ball. As we read stories of wrecks and disasters—structural, personal, and social— we will consider the significance of the ways these stories ask some of the big questions human beings have struggled with for centuries: What makes us human and not animal? What is human nature, and is it really natural? What about gender, race, and other kinds of difference? Who has power and why? Along with substantial work on poetry, this section of English 110 will focus on one play, one short novel, and a group of short stories that engage the different ways that people respond to circumstances that challenge what they thought was “natural” or “universal.” This course introduces students to the analytical skills and critical thinking essential to university-level literary reading, thinking and writing. In large lectures and 30-student Friday discussion groups, students pursue hands-on practice of methods of literary analysis. Please note that this is not a course on writing (that’s ENGL 100 or WRDS 150): we’ll spend our time on fabulous literature rather than essay-writing instructions. And remember: UBC Law, Medicine, Dentistry, Pharmacy, and Education all require 6 credits of first year English, so 110 will prepare you for lots of future paths! Want a head start this summer? Choose HG Wells’ short and creepy mad scientist novel, The Island of Dr. Moreau or Shakespeare’s classic shipwreck+magic play, The Tempest. You can see videos of different productions of Tempest for free through the UBC library or stream the great 2010 film, starring Helen Mirren and Djimon Hounsou. | ||
007 | 2 | In-Person | Lecture | M, W | 09:00 - 10:00 | Chapman, Mary Ann | Section DescriptionThis course is intended to introduce first-year students to the aims and techniques of university-level literary studies by exposing them to literature written in a range of genres—poetry, drama, narrative—in a range of social and historical contexts. The course balances professor’s lecture-format presentations (Mondays and Wednesdays) with more interactive discussions with TAs (Fridays). This particular section of ENGL 110 will be organized around the relationship between works of literature, i.e. parody, allusion, quotation, homage. We will explore how allusions to both Broadway musicals and rap contribute to the meaning of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s 2016 musical Hamilton. We will explore Harlem Renaissance poetry’s engagement with poetic traditions through parody and allusion. We will then discuss poems by Gwendolyn Brooks, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, and Countee Cullen. The course will wrap up with Winnifred Eaton Reeve’s novel Cattle, which cites conventions of the Western genre. Readings will include:
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005 | 1 | In-Person | Lecture | M, W | 14:00 - 15:00 | Luger, Moberley | Section DescriptionWhat can Literature do?: 21st Century Narratives and CounternarrativesScientists use data—gathered through experimentation, for example, or measurement—to discover and interpret the world around them. What do literary scholars use? What kind of “data” is a graphic narrative, a novel, or a poem? And what can the study of literature tell us about how we interpret the world we live in? In particular, what might we learn from literature that we can’t learn by other means? The texts on this course include local and global stories written in our current century. They will show us contemporary lives lived in different corners of the world—for example, a Pakistani university student in New York, an Ojibwe hockey player in Ontario. These are personal stories about public events, and they are the stories that have generally been less discovered, measured, or recorded. They reveal the sometimes invisible, even erased, narratives and lives that lurk behind the headlines or history books. They invite us to ask, who gets to speak and who may be silenced? What kind of knowledge does literature give us access to—and what should we do with that knowledge? Possible texts include The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui, The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid, Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese, Injun by Jordan Abel. | ||
002 | 1 | In-Person | Lecture | M, W | 10:00 - 11:00 | Dick, Alexander | Section DescriptionAfter FrankensteinMary Shelley’s Frankenstein is by far the most influential work of literature in the English language. It has inspired plays, films, video games, comics, cartoons, stand-up comedy, dolls, cereals, and all manner of science-fiction, horror, and fantasy stories and novels. Many of these adaptations, including the most recent, have brought the concerns of their own time to bear on Shelley’s tale of scientific overreach, monstrosity, guilt, and rejection: these concerns include colonialism, racism, sexuality, artificial intelligence, the nature of life, birth, death, and society. But adaptations also enable us to see in critical and cultural perspectives, how such thorny issues, and our approaches to them, have evolved over time and alongside developments in artistic and other technologies. This course is thus about literary adaptation, but it is also about the histories and assumptions from which these adaptations, and our responses to them, emerge. After reading Shelley’s original novel, we will explore a selection of adaptations of Frankenstein, including the first dramatic adaptation of the novel, Richard Brinsley Peake’s Presumption, or the Fate of Frankenstein (1823), James Whale’s early cinematic masterpieces Frankenstein (1931) and The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), two novels, Alasdair Gray’s Poor Things (1992) as well as Yorgos Lanthimos and Tony McNamara’s recent award-winning film adaptation of it (2023), and Ahmed Saadawi’s Frankenstein in Baghdad (2013), and ending with Victor Lavalle’s disturbing but profound graphic novel, Destroyer (2022). Assignments will include short responses, quizzes, essays, and a final exam. Please note: Frankenstein is a work of horror and, while it is not particularly graphic itself, many of its more recent adaptations have used it to probe challenging issues of violence, sexuality, racism, and war. These and other related issues will be discussed sensitively but openly in lectures and tutorials. Please be prepared. | ||
003 | 1 | In-Person | Lecture | M, W | 12:00 - 13:00 | Guy-bray, Stephen | Section DescriptionWe’ll read plays, short stories, and poems from a range of periods in order to consider how texts work and how we can speak and write about them. The plays are William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, and Suzan-Lori Parks’s Topdog/Underdog. We’ll read short stories from the last (almost) 200 years and poems from the last (almost) 500) years. | ||
010 | 2 | In-Person | Lecture | M, W | 13:00 - 14:00 | Gooding, Rick | Section DescriptionLiterature for a Warming World“People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are at the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth.” -- Greta Thunberg, address to the United Nations General Assembly, 2019 When we think about climate change, we may feel torn between concern for the fate of our planet and our desire for an unending supply of consumer goods. Depending on our politics, respect for scientific expertise, and ecological sensibility, we are likely to admire figures like Greta Thunberg or throw our lot in with her critics and plead the necessity of continued economic growth. Wherever our allegiances lie, we may wonder what potential worlds await us. In this course we will read a variety of literary representations of worlds altered by climate change. Readings will include a selection of poems and short stories, Catherynne M. Valente’s 2021 novel The Past is Red, and Bong Joon-ho’s 2013 film Snowpiercer. | ||
008 | 2 | In-Person | Lecture | M, W | 11:00 - 12:00 | Rouse, Robert | |||
011 | 2 | In-Person | Lecture | M, W | 14:00 - 15:00 | Anger, Suzy | Section DescriptionStrange Science, Monsters, Robots, and Literary TheoryIn this section of English 110, we will read literary texts depicting strange science and artificial life. The course will teach you to think and write critically about literature at the university level. It will also introduce you to contemporary literary theories. We will examine a range of approaches to the interpretation of literature, including Marxist, feminist, and postcolonial, and use the theories to analyze the literature we study. Texts read will include Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, George Eliot’s “The Lifted Veil,” and Karel Čapek’s R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots). | ||
009 | 2 | In-Person | Lecture | M, W | 12:00 - 13:00 | Wong, Danielle | Section DescriptionThe Body at the BorderThis course introduces students to methods for studying literature, media, and critical theory by focusing on the body’s relationship to borders. | ||
014 | 2 | In-Person | Lecture | T | 14:00 - 15:30 | Sandeen, Andrea | Section DescriptionDescription to follow. | ||
LW1 | 2 | In-Person | Discussion | Th | 14:00 - 15:30 | Briggs, Marlene | |||
LV1 | 2 | In-Person | Discussion | Th | 11:00 - 12:30 | ||||
LU1 | 2 | In-Person | Discussion | Th | 09:30 - 11:00 | ||||
LP4 | 2 | In-Person | Discussion | F | 09:00 - 10:00 | ||||
LC2 | 1 | In-Person | Discussion | F | 12:00 - 13:00 | Guy-bray, Stephen | |||
LS4 | 2 | In-Person | Discussion | F | 13:00 - 14:00 | ||||
LR6 | 2 | In-Person | Discussion | F | 12:00 - 13:00 | ||||
LF1 | 1 | In-Person | Discussion | F | 13:00 - 14:00 | Cavell, Richard Anthony | |||
LQ4 | 2 | In-Person | Discussion | F | 11:00 - 12:00 | ||||
LQ3 | 2 | In-Person | Discussion | F | 11:00 - 12:00 | ||||
LA3 | 1 | In-Person | Discussion | F | 09:00 - 10:00 | Potter, Tiffany | |||
LB4 | 1 | In-Person | Discussion | F | 10:00 - 11:00 | Dick, Alexander | |||
LT3 | 2 | In-Person | Discussion | F | 14:00 - 15:00 | ||||
LR4 | 2 | In-Person | Discussion | F | 12:00 - 13:00 | ||||
LF3 | 1 | In-Person | Discussion | F | 13:00 - 14:00 | Cavell, Richard Anthony | |||
LQ2 | 2 | In-Person | Discussion | F | 11:00 - 12:00 | ||||
LP2 | 2 | In-Person | Discussion | F | 09:00 - 10:00 | ||||
LR2 | 2 | In-Person | Discussion | F | 12:00 - 13:00 | ||||
LS2 | 2 | In-Person | Discussion | F | 13:00 - 14:00 | ||||
LE2 | 1 | In-Person | Discussion | F | 14:00 - 15:00 | Luger, Moberley | |||
LE1 | 1 | In-Person | Discussion | F | 14:00 - 15:00 | Luger, Moberley | |||
LC3 | 1 | In-Person | Discussion | F | 12:00 - 13:00 | Guy-bray, Stephen | |||
LR3 | 2 | In-Person | Discussion | F | 12:00 - 13:00 | ||||
LP5 | 2 | In-Person | Discussion | F | 09:00 - 10:00 | ||||
LA4 | 1 | In-Person | Discussion | F | 09:00 - 10:00 | Potter, Tiffany | |||
LT1 | 2 | In-Person | Discussion | F | 14:00 - 15:00 | ||||
LB1 | 1 | In-Person | Discussion | F | 10:00 - 11:00 | Dick, Alexander | |||
LP3 | 2 | In-Person | Discussion | F | 09:00 - 10:00 | ||||
LR1 | 2 | In-Person | Discussion | F | 12:00 - 13:00 | ||||
LA5 | 1 | In-Person | Discussion | F | 09:00 - 10:00 | Potter, Tiffany | |||
LQ5 | 2 | In-Person | Discussion | F | 11:00 - 12:00 | ||||
LS1 | 2 | In-Person | Discussion | F | 13:00 - 14:00 | ||||
LB3 | 1 | In-Person | Discussion | F | 10:00 - 11:00 | Dick, Alexander | |||
LE3 | 1 | In-Person | Discussion | F | 14:00 - 15:00 | Luger, Moberley | |||
LC4 | 1 | In-Person | Discussion | F | 12:00 - 13:00 | Guy-bray, Stephen | |||
LC5 | 1 | In-Person | Discussion | F | 12:00 - 13:00 | Guy-bray, Stephen | |||
LP1 | 2 | In-Person | Discussion | F | 09:00 - 10:00 | ||||
LE5 | 1 | In-Person | Discussion | F | 14:00 - 15:00 | Luger, Moberley | |||
LF4 | 1 | In-Person | Discussion | F | 13:00 - 14:00 | Cavell, Richard Anthony | |||
LC1 | 1 | In-Person | Discussion | F | 12:00 - 13:00 | Guy-bray, Stephen | |||
LR5 | 2 | In-Person | Discussion | F | 12:00 - 13:00 | ||||
LT2 | 2 | In-Person | Discussion | F | 14:00 - 15:00 | ||||
LT4 | 2 | In-Person | Discussion | F | 14:00 - 15:00 | ||||
LF5 | 1 | In-Person | Discussion | F | 13:00 - 14:00 | ||||
LA1 | 1 | In-Person | Discussion | F | 09:00 - 10:00 | Potter, Tiffany | |||
LA2 | 1 | In-Person | Discussion | F | 09:00 - 10:00 | ||||
LB2 | 1 | In-Person | Discussion | F | 10:00 - 11:00 | Dick, Alexander | |||
LB5 | 1 | In-Person | Discussion | F | 10:00 - 11:00 | Dick, Alexander | |||
LB6 | 1 | In-Person | Discussion | F | 10:00 - 11:00 | Dick, Alexander | |||
LE4 | 1 | In-Person | Discussion | F | 14:00 - 15:00 | Luger, Moberley | |||
LS3 | 2 | In-Person | Discussion | F | 13:00 - 14:00 | ||||
LC6 | 1 | In-Person | Discussion | F | 12:00 - 13:00 | Guy-bray, Stephen | |||
LS5 | 2 | In-Person | Discussion | F | 13:00 - 14:00 | ||||
LQ1 | 2 | In-Person | Discussion | F | 11:00 - 12:00 | ||||
LF2 | 1 | In-Person | Discussion | F | 13:00 - 14:00 | Cavell, Richard Anthony |
Approaches to Language and Communication
ENGL 111
keyboard_arrow_downStudy of selected communication genres from a language-based perspective: examples may include non-fiction, science writing, business discourse, journalism, language of the internet, podcasts, and other media. Essays are required.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | Lecture | M, W | 14:00 - 15:00 | Mcneill, Laurie | Section DescriptionWriting Back: Life Writing and Speaking Truth to PowerThis section of English 111 will study how writers use personal experience – their own or others’ – in life narratives (or “non-fiction prose”) to make meaning of those experiences and make interventions in public knowledge. The life narratives we’ll study this semester show how individual stories can work to resist dominant norms and stereotypes – for example, of refugee experiences or global conflicts – and offer personal perspectives on historical events that may challenge or disrupt official versions. We’ll examine the rhetorical and literary strategies authors use to bear witness, create family stories, and construct or reconstruct their own identities. We will three book-length memoirs -- Born a Crime, by Trevor Noah; Thi Bui’s The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir; and Something I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You: A Letter to My Daughter, by David Chariandy – and several essay-length texts (TBD). Our discussions of these narratives will be informed by relevant scholarly conversations, and students will contribute to those conversations in a research paper as well as in two short analytical essays and a final exam. Classes will take place in person. | |||
002 | 1 | Lecture | T, Th | 9:30 - 11:00 | Hill, Ian | Section DescriptionRhetoric and Public ControversyHow does everyday language work to influence our thoughts and behaviors? This course provides some answers to this question by delving into the realm of rhetoric. Rhetoric, or the motivation of belief and action, encompasses not only overt techniques of persuasion, but also the quotidian aspects of language and symbol usage that facilitate (or hinder) our daily lives and organize society. This course introduces the principles of rhetorical theory and criticism, and students will apply them in writing and a speech/presentation to contemporary public controversies, such as the politics of climate change, the public function of science, and whatever current controversies fill the headlines each semester. | |||
003 | 2 | Lecture | T, Th | 12:30 - 14:00 | Sharpe, Jillian | Section DescriptionINSTUCTOR: SHARPE, JAE This course considers the nonfiction writing of U.S. women essayists from the 1960s to the 2010s. We will consider how these different authors take up the question of how the social roles of womanhood have changed over the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, and we will examine how nonfictional forms of writing become sites where authors can wrestle with the competing demands placed on them in domestic and public life. Texts are likely to include selections from Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Susan Sontag’s Regarding the Pain of Others, Toni Morrison’s The Source of Self-Regard, Shirley Jackson’s Come Along With Me, and Cynthia Ozick’s Quarrel & Quandary. | |||
005 | 2 | Lecture | M, W | 10:00 - 11:00 | Earle, Bo | Section DescriptionWriting AdventuresThis course explores literature of exploration both in the natural wilderness and in the wildernesses of culture and politics, considering topics including mountain climbing, surfing, manual labour and craftsmanship, environmentalism, psychology, sexism and racism. This class has a relatively large amount of reading. Coursework will be writing intensive and intended to encourage students to find and explore adventure in their own lives. Texts include: Wild, Cheryl Strayed; Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates; Men Explain Things to Me, Rebecca Solnit; Barbarian Days, William Finnegan; The Gardener and the Carpenter, Alison Gopnik; Letter to my Nephew, James Baldwin; The Book of Eels, Patrik Svensson. | |||
006 | 2 | Lecture | T, Th | 14:00 - 15:30 | Stickles, Elise | Section DescriptionWhat We Talk About When We Talk About LanguageGood writers read, and good readers write. Or, as Stephen King puts it: "If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot”. Critical reading and writing are skills which can be developed through practice. In this course, we will demystify the process of critical, analytical reading by studying the rhetorical and stylistic principles used in a variety of non-fiction texts. You will then learn to apply these tools in your own writing. Given our goal of understanding the relationship between author and text, our course readings will focus on the relationship between language, identity, and authorship. We will consider what happens when we learn a new language, or lose one; how language background and identity are reflected in writing style and the choices authors make; and how authors take their audiences’ own identities into account. We will read reflections on the writing process itself, and in turn you will consider your own relationship with language in all its forms. Readings include:
By the end of the course, students will be able to:
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L05 | 1 | Discussion | F | 14:00 - 15:00 | |||||
L06 | 1 | Discussion | F | 14:00 - 15:00 | |||||
L07 | 1 | Discussion | F | 14:00 - 15:00 | |||||
L08 | 1 | Discussion | F | 14:00 - 15:00 | |||||
L20 | 2 | Discussion | F | 10:00 - 11:00 | |||||
L21 | 2 | Discussion | F | 10:00 - 11:00 | |||||
L22 | 2 | Discussion | F | 10:00 - 11:00 | |||||
L23 | 2 | Discussion | F | 10:00 - 11:00 | |||||
WL1 | 1 | Waiting List | M, W, F | 14:00 - 15:00 | |||||
WL2 | 1 | Waiting List | T, Th | 9:30 - 11:00 | |||||
WL3 | 2 | Waiting List | T, Th | 12:30 - 14:00 | |||||
WL5 | 2 | Waiting List | M, W, F | 10:00 - 11:00 | |||||
WL6 | 2 | Waiting List | T, Th | 14:00 - 15:30 |
Approaches to Language and Communication
ENGL 111
keyboard_arrow_downStudy of selected communication genres from a language-based perspective: examples may include non-fiction, science writing, business discourse, journalism, language of the internet, podcasts, and other media. Essays are required.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | Lecture | M, W | 11:00 - 12:00 | Lee, Tara | Section DescriptionProducing Consumable Texts: Exploring Representations of Food and EatingWith the popularity of The Food Network and social media, the pleasures of food have extended to consuming representations of eating and food production (e.g., foraging, harvesting, cooking). This course will explore diverse ways of communicating about food, including through personal essays, restaurant reviews, blog posts, recipes/cookbooks, food shows/documentaries, and Instagram reels. This course will consider each of these genres/media, considering how their forms help convey particular meanings in relation to food. For example, how do recipes instruct readers about a particular lifestyle or ethos tied up with certain kinds of food and preparation? How does a restaurant review provide both critique as well as vicarious enjoyment for the reader? How do visual elements, such as photographs and video, facilitate the consumption experience? The course will also consider how issues related to race, colonialism, gender, and social inequity can be subsumed in the eating process or brought to light through more disruptive eating and communicational practices. | |||
002 | 1 | Lecture | T, Th | 9:30 - 11:00 | Hill, Ian | Section DescriptionRhetoric and Public ControversyHow does everyday language work to influence our thoughts and actions? This course delves into the realm of rhetoric – the motivation of belief and action, which encompasses not only overt techniques of persuasion and propaganda, but also the quotidian aspects of language and symbol usage that facilitate (or hinder) our daily lives and organize society. Students will analyze the rhetoric of contemporary public controversies, such as the politics of climate change, the public function of science, and whatever current controversies fill the headlines this semester. | |||
003 | 2 | Lecture | M, W | 10:00 - 11:00 | Earle, Bo | Section DescriptionSpeaking Truth to Power: Social Representation and Reality
How does writing depict reality differently from, say, photographs or speech? One distinguishing feature of writing is definitiveness. Writing began as engraving; to write has always meant to 'write down,' to inscribe and fix in an unchanging way, creating heretofore inconceivable notions of permanence, property, and quantitative linear accumulation. By contrast, voice, like music, comes and goes with each performance; and images are indefinite; 'imagistic' means 'open to interpretation.' Originally used for accounting, or "book-keeping," writing correlates reality with permanent and precise calculation and recording. This correlation led not just to new economies but to whole religions "of the book" and to the legal codes upon which ever larger-scale human civilization has developed, eventually even marking its own geologic era, the "Anthropocene,” overlapping with the planet’s “sixth mass extinction event.” Humanity’s future would seem to hinge less on the technological innovation we tend to celebrate, than on learning to acknowledge and communicate the reality of systemic environmental, racist, and misogynist violence--aka, capitalism, racism and patriarchy. The texts for this class all in various ways “speak truth to power” by writing "against the grain," attempting to acknowledge, in necessarily haunting and strange ways, what writing disregards, especially the voices of children, women, racial minorities, nomads and non-humans, as well as their voluntary allies, self-styled iconoclasts or 'modern barbarians.' | |||
L05 | 1 | Discussion | F | 11:00 - 12:00 | |||||
L06 | 1 | Discussion | F | 11:00 - 12:00 | |||||
L07 | 1 | Discussion | F | 11:00 - 12:00 | |||||
L08 | 1 | Discussion | F | 11:00 - 12:00 | |||||
L09 | 1 | Discussion | F | 11:00 - 12:00 | |||||
L20 | 2 | Discussion | F | 10:00 - 11:00 | |||||
L21 | 2 | Discussion | F | 10:00 - 11:00 | |||||
L22 | 2 | Discussion | F | 10:00 - 11:00 | |||||
L23 | 2 | Discussion | F | 10:00 - 11:00 | |||||
WL1 | 1 | Waiting List | M, W, F | 11:00 - 12:00 | |||||
WL2 | 1 | Waiting List | T, Th | 9:30 - 11:00 | |||||
WL3 | 2 | Waiting List | M, W, F | 10:00 - 11:00 |
Approaches to Language and Communication
ENGL 111
keyboard_arrow_downStudy of selected communication genres from a language-based perspective: examples may include non-fiction, science writing, business discourse, journalism, language of the internet, podcasts, and other media. Essays are required. This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | In-Person | Lecture | M, W | 11:00 - 12:00 | Lee, Tara | Section DescriptionProducing Consumable Texts: Exploring Representations of Food and EatingWith the popularity of The Food Network and social media, the pleasures of food have extended to consuming representations of eating and food production (e.g., foraging, harvesting, cooking). This course will explore diverse ways of communicating about food, including through personal essays, restaurant reviews, blog posts, recipes/cookbooks, food documentaries, and Instagram reels. This course will consider each of these genres/media, considering how their forms help convey particular meanings in relation to food. For example, how do recipes instruct readers about a particular lifestyle or ethos tied up with certain kinds of food and preparation? How does a restaurant review provide both critique as well as vicarious enjoyment for the reader? How do visual elements, such as photographs and video, facilitate the consumption experience? The course will also consider how issues related to race, colonialism, gender, and class can be subsumed in the eating process or brought to light through more disruptive eating and communicational practices. | ||
003 | 2 | In-Person | Lecture | M, W | 10:00 - 11:00 | Macdonald, Anna | Section DescriptionBody Language: Life Writing of Survival and ResilienceImagine a devastating car crash has left you trapped inside your own body, and you are only able to communicate with the outside world through a series of eye blinks. How would you tell your story? How would you make sense of your suffering? This section of English 111 will investigate how we can understand the language and communication that make life narratives so moving, persuasive, and inspiring. We will apply a combination of literary, rhetorical, and cultural perspectives to a wide array of life writing from ordinary people who describe their extraordinary lived experiences, ranging from narratives about sickness, to racial oppression, to survival after a plane crash. In an age when Artificial intelligence threatens to replace us, this course reminds us that the human capacity to tell our stories can never be replicated. | ||
L10 | 1 | In-Person | Discussion | Th | 09:30 - 11:00 | Hill, Ian | |||
002 | 1 | In-Person | Lecture | T | 09:30 - 11:00 | Hill, Ian | Section DescriptionRhetoric, Controversy, and PropagandaHow does everyday language work to influence our thoughts and actions? This course delves into the realm of rhetoric – the motivation of belief and action, which encompasses not only overt techniques of persuasion and propaganda, but also the quotidian aspects of language and symbol usage that facilitate (or hinder) our daily lives and organize society. In order to work on their own communication skills, students will study and implement argumentative, critical, and stylistic techniques by analyzing the rhetoric of contemporary and historical public controversies, such as the politics of climate change, the public function of science, and whatever current controversies fill the headlines this semester. | ||
L07 | 1 | In-Person | Discussion | F | 11:00 - 12:00 | Lee, Tara | |||
L05 | 1 | In-Person | Discussion | F | 11:00 - 12:00 | Lee, Tara | |||
L20 | 2 | In-Person | Discussion | F | 10:00 - 11:00 | ||||
L23 | 2 | In-Person | Discussion | F | 10:00 - 11:00 | ||||
L06 | 1 | In-Person | Discussion | F | 11:00 - 12:00 | Lee, Tara | |||
L09 | 1 | In-Person | Discussion | F | 11:00 - 12:00 | Lee, Tara | |||
L22 | 2 | In-Person | Discussion | F | 10:00 - 11:00 | ||||
L08 | 1 | In-Person | Discussion | F | 11:00 - 12:00 | Lee, Tara | |||
L21 | 2 | In-Person | Discussion | F | 10:00 - 11:00 |
Challenging Language Myths
ENGL 140
keyboard_arrow_downCritical consideration of a broad range of commonly held beliefs about language and its relation to the brain and cognition, learning, society, change and evolution. Note: This is an elective course that does not fulfill writing requirements in any faculty or the literature requirement in the Faculty of Arts.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 2 | Lecture | M, W, F | 14:00 - 15:00 | Multiple instructors | InstructorsHansson, Gunnar | Stratton, James | |||
WL1 | 2 | Waiting List | M, W, F | 14:00 - 15:00 |
Challenging Language Myths
ENGL 140
keyboard_arrow_downCritical consideration of a broad range of commonly held beliefs about language and its relation to the brain and cognition, learning, society, change and evolution. Note: This is an elective course that does not fulfill writing requirements in any faculty or the literature requirement in the Faculty of Arts.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 2 | Lecture | M, W, F | 14:00 - 15:00 | Multiple instructors | InstructorsCardoso, Amanda | Stratton, James | |||
WL1 | 2 | Waiting List | M, W, F | 14:00 - 15:00 |
Challenging Language Myths
ENGL 140
keyboard_arrow_downCritical consideration of a broad range of commonly held beliefs about language and its relation to the brain and cognition, learning, society, change and evolution. Note: This is an elective course that does not fulfill writing requirements in any faculty or the literature requirement in the Faculty of Arts. Credit will be granted for only one of ENGL 140 or LING 140. This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading. Equivalency: LING140
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | In-Person | Lecture | T, Th | 11:00 - 12:30 | Multiple instructors | Section DescriptionWhat can we believe of what we hear and read about language? In this course, we critically examine a broad range of commonly held beliefs about language and the relation of language to the brain and cognition, learning, society, change and evolution. Students come to understand language myths, the purpose for their existence, and their validity (or not). We use science and common sense as tools in our process of “myth-busting”. The course textbook is Abby Kaplan, Women talk more than men … and other myths about language explained. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), which is available for purchase from the Bookstore or online through the UBC Library. This course is an excellent introduction for students contemplating the English Language Major as well as an appropriate elective for students already in the English Language or Language & Literature Major or Language Minor. Course evaluation is based on two examinations, a written project (pairs or groups), participation and attendance, and low-stakes short weekly writing. For the project, students select a language myth discussed in popular media (online, newspaper, etc.). Based on scholarly readings concerning the myth as well as material covered in class, they “bust” or confirm the myth. This course is cross-listed as Linguistics 140 and is co-taught by instructors from the English and Linguistics Departments. Note:This course does not fulfill the university writing requirements or the literature requirement in the Faculty of Arts. InstructorsCardoso, Amanda | Stickles, Elise |
Principles of Literary Studies
ENGL 200
keyboard_arrow_downA collaboratively-taught exploration and application of key scholarly, theoretical and critical approaches informing the study of literatures in English.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | Lecture | M, W, F | 10:00 - 11:00 | Mcneill, Laurie | Section DescriptionIm/MigrationENGL 200 is a collaboratively-taught exploration of key scholarly, theoretical, and critical approaches informing the study of literatures in English at UBC. Through a diverse set of readings that cross genre, historical periods, and social contexts, this course aims to develop skills in reading, analysis, and critical writing. Students in the course will work closely with one faculty instructor in a small-class setting. Four of these small classes will join together in a cluster for one lecture on each week’s designated texts and topic. ENGL 200, sections 001, 002, 003, and 004, will be led by Laurie McNeill, Miranda Burgess, Dennis Britton, and Janice Chiew Ling Ho, with the topic “Im/Migration.” Together we will examine texts and narratives about travel, mobility, migrations, journeys, and arrivals of various kinds – voluntary, forced, opportunistic, and fantastic. Together, we will ask how literature can help us think about the following: What types of social and political factors lead/force people to leave their homeland? How are borders established and what do they do? How does dislocation create new forms of being and belonging?
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002 | 1 | Lecture | M, W, F | 10:00 - 11:00 | Burgess, Miranda | Section DescriptionIm/MigrationENGL 200 is a collaboratively-taught exploration of key scholarly, theoretical, and critical approaches informing the study of literatures in English at UBC. Through a diverse set of readings that cross genre, historical periods, and social contexts, this course aims to develop skills in reading, analysis, and critical writing. Students in the course will work closely with one faculty instructor in a small-class setting. Four of these small classes will join together in a cluster for one lecture on each week’s designated texts and topic. ENGL 200, sections 001, 002, 003, and 004, will be led by Laurie McNeill, Miranda Burgess, Dennis Britton, and Janice Chiew Ling Ho, with the topic “Im/Migration.” Together we will examine texts and narratives about travel, mobility, migrations, journeys, and arrivals of various kinds – voluntary, forced, opportunistic, and fantastic. Together, we will ask how literature can help us think about the following: What types of social and political factors lead/force people to leave their homeland? How are borders established and what do they do? How does dislocation create new forms of being and belonging?
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003 | 1 | Lecture | M, W, F | 10:00 - 11:00 | Britton, Dennis | Section DescriptionIm/MigrationENGL 200 is a collaboratively-taught exploration of key scholarly, theoretical, and critical approaches informing the study of literatures in English at UBC. Through a diverse set of readings that cross genre, historical periods, and social contexts, this course aims to develop skills in reading, analysis, and critical writing. Students in the course will work closely with one faculty instructor in a small-class setting. Four of these small classes will join together in a cluster for one lecture on each week’s designated texts and topic. ENGL 200, sections 001, 002, 003, and 004, will be led by Laurie McNeill, Miranda Burgess, Dennis Britton, and Janice Chiew Ling Ho, with the topic “Im/Migration.” Together we will examine texts and narratives about travel, mobility, migrations, journeys, and arrivals of various kinds – voluntary, forced, opportunistic, and fantastic. Together, we will ask how literature can help us think about the following: What types of social and political factors lead/force people to leave their homeland? How are borders established and what do they do? How does dislocation create new forms of being and belonging?
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004 | 1 | Lecture | M, W, F | 10:00 - 11:00 | Ho, Janice | Section DescriptionIm/MigrationENGL 200 is a collaboratively-taught exploration of key scholarly, theoretical, and critical approaches informing the study of literatures in English at UBC. Through a diverse set of readings that cross genre, historical periods, and social contexts, this course aims to develop skills in reading, analysis, and critical writing. Students in the course will work closely with one faculty instructor in a small-class setting. Four of these small classes will join together in a cluster for one lecture on each week’s designated texts and topic. ENGL 200, sections 001, 002, 003, and 004, will be led by Laurie McNeill, Miranda Burgess, Dennis Britton, and Janice Chiew Ling Ho, with the topic “Im/Migration.” Together we will examine texts and narratives about travel, mobility, migrations, journeys, and arrivals of various kinds – voluntary, forced, opportunistic, and fantastic. Together, we will ask how literature can help us think about the following: What types of social and political factors lead/force people to leave their homeland? How are borders established and what do they do? How does dislocation create new forms of being and belonging?
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005 | 1 | Lecture | M, W, F | 13:00 - 14:00 | Lee, Tara | Section DescriptionHauntings and Spectral Possibilities in English Literary Studies“It seemed, sir, a woman, tall and large, with thick and dark hair hanging long down her back. I know not what dress she had on: it was white and straight; but whether gown, sheet, or shroud, I cannot tell” (Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre). These sections of the collaboratively taught ENGL 200 (005, 006, 007, and 008) will focus on haunting: the in/visible elements that bump, rattle, and wail in the night. We will examine a variety of literary texts, probing how ghosts and things that haunt productively unsettle the supposed status quo. Our conversations will include hauntings that challenge sanitized colonial narratives, the liminality of ghostly presences/absences, and the material repercussions of social and familial hauntings. Storytelling will also figure strongly in the course as we invite students to consider how they can leverage haunting as a critical framework for reconsidering the social, cultural, and national spaces they inhabit. | |||
006 | 1 | Lecture | M, W, F | 13:00 - 14:00 | Bose, Sarika | Section DescriptionHauntings and Spectral Possibilities in English Literary Studies“It seemed, sir, a woman, tall and large, with thick and dark hair hanging long down her back. I know not what dress she had on: it was white and straight; but whether gown, sheet, or shroud, I cannot tell” (Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre). These sections of the collaboratively taught ENGL 200 (005, 006, 007, and 008) will focus on haunting: the in/visible elements that bump, rattle, and wail in the night. We will examine a variety of literary texts, probing how ghosts and things that haunt productively unsettle the supposed status quo. Our conversations will include hauntings that challenge sanitized colonial narratives, the liminality of ghostly presences/absences, and the material repercussions of social and familial hauntings. Storytelling will also figure strongly in the course as we invite students to consider how they can leverage haunting as a critical framework for reconsidering the social, cultural, and national spaces they inhabit. | |||
007 | 1 | Lecture | M, W, F | 13:00 - 14:00 | Bain, Kimberly | Section DescriptionHauntings and Spectral Possibilities in English Literary Studies“It seemed, sir, a woman, tall and large, with thick and dark hair hanging long down her back. I know not what dress she had on: it was white and straight; but whether gown, sheet, or shroud, I cannot tell” (Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre). These sections of the collaboratively taught ENGL 200 (005, 006, 007, and 008) will focus on haunting: the in/visible elements that bump, rattle, and wail in the night. We will examine a variety of literary texts, probing how ghosts and things that haunt productively unsettle the supposed status quo. Our conversations will include hauntings that challenge sanitized colonial narratives, the liminality of ghostly presences/absences, and the material repercussions of social and familial hauntings. Storytelling will also figure strongly in the course as we invite students to consider how they can leverage haunting as a critical framework for reconsidering the social, cultural, and national spaces they inhabit. | |||
008 | 1 | Lecture | M, W, F | 13:00 - 14:00 | Hunt, Dallas | Section DescriptionHauntings and Spectral Possibilities in English Literary Studies“It seemed, sir, a woman, tall and large, with thick and dark hair hanging long down her back. I know not what dress she had on: it was white and straight; but whether gown, sheet, or shroud, I cannot tell” (Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre). These sections of the collaboratively taught ENGL 200 (005, 006, 007, and 008) will focus on haunting: the in/visible elements that bump, rattle, and wail in the night. We will examine a variety of literary texts, probing how ghosts and things that haunt productively unsettle the supposed status quo. Our conversations will include hauntings that challenge sanitized colonial narratives, the liminality of ghostly presences/absences, and the material repercussions of social and familial hauntings. Storytelling will also figure strongly in the course as we invite students to consider how they can leverage haunting as a critical framework for reconsidering the social, cultural, and national spaces they inhabit. | |||
009 | 2 | Lecture | M, W, F | 11:00 - 12:00 | James, Suzanne | Section DescriptionENGL 200 is a collaboratively-taught exploration of key scholarly, theoretical, and critical approaches informing the study of literatures in English at UBC. Through a diverse set of readings that cross genre, historical periods, and social contexts, this course aims to develop skills in reading, analysis, and critical writing. Students will work closely with one faculty instructor in a small-class setting. Four of these small classes will join together in a cluster for one lecture on each week’s designated texts and topic, with instructors rotating through these classes so that students will get a sense of the interests of four different English faculty members. | |||
010 | 2 | Lecture | M, W, F | 11:00 - 12:00 | Zeitlin, Michael | Section DescriptionENGL 200 is a collaboratively-taught exploration of key scholarly, theoretical, and critical approaches informing the study of literatures in English at UBC. Through a diverse set of readings that cross genre, historical periods, and social contexts, this course aims to develop skills in reading, analysis, and critical writing. Students will work closely with one faculty instructor in a small-class setting. Four of these small classes will join together in a cluster for one lecture on each week’s designated texts and topic, with instructors rotating through these classes so that students will get a sense of the interests of four different English faculty members. | |||
011 | 2 | Lecture | M, W, F | 11:00 - 12:00 | Mallipeddi, Ramesh | Section DescriptionENGL 200 is a collaboratively-taught exploration of key scholarly, theoretical, and critical approaches informing the study of literatures in English at UBC. Through a diverse set of readings that cross genre, historical periods, and social contexts, this course aims to develop skills in reading, analysis, and critical writing. Students will work closely with one faculty instructor in a small-class setting. Four of these small classes will join together in a cluster for one lecture on each week’s designated texts and topic, with instructors rotating through these classes so that students will get a sense of the interests of four different English faculty members. | |||
012 | 2 | Lecture | M, W, F | 11:00 - 12:00 | Echard, Sian | Section DescriptionENGL 200 is a collaboratively-taught exploration of key scholarly, theoretical, and critical approaches informing the study of literatures in English at UBC. Through a diverse set of readings that cross genre, historical periods, and social contexts, this course aims to develop skills in reading, analysis, and critical writing. Students will work closely with one faculty instructor in a small-class setting. Four of these small classes will join together in a cluster for one lecture on each week’s designated texts and topic, with instructors rotating through these classes so that students will get a sense of the interests of four different English faculty members. |
Principles of Literary Studies
ENGL 200
keyboard_arrow_downA collaboratively-taught exploration and application of key scholarly, theoretical and critical approaches informing the study of literatures in English. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | Lecture | M, W, F | 10:00 - 11:00 | Dinat, Deena | Section DescriptionIm/MigrationOur shared approach to the course will centre on Im/Migration. Together we will examine texts and narratives about travel, mobility, migrations, journeys, departures and arrivals of various kinds--voluntary, forced, opportunistic, and fantastic. We will ask how literature can help us think about such questions as these: What types of social and political factors lead or force people to leave their place of origin? What does it mean to have a place of origin, and who has been entitled to claim one? How are borders established and what do they do? How does dislocation create new forms of being and belonging? | |||
002 | 1 | Lecture | M, W, F | 10:00 - 11:00 | Burgess, Miranda | Section DescriptionIm/MigrationOur shared approach to the course will centre on Im/Migration. Together we will examine texts and narratives about travel, mobility, migrations, journeys, departures and arrivals of various kinds--voluntary, forced, opportunistic, and fantastic. We will ask how literature can help us think about such questions as these: What types of social and political factors lead or force people to leave their place of origin? What does it mean to have a place of origin, and who has been entitled to claim one? How are borders established and what do they do? How does dislocation create new forms of being and belonging? | |||
003 | 1 | Lecture | M, W, F | 10:00 - 11:00 | Mcneilly, Kevin | Section DescriptionIm/MigrationOur shared approach to the course will centre on Im/Migration. Together we will examine texts and narratives about travel, mobility, migrations, journeys, departures and arrivals of various kinds--voluntary, forced, opportunistic, and fantastic. We will ask how literature can help us think about such questions as these: What types of social and political factors lead or force people to leave their place of origin? What does it mean to have a place of origin, and who has been entitled to claim one? How are borders established and what do they do? How does dislocation create new forms of being and belonging? | |||
004 | 1 | Lecture | M, W, F | 10:00 - 11:00 | Ho, Janice | Section DescriptionIm/MigrationOur shared approach to the course will centre on Im/Migration. Together we will examine texts and narratives about travel, mobility, migrations, journeys, departures and arrivals of various kinds--voluntary, forced, opportunistic, and fantastic. We will ask how literature can help us think about such questions as these: What types of social and political factors lead or force people to leave their place of origin? What does it mean to have a place of origin, and who has been entitled to claim one? How are borders established and what do they do? How does dislocation create new forms of being and belonging? | |||
005 | 1 | Lecture | M, W, F | 13:00 - 14:00 | Lee, Tara | Section DescriptionHauntings and Spectral Possibilities in English Literary Studies“It seemed, sir, a woman, tall and large, with thick and dark hair hanging long down her back. I know not what dress she had on: it was white and straight; but whether gown, sheet, or shroud, I cannot tell” (Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre). These sections of the collaboratively taught ENGL 200 (005, 006, and 007) will focus on haunting: the in/visible elements that bump, rattle, and wail in the night. We will examine a variety of literary texts, probing how ghosts and things that haunt productively unsettle the supposed status quo. Our conversations will include hauntings that challenge sanitized colonial narratives, the liminality of ghostly presences/absences, the ghosts of our futures, and the material repercussions of social and familial hauntings. Storytelling will also figure strongly in the course as we invite students to consider how they can leverage haunting as a critical framework for reconsidering the social, cultural, and national spaces they inhabit. | |||
006 | 1 | Lecture | M, W, F | 13:00 - 14:00 | Bose, Sarika | Section DescriptionHauntings and Spectral Possibilities in English Literary Studies“It seemed, sir, a woman, tall and large, with thick and dark hair hanging long down her back. I know not what dress she had on: it was white and straight; but whether gown, sheet, or shroud, I cannot tell” (Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre). These sections of the collaboratively taught ENGL 200 (005, 006, and 007) will focus on haunting: the in/visible elements that bump, rattle, and wail in the night. We will examine a variety of literary texts, probing how ghosts and things that haunt productively unsettle the supposed status quo. Our conversations will include hauntings that challenge sanitized colonial narratives, the liminality of ghostly presences/absences, the ghosts of our futures, and the material repercussions of social and familial hauntings. Storytelling will also figure strongly in the course as we invite students to consider how they can leverage haunting as a critical framework for reconsidering the social, cultural, and national spaces they inhabit. | |||
007 | 1 | Lecture | M, W, F | 13:00 - 14:00 | Bain, Kimberly | Section DescriptionHauntings and Spectral Possibilities in English Literary Studies“It seemed, sir, a woman, tall and large, with thick and dark hair hanging long down her back. I know not what dress she had on: it was white and straight; but whether gown, sheet, or shroud, I cannot tell” (Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre). These sections of the collaboratively taught ENGL 200 (005, 006, and 007) will focus on haunting: the in/visible elements that bump, rattle, and wail in the night. We will examine a variety of literary texts, probing how ghosts and things that haunt productively unsettle the supposed status quo. Our conversations will include hauntings that challenge sanitized colonial narratives, the liminality of ghostly presences/absences, the ghosts of our futures, and the material repercussions of social and familial hauntings. Storytelling will also figure strongly in the course as we invite students to consider how they can leverage haunting as a critical framework for reconsidering the social, cultural, and national spaces they inhabit. | |||
009 | 2 | Lecture | M, W, F | 11:00 - 12:00 | Antwi, Phanuel | Section DescriptionCreation, Destruction, Reflection, RebuildingThis team-taught course examines how literature intersects with pivotal moments in the lives of individuals, collectives, and our planet. We will explore a range of literary texts across time that engage with ideas of making and unmaking. Our explorations might include an ancient poem about how the world was created, or texts that reflect on the destructive wars of the twentieth century. Sometimes we will encounter art forms that build themselves on the bones of other forms, that take old traditions apart in order to create new ones for their own time and place. Some of our texts might be celebratory, some apocalyptic; all of them show the power of literature to reflect the human experience in profound and unforgettable ways. This course meets three times a week: Mondays and Fridays are for each section to meet with its designated instructor, while Wednesdays bring together several sections for one large lecture. These large lectures rotate through the course’s four instructors. The idea is to introduce you to some of the vast range of texts and approaches that constitute literary studies today, as well as to give you a taste of how different professors approach teaching and thinking about literary texts. Through our class meetings, the large lectures, and a range of assignments, you will develop tools to approach diverse texts in ways that attend to their formal structure, content, and socio-historical contexts. You will hone your skills in close reading/ analysis in ways that support broader arguments about literature and culture. You will develop self-reflexive and critical awareness of your own reading methods, preferences, and biases, and you will understand the institutional contexts of literary studies. List of texts and readings for this section of ENGL 200 will be posted here once determined. | |||
010 | 2 | Lecture | M, W, F | 11:00 - 12:00 | Mota, Miguel | Section DescriptionCreation, Destruction, Reflection, RebuildingThis team-taught course examines how literature intersects with pivotal moments in the lives of individuals, collectives, and our planet. We will explore a range of literary texts across time that engage with ideas of making and unmaking. Our explorations might include an ancient poem about how the world was created, or texts that reflect on the destructive wars of the twentieth century. Sometimes we will encounter art forms that build themselves on the bones of other forms, that take old traditions apart in order to create new ones for their own time and place. Some of our texts might be celebratory, some apocalyptic; all of them show the power of literature to reflect the human experience in profound and unforgettable ways. This course meets three times a week: Mondays and Fridays are for each section to meet with its designated instructor, while Wednesdays bring together several sections for one large lecture. These large lectures rotate through the course’s four instructors. The idea is to introduce you to some of the vast range of texts and approaches that constitute literary studies today, as well as to give you a taste of how different professors approach teaching and thinking about literary texts. Through our class meetings, the large lectures, and a range of assignments, you will develop tools to approach diverse texts in ways that attend to their formal structure, content, and socio-historical contexts. You will hone your skills in close reading/ analysis in ways that support broader arguments about literature and culture. You will develop self-reflexive and critical awareness of your own reading methods, preferences, and biases, and you will understand the institutional contexts of literary studies. List of texts and readings for this section of ENGL 200 will be posted here once determined. | |||
011 | 2 | Lecture | M, W, F | 11:00 - 12:00 | Paltin, Judith | Section DescriptionCreation, Destruction, Reflection, RebuildingThis team-taught course examines how literature intersects with pivotal moments in the lives of individuals, collectives, and our planet. We will explore a range of literary texts across time that engage with ideas of making and unmaking. Our explorations might include an ancient poem about how the world was created, or texts that reflect on the destructive wars of the twentieth century. Sometimes we will encounter art forms that build themselves on the bones of other forms, that take old traditions apart in order to create new ones for their own time and place. Some of our texts might be celebratory, some apocalyptic; all of them show the power of literature to reflect the human experience in profound and unforgettable ways. This course meets three times a week: Mondays and Fridays are for each section to meet with its designated instructor, while Wednesdays bring together several sections for one large lecture. These large lectures rotate through the course’s four instructors. The idea is to introduce you to some of the vast range of texts and approaches that constitute literary studies today, as well as to give you a taste of how different professors approach teaching and thinking about literary texts. Through our class meetings, the large lectures, and a range of assignments, you will develop tools to approach diverse texts in ways that attend to their formal structure, content, and socio-historical contexts. You will hone your skills in close reading/ analysis in ways that support broader arguments about literature and culture. You will develop self-reflexive and critical awareness of your own reading methods, preferences, and biases, and you will understand the institutional contexts of literary studies. List of texts and readings for this section of ENGL 200 will be posted here once determined. | |||
012 | 2 | Lecture | M, W, F | 11:00 - 12:00 | Echard, Sian | Section DescriptionCreation, Destruction, Reflection, RebuildingThis team-taught course examines how literature intersects with pivotal moments in the lives of individuals, collectives, and our planet. We will explore a range of literary texts across time that engage with ideas of making and unmaking. Our explorations might include an ancient poem about how the world was created, or texts that reflect on the destructive wars of the twentieth century. Sometimes we will encounter art forms that build themselves on the bones of other forms, that take old traditions apart in order to create new ones for their own time and place. Some of our texts might be celebratory, some apocalyptic; all of them show the power of literature to reflect the human experience in profound and unforgettable ways. This course meets three times a week: Mondays and Fridays are for each section to meet with its designated instructor, while Wednesdays bring together several sections for one large lecture. These large lectures rotate through the course’s four instructors. The idea is to introduce you to some of the vast range of texts and approaches that constitute literary studies today, as well as to give you a taste of how different professors approach teaching and thinking about literary texts. Through our class meetings, the large lectures, and a range of assignments, you will develop tools to approach diverse texts in ways that attend to their formal structure, content, and socio-historical contexts. You will hone your skills in close reading/ analysis in ways that support broader arguments about literature and culture. You will develop self-reflexive and critical awareness of your own reading methods, preferences, and biases, and you will understand the institutional contexts of literary studies. List of texts and readings for this section of ENGL 200 will be posted here once determined. |
Principles of Literary Studies
ENGL 200
keyboard_arrow_downA collaboratively-taught exploration and application of key scholarly, theoretical and critical approaches informing the study of literatures in English. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended. This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
008 | 1 | In-Person | Lecture | M, W, F | 13:00 - 14:00 | Akinwole, Tolulope | Section Descriptionwith ENGL 200-005/-006/-007/-008Narrating PlaceWhat does it mean to write a place? What does it mean to write in a place? How does literature simultaneously impact and be impacted by the very geographies that it narrates? How do literary writers engage with the environment and even the current climate crisis? This section of ENGL 200 will engage with these questions of the literary production of place, and the impact that these places have on the literature that comes from them. Places are constructed via multiple stories, often contradictory and interacting complexly with each other, layering stories to produce deep narrative maps. Students will read a range of texts - poems, short stories, and novels - that engage with the complex histories of place across a range of different temporal and geographical contexts, from the misty isles of post-Roman England to 20th century South Africa, from the shores of the Caribbean to our own contemporary moment on the Pacific coast of Western Canada. | ||
007 | 1 | In-Person | Lecture | M, W, F | 13:00 - 14:00 | Moss, Laura | Section Descriptionwith ENGL 200-005/-006/-007/-008Narrating PlaceWhat does it mean to write a place? What does it mean to write in a place? How does literature simultaneously impact and be impacted by the very geographies that it narrates? How do literary writers engage with the environment and even the current climate crisis? This section of ENGL 200 will engage with these questions of the literary production of place, and the impact that these places have on the literature that comes from them. Places are constructed via multiple stories, often contradictory and interacting complexly with each other, layering stories to produce deep narrative maps. Students will read a range of texts - poems, short stories, and novels - that engage with the complex histories of place across a range of different temporal and geographical contexts, from the misty isles of post-Roman England to 20th century South Africa, from the shores of the Caribbean to our own contemporary moment on the Pacific coast of Western Canada. | ||
006 | 1 | In-Person | Lecture | M, W, F | 13:00 - 14:00 | Rouse, Robert | Section Descriptionwith ENGL 200-005/-006/-007/-008Narrating PlaceWhat does it mean to write a place? What does it mean to write in a place? How does literature simultaneously impact and be impacted by the very geographies that it narrates? How do literary writers engage with the environment and even the current climate crisis? This section of ENGL 200 will engage with these questions of the literary production of place, and the impact that these places have on the literature that comes from them. Places are constructed via multiple stories, often contradictory and interacting complexly with each other, layering stories to produce deep narrative maps. Students will read a range of texts - poems, short stories, and novels - that engage with the complex histories of place across a range of different temporal and geographical contexts, from the misty isles of post-Roman England to 20th century South Africa, from the shores of the Caribbean to our own contemporary moment on the Pacific coast of Western Canada. | ||
005 | 1 | In-Person | Lecture | M, W, F | 13:00 - 14:00 | Lee, Tara | Section Descriptionwith ENGL 200-005/-006/-007/-008Narrating PlaceWhat does it mean to write a place? What does it mean to write in a place? How does literature simultaneously impact and be impacted by the very geographies that it narrates? How do literary writers engage with the environment and even the current climate crisis? This section of ENGL 200 will engage with these questions of the literary production of place, and the impact that these places have on the literature that comes from them. Places are constructed via multiple stories, often contradictory and interacting complexly with each other, layering stories to produce deep narrative maps. Students will read a range of texts - poems, short stories, and novels - that engage with the complex histories of place across a range of different temporal and geographical contexts, from the misty isles of post-Roman England to 20th century South Africa, from the shores of the Caribbean to our own contemporary moment on the Pacific coast of Western Canada. | ||
012 | 2 | In-Person | Lecture | M, W, F | 11:00 - 12:00 | James, Suzanne | Section Descriptionwith ENGL 200-009/-010/-011/-012Creation, Destruction, Reflection, RebuildingThis team-taught course examines how literature intersects with pivotal moments in the lives of individuals, collectives, and our planet. We will explore a diverse range of literary texts across time that engage with ideas of making and unmaking. Our explorations might include works about how the world was created, or texts that reflect on the destructive wars of the twentieth century. Sometimes we will encounter art forms that build themselves on the bones of other forms, that take old traditions apart in order to create new ones for their own time and place. Some of our texts will be celebratory, some apocalyptic; all of them show the power of literature to reflect the human experience in profound and unforgettable ways. | ||
009 | 2 | In-Person | Lecture | M, W, F | 11:00 - 12:00 | Antwi, Phanuel | Section Descriptionwith ENGL 200-009/-010/-011/-012Creation, Destruction, Reflection, RebuildingThis team-taught course examines how literature intersects with pivotal moments in the lives of individuals, collectives, and our planet. We will explore a diverse range of literary texts across time that engage with ideas of making and unmaking. Our explorations might include works about how the world was created, or texts that reflect on the destructive wars of the twentieth century. Sometimes we will encounter art forms that build themselves on the bones of other forms, that take old traditions apart in order to create new ones for their own time and place. Some of our texts will be celebratory, some apocalyptic; all of them show the power of literature to reflect the human experience in profound and unforgettable ways. | ||
010 | 2 | In-Person | Lecture | M, W, F | 11:00 - 12:00 | Mota, Miguel | Section Descriptionwith ENGL 200-009/-010/-011/-012Creation, Destruction, Reflection, RebuildingThis team-taught course examines how literature intersects with pivotal moments in the lives of individuals, collectives, and our planet. We will explore a diverse range of literary texts across time that engage with ideas of making and unmaking. Our explorations might include works about how the world was created, or texts that reflect on the destructive wars of the twentieth century. Sometimes we will encounter art forms that build themselves on the bones of other forms, that take old traditions apart in order to create new ones for their own time and place. Some of our texts will be celebratory, some apocalyptic; all of them show the power of literature to reflect the human experience in profound and unforgettable ways. | ||
011 | 2 | In-Person | Lecture | M, W, F | 11:00 - 12:00 | Paltin, Judith | Section Descriptionwith ENGL 200-009/-010/-011/-012Creation, Destruction, Reflection, RebuildingThis team-taught course examines how literature intersects with pivotal moments in the lives of individuals, collectives, and our planet. We will explore a diverse range of literary texts across time that engage with ideas of making and unmaking. Our explorations might include works about how the world was created, or texts that reflect on the destructive wars of the twentieth century. Sometimes we will encounter art forms that build themselves on the bones of other forms, that take old traditions apart in order to create new ones for their own time and place. Some of our texts will be celebratory, some apocalyptic; all of them show the power of literature to reflect the human experience in profound and unforgettable ways. | ||
004 | 1 | In-Person | Lecture | M, W, F | 10:00 - 11:00 | James, Suzanne | Section Descriptionwith ENGL_V 200-001/-002/-003/-004Moving Histories, Travelling TextsHow can Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing, the story of two Ghanaian sisters in the 18th century, speak to Lee Maracle’s “Goodbye Snauq,” a retelling of the formation of what we now call “Kitsilano?” What might the opening howl of Beowulf have to say to the teenage djinns of Mati Diop’s Atlantics? Where might the speaker of William Wordsworth’s “I Wondered Lonely as a Cloud” encounter the wandering, lonely narrator of Open City? This team-taught course brings a diverse range of novels, poems and films together to think about historical and contemporary experiences of migration and movement. Together we’ll investigate literature’s ability to trace a counter-history of migration: what solidarities and connections emerge from histories of loss and displacement? | ||
002 | 1 | In-Person | Lecture | M, W, F | 10:00 - 11:00 | Baxter, Gisele | Section Descriptionwith ENGL_V 200-001/-002/-003/-004Moving Histories, Travelling TextsHow can Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing, the story of two Ghanaian sisters in the 18th century, speak to Lee Maracle’s “Goodbye Snauq,” a retelling of the formation of what we now call “Kitsilano?” What might the opening howl of Beowulf have to say to the teenage djinns of Mati Diop’s Atlantics? Where might the speaker of William Wordsworth’s “I Wondered Lonely as a Cloud” encounter the wandering, lonely narrator of Open City? This team-taught course brings a diverse range of novels, poems and films together to think about historical and contemporary experiences of migration and movement. Together we’ll investigate literature’s ability to trace a counter-history of migration: what solidarities and connections emerge from histories of loss and displacement? | ||
003 | 1 | In-Person | Lecture | M, W, F | 10:00 - 11:00 | Mcneilly, Kevin | Section Descriptionwith ENGL_V 200-001/-002/-003/-004Moving Histories, Travelling TextsHow can Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing, the story of two Ghanaian sisters in the 18th century, speak to Lee Maracle’s “Goodbye Snauq,” a retelling of the formation of what we now call “Kitsilano?” What might the opening howl of Beowulf have to say to the teenage djinns of Mati Diop’s Atlantics? Where might the speaker of William Wordsworth’s “I Wondered Lonely as a Cloud” encounter the wandering, lonely narrator of Open City? This team-taught course brings a diverse range of novels, poems and films together to think about historical and contemporary experiences of migration and movement. Together we’ll investigate literature’s ability to trace a counter-history of migration: what solidarities and connections emerge from histories of loss and displacement? | ||
001 | 1 | In-Person | Lecture | M, W, F | 10:00 - 11:00 | Dinat, Deena | Section DescriptionTeam taught with ENGL_V 200-001/-002/-003/-004Moving Histories, Travelling TextsHow can Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing, the story of two Ghanaian sisters in the 18th century, speak to Lee Maracle’s “Goodbye Snauq,” a retelling of the formation of what we now call “Kitsilano?” What might the opening howl of Beowulf have to say to the teenage djinns of Mati Diop’s Atlantics? Where might the speaker of William Wordsworth’s “I Wondered Lonely as a Cloud” encounter the wandering, lonely narrator of Open City? This team-taught course brings a diverse range of novels, poems and films together to think about historical and contemporary experiences of migration and movement. Together we’ll investigate literature’s ability to trace a counter-history of migration: what solidarities and connections emerge from histories of loss and displacement? |
An Introduction to English Honours
ENGL 210
keyboard_arrow_downComprehensive overview of key periods, genres, and methods in English studies for students entering the English Honours program. Restricted to students in Honours programs.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1-2 | Lecture | M, W, F | 15:00 - 16:00 | Mackie, Gregory | Section DescriptionThe Literary Imagination: Traditions and Counter-TraditionsA year-long (6 credit) course, English 210 is designed to provide Honours students with a firm grounding in English-language literary studies. Its organization is largely chronological, beginning in the medieval period and continuing to the present day. It aims to introduce students to a wide sampling of literary works of poetry, fiction, and drama across the centuries, and to equip them with the analytical tools employed in the scholarly study of these genres. Although these texts – and their authors – engage a diverse variety of topics, in reading and writing about them we will also want to keep in mind such themes as art and imagination, memory and history, the individual in society and freedom and repression. While taking care to situate our readings in their historical and cultural contexts, we should also, where appropriate, allow ourselves to approach them with a sense of openness and humour.
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An Introduction to English Honours
ENGL 210
keyboard_arrow_downComprehensive overview of key periods, genres, and methods in English studies for students entering the English Honours program. Restricted to students in Honours programs.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1-2 | Lecture | M, W, F | 14:00 - 15:00 | Mackie, Gregory | Section DescriptionThe Literary Imagination: Traditions and Counter-TraditionsA year-long (6 credit) course, English 210 is designed to provide Honours students with a firm grounding in English-language literary studies. Its organization is largely chronological, beginning in the medieval period and continuing to the present day. It aims to introduce students to a wide sampling of literary works of poetry, fiction, and drama across the centuries, and to equip them with the analytical tools employed in the scholarly study of these genres. Although these texts – and their authors – engage a diverse variety of topics, in reading and writing about them we will also want to keep in mind such themes as art and imagination, memory and history, the individual in society and freedom and repression. While taking care to situate our readings in their historical and cultural contexts, we should also, where appropriate, allow ourselves to approach them with a sense of openness and humour. |
An Introduction to English Honours
ENGL 210
keyboard_arrow_downComprehensive overview of key periods, genres, and methods in English studies for students entering the English Honours program. Restricted to students in Honours programs.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1-2 | In-Person | Lecture | T, Th | 09:30 - 11:00 | Echard, Sian | Section DescriptionNetworks and Exchange in English LiteratureEnglish 210 is a six-credit course for Honours students, intended as a foundation for advanced study. Over the course of the year, we will read a wide range of literatures written in English, and we will think about the ways that creators and critics have responded to these texts, both in the past and in the present. The arrangement of the course is broadly chronological, from the Middle Ages to the present, though throughout we will pair texts that are in some way in conversation with each other. For example, early in first term we will read some of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales alongside modern responses from Jean Binta Breeze, Patience Agbabi, and Zadie Smith; early in second term, we will pair John Milton’s Paradise Lost with work by Neil Gaiman, Ursula LeGuin, and N.K. Jemisin. As we read our way through canons and counter-canons, we will think about the making, breaking, and rebuilding of networks of influence and engagement. We will think about what we read; how we read; how we talk and write about what we read; and why we often turn to the literary as a way of thinking through big questions. |
Literature in English to the 18th Century
ENGL 220
keyboard_arrow_downA survey of prose, poetry and drama to the 18th Century.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
921 | 1 | Lecture | T, Th | 18:00 - 21:00 | Fox, Lorcan Francis | Section Description* Any classes not taught in person will be held synchronously on Zoom. * This course focuses on selected English writers of poetry, drama, and prose from the 14th to the late 18th centuries. The following literature will be studied: The General Prologue in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales; Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice; selections from John Milton’s Paradise Lost; Part 4 of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels; Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey. Class discussion of each work will sometimes focus on its treatment of social, political, and economic issues of the period in which it was written: for instance, the alleged corruption of the late medieval Church and the questioning of conventional gender roles in the early modern period. Course Requirements:
Texts:
The texts will be available at the UBC Bookstore in a specially priced, shrink-wrapped package. |
Literature in English to the 18th Century
ENGL 220
keyboard_arrow_downA survey of prose, poetry and drama to the 18th Century.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | Lecture | T, Th | 14:00 - 15:30 | Hudson, Nicholas James | Section DescriptionRepresenting Race, Gender and Social Class, 1550-1800The period from the sixteenth century to the late eighteenth century witnessed the creation of categories of race, social class and gender that were taken as “natural” until very recently. During this period, the human species was increasingly subdivided into “racial” groups with white Europeans situated on top of a hierarchy of peoples. The difference between “man” and “woman” was deepened in a way that made males the “naturally” superior sex in charge of all public affairs. Politically, an older social hierarchy governed absolutely by a hereditary monarchy and aristocracy gave way to a system dominated by instead by the power of wealth and capitalist accumulation. In this section of English 220 will be examine how these fundamental changes were represented in literary works that also helped to create and to reinforce a modern hegemonic order that lasted until at least the late twentieth century. Texts: Shakespeare, Othello; Aphra Behn, Oroonoko; Olauda Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of Gustavus Vasa; John Donne, selected love poems; Eliza Haywood, Fantomina; Mary Wollstonecraft, Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman; Suzanne Centlivre, Bold Stroke for a Wife; George Coleman the Younger, Inkle and Yarico; a selection of working class poetry Assessment: two short essays, a final paper and a take-home exam, plus attendance and participation | |||
002 | 2 | Lecture | M, W, F | 11:00 - 12:00 | Pareles, Mo | ||||
003 | 2 | Lecture | M, W, F | 14:00 - 15:00 | Partridge, Stephen |
Literature in English to the 18th Century
ENGL 220
keyboard_arrow_downA survey of prose, poetry and drama to the 18th Century. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | Lecture | M, W, F | 12:00 - 13:00 | Fox, Lorcan Francis | Section DescriptionThis course focuses on selected English writers of poetry, drama, and prose from the late 14th to the 18th centuries. The following literature will be studied: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; Shakespeare’s King Lear; selections from John Milton’s Paradise Lost; Part 4 of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels; Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park. Class discussion of each work will sometimes focus on its treatment of social, political, and economic issues of the period in which it was written: for instance, the alleged corruption of the late medieval Church and the questioning of conventional gender roles in the early modern period. Course requirements: two quizzes (20% each); research essay, 1500 words (30%); final exam (30%) Texts:
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002 | 2 | Lecture | T, Th | 9:30 - 11:00 | Potter, Tiffany | Section DescriptionPleasure, Tension, Contention: Literature in England before 1700This course will provide a series of alternately sparkling and gritty snapshots that together will bring into focus the tensions among canonical traditions and alternate discourses of literary culture in England from the Medieval period to around 1700. This is a tasting menu, not a buffet. Texts are selected to offer a starting point on the vast expanse of content in the first few hundred years of English literary history, organized to lead us to a critical process of collaborative learning rather a high speed overview. We will consider a moderate number of selected readings around conflicts and continuities, both those occurring in the cultures of composition and those emerging subsequently in literary scholarship. At different times, we will interrogate textualizations of the emerging idea of the self, the representation and constitution and destabilizations of presumed-natural notions of gender and difference, the place of social issues and religion in art, the complexity of the English tradition in the much wider world, and the braided threads of love, art and sex. Want a head start? Consider Middleton and Dekker’s 1611 gender-disruptive comedy The Roaring Girl about a famous female thief. |
Literature in English to the 18th Century
ENGL 220
keyboard_arrow_downA survey of prose, poetry and drama to the 18th Century. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | Online | Lecture | T, Th | 11:00 - 12:30 | Tebokkel, Nathan |
Literature in Britain: the 18th Century to the Present
ENGL 221
keyboard_arrow_downA survey of poetry, drama, fiction and non-fiction prose from the 18th century to the present.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
003 | 2 | Lecture | M, W, F | 14:00 - 15:00 | Fox, Lorcan Francis | Section DescriptionLiterature in Britain: The 18th century to the presentThis course focuses on selected writers of British poetry, drama, and prose from the late eighteenth century to the present. It covers four periods of British literary history: “romantic,” Victorian, modern, and post-modern. We will study each work with a view to identifying and exploring social, political, and economic issues of each period: for instance, slavery, the Woman Question, the Condition-of-England Question, colonialism, and post-colonialism. We will also study works by writers from former British colonies. A provisional reading list includes poems by Blake, Wordsworth, Hemans, Tennyson, Kipling, Eliot, and Larkin; Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market”; short fiction by Conrad and Mansfield; prose nonfiction by Orwell; and a play by Shaw or Beckett. All readings are included in the course text: The Broadview Anthology of British Literature, Concise Edition, Volume B, 3rd ed. (The Age of Romanticism, The Victorian Era, The Twentieth Century and Beyond). Course requirements: two in-class essays, each worth 20%; research essay (1500 words), 30%; final exam, 30% |
Literature in Britain: the 18th Century to the Present
ENGL 221
keyboard_arrow_downA survey of poetry, drama, fiction and non-fiction prose from the 18th century to the present. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
003 | Lecture | Section DescriptionBritish Literature, Cultural Tradition, and Social ChangeEnglish 221 surveys British poetry, drama, fiction, and non-fictional prose from the 18th century to the present. This section spans the upheaval of the Revolution in France (1789) to the War in Somalia (2009). We will read a rich array of texts from The Broadview Anthology of British Literature: Concise Volume B (3E) by writers ranging from Edmund Burke to Warsan Shire. By situating British literature in its historical contexts, we will analyze dynamic interrelationships between cultural tradition and social change, extending to the reinterpretations afforded by selected adaptations, documentaries, and performances. Throughout, students will cultivate skills in literary criticism through close engagement with texts as they also compare and contrast forms, issues, and styles within and across historical periods. The course requirements may include a midterm, an essay assignment, and a final examination.
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Literature in Britain: the 18th Century to the Present
ENGL 221
keyboard_arrow_downA survey of poetry, drama, fiction and non-fiction prose from the 18th century to the present. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
003 | 1 | In-Person | Lecture | T, Th | 11:00 - 12:30 | Dalziel, Pamela | Section DescriptionThe Stories We Tell—and RetellWhy do we tell stories? The very phrase “telling stories” is synonymous, to quote the Houyhnhnms in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, with saying “the thing which is not.” Yet most story-tellers are trying to articulate “the thing which is,” however they might define that in socio-political and/or aesthetic terms. In this course we will explore the nature and significance of the stories that we tell—and retell—as writers, readers, and critics. Why are some stories more frequently retold than others? Why—and how—do some stories, such as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, become culture-texts, texts that occupy such prominent places in the popular imagination that they are collectively known and “remembered” even when the original works have never been read? As we attempt to answer these and other literary and cultural questions, we will explore the ideological assumptions—with respect to gender, race, class, sexuality, mental and physical ability, the environment, ethics, religion, education, aesthetics, etc.—implicit in our texts and some of their reimaginings, and in our and the original readers’ interpretations. Our readings will be organized into four clusters: 1-3) Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont’s “Beauty and the Beast: A Tale” (1757), Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847), and Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and some of their twentieth- and twenty-first-century reimaginings; 4) twenty-first-century voices. Texts: Our texts and films will include: Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont, “Beauty and the Beast: A Tale” (D. L. Ashliman, Folklore and Mythology Electronic Texts); Angela Carter, "The Courtship of Mr Lyon" and "The Tiger's Bride"; Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (Oxford World's Classics); selections from Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea (Canvas); Bertha, choreographed by Cathy Marston, music by Errollyn Wallen (Joffrey Ballet); Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Broadview); Alice in Wonderland, directed by Jonathan Miller (Library Online Course Reserves, Canvas (only available during term)); a selection of twentieth- and twenty-first-century illustrated editions of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Rare Books and Special Collections, UBC Library); Small Island stage play, based on the novel by Andrea Levy, adapted by Helen Edmundson (National Theatre performance and script); a selection of poems by Moniza Alvi, Sarah Howe, Kei Miller, and Theresa Muñoz. |
Literature in Canada
ENGL 222
keyboard_arrow_downThe major types of Canadian writing: fiction, poetry, non-fictional prose, and drama
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
921 | 1 | Lecture | M, W | 12:00 - 15:00 | Fedoruk, Emily | Section DescriptionThis Fiction Called Canada - Readings in Poetry, Prose, and PlaceOur course takes the national space of Canada as a point of critical entry for the study of contemporary fiction, poetry, cultural studies, and critical theory. As we share the space of the classroom each week, we will collectively map routes to understanding our positions, more specifically, in the city we call Vancouver and in so-called Canada. We’ll look at the city and its suburbs around us, whether we are home or away, and at the built environments extending from our classrooms and desktops to study our own production of space. Taking seriously our course title, we will analyze and interrogate our meeting point on unceded xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam) territory. Our class will always meet in person. But given that so many of our educational sites have shifted online in recent semesters, we can consider how in the case, and space, of a virtual classroom, this ‘sharing’ raises ever more compelling stakes. Our class offers opportunities for me to learn from students quite literally where you’re at, drawing on our unique spatial experiences of Vancouver and territories beyond. We will take every chance to get out into the city together, shifting the space of the classroom and dancing away from our desktops! We’ll start by practicing close reading but pull this analysis off the page too, studying site-specific artwork as a research method for urban space. Our interdisciplinary reading list will include oral texts, speculative fiction, noir, biotext, historical fiction, narrative film, experimental poetry, and some texts that explore the blurriness of boundaries between forms and genres. Among these, we will engage politics and power struggles as textual imperatives enlivened by our own discussions, activities, and writing. The course objective will be to develop relationships between literature and Canada--as a social space--as two distinct, but overlapping, projects. |
Literature in Canada
ENGL 222
keyboard_arrow_downThe major types of Canadian writing: fiction, poetry, non-fictional prose, and drama
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | Lecture | T, Th | 9:30 - 11:00 | Diabo, Gage | Section DescriptionINSTRUCTOR: DIABO, GAGE ONLINE | SYNCHRONOUS As Cherokee scholar Daniel Heath Justice puts it in response to the titular question of his book Why Indigenous Literatures Matter, “Indigenous literatures matter because Indigenous peoples matter. And that, to me, is mighty good cause for celebration” (221). More than just to interrogate and develop competencies in relation to Indigenous literatures, this course asks students to celebrate the literary work of Indigenous peoples in their appropriate contexts. This course will guide students through the history of First Peoples’ literary productions in Canada from the oral traditions of time immemorial to the prose, poetry, and drama of the present day. The course begins with a look to the east, to the unceded ancestral territory of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, with Mohawk writers E. Pauline Johnson and Kahente Horn-Miller as well as Tuscarora essayist Alicia Elliott. Moving from east to west, the course continues with literary approaches to Anishinaabe resurgence in the writings of Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Basil H. Johnston, Grace Dillon, and Waubgeshig Rice. The course approaches political and cultural issues pertaining to the Indian Act, the Indian Residential School System, and the Red Power era by way of reference to Nehiyaw novelist Michelle Good. Fiction and poetry by Chrystos, Annharte, Joshua Whitehead, Billy-Ray Belcourt, and Arielle Twist are woven throughout the reading schedule in order to explore the range of experiences and formal accomplishments of Indigenous women and queer folk. Lastly, the course addresses the need for decolonial solidarity with reference to the Asian-Indigenous intersections in Stó:lō author Lee Maracle’s “Yin Chin” and Métis playwright Marie Clements’ Burning Vision. | |||
002 | 2 | Lecture | M, W, F | 10:00 - 11:00 | Mccormack, Brendan | Section DescriptionWhat if… ? Speculative Literatures in Canada (or, Eh is for Apocalypse)“We can’t possibly live otherwise until we first imagine otherwise”--Daniel Heath Justice (Cherokee Nation), Why Indigenous Literatures Matter What if global warming causes a pandemic of dreamlessness and a future where Indigenous peoples are hunted for the reported cure found in their bone marrow? What if a new volcanic island were to unexpectedly arise in Burrard Inlet at the outer harbour of Vancouver? What if geronticide emerged as a popular solution to intergenerational social and economic challenges? Speculative literature—an umbrella category usually associated with the science fiction, fantasy, and horror genres, but which we will approach more expansively—is literature of the what if. By expanding, often into disturbing and uncomfortable places, the conditions of the world as we know it in order to consider what might be, it invariably returns us to what is, and to the historical and contemporary challenges that prompt creative acts of speculation. In this course we will take up a range of fantastic novels, short stories, and film in a number of increasingly popular and sometimes overlapping speculative genres—like science fiction, climate fiction (“cli-fi”), dystopia/utopia, (post-)apocalyptic, Afro- and Indigenous futurism, alternate history, horror, fantasy, thriller—to examine the “what ifs” posed by Canadian and Indigenous writers; the power, possibilities, and limits of genre; and the hopes, fears, and political imaginaries of the worlds speculative literature brings into being. The readings (to be finalized later in the summer) will likely be selected from works by Margaret Atwood, Jeff Barnaby, Wayde Compton, Cherie Dimaline, Lawrence Hill, Larissa Lai, Eden Robinson, and Saleema Nawaz.
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Literature in Canada
ENGL 222
keyboard_arrow_downThe major types of Canadian writing: fiction, poetry, non-fictional prose, and drama. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | Lecture | M, W, F | 13:00 - 14:00 | Hunt, Dallas | Section DescriptionIntroduction to Canadian Literature (Land, Labour, and Literatures)Taking the period from early imperial contact and exploration, to Confederation, the turn of the century when Canada’s presence on the global stage began to be felt, through to the Great Wars, Modernism, Postmodernism and the present day, ENGL 222 examines selected features of Canada’s complex and diverse literary history in English. Our survey will interrogate the vibrancy of literary genre across time, comprising Canadian poetry and prose, fiction and non-fiction. In doing so, this course will consider the literary, geographic, political, historical, racial, economic and social processes that have facilitated the contexts and content of authorship and text in Canada. What do these literary forms tell us about “Canada,” and what is set into motion by the interaction of this modifier with “literature”? What does Canadian literature tell “us” about the form of the nation and its citizens in the present day? What does a study of literature have to do with answering questions about nationhood, identity, community, and citizenship? Why does it matter? In attempting to answer these (and other) questions, we will remain committed to the complexities of audience and reception, genre, authorship, and the future of Canada. We will consider not only what it means to tell a story about Canada, who tells it, and how the story is told, laterally connected, and distinct, but who is meant to hear the story, and when. | |||
002 | 2 | Lecture | M, W, F | 10:00 - 11:00 | Mccormack, Brendan | Section DescriptionWhat if… ? Speculative Literatures in Canada (where ‘Eh’ is for Apocalypse)
“The apocalyptic images are not just alarmist rhetoric: by pretty clear scientific consensus, there is ample reason to be afraid...”—Catriona Sandilands, Storying Climate Change “We can’t possibly live otherwise until we first imagine otherwise”—Daniel Heath Justice (Cherokee Nation), Why Indigenous Literatures Matter
What if global warming causes a pandemic of dreamlessness and a future where Indigenous peoples are hunted for a cure reportedly found in their bone marrow? What if scientists genetically re-engineered humanity to better survive climate apocalypse? What if geronticide emerged as a popular solution to intergenerational conflicts over economic inequality? What if cyborgs wrote poetry? What if a child’s emotional distress resulted in transmogrification into a giant red panda? What if... what if... what if… Speculative literature—an umbrella category or “supergenre” associated with genres like science fiction, dystopia, fantasy, and horror—is storytelling of the what if. It alters or extends (often into uncomfortable places) the conditions of the world as we know it in order to consider what might be, and in doing so invariably returns us to what has been and is, to the present that prompts such creative acts of speculation. Focusing its exploration of Canadian literatures through the genres of speculative fiction, this course will examine some of the big “what ifs” being asked by Canadian and Indigenous storytellers today. We’ll read stories about climate apocalypse and the end of the world, about the horrors of colonial history and dystopian neocolonial futures, and about monstrous bodies and posthuman figures, and we’ll consider how such fantastic fictions function to comment on our realities. Indeed, while apocalypse and dystopia have long been spaces for writers to play out the potentially perilous futures of society’s present conditions—a tradition contemporary “cli-fi” continues in response to the very real horror of climate catastrophe—for many marginalized by those conditions, apocalypse and dystopia are not simply imaginative spaces. By exploring a diverse selection of texts and authors, we will thus attend to some of the different ways writers and artists in Canada are employing the fantastic to develop a cultural politics from speculative interventions into both troubling pasts and challenges of the present. We will consider questions such as: what are the powers, possibilities, and limits of speculative genres? How does genre function differently for different writers/audiences in different contexts? What are the hopes, fears, and political imaginaries of the worlds Canadian speculative storytelling brings into being? And how does the “what if?” help us to “imagine otherwise”? The readings and viewings will comprise novels, films, short stories, and poems in several (sometimes overlapping) SF genres—climate fiction (“cli-fi”), (post-)apocalyptic, dystopia/utopia, horror, alternate history, sci-fi, Afro- and Indigenous futurism, and urban fantasy. Primary texts will likely be selected from works by Margaret Atwood, Lindsay B-e, Jeff Barnaby, Wayde Compton, Cherie Dimaline, Hiromi Goto, Lisa Jackson, Doretta Lau, and Domee Shi. |
Literature in Canada
ENGL 222
keyboard_arrow_downThe major types of Canadian writing: fiction, poetry, non-fictional prose, and drama. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
002 | 2 | In-Person | Lecture | M, W, F | 10:00 - 11:00 | Mccormack, Brendan | Section DescriptionWhat if… ? Speculative Literatures in Canada (where ‘Eh’ is for Apocalypse)“The apocalyptic images are not just alarmist rhetoric: by pretty clear scientific consensus, there is ample reason to be afraid...” “We can’t possibly live otherwise until we first imagine otherwise”
What if global warming causes a pandemic of dreamlessness and a future where Indigenous peoples are hunted for a cure reportedly found in their bone marrow? What if scientists genetically re-engineered humanity to better survive climate apocalypse? What if geronticide emerged as a popular solution to intergenerational conflicts over economic inequality? What if cyborgs wrote poetry? What if a child’s emotional distress resulted in transmogrification into a giant red panda? What if... what if... what if… Speculative literature—an umbrella category or “supergenre” associated with genres like science fiction, dystopia, fantasy, and horror—is storytelling of the what if. It alters or extends (often into uncomfortable places) the conditions of the world as we know it in order to consider what might be, and in doing so invariably returns us to what has been and is, to the present that prompts such creative acts of speculation. This course will introduce students to Canadian literatures in the genres of speculative fiction, examining some of the big “what ifs” being asked by Canadian and Indigenous storytellers today. We’ll read stories about climate apocalypse and consider the usefulness of imagining the end of the world. We’ll explore how the horrors of colonial history have been reimagined into dystopian neocolonial futures. And we’ll take up narratives about monstrous bodies and posthuman figures that question what it means to be human. How do such fantastic fictions function to comment on our realities? Indeed, while apocalypse and dystopia have long been spaces for writers to play out the potentially perilous futures of society’s present conditions—a tradition contemporary “cli-fi” continues in response to the very real horror of climate catastrophe—for many marginalized by those conditions, apocalypse and dystopia are not simply imaginative spaces. By exploring a diverse selection of texts and authors, we will thus attend to some of the different ways writers and artists in Canada are employing the fantastic to develop a cultural politics from speculative engagement with both troubling pasts and challenges of the present. Our guiding questions will include: what are the powers, possibilities, and limits of speculative genres? How does genre function differently for different writers/audiences in different contexts? What are the hopes, fears, and political imaginaries of the worlds Canadian speculative storytelling brings into being? And how does the “what if?” help us to “imagine otherwise”? The readings and viewings will comprise novels, films, short stories, and poems in several (sometimes overlapping) SF genres—climate fiction (“cli-fi”), (post-)apocalyptic, dystopia/utopia, horror, alternate history, sci-fi, Afro- and Indigenous futurism, and urban fantasy. Primary texts will likely be selected from works by Margaret Atwood, Lindsay B-e, Jeff Barnaby, Wayde Compton, Cherie Dimaline, Hiromi Goto, Lisa Jackson, Daniel Heath Justice, Doretta Lau, and Domee Shi. |
Literature in the United States
ENGL 223
keyboard_arrow_downThe major types of American writing: fiction, poetry, drama and non-fictional prose.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | Lecture | T, Th | 11:00 - 12:30 | Tomc, Sandra | Section DescriptionAmerican ReckoningsThis course will be a loose survey of United States literature from 1820 to 1900. Our focus will be social justice themes and literary movements. The course will begin with the major figures in early nineteenth-century U.S. literary nationalism, figures who celebrated and mythologized the founding of the United States, including Washington Irving, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Walt Whitman. After looking at these central champions of American nationalism, we will move on to study a skeptical tradition in U.S. literature. This skeptical literature takes into account the problematic political history of the United States, its reliance on an often-brutal capitalist economic order, its dependence on race-based enslavement, and its violent settler colonization of Indigenous territories. In this section we will first study romantic and poetic attacks on the mythology of the U.S. by such writers as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, and Rebecca Harding Davis. We will then look at how a powerful gender ideology in the United States worked in tandem with its larger political and economic ideologies; in this section we will study Emily Dickinson, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Henry James. Finally, the course will look at Black and Indigenous accounts of life under U.S. slavery and colonization. In this section we will read William Apess, Frederick Douglass, and Harriet Jacobs. | |||
002 | 1 | Lecture | T, Th | 14:00 - 15:30 | Severs, Jeffrey | Section DescriptionU.S. Novel Since 1960This course surveys some of the great innovators in the U.S. novel over the past 50 to 60 years, ranging across the stalwarts of realism, postmodernism, and the proliferation of important multicultural voices in the American canon. Questions we will address include: What have been the major innovations in fictional form in the U.S. in the past sixty years, and what forces seem to have driven them? What structures have writers developed in this era to demonstrate new layers of guilt, innocence, and moral complexity? Does the novel, as informational and imaginative medium, have authority in this era? If so, what sort of authority is it? What difference has the explosion in prominent ethnic writers within U.S. literature made for definitions of “American culture”? Students will write two essays (1500 and 2000 words), as well as a final exam. Texts are likely to include Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49, Joan Didion’s Play It As It Lays, Toni Morrison’s “Recitatif” (story) and Jazz, John Cheever’s “The Swimmer” (story), Chang-rae Lee’s A Gesture Life, and Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From the Goon Squad. |
Literature in the United States
ENGL 223
keyboard_arrow_downThe major types of American writing: fiction, poetry, drama and non-fictional prose. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
002 | 2 | Lecture | M, W, F | 11:00 - 12:00 | Zeitlin, Michael | Section DescriptionThis course offers a focused introduction to Literature in the United States. We will read a selection of stories, novels, plays, poems, personal narratives, and "special cases": "It has rightly been said that all great works of literature establish a genre or dissolve one--that they are, in other words, special cases" (Walter Benjamin, "On the Image of Proust," 1927). Our themes will include the legacy of Puritanism and the American revolution; the history of slavery and "race;" the social divisions of gender, class, and labor; the romance of the American dream and its "obverse reflections" (Faulkner) in some versions of American gothic; narrative experiments and modernist form; the pastoral domain and the waste land; and others. Readings may include the following: Short Stories
Assignments and Procedures: Our main activity will be to practice the art of interpretation and close reading. Each student will be asked to deliver a short (five-minute) informal presentation: "Open the book, read something aloud, make an observation or formulate a question--discussion will follow." Our writing assignments will be based on a similar procedure, namely to let our writing flow up from our reading. Students will be expected to make notes in their books (underlining passages of interest or fascination, marking key images, collating scenes and pages, mapping internal relational patterns, and so on). Students will also write three short essays (one in class) based on close reading of a literary text. There will also be a final exam. Classroom conversation will be encouraged. Attendance will be taken. |
Literature in the United States
ENGL 223
keyboard_arrow_downThe major types of American writing: fiction, poetry, drama and non-fictional prose. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
002 | 2 | In-Person | Lecture | M, W, F | 11:00 - 12:00 | Sharpe, Jae |
World Literature in English
ENGL 224
keyboard_arrow_downEnglish literature produced outside Britain and North America.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
951 | 2 | Lecture | M, W | 12:00 - 15:00 | Dinat, Deena | Section DescriptionAfrican Cities in the 21st Century: A Literary ApproachThis summer course introduces students to questions of urbanism, identity, and power in the rapidly-changing metropolises of 21st century Africa. Through novels, film, poetry and short stories, we’ll encounter and challenge preconceived notions of Africa by asking how cities shape modern African life. From the eerie, ghostly Dakar of Mati Diop’s 2019 film Atlantics, to the decaying sprawl of Ivan Vladislavic’s Johannesburg in 2011’s Double Negative, we’ll interrogate what defines and defies the “global” African city through questions of labour, gender, and race. With Teju Cole’s 2011 Open City, we’ll ask what makes New York and Brussels fundamentally African spaces, and debate how histories of migration shape these global centres today. Short stories and poetry from Windhoek, Harare, and Cape Town consider how African cities provide new kinds of communities, shape new identities, and offer glimpses into both the past and the future of the continent.
|
World Literature in English
ENGL 224
keyboard_arrow_downEnglish literature produced outside Britain and North America.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | Lecture | T, Th | 14:00 - 15:30 | Fox, Lorcan Francis | Section DescriptionIn this section of English 224 we will study a wide range of literature by authors who write in English and are from former British colonies (excluding North America). Such literature has been labelled “post-colonial,” a term we will define and interrogate early in the course. A provisional reading list includes poetry by Derek Walcott (St. Lucia), Lorna Goodison (Jamaica), and Jean Arasanayagam (Sri Lanka); short stories by Nadine Gordimer (South Africa), Chinua Achebe (Nigeria), and Anita Desai (India); essays by Salman Rushdie (India-UK), Jamaica Kincaid (Antigua-USA), and Timothy Mo (Hong Kong-UK). All assigned readings are included in the course text: Concert of Voices: An Anthology of World Writing in English, 2nd ed. (Broadview). Course requirements: two in-class essays, each worth 20%; research essay (1500 words), 30%; final exam, 30% |
World Literature in English
ENGL 224
keyboard_arrow_downEnglish literature produced outside Britain and North America.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
951 | 2 | Lecture | M, W | 12:00 - 15:00 | Dinat, Deena | Section DescriptionAfrican Cities in the 21st Century: A Literary ApproachThis summer course introduces students to questions of urbanism, identity, and power in the rapidly-changing metropolises of contemporary Africa. From the ghostly Dakar of Mati Diop’s 2019 film Atlantics, to Teju Cole’s Open New York City, we’ll interrogate what defines and defies the “global” African city by considering questions of labour, gender, and race. Short stories and poetry from around the continent will explore how African cities imagine new kinds of communities, shape new identities, and offer glimpses into the past, present and future of the continent. |
World Literature in English
ENGL 224
keyboard_arrow_downEnglish literature produced outside Britain and North America. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | Lecture | M, W, F | 9:00 - 10:00 | James, Suzanne | Section DescriptionAn Introduction to African Writing“One must look at the world from Africa to be an African writer, Africa is a fascinatingly diverse and complex continent, and its writing–although a relatively recent development–reflects this diversity. This section of English 224 will provide an introduction to African literature through the study of a range of novels and short stories. These works reflect a range of styles and thematic concerns, and are drawn from west, south, east and north Africa. Course texts: Course texts will include Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, Miriama Ba, So Long a Letter, NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names, Zakes Mda’s Ways of Dying and Twenty Years of the Caine Prize for African Writing (a short story anthology). |
World Literature in English
ENGL 224
keyboard_arrow_downEnglish literature produced outside Britain and North America. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | In-Person | Lecture | M, W, F | 12:00 - 13:00 | Dinat, Deena | Section Description2024 marks 30 years since the formal end of South African apartheid, a system of white minority rule enforced with unchecked state violence. This course explores the ways in which writers turned culture into a “weapon of struggle” against apartheid and what happened to South African literature when that struggle was eventually won.
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Poetry
ENGL 225
keyboard_arrow_downPrinciples, methods, and resources for reading poetry.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 2 | Lecture | M, W, F | 11:00 - 12:00 | Fox, Lorcan Francis | Section DescriptionIn this section of English 225 our goal is to study a broad range of poetry by writers of various nationalities; a few poems will be read in English translation. Proceeding chronologically, we will begin with one or two poems of the Renaissance and then move on to the Romantic, Victorian, and Modern periods. The course will end with some consideration of poetry written in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Always we will attend to a poem’s literary elements (form, figurative language, and so on), but sometimes we may also turn briefly to its historical context. “I, too, dislike it,” writes Marianne Moore of poetry in a famous poem entitled “Poetry.” If you don’t already like “it,” I hope you will by the end of the course. Text: The Broadview Introduction to Literature: Poetry, 2nd edition (Broadview) Course requirements: two in-class essays (each worth 20%), research essay (30%), final exam (30%) |
Poetry
ENGL 225
keyboard_arrow_downPrinciples, methods, and resources for reading poetry.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
921 | 1 | Lecture | T, Th | 18:00 - 21:00 | Fox, Lorcan Francis |
Poetry
ENGL 225
keyboard_arrow_downPrinciples, methods, and resources for reading poetry. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | Lecture | M, W, F | 10:00 - 11:00 | Fox, Lorcan Francis | Section DescriptionIn this section of English 225 our goal is to study a broad range of poetry written in English. We will not proceed chronologically but will examine poems of various historical eras, from the Renaissance to the early twenty-first century. Though we may occasionally consider a poem’s historical context our primary focus will be on its literary elements: form, figurative language, and so on. Rather than study several poems by a few poets we will probably study a single poem by several, including Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn MacEwen, Michael Ondaatje, and Jackie Kay. “I, too, dislike it,” writes Marianne Moore of poetry in a famous poem entitled ... “Poetry.” If you don’t already like “it,” I hope you will by the end of the course. Text: The Broadview Introduction to Literature: Poetry, 2nd edition (Broadview) Course requirements: two in-class essays (20% each), research essay, 1500 words (30%), final exam (30%) | |||
002 | 2 | Lecture | T, Th | 9:30 - 11:00 | Guy-bray, Stephen |
Poetry
ENGL 225
keyboard_arrow_downPrinciples, methods, and resources for reading poetry. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
002 | 2 | In-Person | Lecture | T, Th | 09:30 - 11:00 | Guy-bray, Stephen |
Prose Fiction
ENGL 227
keyboard_arrow_downPrinciples, methods and resources for reading the novel and the short story.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | Lecture | T, Th | 11:00 - 12:30 | Fox, Lorcan Francis | Section DescriptionIn this section of English 227 we will study an assortment of short stories by authors of various nationalities and historical eras. After briefly exploring reasons for the emergence of the modern short story we will proceed chronologically by examining short fiction written over the span of roughly a century, from the late nineteenth to the early twenty-first centuries. Apart from identifying each story’s literary elements, we will note how it may reflect one or more literary movements: for instance, realism. How to define the term “short story” is a question that will almost certainly arise from our close study of so broad a range of short fiction. The short stories we study in the course will be selected from the following list: Kate Chopin, “The Story of an Hour”; Guy de Maupassant, “The False Gems”; Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper”; James Joyce, “The Dead”; Franz Kafka, “Metamorphosis”; Katherine Mansfield, “The Garden Party”; Ernest Hemingway, “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”; Chinua Achebe, “Dead Men’s Path”; Alice Munro, “Friend of My Youth”; Alistair MacLeod, “As Birds Bring Forth the Sun”; Raymond Carver, “Cathedral”; Margaret Atwood, “Happy Endings”; Thomas King, “A Short History of Indians in Canada”; Kazuo Ishiguro, “A Family Supper”; Jhumpa Lahiri, “Interpreter of Maladies”; Hassan Blasim, “The Nightmare of Carlos Fuentes”; Madeleine Thien, “Simple Recipes” Text: The Broadview Introduction to Literature: Short Fiction, 2nd ed. (Broadview) Course requirements: two quizzes, each worth 20%; research essay (1500 words), 30%; final exam, 30% | |||
002 | 2 | Lecture | M, W, F | 14:00 - 15:00 | Culbert, John |
Prose Fiction
ENGL 227
keyboard_arrow_downPrinciples, methods and resources for reading the novel and the short story. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | Lecture | T, Th | 14:00 - 15:30 | Severs, Jeffrey | Section DescriptionThe Twentieth-Century African-American NovelA study of the African-American novelist, concentrated on great works of the second half of the twentieth century and addressing the titanic struggles for civil rights, broader freedoms, and equality in gender and sexuality. Texts to be read include: Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952); James Baldwin, Another Country (1962); Toni Morrison, Sula (1973); Gayl Jones, Corregidora (1975); Charles Johnson, Middle Passage (1990). Two five-page close-reading essays, a final exam, and regular participation comprise the core of evaluation. | |||
002 | 2 | Lecture | M, W, F | 15:00 - 16:00 | Culbert, John |
Prose Fiction
ENGL 227
keyboard_arrow_downPrinciples, methods and resources for reading the novel and the short story. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
921 | 1 | Lecture | T, Th | 18:00 - 21:00 | Roukema, Aren | Section DescriptionINSTRUCTOR: AREN ROUKEMA Literature in 4DOur sense of time is a telling of stories. To make sense of the overload of decisions, actions, and events around and within us, humans use narrative to reduce time’s intricate web to a simple line that runs from beginning, through middle, to end. Fiction mirrors these stories we tell ourselves, selecting and organizing events and memories to create the illusion of a stable, comprehensible timeline. In this course we will encounter fiction that highlights the relationship between story and time. We will ask how stories situate in time and discuss strategies for reading them out of time. We will consider time travel, alternative timelines, backwards time (memory, history) and forwards time (prophecy, intuition, prediction). We will ask how time governs the lifespan and motivations of characters, the dread and anticipation of tone and mood, the expansion or degeneration of worlds, and the existential considerations of theme. Most of all, we will examine the use of plot to experiment with time: jumping back and forth, speeding through a lifetime in a few sentences, or spending pages on a single moment. Texts will include Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five (Dial, 1999), stories from The Broadview Introduction to Literature: Short Fiction (2nd edn), and a graphic adaptation of Octavia Butler’s Kindred (Abrams, 2018). | |||
W92 | 1 | Waiting List | T, Th | 18:00 - 21:00 |
Prose Fiction
ENGL 227
keyboard_arrow_downPrinciples, methods and resources for reading the novel and the short story. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
002 | 2 | In-Person | Lecture | M, W, F | 11:00 - 12:00 | Roukema, Aren | Section DescriptionLiterature in 4DOur experience of time is a telling of stories. We use narrative to reduce life’s jumble of memories, experiences, hopes, and anxieties to a simple line that runs from beginning, through middle, to end. Fiction mirrors these stories we tell ourselves, selecting and organizing events to create the illusion of a stable, comprehensible timeline. In this course we’ll encounter novels and short stories from a range of authors and contexts, working together to interpret them from various angles and perspectives. We’ll particularly focus, however, on the relationship between story and time. We’ll situate fiction in its own time and think about how to read it out of time. We’ll consider time travel, alternative timelines, backwards time (memory, history) and forwards time (prophecy, intuition, prediction). We will ask how time governs the lifespan and motivations of characters, the dread and anticipation of mood, the expansion or degeneration of worlds, and the existential considerations of theme. Most of all, we will examine the use of plot to experiment with time: jumping back and forth, speeding through a lifetime in a few sentences, or spending pages on a single moment. Texts: Texts will include Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway (Wordsworth Classics, 1998), Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five (Dial, 1999), stories from The Broadview Introduction to Literature: Short Fiction (2nd edn), and a graphic adaptation of Octavia Butler’s Kindred (Abrams, 2018). |
Topics in Literary and/or Cultural Studies
ENGL 228
keyboard_arrow_downCurrent research interests in English studies.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
002 | 2 | Lecture | T, Th | 9:30 - 11:00 | Vessey, Mark | Section DescriptionThis course is cancelled. [November 2022] |
Topics in Literary and/or Cultural Studies - Topics in Literary and/or Cultural Studies
ENGL 228A
keyboard_arrow_downCurrent research interests in English studies. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
A_001 | 2 | In-Person | Lecture | M, W, F | 12:00 - 13:00 | Mccormack, Brendan | Section DescriptionTerm 2 *This course fulfills the new BA Ways of Knowing: Place and Power breadth requirement This course introduces students to literary and cultural representations of/intersections with practices of power in the context of the West Coast of what is currently called Canada. It emphasizes works by local authors from, about, or associated with Vancouver and British Columbia. Theories of place inform an approach to works by these writers that will allow us to examine literary Vancouver from a range of Indigenous, diaspora, and settler contexts. Our guiding question will be: How does reading “place”—including displacement—make visible the intimate and deeply felt ways dynamics of power are enated, embodied, resisted, and imagined by writers and/in communities? Students will read a range of writers from and/or engaging Vancouver in a variety of literary forms and genres. Assignments will position you in place and community, enabling you to examine place-based texts, mix critical and creative modes of inquiry, and bring student class participants collaboratively together. |
Topics in the Study of Language and/or Rhetoric
ENGL 229
keyboard_arrow_downConsult Department's website for current year's offerings.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 2 | Lecture | T, Th | 12:30 - 14:00 | Dancygier, Barbara | Section DescriptionHow Language Creates MeaningExpressing meaning is why we use language in the first place, but understanding how we choose the form of expression is not straightforward. In the course, we will learn how linguistic meaning emerges at the intersection of our embodied experience, our conceptual abilities, and our social and cultural context. To flesh out the meaning emergence mechanisms we will consider examples from grammar, structure of words, and multiple word meanings, but also visual communication and multimodal (text and image) artifacts. Through reading and analysis of examples, we will learn what it means to view language as a tool supporting conceptualization, in various communicative situations (advertising, internet discourse, commercial contexts, cityscape, and many more). | |||
002 | 1 | Lecture | T, Th | 15:30 - 17:00 | Stickles, Elise | Section DescriptionIntroduction to Cognitive LinguisticsIs a taco a sandwich? What about a hot dog? These questions may lead to a fun debate over dinner, but they also reveal the remarkable nature of the structure of mental categories (such as “sandwich”) and how we decide what does – or doesn’t – belong. In this course, we won’t be able to answer these questions, but we will be able to learn why they are so tricky to answer. To do so, we will explore the field of cognitive linguistics, which is the study of how language and cognition work together to create meaning. Fundamentally, our language is a reflection of how we understand the world around us, as humans living in physical bodies, experiencing the properties of our environment, and engaging in constant social interaction. Therefore, to understand how language works, we must also understand how other cognitive processes work, such as categorization, perception, and mental representations of concepts. We will begin with learning about how we categorize, organize, reason about, and ultimately linguistically label concepts. This structure provides the basis of understanding how figurative language works, with a focus on metaphor and metonymy. We will then see how these same cognitive tools allow words to acquire multiple meanings (polysemy), and how concepts, words, and grammar all work together to create meaning. Finally, we will consider how our newly acquired understanding of language can be applied to other areas of life, such as politics, advertising, and healthcare. Throughout we will study language in all its forms, including written, spoken, and signed language; gesture; and image. By the end of the course, students will be able to:
The main texts are Cognitive Linguistics: An Introduction (2006), by Vyvyan Evans and Melanie Green and An Introduction to Cognitive Linguistics (2006), by Friedrich Ungerer and Hans-Jorg Schmid. There is no need to purchase anything; all assigned readings will be available online via the UBC Library website. | |||
003 | 1 | Lecture | M, W, F | 14:00 - 15:00 | De Villiers, Jessica | Section DescriptionWorking with Spoken DiscourseThis course introduces techniques and approaches for the analysis of spoken discourse in English. The focus will be on analyzing language events involving interaction between two or more speakers, with an emphasis on considering language in context. The course begins with a general overview of the subject including practices and considerations for the collection and transcription of spoken discourse. We will then consider a number of approaches to discourse analysis; ethnography, speech functions, conversation analysis, sociolinguistics and critical discourse analysis. Students will learn how to design and conduct their own research projects. The main textbook, Analysing Casual Conversation, will be supplemented with lecture materials and some additional reading. Throughout the term we will work toward learning and applying a “toolkit” to collected texts. Examples of both spoken and written discourse may be examined but the emphasis will be on spoken discourse. Students will be encouraged to collect and analyze their own data. In general, the goals of the course will be:
There will be a number of short activities and assignments, a group presentation, a final paper representing 40% of the course grade and two short tests. Students will also present their proposed work for the final paper to the class. The textbook for the course will be Analysing Casual Conversation, S. Eggins and D. Slade. Equinox Publishing, 2005. Classes will be held in person on Mondays and Wednesdays, and online via Zoom on Fridays.
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Topics in the Study of Language and/or Rhetoric
ENGL 229
keyboard_arrow_downConsult Department's website for current year's offerings. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | Lecture | T, Th | 15:30 - 17:00 | Stickles, Elise | Section DescriptionIntroduction to Cognitive LinguisticsIs a taco a sandwich? What about a hot dog? These questions may lead to a fun debate over dinner, but they also reveal the remarkable nature of the structure of mental categories (such as “sandwich”) and how we decide what does – or doesn’t – belong. In this course, we won’t be able to answer these questions, but we will be able to learn why they are so tricky to answer. To do so, we will explore the field of cognitive linguistics, which is the study of how language and cognition work together to create meaning. Fundamentally, our language is a reflection of how we understand the world around us, as humans living in physical bodies, experiencing the properties of our environment, and engaging in constant social interaction. Therefore, to understand how language works, we must also understand how other cognitive processes work, such as categorization, perception, and mental representations of concepts. We will begin with learning about how we categorize, organize, reason about, and ultimately linguistically label concepts. This structure provides the basis of understanding how figurative language works, with a focus on metaphor and metonymy. We will then see how these same cognitive tools allow words to acquire multiple meanings (polysemy), and how concepts, words, and grammar all work together to create meaning. Finally, we will consider how our newly acquired understanding of language can be applied to other areas of life, such as politics, advertising, and healthcare. Throughout we will study language in all its forms, including written, spoken, and signed language; gesture; and image. By the end of the course, students will be able to:
The main texts are Cognitive Linguistics: An Introduction (2006), by Vyvyan Evans and Melanie Green and An Introduction to Cognitive Linguistics (2006), by Friedrich Ungerer and Hans-Jorg Schmid. There is no need to purchase anything; all assigned readings will be available online via the UBC Library website. | |||
002 | 2 | Lecture | T, Th | 12:30 - 14:00 | Dollinger, Stefan | Section DescriptionCanadian English: history, present & futureIn this course we’ll reflect about Canadian English, defined as any variety of English spoken and used in Canada. We will distinguish between Standard Canadian English, review the state of our knowledge about it, and other forms of English used in Canada, with a focus on Indigenous Englishes. We will approach Canadian English from sociolinguistic and sociohistorical perspectives: How did it come about? Who decided when that it was its own variety? Why is it the way it is? Is it a colonial form of English? Why do some not know much about it (perhaps you)? Bring a curious and open mind. Note, this course will be conducted EXCLUSIVELY online |
Topics in the Study of Language and/or Rhetoric - LANGUAG/RHETORIC
ENGL 229A
keyboard_arrow_downConsult Department's website for current year's offerings. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended. This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
A_001 | 1 | In-Person | Lecture | T, Th | 15:30 - 17:00 | Dancygier, Barbara | Section DescriptionHow Language Creates MeaningExpressing meaning is why we use language in the first place, but understanding how we choose the form of expression is not straightforward. In the course, we will learn how linguistic meaning emerges at the intersection of our embodied experience, our conceptual abilities, and our social and cultural context. To flesh out the meaning emergence mechanisms we will consider examples from grammar, structure of words, and multiple word meanings, but also visual communication and multimodal (text and image) artifacts. Through developing theoretical concepts and close analysis of examples, we will learn what it means to view language as a tool supporting conceptualization, in various communicative situations (advertising, internet discourse, commercial contexts, cityscape, and many more). |
Introduction to Indigenous Literatures
ENGL 231
keyboard_arrow_downA study of cultural expression in contemporary indigenous contexts.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 2 | Lecture | T, Th | 9:30 - 11:00 | Hunt, Dallas |
Introduction to Indigenous Literatures
ENGL 231
keyboard_arrow_downA study of cultural expression in contemporary indigenous contexts. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 2 | Lecture | T, Th | 11:00 - 12:30 | Hunt, Dallas | Section DescriptionIntroduction to Indigenous Literatures (Through Time & Space)ENGL 231 explores the ways that Indigenous peoples have sought to overcome the legacy of colonialism and achieve self-determination through literary and other forms of cultural production and critique. This course will examine contemporary articulations of Indigenous identity, politics and cultural traditions in the field of literature, through the genres of the novel, poetry, drama, film, and other modes of resurgent cultural expression. We will be examining both critiques of mainstream representations of Indigenous peoples in scholarly articles and readings, as well as Indigenous perspectives on popular culture, urban Indigeneity, history, politics, and contemporary struggles for decolonization. Each class session will be focused on a theme relevant to the course topic and reading materials. The course will be comprised of a combination of class lectures, potential guest speakers, and group discussions. Emphasis will be placed on generating group discussions and class participation whenever possible. |
Introduction to Indigenous Literatures
ENGL 231
keyboard_arrow_downA study of cultural expression in contemporary indigenous contexts. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 2 | In-Person | Lecture | T, Th | 11:00 - 12:30 | Hunt, Dallas | Section DescriptionIndigenous Literatures, Through Time and SpaceENGL 231 explores the ways that Indigenous peoples have sought to overcome the legacy of colonialism and achieve self-determination through literary and other forms of cultural production and critique. This course will examine contemporary articulations of Indigenous identity, politics and cultural traditions in the field of literature, through the genres of the novel, poetry, plays/drama, film, and other modes of resurgent cultural expression. We will be examining both critiques of mainstream representations of Indigenous peoples in scholarly articles and readings, as well as Indigenous perspectives on popular culture, urban Indigeneity, history, politics, and contemporary struggles for decolonization. | ||
002 | 1 | In-Person | Lecture | M, W, F | 13:00 - 14:00 | Manuel, Alexa | Section DescriptionThis course will critically engage the works of contemporary Indigenous authors from North America with a comparative perspective situated in the broad field of Indigenous studies. We will read a variety of genres including poetry, fiction, non-fiction, short stories, novels, as well as criticism in Indigenous studies. Additionally, we will engage with non-textual forms of Indigenous literature, including oral storytelling, performance, and land-based story. The organizing questions for this particular semester are: What is the relationship between contemporary Indigenous literature and Indigenous politics and activism? How do Indigenous scholars and writers contextualize contemporary narratives culturally, politically and historically in ethical and creative ways? How do they address sovereignty, self-determination, decolonization and resurgence in their work? |
Approaches to Media Studies
ENGL 232
keyboard_arrow_downApproaches to the study of media: philosophical; technological; cultural; theoretical.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | Lecture | M, W, F | 11:00 - 12:00 | Cavell, Richard Anthony |
Approaches to Media Studies
ENGL 232
keyboard_arrow_downApproaches to the study of media: philosophical; technological; cultural; theoretical. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | Lecture | M, W, F | 11:00 - 12:00 | Cavell, Richard Anthony | Section DescriptionThis course, designed specifically for students in the Bachelor of Media Studies program, provides foundational understanding of four major approaches to media studies (historical; theoretical; environmental; social justice). The outcomes of the course will enable students to negotiate media in terms of their theoretical foundations and distinguish critically the different effects produced by different media, with broad application in and beyond the study of media. |
Approaches to Media Studies
ENGL 232
keyboard_arrow_downApproaches to the study of media: philosophical; technological; cultural; theoretical. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 2 | In-Person | Lecture | M, W, F | 13:00 - 14:00 | Cavell, Richard Anthony | Section DescriptionMedianthropologiesWhile media studies has its roots in anthropology, this origin story has been relatively neglected until recently, gaining increasing attention that has culminatedg in the publication of studies such as Anthropology of Images (2011), Anthropology of News and Journalism (2010), Anthropology of Globalization (2008), Media Anthropology (2005), Anthropology of Digital Practices (2024), Music and Digital Media: A Planetary Anthropology (2023), Sonic Persona: An Anthropology of Sound (2018), and the 600 page Routledge Companion to Media Anthropology (2023), to name only a few. This course draws on the instructor’s Explorations of Edmund Snow Carpenter: Anthropology Upside Down (2024) to assess the anthropological beginnings of media studies before turning to an examination of various approaches to media anthropology. The course concludes with student panel presentations of media anthropological research into topics such as the UBC home page (ubc.ca), Indigenous media on campus, and campus surveillance. |
Shakespeare Now
ENGL 241
keyboard_arrow_downIntroductory topics in Shakespeare studies that seek to identify relationships between Shakespeare's work and present-day issues and concerns.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 2 | Lecture | T, Th | 14:00 - 15:30 | Britton, Dennis |
Shakespeare Now
ENGL 241
keyboard_arrow_downIntroductory topics in Shakespeare studies that seek to identify relationships between Shakespeare's work and present-day issues and concerns. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 2 | In-Person | Lecture | M, W, F | 14:00 - 15:00 | Britton, Dennis | Section DescriptionCancel ShakespeareShould Shakespeare be canceled? While Shakespeare’s works have long been understood as “necessary” reading, many question Shakespeare’s dominance within the study of literature written in English and his enduring cultural influence. On one side, some argue that there is still much to be gained from reading, watching, and studying Shakespeare; on the other side, some argue that Shakespeare’s works are carriers of racism, misogyny, and other forms of violence that we need to leave behind. We will read a number of Shakespeare’s plays—The Comedy of Errors, Taming of the Shrew, The Merchant of Venice, Othello, Measure for Measure, and The Tempest—closely and use our close reading to examine debates on social media and in the news about canceling Shakespeare. |
Introduction to Children's and Young Adult Literature
ENGL 242
keyboard_arrow_downHistory, genres, and scholarly study of writing for children and adolescents.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | Lecture | M, W, F | 11:00 - 12:00 | Gooding, Richard | Section DescriptionWisdom, Nonsense, and True Lies: An Introduction to Children’s and Young Adult Literature“I imagine everyone will judge it reasonable, that... children, when little, should look upon their parents as their lords, their absolute governors, and as such stand in awe of them; and that when they come to riper years, they should look on them as their best, as their only sure friends, and as such love and reverence them....” --John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, 1693 In an enormously popular and influential work that became something of a handbook for parents and educators, the philosopher John Locke presents an idealized view of the path from childhood to maturity. Some Thoughts Concerning Education was published just as a distinct body of writing for the young was beginning to emerge in England, and Locke argued that the books children read play an important role in their development. But Locke was also a bachelor who had little first-hand experience of children, and he didn’t anticipate the many ways that writing for the young would reflect the complicated and often fraught relations between children and their elders. This course offers an introduction to writing for younger readers from the 17th to the early 21st century. In readings, discussions, and lectures on children’s literature published in English, we will examine how changing understandings of childhood are reflected in the literary genres that adults developed to socialize and regulate the behaviour of the young. Our texts will include a selection of fairy tales, C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Roald Dahl’s The BFG, Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book, and Vera Brosgol’s Anya’s Ghost. |
Introduction to Children's and Young Adult Literature
ENGL 242
keyboard_arrow_downHistory, genres, and scholarly study of writing for children and adolescents. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | Lecture | M, W, F | 9:00 - 10:00 | Baxter, Gisele Marie | Section DescriptionSomething in the Shadows is Watching“You are always in danger in the forest, where no people are.” -- Angela Carter, “The Company of Wolves” From The Turn of the Screw to The Others, creepy children frequently haunt Gothic texts. But what of Gothic texts assuming a young audience? Children’s/YA literature so often focuses on successful (or not so successful) negotiation of threats and learning opportunities in the intimate and public worlds around the child that “children’s” tales are often scarier than adult fiction. In this section, we will study a variety of texts through a literary/cultural studies lens, exploring their (sometimes) evolving genre features. We’ll start with familiar (and not-so-familiar) oral-tradition folk and fairy tales, to consider how their recurring devices establish tropes still frequently recurring. Then we will stray from the path and consider how a selection of novels might challenge or subvert perceived boundaries and conventions, especially in engaging with Gothic themes and motifs, ending with a graphic novel examining adolescent engagement with 1990s Goth culture. We will also discover approaches to children’s/YA texts in literary/cultural studies at the university level. Texts: Core texts tentatively include a selection of traditional folk and fairy tales; Alan Garner, The Owl Service; Francesca Lia Block, The Rose and The Beast; Neil Gaiman, Coraline; and Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki, Skim. Evaluation: Evaluation will tentatively be based on a midterm essay, a term paper requiring secondary academic research, a final reflection essay, and participation in discussion. Keep checking my blog (https://blogs.ubc.ca/drgmbaxter/) for updates concerning texts and requirements. | |||
002 | 2 | Lecture | M, W, F | 10:00 - 11:00 | Lee, Tara | Section DescriptionRegulating and Claiming Desire: (Re)Constructions of Gender and Sexuality in Children’s and YA Literature“All children, except one, grow up” (Barrie, Peter Pan) This course will introduce key shifts and tensions within children’s and young adult literature centring on representations and explorations of (primarily female) gender and emerging (often channelled) sexuality. We will begin by examining classic fairy tales, bringing them into conversation with modern Disney revisioning of them, before shifting to Victorian perceptions of childhood and the passage to adulthood. From there, we will examine evolving portrayals of puberty and sexual desire in the 1970s (e.g., Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret) before moving on to more contemporary texts that offer both conservative (e.g., Twilight) as well as expansive and intersectional notions of adolescent gender, sexuality, and embodiment. The relationality facilitated by new technologies and shifting media landscapes will be treated at the end of the course. Questions of genre (e.g., fantasy, parable, realism, dystopian, romance) will also be considered in relation to youthful desire and its production/consumption/regulation. |
Introduction to Children's and Young Adult Literature
ENGL 242
keyboard_arrow_downHistory, genres, and scholarly study of writing for children and adolescents. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | In-Person | Lecture | T, Th | 11:00 - 12:30 | Gooding, Rick | Section DescriptionParents Just Don’t Understand: An Introduction to Children’s and Young Adult Literature“I imagine everyone will judge it reasonable, that... children, when little, should look upon their parents as their lords, their absolute governors, and as such stand in awe of them; and that when they come to riper years, they should look on them as their best, as their only sure friends, and as such love and reverence them....” -- John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, 1693 In an enormously popular and influential work that became something of a handbook for parents and educators, the philosopher John Locke presents an idealized view of the path from childhood to maturity. Some Thoughts Concerning Education was published just as a distinct body of writing for the young was beginning to emerge in England, and Locke argued that the books children read play an important role in their development. But Locke was also a bachelor who had little first-hand experience of children, and he didn’t anticipate the many ways that writing for the young would reflect the complicated and often fraught relations between children and their elders. This course offers an introduction to children’s and Young Adult literature, with an emphasis on parent-child relations. In readings, discussions, and lectures on children’s literature published in English, we will examine how changing understandings of childhood—and particularly of the relationship between children and their parents—are reflected in writing for young readers. We’ll begin with a selection of classic fairy tales before turning our attention to recent work, including novels by David Almond and Neil Gaiman, and a graphic novel by Mariko and Jillian Tamaki.
| ||
002 | 2 | In-Person | Lecture | M, W, F | 10:00 - 11:00 | Bose, Sarika | Section Description“From Instruction to Delight”: An Introduction to Children’s LiteratureLiterature written for children has evolved along with evolving concepts of childhood and the nature of the child. While didacticism continues to be a strong force underlying what is written for children, it has been modified by a recognition that children's need for play and “delight” must be acknowledged. Revolutions of the 18th century were not only political: when publisher John Newbery chose to publish books that delighted children and did not simply instruct them about manners and morals, he began a movement towards building a genre of literature that is familiar to us today in its use of imagination and play. In this course we will explore some early literature written for children, such as Newbery’s A Pretty Pocket Book (1844) and The History of Little Goody Two Shoes (1865), before moving to fairy tales, and the legacy of both in the young adult fantasy written over the last century. Our authors will include Rick Riordan, J.K. Rowling, Philip Pullman, C.S. Lewis and Neil Gaiman. Core questions we will ask in this course will focus on mythologies created through genres of children’s literature, and their effect on children’s ideas of the world and their place in it. |
Speculative Fiction
ENGL 243
keyboard_arrow_downGenres and sub-genres of speculative fiction, such as science fiction and fantasy, alternate history, dystopian and post-apocalyptic narrative, and slipstream, as well as the intersections among them.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 2 | Lecture | T, Th | 12:30 - 14:00 | Baxter, Gisele Marie | Section DescriptionSpeculative Fiction: Synthetic Humans; Posthuman Dystopias
“We make Angels. In the service of Civilization. There were bad angels once … I make good angels now.” - Niander Wallace, Blade Runner 2049 “Whole generations of disposable people.” – Guinan, “The Measure of a Man”, Star Trek: The Next Generation (season 2) The near-future and alternate-reality landscapes of science fiction are often terrifying places and have been since Gothic and dystopian impulses intersected in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Shelley’s landmark tale evokes dread in the implications of Victor’s generation of a humanoid Creature; this dread echoes in more recent products or accidents of science: clones, robots and replicants, artificial intelligences, cyborgs. Such texts raise issues of gendered exploitation, consciousness and rights, research ethics, and fear, in the realization that these creatures are, ultimately, not human but posthuman, yet often more sympathetic than their makers. However, despite their apparent superiority, such humanoids tend to be defined as commodities. In this course, we will consider the posthuman element of dystopian speculations reflecting on the present and recent past, especially concerning threats of mass surveillance, profit-motivated technology, environmental crisis, and redefinitions of human identity. Core texts tentatively include William Gibson, Neuromancer; Lana Wachowski and Lilly Wachowski, The Matrix: Shooting Script; Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go; Blade Runner 2049 (dir. Denis Villeneuve) plus one other film (or screenplay) and/or one other novel. Evaluation will be based on a midterm essay, a term paper requiring secondary academic research, a final exam, and participation in discussion. Keep checking my blog (https://blogs.ubc.ca/drgmbaxter/) for updates concerning texts and requirements. |
Speculative Fiction
ENGL 243
keyboard_arrow_downGenres and sub-genres of speculative fiction, such as science fiction and fantasy, alternate history, dystopian and post-apocalyptic narrative, and slipstream, as well as the intersections among them. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 2 | Lecture | T, Th | 14:00 - 15:30 | Baxter, Gisele Marie | Section DescriptionSynthetic Humans; Posthuman Dystopias“We make Angels. In the service of Civilization. There were bad angels once … I make good angels now.” – Niander Wallace, Blade Runner 2049 “Whole generations of disposable people.”– Guinan, “The Measure of a Man”, Star Trek: The Next Generation (season 2)
The near-future and alternate-reality landscapes of science fiction are often terrifying places and have been since Gothic and dystopian impulses intersected in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Shelley’s landmark tale evokes dread in the implications of Victor’s generation of a humanoid Creature; this dread echoes in more recent products or accidents of science: clones, robots and replicants, artificial intelligences, cyborgs. Such texts raise issues of gendered exploitation, consciousness and rights, research ethics, and fear, in the realization that these creatures are, ultimately, not human but posthuman, yet often more sympathetic than their makers. However, despite their apparent superiority, such humanoids tend to be defined as commodities. In this course, we will consider the posthuman element of dystopian speculations reflecting on the present and recent past, especially concerning threats of mass surveillance, profit-motivated technology, environmental crisis, and redefinitions of human identity. Core texts tentatively include William Gibson, Neuromancer; Lana Wachowski and Lilly Wachowski, The Matrix: Shooting Script; Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go; Blade Runner 2049 (dir. Denis Villeneuve) plus one other film (or shooting script) and/or one other novel. Evaluation will tentatively be based on a midterm essay, a term paper requiring secondary academic research, a final reflection essay, and participation in discussion. Keep checking my blog (https://blogs.ubc.ca/drgmbaxter/) for updates concerning texts and requirements. |
Speculative Fiction
ENGL 243
keyboard_arrow_downGenres and sub-genres of speculative fiction, such as science fiction and fantasy, alternate history, dystopian and post-apocalyptic narrative, and slipstream, as well as the intersections among them. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
921 | 1 | Lecture | M, W | 16:00 - 19:00 | Rouse, Robert | Section DescriptionApocalypse How? Writing and Reading the End Times in Speculative FictionWestern culture has long been obsessed with the end. From Noah’s Flood to the Christian Apocalypse, the medieval millennial terrors of the year 1000 to the tech-panic of Y2K, narratives of ‘how it all ends’ are varied in scope and cause, but always present with us. In this course we will read six long texts that engage with a number of potential 20th and 21st century apocalyptic existential threats, from nuclear war to pandemics, from zombies to climate change. As much interested in the social implications of disaster as they are in its physical impacts, these novels offer not only warnings, but also hope in the human capacity for survival and reimagination. Longer texts will include:
|
Speculative Fiction
ENGL 243
keyboard_arrow_downGenres and sub-genres of speculative fiction, such as science fiction and fantasy, alternate history, dystopian and post-apocalyptic narrative, and slipstream, as well as the intersections among them. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | In-Person | Lecture | T, Th | 11:00 - 12:30 | Wong, Danielle | Section DescriptionRacial FuturesThis course engages contemporary literature, media, and theory that illuminate how concepts of the future are expressly racial visions. Speculative narratives are at once imperialist visions of control and prediction, and pertinent to radical imaginaries of a different world. We will examine cultural and scholarly works that bring speculative fiction, histories of empire and colonialism, and theories of race, gender, and sexuality into conversation. Course texts might include novels like Larissa Lai's Salt Fish Girl and Octavia Butler's Kindred; stories by Ling Ma, Ted Chiang, Ken Liu, and Nalo Hopkinson; poetry like Joshua Whitehead's full-metal indigiqueer; and films such as Boots Riley's Sorry To Bother You and Ridley Scott's Blade Runner. (Please note that these are only tentative titles and authors, and that the course syllabus will be posted in Term 1). | ||
002 | 2 | In-Person | Lecture | T, Th | 14:00 - 15:30 | Baxter, Gisele | Section DescriptionSynthetic Humans; Posthuman Dystopias“We make Angels. In the service of Civilization. There were bad angels once … I make good angels now.” -- Niander Wallace, Blade Runner 2049 “Whole generations of disposable people.” – Guinan, “The Measure of a Man”, Star Trek: The Next Generation (season 2) The near-future and alternate-reality landscapes of science fiction are often terrifying places and have been since Gothic and dystopian impulses intersected in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Shelley’s landmark tale evokes dread in the implications of Victor’s generation of a humanoid Creature; this dread echoes in more recent products or accidents of science: clones, robots and replicants, artificial intelligences, cyborgs. Such texts raise issues of gendered exploitation, consciousness and rights, research ethics, and fear, in the realization that these creatures are, ultimately, not human but posthuman, yet often more sympathetic than their makers. However, despite their apparent superiority, such humanoids tend to be defined as commodities. In this course, we will consider the posthuman element of dystopian speculations reflecting on the present and recent past, especially concerning threats of mass surveillance, profit-motivated technology, environmental crisis, and redefinitions of human identity. Core texts tentatively include William Gibson, Neuromancer; Madeline Ashby, vN; Lana Wachowski and Lilly Wachowski, The Matrix: Shooting Script; Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go or Klara and the Sun; Blade Runner 2049 (dir. Denis Villeneuve) plus possibly one other film (or shooting script) or one other novel. Evaluation will tentatively be based on a midterm essay, a term paper requiring secondary academic research, a final reflection essay, and participation in discussion. Keep checking my blog (https://blogs.ubc.ca/drgmbaxter/) for updates concerning texts and requirements. |
Environment and Literature
ENGL 244
keyboard_arrow_downLiterary, critical, and/or pop-culture texts about environmentalism and ecology.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | Lecture | M, W, F | 9:00 - 10:00 | Tebokkel, Nathan | Section DescriptionEnds of Nature INSTRUCTOR: NATHAN TE BOKKEL Glaciers melting, forests burning, grasslands eroding, climate changing—today, we witness the end of nature. Nature has been clear-cut, strip-mined, and polluted, rearranged by engineering, transformed by biotechnology, and replaced by simulation and outer space. But what exactly is nature? And what do we mean by its end? The stories we tell about ends of nature, and how we tell those stories, are essential to answering these questions. There are many such stories, and they vary over time and around the world. We’ll start exploring them with biblical seas of blood and days of darkness, then we’ll read poems of plagues and wars, stories of machines, nuclear fallout, and virtual reality, and novels about genetic engineering and climate change. We’ll read foundational ecocritical essays about ends of nature, as well as a few popular essays. There will be two quizzes and two papers. |
Environment and Literature
ENGL 244
keyboard_arrow_downLiterary, critical, and/or pop-culture texts about environmentalism and ecology. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | Lecture | M, W, F | 11:00 - 12:00 | Culbert, John |
Environment and Literature
ENGL 244
keyboard_arrow_downLiterary, critical, and/or pop-culture texts about environmentalism and ecology. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | In-Person | Lecture | M, W, F | 11:00 - 12:00 | Culbert, John |
Comics and Graphic Media
ENGL 245
keyboard_arrow_downIntroduction to the critical study of comics and graphic media.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 2 | Lecture | T, Th | 9:30 - 11:00 | Mcneilly, Kevin | Section DescriptionComics and Graphic Media: Reading SurfacesIn this course, we will survey key texts in emerging canons of graphic media—hybrids and mixtures of comics, illustrated texts, cartoons, graphic novels, graffiti, visual media and other genres—with an eye to establishing our own workable critical reading practices. What do graphic texts tell us about the limits of literature, and about the relationships between art and popular culture? How has the emergence of mass-produced graphic forms and genres impacted on the ways in which we read, and on how we value and evaluate writing? What has become of our sense of what constitutes a book or even a page? How do graphic media encourage us to reflect on the visual, spatial and material forms of representation, in language and in other sign systems and mediums? How is graphic media's increasing popularity, its burgeoning readership, tied to certain conceptions of identity, subjectivity, sociality and literacy? The texts for this course are likely to include Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet by Ta-Nehisi Coates and Brian Stelfreeze, Making Comics by Lynda Barry, Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, A Girl Called Echo: Pemmican Wars by Katherena Vermette and Scott B. Henderson, Fun Home by Alison Bechdel, and Sweet Tooth by Jeff Lemire. Students will also have an opportunity to write about and discuss their own favourite comics. |
Comics and Graphic Media
ENGL 245
keyboard_arrow_downIntroduction to the critical study of comics and graphic media. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | Lecture | T, Th | 11:00 - 12:30 | Gooding, Richard | Section DescriptionComics and Graphic MediaThis course is an introduction to comics and other graphic media. In it, we will study some of the major forms--super-hero comics, nonfiction, science fiction, memoirs, and manga--with the goal of developing close reading practices that enrich our understanding of how texts and images work together. Although this course will emphasize longer narratives published after 1980, may make some brief excursions into earlier texts and short forms--comic strips, picture books, and graffiti. The reading list hasn’t been finalized yet, but will likely include selections from Tomie by Junzi Ito; Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud; Batman: Year One by Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli; Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi. | |||
002 | 2 | Lecture | T, Th | 11:00 - 12:30 | Mcneilly, Kevin |
Comics and Graphic Media
ENGL 245
keyboard_arrow_downIntroduction to the critical study of comics and graphic media. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
002 | 2 | In-Person | Lecture | T, Th | 11:00 - 12:30 | Mcneilly, Kevin | Section DescriptionReading SurfacesIn this course, we will survey key texts in emerging canons of graphic media—hybrids and mixtures of comics, illustrated texts, cartoons, graphic novels, graffiti, visual media and other genres—with an eye to establishing our own workable critical reading practices. What do graphic texts tell us about the limits of literature, and about the relationships between art and popular culture? How has the emergence of mass-produced graphic forms and genres impacted on the ways in which we read, and on how we value and evaluate writing? What has become of our sense of what constitutes a book or even a page? How do graphic media encourage us to reflect on the visual, spatial and material forms of representation, in language and in other sign systems and mediums? How is graphic media's increasing popularity, its burgeoning readership, tied to certain conceptions of identity, subjectivity, sociality and literacy? How do comics help us to engage with social and environmental crises in our world? Texts for this course this year will very likely include Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet by Ta-Nehisi Coates and Brian Stelfreeze, Making Comics by Lynda Barry, Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, Ducks by Kate Beaton, Alien 3: The Unproduced Screenplay by William Gibson and Johnnie Christmas, Fun Home by Alison Bechdel, and Secret Path by Jeff Lemire and Gord Downie. The course also includes a series of comics-drawing workshops, when students can learn to make their own comics. Students will also have an opportunity to write about and discuss their own favourite graphic media. |
Literature and Film
ENGL 246
keyboard_arrow_downApproaches to the study of the relationships between literature and film.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | Lecture | M, W, F | 14:00 - 15:00 | Saunders, Mary Ann |
Literature and Film
ENGL 246
keyboard_arrow_downApproaches to the study of the relationships between literature and film. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
002 | 2 | Lecture | T, Th | 12:30 - 14:00 | Potter, Tiffany | Section DescriptionOn Literature on ScreenThis course will seek to change conversations on book-to-screen adaptations by asking not boring questions of fidelity (is it the same as the book? Yes/no. I love/hate that), but rather, what is significant about the way that stories get told and retold on page and screen. We’ll get the critical and theoretical tools we need to go far beyond those YouTube best/worst/coolest conversations and to level up into the ideological, political or cultural work that gets done, sometimes almost invisibly, by putting on screen a new or old story we think we already know. This course will lean in to literary and critical methodologies more than cinematography and film studies (there’s a different department for that!), and we will spend multiple weeks on each text/film adaptive relationship and what it can tell us. Want to get ahead this summer or on December break? The preliminary reading list focuses around three stories about creating and navigating life: Frankenstein (Karloff v DeNiro); Pride and Prejudice (with Lizzie Bennet Diaries + Bride and Prejudice); and Life of Pi plus a sci-fi short story or two… |
Literature and Film
ENGL 246
keyboard_arrow_downApproaches to the study of the relationships between literature and film. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | In-Person | Lecture | M, W, F | 14:00 - 15:00 | Baxter, Gisele | Section DescriptionVampires on Page and Screen: Transfusions and Transmutations“I am all in a sea of wonders. I doubt; I fear; I think strange things, which I dare not confess to my own soul.” -- Bram Stoker, Dracula This course examines adaptations in something of the way vampire transformations work, by considering how elements of appearance remain but the resulting creature is always radically different. We’ll go in prepared, not with stakes and garlic but with the critical and theoretical tools needed to move beyond popular online discussions and enable consideration of ideological, political, and cultural questions arising in creating through adaptation a new and separate text in a different genre. Our approach will be more that of literary and cultural studies than film studies, as we consider why stories about vampires, the blood-drinking immortals of myth and legend - and more recently of fiction and film - fascinate us and their adapters, and to what extent visualizing them results a transfusion, a transmutation, or both. Core texts tentatively include Sheridan LeFanu’s Carmilla plus one adaptation (ideally the 2019 eponymous film), possibly The Vampire Lovers), Bram Stoker’s Dracula plus two adaptations: possibilities include Nosferatu (either Murnau or Herzog), Dracula (1931; Tod Browning), Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992; Francis Ford Coppola). We might also have a look at John Polidori’s novella The Vampyre (or at one as yet unadapted vampire story) and at one vampire film that isn’t an adaptation (e.g. What We Do in the Shadows or Only Lovers Left Alive). Film choices will depend on access through Library Online Course Reserves. As well, academic readings in theory and criticism specifically concerned with adaptation, as well as in Gothic studies, will be set and provided through Library Online Course Reserves. Evaluation will tentatively be based on a midterm essay, a term paper requiring secondary academic research, a final reflection essay, and participation in discussion. Keep checking my blog (https://blogs.ubc.ca/drgmbaxter/) for updates concerning texts and requirements. |
Television Studies
ENGL 247
keyboard_arrow_downIntroduction to methods and practices of television studies, with emphasis on the use of literary approaches to televisual narrative. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 2 | Lecture | M, W, F | 12:00 - 13:00 | Frank, Adam | Section DescriptionOn TelevisionThis course takes up television (specifically, North American television) as an object of investigation and a subject for criticism. We will approach television by watching it as well as by reading literary, historical, and critical writing about it. Treatments of television are often characterized by sexual fantasy, political anxiety, intense excitement and contempt, and highly reflexive irony. We will try to understand why television is so provocative, why it has been so difficult to understand, and how we may develop tools and techniques to approach it critically. Warning: some of the materials for reading and viewing in this course feature strong language, sexuality, and violence. Viewer discretion is advised. The learning objectives of this course include:
The course format will combine lectures, discussion, and group work. |
Mystery and Detective Fiction
ENGL 248
keyboard_arrow_downThematic and generic approaches to mystery, crime, and detective writing in English, primarily short-fiction and novels; may also include comics, radio, film, and television. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 2 | Lecture | M, W, F | 14:00 - 15:00 | Dick, Alexander | Section DescriptionGenres of DetectionThis course surveys the major developments in detective fiction from the mid-nineteenth-century to the present. It covers the major genres of detection including the classic mystery, “hard-boiled,” “noir,” and police procedural and features most of the major authors of the field such as Poe, Christie, Doyle, Hammett, Chandler, Hughes, Grafton, Peretsky, Simenon, Rankin, and Robinson. The course will focus mainly on short stories so that we can consider as wide a range of styles and approaches to detection as possible. But we will also read some longer and recently published novels in order to see how detective fiction engages in depth the challenging issues of its time, including gender violence and persistent colonialism. Evaluation:
Texts (subject to change):
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Mystery and Detective Fiction
ENGL 248
keyboard_arrow_downThematic and generic approaches to mystery, crime, and detective writing in English, primarily short-fiction and novels; may also include comics, radio, film, and television. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 2 | In-Person | Lecture | M, W, F | 14:00 - 15:00 | Dick, Alexander | Section DescriptionHard-boiled and NoirAdmiring French film critics coined the term “Noir” to describe stylized, moody, atmospheric, politically-charged, morally-ambiguous American films from the 1940s and 1950s about ordinary people who commit extraordinary crimes. These films were themselves quirkily and sometimes surreally adapted from Gothic, mystery, and especially “hard-boiled” detective stories from the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries that thrilled and inspired readers with tales of murder, mayhem, and daring-do—albeit in somewhat more lighthearted or comforting registers. Since in 60s, though, Noir has itself become a global phenomenon whose authors adapt its persistently sinister tropes of greed, murder, cynicism and cruelty to comment on the critical issues of their time, including psychic malaise, racial identity, class power, and gender violence. This course will survey hardboiled and noir fiction (and some films) and probe their aesthetic, psychological, and political implications. We will read several classic hardboiled and noir texts to define its modes and assumption and to differentiate them from other forms of detective fiction. We will also read some recent American and “global noir” novels offering fresh perspectives on the genre’s racial, gender, and class politics. Assignments will include in-class writing assignments and a final exam, but students will also have a chance to develop creative skills by writing their own hard-boiled or noir story. Note: these novels and films portray, describe, and confront racial prejudice, gender violence, drug addiction, psychic trauma, and related issues in sometimes stark and challenging ways. Students are advised to bring an open mind to these texts and to be prepared to discuss the challenging issues they raise. |
Introduction to Critical Theory
ENGL 300
keyboard_arrow_downAnalysis of theoretical methods and critical approaches practiced in the discipline of English studies. Required of all students in the English Honours Literature and Language and Literature programs.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 2 | Lecture | M, W, F | 14:00 - 15:00 | Paltin, Judith | Section DescriptionIntroduction to Critical TheoryThis problem- and play-based approach to general literary and critical theory studies what counts as knowledge, how we find meaning and where, how humans adapt, respond, and resist in the face of changing conditions in the world, the status of art as expression, and how we determine communication and interpretation. You might think of critical theory as consisting in the arguments which justify the work of the arts and humanities and expose the measure of their worth. It asks what functions critics and creatively-thinking theorists play in the processes by which societies and cultures reproduce themselves, and it thinks about how to advocate most effectively for those in the world who face social, economic, environmental, and political barriers to thriving and flourishing. We will read and discuss a rich selection of short fiction and poems in juxtaposition with narrative theory, ecocriticism, theories in media and communication, critical race theory, feminist theory and literary criticism, gender studies, queer theory, old and new materialisms, studies in the workings of the mind and psychoanalysis, decoloniality, post/structuralism, and cultural theory.
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Introduction to Critical Theory
ENGL 300
keyboard_arrow_downAnalysis of theoretical methods and critical approaches practiced in the discipline of English studies. Required of all students in the English Honours Literature and Language and Literature programs. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 2 | Lecture | T, Th | 11:00 - 12:30 | Multiple instructors | Section DescriptionEverything, Everywhere: The Timespace of Racial Capitalism
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Introduction to Critical Theory
ENGL 300
keyboard_arrow_downAnalysis of theoretical methods and critical approaches practiced in the discipline of English studies. Required of all students in the English Honours Literature and Language & Literature programs. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended. This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | In-Person | Lecture | M, W, F | 12:00 - 13:00 | Frank, Adam | Section DescriptionDream, play, phantasy: Affect theory and literary criticismThis course seeks to do two things. First, it introduces students to some aspects of affect and object-relations theory as these have entered literary scholarship and the theoretical humanities in the last couple of decades. We will begin with Sigmund Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), a classic text that influenced the practice of literary criticism in the twentieth century. But we will quickly move to departures from Freud that specifically critique the psychoanalytic theory of the drives. We encounter the work of Silvan Tomkins, a U.S. psychologist who develops a complex theory of affect and a phenomenological approach to affect as motivational experience. And we will spend time with the British school of object-relations theory, paying particular attention to the notion of phantasy in Melanie Klein, play in Donald Winnicott, and reverie in Wilfred Bion. Along the way we will explore secondary literature on affect, especially feminist, queer, and anti-racist critical work alongside these primary theoretical texts. The second purpose of this course is to encourage students to experiment with a method, or a set of techniques, for literary interpretation that is guided by the affective experience of the reader. How might a careful phenomenological attention to affect and an analytic orientation help to ground criticism? If criticism is always reflexive—if it involves the reader in a process of examining their own experiences, positions, values and motivations—how will a criticism informed by affect theory keep things at once speculative and real, connected both to the text (or other aesthetic object) and to the reader? This course is taught as a mix of lecture and discussion. In addition to primary theoretical work and other works of criticism and interpretation, we will read novels and short stories, and engage with films and television shows to see how affect theory can offer a promising set of tools for thinking across media form. We will also think about these literary and cultural artifacts as themselves proposing theoretical vantage points. Our learning objectives include:
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Technical Writing
ENGL 301
keyboard_arrow_downStudy of the principles of written communication in general business and professional activities, and practice in the preparation of abstracts, proposals, reports, and correspondence. Not for credit towards the English Major or Minor.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
98A | 1-2 | Lecture | Paterson, Erika | ||||||
98X | 1-2 | Waiting List |
Technical Writing
ENGL 301
keyboard_arrow_downStudy of the principles of written communication in general business and professional activities, and practice in the preparation of abstracts, proposals, reports, and correspondence. Not for credit towards the English Major or Minor.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 2 | Lecture | T, Th | 9:30 - 11:00 | Baxter, Gisele Marie | Section DescriptionNow with added grammar! While 301 is not a course in remedial grammar, this section will provide online Canvas-based writing resources and a series of workshops, designed to help identify writing and proofreading problems, and to provide strategies to address them. English 301: Technical Writing examines the rhetorical genre of professional and technical communication, especially online, through analysis and application of its principles and practices. You will produce a formal report, investigating resources and/or concerns in a real-life community, as a major project involving a series of linked assignments. This project will involve the study (and possibly practical application) of research ethics where human subjects are involved (e.g. in conducting surveys or interviews). Think of this course as an extended report-writing Boot Camp: intensive, useful preparation for the last phase of your undergraduate degree, as you start applying to professional and graduate programs, and for the years beyond of work and community involvement. Technical Writing is closed to first- and second-year students in Arts, and cannot be used for credit towards the English Major or Minor. The course text will be Lannon et al, Technical Communications, 8th Canadian Edition, Pearson, 2020. Please note that this is a blended course, and will require both participation in synchronous lectures and workshops as well as asynchronous independent work of the sort done in a conventional online course (e.g. Canvas-based textbook exercises and peer feedback on drafts). Keep checking my blog (https://blogs.ubc.ca/drgmbaxter/) for updates concerning texts and requirements. | |||
99A | 1 | Lecture | Paterson, Erika | Section DescriptionEnglish 301 involves the study of principles of written and online communications in business and professional contexts; it includes discussion of and practice in the preparation of abstracts, proposals, applications, reports, correspondence, and online communications: emails, texts, Web Folio, and networking. Note: Credits in this course cannot be used toward a major or a minor in English. Prerequisite: six credits of First Year English or Arts One or Foundations English 301 is offered as a fully online course. The use of a computer and ready access to an Internet connection are required. Intended Audience This course should be of interest to students in a variety of disciplines such as commerce, science, education, and the health sciences. It may also be of interest to students in Arts Co-Op and other Co-Op programs. Course author: Dr. Erika Paterson is an instructor in the Department of English Language and Literatures.
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99C | 2 | Lecture | Paterson, Erika | Section DescriptionEnglish 301 involves the study of principles of written and online communications in business and professional contexts; it includes discussion of and practice in the preparation of abstracts, proposals, applications, reports, correspondence, and online communications: emails, texts, Web Folio, and networking. Note: Credits in this course cannot be used toward a major or a minor in English. Prerequisite: six credits of First Year English or Arts One or Foundations English 301 is offered as a fully online course. The use of a computer and ready access to an Internet connection are required. Intended Audience This course should be of interest to students in a variety of disciplines such as commerce, science, education, and the health sciences. It may also be of interest to students in Arts Co-Op and other Co-Op programs. Course author: Dr. Erika Paterson is an instructor in the Department of English Language and Literatures. |
Technical Writing
ENGL 301
keyboard_arrow_downStudy of the principles of written communication in general business and professional activities, and practice in the preparation of abstracts, proposals, reports, and correspondence. Not for credit towards the English Major or Minor.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
98A | 1-2 | Lecture | Paterson, Erika | Section DescriptionSee English 301 Syllabus, 2022 English 301 is a dedicated writing course offered in an online classroom environment. During the course you will be expected to work in three ways: independently; in consultation with your instructor; and collaboratively in writing teams to be established in the first unit of the course. This is an asynchronous course. English 301 has these major objectives:
English 301 involves the study of principles of written and online communications in business and professional contexts; it includes discussion of and practice in the preparation of abstracts, proposals, applications, reports, correspondence, and online communications: emails, texts, Web Folio, and networking. Note: Credits in this course cannot be used toward a major or a minor in English. Prerequisite: six credits of First Year English or Arts One or Foundations English 301 is offered as a fully online course. The use of a computer and ready access to an Internet connection are required. Intended Audience This course should be of interest to students in a variety of disciplines such as commerce, science, education, and the health sciences. It may also be of interest to students in Arts Co-Op and other Co-Op programs. Course author: Dr. Erika Paterson is an instructor in the Department of English Language and Literatures. | |||||
98X | 1-2 | Waiting List |
Technical Writing
ENGL 301
keyboard_arrow_downStudy of the principles of written communication in general business and professional activities, and practice in the preparation of abstracts, proposals, reports, and correspondence. Not for credit towards the English Major or Minor. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | Lecture | M, W, F | 12:00 - 13:00 | Baxter, Gisele Marie | Section DescriptionNote: Blended Course Technical Writing examines the rhetorical genre of professional and technical communication, especially online, through analysis and application of its principles and practices. You will produce a formal report, investigating resources and/or concerns in a real-life community, as a major project involving a series of linked assignments. This project will involve the study (and possibly practical application) of research ethics where human subjects are involved (e.g. in conducting surveys or interviews). Evaluation will be based on a series of four linked assignments culminating in the formal report, as well as participation in discussion and completion of various textbook exercises. Think of this course as an extended report-writing Boot Camp: intensive, useful preparation for the last phase of your undergraduate degree, as you start applying to professional and graduate programs, and for the years beyond of work and community involvement. Technical Writing is closed to first- and second-year students in Arts and cannot be used for credit towards the English Major or Minor. Text: The course text will be Lannon et al, Technical Communications, 8th Canadian Edition, Pearson, 2020. Please note that this is a blended course and will require both participation in synchronous lectures and workshops as well as asynchronous but scheduled independent work of the sort done in a conventional online course (e.g. weekly Canvas-based textbook exercises and occasional peer feedback on drafts). Also note that while 301 is not a course in remedial grammar, this section will provide online Canvas-based writing resources and workshops designed to help identify writing and proofreading problems, and to provide strategies to address them. Keep checking my blog (https://blogs.ubc.ca/drgmbaxter/) for updates concerning texts and requirements. |
Technical Writing
ENGL 301
keyboard_arrow_downStudy of the principles of written communication in general business and professional activities, and practice in the preparation of abstracts, proposals, reports, and correspondence. Not for credit towards the English Major or Minor. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | Hybrid | Lecture | M, W, F | 12:00 - 13:00 | Baxter, Gisele | Section DescriptionEnglish 301: Technical Writing examines the rhetorical genre of professional and technical communication, especially online, through analysis and application of its principles and practices. You will produce a formal report, investigating resources and/or concerns in a real-life community, as a major project involving a series of linked assignments. This project will involve the study (and possibly practical application) of research ethics where human subjects are involved (e.g. in conducting surveys or interviews). Evaluation will be based on a series of four linked assignments culminating in the formal report, as well as participation in discussion and completion of various textbook exercises. Think of this course as an extended report-writing Boot Camp: intensive, useful preparation for the last phase of your undergraduate degree, as you start applying to professional and graduate programs, and for the years beyond of work and community involvement. Technical Writing is closed to first- and second-year students in Arts and cannot be used for credit towards the English Major or Minor. The course text will be Lannon et al, Technical Communications, 8th Canadian Edition, Pearson, 2020. Please note that this is a blended course and will require both participation in synchronous lectures and workshops as well as asynchronous but scheduled independent work of the sort done in a conventional online course (e.g. weekly Canvas-based textbook exercises and occasional peer feedback on drafts). Also note that while 301 is not a course in remedial grammar, this section will provide online Canvas-based writing resources and workshops designed to help identify writing and proofreading problems, and to provide strategies to address them. Keep checking my blog (https://blogs.ubc.ca/drgmbaxter/) for updates concerning texts and requirements. |
Rhetoric of Science, Technology, and Medicine
ENGL 309
keyboard_arrow_downExploration of the persuasive dimension of discourse practices in science, technology, and medicine.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 2 | Lecture | M, W, F | 11:00 - 12:00 | Smilges, Johnathan Logan |
Rhetoric of Science, Technology, and Medicine
ENGL 309
keyboard_arrow_downExploration of the persuasive dimension of discourse practices in science, technology, and medicine. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 2 | Lecture | M, W, F | 11:00 - 12:00 | Smilges, Johnathan Logan | Section DescriptionTo study the rhetoric of science, technology, and medicine is to study both the rhetorical effects of these domains on the world and the rhetorical processes by which these domains are rendered distinguishable, authoritative, and even essential to our survival. In this class, we will situate our study in the context of gender and specifically transgender experience. Regardless of our own gender identities and expressions, we all exist in relation to discourses, industries, and policies that are deeply gendered. From surgical medicine to airport security to the video game industry, our lives are tightly regulated by unspoken assumptions about gender: who can choose it, who can change it, and why it matters. These issues are particularly important to trans and gender nonconforming people who often face obstacles accessing the care and services they need to survive. Even as many scientists, tech developers, and medical practitioners work to be more gender-inclusive, it is becoming apparent that their inclusivity is often limited to people who are white, financially secure, and nondisabled. As we will discover this term, studying the (trans)gendered rhetoric of science, technology, and medicine is not only to make a value judgement on a person's or institution's progressivism but also to evaluate these rhetorics' material effects on trans people’s lives, especially on those who exist at the margins of trans community. The semester will be divided into two sections. The first half will be methodological and historical, introducing a range of rhetorical approaches to science, technology, and medicine, as well as exposing the (trans)gendered history of each of these domains’ development. We will focus especially on the insights and perspectives of trans, gender nonconforming, and otherwise gender minoritized people. While not all of these scholars are rhetoricians by training, each of them offers important insights on how techno-science and medicine have been rhetorically designed to regulate gender norms. The second half of the course will center trans and gender nonconforming people’s counter-rhetorics that trouble the authority of the medical industrial complex and the profit-driven motivations of the tech industry. These counter-rhetorics reimagine trans life in ways that are both gender-affirming and community-oriented. Throughout the second half of the course, students will collaborate on a service-learning project that addresses some of the health needs of the trans community at UBC. |
Rhetoric of Science, Technology, and Medicine
ENGL 309
keyboard_arrow_downExploration of the persuasive dimension of discourse practices in science, technology, and medicine. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 2 | In-Person | Lecture | M, W, F | 11:00 - 12:00 | Smilges, Logan |
History and Theory of Rhetoric: Classical Rhetoric
ENGL 310
keyboard_arrow_downIntroduction to classical rhetoric with attention to the analysis of present-day texts.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | Lecture | T, Th | 12:30 - 14:00 | Hill, Ian | Section DescriptionHistory and Theory of Rhetoric: Classical RhetoricWhat is rhetoric, and how do persuasion and influence work? How you can persuade your friends, family, colleagues, and strangers? Some of the most infamous historical intellectuals vehemently disagree about the answers to these questions, but taken together, their answers provide a blueprint for rhetorical theory. By reading and applying rhetorical theories advanced by important thinkers in major epochs of world history, students will learn about how rhetoric was supposed to function in ancient Egyptian wisdom literature, ancient Greece (Gorgias, Philostratus, & Aristotle), ancient Rome (Cicero), medieval Arabia (al-Jurjānī & al-Rāzī), and elsewhere, as well as how these theories still function (or not) today.
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History and Theory of Rhetoric: Classical Rhetoric
ENGL 310
keyboard_arrow_downIntroduction to classical rhetoric with attention to the analysis of present-day texts. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | Lecture | T, Th | 12:30 - 14:00 | Hill, Ian | Section DescriptionWhat is rhetoric, and how do persuasion and influence work? How you can persuade your friends, family, colleagues, and strangers? Some of the most infamous historical intellectuals vehemently disagree about the answers to these questions, but taken together, their answers provide a blueprint for rhetorical theory. By reading and applying rhetorical theories advanced by important thinkers in major epochs of world history, students will learn about how rhetoric was supposed to function in ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, ancient China, the Roman Empire, medieval Arabia, and elsewhere, as well as how these theories still function (or not) today.
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History and Theory of Rhetoric: Classical Rhetoric
ENGL 310
keyboard_arrow_downIntroduction to classical rhetoric with attention to the analysis of present-day texts. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | In-Person | Lecture | T, Th | 12:30 - 14:00 | Hill, Ian | Section DescriptionWhat is rhetoric, and how do persuasion and influence work? How you can persuade your friends, family, colleagues, and strangers? Some of the most infamous historical intellectuals vehemently disagree about the answers to these questions, but taken together, their answers provide a blueprint for rhetorical theory. By reading and applying rhetorical theories advanced by important thinkers in major epochs of world history, students will learn about how rhetoric was supposed to function in ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, ancient China, medieval Arabia, and elsewhere, as well as how these theories still function (or not) today. |
Discourse and Society
ENGL 312
keyboard_arrow_downIntroduction to theories of language and culture, and to techniques for analysing discourses in their social contexts. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | Lecture | M, W, F | 9:00 - 10:00 | Thieme, Katja |
History of the English Language: Early History
ENGL 318
keyboard_arrow_downPrinciples of language change and language typology. The development of the English language from its Indo-European origins to the end of the Anglo-Saxon period.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | Lecture | M, W, F | 11:00 - 12:00 | Stratton, James |
History of the English Language: Early History
ENGL 318
keyboard_arrow_downPrinciples of language change and language typology. The development of the English language from its Indo-European origins to the end of the Anglo-Saxon period. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | Lecture | T, Th | 14:00 - 15:30 | Stratton, James |
History of the English Language: Early History
ENGL 318
keyboard_arrow_downPrinciples of language change and language typology. The development of the English language from its Indo-European origins to the end of the Anglo-Saxon period. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | Hybrid | Lecture | T, Th | 14:00 - 15:30 | Blake, Susan |
History of the English Language: Later History
ENGL 319
keyboard_arrow_downPrinciples of language change. The development and spread of the English language from the Norman Conquest to the Modern English period.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 2 | Lecture | M, W, F | 11:00 - 12:00 | Stratton, James |
History of the English Language: Later History
ENGL 319
keyboard_arrow_downPrinciples of language change. The development and spread of the English language from the Norman Conquest to the Modern English period.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
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001 | 2 | Lecture | M, W, F | 12:00 - 13:00 | Stratton, James |
History of the English Language: Later History
ENGL 319
keyboard_arrow_downPrinciples of language change. The development and spread of the English language from the Norman Conquest to the Modern English period. Prerequisite: Knowledge of the International Phonetic Alphabet (via ENGL 318, ENGL 330 or the equivalent). Recommended: ENGL 318.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 2 | In-Person | Lecture | M, W, F | 14:00 - 15:00 | Biermann, Wilhelmina Georgina | Section DescriptionIn the English 319 course we follow the development of English from the time of the Norman Conquest to the present day. In terms of the diachronic study of language, the course provides an overview of the historical evolution of English from the Middle English period (1100-1500) through the Early Modern English Period (1500-1800) to the Late Modern English Period (1800-21st century). In each period, we study the changes in linguistic structure in terms of the sounds of the language and their relationship with spelling (phonology and graphology), words, including principles of word formation (morphology), loanwords, relevant aspects of word classes (the lexicon), word meaning (semantics) and sentence structure (syntax), with a view to learning about the dynamic, ongoing development and creative flexibility of the English language. The approach taken in the course is descriptive and is not situated exclusively in any specific linguistic theory. Since the course aims at enabling students to grasp and describe the significant linguistic changes from one historical period to the next, students will be required to acquire a working knowledge of
There is an emphasis in this course on sustained practicing what you are learning by analyzing and describing a substantial number of examples throughout our study of the historical periods from Middle English up to present-day language use. Required textbook: Brinton, Laurel J. & Leslie Arnovick. The English Language: A Linguistic History. 3rd ed. Oxford University Press, 2017. |
English Grammar and Usage
ENGL 321
keyboard_arrow_downDescriptive approaches to the English language
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
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98A | 1-2 | Lecture | Biermann, Wilhelmina Georgina | Section DescriptionMODE OF DELIVERY: ONLINE, ASYNCHRONOUS This course is an introduction to the sentence structure of English and to the use of grammar in various communication situations differing in register, dialect or mode. A characteristic of English grammar is that it is flexible – users can and do adapt grammatical structures according to their communicative requirements. This is true of spoken language ranging from, for instance, everyday informal conversation to formal presentations and in written language from informal uses in notes or text messages to formal papers. The dialect of the speaker or writer affects the grammar, too. By studying numerous examples across more than one regional dialect of contemporary (present-day) English usage, the course explores some of the prominent uses to which grammar can be put. Grammar is often defined as a set of rules for the use of language. The approach followed in the course is descriptive. This implies that the course teaches how grammar is used in real situations, rather than how some or other authority (like a professor of English language, an institution for the regulation of language, or a prescriptive textbook) prescribes that it should be used. This does not mean that there are no rules in this course; rather that the rules reflect how language users actually tend to use the language. The English 321 course begins by identifying types of grammatical units, describing their internal structure and relating them to larger structures and determining their meaning in the context in which they occur. The grammatical units are presented as a hierarchy in which each unit is composed of one or more of the units below it in the hierarchy. Words consist of one or more morphemes, phrases consist of one or more words and clauses consist of one or more phrases. The course systematically describes the following levels of grammar: morphology, word classes (or parts of speech), phrase classes and the structure of clauses. Full description available at https://distancelearning.ubc.ca/courses-and-programs/distance-learning-courses/courses/engl/engl321/ | |||||
98X | 1-2 | Waiting List |
English Grammar and Usage
ENGL 321
keyboard_arrow_downDescriptive approaches to the English language
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
99A | 1-A | Lecture | Biermann, Wilhelmina Georgina | Section Description
The English 321 course provides an introduction to English grammar and its use in everyday communication. We take a descriptive stance when considering the rules of grammar and language variation, starting with the study of words and their parts, proceeding to word classes, phrases and clauses, and concluding with the different communicative functions that grammatical structures can perform when we package information in particular ways. This course equips students with skills to identify and describe the effects of derived structures in various communicative situations and provides a strong basis for further study of the English language, language variation, literary and non-literary stylistics and for teaching English. The course includes numerous exercises analyzing sentences and chunks of discourse. There are four short collaborative assignments, two monthly tests, and a final exam counting 30% of the final grade. The prescribed books are:
More details are available on the course website on canvas.ubc.ca. |
English Grammar and Usage
ENGL 321
keyboard_arrow_downDescriptive approaches to the English language
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
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98A | 1-2 | Lecture | Biermann, Wilhelmina Georgina | Section DescriptionThe English 321 online course is an introduction to English grammar and its use in everyday communication. We take a descriptive stance when considering the rules of grammar and language variation. The course starts with the study of words and their parts, proceeds to word classes, phrases and clauses and concludes with the different communicative functions that grammatical structures can perform when we package information in specific ways. This course equips students with skills enabling them to identify and describe the effects of derived structures in various communicative situations and provides a strong basis for further study of the English language, language variation, literary and non-literary stylistics and for teaching English. Students will be working fully online on all the graded work, including individual exercises, group projects, two mid-term tests and a final exam. The two tests are open-book, timed assignments, whereas the exam is invigilated via Zoom. There are Zoom meetings at regular intervals which will be recorded for the benefit of students in different time zones with the permission of students attending. Zoom office hours are by appointment. Required reading: Börjars, Kersti and Kate Burridge. Introducing English Grammar, 3rd ed. Routledge, 2019. ISBN: 978-1138-6351-9. Leech, Geoffrey, Margaret Deuchar and Robert Hoogenraad. English Grammar for Today: A New Introduction. 2nd ed. Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. ISBN: 13: 978-1-4039-1642-6. More details are available on the course website on canvas.ubc.ca. | |||||
98X | 1-2 | Waiting List |
English Grammar and Usage
ENGL 321
keyboard_arrow_downDescriptive approaches to the English language. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
99A | 1 | Lecture | Biermann, Ina | Section DescriptionThe fully online English 321 course offers an introduction to English grammar and its use in everyday communication. We take a descriptive stance when considering the rules of grammar and language variation, starting with the study of words and their parts, proceeding to word classes, phrases and clauses, and concluding with the different communicative functions that grammatical structures can perform when we package information in particular ways. This course equips students with skills for identifying and describing the effects of derived structures in various communicative situations. It provides a strong basis for further study of the English language, language variation, literary and non-literary stylistics and for teaching English. The course includes numerous graded exercises analyzing sentences and chunks of discourse. A non-graded discussion forum for language questions is conducted throughout the term. There are four short collaborative assignments, two mid-term tests and one final test. Distribution of grades:
The prescribed books are:
More details are available on the course website on canvas.ubc.ca. |
English Grammar and Usage - English Grammar and Usage
ENGL 321A
keyboard_arrow_downDescriptive approaches to the English language. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
A_99A | Online | Lecture | Biermann, Wilhelmina Georgina | Section DescriptionEnglish 321 is a fully asynchronous online course. It offers an introduction to English grammar and its use in everyday communication. Taking a descriptive stance towards the rules of grammar and language variation, we work with examples from written and spoken language used in various formal and informal situations. Our study starts with words and their parts, proceeds to word classes, phrases and clauses, and concludes by considering different communicative functions that grammatical structures can perform when we package information in particular ways. This course:
In ENGL321, as in language courses generally, active and sustained engagement with the course materials is important. It is helpful to practice what you have learned at every step of your progress by completing the exercises provided on the course website and in the textbooks and to watch and listen in conversations or everyday reading for instances of application or non-application of the descriptive rules that you are learning in the course. The collaborative journal posting assignments provide opportunities to gather data and discuss the application of usage rules to real-life usage that you record (with permission of the participants) and describe. Note: Although this is not a remedial course explicitly aimed at improving your own language usage, studying the structure and the usage of the language can have a positive, continuing impact on your ability to communicate effectively in English. Textbooks Börjars, Kersti & Kate Burridge. Introducing English Grammar, 3rd ed. Routledge, 2019. Leech, Geoffrey, Margaret Deuchar and Robert Hoogenraad. English Grammar for Today: A New Introduction. 2nd ed. Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. |
Stylistics
ENGL 322
keyboard_arrow_downApplication of linguistic theory and method to stylistic analysis.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
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99C | 2 | Lecture | Biermann, Wilhelmina Georgina | Section DescriptionThis course is an introduction to the study of stylistics, focusing on literary stylistics, i.e., the linguistic analysis of poems, prose and plays with a view to arriving at verifiable interpretations. During the term, we make a close study of selected examples from each of the three main genres and apply our knowledge of language and linguistics in order to interpret the literary message. As students work through the course modules, they submit exercises to apply the techniques of stylistic analysis to specific examples. Students also participate in two collaborative workshops. In the first workshop, you replicate a published stylistic analysis of a poem to determine how your reading as a group differs or corresponds to the published reading. You then evaluate what you have learnt in the process of replicating the analysis. The second workshop involves stylistically analyzing conversational strategies in a dramatic text. This includes examining extracts from the text, describing the strategies used and articulating your findings about the ways in which humour is communicated. In the term paper, students offer a stylistic analysis of a short story. Distribution of grades:
Prescribed reading: Simpson, Paul. Stylistics: A Resource Book for Students, 2nd ed. Routledge, 2014. |
Stylistics
ENGL 322
keyboard_arrow_downApplication of linguistic theory and method to stylistic analysis. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
99C | 2 | Lecture | Biermann, Ina | Section DescriptionThis fully online course is an introduction to stylistics, the study of style in language. Although stylistics includes literary and non-literary communication, in this course we make a close study of selected examples from each of the three main literary genres. An important aim of this course is to provide students with an understanding of stylistic tools that have been developed since the 1960s to the present. The course both accounts for the main linguistic concepts applied in stylistics and guides students towards applying their knowledge of language and linguistics when describing the style of communication in any text. Consequently, students have strong evidence for interpreting the literary message and can do so with greater insight and accuracy. Students complete graded and self-testing exercises in which they practice applying the techniques of stylistic analysis to a range of non-literary and literary examples. They participate in two collaborative workshops, the first requiring the stylistic analysis of a poem and the second describing the effect of language use in dramatic dialogue. In the term paper, students provide a guided stylistic analysis of a short story with reference to findings about the author’s style in recent corpus stylistics research. The final exam is an online quiz covering all the material studied during the course. Distribution of grades:
Prescribed reading:
More details are available on the course website on canvas.ubc.ca. |
Stylistics - Stylistics
ENGL 322A
keyboard_arrow_downApplication of linguistic theory and method to stylistic analysis. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
A_99C | Online | Lecture | Biermann, Wilhelmina Georgina | Section DescriptionThis fully asynchronous online course is an introduction to the study of stylistics, with an emphasis on literary stylistics. The course starts with the definition of stylistics as the linguistic analysis of literary or non-literary texts for the purpose of reaching verifiable interpretation(s) of the meaning being communicated. We observe the significant shifts that have taken place in the development of stylistics as a discipline, while maintaining a steady emphasis on the linguistic analysis of literature. We next consider what communication strategies characterize each of the literary genres. When describing and exemplifying current stylistic tools for analyzing poems, narrative texts and dramas, we indicate how stylistic analysis enables verifiable interpretation(s) and can prevent an untenable reading. The course emphasizes the following actions to enhance your learning: working hands-on with examples from each of the three genres by means of detailed analysis of the language of the text; discussing difficult concepts and good insights with class members (you can count on also receiving input from the instructor); and verifying findings by (in this context, small-scale) replication of analyses. The high point of the course is the term paper in which students consider two to three findings reported in a recent corpus stylistic study on the writing style of a famous novelist (and Nobel laureate). You will be asked to replicate these findings in your own reading of a very short story or an extract from a longer work by the same author with a view to verifying your interpretation of the story. Textbooks: Short, Mick. Exploring the Language of Poems, Plays and Prose. Longman, 1996. Simpson, Paul. Stylistics: A Resource Book for Students, 2nd ed. Routledge, 2014. |
Varieties of English
ENGL 323
keyboard_arrow_downStudy of geographical, social, and/or urban dialects of English.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | Lecture | T, Th | 14:00 - 15:30 | Dollinger, Stefan | Section DescriptionIn this course, we will explore the method of the “written questionnaire” in the social variation of English, a method that has been sidelined for most of the 20th century until quite recently (sociolinguists generally prefer interviews, but not so quick!) Your textbook, The Written Questionnaire in Social Dialectology: History, Theory, Practice has played a role in the method’s revitalization in recent years and it will guide us through the process from start to finish. In this process, you’ll learn a bit a out World Englishes and an awful lot about English in Canada, what we call Canadian English: is eh Canadian? Is toque really Canadian (what is it, anyway?). We will try our hand at data collection to see which kind of questions “work” better and why for a linguistic variable of your choice. We will also aim to find patterns in national questionnaire data. Couch vs. chesterfield, parkade vs. garage, tom-EH-to vs. tom-AH-to? Every year, some of your research findings will make it into the book (look for the names T. Chambers, Hirota or Cheng in your textbook from previous classes). You will learn to use Excel and all the things you can do with (a marketable skill). |
Varieties of English
ENGL 323
keyboard_arrow_downStudy of geographical, social, and/or urban dialects of English. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 2 | Lecture | T, Th | 14:00 - 15:30 | Dollinger, Stefan | Section DescriptionHow many Englishes are there? What’s English anyway? What is Canadian English? What is Pidgin English? Is it “different from” or “different than”, “toque”, “hat” or “beanie”? In this class we take a close, conceptual look at linguistic variation in English, to be precise: in Englishes. Beginning with a classic model, we’ll read and discuss texts that model variation in L1, L2 and Lingua Franca Englishes, World Englishes and Global Englishes. We will write short reflection pieces on some texts that will prepare us for a mini in-class conference with friendly feedback and an ensuing term paper on a variety of English of your choice (from a curated list).
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Studies in the English Language
ENGL 326
keyboard_arrow_downTopics in the history or structure of the English language.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | Lecture | M, W, F | 12:00 - 13:00 | Dancygier, Barbara | Section DescriptionThe Language of the MediaThere has been much interest recently in the impact that contemporary media (print news and TV, but also social media) have on public discourse and public trust in information. In the course, we will study a range of language forms and communication genres to better understand the nature of contemporary public discourse and to build an informed approach to the communicative universe we live in. We will start by discussing selected language phenomena, such as types of figuration, linguistic constructions, and expressions of epistemic and emotional stance. After establishing introductory concepts, we will focus on several case studies, looking more specifically at four areas of media discourse: 1. News coverage, 2. Political discourse (speeches, election campaigns, social media responses), 3. Internet discourse (memes, Twitter), and 4. TV news and humorous commentary (such as late night shows). Students will be expected to participate in in-class discussions and projects, collect their own media examples, and respond to take-home assignments. | |||
002 | 2 | Lecture | T, Th | 12:30 - 14:00 | Dollinger, Stefan | Section DescriptionONLINE - DOES NOT REQUIRE ANY IN-PERSON ATTENDANCE TO COMPLETE Canadian English: history, description, futureIn this course we’ll reflect on the state of knowledge about Canadian English, defined as any variety of English spoken and used in Canada. We will distinguish between Standard Canadian English and all other forms of English used in Canada, including First Nations Englishes. We will approach Canadian English from sociolinguistic and sociohistorical perspectives: how did it come about? Why is it the way it is? Why do some not know much about it (perhaps you)? You will be coached to pick and research a topic within Canadian English of your choice, and critically assess the status quo in your chosen domain by way of a comprehensive literature review. The general area can be lexis, pronunciation, syntax, morphology, usage, or attitudes and perception, from which you would choose a narrower domain as a topic (e.g. First Nations terms in Canadian English; intensifiers in Canadian English; British influence in mid-20th century CanE). In a second stage, we will design the parameters for an empirical study in which we propose to address an existing gap in the literature. Your literature review and study design might be used for a BA thesis, Honor’s thesis or term paper and would give you a jumpstart on any of these projects. Note, this course will be conducted EXCLUSIVELY online.
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Studies in the English Language - Studies in the English Language
ENGL 326A
keyboard_arrow_downTopics in the history or structure of the English language. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
A_001 | 1 | In-Person | Lecture | T, Th | 12:30 - 14:00 | Dancygier, Barbara | Section DescriptionThe Language of the MediaThere has been much interest recently in the impact that contemporary media (print news, social media and image-text communication) have on public discourse and public trust in information. In the course, we will study a range of language forms and communication genres to better understand the nature of contemporary public discourse and to build an informed approach to the communicative universe we live in. We will start by discussing selected language phenomena, such as types of figuration, linguistic constructions, and expressions of stance. After establishing introductory concepts, we will focus on several case studies, looking more specifically at the discourse of major campaigns and crises (e.g. Brexit, COVID, climate change), political discourse genres (speeches and election campaigns), the role of post-truth phenomena, and internet discourse genres (memes and ads). Students will be expected to participate in in-class discussions and projects, engage with readings, collect their own media examples, and respond to take-home assignments. |
Cognitive Approaches to the Study of Meaning
ENGL 327
keyboard_arrow_downInterpretation of linguistic usages through cognitive concepts.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 2 | Lecture | T, Th | 15:30 - 17:00 | Dancygier, Barbara | Section DescriptionCognitive PoeticsLanguage use in literary texts builds on standard forms and concepts, while pushing their meaning potential to the limits by extending or re-designing what is available. Such mechanisms of creativity are the subject matter of this course. To understand the processes involved and learn how textual meaning is built and received, we study cognitive approaches to language and apply the concepts to literary discourse and other creative discourse genres. We study poetry, narrative fiction, and drama, also by putting these genres in the context of contemporary discourse and visual culture. The concepts investigated show students how to connect the study of language and literature to an understanding of how the human mind processes and creates meaning. This approach, combining the study of language, literature, and conceptualization, is known as Cognitive Poetics. |
Cognitive Approaches to the Study of Meaning
ENGL 327
keyboard_arrow_downInterpretation of linguistic usages through cognitive concepts. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | Lecture | T, Th | 12:30 - 14:00 | Dancygier, Barbara | Section DescriptionCognitive PoeticsLanguage use in literary texts builds on standard forms and concepts, while pushing their meaning potential to the limits by extending or re-designing what is available. Such mechanisms of creativity are the subject matter of this course. To understand the processes involved and learn how textual meaning is built and received, we study cognitive approaches to language and apply the concepts to literary discourse and other creative genres. We study poetry, narrative fiction, and drama, also by putting these genres in the context of contemporary discourse and visual culture (film, internet memes, advertising, political and cultural campaigns, etc.). The concepts investigated show students how to connect the study of language and literature to an understanding of how the human mind processes and creates meaning. This approach, combining the study of language, literature, and conceptualization, is known as Cognitive Poetics. |
Metaphor, Language and Thought
ENGL 328
keyboard_arrow_downExploration of the concepts underlying figurative language (in vocabulary as well as in grammar), using data from both colloquial and literary language.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | Lecture | T, Th | 12:30 - 14:00 | Stickles, Elise | Section DescriptionThis class focuses on “everyday metaphors”: the figurative language that we use all the time, over the course of casual conversations and throughout our lives, often without even realizing it. While we may think our colloquial use of language is mostly literal, we rely on metaphors to talk about all sorts of ideas and situations. For example, we may talk about “fighting” crime, “waging war” on a pandemic, or “battling” poverty. In all these cases, we are describing one type of concept - a serious societal challenge - in terms of another concept, physical combat. But what does it mean to describe a pandemic as a “war”, versus a “wildfire” or a “journey”? Not only are these types of patterns pervasive throughout our language use, they also influence how we understand these concepts. In this course, you will learn how to identify and analyze figurative language in a variety of texts and media, and also consider the persuasive role of metaphor as a cognitive phenomenon. In the first part of the course, we will learn about various types of figurative language (metaphor, metonymy, blending). In the second part, we will apply these theoretical concepts to a range of genres, from health care to poetry. We will also consider the role of figurative language beyond the written and spoken word, such as gesture, memes, and other forms of multimodality. By the end of the course, students will be able to:
Required textbook: Dancygier, Barbara, and Eve Sweetser. Figurative Language. Cambridge University Press, 2014. |
Metaphor, Language and Thought
ENGL 328
keyboard_arrow_downExploration of the concepts underlying figurative language (in vocabulary as well as in grammar), using data from both colloquial and literary language. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 2 | Lecture | M, W, F | 14:00 - 15:00 | Stickles, Elise | Section DescriptionThis class focuses on “everyday metaphors”: the figurative language that we use all the time, over the course of casual conversations and throughout our lives, often without even realizing it. While we may think our colloquial use of language is mostly literal, we rely on metaphors to talk about all sorts of ideas and situations. For example, we may talk about “fighting” crime, “waging war” on a pandemic, or “battling” poverty. In all these cases, we are describing one type of concept - a serious societal challenge - in terms of another concept, physical combat. But what does it mean to describe a pandemic as a “war”, versus a “wildfire” or a “journey”? Not only are these types of patterns pervasive throughout our language use, they also influence how we understand these concepts. In this course, you will learn how to identify and analyze figurative language in a variety of texts and media, and also consider the persuasive role of metaphor as a cognitive phenomenon. In the first part of the course, we will learn about various types of figurative language (metaphor, metonymy, blending). In the second part, we will apply these theoretical concepts to a range of genres, from health care to poetry. We will also consider the role of figurative language beyond the written and spoken word, such as gesture, memes, and other forms of multimodality. By the end of the course, students will be able to:
Required textbook: Dancygier, Barbara, and Eve Sweetser. Figurative Language. Cambridge University Press, 2014. |
Metaphor, Language and Thought - Metaphor, Language and Thought
ENGL 328A
keyboard_arrow_downExploration of the concepts underlying figurative language (in vocabulary as well as in grammar), using data from both colloquial and literary language. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
A_001 | 2 | In-Person | Lecture | M, W, F | 14:00 - 15:00 | Stickles, Elise |
The Structure of Modern English: Sounds and Words
ENGL 330
keyboard_arrow_downAn introduction to phonology, morphology, and lexical semantics.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
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98A | 1-2 | Lecture | Biermann, Wilhelmina Georgina | ||||||
98X | 1-2 | Waiting List |
The Structure of Modern English: Sounds and Words
ENGL 330
keyboard_arrow_downAn introduction to phonology, morphology, and lexical semantics.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
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001 | 1 | Lecture | M, W | 16:00 - 17:30 | De Villiers, Jessica | Section DescriptionSounds and WordsThis course explores and examines contemporary English linguistic structure at the level of sounds and words. It begins with a study of speech sounds. We study the articulation of sounds in English, methods for phonetic transcription and the possible sound combinations in English (phonology). We then study words, and the processes of word formation and word classification in English (morphology). Finally, we consider word meaning and look at a variety of approaches to appreciating the nuances of meaning in English words (lexical semantics). Our focus will be on developing skills for analysing these three components of language, with an eye toward understanding how they belong to one communication system. Upon completion of this course, students will have:
Course evaluation: There will be 3 tests, 3 quizzes and a class participation mark. The tests are not cumulative. A variety of in-class, homework and test questions will be given, including definitions, fill in the blanks, problem solving and short answer questions. Required Text: L. Brinton. (2010) The Structure of Modern English. (2nd ed.). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Chapters 1-6.
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002 | 2 | Lecture | T, Th | 16:00 - 17:30 | Stickles, Elise | Section DescriptionThis course explores and examines contemporary English phonology, morphology and lexical semantics. It begins with the study of speech sounds in English. We apply methods for phonetic transcription and study distinct sounds and possible sound combinations in English (phonology). We study the processes of word formation and word classification in English (morphology). We also study word meaning (lexical semantics) using a variety of approaches. Upon completion of this course, students will:
Required textbook: Brinton, Laurel J., and Donna M. Brinton. The Linguistic Structure of Modern English. John Benjamins, 2010. |
The Structure of Modern English: Sounds and Words
ENGL 330
keyboard_arrow_downAn introduction to phonology, morphology, and lexical semantics.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
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98A | 1-2 | Lecture | Biermann, Wilhelmina Georgina | Section DescriptionThe English 330 online course provides a comprehensive introduction to English phonology, morphology, parts of speech, and lexical (word) meaning. We start by studying speech sounds and work our way up to larger structures until we reach the level of words and their meanings. When studying speech sounds, students will study the International Phonetic Alphabet as it pertains to present-day varieties of English. Students will be expected to acquire proficiency in phonetic transcription. The course is offered from a descriptive perspective and is not situated exclusively in any specific linguistic theory. There are three collaborative assignments, six quizzes, graded discussions for each module and a final exam. Students will be working fully online on all the course work. The exam is invigilated via Zoom. There are Zoom meetings at regular intervals which will be recorded for the benefit of students in different time zones with the permission of students attending. Zoom office hours are by appointment. Required reading: Brinton, Laurel J. and Donna M. Brinton. The Linguistic Structure of Modern English. John Benjamins, 2010. ISBN 978 90 272 1172 9. More details are available on the course website on canvas.ubc.ca. | |||||
98X | 1-2 | Waiting List |
The Structure of Modern English: Sounds and Words
ENGL 330
keyboard_arrow_downAn introduction to phonology, morphology, and lexical semantics. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
002 | 2 | Lecture | M, W | 15:30 - 17:00 | Stickles, Elise | Section DescriptionThis course explores and examines contemporary English phonology, morphology and lexical semantics. It begins with the study of speech sounds in English. We apply methods for phonetic transcription and study distinct sounds and possible sound combinations in English (phonology). We study the processes of word formation and word classification in English (morphology). We also study word meaning (lexical semantics) using a variety of approaches. Upon completion of this course, students will:
Required textbook: Brinton, Laurel J., and Donna M. Brinton. The Linguistic Structure of Modern English. John Benjamins, 2010. |
The Structure of Modern English: Sounds and Words
ENGL 330
keyboard_arrow_downAn introduction to phonology, morphology, and lexical semantics. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
98A | 1-2 | Lecture | De Villiers, Jessica | ||||||
98X | 1-2 | Waiting List |
The Structure of Modern English: Sounds and Words
ENGL 330
keyboard_arrow_downAn introduction to phonology, morphology, and lexical semantics. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
002 | 2 | In-Person | Lecture | M, W | 15:30 - 17:00 | Stickles, Elise | Section DescriptionThis course explores and examines contemporary English phonology, morphology and lexical semantics. It begins with the study of speech sounds in English. We apply methods for phonetic transcription and study distinct sounds and possible sound combinations in English (phonology). We study the processes of word formation and word classification in English (morphology). We also study word meaning (lexical semantics) using a variety of approaches. Upon completion of this course, students will: understand the English sound system, including sounds that are used in speech production and the rules and patterns governing their use; understand the rules of English word formation and grammatical modification; understand different approaches to representing and analyzing lexical meaning; demonstrate the ability to formally or diagrammatically represent this knowledge; appreciate the nuances of meaning in human language and the conceptual system underlying it. Required textbook: Brinton, Laurel J., and Donna M. Brinton. The Linguistic Structure of Modern English. John Benjamins, 2010. |
The Structure of Modern English: Sentences and Their Uses
ENGL 331
keyboard_arrow_downAn introduction to syntax, pragmatics, and sentence semantics.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | Lecture | T, Th | 12:30 - 14:00 | Dollinger, Stefan | Section DescriptionWelcome to this key course for any English major, minor and/or language enthusiast! Do not opt out of this course even if you can, just give it a try! Often considered the “tough” stuff of English that everyone wishes they knew, but few actually do, let’s together unlock the beauty of syntactic analysis. Let’s ask questions, let’s try out what the best (or “least bad”) classification for a given structure is! Use this knowledge of English syntax to teach, to sharpen up your own writing, or just to show off your grammatical prowess when you need to do so. Use the knowledge for any of your other languages (and learn to adapt it to these). With excerpts from both a traditional grammar textbook by very nice and capable linguists and sections from another textbook for a more functional approach, we will explore the idea of the word, the subject, the object, their forms and functions, and how they “play” together and learn, for instance, how an object is different from a complement (spelled with an “e”). No prior grammatical knowledge is required. Everyone welcome. Note, this course will be conducted EXCLUSIVELY online. | |||
002 | 2 | Lecture | T, Th | 11:00 - 12:30 | De Villiers, Jessica | Section DescriptionTuesdays: In-person, Buch D317 This course focuses on the structure of modern English beyond the level of the word. We study how words and phrases are combined in English sentence structure (syntax) from a generative perspective. Our focus will be on both simple and complex sentences. We will also study meaning in sentences (sentence semantics) and how language functions in context (pragmatics). Upon completion of this course, students will have:
Course evaluation: There will be 3 tests, 3 quizzes and a class participation mark. The tests are not cumulative. A variety of in-class, homework and test questions will be given, including problem solving, short answer, and multiple-choice questions, but the emphasis will be on representing English sentence structure diagrammatically. Required Text: L. Brinton. (2010) The Structure of Modern English. (2nd ed.). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Chapters 7-11. NOTE: This course will be conducted in person and online.
|
The Structure of Modern English: Sentences and Their Uses
ENGL 331
keyboard_arrow_downAn introduction to syntax, pragmatics, and sentence semantics. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | Lecture | T, Th | 11:00 - 12:30 | Dollinger, Stefan | Section DescriptionWelcome to this key course for any English major, minor and/or language enthusiast! Do *not* opt out of this course even if you can, just give it a try! Often considered the “tough” stuff of English that everyone wishes they knew, but few actually do, let’s together unlock the beauty of syntactic analysis. Let’s ask questions, let’s try out what the best (or “least bad”) classification for a given structure is. Use this knowledge of English syntax to teach, to sharpen up your own writing, or just to show off your grammatical prowess when you need to do so. Use the knowledge for any of your other languages (and learn to adapt it to these). No prior grammatical knowledge is required. Everyone welcome. Note, this course will be conducted EXCLUSIVELY online. |
The Structure of Modern English: Sentences and Their Uses
ENGL 331
keyboard_arrow_downAn introduction to syntax, pragmatics, and sentence semantics. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
99C | 2 | Online | Lecture | Th | 15:00 - 18:00 | De Villiers, Jessica | Section Descriptionhe Structure of Modern English: Sentences and Their UsesThis online course focuses on the structure of modern English beyond the level of the word. We study how words and phrases are combined in English sentence structure (syntax) from a generative perspective. Our focus will be on both simple and complex sentences. We will also study meaning in sentences (sentence semantics) and how language functions in context (pragmatics). Upon completion of this course, students will have: a knowledge of the structure of simple and complex sentences in English and the ability to represent this knowledge diagrammatically an appreciation of the nuances of meaning in human language and a knowledge of the conceptual system underlying meaning an understanding of the use of language in context. Course evaluation: There will be 3 tests, 3 quizzes and a class participation mark. The tests are not cumulative. A variety of in-class, homework and test questions will be given, including problem solving, short answer, and multiple-choice questions, but the emphasis will be on representing English sentence structure diagrammatically.
Required Text: L. Brinton. (2010) The Structure of Modern English. (2nd ed.). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Chapters 7-11. |
Approaches to Media History
ENGL 332
keyboard_arrow_downHistory of media and technological change; literary, rhetorical, or linguistic methods of inquiry.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | Lecture | M, W, F | 13:00 - 14:00 | Cavell, Richard Anthony | ||||
002 | 2 | Lecture | T, Th | 9:30 - 11:00 | Frank, Adam | Section DescriptionOpening the Box: on the (pre)history of televisionWhat can we discover about historical media and the technologies that underlie them through reading literary works? This course aims to answer this question through an exploration of the long history of television. Television emerged in fits and starts, in part from now defunct 19th-century technologies (such as telegraphy and phototelegraphy). It became a fixture in family homes after World War Two (in the US and elsewhere) on the model of radio. Television's history opens out onto broader histories which this course approaches by way of media archaeology as well as literary and cultural history. We begin from the idea that writing and print, themselves mediums, are particularly sensitive to the emergence of new media that pertain to writing (those based on -graphy technologies). By paying close attention to writing as well as to poetics (ideas about how writing works), we will explore the possibilities and limits that accompany new technologies, and the discourses by which they are understood. Note, our geographical focus will mostly, but not exclusively, be the United States. We are interested in the spatial and conceptual idea of "America" as it comes to be identified with so-called mass media in the twentieth century. This course will be taught as a mix of lecture and discussion. In it we will read literary and theoretical texts, watch television, view films, and listen to radio as we seek to gain a deep historical sense of the medium |
Approaches to Media History
ENGL 332
keyboard_arrow_downHistory of media and technological change; literary, rhetorical, or linguistic methods of inquiry. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | Lecture | T, Th | 14:00 - 15:30 | Frank, Adam | Section DescriptionOn the (pre-)history of televisionThis course explores the long history and prehistory of television. As technology, television emerged quite slowly from experiments with nineteenth-century technologies (such as telegraphy and phototelegraphy) that reproduce and transmit visual and sound images across space and time. As an institution and medium, television developed out of radio (in the 1930s) to become a standard feature in homes after the 1940s in North America and elsewhere. Even a brief glance at television, as both technology and as institution, quickly opens out onto larger social, political, and cultural histories. This course approaches these broader histories by reading literature and thinking across media forms. Writing and print, themselves mediums, compete and collaborate with newer media that pertain to writing (based on -graphy technologies). By paying close attention to writing and poetics (ideas about how writing works), we will explore perceptual regimes that accompany new technologies, the media institutions that capture them, and the discourses by which they are understood. Note: our geographical focus will mostly, but not exclusively, be the United States. This course will be taught as a mix of lecture and discussion. We will read literary, critical, and theoretical texts, watch television, view films, and listen to radio as we seek to gain a deep historical sense of the medium. Our learning objectives include:
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99C | 2 | Lecture | Burgess, Miranda | Section DescriptionMedia ecologies, 1650 to the presentAlthough the phrase “media ecology” was coined by education professor Neil Postman in 1970, this course takes its title and its focus from My Mother was a Computer: Digital Subjects and Literary Texts, published by literature scholar and media theorist N. Katherine Hayles in 2005. Commenting on the rise of the commercial Internet at the turn of the millennium, and its effects on existing technologies such as the printed book and analog film, Hayles wrote that “media can converge into digitality and simultaneously diverge into a robust media ecology in which new media represent and are represented in old media” (32, emphasis in original). Hayles here criticizes more conventional models of media history, which tend to explain the coming and spread of new (most recently digital) media forms using competition and predation analogies in which one kind of media form absorbs and defeats the others. These models yield in Hayles’s telling to a model of “coevolution” that focuses on relationships, encounters, and exchanges between media forms (32). In Hayles’s analysis, the word “media” refers to technologies, means of and devices for storing and conveying information and experience. This course builds on Hayles’s emphases on coexistence and coevolution while also examining the history of the idea of “media” and “mediation” itself, from the early modern period to the present. The course is organized comparatively, bringing digital and print media forms into conversation, and its learning design and assessments draw on comparative modes of inquiry. The course combines theoretical and historical reading and investigation with hands-on, project-based learning. You will investigate the historical development of knowledge technologies, broadly understood, explore their practical use, consider what it means to inquire into the experiences and lives of those who have worked with and used them, and use digital and analog media to organize and explain your findings. You will also engage with media ecologies in a second sense, considering the relationship between media, their material qualities, and the resources and practices of the surrounding world. You will also consider literary texts that reflect on their own relationship to media and mediation, bringing questions of media history and media theory productively into view. |
Approaches to Media History
ENGL 332
keyboard_arrow_downHistory of media and technological change; literary, rhetorical, or linguistic methods of inquiry. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
99A | Online | Lecture | Burgess, Miranda | Section DescriptionMedia ecology in the Atlantic world, 1650 to the presentThis course begins by defining “media ecology” as a “coevolution” among technologies, their users, the materials from which technologies are made, and the communities in which their users participate. It examines the history of the idea of “media” and “mediation” from the early modern period to the present, and in conjunction with kinds and sites of media and mediation typically overlooked in media histories, including Indigenous knowledge-keeping, ceremony, and diplomacy and Black community production and circulation of texts. The course is organized comparatively, bringing print and digital media forms into conversation, along with a broadened sense of what “mediation” is and might be. The learning design and assessments for this course draw on comparative modes of inquiry. The course combines theoretical and historical reading and investigation with hands-on, project-based learning. You will investigate the historical development of knowledge technologies, broadly understood, experience and reflect on their practical use, examine them in relation to broader approaches to mediation and media history, consider what it means to inquire into the experiences and lives of those who have worked with and used technological forms and participated in other modes of mediation contemporary with them, and use digital and analog media to organize and explain your findings. You will also engage with media ecologies in a second sense, considering the relationship between media, their material qualities, and the resources and practices of the surrounding world. Finally, you will consider literary texts that reflect on their own relationship to media and mediation, bringing media historical questions productively into view. | |||||
001 | 2 | In-Person | Lecture | T, Th | 14:00 - 15:30 | Frank, Adam |
History of the Book
ENGL 333
keyboard_arrow_downSurvey of development of text technologies (such as manuscripts, printed books, new media forms), through historical, cultural, and theoretical frameworks. Consult department website for current year's offerings. Credit granted for up to 6 credits of ENGL 333 and 419.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 2 | Lecture | M, W, F | 9:00 - 10:00 | Echard, Sian | Section DescriptionFrom Codex to Code“Never judge a book by its cover,” we are often told, and yet we do judge books, not only by their covers, but also by their typefaces, their illustrations, where they are filed in the bookstore or the library, and any number of other factors not apparently directly related to their content. This course will introduce participants to book history, a discipline that unravels the complex relationships between particular books, the texts they contain, the cultures that produced them, and the readers who encounter them. D.F. McKenzie famously described bibliography as the sociology of texts. As we move through important moments in the history of book production, we will explore how materiality and meaning interact, in a range of historical and cultural contexts. Along the way, we will learn about the many forms texts have taken over the centuries, from oral recitations to ebooks, and everything in between. A unique feature of this course is that we will meet regularly in Rare Books and Special Collections in the Barber Learning Centre. Here, you will have the opportunity for hands-on experience with a wide collection of rare materials dating from the Middle Ages to the present. You will pursue your own original research with our unique materials, informed by our discussions and readings focused on the role of modes of production, dissemination, and storage of text-objects in determining the reception and social function of texts. | |||
002 | 2 | Lecture | M, W, F | 13:00 - 14:00 | Cavell, Richard Anthony | Section DescriptionFlaps and Foldouts: The History of the Movable BookChildren love popup books, but did you know that books with flaps and foldouts were how medicine was taught for more than 200 years? You will learn about these and other non-conforming books through a series of readings, as well as through interactions with the instructor’s collection of non-conforming books. |
History of the Book
ENGL 333
keyboard_arrow_downSurvey of development of text technologies (such as manuscripts, printed books, new media forms), through historical, cultural, and theoretical frameworks. Consult department website for current year's offerings. Credit granted for up to 6 credits of ENGL 333 and 419. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
002 | 2 | Lecture | M, W, F | 13:00 - 14:00 | Cavell, Richard Anthony | Section DescriptionThis course examines the history of books that have flaps, foldouts, popups, wheels, flip movies, and so on. While such books are as old as the book itself, they are most often overlooked in histories of the book. The course approaches the book as a medium, as a process, rather than as an inert product of the printing press. The learning outcomes of the course include an understanding of the book as a cultural technique of enormous importance historically; a basic understanding of media history; and an interactive understanding of book technology through panel presentations on specific books (provided by the instructor), and through the demonstration copies of books from the instructor’s collection that will be circulated in the classroom. |
History of the Book - History of the Book
ENGL 333A
keyboard_arrow_downSurvey of development of text technologies (such as manuscripts, printed books, new media forms), through historical, cultural, and theoretical frameworks. Consult department website for current year's offerings. Credit granted for up to 6 credits of ENGL 333 and 419. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
A_001 | 1 | In-Person | Lecture | T, Th | 12:30 - 14:00 | Echard, Sian | Section DescriptionFrom Codex to Code“Never judge a book by its cover,” we are often told, and yet we do judge books, not only by their covers, but also by their typefaces, their illustrations, where they are filed in the bookstore or the library, and by any number of other factors not apparently directly related to their content. This course will introduce students to book history, a discipline that tries to unravel the complex relationships between particular books, the texts they contain, the cultures that produce them, and the readers who encounter them. D.F. McKenzie famously described bibliography as the sociology of texts. As we move through important moments in the history of book production, we will explore how materiality and meaning interact, in a range of historical and cultural contexts. Students will learn about the many forms texts have taken over the centuries, from oral recitations to ebooks, and everything in between. A feature of this course is hands-on experience with UBC’s collections: roughly every other week, we will visit the Irving K. Barber Library to explore materials from Rare Books and Special Collections. Course assignments will facilitate individual, curiosity-driven research with these materials. |
Introduction to Old English
ENGL 342
keyboard_arrow_downOld English vocabulary, grammar, and translation, with readings in poetry and prose. Credit will be granted for only one of ENGL 340 and ENGL 342.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 2 | Lecture | M, W, F | 10:00 - 11:00 | Pareles, Mo |
Introduction to Old English
ENGL 342
keyboard_arrow_downOld English vocabulary, grammar, and translation, with readings in poetry and prose. Credit will be granted for only one of ENGL 340 and ENGL 342. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | Lecture | T, Th | 12:30 - 14:00 | Pareles, Mo | Section DescriptionOld English Language and Translation“You must remember we knew nothing of [Old English]; each word was a kind of talisman we unearthed…And with those words we became almost drunk.” –Jorge Luis Borges, “Blindness” Old English, the earliest form of English, offers an uncanny sensation: so different from present-day English that it must be studied as a foreign language, it is an ancestor whose patterns reveal themselves quickly to the learner. Old English literature is strange, intimate, and violent: a general falls into his bed after a woman’s brutal swordstroke; a feud erupts at a wedding; a tree, torn from the wilderness to become an unwilling instrument of torture, clings to Christ in what Borges calls a lovers’ embrace. This literature is usually read in translation, but in this class you will begin to read it in the original. You will learn the fundamentals of Old English grammar, syntax, and vocabulary; specialized poetic vocabulary and the basic rules of poetic composition; and unusual features that have been lost in the journey from Old to present-day English. |
Introduction to Old English
ENGL 342
keyboard_arrow_downOld English vocabulary, grammar, and translation, with readings in poetry and prose. Credit will be granted for only one of ENGL 340 and ENGL 342. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | In-Person | Lecture | M, W, F | 10:00 - 11:00 | Pareles, Mo | Section DescriptionOld English Language and Translation“You must remember we knew nothing of [Old English]; each word was a kind of talisman we unearthed…And with those words we became almost drunk.” –Jorge Luis Borges, “Blindness” Old English, the earliest form of English, offers an uncanny sensation: so different from present-day English that it must be studied as a foreign language, it is an ancestor whose patterns reveal themselves quickly to the learner. Old English literature is strange, intimate, and violent: a general falls into his bed after a woman’s brutal swordstroke; a feud erupts at a wedding; a tree, torn from the wilderness to become an unwilling instrument of torture, clings to Christ in what Borges calls a lovers’ embrace. This literature is usually read in translation, but in this class you will begin to read it in the original. You will learn the fundamentals of Old English grammar, syntax, and vocabulary; specialized poetic vocabulary and the basic rules of poetic composition; and unusual features that have been lost in the journey from Old to present-day English. |
Anglo-Saxon and Early Medieval Literature
ENGL 343
keyboard_arrow_downReadings in the literature of early medieval (pre-1200) Britain and its neighbours, in modern English translation. May encompass multiple genres and contexts. Consult department website for current year's offerings. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 2 | Lecture | M, W, F | 13:00 - 14:00 | Pareles, Mo |
Anglo-Saxon and Early Medieval Literature - Anglo-Saxon and Early Medieval Literature
ENGL 343A
keyboard_arrow_downReadings in the literature of early medieval (pre-1200) Britain and its neighbours, in modern English translation. May encompass multiple genres and contexts. Consult department website for current year's offerings. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
A_001 | 2 | In-Person | Lecture | M, W, F | 10:00 - 11:00 | Pareles, Mo |
Middle English Literature
ENGL 344
keyboard_arrow_downPlease see the Department website for further information on topics offered in the current session. May encompass multiple genres and contexts. Consult department website for current year's offerings.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 2 | Lecture | M, W, F | 11:00 - 12:00 | Rouse, Robert | Section DescriptionMedieval RomanceMedieval romance (OF: romanz) was one of the most popular of medieval genres. First appearing in the twelfth century as the predominant mode of literary entertainment of the aristocratic courts of Western Europe, romance narratives dominated European literature for much of the Middle Ages. Early romances took as their theme the lives, battles, and loves of chivalric knights and ladies, but the romance genre was – over time – appropriated for purposes as diverse as religious instruction, national and global identity politics, and eventually parody and humour.
This course will examine the romances of medieval England during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, in what has been termed the great flowering of late medieval romance. During this period the genre became highly popular not only with the nobility, but also with the rising mercantile and gentry classes of England, and this changing audience – and the changing expectations that they brought with them – led to a literature diverse in both form and content. We shall be reading of knights and ladies, giants and dragons, incestuous fathers and wicked usurpers, fearsome "Saracens", malicious Faeries, children of the devil, lepers who bathe in baths of blood, and – of course – sex and sword-play. All in all, a bit like A Game of Thrones but with more difficult grammar.
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Middle English Literature
ENGL 344
keyboard_arrow_downMay encompass multiple genres and contexts. Consult department website for current year's offerings. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 2 | Lecture | M, W, F | 9:00 - 10:00 | Echard, Sian | Section DescriptionThe Arthur of the BritonsKing Arthur, Lancelot, Guenevere, the Round Table, the Holy Grail - these names familiar to many of us, but how did that happen? How did stories that originated in early medieval Britain end up so widespread and popular that they’re still being retold today? In this course, we go back to the beginning. We’ll look at the strange Welsh poems and tales that might show us the oldest versions of Arthur. We will read the twelfth-century Latin history that gave the world the first connected life story for Arthur. These texts will be read in translation, but we’ll also read poetry and prose in Middle English, moving gently through the amazing alliterative poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, as well as Sir Thomas Malory’s prose Morte D’Arthur, the text most responsible for passing the stories of Arthur and his knights to the post-medieval English-speaking world. There’s an apartment building in Vancouver called “Sir Galahad” – by the end of this course, you’ll recognize the reference, and also be able to appreciate just how weird it really is… Required Texts:
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99A | 1 | Lecture | Rouse, Robert | Section DescriptionLove and Honour: Medieval Chivalry and Courtly LoveThe courtly poetry of medieval Europe develops out of a vibrant reimagining of elite culture in the twelfth-century that spread like wild-fire across the courts of Europe. The development of the entwined ideologies of chivalry and courtly love (fin amour) create an environment that produces some of the masterpieces of European literature. This course examines these two social phenomena from their origins in the twelfth-century court culture exemplified by the poetry of Chrétien de Troyes, Andreas Capellanus, and others, through to the flourishing of literary activity in the world of fourteenth-century England. We will read a range of medieval texts, some in modern translation and some in the original Middle English, ranging from Chrétien’s Lancelot, selections from chivalric manuals, secular and religious love lyrics, Sir Perceval of Gales, to the popular romance The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnall. Finally, as the capstone text of the course, we read the alliterative Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a complex meditation on honour, love, the natural world, and the search for human perfection. This classic text, long central to the canon of English literature, will be examined through lenses both traditional and contemporary, asking not only what it meant in its fourteenth-century context, but what it continues to mean to us today in our own time of cultural and environmental crisis. |
Middle English Literature - Middle English Literature
ENGL 344A
keyboard_arrow_downMay encompass multiple genres and contexts. Consult department website for current year's offerings. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
A_99A | Online | Lecture | Rouse, Robert | Section DescriptionLove and Honour: Medieval Chivalry and Courtly LoveThe courtly poetry of medieval Europe develops out of a vibrant reimagining of elite culture in the twelfth-century that spread like wild-fire across the courts of Europe. The development of the entwined ideologies of chivalry and courtly love (fin amour) create an environment that produces some of the masterpieces of European literature. This course examines these two social phenomena from their origins in the twelfth-century court culture exemplified by the poetry of Chrétien de Troyes, Andreas Capellanus, and others, through to the flourishing of literary activity in the world of fourteenth-century England. We will read a range of medieval texts, some in modern translation and some in the original Middle English, ranging from Chrétien’s Lancelot, selections from chivalric manuals, secular and religious love lyrics, Sir Perceval of Gales, to the popular romance The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnall. Finally, as the capstone text of the course, we read the alliterative Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a complex meditation on honour, love, the natural world, and the search for human perfection. This classic text, long central to the canon of English literature, will be examined through lenses both traditional and contemporary, asking not only what it meant in its fourteenth-century context, but what it continues to mean to us today in our own time of cultural and environmental crisis. |
Chaucer
ENGL 346
keyboard_arrow_downA detailed study of Chaucer's major works. Consult department website for current year's offerings.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | Lecture | M, W, F | 16:00 - 17:00 | Partridge, Stephen | Section DescriptionChaucer’s Canterbury Tales: A World of Words and a Sea of StoriesWith the help of a reader-friendly edition and a series of structured but gentle lessons, you will acquire facility in reading Chaucer’s Middle English. More importantly, you will learn how Chaucer makes use of his language’s power in assembling a series of narratives ostensibly told by the diverse company of pilgrims he met on the way to Canterbury. The pilgrims’ tales create a conversation about many themes, including class, love, sex and gender, work, language, the nature of narrative itself, and the pleasures and travails of studenthood, and our class meetings will reflect the collection’s spirit with regular sessions of open discussion. We will consider the linguistic and literary innovations that led readers to consider Chaucer the “father of English poetry” together with the sense of humour – by turns satirical, bawdy, and self-deprecating – that makes reading his poetry a constant joy. |
Chaucer
ENGL 346
keyboard_arrow_downA detailed study of Chaucer's major works. Consult department website for current year's offerings. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | Lecture | T, Th | 14:00 - 15:30 | Partridge, Stephen | Section DescriptionChaucer’s Canterbury Tales: A World of Words and a Sea of StoriesWith the help of a reader-friendly edition and a series of structured but gentle lessons, you will acquire facility in reading Chaucer’s Middle English. More importantly, you will learn how Chaucer makes use of his language’s power in assembling a series of narratives ostensibly told by the diverse company of pilgrims he met on the way to Canterbury. The pilgrims’ tales create a conversation about many themes, including class, love, sex and gender, work, language, the nature of narrative itself, and the pleasures and travails of studenthood, and our class meetings will reflect the collection’s spirit with regular sessions of open discussion. We will consider the linguistic and literary innovations that led readers to consider Chaucer the “father of English poetry” together with the sense of humour – by turns satirical, bawdy, and self-deprecating – that makes reading his poetry a constant joy.
|
Chaucer - Chaucer
ENGL 346A
keyboard_arrow_downA detailed study of Chaucer's major works. Consult department website for current year's offerings. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
A_001 | 1 | In-Person | Lecture | T, Th | 14:00 - 15:30 | Partridge, Stephen | Section DescriptionChaucer’s Canterbury Tales: A World of Words and a Sea of StoriesWith the help of a reader-friendly edition and a series of structured but gentle lessons, you will acquire facility in reading Chaucer’s Middle English. More importantly, you will learn how Chaucer makes use of his language’s power in assembling a series of narratives ostensibly told by the diverse company of pilgrims he met on the way to Canterbury. The pilgrims’ tales create a conversation about many themes, including class, love, sex and gender, work, language, the nature of narrative itself, and the pleasures and travails of studenthood, and our class meetings will reflect the collection’s spirit with regular sessions of open discussion. We will consider the linguistic and literary innovations that led readers to consider Chaucer the “father of English poetry” together with the sense of humour – by turns satirical, bawdy, and self-deprecating – that makes reading his poetry a constant joy. |
Renaissance Literature
ENGL 347
keyboard_arrow_downLiterature of the sixteenth and early seventeenth-centuries. May encompass multiple genres and contexts. Consult department website for current year's offerings.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | Lecture | M, W, F | 10:00 - 11:00 | Sirluck, Katherine | Section DescriptionHuman/Animal Hybridity and Navigation of Species Boundaries in Renaissance Literature and DramaThis course will focus on changing ideas of humans and animals, and human-animal relations in the Renaissance as expressed in the literature and drama of the time. We will explore the shifting paradigms governing the status and role of animals, beginning in classical antiquity and moving forward through medieval Europe to England in the Renaissance. In this period, the definition of the human is closely tied to the definition of the animal. At one extreme species exist hierarchically, and in tension with each other, while elsewhere the borders between humans and animals are being crossed, and even erased. We will consider how these factors are implicated in the political, philosophical, religious and social ideas of the period, and how they might influence the possibility of inter-species and same-species empathy. We will reflect particularly on how representations of animals, humans as animals, and human-animal hybrids are made to figure in subject-formation, moral discourses, and especially in formulations of class, race, and gender relations in the English Renaissance. Our field of study will include both literary and theatrical texts and other kinds of documents, from biblical accounts, classical natural history, and medieval bestiaries to records of animal trials, medical treatments, and anatomical studies. We will read accounts of bear-baiting, menagerie keeping, hunting, falconry, and riding, and we will explore attitudes towards animals as pets, property, mounts, guards, hunters, musicians, and meat. For their assignments, students will choose a selection of books and articles from the burgeoning fields of Renaissance-focused Animal Studies and Eco-critical scholarship. Together, we will examine how some literary and dramatic works use animals, and animal imagery, especially in order to interrogate, exalt, degrade, or otherwise mediate the contentious category of the human.
Texts: Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queen, selections from Books 1, 2 & 3; William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, King Lear; Margaret Cavendish, “The Hunting of the Hare”; Ben Jonson, Volpone; John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi; John Milton, selections from Paradise Lost
Secondary Texts: selections from Aristotle, De Anima, De Animalibus Historia; selections from Bestiary, trans. & ed. Richard Barber, selections from The Book of Beasts, Being a Translation from a Latin Bestiary of the Twelfth Century, ed. & trans. T. H. White; Sir Philip Sidney, selections from The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia; selections from Michel de Montaigne, Apology for Raimond Sebond;”, selections from Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
Course Requirements: One in-class mid-term essay (25%), one term paper (40%), one creative presentation or theatre review, together with class participation (5%), and a final exam (30%). | |||
002 | 2 | Lecture | T, Th | 11:00 - 12:30 | Nardizzi, Vincent | Section DescriptionRenaissance Lyric PoetryThis course is an experiment in reading lyric poetry. We’ll use The Broadview Anthology (The Renaissance and the Early Seventeenth Century) as our guide. During class sessions, we’ll read aloud with one another all the lyric poems included in it, from the early formulations of an “English” lyric tradition (the poems of Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Early of Surrey) to the vogue for sonnet sequences inspired by perhaps the era’s greatest poet (Sir Philip Sidney), to the devotional and erotic wit of earlier seventeenth-century poets (John Donne and George Herbert). Along the way we’ll also survey the poems of two queens (Elizabeth I and Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots), of Sidney’s relatives (Mary Sidney Herbert and Lady Mary Wroth), and others (Aemilia Lanyer, Ben Jonson, William Shakespeare, and Christopher Marlowe). If we’re lucky, we’ll get to Milton. We’ll want to think about why reading lyric poetry aloud is important. We’ll hone our skills in close reading. We’ll consider how poets imagine these lyrics in relation to reading, writing, manuscript circulation, and print publication. We’ll reflect on different poetic forms. We’ll want to keep an eye out for the language of money. And we’ll explore how what seemed an ever-expanding world to the English around 1600 could be marvelously contracted into the “little rooms” of the lyric. There will be 2 exams and 1 writing assignment. |
Renaissance Literature
ENGL 347
keyboard_arrow_downLiterature of the sixteenth and early seventeenth-centuries. May encompass multiple genres and contexts. Consult department website for current year's offerings. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
002 | 2 | Lecture | T, Th | 14:00 - 15:30 | Frelick, Nancy | Section DescriptionMadness and Folly in the RenaissanceMadness and folly fascinated Renaissance humanists, who celebrated the figure of the “witty jester” or “wise fool” in their writings. In this course, we will explore various depictions of “unreason” or irrationality in Renaissance texts, paying particular attention to the paradoxical discourses that often seem to accompany such representations. Among others, we will examine descriptions of love as a malady in early modern medicine and as a source of inspiration in Neo-Platonic, Petrarchist, and Elizabethan poetry, analyze the age-old association between melancholy and genius in humoral theory, consider the power of the imagination in Montaigne’s Essays, and compare playful personifications of Folly in works by Erasmus and Louise Labé. We will also study representations of madness and folly in two of Shakespeare’s tragedies (Hamlet and King Lear) along with some more recent readings from cultural theory and the social sciences. |
Renaissance Literature - Renaissance Literature
ENGL 347A
keyboard_arrow_downLiterature of the sixteenth and early seventeenth-centuries. May encompass multiple genres and contexts. Consult department website for current year's offerings. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
A_001 | 2 | In-Person | Lecture | T, Th | 11:00 - 12:30 | Guy-bray, Stephen | Section DescriptionIn this course we’ll read Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene, one of the greatest of Renaissance epics. We’ll make our way slowly and steadily through all six books. Although there will be some discussion of religion and politics (hard to separate when Spenser wrote), our main focus will be on the Faerie Queene as poetry. |
Shakespeare
ENGL 348
keyboard_arrow_downA detailed study of Shakespeare's works. Consult department website for current year's offerings.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
98A | 1-2 | Lecture | Paul, Joseph | Section Description“Author’s pen” and “Actor’s voice”: Shakespeare in Text and PerformanceThis course will explore the extent to which we as readers of Shakespeare’s tragedies, histories, and comedies can remain engaged with his plays’ potential for realization onstage, in performance. Part of our focus will be historicist: we will consider the institutional and social conditions attendant upon the original productions of the plays, as well as the ways in which the plays themselves dramatize matters of affect and spectatorship. Our work will also explore the formal dramaturgy of the plays in order to think about how the texts register the nuance of performance in obvious ways (in stage directions and dialogue) and by appealing to the senses and to the emotions of a live audience. We will also look at the editing, printing, and publishing of the plays in order to think about how the page simultaneously encodes and distorts performance for modern readers. Whenever possible, we will consider the performance history of the plays, with a particular emphasis on how modern adaptations for the stage make use of (cut, modify, rearrange, reimagine) the playtext. | |||||
98W | 1-2 | Waiting List |
Shakespeare
ENGL 348
keyboard_arrow_downA detailed study of Shakespeare's works. Consult department website for current year's offerings.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | Lecture | M, W, F | 14:00 - 15:00 | Britton, Dennis | Section DescriptionShakespeare and RaceShakespeare wrote his plays at the same historical moment that English explorers were encountering peoples in the Americas, Africa, and Asia, peoples with beliefs, customs, and skin colors different from their own. The “difference” of indigenous peoples, Africans, and Asians inspired a variety of feelings, and the English would increasingly define themselves in opposition to non-European, non-White people. In this course we will consider how Shakespeare’s plays represent racial difference, and how representations of difference produced a developing sense of White racial identity. We will read selected sonnets, Richard III, Henry V, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice, Othello, and The Tempest.
| |||
002 | 2 | Lecture | M, W, F | 14:00 - 15:00 | Sirluck, Katherine | Section DescriptionShakespeare and the Age of UncertaintyThis course will focus primarily on the plays of Shakespeare, with some attention given to other Renaissance dramatic and non-dramatic works. As we read the plays, we will discuss cultural history, contemporary religious, philosophical, and political ideas, and elements of government, domestic life and social interaction relevant for these works. We will consider how these plays deal with Early Modern prescriptions for identity and value, and pervading ideological constructions of rank, race, gender, and sexuality. We will take account of contributing aesthetic traditions, and bear in mind the conditions influencing dramatic production, pondering the participation of Shakespeare’s plays in both the authorized and subversive aspects of Elizabethan and Jacobean playing and audience reception. Shakespeare’s theatre can be seen as a commercial enterprise, licensed by the authorities, and dependent on royal patronage, involving complex negotiations of class and subjectivity. It can also be seen as a marginal or liminal space wherein the dilemmas and dreams of Shakespeare’s time and now of our own can be evoked and given imaginative form; where competing voices find expression; where “things as they are” can be challenged by the very manner of their representation. The dramatic poetry of Shakespeare is both historical document and unfinished experiment - a boundlessly eventful experiential realm. Students will study six plays, four with full coverage in the classroom and two with briefer coverage in class. We will also consider a handful of the sonnets. William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, Othello, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, The Tempest | |||
99C | 1 | Lecture | Paul, Joseph | Section DescriptionINSTRUCTOR: GAVIN PAUL "Author's pen" and "actor's voice": Shakespeare in Text and PerformanceThis course will explore the extent to which we as readers of Shakespeare’s tragedies, histories, and comedies can remain engaged with his plays’ potential for realization onstage, in performance. Part of our focus will be historicist: we will consider the institutional and social conditions attendant upon the original productions of the plays, as well as the ways in which the plays themselves dramatize matters of affect and spectatorship. Our work will also explore the formal dramaturgy of the plays in order to think about how the texts register the nuance of performance in obvious ways (in stage directions and dialogue) and by appealing to the senses and to the emotions of a live audience. We will also look at the editing, printing, and publishing of the plays in order to think about how the page simultaneously encodes and distorts performance for modern readers. Whenever possible, we will consider the performance history of the plays, with a particular emphasis on how modern adaptations for the stage make use of (cut, modify, rearrange, reimagine) the playtext.
|
Shakespeare
ENGL 348
keyboard_arrow_downA detailed study of Shakespeare's works. Consult department website for current year's offerings.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
98A | 1-2 | Lecture | Paul, Joseph | Section Description"Author's pen" and "actor's voice": Shakespeare in Text and PerformanceThis course will explore the extent to which we as readers of Shakespeare’s tragedies, histories, and comedies can remain engaged with his plays’ potential for realization onstage, in performance. Part of our focus will be historicist: we will consider the institutional and social conditions attendant upon the original productions of the plays, as well as the ways in which the plays themselves dramatize matters of affect and spectatorship. Our work will also explore the formal dramaturgy of the plays in order to think about how the texts register the nuance of performance in obvious ways (in stage directions and dialogue) and by appealing to the senses and to the emotions of a live audience. We will also look at the editing, printing, and publishing of the plays in order to think about how the page simultaneously encodes and distorts performance for modern readers. Whenever possible, we will consider the performance history of the plays, with a particular emphasis on how modern adaptations for the stage make use of (cut, modify, rearrange, reimagine) the playtext. | |||||
98W | 1-2 | Waiting List |
Shakespeare
ENGL 348
keyboard_arrow_downA detailed study of Shakespeare's works. Consult department website for current year's offerings. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | Lecture | M, W, F | 10:00 - 11:00 | Nardizzi, Vincent | Section DescriptionShakespeare’s LondonOur lecture-based course focuses on “London” in Shakespeare’s drama. Shakespeare never wrote a play set in contemporary London, as many of his playwrighting colleagues did. The capital is only explicitly featured in his plays about England’s historical past. It is nonetheless often argued that the towns and urban centers where other Shakespearean plays are set actually serve as screens for this growing metropolis. Our course will survey three of Shakespeare’s history plays set in London; one of his plays whose setting is perhaps a screen for London; and three plays about contemporary London that were written by Shakespeare’s colleagues. Our course topics will be the poetics of historiography, London’s urban geography, and representations of royalty and immigrants, and elites and laborers in these plays. Readings will include Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1 and The Merry Wives of Windsor; the Shakespearean collaborations Sir Thomas More and Henry VIII (All is True); The London Prodigal, which used to be attributed to Shakespeare; Thomas Middleton’s A Chaste Maid in Cheapside and Middleton and Thomas Dekker’s Roaring Girl. There will be 2 in-class exams and a final essay. | |||
99C | 2 | Lecture | Paul, Joseph | Section Description"Author's pen" and "actor's voice": Shakespeare in Text and PerformanceThis course will explore the extent to which we as readers of Shakespeare’s tragedies, histories, and comedies can remain engaged with his plays’ potential for realization onstage, in performance. Part of our focus will be historicist: we will consider the institutional and social conditions attendant upon the original productions of the plays, as well as the ways in which the plays themselves dramatize matters of affect and spectatorship. Our work will also explore the formal dramaturgy of the plays in order to think about how the texts register the nuance of performance in obvious ways (in stage directions and dialogue) and by appealing to the senses and to the emotions of a live audience. We will also look at the editing, printing, and publishing of the plays in order to think about how the page simultaneously encodes and distorts performance for modern readers. Whenever possible, we will consider the performance history of the plays, with a particular emphasis on how modern adaptations for the stage make use of (cut, modify, rearrange, reimagine) the playtext. |
Shakespeare
ENGL 348
keyboard_arrow_downA detailed study of Shakespeare's works. Consult department website for current year's offerings. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
98A | 1-2 | Lecture | Paul, Joseph | Section Description"Author's pen" and "actor's voice": Shakespeare in Text and PerformanceThis course will explore the extent to which we as readers of Shakespeare’s tragedies, histories, and comedies can remain engaged with his plays’ potential for realization onstage, in performance. Part of our focus will be historicist: we will consider the institutional and social conditions attendant upon the original productions of the plays, as well as the ways in which the plays themselves dramatize matters of affect and spectatorship. Our work will also explore the formal dramaturgy of the plays in order to think about how the texts register the nuance of performance in obvious ways (in stage directions and dialogue) and by appealing to the senses and to the emotions of a live audience. We will also look at the editing, printing, and publishing of the plays in order to think about how the page simultaneously encodes and distorts performance for modern readers. Whenever possible, we will consider the performance history of the plays, with a particular emphasis on how modern adaptations for the stage make use of (cut, modify, rearrange, reimagine) the playtext. | |||||
98W | 1-2 | Waiting List |
Shakespeare - Shakespeare
ENGL 348A
keyboard_arrow_downA detailed study of Shakespeare's works. Consult department website for current year's offerings. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
A_001 | 1 | In-Person | Lecture | T, Th | 14:00 - 15:30 | Britton, Dennis | Section DescriptionShakespeare and the Idea of the NationWhat is a nation? What does it mean to be, and how does one become, a part of a nation? These are certainly important questions now, and they were equally important in Shakespeare’s day as England was still establishing itself as a sovereign nation. We will read works by Shakespeare and examine the nation as a category of belonging and exclusion that intersects with concerns about race, gender, sexuality, and language. We will read Titus Andronicus, “The Henriad” (Richard II, 1 Henry IV, 2 Henry IV, and Henry V), The Merchant of Venice, Othello, and Cymbeline. Class assignments will include short papers, a close reading assignment, and a research-based final project. | ||
A_002 | 2 | In-Person | Lecture | M, W, F | 11:00 - 12:00 | Cavell, Richard Anthony | Section DescriptionMediatic ShakespeareThis course provides a unique approach to selected plays by Shakespeare through its focus on Shakespeare’s media—orality, script, and print—and the dramatization of these media in his plays during the period when the dominant medium was shifting from orality to literacy. The course also provides students with an introduction to media theory. The historical background of Shakespeare’s era is further developed through student panel presentations on topics relevant to the media context of Shakespeare’s time, including music, scribal practices, printing, and education. | ||
A_99C | Online | Lecture | Paul, Gavin |
Seventeenth-Century Literature
ENGL 349
keyboard_arrow_downLiterature of Stuart and Civil War Britain. May encompass multiple genres and contexts. Consult department website for current year's offerings.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 2 | Lecture | M, W, F | 10:00 - 11:00 | Hodgson, Elizabeth | Section DescriptionPolitical Bodies, Social Selves: 17th century Literature17th century England was a culture good at creating crisis: for itself, in its civil wars, and for others, in its rapidly expanding colonialism. This was also a world fascinated by women’s powers, gender-fluid performance, unruly workers, the idea of trees, the mysteries of the spirit, and the meaning of community. With a king who called himself the nursing mother of the nation, and exploitative cooperatives doing deals in India, with sermons described as “a making love to the congregation” and poems imagining Indigenous peoples as the new Adam, 17th century English literature is packed with startling, complex, and important moments in the making of Englishness, Whiteness, gender, and citizenship. Violent, sexy, and witty, painful, nostalgic, and vivid, this literature speaks to our world in its own powerful and troubled voices. Course-modules will include Class and Social Satire; Religious Believing; Violence and the Stage; Misogyny and Romance; Rhetorics of Early Colonialism; Myths of the Citizen. We’ll read pastoral satires, country-house poems, civil-war debates, blood-tragedies, amorous verse, and religious confessions (Amelia Lanyer; John Donne; Mary Wroth; John Webster; Ben Jonson; Walter Ralegh; Oliver Cromwell; Thomas Hobbes; Katherine Philips). The course will be as interactive as I can make it: workshops, discussion, collaborative projects, group-work. You’ll have a custom anthology, no midterm, and lots of choice in your writing projects. |
Seventeenth-Century Literature
ENGL 349
keyboard_arrow_downLiterature of Stuart and Civil War Britain. May encompass multiple genres and contexts. Consult department website for current year's offerings. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 2 | Lecture | T, Th | 12:30 - 14:00 | Guy-bray, Stephen |
Seventeenth-Century Literature - 17TH C LIT
ENGL 349A
keyboard_arrow_downLiterature of Stuart and Civil War Britain. May encompass multiple genres and contexts. Consult department website for current year's offerings. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
A_001 | 1 | In-Person | Lecture | M, W, F | 12:00 - 13:00 | Hodgson, Elizabeth | Section DescriptionPolitical Bodies, Social Selves: 17th century Literature17th century England was a culture good at creating crisis: for itself, in its civil wars, and then for others, in its rapidly expanding colonialism. This was also a world fascinated by women’s powers, gender-fluid performance, unruly workers, the idea of trees, the mysteries of the spirit, and the meaning of community. With a king who called himself the nursing mother of the nation, and exploitative cooperatives doing deals in India, with sermons described as “a making love to the congregation” and poems imagining Indigenous peoples as the new Adam, 17th century English literature is packed with startling, complex, and important moments in the making of Englishness, Whiteness, gender, and citizenship. Violent, sexy, and witty, painful, nostalgic, and vivid, this literature speaks to our world in its own powerful and troubled voices. Course-modules will include Class and Social Satire; Religious Believing; Violence and the Stage; Misogyny and Romance; Rhetorics of Early Colonialism; Myths of the Citizen. We’ll read pastoral satires, country-house poems, civil-war debates, blood-tragedies, amorous verse, and religious confessions (Amelia Lanyer; John Donne; Mary Wroth; John Webster; Ben Jonson; Walter Ralegh; Oliver Cromwell; Thomas Hobbes; Katherine Philips). The course will be as interactive as I can make it: workshops, discussion, collaborative projects, group-work. You’ll have a custom anthology, no midterm, and lots of choice in your writing projects. |
Milton
ENGL 350
keyboard_arrow_downA detailed study of Milton's works. Consult department website for current year's offerings. Credit will be granted for up to 6 credits of ENGL 350 and/or 354. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 2 | Lecture | T, Th | 9:30 - 11:00 | Hodgson, Elizabeth |
Milton - Milton
ENGL 350A
keyboard_arrow_downA detailed study of Milton's works. Consult department website for current year's offerings. Credit will be granted for up to 6 credits of ENGL 350 and/or 354. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
A_001 | 1 | In-Person | Lecture | M, W, F | 10:00 - 11:00 | Guy-bray, Stephen | Section DescriptionThe only text in this course is Milton’s Paradise Lost. We’ll move through it fairly slowly. Our primary focus will be on the poem as poetry. No prior experience with Christianity or the Bible is necessary. |
Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Literature
ENGL 351
keyboard_arrow_downBritish and Global literature from the Restoration of the Monarchy to the Enlightenment with a focus on intellectual and political contexts. Consult department website for current year's offerings. Credit will be granted for up to 6 credits of ENGL 351 and/or 357.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | Lecture | M, W, F | 13:00 - 14:00 | Gooding, Richard | Section DescriptionChildren in Time: The Making of Modern Childhood in Eighteenth-Century EnglandThe century that separates the portraits of Master Montagu Drake and the Wood children (you can see them here) saw deep changes in how children were understood and treated in the English-speaking world. By the end of the eighteenth century, for example, almost no one took seriously John Locke’s belief that children should be prepared for the demands of adult life through cold baths, hard beds, and leaky shoes; and, as Lawrence Stone notes, the common parental practice of giving more than one child the same name and recycling the names of dead children had died out. In this course, we will examine how seventeenth- and eighteenth-century beliefs about childhood influenced writing for children and adolescents. We will consider such matters as parent-child relations, 17th- and 18th-century educational models, the rise of a children's book industry the emergence of cross-over texts (books written for adults but appropriated by younger readers), the rise of writing aimed at youth, and the commodification of childhood. Some readings will focus on enduring childhood favourites such as Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, and fairy tales by Charles Perrault and Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont. Others will bring us into contact with texts that have fallen out of the canon of children's reading—the transparently junky and profit-driven A Little Pretty Pocket-Book, The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes, with its attempt hawking quack medicines and toys, and the short and bizarrely sadistic novel The Village School, which now reads as a how-to guide for violating the rights of children. Along the way, we'll take some time to visit (and handle) tiny children's books housed in UBC's Rare Books and Special Collections and look at changing visual representations of childhood over the century. | |||
002 | 2 | Lecture | T, Th | 14:00 - 15:30 | Potter, Tiffany | Section DescriptionPopular Culture in/and the Eighteenth CenturyStudies of modern popular culture have illuminated the complex relationships that individuals and groups maintain with the larger artistic, political, economic, and social movements around them. Such methodologies, however, have rarely been applied to the eighteenth century. Through detailed engagements with representations of popular culture, this class will work collaboratively to illuminate the relationships among high culture, women’s culture, and popular culture, and the ways in which the conventional masculinization of high culture constitutes the feminine as the popular. Recognition of the historically naturalized links between the feminine and the popular in fiction (both frivolous, both products of fashion, both determined by performance and consumption) will provide a scaffold for our work in other literary and cultural contexts that have previously been regarded as separated by less nuanced boundaries of high and low culture, including blockbuster plays like The Beggar’s Opera, shocking fiction like Behn's The Fair Jilt, and the literary hissing match around the pop cult phenomenon Pamela (read in excerpt) and the most popular Regency text in modern times, Pride and Prejudice. While most of this course will focus on women and popular culture in the eighteenth century, we will end with a section on the ways in which eighteenth-century women are depicted in modern popular culture, including fiction adaptations such as Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and one other media adaptation. Getting a head start? Read Pride and Prejudice for excellent summer reading that will save you time in November! |
Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Literature
ENGL 351
keyboard_arrow_downBritish and Global literature from the Restoration of the Monarchy to the Enlightenment with a focus on intellectual and political contexts. Consult department website for current year's offerings. Credit will be granted for up to 6 credits of ENGL 351 and/or 357. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | Lecture | M, W, F | 11:00 - 12:00 | Potter, Tiffany | Section DescriptionSo much drama! Eighteenth-century TheatreAfter the silence of the Puritan Commonwealth, London’s theatres burst into social, artistic and ideological prominence (and no small fabulousness) with the restoration of King Charles II. Through tragedy, burlesque, and several types of comedy, plays contributed to cultural dialogues on the relative identities of the nation and the individual through sites of tension among conflicting elements like noble heroics, brilliant wit, political subversion, historical revisionism, and some rather explicit sex. We will consider the ways that English playwrights and stage practices echoed and interrogated the implications the ways the dramatic genres of the era embraced both spectatorship and readership and made the political into the (very) personal. Looking for a head start this summer? Consider the pairing of Wycherley’s Country Wife and Behn’s The Rover, two very different takes—sparkling and pitch dark—on the stakes and implications of the Restoration’s most lasting genre, the ostensible comedy of libertine seduction. Or the quite startling, proto-postmodern comedy with a Nabokov-esque mad editor in Fielding’s Tragedy of Tragedies. |
Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Literature - Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Literature
ENGL 351A
keyboard_arrow_downBritish and Global literature from the Restoration of the Monarchy to the Enlightenment with a focus on intellectual and political contexts. Consult department website for current year's offerings. Credit will be granted for up to 6 credits of ENGL 351 and/or 357. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
A_001 | 1 | In-Person | Lecture | T, Th | 14:00 - 15:30 | Gooding, Rick | Section DescriptionRegulating Fantasy: Unruly Imaginations and Supervisory Education in Eighteenth-Century Children’s and Young Adult Literature
“Let me observe to you (which I would have you communicate to your little friends) that giants, magic, fairies, and all sorts of supernatural assistances in a story, are only introduced to amuse and divert: for a giant is called so only to express a man of great power” --Sarah Fielding, The Governess, 1749
Plots of most eighteenth-century books for children and teens reflected the adult agenda of turning youth into well-behaved respecters of parental, social, and religious authority. The young, however, were not always as compliant as adults wished: both as characters within texts and as real-world readers, children appropriated their elders’ reading, emphasized apparently minor or incidental elements of narratives, and engaged in subversive modes of interpretation. Nowhere was the tension between the priorities of children and adults more apparent than in the anxious attention to the dangers of fantasy that marked contemporary educational theory as well as the texts and paratexts of writing for youth. This course will examine eighteenth-century strategies for disarming the threat fantasy posed, from the role translators and editors played in legitimizing French fairy tales, to the London publishing industry’s attempts at rendering folk and fantasy elements educational, to the development of a model of supervisory education, though which wise adults corrected the misunderstandings of their wards and students. After a brief overview of the prevailing models of childhood in the late seventeenth and eighteenth century, we’ll turn our attention fairy tales—the most fantastic literature widely available to youth. We’ll then examine writers working in second half of the eighteenth century—Sarah Fielding, Mary Wollstonecraft, Thomas Day, and Mary Ann Kilner, among others—who incorporated fantastic elements at the same time that they attempted to regulate young readers’ interpretations. |
Eighteenth-Century Literature
ENGL 353
keyboard_arrow_downIntellectual developments and Literary experiments, in British and Global contexts. May encompass multiple genres and contexts. Consult department website for current year's offerings. Credit will be granted for up to 6 credits of ENGL 353 and/or 358.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 2 | Lecture | M, W, F | 15:00 - 16:00 | Hudson, Nicholas James | Section DescriptionRace, Ethnicity and the British Empire in Eighteenth-Century LiteratureThe eighteenth-century marked massively expanded contact between the Western world and peoples across the globe. In the Americas, war erupted between the British, the French, the Spanish and the Portuguese over control of the Western Hemisphere, decimating indigenous people and robbing their territory. The trade of slaves from African to the Western hemisphere expanded greatly, but also sparked the first campaign for human rights, the abolitionist campaign. To the east, Europe continued to confront a great rival empire, the Ottoman Empire, and a rival religion to Christianity, Islam. The aim of this course is to trace the impact of these world-shaping events on British literature – including novels, travel accounts, poetry and drama. Partly through the influence of these work, Europeans began to develop the idea that the human race was divided into various “races” – “Caucasian,” “Negro,” “Asian,” etc. – which formed a hierarchy in which whites ruled “naturally” over other peoples. These developments have had a long legacy that helps us better to understand our cultural and political situation today. Texts: Aphra Behn, Oroonoko; selection of captivity narratives; poems on the Inkle and Yarico legend; George Coleman the Younger, Inkle and Yarico; Olauda Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of Gustavus Vasa; anon., A Woman of Colour; Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Turkish Embassy Letters; selection of abolitionist poetry; selected poems by Phillis Wheatley Assessment: two short essays, a final paper and a take-home exam, plus attendance and participation |
Eighteenth-Century Literature
ENGL 353
keyboard_arrow_downIntellectual developments and Literary experiments, in British and Global contexts. May encompass multiple genres and contexts. Consult department website for current year's offerings. Credit will be granted for up to 6 credits of ENGL 353 and/or 358. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | Lecture | T, Th | 14:00 - 15:30 | Gooding, Richard | Section DescriptionMaking Middle-Class Girls: Gender, Class, Education, and Unspoken Anxieties in Eighteenth-Century Writing for YouthEver since the emergence during the mid-seventeenth century of books addressed to children and adolescents, parents and educators have worried about the detrimental effects of reading on the young. While adults’ anxiety rarely reached levels reflected in today’s fevered debates about libraries and school curricula (panic surrounding the erotic dimensions of Samuel Richardson’s Pamela (1740) being a notable exception), eighteenth-century writers regularly reassured parents and guardians of the educational value of the works they wrote for youth. In this course, we’ll look at the careful balancing act performed by eighteenth-century writers who hoped to entertain one group of readers, middle-class girls, while preparing them for the demands of adult life. In doing so, we’ll consider a range of concerns these writers explicitly addressed, including the duty of daughters to parents, guardians, and God, the challenge of distinguishing appropriate suitors from merely fashionable ones, and the social and domestic obligations of the middle-class wife. We’ll also consider a very different concern that, because it sparked anxiety among parents and educators who wanted to shield youth from the dangers of the world, was for the most part relegated to the edges of texts or represented figuratively—the looming challenge of adult sexuality. Readings will include fairy tales by Charles Perrault and Jeanne-Marie LePrince de Beaumont, Sarah Fielding’s The Governess; or, The Little Female Academy, Mary Ann Kilner’s The Adventures of a Pincushion, Designed Chiefly for the Use of Young Ladies, and Mary Wollstonecraft’s, Original Stories from Real Life, along with short excerpts from works by John Locke, John Bunyan, Samuel Richardson, and Maria Edgeworth. |
Eighteenth-Century Literature - Eighteenth-Century Literature
ENGL 353A
keyboard_arrow_downIntellectual developments and Literary experiments, in British and Global contexts. May encompass multiple genres and contexts. Consult department website for current year's offerings. Credit will be granted for up to 6 credits of ENGL 353 and/or 358. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
A_001 | 2 | In-Person | Lecture | T, Th | 09:30 - 11:00 | Potter, Tiffany | Section DescriptionPopular Culture and the Eighteenth CenturyStudies of modern popular culture have illuminated the complex relationships that individuals and groups maintain with the larger artistic, political, economic, and social movements around them. Through detailed engagements with eighteenth-century popular culture, this class will work collaboratively to illuminate the relationships among high culture, women’s culture, and popular culture, and the ways in which the conventional masculinization of high culture constitutes the feminine as the popular. Recognition of the historically naturalized links between the feminine and the popular in fiction (both frivolous products of fashion, determined by performance and consumption) will provide a scaffold for our work in other literary and cultural contexts that have previously been regarded as separated by less nuanced boundaries of high and low culture, including blockbuster plays like The Beggar’s Opera, shocking fiction like Behn’s The Fair Jilt, and the literary hissing match around the pop cult phenomenon Pamela (read in excerpt), and one of the most adapted of Regency fictions, Jane Austen’s Emma. While most of this course will focus on popular culture created in the eighteenth century, we will end with a section on the implications of eighteenth-century women in modern popular culture, including screen adaptations of Emma, likely including Emma (1996), Emma Approved (online, 2013) and/or Clueless (1995). But not the excruciating 2020 version. Want to get ahead? Read Emma over the break and watch some adaptations—in March you will be glad you did! |
Romantic Period Literature
ENGL 355
keyboard_arrow_downBritish and Global literature, 1780-1830, from the period of the French Revolution to the Reform Act and the Abolition of Slavery in the British Empire. May encompass multiple genres and contexts. Consult department website for current year's offerings. Credit will be granted for up to 6 credits of ENGL 355 and/or 359.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
921 | 1 | Lecture | M, W | 14:00 - 17:00 | Burgess, Miranda | Section DescriptionMapping Romantic VancouverWorking at the crossroads of literary studies with theories and practices of settler land use such as extraction, agriculture, urban design, and cartography, this course examines the sedimented history of British Romanticism (the literatures, especially poetry and poetics, of the period 1770-1840) in settler colonial place-making on the traditional and unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and Səl̓ílwətaʔ peoples. In our work together, we will use close reading and deep mapping methods to investigate the continuing but little considered role of Romantic quotations, names, and tropes in what Tiffany Lethabo King has named the “white cartography” of what is currently known as Vancouver. We will deeply engage the “crisis of representation,” as King calls it, that ensues when these practices, and the violent histories they depend on and imperfectly conceal, encounter peoples and histories that cannot be subsumed or erased. We will meet alternately on the UBC Vancouver campus and at a series of relevant sites in the city and surrounding region. Readings will include novels by Walter Scott, Jane Austen, and John Richardson, poems by James Grainger, Phillis Wheatley Peters, William Wordsworth, Robert Burns, Thomas Moore, and Pauline Johnson, and prose by James Cook, Thomas De Quincey, and Olaudah Equiano. |
Romantic Period Literature
ENGL 355
keyboard_arrow_downBritish and Global literature, 1780-1830, from the period of the French Revolution to the Reform Act and the Abolition of Slavery in the British Empire. May encompass multiple genres and contexts. Consult department website for current year's offerings. Credit will be granted for up to 6 credits of ENGL 355 and/or 359.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | Lecture | T, Th | 9:30 - 11:00 | Earle, Bo | Section DescriptionRomantic LiteratureRomanticism has much to teach us about ourselves. Following the 18th Century revolutions in France and the U.S., Romanticism is the original cultural response to the same conflicted set of socio-historical circumstances that define our world today, combining ideals of individual freedom, social democracy and environmental sustainability with global consumer capitalism, imperialism, racism and patriarchy. Romanticism is modernity’s paradoxically collective, social preoccupation with what it means to lead a unique life of one’s own. Romanticism created global capitalism’s original ‘pop culture’ and simultaneously pioneered pop culture’s capacity for social critique. Romanticism challenged readers to face socially taboo realities of suffering and desire, both as solitary readers and as members of a collective, literary ‘public.’ Romanticism probed ambiguities and ironies of self-mediation and self-awareness, anticipating our experience today of social media. Romanticism changed the basic function of literature from representing the world to re-creating it. In John Keats’s terms, Romanticism fosters readers’ “negative capability” to live a “life of sensation rather than thought.” We will examine how sex, gender, race and national and economic identity are re-written in Romantic poetry and philosophy and in the fiction of Jane Austen and Mary Shelley. As much as possible we will also explore echoes of course texts in popular culture today. Required texts: Romanticism: An Anthology, Fourth Edition, ed. Duncan Wu; Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen; Persuasion, Jane Austen; Frankenstein (1818), Mary Shelley |
Romantic Period Literature
ENGL 355
keyboard_arrow_downBritish and Global literature, 1780-1830, from the period of the French Revolution to the Reform Act and the Abolition of Slavery in the British Empire. May encompass multiple genres and contexts. Consult department website for current year's offerings. Credit will be granted for up to 6 credits of ENGL 355 and/or 359. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | Lecture | T, Th | 9:30 - 11:00 | Earle, Bo | Section Description“Stranger Things:” Romanticism and Society, Then and NowFollowing the 18th Century revolutions in France and the U.S., Romanticism was the original cultural response to the same forms of democratic politics, consumer capitalism, patriarchy, globalism and imperialism that continue to organize our world today. Key Romantic concerns pervade culture today so thoroughly that we forget their historical origins: our incalculable potential for god-like creativity; our unavoidable subjection to unpredictable change and trauma; and, above all, the radical, dynamic interconnectedness of everything (of the familiar and the strange, nature and technology, individual and collective, local and global, activity and passivity, sophistication and naiveté, etc.) This class examines Romanticism's founding documents and recent echoes to illuminate not just our history but ourselves. Required Texts
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002 | 2 | Lecture | M, W, F | 12:00 - 13:00 | Dick, Alexander | Section DescriptionRomantic Poetry: Space, Environment, MediaThis course invites students to consider how the poetry and poetics of the Romantic period conceives of space and environment in ways that remain fundamental and important today. How, we will ask, does poetry and poetic language help us not simply to represent the world, but actually to create it or perhaps imagine alternatives to it? And how does reading this poetry enable us to recognize (that is, see or know again) with new eyes and encourage us to make it different? In other words, we will think about these poems as creative acts of mediation. We will read examples of several popular poetic genres from the Romantic period including songs, ballads, sonnets, odes, and fragments. These will be supplemented by selections of poetic and aesthetic theory, political, religious, and scientific writing, and paintings, illustrations, and sculptures so that we can gain a sense of what people in the period imagined the spaces and environments around them to be and how they used those imaginary spaces to engage and re-orient (still) urgent issues like race, gender, climate, and power. Our readings will feature some famous, and some not-so famous Romantic poems, but all of them will be manageable (i.e. SHORT) so that we can spend as much time as one-hour class sessions allow attending to their language, imagery, and operations. Students will be invited to participate in poetry’s world-making capacities by building on and against Romantic poetics in class activities, writing assignments, and creative projects. Required Texts: The Broadview Anthology of Romantic Poetry (ed. Black et al., 2016) |
Romantic Period Literature - Romantic Period Literature
ENGL 355A
keyboard_arrow_downBritish and Global literature, 1780-1830, from the period of the French Revolution to the Reform Act and the Abolition of Slavery in the British Empire. May encompass multiple genres and contexts. Consult department website for current year's offerings. Credit will be granted for up to 6 credits of ENGL 355 and/or 359. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
A_001 | 1 | Online | Lecture | T, Th | 09:30 - 11:00 | Tebokkel, Nathan | Section DescriptionBritish and Global literature, 1780-1830, from the period of the French Revolution to the Reform Act and the Abolition of Slavery in the British Empire. May encompass multiple genres and contexts. Credit will be granted for up to 6 credits of ENGL 355 and/or 359. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended. | ||
A_002 | 2 | In-Person | Lecture | M, W, F | 12:00 - 13:00 | Dick, Alexander | Section DescriptionThe Music of RomanticismThe seraph-band, each waved his hand, While songs were among the most popular media of the period in British literary history we now know as the “Romantic” (1780-1830), British Romanticism is rarely considered to have been a musical phenomenon. This course corrects that oversight. Examining six major collections of the period’s most innovative and influential lyric genres—songs, ballads, tales, sonnets (“little songs”), melodies, and improvisations—we will dive deeply into the meter, rhythm, sound, diction, poetic devices and literary effects of individual lyrics. We will also contemplate how Romantic-era poets weaved musical forms into the silent medium of print, anticipating and encouraging a tension between the intellectual work of poetry and the populist spirit of music that persists to our own day. This will enable us, further, to examine the importance of music to Romanticism’s political impulses and to explore the ways poetic music opens up questions of feeling, environment, volition, desire, identity, race, sexuality, personal growth, and social order. Primary readings will feature poems by William Blake, Charlotte Smith, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Mary Robinson, Lord Byron, and Laetitia Elizabeth Landon (LEL). Assignments will combine creative and critical skills through presentations, common-placing, adaptations, and reviews. Although much of the work in this class will be independent, students will be expected to engage closely and systematically with the form, mood, and above all the sound of poetry in class discussions and group exercises. |
Early Canadian Writing - Early Canadian Writing
ENGL 360A
keyboard_arrow_downPre-Confederation colonial literature from its emergence until the end of World War 1. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
A_001 | 2 | In-Person | Lecture | M, W, F | 14:00 - 15:00 | Antwi, Phanuel |
U.S. Literature to 1890
ENGL 361
keyboard_arrow_downFiction, poetry and/or drama written in the U.S. prior to the twentieth century. Consult department website for current year's offerings. Credit will be granted for up to 6 credits of ENGL 361 and/or 369.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 2 | Lecture | T, Th | 11:00 - 12:30 | Tomc, Sandra | Section DescriptionAmerican Literature to 1890: Folk HorrorThis course explores a subgenre of gothic horror called “Folk Horror.” Often concerned with obscure folk stories, macabre historical events (like the Salem Witch Trials), or tales told by traditionally minoritized populations, folk horror constructs itself as a genre in which marginal voices can speak. We will focus mainly on US writers who helped pioneer the genre but will also read some British fiction and watch several contemporary films. We will read stories and poems by such authors as Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Sheridan Le Fanu, H.P. Lovecraft, Angela Carter, and Toni Morrison. The films we will watch include The Wicker Man, Midsommer, The Witch, and A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night. We will read theories of horror and the gothic by Sigmund Freud, Julia Kristeva, and Slavoj Žižek. |
U.S. Literature to 1890
ENGL 361
keyboard_arrow_downFiction, poetry and/or drama written in the U.S. prior to the twentieth century. Consult department website for current year's offerings. Credit will be granted for up to 6 credits of ENGL 361 and/or 369. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | Lecture | M, W, F | 12:00 - 13:00 | Chapman, Mary Ann | Section DescriptionThis survey of US literature to 1890 is organized around the theme of the self: Self-making, self-deception, self-reliance, self-expression, self-deception, self-representation, etc. We will begin with a hip hop opera based on the biography of the US’s first Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, one of the first self-made men in America. We will then read nonfiction about self-reliance by an early environmentalist (Thoreau) and a US philosopher (Emerson); lyric (self-expressive) poetry by Whitman and Dickinson; and life writing by a former slave (Jacobs) and the first Asian American author (Sui Sin Far). The course will wrap up with a novel written by 13 contributors that confronts the American mythology of self-making OR a recent book about five generations of a Chinese American family.
Texts may include:
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Victorian Period Literature
ENGL 362
keyboard_arrow_downBritish and Global literature, 1832-1901, with an emphasis on genre or special topics. Consult department website for current year's offerings.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
921 | 1 | Lecture | T, Th | 14:00 - 17:00 | Baxter, Gisele Marie | Section DescriptionGhosts are Real (So are Vampires): Victorian Gothic Terror and Horror
Whether we take Edith Cushing or Abraham Van Helsing at their word, the 19th-century Gothic revival certainly emphasized possibilities for terror and horror in tales of the supernatural. However, these interventions of spectral and un-dead beings often take place in the recognizable present; they speak to its anxieties. Perhaps they speak to ours as well, given our recent fascination with Neo-Victorian representations of the 19th century, such as Penny Dreadful, From Hell, Crimson Peak, etc. We will examine stories addressing issues of gender and sexuality; class, race, and culture; realism and the supernatural; urban and rural settings, all in a century known for developments in science and technology (especially photography), social upheaval, and a veneer of respectability, yet with monsters lurking in closets and under beds. Our focus will also permit consideration of the boom in publication of popular literature in a variety of formats, as well as the rise of the professional writer during the 19th century. Core texts include Margaret Oliphant’s The Library Window, Sheridan LeFanu’s Carmilla, Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, and short fiction very likely including M.R. James, “Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad”; Elizabeth Gaskell, “The Old Nurse’s Story”; Charlotte Riddell, “The Open Door”; Sheridan LeFanu, “An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street”; R.L. Stevenson, “The Body Snatcher”; E. Nesbit, “John Charrington’s Wedding” and possibly a couple of Victorian werewolf stories (since werewolf stories feature prominently in the research done for both Carmilla and Bram Stoker’s infamous Dracula). A page of links to the short stories is in the Notes and Course Materials Module on our Canvas site, as well as a link to the Project Gutenberg edition of Carmilla. Evaluation will be based on two essays, a take-home final exam, and participation in discussion in class and on the course’s Canvas site. Please keep checking my blog for updates: https://blogs.ubc.ca/drgmbaxter/ |
Victorian Period Literature
ENGL 362
keyboard_arrow_downBritish and Global literature, 1832-1901, with an emphasis on genre or special topics. Consult department website for current year's offerings.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 2 | Lecture | M, W, F | 9:00 - 10:00 | Earle, Bo | Section DescriptionMiddlemarch: Roots and Branches‘George Eliot”, the pseudonym of Marian Evans, wrote the preeminent Victorian novel, the greatest novel of the novel’s greatest era. But Middlemarch is praised more than it is read, and is actually a remarkably unusual book in many ways. Longer than War and Peace, Middlemarch’s page count is second to only one other novel, Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. Trollope called Middlemarch the first “psychologically realistic” novel, and Virginia Woolf, less technically but more precisely, said it was “the first novel for grown-up people.” Both novelists read Middlemarch as uniquely ‘growing’ beyond prior novels’ naïve scope, anachronistically aristocratic scenarios and fairy-tale happy-endings. Middlemarch gives literary attention to a new, distinctly ‘modern’ experience of frustration and disappointment occasioned by impersonal forces of history and economic, political and cultural circumstances (and even, increasingly, random chance). Yet Middlemarch calls itself a “domestic epic” because it grants Homeric-scale attention to the routine tragedies of modern, mediocre, domestic life, and invites readers to view their own lives likewise. We will consider how Middlemarch depicts lives caught in the middle of emergent, modern forms of art, science, communication, transportation, and social, political, economic and sexual relations. We will explore Middlemarch as a singular artwork that is also representative of several key points of transition from Romanticism to Modernism in poetry, fiction, philosophy, painting, film, and new media.
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Victorian Period Literature
ENGL 362
keyboard_arrow_downBritish and Global literature, 1832-1901, with an emphasis on genre or special topics. Consult department website for current year's offerings.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
921 | 1 | Lecture | T, Th | 14:00 - 17:00 | Baxter, Gisele Marie | Section DescriptionGhosts are Real (So are Vampires): The Supernatural and Victorian Gothic Terror and Horror“Ghosts are real, this much I know” – Edith Cushing, Crimson Peak “There are such beings as vampires; some of us have evidence that they exist” – Abraham Van Helsing, Dracula Whether we take Edith Cushing or Abraham Van Helsing at their word, the 19th-century Gothic revival certainly emphasized possibilities for terror and horror in tales of the supernatural. However, these interventions of spectral and un-dead beings often take place in the recognizable present; they speak to its anxieties. Perhaps they speak to ours as well, given our recent fascination with Neo-Victorian representations of the 19th century, such as Penny Dreadful, From Hell, Crimson Peak, etc. We will examine stories addressing issues of gender and sexuality; class, race, and culture; realism and the supernatural; urban and rural settings, all in a century known for developments in science and technology (especially photography), social upheaval, and a veneer of respectability, yet with monsters lurking in closets and under beds. Our focus will also permit consideration of the boom in publication of popular literature in a variety of formats, as well as the rise of the professional writer during the 19th century. Core texts include Margaret Oliphant’s The Library Window, Sheridan LeFanu’s Carmilla, Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, and short fiction possibly including M.R. James, “Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad”; Elizabeth Gaskell, “The Old Nurse’s Story”; Charlotte Riddell, “The Open Door”; Sheridan LeFanu, “An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street”; R.L. Stevenson, “The Body Snatcher”; E. Nesbit, “John Charrington’s Wedding” and possibly a couple of Victorian werewolf stories (since werewolf stories feature prominently in the research done for both Carmilla and Bram Stoker’s infamous Dracula). A page of links to the short stories will be in the Notes and Course Materials Module on our Canvas site, as well as a link to the Project Gutenberg edition of Carmilla. Evaluation will be based on a midterm essay, a term paper, a final reflection essay, and participation in discussion both in class and on the course’s Canvas site. Please keep checking my blog for updates: https://blogs.ubc.ca/drgmbaxter/
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W21 | 1 | Waiting List | T, Th | 14:00 - 17:00 |
Victorian Period Literature
ENGL 362
keyboard_arrow_downBritish and Global literature, 1832-1901, with an emphasis on genre or special topics. Consult department website for current year's offerings. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | Lecture | T, Th | 11:00 - 12:30 | Dalziel, Pamela | Section DescriptionPopular Victorian Fiction from Page to Stage“No, I haven’t read it – but I saw the play!” In the nineteenth century, stage adaptations helped to create and to sustain a novel’s popular success, much as screen adaptations do today. In this course we will explore how and why Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd became – and have remained – so popular with readers, script writers, and theatre-goers. Questions that we will ask include: why is Jane Eyre one of the most popular English novels ever written, inspiring successive generations of authors and artists of every description? How did Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland become a culture-text, a text that occupies such a prominent place in the popular imagination that it is collectively known and “remembered” even when the original work has never been read? Why has Far from the Madding Crowd been popularly defined in seemingly contradictory ways: as sensation fiction, pastoral idyll, traditional ballad, love story, and realistic novel? As we attempt to answer these and other questions of cultural production, we will also explore the ideological assumptions – with respect to gender, race, class, sexuality, mental and physical ability, the environment, ethics, religion, education, aesthetics, etc. – implicit in the novels and in a selection of stage adaptations from the Victorian period to the present, and in our (and the Victorians’) readings of them. Pre-reading of at least one of our longer novels (Jane Eyre and Far from the Madding Crowd) is highly recommended. Reading and viewing list: Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (Oxford World's Classics); Jane Eyre or The Secrets of Thornfield Manor, adapted by John Courtney, 1848 (Jane Eyre on Stage, 1848-1898, UBC Library); Jane Eyre, devised by the Company and directed by Sally Cookson, 2015 (Drama Online, UBC Library); Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Broadview); Alice in Wonderland: A Musical Dream Play, in Two Acts, for Children and Others, Act I, adapted by Henry Savile Clarke, music by Walter Slaughter, 1886 (the script will be posted on Canvas, the score is posted by the University of Rochester, and links to recordings, including the 2020 University of Kent performance, are posted on Lewis Carroll Resources); wonder.land, directed by Rufus Norris, lyrics and text by Moira Buffini, music by Damon Albarn, 2015 (Drama Online, UBC Library); Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd (Oxford World's Classics); Far from the Madding Crowd, adapted by Joseph Comyns Carr and Thomas Hardy, 1882 (to be posted on Canvas); a twenty-first century adaptation of Far from the Madding Crowd TBD.
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002 | 2 | Lecture | M, W, F | 9:00 - 10:00 | Earle, Bo |
Victorian Period Literature
ENGL 362
keyboard_arrow_downBritish and Global literature, 1832-1901, with an emphasis on genre or special topics. Consult department website for current year's offerings. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
921 | 1 | Lecture | T, Th | 14:00 - 17:00 | Baxter, Gisele Marie | Section DescriptionGhosts are Real (So are Vampires): Victorian Gothic Terror, Horror, and the Supernatural“Ghosts are real, this much I know” – Edith Cushing, Crimson Peak “There are such beings as vampires; some of us have evidence that they exist” – Abraham Van Helsing, Dracula Whether we take Edith Cushing or Abraham Van Helsing at their word, the 19th-century Gothic revival certainly emphasized possibilities for terror and horror in tales of the supernatural. However, these interventions of spectral and un-dead beings often take place in the recognizable present; they speak to its anxieties. Perhaps they speak to ours as well, given our recent fascination with Neo-Victorian representations of the 19th century, such as Crimson Peak, as well as Penny Dreadful, From Hell, Sarah Waters’s Victorian trilogy, the numerous adaptations of Dracula, plus many others. We will examine fiction addressing issues of gender and sexuality; class, race, and culture; realism and the supernatural; urban and rural settings, all in a century known for developments in science and technology (especially photography), social upheaval, and a veneer of respectability, yet with monsters lurking in closets and under beds. Our focus will also permit consideration of the boom in publication of popular literature in a variety of formats, as well as the rise of the professional writer during the 19th century. Core texts include Margaret Oliphant’s The Library Window, Sheridan LeFanu’s Carmilla, Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, and selected short fiction possibly including M.R. James, “Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad”; Elizabeth Gaskell, “The Old Nurse’s Story”; Sheridan LeFanu, “An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street”; Mary Braddon’s “Good Lady Ducayne,” R.L. Stevenson, “The Body Snatcher”; E. Nesbit, “John Charrington’s Wedding” and maybe a couple of Victorian werewolf stories (since werewolf stories feature prominently in the research done for both Carmilla and Bram Stoker’s infamous Dracula). Evaluation will be based on a midterm essay, a term paper, a final reflection essay, and participation in discussion both in class and on the course’s Canvas site. Please check my blog for updates concerning the course and its texts: https://blogs.ubc.ca/drgmbaxter/ | |||
W21 | 1 | Waiting List | T, Th | 14:00 - 17:00 |
Victorian Period Literature - Victorian Period Literature
ENGL 362A
keyboard_arrow_downBritish and Global literature, 1832-1901, with an emphasis on genre or special topics. Consult department website for current year's offerings. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
A_002 | 2 | In-Person | Lecture | T, Th | 14:00 - 15:30 | Dalziel, Pamela | Section DescriptionMiddlemarch and Jane EyreWhen asked what she thought of George Eliot’s Middlemarch Emily Dickinson replied: “What do I think of glory”? A century and a half later Middlemarch was voted the greatest British novel in an international BBC Culture poll. Why is Middlemarch, described by Virginia Woolf as “one of the few English novels written for grown-up people,” so highly regarded? Why is Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, ranked fifth in the greatest British novels poll, one of the most popular English novels ever written, inspiring successive generations of authors, visual artists, and filmmakers? In attempting to answer these and other literary and cultural questions, we will explore why – and how – Middlemarch and Jane Eyre have been canonized and examine the ideological assumptions implicit in defining literary works as “great.” We will also explore the ideological assumptions – with respect to gender, race, class, sexuality, mental and physical ability, the environment, ethics, religion, education, aesthetics, etc. – implicit in the novels and in our (and the Victorians’) readings of them. Our texts: George Eliot, Middlemarch (Oxford World's Classics); Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (Oxford World's Classics). Try not to be too influenced by – put off by? – the Middlemarch cover illustration. Yes, we will discuss why we often judge books by their covers . . . Middlemarch is 785 pages and Jane Eyre is 440 pages: please do as much reading as possible before the course begins. | ||
A_001 | 1 | In-Person | Lecture | T, Th | 11:00 - 12:30 | Bose, Sarika | Section DescriptionVictorian Literature for ChildrenThis section of English 362 will explore literature written for children during the Victorian period in England. Important concerns of the Victorian period were the changing roles of women and working classes in society, Empire and national identity, and the influence of new scientific discoveries, particularly about the relationship between humans, animals and the divine. When we begin to think of “children’s literature”, we realize its slipperiness as a genre; in this course, we will explore a variety of genres tied to our core texts. Our core texts will be from the commonly-called “Golden Age of Children’s Literature”, and will be read also in conversation with some children’s literatures from other cultures. Core texts will include works by Lewis Carroll, Rudyard Kipling, Charles Kingsley, and George Macdonald, and will be supplemented by short stories and excerpts. Topics covered will include the use of fairy tales by the Victorian press, framing education in children’s literature, the portrayal of animals, humans and the natural world, the writing of colonial identity in Indian children’s literature and Indian press, and the influence of ancient Middle Eastern tales brought to England by travellers. This course will also continue your training in research and academic writing. |
Nineteenth-Century Literature
ENGL 364
keyboard_arrow_downBritish and Global literature from the nineteenth century and its intellectual and cultural contexts. Consult department website for current year's offerings.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | Lecture | T, Th | 11:00 - 12:30 | Dalziel, Pamela | Section DescriptionWomen Writing Victorian Literature: Realism, Romance, FantasyThe course wil be conducted online using Zoom. Synchronous (real-time) attendance during our designated timeslot is required, as is synchronous audio participation in Zoom breakout rooms (you will need a working microphone).
Why is George Eliot’s Middlemarch, described by Virginia Woolf as “one of the few English novels written for grown-up people” and voted the greatest British novel in a BBC Culture poll, considered to be the quintessential Victorian novel? Why – and how – did Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre become one of the most popular English novels ever written, inspiring successive generations of authors, visual artists, and filmmakers? Why is the first line of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s sonnet XLIII, “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways,” so well known when the remainder of the poem, the Sonnets from the Portuguese sequence, and Barrett Browning herself are not? In attempting to answer these and other literary and cultural questions, we will explore the ideological assumptions – with respect to gender, race, class, sexuality, mental and physical ability, the environment, ethics, religion, education, aesthetics, etc. – implicit in the literary works and in our (and the Victorians’) readings of them. Novels: George Eliot, Middlemarch (Oxford World's Classics); Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (Oxford World's Classics). Middlemarch is 785 pages and Jane Eyre is 440 pages: please do as much reading as possible before the course begins. Poems: Elizabeth Barrett Browning, selected poems, including “The Cry of the Children,” “The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point,” Sonnets from the Portuguese; Christina Rossetti, selected poems, including “In an Artist’s Studio,” “Winter: My Secret,” “Goblin Market.” Fairy tales: E. Nesbit, “The Prince, Two Mice, and Some Kitchen-Maids,” “Melisande: Or, Long and Short Division” (Nine Unlikely Tales for Children, Internet Archive). I have ordered Elizabeth Barrett Browning: Selected Poems (Broadview Press) and Christina Rossetti: Poems and Prose (Oxford World's Classics): both are excellent editions with very helpful introductions and notes; however, both are also somewhat expensive so, if you wish, you may use online editions (links will be posted on Canvas Library Online Course Reserves).
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99C | 2 | Lecture | Bose, Sarika | Section DescriptionA World of Shadows and Monsters: Imagining the Supernatural in Victorian LiteratureThis 13-week, 3-credit, fully asynchronous course examines several genres of literature popular in the nineteenth-century, while focusing on the place of the supernatural in that literature. At a time of great change, socially, financially, scientifically and on a broader level, politically, many writers of fiction turned to the supernatural as a way to mediate this experience of change. This course will explore how some of the most popular writers of the century, including Oscar Wilde, Charlotte Brontë, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, and R.L. Stevenson, engaged with the supernatural and with the contemporary issues of social justice. Our core textbook, The Broadview Anthology of British Literature: The Victorian Era, 3rd edition, includes several of our texts, but we will also use stand-alone editions of others. The course will require essays, regular discussion and peer review contributions, and a final examination that will be invigilated via Zoom. This course is suitable for an English major or minor, and as an elective for other undergraduate degrees. |
Nineteenth-Century Literature
ENGL 364
keyboard_arrow_downBritish and Global literature from the nineteenth century and its intellectual and cultural contexts. Consult department website for current year's offerings. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
99C | 2 | Lecture | Bose, Sarika | Section DescriptionA World of Shadows and Monsters: Imagining the Supernatural in Victorian LiteratureThis 13-week, fully asynchronous course examines several genres of literature popular in the nineteenth-century, while focusing on the place of the supernatural in that literature. At a time of great change, socially, financially, scientifically and on a broader level, politically, many writers of fiction turned to the supernatural as a way to mediate this experience of change. This course will explore how some of the most popular writers of the century, including Oscar Wilde, Charlotte Brontë, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, and R.L. Stevenson, engaged with the supernatural and with the contemporary issues of social justice. Our core textbook, The Broadview Anthology of British Literature: The Victorian Era, 3rd edition, includes several of our texts, but we will also use stand-alone editions of others. This course will require essays, regular discussion and peer review contributions and a final examination that will be invigilated via Zoom. |
Nineteenth-Century Literature - Nineteenth-Century Literature
ENGL 364A
keyboard_arrow_downBritish and Global literature from the nineteenth century and its intellectual and cultural contexts. Consult department website for current year's offerings. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
A_001 | 1 | In-Person | Lecture | M, W, F | 15:00 - 16:00 | Roukema, Aren | Section DescriptionThe Origins of Science FictionThis course explores the emergence of science fiction (SF) in a nineteenth-century climate of intellectual, social, and technological transformation. Though often viewed as a twentieth-century genre, the nineteenth century saw SF acquire its most identifiable themes — invented technologies, the encounter with otherness, imagined futures — and tropes — extra-terrestrials, space voyages, robots, the posthuman. We’ll discuss both canonical and lesser-known texts of the period, tracing the origins of SF in major social and intellectual currents including evolutionary theory, colonialism, rapid technological advancement, and an emerging distinction between professional and amateur science. Analyzing science fiction also opens novel perspectives on central issues and developments in the period: shifting perceptions of nature and the human, the conflicts and consequences of colonization, challenges to hierarchies of race and gender, mass literacy, secularization, socialism and utopian thought, and attempts to harmonize science with the supernatural. Texts: Texts will include Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s The Coming Race, and Pauline Hopkins’ Of One Blood: Or, The Hidden Self, as well as short stories from a range of authors, including Edgar Allan Poe, H.G. Wells, and Begum Rokeya. |
Modernist Literature
ENGL 365
keyboard_arrow_downLiterary experimentation in 19th to 20th century movements known as modernism. Includes interdisciplinary approaches to literary, performance, and media arts, and intellectual and social histories of the period. May encompass multiple genres and contexts. Consult department website for current year's offerings.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | Lecture | M, W, F | 15:00 - 16:00 | Baxter, Gisele Marie | Section DescriptionHaunted Landscapes of Gothic Modernism“in the middle of my party, here’s death, she thought” - Mrs. Dalloway Modernism was born out of seismic, revolutionary shifts in society and culture. World wars, political revolutions in Europe and beyond, murderous civil and colonial/imperial wars, economic depression, and successive waves of technological modernization offering mixed psychological and social benefits and injuries laid siege to assumptions that the world was in any way well-ordered or reliably understood. Its literature both reflects conscious innovation and experiment and sometimes opposes these passions for change. Its obsessions respond in complex ways to those seismic shifts in its representations of gender and sexuality, social structures, race and culture, in all cases often in terms of transgression. And yet, in its drive to make things new, Modernist literature is often a haunted place: spectres of ancestry, of war, of places escaped from collide with the present moment, creating a dark, Gothic modernity. This troubled place will be our focus in the darkening days of autumn. Core texts include Henry James, The Turn of the Screw (to be read as a Modernism precursor), Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison; D.H. Lawrence, Women in Love; Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway; James Joyce’s “The Dead” and Katherine Mansfield’s “Prelude” and “At the Bay”; plus perhaps one more work of short fiction. Evaluation will be based on a midterm essay, a term paper requiring secondary academic research, a final exam, and participation in discussion. Keep checking my blog (https://blogs.ubc.ca/drgmbaxter/) for updates concerning texts and requirements. |
Modernist Literature
ENGL 365
keyboard_arrow_downLiterary experimentation in 19th to 20th century movements known as modernism. Includes interdisciplinary approaches to literary, performance, and media arts, and intellectual and social histories of the period. May encompass multiple genres and contexts. Consult department website for current year's offerings. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
002 | 2 | Lecture | T, Th | 9:30 - 11:00 | Baxter, Gisele Marie | Section DescriptionHaunted Landscapes of Gothic Modernism“in the middle of my party, here’s death, she thought” -- Mrs. Dalloway Modernism was born out of seismic, revolutionary shifts in society and culture. World wars, political revolutions in Europe and beyond, murderous civil and colonial/imperial wars, economic depression, and successive waves of technological modernization offering mixed psychological and social benefits and injuries laid siege to assumptions that the world was in any way well-ordered or reliably understood. Its literature both reflects conscious innovation and experiment and sometimes opposes these passions for change. Its obsessions respond in complex ways to those seismic shifts in its representations of gender and sexuality, social structures, race and culture, in all cases often in terms of transgression. And yet, in its drive to make things new, Modernist literature is often a haunted place: spectres of ancestry, of war, of places escaped from collide with the present moment, creating a dark, Gothic modernity. This troubled place will be our focus as winter turns to spring. Texts: Core texts tentatively include Henry James, The Turn of the Screw (to be read as a Modernism precursor), Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison; D.H. Lawrence, Women in Love; Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway; James Joyce, “The Dead”; and Katherine Mansfield, “Prelude” and “At the Bay”; plus perhaps one more work of short fiction. Evaluation: Evaluation will be based on a midterm essay, a term paper requiring secondary academic research, a final reflection essay, and participation in discussion. Keep checking my blog (https://blogs.ubc.ca/drgmbaxter/) for updates concerning texts and requirements. | |||
99A | 1 | Lecture | Paltin, Judith | Section DescriptionSome descriptions of Modernism offer bloodless abstractions about formal experimentation, academic disruption, and reactions against conventional morality. This course concentrates on the wildly passionate commitment of moderns to changing the world, to finding new sensations and affects, to overcoming historical evils and biases, to appreciating with sincere admiration other arts, other cultures and languages, and other places. The practices of the literary avant-garde may be a kind of cosmopolitanism of the arts, opening borders between different aesthetic media, traditions, and forms, to correspond with the opening up of the planet’s borders through technologies of speed in movement and communication. This course analyzes Modernism through the lens of its discrete experimental literary and artistic movements, networks, manifestos, and performances. Topics include Decadence, the New Woman, Expressionism, Manifesto Modernism, Impressionism, Surreality, Psychoanalysis, Minimalism, Technological Modernity, and Graphic Modernisms. Writers include Stein, Yeats, Rhys, Woolf, Joyce, Eliot, Conrad, others. |
Modernist Literature - Modernist Literature
ENGL 365A
keyboard_arrow_downLiterary experimentation in 19th to 20th century movements known as modernism. Includes interdisciplinary approaches to literary, performance, and media arts, and intellectual and social histories of the period. May encompass multiple genres and contexts. Consult department website for current year's offerings. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
A_002 | 2 | In-Person | Lecture | T, Th | 09:30 - 11:00 | Baxter, Gisele | Section DescriptionHaunted Landscapes of Gothic Modernism“in the middle of my party, here’s death, she thought” - Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway Modernism was born out of seismic, revolutionary shifts in society and culture. World wars, political revolutions in Europe and beyond, murderous civil and colonial/imperial wars, economic depression, and successive waves of technological modernization offering mixed psychological and social benefits and injuries laid siege to assumptions that the world was in any way well-ordered or reliably understood. Its literature both reflects conscious innovation and experiment and sometimes opposes these passions for change. Its obsessions respond in complex ways to those seismic shifts in its representations of gender and sexuality, social structures, race and culture, in all cases often in terms of transgression. And yet, in its drive to make things new, Modernist literature is often a haunted place: spectres of ancestry, of war, of places escaped from collide with the present moment, creating a dark, Gothic modernity. This troubled place will be our focus as winter turns to spring. Core texts tentatively include Henry James, The Turn of the Screw (to be read as a Modernism precursor), Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison; D.H. Lawrence, Women in Love; Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway; James Joyce, “The Dead”; and Katherine Mansfield, “Prelude” and “At the Bay”; plus perhaps one more work of short fiction. Evaluation will tentatively be based on a midterm essay, a term paper requiring secondary academic research, a final reflection essay, and participation in discussion. Keep checking my blog (https://blogs.ubc.ca/drgmbaxter/) for updates concerning texts and requirements. | ||
A_99A | Online | Lecture | Paltin, Judith | Section DescriptionModern LiteratureSome descriptions of Modernism offer bloodless abstractions about formal experimentation, academic disruption, and reactions against conventional morality. This course concentrates on the wildly passionate commitment of moderns to changing the world, to finding new sensations and affects, to overcoming historical evils and biases, to appreciating with sincere admiration other arts, other cultures and languages, and other places. The practices of the literary avant-garde may be a kind of cosmopolitanism of the arts, opening borders between different aesthetic media, traditions, and forms, to correspond with the opening up of the planet’s borders through technologies of speed in movement and communication. This course analyzes Modernism through the lens of its discrete experimental literary and artistic movements, networks, manifestos, and performances. Topics include Decadence, the New Woman, Expressionism, Manifesto Modernism, Impressionism, Surreality, Psychoanalysis, Minimalism, Technological Modernity, and Graphic Modernisms. Forms include prose fiction, verse, and drama. Writers include Stein, Yeats, Rhys, Woolf, Joyce, Eliot, Conrad, others. |
Twentieth-Century Literature
ENGL 366
keyboard_arrow_downFiction, poetry and/or drama written between 1900 and 1999. May encompass multiple genres and contexts. Consult department website for current year's offerings. Credit will be granted for up to 6 credits of ENGL 366 and/or 464.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 2 | Lecture | T, Th | 15:30 - 17:00 | Briggs, Marlene | Section DescriptionModern Novels and Contemporary Crises: Transhistorical ApproachesEnglish 366 engages with canonical and controversial Anglo-American novels on modern social crises. Between World War I (1914-1918) and World War II (1939-1945), many intellectuals confronted a world that seemed to be in ruins: the unsettling epoch stimulated aesthetic innovations and ideological risks in prose fiction. Attending closely to the contested issues and experimental modes of the era, our multidisciplinary discussions will encompass topics such as war and peace (Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway and Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises); industry and ecology (D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover); and fascism and democracy (Richard Wright, Native Son and George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four). The questions raised by the interwar novel resonate today. Hence, this class highlights transhistorical approaches to modern fictions to explore contemporary struggles to re-imagine forms of collectivity in the midst of protracted military conflicts, accelerating environmental degradation, and persistent civil divisions. The course requirements may include a midterm, a major essay, and a final examination. Please note that discretion is advised: this course focuses on mature subject-matter.
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Twentieth-Century Literature
ENGL 366
keyboard_arrow_downFiction, poetry and/or drama written between 1900 and 1999. May encompass multiple genres and contexts. Consult department website for current year's offerings. Credit will be granted for up to 6 credits of ENGL 366 and/or 464. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
001 | 1 | Lecture | T, Th | 11:00 - 12:30 | Paltin, Judith | Section DescriptionModern Novels and Contemporary Crises: Trans/historical ApproachesEnglish 366 engages with canonical and controversial Anglo-American novels on modern social crises. Between World War I (1914-1918) and World War II (1939-1945), many intellectuals confronted a world that seemed to be in ruins: the unsettling epoch stimulated aesthetic innovations and ideological risks in prose fiction. Attending closely to these contested issues and experimental modes, our multidisciplinary discussions will encompass topics such as war and peace (Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway); industry and ecology (D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover and John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath); and fascism and democracy (Richard Wright, Native Son and George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four). The questions raised by the interwar novel resonate today. Hence, this class highlights trans/historical approaches to modern fictions to explore contemporary struggles to re-imagine forms of collectivity in the midst of protracted military conflicts, accelerating environmental degradation, and persistent civil divisions. The course requirements may include a midterm, an essay assignment, and a final examination. Please note that discretion is advised: this course focuses on mature subject-matter.
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Twentieth-Century Literature - Twentieth-Century Literature
ENGL 366A
keyboard_arrow_downFiction, poetry and/or drama written between 1900 and 1999. May encompass multiple genres and contexts. Consult department website for current year's offerings. Credit will be granted for up to 6 credits of ENGL 366 and/or 464. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
A_001 | 2 | In-Person | Lecture | T, Th | 11:00 - 12:30 | Inver, Reed | Section DescriptionEnglish 366 is dedicated to studies in twentieth-century literature. This section engages with texts that imagine different types of future society, both utopian and dystopian. Between the spread of powerful and dangerous new technologies and the rise and fall of fascist and communist states, the twentieth century was one of enormous political and social transformation. These changes prompted writers to imagine future societies as a way of questioning, warning about, and inspiring new forms of social and political order. We will read several utopian/dystopian texts, including four novels: George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, Ursula K. Le Guin's The Dispossessed, Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker, and Octavia Butler's The Parable of the Sower. Alongside these novels, we will read several short texts, including critical essays that theorize the way science fiction engages with the real world, as well as examples of political thought from the twentieth century. Through these readings, we will discuss how writers and intellectuals thought about the future then and how we might do so now, as the twenty-first century seems poised to be another time of tumultuous transformation. Course requirements will include classroom contributions and several essays. Please note that many of these texts engage with mature and difficult subject matter.
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U.S. Literature from 1890
ENGL 368
keyboard_arrow_downLiterature and other texts in diverse U.S. cultural contexts and/or from a range of eras. Consult department website for current year's offerings. Credit will be granted for up to 6 credits of ENGL 368 and/or 472.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
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001 | 1 | Lecture | M, W, F | 10:00 - 11:00 | Zeitlin, Michael | Section DescriptionWar and American Modernism
In this course we will explore the emergence of modernist form from the wreckage of the First World War. Primary readings will include the following:
In our writing assignments (short essays, a final exam) and classroom discussions we will practice the art of interpretation and close reading. | |||
003 | 1 | Lecture | M, W, F | 14:00 - 15:00 | Sharpe, Jillian | Section DescriptionINSTRUCTOR: SHARPE, JAE Artificial Intelligence and Robotics in Contemporary U.S. LiteratureThis course considers contemporary American literature that has taken up the questions of how intelligence and subjectivity have changed in the Information Age. What are the cognitive effects of our daily exposure to tremendous amounts of content on social media? How has our relationships with our various Internet-connected devices influenced how we understand our own humanness? These authors consider the question of what characterizes the human in an age where machines can perform many of the functions of the human brain, and they ask us to consider how such a digitized condition has ripple effects on U.S. democracy, labor, and social life. Students will write two midterm essays and a final exam. Texts are likely to include Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Don DeLillo’s Zero K and The Silence, Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, and Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad.
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U.S. Literature from 1890
ENGL 368
keyboard_arrow_downLiterature and other texts in diverse U.S. cultural contexts and/or from a range of eras. Consult department website for current year's offerings. Credit will be granted for up to 6 credits of ENGL 368 and/or 472. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
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001 | 1 | Lecture | M, W, F | 10:00 - 11:00 | Zeitlin, Michael | Section DescriptionEros and Death in the Modern American Novel
We'll explore the ways in which these novels represent the power of the life drive (eros, desire, fantasy, sexuality, freedom, praxis) as it struggles against a range of repressive realities, including the often vicious social divisions of race, class, labour, and gender. Our analytical key words will include dream, imagination, the unconscious, narcissism, symbolism, condensation, displacement, repression, repetition, law, censorship, the uncanny, Eden, wasteland, pastoral, aphanasis (the fading or the disappearance of a star, of desire), death, mortality. Each student will be asked to deliver a short (five-minute) informal presentation: "Open the book, read something aloud, make an observation or formulate a question--discussion will follow." Students will also write three short essays (one in class) based on close reading of a literary text. There will be a final exam. Classroom conversation will be encouraged. Attendance will be taken. |
U.S. Literature from 1890 - U.S. Literature from 1890
ENGL 368A
keyboard_arrow_downLiterature and other texts in diverse U.S. cultural contexts and/or from a range of eras. Consult department website for current year's offerings. Credit will be granted for up to 6 credits of ENGL 368 and/or 472. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
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A_001 | 1 | In-Person | Lecture | T, Th | 12:30 - 14:00 | Severs, Jeffrey | Section DescriptionContemporary U.S. FictionThis course will examine in depth the conversation formed by five outstanding novelists and their varied takes on the mythologies, dreams, and systems undergirding U.S. life in the global world of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. Texts will include:
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Literatures and Cultures of Africa and/or the Middle East
ENGL 370
keyboard_arrow_downLiterary and cultural works from Africa; some sections include Africa and the Middle East. Multiple perspectives on local, national, and global issues including colonialism, migration, transnationalism, education, art and politics. May include fiction, poetry, drama, digital media, and other forms. Consult department website for current year's offerings. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.
Section | Term | Delivery Mode | Format | Day(s) | Time(s) | Instructor(s) | Syllabus | Details Data | Details |
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001 | 2 | Lecture | M, W, F | 11:00 - 12:00 | James, Suzanne | Section DescriptionCross-listed with AFST 370-001Post-Apartheid South African Literature“It was easier to write about the past . . . because the past created ready-made stories. There was a very clear demarcation between good and evil . . . Black was good; white was bad. Your conflict was there. There were no gray areas. We no longer have that. In this new situation, black is not necessarily good. There are many black culprits; there are many good white people. We have become normal. It’s very painful to become normal.” (Zakes Mda) Fifty years of oppression under the South African apartheid system inspired an impressive corpus of protest literature, but how have writers responded to the collapse of the racist regime and its replacement with a democratic constitution? Our study of recent South African writing will include Zoë Wicomb’s David’s Story, Zakes Mda’s The Heart of Redness, Phaswane Mpe’s Welcome to Our Hillbrow, Damon Galgut’s The Good Doctor and Sello Diuker’s Thirteen Cents.
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Literatures and Cultures of Africa and/or the Middle East - LIT CULT AFR ME
ENGL 370A
keyboard_arrow_downLiterary and cultural works from Africa; some sections include Africa and the Middle East. Multiple perspectives on local, national, and global issues including colonialism, migration, transnationalism, education, art and politics. May include fiction, poetry, drama, digital media, and other forms. Consult department website for current year's offerings.