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Reading and Writing about Language and Literatures

ENGL 100

guy-bray-stephen baxter-gisele-marie sharpe-jillian ho-janice fox-lorcan-francis mccormack-brendan gooding-richard smilges-johnathan-logan echard-sian deer-glenn al-kassim-dina paltin-judith frank-adam partridge-stephen macdonald-anna dinat-deena zeitlin-michael rosenberg-jordy nardizzi-vincent mcneilly-kevin

2023 Winter Term 1/2Credits: 3

A 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.

Sections (46)

Section	Term	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Details Data
001	1	Lecture	M, W, F	9:00 - 10:00	Guy-bray, Stephen	Section Description In 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, 8^th edition.
002	1	Lecture	M, W, F	10:00 - 11:00	Baxter, Gisele Marie	Section Description Haunted 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 21^stcentury? 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 Description 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 20^th 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 Description This 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 Description Focused 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 Description Storying Conflict: Narrative in Canadian Literary Contexts According 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 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.
007	1	Lecture	T, Th	9:30 - 11:00	Gooding, Richard	Section Description Why 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.
008	1	Lecture	T, Th	11:00 - 12:30	Smilges, Johnathan Logan	Section Description A 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 Description In 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 Description Storying 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: Alice Munro, Lives of Girls and Women (Penguin Modern Classics) Fred Wah, Diamond Grill (NeWest) Maria Campbell, Halfbreed (Penguin Random House) David Chariandy, I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You (Penguin Random House) Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis, Volume 1 (Pantheon) Selections from the following E-Texts available through the UBC Library: Porter Abbott, The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative, Second Edition (Cambridge UP 2008). Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson, Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives, Second Edition (U of Minnesota P, 2010).
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 Description Books and Friendship Aristotle 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 Description Mad Science: An Introduction to Criticism This 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 Description INSTRUCTOR: ANNA MACDONALD Identity and Belonging How 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 Description Growing Up New : Reading the Contemporary African Bildungsroman Why 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): Tsitsi Dangarembga – Nervous Conditions Binyavanga Wainaina – One Day I Will Write About This Place Short Stories by Diriye Osman and Pravasan Pillay, among others
017	2	Lecture	M, W, F	14:00 - 15:00	Zeitlin, Michael	Section Description This 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 Edgar Allan Poe, "The Casque of Amontillado" (1846) James Joyce, "Araby" (1914) William Faulkner, "A Rose for Emily" (1930) J.D. Salinger, "The Laughing Man" (1949) Donald Barthelme, "Some of Us Had Been Threatening Our Friend Colby" (1987) and "The Baby" (1987) Novel Rebecca West, The Return of the Soldier (1918) Personal Narratives Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas, an American Slave (1845) Joan Didion, "On Keeping a Notebook" (1966) Octavia Butler, "Positive Obsession" (1989) and "Furor Scribendi" (1989) Poetry Benjamin Hertwig, Slow War (2017) Drama Sophocles, Antigone (441 B.C.) 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 Description Focused 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 Description Writing Trans Resistance In 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 Description On First Reading This 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 Description 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 20^th 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 Description Focused 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: 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”
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

dalziel-pamela pareles-mo james-suzanne mcneilly-kevin gooding-rick brown-cody akinwole-tolulope jackson-zachary-dylan paltin-judith roukema-aren al-kassim-dina bose-sarika culbert-john hunt-dallas mccormack-brendan dinat-deena sharpe-jae baxter-gisele britton-dennis mackie-gregory

2024 Winter Term 1/2Credits: 3

Sections (24)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Details Data
019	2	In-Person	Lecture	T, Th	11:00 - 12:30	Dalziel, Pamela	Section Description The 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 Description Dancing in Chains: Writing and Reading Translation If 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 Description The Madwoman in the Attic: Literary Explorations of Madness How 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 Description Making Trouble We 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 Description Why Fairy Tales Still Matter 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? 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 Description Thuggery across Literary Space and Time The 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	Jackson, Zachary Dylan	Section Description Instructor: Dylan Jackson Imagining Earth: Planets, Places, and Pasts In this course, we will 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, commodity, 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, and working with periods from the Middle Ages to the present day, we will study representations of the relationship between humans and our environments. We will analyze, engage with, and respond to a variety of texts, including poetry, comics, videogames, and novels. As we engage with these texts, and with other scholars’ responses to them, you will develop strategies for writing critical, specific, and significant literary analysis.
012	2	In-Person	Lecture	M, W, F	09:00 - 10:00	Paltin, Judith	Section Description Books and Friendship Aristotle 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 Description In 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: Richard Wagamese. One Native Life. Excerpts. Available through UBC Library. Rivers Solomon. The Deep. Saga Press. Neil Gaiman. The Graveyard Book. HarperCollins Press. R.L. Stevenson. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Broadview Press. Oscar Wilde. The Importance of Being Earnest. Broadview Press.
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 Description Genres of Indigeneity This 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 Description The Madwoman in the Attic: Literary Explorations of Madness How 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 Description Storying Conflict: Narrative in Canadian Literary Contexts According 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 Description Growing Up New : Reading the Contemporary African Bildungsroman Why 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): Tsitsi Dangarembga – Nervous Conditions J.M. Coetzee – Boyhood: Scenes from a Provincial Life Short Stories by Diriye Osman and Pravasan Pillay, among others.
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 Description Haunted 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 21^stcentury? 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 Description In 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: Richard Wagamese. One Native Life. Excerpts. Available through UBC Library. Rivers Solomon. The Deep. Saga Press. Neil Gaiman. The Graveyard Book. HarperCollins Press. R.L. Stevenson. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Broadview Press. Oscar Wilde. The Importance of Being Earnest. Broadview Press.
015	2	In-Person	Lecture	M, W, F	12:00 - 13:00	Britton, Dennis	Section Description Literature and (Re)creation Literature 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 Description Bad Manners What 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

Reading and Writing about Language and Literatures

ENGL 100

bose-sarika dalziel-pamela pareles-mo severs-jeffrey zeitlin-michael antwi-phanuel james-suzanne moss-laura stickles-elise hunt-dallas baxter-gisele de-villiers-jessica al-kassim-dina deer-glenn paltin-judith mackie-gregory akinwole-tolulope bain-kimberly britton-dennis

2025 Winter Term 1/2Credits: 3

Sections (24)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Details Data
023	2	In-Person	Lecture	M, W, F	15:00 - 16:00	Bose, Sarika	Section Description Horror/Science: Gothic Echoes in Science Fiction “It was on a dreary night of November, that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet.” – Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein, Chapter IV. Over 40 years ago, Patrick Brantlinger argued in “The Gothic Origins of Science Fiction” that a problem in reading Science Fiction as “realistic prophecy … arises from the fact that the conventions of science fiction derive from the conventions of fantasy and romance, and especially from those of the Gothic romance. Science fiction grows out of literary forms that are antithetical to realism.” More recently, two 2019 essays by Daniel Pietersen on Sublime Horror (republished on his own site), “The universe is a haunted house – the Gothic roots of science fiction” and “Spiders and flies – the Gothic monsters of sci-fi horror,” explore the intersection of terror and horror tropes in what we can only call Gothic Science Fiction. This course is not about slick shiny optimistic visions of the future. It’s not about science research that has vastly benefitted worlds and their inhabitants: it’s about bizarre singular passion projects and their progeny, about science gone wrong, about the byways of pseudoscience. We will examine contemporary approaches to the Gothic and apply them to various primary texts. Core texts tentatively include Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein (1818 edition); Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and/or H.G. Wells, The Island of Doctor Moreau; Alien (dir. Ridley Scott) and another film or novel (possibly Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake), as well as Gardner and Diaz, Reading and Writing About Literature (6th 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 midterm essay and a term paper (both 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.
019	2	In-Person	Lecture	T, Th	11:00 - 12:30	Dalziel, Pamela	Section Description The 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. *You will be required to have read Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost* (Vintage) in its entirety by Tuesday, January 20th (the third week of term). Please begin reading before term begins. Course requirements: thoughtful and informed participation (1% for each lecture and small-group discussion class) - 20% in-class essay #1 - 15% in-class essay #2 - 15% at-home paper (approximately 1500 words) - 20% Canvas Discussions post (4%) and reply (1%) - 5% final exam - 25% Our texts:** Michael Ondaatje, Anil’s Ghost (Vintage); Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Broadview print edition, eBook); 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); the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) Elders, “Ch’ich’iyúy: The Two Sisters” (.pdf to be posted on Canvas); selections from Richard Wagamese, Embers: One Ojibway’s Meditations (Douglas & McIntyre print edition, UBC Library eBook (the eBook does not include the splendid photographs)); a selection of poems (all available online) by Sarah Howe, Theresa Muñoz, and Alice Te Punga Somerville.
017	2	In-Person	Lecture	M, W, F	14:00 - 15:00	Pareles, Mo	Section Description Dancing in Chains: Writing and Reading Translation If 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 creative work with languages and media.
007	1	In-Person	Lecture	T, Th	09:30 - 11:00	Severs, Jeffrey	Section Description The Unruly Self in Literature and Culture New York high society and its sometimes vicious marriage market at the turn of the twentieth century in Edith Wharton’s stories, a “Brotherhood” of 1940s communist activists in a city filled with racial tensions in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, the absurd talk-show circuit of Don DeLillo’s drama Valparaiso, homophobic small-town America in Alison Bechdel’s graphic memoir Fun Home . . . These are some of the settings and social orders the heroes and heroines of this course have to navigate. We will follow these characters as they sometimes rebel against and sometimes acquiesce to the orders and institutions in which they find themselves. Why isn’t the self easily tamed by society’s demands and norms? We conclude the course with Werner Herzog’s astonishing documentary film about a man among the bears, Grizzly Man. This course offers students an introduction to the skills and practices of literary criticism. Through a focus on writing assignments across the term, students will learn how to ask rich and provocative questions about literary texts, how to build interpretations around highly focused work with a text’s individual words and images, and how to use literature and film as a lens for understanding historical contexts and social problems. Through invigorating reading and viewing experiences, students will build an arsenal of strong interpretive and writing techniques for their university futures.
003	1	In-Person	Lecture	M, W, F	11:00 - 12:00	Zeitlin, Michael	Section Description Awakenings This course offers a writing-intensive introduction to literary studies and fulfils the first-year component of the Faculty of Arts Writing and Research Requirement. The course is open only to students in the Faculty of Arts and is recommended for students intending to enter the Majors or Honours program in English Language and Literatures. Students will write short essays in class; engage in discussion and intellectual exchange in the classroom; do informal close readings (aloud); and write one longer take-home essay. There will also be a final exam. Please note: this course is resolutely unfriendly to AI tools and CHATGPT etc. Reading List: Ernest Hemingway, In Our Time (1925) Kate Chopin, "Desirée's Baby" (1893) Kate Chopin, The Awakening (1899) Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845) Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance" (1841) Emily Dickinson, poems (1855-1865) Sophocles, Antigone (440 BC) Joan Didion, "On Keeping a Notebook" (1968) Joan Didon, "Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream" (1966) Raymond Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (1966)
022	1	In-Person	Lecture	M, W, F	15:00 - 16:00	Antwi, Phanuel
001	1	In-Person	Lecture	M, W, F	09:00 - 10:00	James, Suzanne	Section Description Fragmented Identities and Multiple Selves This section of English 100 will explore representations of ambiguous and multifaceted identities in a range of diverse texts: two novels (Frankenstein and Freshwater), three short stories ("The Tell-Tale Heart," "The Yellow Wallpaper" and "The Secret Sharer") and two of Sylvia Plath's poems ("Lady Lazarus" and "Mad Girl's Love Song"). In class lectures and discussions, we will consider the historical and cultural contexts in which these works were produced as well as a range of theoretical and critical approaches. Course assignments will focus on developing university-level skills of critical analysis and response, academic writing and research. There will be no final examination in this course.
002	1	In-Person	Lecture	M, W, F	10:00 - 11:00	Moss, Laura	Section Description Literature as a Transformative Space English 100 provides a writing-intensive introduction to language and literary studies through the exploration of texts in their critical and theoretical contexts. In this section, we will be exploring works of literature that engage with transformations of all kinds and with texts that transgress expectations. We will examine how authors transpose genders, transform between species, transport across time, and translate the environment through the study of three novels (Virgina Woolf’s Orlando, Fifteen Dogs by Andre Alexis, and Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being) alongside the poetry of rita wong in forage and Kim Fu’s amazing short stories Lesser Known Monsters of the 21^st Century. Assessment will be based on a series of smaller assignments, scaffolded to the final research paper and a creative rewrite.
011	1	In-Person	Lecture	T, Th	15:30 - 17:00	Bose, Sarika
009	1	In-Person	Lecture	T, Th	12:30 - 14:00	Stickles, Elise
008	1	In-Person	Lecture	T, Th	11:00 - 12:30	Bose, Sarika	Section Description The Quest for Self In 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: The Deep (Rivers Solomon), The Graveyard Book (Neil Gaiman) and The Importance of Being Earnest (Oscar Wilde).
005	1	In-Person	Lecture	M, W, F	13:00 - 14:00	Hunt, Dallas	Section Description Genres of Indigeneity This 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?
006	1	In-Person	Lecture	M, W, F	14:00 - 15:00	Baxter, Gisele	Section Description Vampires 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 various questions arising in creating through adaptation a separate text in a different genre. Our approach will be in literary and cultural studies rather 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 whether visualizing them using an existing narrative results in a transfusion, a transformation, or both. Core texts tentatively include two novels, J. Sheridan LeFanu’s Carmilla and Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and three film adaptations: one of Carmilla and two of Dracula (to be determined by class vote), as well as Gardner and Diaz, Reading and Writing About Literature (6th 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 midterm essay and a term paper (both 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.
004	1	In-Person	Lecture	M, W, F	12:00 - 13:00	Bose, Sarika	Section Description Intructor: Sarika Bose
010	1	In-Person	Lecture	T, Th	14:00 - 15:30	De Villiers, Jessica	Section Description Cinematic Interiors This section of English 100 explores the evolving role of space in shaping storytelling across film and television. Focusing on the films of directors such as Hitchcock, Coppola, and Bong, as well as TV series like Severance and Succession, we’ll look at domestic interiors, workplaces, curated environments, communal settings, and transitional spaces to consider how cinematic spaces function as sites of mood, meaning, and narrative tension. We’ll explore how cultural and technological shifts are changing our relationships to space, presence, and perception. Themes include the collapse of shared narratives, the erosion of trust in once-stable spaces, and the fragmented self in surveillance culture. Drawing on film theory, design, and narrative analysis, students will gain tools to analyze visual and spatial storytelling. Short, scaffolded writing assignments, informed by key readings from Steven Jacobs and others, will support the development of interpretive and analytical skills. No prior film experience required - just curiosity and a willingness to look closely.
021	2	In-Person	Lecture	T, Th	14:00 - 15:30	Al-kassim, Dina
020	2	In-Person	Lecture	T, Th	12:30 - 14:00	Deer, Glenn
015	2	In-Person	Lecture	M, W, F	12:00 - 13:00	Bose, Sarika
012	2	In-Person	Lecture	M, W, F	09:00 - 10:00	Paltin, Judith	Section Description This course reads fantasy and speculative fiction to explore the many ways in which writers imagine how societies and cultures might be... otherwise. Fantastic and speculative worlds are some of the richest forms of experimental thought, problem solving and storytelling in which we engage. How do writers make these worlds persuasive? What kinds of connections do they expect us to make between their storyworlds and the actual world? What influences differences among the ways they take up similar themes? We will discover multiple answers to these questions. Along the way, we will also learn general principles about narrative and fiction as they are theorized in English, and how writing works at an analytical level, by discussing matters such as plot, figuration, character, point of view, and setting. Writers include Le Guin, Bradbury, Orwell, Angela Carter, Vonnegut, Ishiguro, Karen Tei Yamashita.
016	2	In-Person	Lecture	M, W, F	13:00 - 14:00	Mackie, Gregory	Section Description Villains and Villainy One of the most enduring figures in literature is the villain or antagonist. In this section, we will want to ask why this might be by focusing on a variety of literary villains in fiction, poetry, and drama. Villains force us to confront a number of question, and ethical ones in particular: what makes villains so attractive to both writers and readers? Are villains sometimes justified? And ultimately, what might their ambition, criminality and charisma tell us about ourselves? Mark Breakdown: Participation: 10% In-class essay #1: 15% In-class essay #2: 20% Term paper: 25% Final Exam: 30% Reading List: Edgar Allan Poe, “The Cask of Amontillado” (online) William Shakespeare, Othello Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Arthur Conan Doyle, “A Scandal in Bohemia” and “The Final Problem” from The Adventures and Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness Patricia Highsmith, The Talented Mr. Ripley
018	2	In-Person	Lecture	T, Th	09:30 - 11:00	Akinwole, Tolulope
013	2	In-Person	Lecture	M, W, F	10:00 - 11:00	Bain, Kimberly	Section Description A writing-intensive introduction to the disciplines of 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. This course is an introduction to the art of reading and writing about literature. Our meetings will be devoted to reading about literature. These sessions will focus on Octavia Butler’s Kindred as well as two of its adaptations—the graphic novel and the FX TV series. We will deepen our understanding of these texts and their contexts by: engaging with scholarly articles that explore historical context and audience; reading in current criticism and theory; and developing strategies for textual analysis in literary and cultural studies. Over the term, students will be able to develop their own conclusions about literature and literary criticism, while developing their skills as academic writers. Our meetings will also be spent tackling writing. To put it another way, ENGL 100 is a writing course that uses literature as its topic; because it meets the Faculty of Arts Writing Requirement, the focus must clearly be on scholarly writing throughout the course. You will write weekly responses, two short essays, and a term paper requiring secondary research.
024	2	In-Person	Lecture	T, Th	15:30 - 17:00	Baxter, Gisele	Section Description Haunted Houses 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 such tales of terror and horror, even in the 21^stcentury? 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 Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House; Alan Garner, The Owl Service; 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 (6th 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 midterm essay and a term paper (both 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.
014	2	In-Person	Lecture	M, W, F	11:00 - 12:00	Britton, Dennis	Section Description Literature and (Re)creation Literature 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, excerpts 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, and Octavia E. Butler’s Blood Child and Other Stories

Approaches to Literature and Culture

ENGL 110

fox-lorcan-francis culbert-john baxter-gisele scholes-judith jerome-gillian giffen-sheila

2023 SummerCredits: 3

Study 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.

Sections (8)

Section	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Details Data
JL1	In-Person	Lecture	M, W	12:00 - 15:00		Section Description Literary Experiments How 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	In-Person	Lecture	M, W	18:00 - 21:00	Fox, Lorcan Francis	Section Description 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. two in-class essays: 20% each home essay (1000 words): 30% final exam: 30% Text: Lisa Chalykoff, Neta Gordon, Paul Lumsden, eds. The Broadview Introduction to Literature: Concise Edition, 2nd ed. (Broadview, 2019) A Provisional Reading List POEMS: 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
JL4	In-Person	Lecture	T, Th	18:00 - 21:00	Culbert, John	Section Description Literature 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.
JL3	In-Person	Lecture	T, Th	12:00 - 15:00	Baxter, Gisele	Section Description Literary Monsters and Monstrous Literature Rey: “You are a monster.” Kylo Ren: “Yes, I am.” – Star Wars: The Last Jedi “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/
MA1	In-Person	Lecture	M, W	12:00 - 15:00	Scholes, Judith	Section Description Reading Humans in Nature In 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.
MA4	In-Person	Lecture	T, Th	18:00 - 21:00	Jerome, Gillian	Section Description Literature 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.
MA2	In-Person	Lecture	M, W	18:00 - 21:00	Giffen, Sheila	Section Description Pandemic Writing in Sacred and Secular Worlds This 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	In-Person	Lecture	T, Th	12:00 - 15:00	Culbert, John	Section Description Literature 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.

Approaches to Literature and Culture

ENGL 110

potter-tiffany chapman-mary-ann burgess-miranda wong-danielle luger-moberley pareles-mo james-suzanne cavell-richard-anthony gooding-richard rouse-robert anger-suzy basile-jonathan baxter-gisele-marie fox-lorcan-francis

2023 Winter Term 1/2Credits: 3

Sections (84)

Section	Term	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Details Data
001	1	Lecture	M, W	9:00 - 10:00	Potter, Tiffany	Section Description 400 Years of Asking the Big Questions There 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 Description Imitation 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: Hamilton: The Musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda Selected poems Nella Larsen’s Passing OR Winnifred Eaton Reeve’s Cattle
003	1	Lecture	M, W	12:00 - 13:00	Burgess, Miranda	Section Description In relation: Identity, Inheritance, Survival, Love The 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 19^th 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: Thi Bui, The Best We Could Do (2017); Cherie Dimaline, The Marrow Thieves (2017); Toni Morrison, Beloved (1987); Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley, Frankenstein (1818)
004	1	Lecture	M, W	13:00 - 14:00	Wong, Danielle	Section Description The Body at the Border This 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 Description What can Literature do?: Counternarratives of the 21^st Century Scientists 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 Description Fictions of the Queer Past Us. 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 Description Defining the Self How 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 Description The 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 Description Literature 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 Description Fantastic Pasts and Science Futures: Speculative Fictions and Histories Where 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 20^th 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 Description Strange Science, Ghosts, Robots, and Literary Theory In 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 Description Modernism, Science, and the Environment The 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 Description Literary Monsters and Monstrous Literature Rey: “You are a monster.” Kylo Ren: “Yes, I am.” – Star Wars: The Last Jedi “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 Description 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 (I hope) enjoyment. two in-class essays: 20% each home essay (1200 words): 30% final exam: 30% 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

culbert-john roukema-aren wilkinson-michael inniss-scott dinat-deena sharpe-jae

2024 SummerCredits: 3

Sections (7)

Section	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Details Data
MA4	In-Person	Lecture	T, Th	18:00 - 21:00	Culbert, John
JL2	In-Person	Lecture	M, W	18:00 - 21:00	Roukema, Aren	Section Description INSTRUCTOR: AREN ROUKEMA Narrating Realities What 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	In-Person	Lecture	T, Th	12:00 - 15:00	Wilkinson, Michael	Section Description INSTRUCTOR: MIKE WILKINSON Imagining the Human in Science Through 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.
MA2	In-Person	Lecture	M, W	18:00 - 21:00	Inniss, Scott	Section Description This 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.
MA1	In-Person	Lecture	M, W	12:00 - 15:00	Dinat, Deena	Section Description Power and Protest in South African Literature This 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.
MA3	In-Person	Lecture	T, Th	12:00 - 15:00	Sharpe, Jae	Section Description Literary Experiments How 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.
JL1	In-Person	Lecture	M, W	12:00 - 15:00	Sharpe, Jae	Section Description Literary Experiments How 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.

Approaches to Literature and Culture

ENGL 110

cavell-richard-anthony potter-tiffany chapman-mary-ann luger-moberley dick-alexander guy-bray-stephen gooding-rick rouse-robert anger-suzy wong-danielle hunter-weldon

2024 Winter Term 1/2Credits: 3

Sections (65)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Details Data
004	1	In-Person	Lecture	M, W	13:00 - 14:00	Cavell, Richard Anthony	Section Description Literature and the Media This 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 Description 400 Years of Humanity’s Big Questions There 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 Description This 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: Hamilton: The Musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda Winnifred Eaton Reeve’s 1923 novel Cattle Selected poems by Shakespeare, Harryette Mullen, Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, Langston Hughes and Gwendolyn Brooks
005	1	In-Person	Lecture	M, W	14:00 - 15:00	Luger, Moberley	Section Description What can Literature do?: 21^st Century Narratives and Counternarratives Scientists 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 Description After Frankenstein Mary 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 Description We’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 Description Literature 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	Section Description Visions of the End: Reading the Apocalypse Western 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 a series of texts that engage with a number of potential 20^th and 21^st 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.
011	2	In-Person	Lecture	M, W	14:00 - 15:00	Anger, Suzy	Section Description Strange Science, Monsters, Robots, and Literary Theory In 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 Description The Body at the Border This course introduces students to methods for studying literature, media, and critical theory by focusing on the body’s relationship to borders. In particular, we will examine how borders in their various forms are represented, interrogated, or reimagined in contemporary North American and diasporic literature and media. We will focus on the relationships between race, gender, sexuality and narratives of migration that illuminate 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. Students will develop skills essential to university-level reading, writing, and critical analysis.
014	2	In-Person	Lecture	T	14:00 - 15:30	Hunter, Weldon	Section Description Instructor: Donald "Weldon" Hunter Narratives of Creativity In this course, we will examine the relationship between storytelling, artistic innovation, and the notion of creativity itself. Spanning a range of literary genres and cultural contexts, this course delves into how creativity has been understood, celebrated, and contested throughout history, from traditional notions of literary and artistic creation to contemporary forms of expression. Through close readings —from the poems of Emily Dickinson to the visual works of Youtube “content” creators – we will consider how narratives of creativity reflect broader cultural, philosophical, and technological shifts. Key themes include the role of the “creator” in society, the tension between originality and imitation, and the social and political contexts in which culture gets made. What is creativity and why is it so important in human life? How does society encourage or discourage human creativity? What are the relationships between creators, their creativity, and their creations? And how is creativity related to inspiration, feelings, imagination, innovation, novelty, skill, and even productivity? What are the best conditions for fostering creativity? This course also poses critical questions about the future of creativity in an increasingly interconnected and technologized world. How will AI, digital platforms, and global connectivity redefine the creative process? Can creativity be algorithmically generated, or is it inherently human? What is the role of storytelling in an age dominated by data and virtual realities? In exploring these questions, we will interrogate the boundaries of human imagination and the ways in which narratives of creativity are likely to appear in the coming years. A full reading list and syllabus will be available on the first day of classes in January, but students might begin by reading the following poems: “To Make a Prairie” by Emily Dickinson, “Any Lit” by Harryette Mullen, “The Young Poets of Winnipeg” by Naomi Shihab Nye, “Trying too Hard to Write a Poem Sitting on the Beach” by Philip Whalen – which can be found on poets.org and The Poetry Foundation’s website.
LW1	2	In-Person	Discussion	Th	14:00 - 15:30	Hunter, Weldon
LV1	2	In-Person	Discussion	Th	11:00 - 12:30
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 Literature and Culture

ENGL 110

inniss-scott baxter-gisele roukema-aren sharpe-jae

2025 SummerCredits: 3

Sections (6)

Section	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Details Data
MA1	In-Person	Lecture	M, W	12:00 - 15:00	Inniss, Scott	Section Description Irony and Serious Humour in Multicultural Writing and Film As cultural and literary devices, irony and humour are similar in that they often involve language or forms of expression that appear to mean something other than what they say. This surprising lack of commitment to meaning is part of what makes irony and humour funny—and thus unserious by definition. It’s only a joke, after all. Yet ironic double meaning and comic incongruity are also highly effective when it comes to raising difficult issues or potentially distressing and embarrassing subject matter. Ironically, it is the unseriousness of humour that seems most to recommend it as a literary and cultural technique for addressing serious issues. This course proposes to take a serious look at how different forms of irony and humour operate in the creative work of a number of (mostly) contemporary Indigenous, Black, and multicultural authors. It inquires into how these authors use ironic and comic modes of address and representation to elude and transgress dominant social norms around class, gender, race, sexuality, and identity. Who or what is the “butt” or object of humour in the work of these short story writers, poets, and film makers? Are their jokes and ironic characterizations primarily instances of “laughing at,” or do they also invite readers to consolidate group identity and fellow feeling by means of “laughing with?” Do the texts use comic ambiguity and irony to “bribe” readers with feelings of comic enjoyment, or is the goal rather to generate ridicule, scorn, and displeasure. Most importantly, are there instances in which these authors use humour to perform more overtly serious work, such as political resistance, opposition, and critique? The course syllabus is to comprise work by some or all of the following authors, poets, and directors: Sherman Alexie (Spokane), Marie Annharte Baker (Anishinaabe), Wanda Coleman, Linh Dinh, Chester Himes, Thomas King (Cherokee), Ha Jin, Spike Lee, Adrian Louis (Lovelock Paiute), K. Silem Mohammad, Trevor Noah, and John Yau. Many of the texts are quite short, and we are watching at least one film (in lieu of reading a novel).
JL2	In-Person	Lecture	T, Th	12:00 - 15:00	Baxter, Gisele	Section Description Literary Monsters and Monstrous Literature Rey: “You are a monster.” Kylo Ren: “Yes, I am.” – Star Wars: The Last Jedi “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 \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 start with 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 Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle. There may be a couple of additional texts. Your writing assignments in this course (two essays and a final exam) will develop skills in both critical thinking and university-level literary textual analysis, and both are much more generally useful and applicable than you might think. I hope there will also be a lot of lively discussion, both in class and on our Canvas site.
JL1	In-Person	Lecture	M, W	12:00 - 15:00	Roukema, Aren	Section Description Narrating Realities What 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 process and communicate 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, a film — and ask how approaches to narrating reality mark the differences between these genres. Texts will include Robinson's Monkey Beach (Vintage, 2000), O’Brien’s The Things They Carried (1990), the Wachowskis’ first Matrix film (1999), and various poems and short stories.
MA2	In-Person	Lecture	T, Th	12:00 - 15:00	Sharpe, Jae
D99	In-Person	Discussion
D98	In-Person	Discussion

Approaches to Literature and Culture

ENGL 110

cavell-richard-anthony guy-bray-stephen rouse-robert james-suzanne dick-alexander chapman-mary potter-tiffany luger-moberley wong-danielle anger-suzy

2025 Winter Term 1/2Credits: 3

Sections (56)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Details Data
004	1	In-Person	Lecture	M, W	13:00 - 14:00	Cavell, Richard Anthony	Section Description Literature and the Media The 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, information culture, media history, Indigenous media theory, and AI. In addition, the course encourages students in reading and writing strategies that will enhance their ability to communicate ideas effectively.
003	1	In-Person	Lecture	M, W	12:00 - 13:00	Guy-bray, Stephen	Section Description We’ll read a selection of short stories (some very short, some longer; some funny, some sad) from the last 200 years or so. We’ll consider the different kinds of narration, plot structure, point of view, and beginnings and endings. Students will gain an appreciation for what it means to tell stories.
009	2	In-Person	Lecture	M, W	12:00 - 13:00	Rouse, Robert	Section Description Instructor: Robert Rouse Robots, Artificial Intelligence, and Us AI is one of the most pressing technological and social questions of the current moment. Governments and corporations around the world are rushing to pour billions of dollars into AI research, all seeking to be the first to develop AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) and to leverage other modes of AI (LLMs and the like). However, the concept of Artificial Intelligence is far from new, and writers have been thinking about the implications of non-human machine intelligences for centuries, in ways that range from the utopian to the apocalyptic. From the benevolent AI overseers of Asimov's imagination to the genocidal self-aware Skynet of the Terminator films, AI has been imagined as humanity's best friend and our worst nightmare, and everything in-between. In this course we will explore the complex intimate relationships between humans and artificial intelligences through a range of literary texts. We will delve (a common LLM word) into a selection of seminal works that span various genres and perspectives, providing insights into the implications of our technological advancements on society, ethics, and identity. The course texts will include the some of the following texts: I, Robot; The Lifecycle of Software Objects; The Murderbot Diaries, vol 1 (the two novellas All Systems Red and Artificial Condition); Klara and the Sun; a range of short fiction; and a selection of films on AI.
008	2	In-Person	Lecture	M, W	11:00 - 12:00	James, Suzanne	Section Description Defining the Self How 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.
002	1	In-Person	Lecture	M, W	10:00 - 11:00	Dick, Alexander	Section Description After Frankenstein Mary 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. After reading Shelley’s original novel, we will explore a selection of adaptations of Frankenstein in fiction, film, comics, and various other media. Assignments will include both in-class and take-home writing and a final exam.
007	2	In-Person	Lecture	M, W	09:00 - 10:00	Chapman, Mary	Section Description Instructor: Mary Chapman his course is intended to introduce 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 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 engages with conventions of the Western genre. Readings will include: Hamilton: The Musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda Winnifred Eaton Reeve’s 1923 novel Cattle Selected poems by Shakespeare, Harryette Mullen, Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, Langston Hughes and Gwendolyn Brooks
001	1	In-Person	Lecture	M, W	09:00 - 10:00	Potter, Tiffany	Section Description 400 Years of Humanity’s Big Questions There 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, with 30-student Friday discussion groups for hands-on practice of literary analysis. 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, revenge+romantasy play, The Tempest. You can stream videos of different theatre productions of Tempest for free through the UBC library or hunt out the great 2010 film, starring Helen Mirren and Djimon Hounsou. 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 this course will qualify you for lots of future paths!
005	1	In-Person	Lecture	M, W	14:00 - 15:00	Luger, Moberley	Section Description Counternarratives in comics, fiction & poetry Scientists 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 Vietnamese refugee in California, 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, Exit West by Mohsin Hamid, Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese, Medium by Johanna Skibsrud.
010	2	In-Person	Lecture	M, W	13:00 - 14:00	Wong, Danielle
011	2	In-Person	Lecture	M, W	14:00 - 15:00	Anger, Suzy	Section Description Strange Science, Monsters, Robots, and Literary Theory In this section of English 110, we will read literary texts depicting strange science, monsters, robots, 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).
LG1	1	In-Person	Discussion	Th	11:00 - 12:30
LE1	1	In-Person	Discussion	F	14:00 - 15:00
LC1	1	In-Person	Discussion	F	12:00 - 13:00
LA3	1	In-Person	Discussion	F	09:00 - 10:00
LE2	1	In-Person	Discussion	F	14:00 - 15:00
LF4	1	In-Person	Discussion	F	13:00 - 14:00
LC3	1	In-Person	Discussion	F	12:00 - 13:00
LB2	1	In-Person	Discussion	F	10:00 - 11:00
LF3	1	In-Person	Discussion	F	13:00 - 14:00
LB6	1	In-Person	Discussion	F	10:00 - 11:00
LA4	1	In-Person	Discussion	F	09:00 - 10:00
LA5	1	In-Person	Discussion	F	09:00 - 10:00
LE4	1	In-Person	Discussion	F	14:00 - 15:00
LF2	1	In-Person	Discussion	F	13:00 - 14:00
LB1	1	In-Person	Discussion	F	10:00 - 11:00
LA2	1	In-Person	Discussion	F	09:00 - 10:00
LC4	1	In-Person	Discussion	F	12:00 - 13:00
LB5	1	In-Person	Discussion	F	10:00 - 11:00
LC5	1	In-Person	Discussion	F	12:00 - 13:00
LE3	1	In-Person	Discussion	F	14:00 - 15:00
LB4	1	In-Person	Discussion	F	10:00 - 11:00
LB3	1	In-Person	Discussion	F	10:00 - 11:00
LC6	1	In-Person	Discussion	F	12:00 - 13:00
LC2	1	In-Person	Discussion	F	12:00 - 13:00
LA1	1	In-Person	Discussion	F	09:00 - 10:00
LF1	1	In-Person	Discussion	F	13:00 - 14:00
LQ3	2	In-Person	Discussion	F	11:00 - 12:00
LS2	2	In-Person	Discussion	F	13:00 - 14:00
LQ5	2	In-Person	Discussion	F	11:00 - 12:00
LP2	2	In-Person	Discussion	F	09:00 - 10:00
LP1	2	In-Person	Discussion	F	09:00 - 10:00
LQ2	2	In-Person	Discussion	F	11:00 - 12:00
LQ4	2	In-Person	Discussion	F	11:00 - 12:00
LR1	2	In-Person	Discussion	F	12:00 - 13:00
LS1	2	In-Person	Discussion	F	13:00 - 14:00
LT1	2	In-Person	Discussion	F	14:00 - 15:00
LR3	2	In-Person	Discussion	F	12:00 - 13:00
LQ1	2	In-Person	Discussion	F	11:00 - 12:00
LT5	2	In-Person	Discussion	F	14:00 - 15:00
LT3	2	In-Person	Discussion	F	14:00 - 15:00
LT2	2	In-Person	Discussion	F	14:00 - 15:00
LR2	2	In-Person	Discussion	F	12:00 - 13:00
LR4	2	In-Person	Discussion	F	12:00 - 13:00
LR5	2	In-Person	Discussion	F	12:00 - 13:00
LP3	2	In-Person	Discussion	F	09:00 - 10:00
LS3	2	In-Person	Discussion	F	13:00 - 14:00

Approaches to Language and Communication

ENGL 111

lee-tara hill-ian earle-bo

2023 Winter Term 1/2Credits: 3

Study 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.

Sections (15)

Section	Term	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Details Data
001	1	Lecture	M, W	11:00 - 12:00	Lee, Tara	Section Description Producing Consumable Texts: Exploring Representations of Food and Eating With 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 Description Rhetoric and Public Controversy How 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 Description Speaking Truth to Power: Social Representation and Reality "My perception is as much a fact as the sun." --RW Emerson 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

lee-tara macdonald-anna hill-ian

2024 Winter Term 1/2Credits: 3

Sections (13)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Details Data
001	1	In-Person	Lecture	M, W	11:00 - 12:00	Lee, Tara	Section Description Producing Consumable Texts: Exploring Representations of Food and Eating With 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 Description Body Language: Life Writing of Survival and Resilience Imagine 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 Description Rhetoric, Controversy, and Propaganda How 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

Approaches to Language and Communication

ENGL 111

burgess-miranda dancygier-barbara hill-ian

2025 Winter Term 1/2Credits: 3

Sections (12)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Details Data
001	1	In-Person	Lecture	M, W	11:00 - 12:00	Burgess, Miranda	Section Description Manifesting the People in Writing and Speech Government is everywhere. Governments aren’t perfect. One result of this pair of intersecting truisms is the preoccupation with calling for and making a difference that runs through so much political writing and speech. Whether in addresses to a crowd or in written exhortations, political writing and speech aims to make something happen, and that something, most often, is change. This course considers texts whose writers address what they frame—or seek to call into being—as an audience of political change agents: the people. Texts considered may include manifestos, open letters, instruction books, political addresses, broadsides, pamphlets, movies, political cartoons, and/or memes. In a packet of theoretical excerpts, the course will introduce you to critical frames for considering these texts and their kinds, and your own and your colleagues’ critical and political agency in relation to them. In a series of written and multimedia assignments, individual and collaborative, this course will prompt you to produce analyses of political discourse—and a short political discourse of your own.
003	2	In-Person	Lecture	M, W	10:00 - 11:00	Dancygier, Barbara	Section Description Instructor: Barbara Dancygier Metaphor and Friends: How Language Reflects (and Supports) our Creativity Most of us believe that our everyday communication is essentially conducted via literal language. The goal of this course is to show you that there are at least two ways in which such a belief is not accurate. First, much of what we communicate, whether in conversations with peers or in an academic context, relies heavily on figurative expressions. We will consider various areas of communication (conversation, journalism, politics, science, literature, etc) to see how our everyday language relies on metaphor and its “friends” (whom we will meet in class!). Secondly, contemporary communication also relies heavily on images (many scholars refer to such uses as ‘multimodal)’. We will study examples of various multimodal genres (ads, campaigns, memes, etc.) to understand how and why language works together with images. Through these two strands, we will see why language can be (metaphorically!) described as a toolkit supporting creativity and problem solving. We will read about relevant concepts and read to see language at work. We will spend much time in class discussing examples (some of which you yourselves will bring for our consideration and enjoyment). And we will also write, so as to engage closely with texts, examples, and ideas, and also to give a boost to our creativity.
L10	1	In-Person	Discussion	Th	09:30 - 11:00
002	1	In-Person	Lecture	T	09:30 - 11:00	Hill, Ian	Section Description Rhetoric, Controversy, & Propaganda How 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.
L05	1	In-Person	Discussion	F	11:00 - 12:00
L06	1	In-Person	Discussion	F	11:00 - 12:00
L07	1	In-Person	Discussion	F	11:00 - 12:00
L08	1	In-Person	Discussion	F	11:00 - 12:00
L09	1	In-Person	Discussion	F	11:00 - 12:00
L20	2	In-Person	Discussion	F	10:00 - 11:00
L22	2	In-Person	Discussion	F	10:00 - 11:00
L21	2	In-Person	Discussion	F	10:00 - 11:00

Challenging Language Myths

ENGL 140

cardoso-amanda stratton-james

2023 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Critical 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.

Sections (2)

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		Instructors Cardoso, Amanda \| Stratton, James
WL1	2		Waiting List	M, W, F	14:00 - 15:00

Challenging Language Myths

ENGL 140

cardoso-amanda stickles-elise

2024 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Sections (1)

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 Description What can we believe of what we hear and read about language? Is language change bad? Do some people have “good grammar”? Does language shape thought and/or culture? Are young people destroying the language? Is texting destroying the language? Is learning a language easier for kids? Does your ability to learn a language reflect your intelligence? Is all thought linguistic? Where in your brain is language located? Do bilinguals have an advantage or are they disadvantaged? 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. Instructors Cardoso, Amanda \| Stickles, Elise

Principles of Literary Studies

ENGL 200

dinat-deena burgess-miranda mcneilly-kevin ho-janice lee-tara bose-sarika bain-kimberly antwi-phanuel mota-miguel paltin-judith echard-sian

2023 Winter Term 1/2Credits: 3

A 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.

Sections (11)

Section	Term	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Details Data
001	1	Lecture	M, W, F	10:00 - 11:00	Dinat, Deena	Section Description Im/Migration Our 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 Description Im/Migration Our 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 Description Im/Migration Our 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 Description Im/Migration Our 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 Description Hauntings 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 Description Hauntings 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 Description Hauntings 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 Description Creation, Destruction, Reflection, Rebuilding This 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 Description Creation, Destruction, Reflection, Rebuilding This 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 Description Creation, Destruction, Reflection, Rebuilding This 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 Description Creation, Destruction, Reflection, Rebuilding This 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

akinwole-tolulope moss-laura rouse-robert lee-tara james-suzanne antwi-phanuel mota-miguel paltin-judith baxter-gisele mcneilly-kevin dinat-deena

2024 Winter Term 1/2Credits: 3

Sections (12)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Details Data
008	1	In-Person	Lecture	M, W, F	13:00 - 14:00	Akinwole, Tolulope	Section Description with ENGL 200-005/-006/-007/-008 Narrating Place What 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 Description with ENGL 200-005/-006/-007/-008 Narrating Place What 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 Description with ENGL 200-005/-006/-007/-008 Narrating Place What 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 Description with ENGL 200-005/-006/-007/-008 Narrating Place What 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 Description with ENGL 200-009/-010/-011/-012 Creation, Destruction, Reflection, Rebuilding This 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 Description with ENGL 200-009/-010/-011/-012 Creation, Destruction, Reflection, Rebuilding This 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 Description with ENGL 200-009/-010/-011/-012 Creation, Destruction, Reflection, Rebuilding This 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 Description with ENGL 200-009/-010/-011/-012 Creation, Destruction, Reflection, Rebuilding This 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 Description with ENGL_V 200-001/-002/-003/-004 Moving Histories, Travelling Texts How 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 Description with ENGL_V 200-001/-002/-003/-004 Moving Histories, Travelling Texts How 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 Description with ENGL_V 200-001/-002/-003/-004 Moving Histories, Travelling Texts How 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 Description Team taught with ENGL_V 200-001/-002/-003/-004 Moving Histories, Travelling Texts How 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?

Principles of Literary Studies

ENGL 200

ho-janice burgess-miranda dinat-deena echard-sian severs-jeffrey moss-laura wong-danielle zeitlin-michael lee-christopher

2025 Winter Term 1/2Credits: 3

Sections (9)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Details Data
002	1	In-Person	Lecture	M, W, F	10:00 - 11:00	Ho, Janice	Section Description ENGL 200-001, -002, -003 are collaboratively taught by Profs. Deena Dinat, Sian Echard and Janice Ho Migrations This course focuses on the themes of migration and movement—of people, commodities, texts, and cultures—across a range of geographical locations and historical times. We will also consider the related question of how and when mobilities become restricted. Who travels and who stays? What are the histories that have brought about forced and voluntary migrations? How are identities shaped in response to encounters with cultural difference, and through experiences of exile and displacement? How are texts translated and adapted across different audiences and cultures? Texts we will study are likely to include Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale and its adaptations; Teju Cole’s Open City; Ling Ma’s Severance; Brian Friel’s Translations; as well as a selection of poetry and film.
004	1	In-Person	Lecture	M, W, F	13:00 - 14:00	Burgess, Miranda	Section Description ENGL 200-004, -005, -006 are collaboratively taught by Profs. Miranda Burgess, Laura Moss and Michael Zeitlin Interconnectedness Writing in 1768, the German philosopher and playwright Gotthold Ephraim Lessing asserted that “in nature, everything is bound together; everything interconnects, everything is interchangeable with everything else, everything changes from one thing to another.” Lessing went on to define reading as a process in which “finite spirits”—humans—can “take their share of pleasure” in interconnectedness by “develop[ing] the capacity to isolate elements and direct their attention at will.” This course approaches interconnectedness in both of these ways. Together we’ll attend to ways literary texts (poems, short stories, novels, and a play) establish and examine connections between individuals, peoples, places, spaces, species, environments, and ideas. We’ll also consider our own acts of reading: how they honour connectedness and the big picture and how, at times, considering connections requires us to focus more narrowly, on textual details and individual responses. Course assignments will prompt students to read individually and together, fostering dialogue among texts and among the members of this course.
003	1	In-Person	Lecture	M, W, F	10:00 - 11:00	Dinat, Deena	Section Description ENGL 200-001, -002, -003 are collaboratively taught by Profs. Deena Dinat, Sian Echard and Janice Ho Migrations This course focuses on the themes of migration and movement—of people, commodities, texts, and cultures—across a range of geographical locations and historical times. We will also consider the related question of how and when mobilities become restricted. Who travels and who stays? What are the histories that have brought about forced and voluntary migrations? How are identities shaped in response to encounters with cultural difference, and through experiences of exile and displacement? How are texts translated and adapted across different audiences and cultures? Texts we will study are likely to include Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale and its adaptations; Teju Cole’s Open City; Ling Ma’s Severance; Brian Friel’s Translations; as well as a selection of poetry and film.
001	1	In-Person	Lecture	M, W, F	10:00 - 11:00	Echard, Sian	Section Description ENGL 200-001, -002, -003 are collaboratively taught by Profs. Deena Dinat, Sian Echard and Janice Ho Migrations This course focuses on the themes of migration and movement—of people, commodities, texts, and cultures—across a range of geographical locations and historical times. We will also consider the related question of how and when mobilities become restricted. Who travels and who stays? What are the histories that have brought about forced and voluntary migrations? How are identities shaped in response to encounters with cultural difference, and through experiences of exile and displacement? How are texts translated and adapted across different audiences and cultures? Texts we will study are likely to include Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale and its adaptations; Teju Cole’s Open City; Ling Ma’s Severance; Brian Friel’s Translations; as well as a selection of poetry and film.
007	2	In-Person	Lecture	M, W, F	11:00 - 12:00	Severs, Jeffrey	Section Description ENGL 200-007, -008, -009 are collaboratively taught by Profs. Chris Lee, Jeffrey Severs, and Danielle Wong Remix: Texts, Mediation, and Cultural Power We usually think of works of art as original creations, but every text emerges from long histories and practices of meaning-making. In other words, every text is in some ways a remix, often in terms that respond to systems of power and earlier artistic canons. This course conceives of remixing as, among other things, an aesthetic strategy and critical lens that reflects on and destabilizes multiple forms of power and authority. Remixing is a social practice indexed to different modalities of power that can also excavate alternative and minoritarian political histories and cultural practices. This class’s varied syllabus encourages students to get into the depths of not just literary texts like novels, short stories, and poems but also films and other media artifacts. Students will be introduced to take multimedia and multi-sensory approaches to reading, analysis, and interpretation while reflecting on their relationship to literary and cultural studies as an academic formation. Texts likely to feature in the class include short stories by Herman Melville, Charles Johnson, Lee Maracle, and Eileen Chang; poetry by Joshua Whitehead; a novel by Toni Morrison; and films and video art by artists including Ani Ema Susanti, Sondra Perry, and Richard Fung.
006	1	In-Person	Lecture	M, W, F	13:00 - 14:00	Moss, Laura	Section Description ENGL 200-004, -005, -006 are collaboratively taught by Profs. Miranda Burgess, Laura Moss and Michael Zeitlin Interconnectedness Writing in 1768, the German philosopher and playwright Gotthold Ephraim Lessing asserted that “in nature, everything is bound together; everything interconnects, everything is interchangeable with everything else, everything changes from one thing to another.” Lessing went on to define reading as a process in which “finite spirits”—humans—can “take their share of pleasure” in interconnectedness by “develop[ing] the capacity to isolate elements and direct their attention at will.” This course approaches interconnectedness in both of these ways. Together we’ll attend to ways literary texts (poems, short stories, novels, and a play) establish and examine connections between individuals, peoples, places, spaces, species, environments, and ideas. We’ll also consider our own acts of reading: how they honour connectedness and the big picture and how, at times, considering connections requires us to focus more narrowly, on textual details and individual responses. Course assignments will prompt students to read individually and together, fostering dialogue among texts and among the members of this course.
008	2	In-Person	Lecture	M, W, F	11:00 - 12:00	Wong, Danielle	Section Description ENGL 200-007, -008, -009 are collaboratively taught by Profs. Chris Lee, Jeffrey Severs, and Danielle Wong Remix: Texts, Mediation, and Cultural Power We usually think of works of art as original creations, but every text emerges from long histories and practices of meaning-making. In other words, every text is in some ways a remix, often in terms that respond to systems of power and earlier artistic canons. This course conceives of remixing as, among other things, an aesthetic strategy and critical lens that reflects on and destabilizes multiple forms of power and authority. Remixing is a social practice indexed to different modalities of power that can also excavate alternative and minoritarian political histories and cultural practices. This class’s varied syllabus encourages students to get into the depths of not just literary texts like novels, short stories, and poems but also films and other media artifacts. Students will be introduced to take multimedia and multi-sensory approaches to reading, analysis, and interpretation while reflecting on their relationship to literary and cultural studies as an academic formation. Texts likely to feature in the class include short stories by Herman Melville, Charles Johnson, Lee Maracle, and Eileen Chang; poetry by Joshua Whitehead; a novel by Toni Morrison; and films and video art by artists including Ani Ema Susanti, Sondra Perry, and Richard Fung.
005	1	In-Person	Lecture	M, W, F	13:00 - 14:00	Zeitlin, Michael	Section Description ENGL 200-004, -005, -005 are collaboratively taught by Profs. Miranda Burgess, Laura Moss and Michael Zeitlin Interconnectedness Writing in 1768, the German philosopher and playwright Gotthold Ephraim Lessing asserted that “in nature, everything is bound together; everything interconnects, everything is interchangeable with everything else, everything changes from one thing to another.” Lessing went on to define reading as a process in which “finite spirits”—humans—can “take their share of pleasure” in interconnectedness by “develop[ing] the capacity to isolate elements and direct their attention at will.” This course approaches interconnectedness in both of these ways. Together we’ll attend to ways literary texts (poems, short stories, novels, and a play) establish and examine connections between individuals, peoples, places, spaces, species, environments, and ideas. We’ll also consider our own acts of reading: how they honour connectedness and the big picture and how, at times, considering connections requires us to focus more narrowly, on textual details and individual responses. Course assignments will prompt students to read individually and together, fostering dialogue among texts and among the members of this course.
009	2	In-Person	Lecture	M, W, F	11:00 - 12:00	Lee, Christopher	Section Description ENGL 200-007, -008, -009 are collaboratively taught by Profs. Chris Lee, Jeffrey Severs, and Danielle Wong Remix: Texts, Mediation, and Cultural Power We usually think of works of art as original creations, but every text emerges from long histories and practices of meaning-making. In other words, every text is in some ways a remix, often in terms that respond to systems of power and earlier artistic canons. This course conceives of remixing as, among other things, an aesthetic strategy and critical lens that reflects on and destabilizes multiple forms of power and authority. Remixing is a social practice indexed to different modalities of power that can also excavate alternative and minoritarian political histories and cultural practices. This class’s varied syllabus encourages students to get into the depths of not just literary texts like novels, short stories, and poems but also films and other media artifacts. Students will be introduced to take multimedia and multi-sensory approaches to reading, analysis, and interpretation while reflecting on their relationship to literary and cultural studies as an academic formation. Texts likely to feature in the class include short stories by Herman Melville, Charles Johnson, Lee Maracle, and Eileen Chang; poetry by Joshua Whitehead; a novel by Toni Morrison; and films and video art by artists including Ani Ema Susanti, Sondra Perry, and Richard Fung.

An Introduction to English Honours

ENGL 210

mackie-gregory

2023 Winter Term 1/2Credits: 6

Comprehensive overview of key periods, genres, and methods in English studies for students entering the English Honours program. Restricted to students in Honours programs.

Sections (1)

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 Description The Literary Imagination: Traditions and Counter-Traditions A 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

echard-sian

2024 Winter Term 1/2Credits: 6

Comprehensive overview of key periods, genres, and methods in English studies for students entering the English Honours program. Restricted to students in Honours programs.

Sections (1)

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 Description Networks and Exchange in English Literature English 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

fox-lorcan-francis potter-tiffany

2023 Winter Term 1/2Credits: 3

A 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.

Sections (2)

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 Description This 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: Joseph Black et al., eds., The Broadview Anthology of British Literature, Concise Edition, Volume A (The Medieval Period, The Renaissance and the Early Seventeenth Century, The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century), Third Edition Jane Austen, Mansfield Park (Broadview)
002	2		Lecture	T, Th	9:30 - 11:00	Potter, Tiffany		Section Description Pleasure, Tension, Contention: Literature in England before 1700 This 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

tebokkel-nathan

2024 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

A 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.

Sections (1)

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 English to the 18th Century

ENGL 220

pareles-mo

2025 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

A 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.

Sections (1)

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	Pareles, Mo		Section Description Sovereignty in Medieval and Early Modern British Literature How does a community justify the right to rule or to self-rule? Is a king’s body in fact two? Can a survivor of violence regain control over their own body? What makes regions into a nation? In a society where women have limited rights, how can a queen rule over all? These—and many more—are questions of sovereignty, the controversial and nebulous concept that deals with the authority to decide. In this course, we will investigate how the multilingual literature of Britain before 1800—from Anglo-Norman (e.g., French) romance to Welsh poetry to early modern English drama—addresses the problem of sovereignty. All work will be read in English. We will focus on how literature lends itself to claims of political and religious sovereignty and how sovereignty underwrites national identities and British imperialism. In so doing we will also explore ecology, racialization and Indigeneity, gender and sexuality, and the politics of language, form, and genre.

Literature in Britain: the 18th Century to the Present

ENGL 221

2023 Winter TermCredits: 3

A 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.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
003			Lecture					Section Description British Literature, Cultural Tradition, and Social Change English 221 surveys British poetry, drama, fiction, and non-fictional prose from the 18^thcentury 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.

Literature in Britain: the 18th Century to the Present

ENGL 221

dalziel-pamela

2024 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Sections (1)

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 Description The Stories We Tell—and Retell Why 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 Britain: the 18th Century to the Present

ENGL 221

mackie-gregory

2025 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

NOTE: ENGL 221-003 (TERM 2, MARLENE BRIGGS) - CANCELLED

Sections (1)

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	Mackie, Gregory		Section Description This course surveys British Literature from the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. It aims to introduce students to a wide sampling of literary works of poetry, fiction, and drama across the period. While these works engage a diverse variety of topics, in reading 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 these texts in their historical and cultural contexts, we should also, where appropriate, allow ourselves to approach them with a sense of openness and humour. Course Requirements and Policies: Participation: 10% In-class essay: 20% Term paper: 40% Final exam: 30% Novels: Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (Penguin) Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness and Other Tales (Oxford) George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four (Penguin) Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day (Vintage) Poetry and Drama: The Broadview Anthology of British Literature, Concise Edition, Vol. B. SECOND EDITION. Materials unavailable elsewhere will be provided electronically or by handout.

Literature in Canada

ENGL 222

hunt-dallas mccormack-brendan

2023 Winter Term 1/2Credits: 3

The 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.

Sections (2)

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 Description Introduction 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 Description What 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

mccormack-brendan

2024 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Sections (1)

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 Description What 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. 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 Canada

ENGL 222

lee-tara mccormack-brendan

2025 Winter Term 1/2Credits: 3

Sections (2)

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	Lee, Tara		Section Description Aliens, Monsters, and Shapeshifters: (Re)Invention in Asian Canadian Literature “She fumbles, the stutter of birthing an unwelcome / child to a violent nation that does not know it” (Natalie Wee, “Can You Speak English?”) This section of ENGL 222 will explore the unfolding of Asian Canadian literature in a variety of genres. It will begin by considering “beginnings,” and the fraught positions of Asian Canadians in relation to the nation-state (Fred Wah’s Diamond Grill, Hiromi Goto’s The Kappa Child) before shifting to diasporic movements and community-formation (Kim Thúy’s Ru). The class will engage with questions related to labour and fierce embodiment (Souvankham Thammavongsa’s Pick a Colour, Natalie Wee’s Beast at Every Threshold), and then conclude by considering the city as an intersectional space for asserting belonging (Catherine Hernandez’s Scarborough).
002	2	In-Person	Lecture	M, W, F	10:00 - 11:00	Mccormack, Brendan		Section Description What 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 you could upload your consciousness into a new body? What if cyborgs wrote poetry? What if a child’s emotional distress resulted in transformation 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 contested 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 speculation. 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. Note—many of our texts, operating in fictional genres like apocalypse, dystopia, and horror, address contexts that are often uncomfortably real and challenging, and can take us to some troubling places (usually, they lead us back out of them, often to more hopeful places). We will analyze these works with care and sensitivity, but reader beware.

Literature in the United States

ENGL 223

zeitlin-michael

2023 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

The 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.

Sections (1)

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 Description This 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 J.D. Salinger, "Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut" (1948) Herman Melville, "Bartleby, the Scrivener" (1853) William Faulkner, "Dry September" (1931) Nathaniel Hawthorne, "The May-Pole of Merry Mount" (1836) Edgar Allan Poe, "The Oval Portrait" (1842) Kate Chopin, "Desirée's Baby" (1893) Special Cases Joan Didion, "Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream" (1966) Ernest Hemingway, In Our Time (1925) Ta-Nehesi Coates, Between the World and Me (2015) Thomas Jefferson et al., "The Declaration of Independence" (1776) Novel Cormac McCarthy, The Road (2006) Poetry T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land (1922) Drama Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun (1959) 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

sharpe-jae

2024 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Sections (1)

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		Section Description Notions of Home in Contemporary American Literature The idea of home has long been a fraught concept in American literature. In this class, we will examine stories about American homes from contemporary authors to consider what questions of belonging and space arise in such narratives. The authors we will be reading employ experimental styles in order to convey the complexity and provisional nature of such settings, and they call attention to the difficulties faced by various American subjects in situating themselves within both the spatial and temporal planes of the nation. Students will learn how to refine their writing at an academic level and to weave historical and theoretical research into their writing. Texts are likely to include Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Joan Didion’s A Book of Common Prayer, David Foster Wallace’s The Broom of the System, Toni Morrison’s Paradise, and excerpts from John Ashberry’s Parallel Movement of the Hands.

Literature in the United States

ENGL 223

sharpe-jae

2025 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Sections (1)

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		Section Description Instructor: Jae Sharpe There is no course description available at this time for this section.

World Literature in English

ENGL 224

dinat-deena

2023 SummerCredits: 3Pre-requisite

English literature produced outside Britain and North America. Prerequisite: Second-year standing and 3 credits from one of (a) 100-level ENGL or (b) ARTS 001 or (c) ASTU 100 or (d) ASTU 101 or (e) WRDS 150 or (f) WRDS 350. Prerequisites must be met by the first day of class or students will be withdrawn.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
951		In-Person	Lecture	M, W	12:00 - 15:00	Dinat, Deena		Section Description African Cities in the 21st Century: A Literary Approach This 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

james-suzanne

2023 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

English 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.

Sections (1)

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 Description An Introduction to African Writing “One must look at the world from Africa to be an African writer, not look upon Africa from the world” (Nadine Gordimer) 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

dinat-deena

2024 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

English 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.

Sections (1)

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 Description 2024 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. Beginning with prison poetry from the 1970s and 1980s, we’ll look at texts that exposed the cruelties of the apartheid state and imagined a radical future for the nation. The advent of democracy in the 1990s, and with it the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, provided a range of new possibilities for writers, but also a series of challenges that we’ll explore through a range of forms and genres. Texts include (subject to change): JM Coetzee - Life and Times of Michael K Zoë Wicomb - Playing in the Light Phaswane Mpe - Welcome to Our Hillbrow Short stories by Nadine Gordimer, Njabulo Ndebele and Ivan Vladislavić, Poetry by Chris van Wyk, Jeremy Cronin, Dennis Brutus and Gabeba Baderoon

World Literature in English

ENGL 224

dinat-deena

2025 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

English 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.

Sections (1)

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 Description Apartheid and its Afterlives 2024 marked 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. Beginning with prison poetry from the 1970s and 1980s, we’ll look at texts that exposed the cruelties of the apartheid state and imagined a radical future for the nation. The advent of democracy in the 1990s, and with it the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, provided a range of new possibilities for writers, but also a series of challenges that we’ll explore through a range of forms and genres. Texts include (subject to change): JM Coetzee - Life and Times of Michael K Zoë Wicomb - Playing in the Light Phaswane Mpe - Welcome to Our Hillbrow Short stories by Nadine Gordimer, Njabulo Ndebele and Ivan Vladislavić, Poetry by Chris van Wyk, Jeremy Cronin, Dennis Brutus and Gabeba Baderoon

Poetry

ENGL 225

fox-lorcan-francis

2023 SummerCredits: 3Pre-requisite

Principles, methods, and resources for reading poetry. Prerequisite: Second-year standing and 3 credits from one of (a) 100-level ENGL or (b) ARTS 001 or (c) ASTU 100 or (d) ASTU 101 or (e) WRDS 150 or (f) WRDS 350. Prerequisites must be met by the first day of class or students will be withdrawn.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
921		In-Person	Lecture	T, Th	18:00 - 21:00	Fox, Lorcan Francis

Poetry

ENGL 225

fox-lorcan-francis guy-bray-stephen

2023 Winter Term 1/2Credits: 3

Principles, 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.

Sections (2)

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 Description In 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

guy-bray-stephen

2024 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Principles, 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.

Sections (1)

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

Drama

ENGL 226

bose-sarika

2025 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Principles, methods and resources for reading drama. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.

Sections (1)

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	Bose, Sarika		Section Description Instructor: Sarika Bose

Prose Fiction

ENGL 227

severs-jeffrey culbert-john

2023 Winter Term 1/2Credits: 3

Principles, 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.

Sections (2)

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 Description The Twentieth-Century African-American Novel A 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

roukema-aren

2024 SummerCredits: 3

Principles, 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.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
921		In-Person	Lecture	T, Th	18:00 - 21:00	Roukema, Aren		Section Description INSTRUCTOR: AREN ROUKEMA Literature in 4D Our 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 (2^nd edn), and a graphic adaptation of Octavia Butler’s Kindred (Abrams, 2018).

Prose Fiction

ENGL 227

roukema-aren

2024 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Principles, 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.

Sections (1)

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 Description Literature in 4D Our 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 (2^nd edn), and a graphic adaptation of Octavia Butler’s Kindred (Abrams, 2018).

Prose Fiction

ENGL 227

dalziel-pamela

2025 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Principles, 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.

Sections (1)

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	Dalziel, Pamela		Section Description Beauties, Beasts, and Wonderlands We all know the stories of Beauty and the Beast and Alice in Wonderland. Or do we? In this course we will explore how and why Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont’s “Beauty and the Beast” and Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland have 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. Questions that we will ask include: why has Le Prince de Beaumont’s “Beauty and the Beast” inspired successive generations of authors and artists while Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve’s “La Belle et la Bête” (Le Prince de Beaumont’s source) is largely forgotten? Why is Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, translated into more than 175 languages, exceptionally popular in Japan, where it has been reimagined in everything from literature and art to video games and household goods? How does Alice’s visual identity from the nineteenth century to the present (re)define her as a fashion icon? 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 texts and some of their adaptations and reimaginings, and in our and the original readers’ and viewers’ interpretations. The focus of our discussions will be the three original texts: Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve’s “La Belle et la Bête,” translated by Aurora Wolfgang (UBC Library); Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont’s “Beauty and the Beast,” The Young Misses Magazine (UBC Library); and Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Broadview print edition, eBook). We will also analyze in detail Jean Cocteau’s 1946 film La Belle et la bête, Jonathan Miller’s 1966 telefilm Alice in Wonderland, and Elizabeth LaPensée and KC Oster’s 2022 graphic novel Rabbit Chase (Annick Press print edition, eBook). Please note that our discussions of the 1951 Disney Alice in Wonderland and the 1991 Disney Beauty and the Beast will be brief, focusing on how the films continue to define the literary works in the popular imagination. Assignments: Assignments will include an in-class essay, an at-home paper, and a final exam.

Topics in Literary and/or Cultural Studies - Topics in Literary and/or Cultural Studies

ENGL 228A

mccormack-brendan

2024 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Current 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.

Sections (1)

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 Description Term 2  MWF, 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM *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

stickles-elise dollinger-stefan

2023 Winter Term 1/2Credits: 3

Consult 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.

Sections (2)

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 Description Introduction to Cognitive Linguistics Is 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: Identify and understand basic concepts in cognitive linguistics Understand the roles of physical, psychological, and sociocultural context in linguistic meaning Analyze the linguistic and conceptual structure of a variety of texts Apply concepts from cognitive linguistics to other topics and disciplines 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 Description Canadian English: history, present & future In 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

dancygier-barbara

2024 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Consult 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.

Sections (1)

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 Description How Language Creates Meaning Expressing 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).

Topics in the Study of Language and/or Rhetoric - LANGUAG/RHETORIC

ENGL 229A

dollinger-stefan

2025 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Sections (1)

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	Dollinger, Stefan		Section Description In this course we’ll reflect on Canadian English, defined as any variety of English spoken and used in Canada. We will distinguish between Canadian English, Standard Canadian English, and start to think about what an “Inclusive Standard Canadian English” might look like. We review the state of our knowledge about Canadian English, match it to our own personal experience (or lack thereof), and other forms of English used in Canada, including Indigenous Englishes. We will approach Canadian English from sociolinguistic and sociohistorical perspectives: How did it come about? Who decided when that Canadian English was its own variety? Why is it the way it is? Why do some not know much about it (perhaps you)? Bring a curious and open mind. Deliverables: Class presentation: 5 minutes on a feature of Canadian English Project: we aim to improve Wikipedia coverage on Canadian English Exams: midterm and final exam Select materials (to be completed): Dollinger, Stefan. 2019. Creating Canadian English: The Professor, the Mountaineer, and a National Variety of English. Cambridge University Press. Walker, James A. 2015. Canadian English: A Sociolinguistic Perspective. London: Routledge.

Introduction to Reading Place and Power in Vancouver and BC

ENGL 230

mccormack-brendan

2025 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Indigenous, diaspora, and settler literary/cultural engagements with practices of power in the context of the West Coast of what is currently called Canada. Works about, associated with and/or by Vancouver and BC authors. Introduction to theories of place and power. For ENGL_V courses at the 200- or 300-level, prior completion of at least one 100-level ENGL_V course is recommended.

Sections (1)

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	Mccormack, Brendan		Section Description Storying Place: Introduction to Reading Place & Power in Vancouver and BC *This course fulfills the new BA Ways of Knowing: Place and Power breadth requirement This course introduces students to reading literary and cultural representations of “place” as they intersect with practices of power in the context of the West Coast of what is currently called Canada. It examines works by local authors and artists from, about, or associated with Vancouver and BC, emerging from a variety of Indigenous, diaspora, and settler contexts. Theories of place will inform our approach to reading a range of positions and perspectives on literary Vancouver in works that address various geographic and communal places: from our local surroundings here at UBC’s Point Grey campus and Pacific Spirit Park, on unceded xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) territory; to Kitsilano, Main Street, Chinatown, Hogan’s Alley, the Downtown Eastside, and other past and present neighbourhoods in the city; to the coastal environments of the Pacific Northwest and the Salish Sea. Our guiding questions will be: What is “place”? How is it a way of seeing and understanding the world? How does literature function in the making of place(s), particularly as they become contested in the context of power? How have Indigenous and other communities historically marginalized in/by Vancouver mobilized cultural production in response to ongoing histories of settler-colonial erasure, racial exclusion, gentrification, and environmental disruption? How does reading “place” (including forms of displacement) make visible the intimate ways that dynamics of power are enacted, felt, embodied, resisted, and imagined by writers and communities? We will take up these and other questions by considering place and power in local literatures, looking to such narrative forms as short stories, novels, poetry, creative non-fiction, speculative fiction, and digital media. Assignments will position you in place and community and encourage students to understand themselves as variously “inside” the stories of place we study, enabling you to analyze place-based texts, mix critical and creative modes of inquiry, and bring student class participants collaboratively together.

Introduction to Indigenous Literatures

ENGL 231

hunt-dallas

2023 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

A 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.

Sections (1)

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 Description Introduction 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

hunt-dallas manuel-alexa

2024 Winter Term 1/2Credits: 3

A 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.

Sections (2)

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 Description Indigenous Literatures, Through Time and 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, 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 Description This 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?

Introduction to Indigenous Literatures

ENGL 231

hunt-dallas

2025 Winter Term 1/2Credits: 3

A 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.

Sections (2)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
001	1	In-Person	Lecture	M, W, F	15:00 - 16:00	Hunt, Dallas		Section Description Indigenous Literatures, through Time and 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, 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	2	In-Person	Lecture	T, Th	11:00 - 12:30			Section Description Instructor: Alexa Manuel The course description for this course is not yet available.

Approaches to Media Studies

ENGL 232

cavell-richard-anthony

2023 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Approaches 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.

Sections (1)

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 Description This 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

cavell-richard-anthony

2024 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Sections (1)

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 Description Medianthropologies While 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.

Approaches to Media Studies

ENGL 232

cavell-richard-anthony

2025 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Sections (1)

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

Shakespeare Now

ENGL 241

britton-dennis

2024 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Introductory 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.

Sections (1)

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 Description Cancel Shakespeare Should 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

baxter-gisele-marie lee-tara

2023 Winter Term 1/2Credits: 3

History, 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.

Sections (2)

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 Description Something 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 Description Regulating 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

gooding-rick bose-sarika

2024 Winter Term 1/2Credits: 3

History, 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.

Sections (2)

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 Description Parents 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 Literature Literature 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 18^th 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

baxter-gisele-marie

2023 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Genres 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.

Sections (1)

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 Description 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 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

rouse-robert

2024 SummerCredits: 3

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
921		In-Person	Lecture	M, W	16:00 - 19:00	Rouse, Robert		Section Description Apocalypse How? Writing and Reading the End Times in Speculative Fiction Western 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 20^th and 21^st 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: Stewart, Earth Abides Miller, A Canticle for Leibowitz Brooks, World War Z Al Akkad, American War Campbell, Arboreality Rice, Moon of the Crusted SnowWe will also be reading a range of short stories and critical articles, which will be available via Canvas.

Speculative Fiction

ENGL 243

wong-danielle baxter-gisele

2024 Winter Term 1/2Credits: 3

Sections (2)

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 Description Racial Futures This 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 Description 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; 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.

Speculative Fiction

ENGL 243

rouse-robert

2025 SummerCredits: 3

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
001		In-Person	Lecture	M, W	10:00 - 13:00	Rouse, Robert		Section Description Robots, Artificial Intelligence, and Us AI is one of the most pressing technological and social questions of the current moment. Governments and corporations around the world are rushing to pour billions of dollars into AI research, all seeking to be the first to develop AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) and to leverage other modes of AI (LLMs and the like). The social questions surrounding AI are numerous and pressing, yet they are not new. Writers have been exploring the potential impacts of AI on human society, and on human psychology, for many decades. In this course we will explore the complex intimate relationships between humans and artificial intelligences through a range of literary texts from the 20th and 21st centuries. We will delve (a common LLM word) into a selection of seminal works that span various genres and perspectives, providing insights into the implications of our technological advancements on society, ethics, and identity. The course texts will include the following: I, Robot; Neuromancer; The Lifecycle of Software Objects; The Murderbot Diaries, vol 1 (the two novellas All Systems Red and Artificial Condition); and Klara and the Sun; and a selection of films on AI.

Speculative Fiction

ENGL 243

baxter-gisele

2025 Winter Term 1/2Credits: 3

Sections (2)

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	Baxter, Gisele		Section Description 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 landmark novel Frankenstein. Shelley’s tale evokes dread in the implications of Victor’s generation of a humanoid Creature; this dread echoes in more recent fictional products or accidents of science: clones, robots and replicants, artificial intelligences, cyborgs. Such texts raise issues concerning 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 or Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake; 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) or one other novel, to be announced. 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	In-Person	Lecture	T, Th	09:30 - 11:00	Baxter, Gisele		Section Description Instructor: Gisele Baxter 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 landmark novel Frankenstein. Shelley’s tale evokes dread in the implications of Victor’s generation of a humanoid Creature; this dread echoes in more recent fictional products or accidents of science: clones, robots and replicants, artificial intelligences, cyborgs. Such texts raise issues concerning 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 or Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake; 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 (possibly Alien or AI) or one other novel (possibly Frankenstein), to be announced. Evaluation will be based on a midterm essay, a term paper requiring secondary academic research, a final reflection essay, and participation in discussion in the lecture periods and on Canvas. Keep checking my blog (https://blogs.ubc.ca/drgmbaxter/) for updates concerning texts and requirements.

Environment and Literature

ENGL 244

culbert-john

2023 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Literary, 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.

Sections (1)

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

culbert-john

2024 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Literary, 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.

Sections (1)

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

Environment and Literature

ENGL 244

culbert-john

2025 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Literary, 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.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
001	1	In-Person	Lecture	T, Th	14:00 - 15:30	Culbert, John

Comics and Graphic Media

ENGL 245

gooding-richard mcneilly-kevin

2023 Winter Term 1/2Credits: 3

Introduction 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.

Sections (2)

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 Description Comics and Graphic Media This 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

mcneilly-kevin

2024 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Introduction 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.

Sections (1)

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 Description Reading Surfaces In 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

potter-tiffany

2023 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Approaches 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.

Sections (1)

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 Description On Literature on Screen This 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

baxter-gisele

2024 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Approaches 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.

Sections (1)

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 Description Vampires 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.

Literature and Film

ENGL 246

mota-miguel dinat-deena

2025 Winter Term 1/2Credits: 3

Approaches 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.

Sections (2)

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	Mota, Miguel		Section Description Adaptation: ‘Which was better, the book or the film?’ The above question has too often become the cornerstone of modern debates around adaptation. Our objective in this course will be to reframe the ways in which we might consider and discuss the many and varied relationships between various genres of literature and film. The scope of our discussion will range from detailed examinations of particular passages and scenes to the re-definition of concepts and re-shaping of terminology in an effort to explore how literature and film can speak to each other as different but equal partners. Instead of considering adaptation as a lit-centric field, in which the value of a film is based on its fidelity to the ‘original’ text, we’ll look at the ways in which film and literature engage in fruitful and productive conversations with each other. We’ll consider how stories adapt to the aesthetic and commercial demands of multiple genres – novels, comic books, short stories, screenplays, and films. In the process, we’ll read some adaptation theory and study the cultural contexts surrounding both the source text and its adaptation. In so doing, we’ll explore the ways in which these two different media use diverse forms of technological representation to engage with a number of cultural and social issues. We’ll finish the course by considering more recent attempts within the field of adaptation to move beyond the unidirectional movement of literature to film, as content moves away from notions of a single, stable source and an identifiable author, and towards an era of transmedia creation by multiple entities and media conglomerates.
002	2	In-Person	Lecture	T, Th	15:30 - 17:00	Dinat, Deena

Television Studies

ENGL 247

frank-adam

2023 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Introduction 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.

Sections (1)

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 Description On Television This 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: familiarize students with the history of network television in the United States introduce students to formal vocabulary to describe televisual experience communicate to students tools for critical thinking and writing about television The course format will combine lectures, discussion, and group work.

Mystery and Detective Fiction

ENGL 248

dick-alexander

2023 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Thematic 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.

Sections (1)

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 Description Genres of Detection This 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: In-class participation (10%) Weekly online discussion posts (20%) Writing Assignment (30%) Mid-term and final exams (40%) Texts (subject to change): Mansfield-Kelley and Marchino (eds), The Longman Anthology of Detective Fiction (2005) Hughes, In a Lonely Place (1947) + film, dir. Nicholas Ray (1950) King, Dreadfulwater (2002) Braithwaite, My Sister the Serial Killer (2019)

Mystery and Detective Fiction

ENGL 248

dick-alexander

2024 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Sections (1)

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 Description Hard-boiled and Noir Admiring 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.

Mystery and Detective Fiction

ENGL 248

dick-alexander

2025 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
001	1	In-Person	Lecture	M, W, F	13:00 - 14:00	Dick, Alexander		Section Description Hard-boiled and Noir Admiring 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 quirkily and sometimes surreally adapted from Gothic, mystery, and especially “hard-boiled” detective stories from the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Since the 1960s, Noir has 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 film to 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 a selection of 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; students will also have a chance to develop creative skills by writing their own hard-boiled or noir story.

Introduction to Critical Theory

ENGL 300

bain-kimberly wong-danielle

2023 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Analysis 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.

Sections (1)

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 Description Everything, Everywhere: The Timespace of Racial Capitalism Analysis 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. This course focuses on the theories, histories, and philosophies of racial capitalism from its origins, with particular emphasis on its functions in the contemporary moment. This course ranges across different disciplines and regions to survey how race and capitalism have been conjoined both theoretically and materially. Some themes we will explore over the course of the semester include: information capitalism, neoliberalism, ghost labor, borders/ migration, carcerality, (in)debt(edness), anti-capitalism and the popular, the Anthropocene, and so forth. We will particularly be interested in how those social formations correspond and diverge. This course takes a heterogenous and expansive definition of theory; as such, we will engage with myriad forms of texts including music, video games, poetry, performance art, visual art, film, and so forth. Instructors Bain, Kimberly \| Wong, Danielle

Introduction to Critical Theory

ENGL 300

frank-adam

2024 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Analysis 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.

Sections (1)

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 Description Dream, play, phantasy: Affect theory and literary criticism This 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: to introduce students to affect and object-relations theory to experiment with grounding interpretive techniques in such theories to maintain an open, reflexive, analytic attitude toward aesthetic experience

Introduction to Critical Theory

ENGL 300

paltin-judith

2025 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Analysis 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.

Sections (1)

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	Paltin, Judith		Section Description This introduction to critical theory is themed around crowds, democracy, and politics. We will explore theories of agency and forms of democracy, phenomena such as group aggression and utopianism, technologies for the persuasion and control of crowds, ideologies underlying populisms and authoritarianisms, and philosophies of bare life and biopolitics. It seems an appropriate moment to rethink the crowd and its history, when asylum seeking and global migrations, d/evolving democracies, virtual-digital crowds, and crowd-based political movements around the world are calling for our attention. We will also draw on the literary as a productive archive for this critique. As we proceed, we will build a theory of the performativity of the crowd. Readings and films include selections from Marx, Charles Baudelaire, Gustave Le Bon, Virginia Woolf, Raymond Williams, Stuart Hall, Paul Gilroy, T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, Fritz Lang, Sean O’Casey, Ernesto Laclau, Judith Butler, Jacques Ranciére, others.

Technical Writing

ENGL 301

paterson-erika

2023 SummerCredits: 3Pre-requisite

Study 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. Prerequisite: Third-year standing and 3 credits from one of (a) 100-level ENGL or (b) 200-level ENGL or (c) ARTS 001 or (d) ASTU 100 or (e) ASTU 101 or (f) WRDS 150 or (g) WRDS 350. 6 credits of 100- and/or 200-level English courses is recommended. Prerequisites must be met by the first day of class or students will be withdrawn.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
98A		In-Person	Lecture			Paterson, Erika		Section Description See 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: to introduce through course readings and activities the distinctive elements of writing in business, professional, and technical contexts; to provide opportunities to practice and perfect the strategies and techniques particular to writing in these contexts; to engage you with your classmates in online discussion, peer review, and the production and analysis of documents produced for business, professional, and technical contexts; to direct you to the considerable resources available to you through UBC’s Career Services unit; to involve you in developing and designing an online Web Folio with an accompanying resume and references to encourage and assist you in reflecting on your writing and developing peer-review and self-editing skills. 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.

Technical Writing

ENGL 301

baxter-gisele-marie

2023 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Study 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.

Sections (1)

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 Description Note: 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

baxter-gisele

2024 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Study 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.

Sections (1)

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 Description 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). 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

smilges-johnathan-logan

2023 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Exploration 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.

Sections (1)

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 Description To 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

smilges-logan

2024 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Sections (1)

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		Section Description Rhetorics of Science, Technology, & Medicine To 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

smilges-logan

2025 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
001	2	In-Person	Lecture	T, Th	14:00 - 15:30	Smilges, Logan

History and Theory of Rhetoric: Classical Rhetoric

ENGL 310

hill-ian

2023 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Introduction 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.

Sections (1)

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 Description What 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.

History and Theory of Rhetoric: Classical Rhetoric

ENGL 310

hill-ian

2024 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Sections (1)

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 Description What 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.

History and Theory of Rhetoric: Classical Rhetoric

ENGL 310

hill-ian

2025 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Sections (1)

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 Description History and Theory of Rhetoric: Classical Rhetoric What 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

thieme-katja

2023 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Introduction 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.

Sections (1)

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

stratton-james

2023 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Principles 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.

Sections (1)

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

blake-susan

2024 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Sections (1)

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: Early History

ENGL 318

dollinger-stefan

2025 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Sections (1)

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	Dollinger, Stefan		Section Description In this course we will be tracing the development of the English language from its Indo-European beginnings to the Middle English period. We will deal with the internal development of the language (its ‘structure’) on all levels: sounds (phonology), grammar (morphology & syntax), word meaning (semantics) and orthography and some select pragmatic features (language in use). We will also explore the most important events in the language-external history (‘political, social and cultural history’) that shaped the language. As we are covering a period of more than a thousand years, our aim is to put the various stages of development in relation to each other: what happened when and with what results – and, if possible, why. Along the way we will be dealing with texts from different periods. Requirements: Group presentation Etymology research project Midterm and final exams Core Readings: Knooihuizen, Remco. 2023. The Linguistics of the History of English. Cham: Springer. Brinton, Laurel J. and Leslie K. Arnovick. 2016. The English Language: A Linguistic History. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

History of the English Language: Later History

ENGL 319

stratton-james

2023 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Principles of language change. The development and spread of the English language from the Norman Conquest to the Modern English period.

Sections (1)

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	Stratton, James

History of the English Language: Later History

ENGL 319

biermann-wilhelmina-georgina

2024 Winter Term 2Credits: 3Pre-requisite

Principles 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.

Sections (1)

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 Description In 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 (1800-21^st 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 the International Phonetic Alphabet and English morphology and syntax. 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. 3^rd ed. Oxford University Press, 2017.

English Grammar and Usage - English Grammar and Usage

ENGL 321-

biermann-wilhelmina-georgina

2023 SummerCredits: 3Pre-requisite

Descriptive approaches to the English language Prerequisite: Third-year standing and 3 credits from one of (a) 100-level ENGL or (b) 200-level ENGL or (c) ARTS 001 or (d) ASTU 100 or (e) ASTU 101 or (f) WRDS 150 or (g) WRDS 350. 6 credits of 100- and/or 200-level English courses is recommended. Prerequisites must be met by the first day of class or students will be withdrawn.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
-_98A		In-Person	Lecture			Biermann, Wilhelmina Georgina

English Grammar and Usage

ENGL 321

biermann-ina

2023 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Descriptive 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.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
99A	1		Lecture			Biermann, Ina		Section Description The 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: Exercises: 20% Collaborative assignments: 20% Test 1: 20% Test 2: 20% Test 3: 20% The prescribed books are: Börjars, Kersti & Kate Burridge. Introducing English Grammar, 3^rd edition. Routledge, 2019. Leech, Geoffrey, Margaret Deuchar and Robert Hoogenraad. English Grammar for Today: A New Introduction. 2^nd ed. Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. More details are available on the course website on canvas.ubc.ca.

English Grammar and Usage - English Grammar and Usage

ENGL 321A

biermann-wilhelmina-georgina

2024 Winter TermCredits: 3

Descriptive 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.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_99A		Online	Lecture			Biermann, Wilhelmina Georgina		Section Description English 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: equips students with skills for identifying and describing the effects of derived structures in various communicative situations by means of the study and description of numerous diverse examples, provides a strong basis for further study of the English language, language variation, literary and non-literary communication and style, and provides essential preparation for students planning to teach English at any level. 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, 3^rd ed. Routledge, 2019. Leech, Geoffrey, Margaret Deuchar and Robert Hoogenraad. English Grammar for Today: A New Introduction. 2^nd ed. Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.

English Grammar and Usage - English Grammar and Usage

ENGL 321A

stickles-elise

2025 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Descriptive 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.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_002	2	In-Person	Lecture	M, W	15:30 - 17:00	Stickles, Elise

Stylistics

ENGL 322

biermann-ina

2023 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Application 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.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
99C	2		Lecture			Biermann, Ina		Section Description This 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: Term paper: 30% Collaborative Workshop 1: 20% Collaborative Workshop 2: 10% Graded exercises: 20% Discussion forum: 5% Final Exam: 15% Prescribed reading: Short, Mick. Exploring the language of poems, plays and prose. Longman, 1996. Simpson, Paul. Stylistics: A Resource Book for Students, 2^nd ed. Routledge, 2014. More details are available on the course website on canvas.ubc.ca.

Stylistics - Stylistics

ENGL 322A

biermann-wilhelmina-georgina

2024 Winter TermCredits: 3

Application 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.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_99C		Online	Lecture			Biermann, Wilhelmina Georgina		Section Description This 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, 2^nd ed. Routledge, 2014.

Stylistics - Stylistics

ENGL 322A

biermann-wilhelmina-georgina

2025 Winter TermCredits: 3

Application 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.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_99A		Online	Lecture			Biermann, Wilhelmina Georgina

Varieties of English

ENGL 323

dollinger-stefan

2023 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Study 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.

Sections (1)

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 Description How 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).

Varieties of English - ENGLISH DIALECTS

ENGL 323A

dollinger-stefan

2025 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

How many Englishes are there? What’s English anyway? What is Canadian English? What is Pidgin English? 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,…

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_001	2	Hybrid	Lecture	T, Th	14:00 - 15:30	Dollinger, Stefan		Section Description How many Englishes are there? What’s English anyway? What is Canadian English? What is Pidgin English? 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 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). Text: Jenkins, Jennifer. 2025. Global Englishes: A Resource Book for Students. 4^th edition. Routledge. Requirements: Student reflections Oral presentation at mini conference Midterm and final exams

Studies in the English Language - Studies in the English Language

ENGL 326A

dancygier-barbara

2024 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Topics 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.

Sections (1)

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 Description The Language of the Media There 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.

Studies in the English Language - Studies in the English Language

ENGL 326A

dancygier-barbara

2025 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

The Language of the Media There 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 understand better the nature of contemporary public…

Sections (1)

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

Cognitive Approaches to the Study of Meaning

ENGL 327

dancygier-barbara

2023 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Interpretation 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.

Sections (1)

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 Description Cognitive Poetics Language 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.

Cognitive Approaches to the Study of Meaning - Cognitive Approaches to the Study of Meaning

ENGL 327A

dancygier-barbara

2025 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Interpretation 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.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_001	2	In-Person	Lecture	M, W, F	13:00 - 14:00	Dancygier, Barbara		Section Description Cognitive Poetics Language 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

stickles-elise

2023 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Exploration 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.

Sections (1)

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 Description This 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: Identify and analyse figurative language in a variety of texts, genres, and media Understand and apply core concepts in cognitive linguistics, including metaphor theory and frame semantics Read and comprehend scholarly articles in the field of metaphor studies Develop an original metaphor analysis and present it in spoken and written form Engage in critical academic discussion with both peers and scholarly literature Required textbook: Dancygier, Barbara, and Eve Sweetser. Figurative Language. Cambridge University Press, 2014.

Metaphor, Language and Thought - Metaphor, Language and Thought

ENGL 328A

stickles-elise

2024 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Sections (1)

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		Section Description This 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: Identify and analyse figurative language in a variety of texts, genres, and media Understand and apply core concepts in cognitive linguistics, including metaphor theory and frame semantics Read and comprehend scholarly articles in the field of metaphor studies Develop an original metaphor analysis and present it in spoken and written form Engage in critical academic discussion with both peers and scholarly literature Required textbook: Dancygier, Barbara, and Eve Sweetser. Figurative Language. Cambridge University Press, 2014.

Metaphor, Language and Thought - Metaphor, Language and Thought

ENGL 328A

stickles-elise

2025 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Sections (1)

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		Section Description This 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: Identify and analyse figurative language in a variety of texts, genres, and media Understand and apply core concepts in cognitive linguistics, including metaphor theory and frame semantics Read and comprehend scholarly articles in the field of metaphor studies Develop an original metaphor analysis and present it in spoken and written form Engage in critical academic discussion with both peers and scholarly literature Required textbook: Dancygier, Barbara, and Eve Sweetser. Figurative Language. Cambridge University Press, 2014.

The Structure of Modern English: Sounds and Words - The Structure of Modern English: Sounds and Words

ENGL 330-

biermann-wilhelmina-georgina

2023 SummerCredits: 3Pre-requisite

An introduction to phonology, morphology, and lexical semantics. Prerequisite: Third-year standing and 3 credits from one of (a) 100-level ENGL or (b) 200-level ENGL or (c) ARTS 001 or (d) ASTU 100 or (e) ASTU 101 or (f) WRDS 150 or (g) WRDS 350. 6 credits of 100- and/or 200-level English courses is recommended. Prerequisites must be met by the first day of class or students will be withdrawn.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
-_98A		In-Person	Lecture			Biermann, Wilhelmina Georgina

The Structure of Modern English: Sounds and Words

ENGL 330

stickles-elise

2023 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

An 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.

Sections (1)

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 Description This 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: Sounds and Words

ENGL 330

de-villiers-jessica

2024 SummerCredits: 3

An 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.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
98A		In-Person	Lecture			De Villiers, Jessica

The Structure of Modern English: Sounds and Words

ENGL 330

stickles-elise

2024 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

An 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.

Sections (1)

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 Description This 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: Sounds and Words

ENGL 330

de-villiers-jessica

2025 SummerCredits: 3

An 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.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
98A		Online	Lecture			De Villiers, Jessica		Section Description This online course explores and examines contemporary English phonology, morphology, parts of speech, and lexical (word) meaning. We begin with the study of distinct speech sounds and possible sound combinations in English. Students will study the International Phonetic Alphabet as it applies to current varieties of English. Next, we study the processes of word formation and word classification in English. We then study word meaning (lexical semantics) using a variety of approaches. The course is offered from a descriptive perspective and is not focused exclusively on any specific linguistic theory. There are three collaborative assignments, five quizzes, graded discussions for each module and a final exam. Students will be working fully online on all the course work. There are Zoom meetings and recorded lectures at regular intervals. The final exam is online. 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.

The Structure of Modern English: Sounds and Words

ENGL 330

2025 Winter TermCredits: 3

An 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.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
99A		Online	Lecture					Section Description Instructor: Elise Stickles This 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

dollinger-stefan

2023 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

An 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.

Sections (1)

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 Description Welcome 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

de-villiers-jessica

2024 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

An 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.

Sections (1)

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 Description he Structure of Modern English: Sentences and Their Uses This 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.

The Structure of Modern English: Sentences and Their Uses

ENGL 331

de-villiers-jessica

2025 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

An 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.

Sections (1)

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 Description This 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

frank-adam burgess-miranda

2023 Winter Term 1/2Credits: 3

History 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.

Sections (2)

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 Description On the (pre-)history of television This 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: to familiarize students with broader histories of television and its emergence from 19th- and early 20th-century technologies and institutions to introduce students to literary tools for approaching media history to broaden media literacy by helping students to think and write critically about television and other media
99C	2		Lecture			Burgess, Miranda		Section Description Media ecologies, 1650 to the present Although 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

burgess-miranda

2024 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Sections (2)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
99A		Online	Lecture			Burgess, Miranda		Section Description Media ecology in the Atlantic world, 1650 to the present This 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	Burgess, Miranda		Section Description Instructor: Miranda Burgess Media ecology in the Atlantic world, 1650 to the present This 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.

Approaches to Media History

ENGL 332

frank-adam burgess-miranda

2025 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Sections (2)

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	Frank, Adam		Section Description On the (pre-)history of television This 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 medium, 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: to familiarize students with broader histories of television and its emergence from 19th- and early 20th-century technologies and institutions to introduce students to literary tools for approaching media history to broaden media literacy by helping students to think and write critically about television and other media
99A		Online	Lecture			Burgess, Miranda		Section Description Media ecologies in the Atlantic world, 1650 to the present This course begins by defining “media ecology” as a “coevolution” among technologies, their users, the materials from which technologies are made, and the communities and networks in which makers, users, and materials 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.

History of the Book

ENGL 333

cavell-richard-anthony

2023 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Survey 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.

Sections (1)

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 Description This 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

echard-sian

2024 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Sections (1)

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 Description From 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

pareles-mo

2023 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Old 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.

Sections (1)

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 Description Old 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

pareles-mo

2024 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Sections (1)

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 Description Old 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

pareles-mo

2025 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Sections (1)

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 Description Old 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 written 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

pareles-mo

2023 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Readings 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.

Sections (1)

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

pareles-mo

2024 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Sections (1)

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		Section Description A man falls asleep, his bed beneath a hung shield of bright wood. Who made it for him? Who will remember it after tonight? He goes to sleep for the last time, brimful from feasting, glad for his bed, his armor set above him, a scarecrow to the night. Identical under a blanket to the rest, but not quite the same—he Squinted when he laughed, he had a crooked thumb… …This one would pay dearly for his beauty sleep, for out in the dark, something of Grendel was waiting. (Meghan Purvis, “Grendel’s Mother”) How far can you go in translating a thousand-year-old poem? How do you balance relevance and authenticity? What does it mean to translate Beowulf into other platforms—to screen, graphic novel, performance, fan fiction, musical score, X thread? How do ethical translators reckon with the racist, sexist and imperialist history of Beowulf interpretation? This course on the many lives of Beowulf is also a course in the theory and practice of literary translation. Primary texts include Beowulf translations by Thomas Meyer, Seamus Heaney, and Meghan Purvis; we will also read widely in contemporary theory and criticism. Previous study of Old English not required.

Middle English Literature

ENGL 344

echard-sian rouse-robert

2023 Winter Term 1/2Credits: 3

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.

Sections (2)

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 Description The Arthur of the Britons King 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: The Mabinogion, translated by Sioned Davies The History of the Kings of Britain, translated by Michael Faletra Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Broadview facing-page edition (translated by James Winny) Sir Thomas Malory, The Morte Darthur, Oxford World’s Classics edition
99A	1		Lecture			Rouse, Robert		Section Description Love and Honour: Medieval Chivalry and Courtly Love The 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

rouse-robert

2024 Winter TermCredits: 3

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_99A		Online	Lecture			Rouse, Robert		Section Description Love and Honour: Medieval Chivalry and Courtly Love The 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

echard-sian

2025 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_001	2	In-Person	Lecture	T, Th	12:30 - 14:00	Echard, Sian		Section Description The Arthur of the Britons King 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 that really is.

Chaucer

ENGL 346

partridge-stephen

2023 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

A 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.

Sections (1)

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 Description Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales: A World of Words and a Sea of Stories With 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

partridge-stephen

2024 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Sections (1)

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 Description Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales: A World of Words and a Sea of Stories With 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

rouse-robert

2025 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_001	1	In-Person	Lecture	T, Th	09:30 - 11:00	Rouse, Robert		Section Description Chaucer: Canterbury Tales This course will introduce you to the world of Chaucer and late medieval English literary culture. You will read stories of trickery and adventure, of romance and revelry, as Chaucer’s pilgrims travel through a world rich in satire and social commentary. Chaucer’s characters have left indelible marks on English literature, both in their medieval incarnations and their traces and influence on other texts over the centuries. Jealous carpenters, drunken millers, aggressive wives, and lecherous priests jostle for attention with pious parsons, wealthy monks, and noble knights. The late medieval world is brought to riotous life in Chaucer’s words, constructing an age that – far from being dark – explodes in polycromatic and polyvocal splendour. In this 13-week course we will read (most of) Chaucer’s best-known work, The Canterbury Tales, and by the end of the course you will be comfortable both with reading Middle English and working within the literary culture of the late fourteenth century.

Renaissance Literature

ENGL 347

frelick-nancy

2023 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Literature 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.

Sections (1)

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 Description Madness and Folly in the Renaissance Madness 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

guy-bray-stephen

2024 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Sections (1)

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 Description In 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.

Renaissance Literature - Renaissance Literature

ENGL 347A

frelick-nancy guy-bray-stephen

2025 Winter Term 1/2Credits: 3

Sections (2)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_001	1	In-Person	Lecture	M, W, F	14:00 - 15:00	Frelick, Nancy		Section Description Madness and Folly in the Renaissance Madness 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.
A_002	2	In-Person	Lecture	T, Th	11:00 - 12:30	Guy-bray, Stephen		Section Description One of the literary forms that now seems distinctively early modern to us is the essay. In this course, we’ll read the two greatest essayists of the period: the Frenchman Michel de Montaigne and the Englishman Sir Thomas Browne. Both were highly intelligent, well read, unfailingly curious about more or less everything, and frequently weird. They thought often and well about the world they lived in; we’ll think with them.

Shakespeare - Shakespeare

ENGL 348-

paul-gavin

2023 SummerCredits: 3Pre-requisite

A detailed study of Shakespeare's works. Consult department website for current year's offerings. Prerequisite: Third-year standing and 3 credits from one of (a) 100-level ENGL or (b) 200-level ENGL or (c) ARTS 001 or (d) ASTU 100 or (e) ASTU 101 or (f) WRDS 150 or (g) WRDS 350. 6 credits of 100- and/or 200-level English courses is recommended. Prerequisites must be met by the first day of class or students will be withdrawn.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
-_98A		In-Person	Lecture			Paul, Gavin

Shakespeare

ENGL 348

nardizzi-vincent paul-joseph

2023 Winter Term 1/2Credits: 3

A 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.

Sections (2)

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 Description Shakespeare’s London Our 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 Performance This 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 - Shakespeare

ENGL 348-

paul-gavin

2024 SummerCredits: 6

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
-_98A		In-Person	Lecture			Paul, Gavin

Shakespeare - Shakespeare

ENGL 348A

britton-dennis cavell-richard-anthony paul-gavin

2024 Winter Term 1/2Credits: 3

Sections (3)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Details Data
A_001	1	In-Person	Lecture	T, Th	14:00 - 15:30	Britton, Dennis	Section Description Shakespeare and the Idea of the Nation What 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 Description Mediatic Shakespeare This 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

Shakespeare - Shakespeare

ENGL 348A

paul-gavin

2025 SummerCredits: 3

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_98A		Online	Lecture			Paul, Gavin		Section Description "Author's pen" and "actor's voice": Shakespeare in Text and Performance This 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 - Shakespeare

ENGL 348A

britton-dennis cavell-richard-anthony paul-gavin

2025 Winter Term 1/2Credits: 3

Sections (3)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Details Data
A_001	1	In-Person	Lecture	T, Th	14:00 - 15:30	Britton, Dennis	Section Description Shakespeare and the Idea of the Nation What 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 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 Richard II, 1 Henry IV, 2 Henry IV, 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 Description Mediatic Shakespeare Drawing on the instructor’s Mediatic Shakespeare (UTP 2025), the course provides a unique focus on the plays of Shakesepeare, arguing that many of them dramatise the early modern media shift out of a largely oral culture into a culture that is increasingly literate, a shift exacerbated by the growing prominence of print. The course will introduce students to media theory, as well as to the historical and cultural contexts of Shakespeare’s work.
A_99C		Online	Lecture			Paul, Gavin

Seventeenth-Century Literature

ENGL 349

guy-bray-stephen

2023 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Literature 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.

Sections (1)

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

hodgson-elizabeth

2024 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Sections (1)

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 Description Political Bodies, Social Selves: 17^th century Literature 17^th 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, 17^th 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

hodgson-elizabeth

2023 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

A 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.

Sections (1)

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

guy-bray-stephen

2024 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Sections (1)

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 Description The 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.

Milton - Milton

ENGL 350A

guy-bray-stephen

2025 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Sections (1)

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 Description The only text in this course is Milton’s Paradise Lost. We’ll move through at the leisurely pace of one book per week. 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

potter-tiffany

2023 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

British 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.

Sections (1)

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 Description So much drama! Eighteenth-century Theatre After 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

gooding-rick

2024 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Sections (1)

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 Description Regulating 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.

Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Literature - Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Literature

ENGL 351A

potter-tiffany

2025 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_001	1	In-Person	Lecture	M, W, F	11:00 - 12:00	Potter, Tiffany		Section Description So much drama! Eighteenth-century stage comedy After 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 several types of comedy, from subversive and smutty to heartfelt and sentimental (with a sidequest on mad burlesque), the six plays in this course contributed to cultural dialogues on the relative identities of the nation and the individual through such conflicting elements as heroics, religious critique, brilliant wit, political subversion, and some rather explicit sex. We will consider the ways in which English playwrights and stage practices both queried and reinscribed ideas of sexuality and marriage, gender normativity, intellect and passion, and violence and its burlesques, as well as the ways the theatrical 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—sparklingly witty and pitch dark—on the Restoration’s most lasting genre, witty libertine sex comedy. Or try the quite startling, proto-postmodern comedy with a Nabokov-esque mad editor in Fielding’s Tragedy of Tragedies.

Eighteenth-Century Literature

ENGL 353

gooding-richard

2023 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Intellectual 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.

Sections (1)

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 Description Making Middle-Class Girls: Gender, Class, Education, and Unspoken Anxieties in Eighteenth-Century Writing for Youth Ever 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

potter-tiffany

2024 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Sections (1)

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 Description Popular Culture and the Eighteenth Century Studies 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!

Eighteenth-Century Literature - Eighteenth-Century Literature

ENGL 353A

mallipeddi-ramesh

2025 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Sections (1)

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	Mallipeddi, Ramesh

Romantic Period Literature

ENGL 355

earle-bo dick-alexander

2023 Winter Term 1/2Credits: 3

British 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.

Sections (2)

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 Now Following 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 Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818) Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey Jane Austen, Persuasion Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
002	2		Lecture	M, W, F	12:00 - 13:00	Dick, Alexander		Section Description Romantic Poetry: Space, Environment, Media This 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

tebokkel-nathan dick-alexander

2024 Winter Term 1/2Credits: 3

Sections (2)

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 Description British 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 Description The Music of Romanticism The seraph-band, each waved his hand, No voice did they impart, No voice; but oh! The silence sank, Like music on my heart. --Coleridge, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (496-99) 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.

Romantic Period Literature - Romantic Period Literature

ENGL 355A

dick-alexander

2025 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Sections (1)

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	Dick, Alexander		Section Description The Music of Romanticism The seraph-band, each waved his hand, No voice did they impart, No voice; but oh! The silence sank, Like music on my heart. Coleridge, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (496-99) Songs were among the most popular media of the period in British literary history we now know as the “Romantic” (1780-1830), but British Romanticism is rarely considered to have been a musical phenomenon. This course corrects that oversight. By way 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 examine the ways 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. We will also contemplate the importance of music to Romanticism’s political impulses and to explore how poetic music opens up questions of feeling, environment, volition, desire, identity, race, sexuality, personal growth, and social order. Primary readings will feature poems by Charlotte Smith, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Mary Robinson, William Blake, Thomas Moore, and Laetitia Elizabeth Landon (LEL). Writing assignments will encourage students to extend their creative, critical, and research skills. No previous education, skill, or talent in music is necessary to succeed in this course—but enjoying music and being open to its spirit and effects will definitely help.

Early Canadian Writing - Early Canadian Writing

ENGL 360A

antwi-phanuel

2024 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Pre-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.

Sections (1)

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		Section Description This course in early Canadian writing offers an introduction to some significant works in Canadian literary culture in English from its emergence in pre-Confederation colonial literature to its development until the end of the World War I. We will ask, how has Canada’s particular colonial history shaped what has been recognised as Canadian literature and culture? How have settlement patterns, geographical features, or political structures affected cultural production in Canada? With these questions in mind, the themes we will address in this course include: exploration, colonization and settlement; Indigenous and First Nations sovereignty; English-French relations; issues of race, class, gender and sexuality; literature and the telling of history; Canadian literary regionalism. We will address these themes and many other questions about the relationship between literature and national identification in an historically and culturally contextualised survey of selected English-Canadian poets, essayists, and writers of fiction.

U.S. Literature to 1890

ENGL 361

chapman-mary-ann

2023 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Fiction, 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.

Sections (1)

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 Description This 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: Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jeremy McCarter, Hamilton: The Revolution Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay “Self-Reliance” (1841) Selections from Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself Emily Dickinson’s selected poems Henry David Thoreau’s memoir, Walden (1854) Herman Melville’s novella, Benito Cereno (1852) in Billy Budd, Bartleby , and Other Stories Harriet Jacobs’ autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) Sui Sin Far’s memoir, “Leaves from the Mental Portfolio of an Eurasian” (1909) Elizabeth Jordan’s ed. Composite novel The Sturdy Oak (1917) Ava Chin, Mott Street: A Chinese American Family’s Story of Exclusion and Homecoming (2023)

U.S. Literature to 1890 - U.S. Literature to 1890

ENGL 361A

zeitlin-michael

2025 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_003	2	In-Person	Lecture	M, W, F	14:00 - 15:00	Zeitlin, Michael		Section Description Some Versions of American Gothic Authors may include Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Frederick Douglass, Henry James, William Faulkner, Nella Larsen, Emily Dickinson, Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, Cormac McCarthy, Sylvia Plath, Kate Chopin, and J. D. Salinger. Their works trace the sources of American darkness to the realities of a violent history represented in sometimes forthright but more often in formally vexed and psychologically distorted ways. Students will write short essays in class; engage in discussion and exchange in the classroom; do informal close readings (aloud); and write one longer take-home essay. There will also be a final exam. Please note: this course is resolutely unfriendly to AI tools and CHATGPT etc. The confirmed reading list will posted by November 2025.

Victorian Period Literature - Victorian Period Literature

ENGL 362-

baxter-gisele

2023 SummerCredits: 3Pre-requisite

British and Global literature, 1832-1901, with an emphasis on genre or special topics. Consult department website for current year's offerings. Prerequisite: Third-year standing and 3 credits from one of (a) 100-level ENGL or (b) 200-level ENGL or (c) ARTS 001 or (d) ASTU 100 or (e) ASTU 101 or (f) WRDS 150 or (g) WRDS 350. 6 credits of 100- and/or 200-level English courses is recommended. Prerequisites must be met by the first day of class or students will be withdrawn.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
-_921		In-Person	Lecture	T, Th	14:00 - 17:00	Baxter, Gisele

Victorian Period Literature

ENGL 362

dalziel-pamela earle-bo

2023 Winter Term 1/2Credits: 3

British 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.

Sections (2)

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 Description Popular 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.
002	2		Lecture	M, W, F	9:00 - 10:00	Earle, Bo

Victorian Period Literature - Victorian Period Literature

ENGL 362-

baxter-gisele

2024 SummerCredits: 3

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
-_921		In-Person	Lecture	T, Th	14:00 - 17:00	Baxter, Gisele

Victorian Period Literature - Victorian Period Literature

ENGL 362A

dalziel-pamela bose-sarika

2024 Winter Term 1/2Credits: 3

Sections (2)

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 Description Middlemarch and Jane Eyre When 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 Description Victorian Literature for Children This 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.

Victorian Period Literature - Victorian Period Literature

ENGL 362A

baxter-gisele

2025 SummerCredits: 3

Ghosts 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…

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_921		In-Person	Lecture	T, Th	14:00 - 17:00	Baxter, Gisele

Victorian Period Literature - Victorian Period Literature

ENGL 362A

mackie-gregory

2025 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_001	2	In-Person	Lecture	M, W, F	11:00 - 12:00	Mackie, Gregory		Section Description The Victorian Novel “The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.” – Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest In this section we will explore the social, aesthetic, and economic contexts that informed the nineteenth century’s most popular genre, the novel. Despite its relative predominance, the Victorian novel is more diverse than monolithic, and we will be paying close attention to a variety of nineteenth-century fictional modes, including social comedy, realism, detective fiction, and the gothic. PLEASE NOTE: reading in advance is STRONGLY ENCOURAGED. Victorian novels are not known for their brevity. Reading List Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights Elizabeth Gaskell, Cranford Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d’Urbervilles Evaluation Informed Participation: 10% Regular Reading Quizzes: 10% Midterm: 20% Term Paper: 30% Final Exam: 30%

Nineteenth-Century Literature

ENGL 364

bose-sarika

2023 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

British 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.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
99C	2		Lecture			Bose, Sarika		Section Description A World of Shadows and Monsters: Imagining the Supernatural in Victorian Literature This 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

roukema-aren

2024 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Sections (1)

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 Description The Origins of Science Fiction This 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.

Nineteenth-Century Literature - Nineteenth-Century Literature

ENGL 364A

dalziel-pamela

2025 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_001	2	In-Person	Lecture	T, Th	14:00 - 15:30	Dalziel, Pamela		Section Description The Victorian Fairy Tale: Text and Image “What is the use of a book,” thought Alice, “without pictures or conversations?” During the Victorian period there were more illustrated books and periodicals in circulation than ever before. Publishers exploited the power of the visual to attract readers, commissioning illustrators who were as well known, sometimes better known, than the authors. The illustrations often attracted as much attention—and, yes, sometimes more attention—than the texts, and represent the earliest published responses to the literary works. In this course we will explore the relationship between text and image in a selection of Victorian fairy tales, both original tales and rewritings of traditional tales. How do the illustrations define the literary texts? To what extent do the illustrations reinscribe, revise, and/or subvert the assumptions, both aesthetic and ideological (e.g., with respect to gender, race, class, sexuality, mental and physical ability, the environment, ethics, religion, education, aesthetics, etc.), implicit in the tales and in our—and the Victorians’—readings of them? Approximately half of our classes will take place in UBC Library’s Rare Books and Special Collections where we will work with early editions of the tales and discuss them in relation to Victorian print culture. We will ask such questions as: To what extent does the dominance of George Cruikshank’s designs for the Fairy Library obscure his intention to promote the temperance movement? How does reading Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in the first edition, for which the placement of the illustrations was carefully planned by both John Tenniel and Lewis Carroll, influence the interpretation of the text? How do the binding, cover design, and decorations and illustrations by Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon define Oscar Wilde’s A House of Pomegranates as a work of the Aesthetic movement and/or a collection of fairy tales? Our illustrated tales John Ruskin and Richard Doyle, The King of the Golden River George Cruikshank, “Hop-o’my-Thumb and the Seven-League Boots” and “Cinderella and the Glass Slipper” Lewis Carroll and John Tenniel, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland Christina Rossetti and D. G. Rossetti, “Goblin Market” Christina Rossetti and Arthur Hughes, Speaking Likenesses George MacDonald and Arthur Hughes, “The Light Princess” Mary de Morgan and William de Morgan, “A Toy Princess” Mary de Morgan and Walter Crane, “The Necklace of Princess Fiorimonde” Oscar Wilde, Walter Crane, and Jacomb Hood, “The Happy Prince” Oscar Wilde, Ricketts, and C. H. Shannon, “The Birthday of the Infanta” Evelyn Sharp and Mabel Dearmer, “The Boy who Looked Like a Girl” Kenneth Grahame, Maxfield Parrish, and E. H. Shepard, “The Reluctant Dragon” Nesbit and H. R. Millar, “The Prince, Two Mice, and Some Kitchen-Maids” and “Melisande: Or, Long and Short Division” Links to digitized editions of our illustrated tales will be posted in UBC Library Online Course Reserves. If you would like to purchase a twenty-first-century edition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland with a helpful introduction and notes, I highly recommend the Broadview edition (print copy, eBook). The following editions are also excellent, though we will only be discussing a few of the tales that they include: George MacDonald, The Princess and the Goblin and Other Fairy Tales (Broadview); Oscar Wilde, The Complete Short Stories (Oxford World’s Classics); and Victorian Fairy Tales, edited by Michael Newton (Oxford World’s Classics).

Modernist Literature

ENGL 365

baxter-gisele-marie paltin-judith

2023 Winter Term 1/2Credits: 3

Literary 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.

Sections (2)

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 Description Haunted 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 Description Some 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

baxter-gisele paltin-judith

2024 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Sections (2)

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 Description Haunted 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 Description Modern Literature Some 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.

Modernist Literature - Modernist Literature

ENGL 365A

paltin-judith

2025 Winter TermCredits: 3

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_99C		Online	Lecture			Paltin, Judith		Section Description Modernist Literature Some descriptions of modernism are bloodless abstractions about formal experimentation, academic disruption, and modernist reaction against a too-rigid bourgeois 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 peoples, cultures and languages, and other places. Topics include Decadence, the New Woman, Expressionism, Dada, Manifesto Modernism, New Objectivity, Impressionism, the Surreal and Psychoanalytic, Gesamtkunstwerk and Encyclopedism, Minimalism, Montage, Technological Moderns, Graphic Modernisms. Writers include Stein, H.D., Loy, Conrad, Woolf, Joyce, Pound, Eliot, O’Casey, Beckett, Barnes, Stevens, Larsen, Rhys, others.

Twentieth-Century Literature

ENGL 366

paltin-judith

2023 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Fiction, 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.

Sections (1)

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 Description Modern Novels and Contemporary Crises: Trans/historical Approaches English 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.

Twentieth-Century Literature - Twentieth-Century Literature

ENGL 366A

inver-reed

2024 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Sections (1)

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 Description English 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.

U.S. Literature from 1890

ENGL 368

zeitlin-michael

2023 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Literature 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.

Sections (1)

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	Zeitlin, Michael		Section Description Eros and Death in the Modern American Novel Kate Chopin, The Awakening (1899) Willa Cather, A Lost Lady (1923) F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925) Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises (1926) Nella Larsen, Passing (1929) William Faulkner, The Wild Palms (1939) 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

severs-jeffrey

2024 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Sections (1)

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	Severs, Jeffrey		Section Description Contemporary U.S. Fiction This 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: Don DeLillo, Libra (1988); Thomas Pynchon, Vineland (1990); Toni Morrison, Paradise (1997); Jennifer Egan, The Keep (2006); Chang-rae Lee, On Such a Full Sea (2014)

U.S. Literature from 1890 - U.S. Literature from 1890

ENGL 368A

severs-jeffrey

2025 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Sections (1)

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	Severs, Jeffrey		Section Description Fifty Years of U.S. Fiction This course will immerse students in major U.S. novels of the 1970s to the 2020s, including some very recently published work. For an eclectic reading list our topics of interest will be likewise eclectic, but some subjects for examination will include the depth of racialized suffering in U.S. history; the legacy of wars and imperial struggle in Vietnam, Iraq, Hawaii, Philadelphia, and elsewhere; and the ongoing use of genres of the detective, the spy, the road, horror, and more. Texts likely to be included (subject to change): Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon (1977); Tim O’Brien, Going After Cacciato (1979); Joan Didion, Democracy (1984); John Edgar Wideman, Philadelphia Fire (1990); Don DeLillo, Point Omega (2010); Thomas Pynchon, Shadow Ticket (2025).

Literatures and Cultures of Africa and/or the Middle East

ENGL 370

james-suzanne

2023 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Literary 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.

Sections (1)

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	James, Suzanne		Section Description Cross-listed with AFST 370-001 Post-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.

Literatures and Cultures of Africa and/or the Middle East - Literatures and Cultures of Africa and/or the Middle East

ENGL 370A

akinwole-tolulope

2024 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Literary 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. Credit will be granted for only one of ENGL_V 370 or AFST_V 370. Equivalency: AFST_V 370.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_001	2	In-Person	Lecture	M, W, F	11:00 - 12:00	Akinwole, Tolulope		Section Description African Climate Fiction What is African climate fiction? How does this genre of African literature and film engage the current climate crisis of our planet? What aesthetic strategies do African literature and film deploy to comment on the ongoing climate crisis? To engage these questions, we will start by studying the configurations of human and other-than-human actors in African epics and folktales as well as other foundational literary texts selected from across the continent. Drawing on this Africanist account of planetary engagement, we will then explore key terms in African environmentalism and climate fiction as we define fiction broadly to include film and social narratives. We will then explore how African cultural actors’ investigations of multispecies engagements, the ethics of resource use, the so-called Anthropocene, and the concept of the planetary unsettle the colonial impulses that often lurk in the environmentalisms and environmental policies of Global North political and academic frames. We will consider the sorts of “environmental tragedies” that Western environmentalism links to Africa such as the environmental degradation in the Niger-Delta and African civil wars stoked to serve cold war actors’ resource needs. Just as importantly, and contesting the environmental affects and policies of Global North actors, we will also explore how diverse African cultural imaginaries challenge the Western narrative of environmental tragedy and that narrative’s weak capacity to track the connections of rural and urban spaces, and the logics of extractivism that often ride on Western rhetoric of environmentalisms and climate change.

Literatures and Cultures of Africa and/or the Middle East - Literatures and Cultures of Africa and/or the Middle East

ENGL 370A

james-suzanne

2025 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Literary 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. Credit will be granted for only one of ENGL_V 370 or AFST_V 370. Equivalency: AFST_V 370.

Sections (1)

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	James, Suzanne		Section Description Post-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 Playing in the Light, Zakes Mda’s The Heart of Redness, Phaswane Mpe’s Welcome to Our Hillbrow, Kopano Matlwa's Coconut and Sello Diuker’s Thirteen Cents.

Asian Canadian and/or Asian Transnational Studies

ENGL 371

kim-christine

2023 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

An interdisciplinary engagement with literature in the context of Asian migrations in Canadian and other transnational locations. Consult Department for current year's offerings. Credit will be granted for up to 6 credits of ENGL 371 and/or 480. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
001	2		Lecture	T, Th	9:30 - 11:00	Kim, Christine		Section Description The Cold War in Asia: Asian American and Asian Canadian Responses The period post-WWII until the 1980s is conventionally understood in the West as the Cold War. Marked by events such as the Cuban missile crisis, the war in Vietnam, and the fall of the Berlin Wall, these years are remembered as a tense time when it seemed that the conflict between communist and capalist democratic ideologies might result in the outbreak of nuclear war. At the same time, it is important to remember that these same tensions played out very differently in Asia and took the form of multiple bloody and violent wars. This course will return to this historical period in order to rethink what is conventionally remembered in the West as a conflict between the US and the USSR as a struggle that also involved—and, indeed, was staged in—Asia. By reading novels, a novella, poetry, and a memoir that move us through the Chinese civil war, the Korean war, the wars in Southeast Asia, and North Korea, we will explore the legacies of Cold War logics and the afterlife of the wars in Asia for Canadians and Americans. How do these contradictory memories and competing historical narratives shape how Asians in North America imagine themselves and are understood by non-Asians? How does what critic Jodi Kim calls the “protracted afterlife” of the Cold War continue to influence current conversations about migration, citizenship, and global events and politics? We will contextualize our discussions of these literary texts with critical and theoretical material and documentary films in order to think critically about these competing cultural representations and the narratives they produce. Required Readings (subject to change): Samantha Lan Chang, Hunger Chang-rae Lee, Native Speaker Madeleine Thien, Dogs at the Perimeter Souvankham Thammavongsa, Found Y-Dang Troeung, Landbridge Additional theoretical readings will be available via UBC Library. Course Evaluation (subject to change) Participation - 10% Reading Quizzes (2x5%) - 10% Close Reading Essay (600 words) - 15% Creative Assignment (response + 600 words) - 25% Research Essay Proposal - 5% Research Essay (1800 words) - 35%

Asian Canadian and/or Asian Transnational Studies - Asian Canadian and/or Asian Transnational Studies

ENGL 371A

kim-christine

2024 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_001	1	In-Person	Lecture	T, Th	09:30 - 11:00	Kim, Christine		Section Description The Cold War in Asia: Asian American and Asian Canadian Responses The period post-WWII until the 1980s is conventionally understood in the West as the Cold War. Marked by events such as the Cuban missile crisis, the war in Vietnam, and the fall of the Berlin Wall, these years are remembered as a tense time when it seemed that the conflict between communist and capalist democratic ideologies might result in the outbreak of nuclear war. At the same time, it is important to remember that these same tensions played out very differently in Asia and took the form of multiple bloody and violent wars. This course will return to this historical period in order to rethink what is conventionally remembered in the West as a conflict between the US and the USSR as a struggle that also involved—and, indeed, was staged in—Asia. By reading novels, a novella, poetry, and a memoir that move us through the Chinese civil war, the Korean war, the wars in Southeast Asia, and North Korea, we will explore the legacies of Cold War logics and the afterlife of the wars in Asia for Canadians and Americans. How do these contradictory memories and competing historical narratives shape how Asians in North America imagine themselves and are understood by non-Asians? How does what critic Jodi Kim calls the “protracted afterlife” of the Cold War continue to influence current conversations about migration, citizenship, and global events and politics? We will contextualize our discussions of these literary texts with critical and theoretical material and documentary films in order to think critically about these competing cultural representations and the narratives they produce. Required Readings (subject to change): Samantha Lan Chang, Hunger Chang-rae Lee, Native Speaker Madeleine Thien, Dogs at the Perimeter Souvankham Thammavongsa, Found Y-Dang Troeung, Landbridge Additional theoretical readings will be available via UBC Library. Course Evaluation (subject to change) Participation - 10% Reading Quizzes (2x5%) - 10% Close Reading Essay (600 words) - 15% Creative Assignment (response + 600 words) - 25% Research Essay Proposal - 5% Research Essay (1800 words) - 35%

Asian Canadian and/or Asian Transnational Studies - Asian Canadian and/or Asian Transnational Studies

ENGL 371A

kim-christine

2025 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_001	1	In-Person	Lecture	T, Th	09:30 - 11:00	Kim, Christine		Section Description The Cold War in Asia: Asian American and Asian Canadian Responses The period post-WWII until the 1980s is conventionally understood in the West as the Cold War. Marked by events such as the Cuban missile crisis, the war in Vietnam, and the fall of the Berlin Wall, these years are remembered as a tense time when it seemed that the conflict between communist and capalist democratic ideologies might result in the outbreak of nuclear war. At the same time, it is important to remember that these same tensions played out very differently in Asia and took the form of multiple bloody and violent wars. This course will return to this historical period in order to rethink what is conventionally remembered in the West as a conflict between the US and the USSR as a struggle that also involved—and, indeed, was staged in—Asia. By reading novels, a novella, poetry, and a memoir that move us through the Chinese civil war, the Korean war, the wars in Southeast Asia, and North Korea, we will explore the legacies of Cold War logics and the afterlife of the wars in Asia for Canadians and Americans. How do these contradictory memories and competing historical narratives shape how Asians in North America imagine themselves and are understood by non-Asians? How does what critic Jodi Kim calls the “protracted afterlife” of the Cold War continue to influence current conversations about migration, citizenship, and global events and politics? We will contextualize our discussions of these literary texts with critical and theoretical material and documentary films in order to think critically about these competing cultural representations and the narratives they produce.

Canadian Literature

ENGL 372

inniss-scott diabo-gage

2023 Winter Term 1/2Credits: 3

Writing and culture in Canada with texts taught in context. Consult department website for current year's offerings. Credit will be granted for up to 6 credits of ENGL 372 and/or 470. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.

Sections (2)

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	Inniss, Scott
99C	2		Lecture			Diabo, Gage		Section Description In this course, we will be reading, thinking, writing, and speaking about Canada and Canadian literature. These are contested terms, concepts, and “territories.” What is Canada? How did it get this way? What is Canadian literature, or "Canlit"? What is its history and present context? Why do some writers want to “break up” with Canlit, or call it a “dumpster fire”? We'll be reading and listening to poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and interviews; watching film and video clips; writing discussion board posts and essays; and developing creative projects.

Canadian Literature - Canadian Literature

ENGL 372A

mccormack-brendan hunt-dallas

2024 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Sections (2)

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	Mccormack, Brendan		Section Description Storying Land in Canadian Literatures Hidden in wonder and snow, or sudden with summer, This land stares at the sun in a huge silence Endlessly repeating something we cannot hear. Inarticulate, arctic. --F.R. Scott, "Laurentian Shield” (1945) Now, I’m going to tell you something This stump—you think it’s a stump— but that’s my grandfather. He’s very, very old man. Old, old man. He can talk to you. --Harry Robinson (Syilx), "You Think It’s a Stump” (1992) The distinction between reading the land as a speechless space of "huge silence” and identifying with it as a living relation reflects differences between Western and Indigenous approaches to land and ecology. Land has long been central to the idea of "Canadian literature,” whose historical formation was supported by writers mapping onto ostensibly "new” territory beliefs about the sublime beauty or terror of a vast, unpopulated landscape—ideas like "wilderness” and "the North” that became tied to national identity, supported the work of "developing” lands and resources, and remain powerfully sedimented in national thought. These dominant narratives displaced not only the storied knowledge of Indigenous peoples who have lived on and with the land for millennia, but other complex relations to place and environment expressed by diverse peoples within Canada’s physical and social landscapes. In this class we will seek to understand how representations of land and non-human "nature” in Canadian literatures are mediated by these differences and implicated in the historical production of cultural sensibilities that have naturalized the claims to land and belonging of some while disavowing those of others. How does literature claim land? How has Canadian literature functioned as a discourse in the stabilization and destabilization of settler-colonial territoriality? Can literature write the land without exploiting it as a resource? How are contemporary writers re-storying the land and human relations with it in terms of decolonial and environmental justice? In this course we’ll take up these and other questions as we develop a historical perspective on the complex, political relationship between literature and the land beneath our feet. We’ll explore a range of Canadian texts from settler, Indigenous, and diasporic writers—crossing multiple genres, spanning the early 20th century to the present, and ranging from the Pacific coast to the Arctic—that invite us to consider how land and literature intersect with (among other concerns) the politics of place, colonialism and decolonial resurgence, (im)migration, race, gender, urban space, ecocriticism, and environmental activism. In particular, our selections will invite us to consider what it means to read the land from our current location in Vancouver and BC, sites of natural beauty as well as complex struggles over land, sovereignty, and displacement. Assignments are likely to include one short reflection essay, one research paper, a creative/critical project, a group presentation, and a final exam.
A_99C		Online	Lecture			Hunt, Dallas		Section Description Indigenous Futurisms In this course we will consider the intersections between critical theory and Indigenous Studies to explore the notion of Indigenous futurisms. To do so, we will read and discuss a selection of diverse literary and cultural texts that engage with both critical theory and Indigenous thought and practice in nuanced and creative ways, from short stories and poetry, to films and art installations. This will include examinations of historical and contemporary texts, tensions, and dialogues, which is intended to foster an understanding of the broader social, political, and historical contexts from which these critical and theoretical productions emerge. We will investigate not only engagements between Indigenous and “Western" thought, but also between Indigenous and other non-western thinkers, including from the traditions of Black studies and other anti-colonial traditions of critical analysis.

Canadian Literature - Canadian Literature

ENGL 372A

moss-laura mccormack-brendan

2025 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Sections (2)

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	Moss, Laura		Section Description Canadian Literature: Reading the Climate Emergency Nature has always been at the core of Canadian artistic production. Over the past two hundred years, however, creative responses to the environment have changed dramatically. In the past few decades, with the increasing recognition of the climate emergency, artists are less apt to either passively address the land or render it sentimentally, and more apt to imagine an altered state of environmental change, even degradation. Contemporary writers often look at the effects of human interaction, resource extraction, and economic exploitation on Canadian land and waters. One strand of nature writing employs a poetics of warning as writers speculate on the effects of the tar sands on global warming, the relationships between Indigenous land claims and strip mining, the impacts of oil transportation on British Columbian riverbeds, or the consequences of the genetic modification of crop plants on prairie ecosystems. In parallel to the creative work, much scholarship has turned to discussions of human/non-human interaction, bioregional studies, postcolonial ecocriticism. In this course we will read critical work about the environment alongside fiction, poetry, drama, film, and visual art produced in Canada.
A_99A		Online	Lecture			Mccormack, Brendan

Indigenous Literature

ENGL 373

hunt-dallas mccormack-brendan

2023 Winter Term 1/2Credits: 3

Indigenous writing and cultural expression in national and/or international contexts. Consult department website for current year's offerings. Credit will be granted for up to 6 credits of ENGL 373 and/or 476. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.

Sections (2)

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	Hunt, Dallas		Section Description NDN Time: Past and Presents Erased, Futures Foreclosed This course will examine how different populations stake particular claims to the future, and the political, existential, epistemological, and ontological ramifications of these claims. This work is interested and attentive to the ways in which Indigenous peoples are often written out of the futures that are imagined in mainstream speculative and science fiction texts, while also remaining as a spectral, disavowed presence in contemporary life. In response, this course foregrounds Indigenous futurisms, the otherwise worlds they propose, and the radical futurities they cultivate, while grappling with the present colonial conditions that we must contend with in order to make these futurities vibrant realities. This course intends to foster deepened engagement with the topic of Indigenous futurities, and its relationship to contemporary social and ecological challenges in settler colonial societies. It will result in varying engagements with Indigenous notions of time, kinship, change, and continuity. These notions offer different modes of imagining possible shared futures than are often presented in mainstream texts. The course will feature engagements with scholars, artists, and writers working within the fields of speculative futures, as well as scholars working on ideas of settler replacement, elimination, and self-Indigenization This course, however, differs from these accounts by situating and framing these issues through a futurist lens, and unpacking how depictions of what José Estaban Muñoz (2009) describes as a “forward- dawning futurity” comes to bear on the present and the political, social, and artistic projects in which many settlers are invested. Finally, This course will foreground the voices of Indigenous peoples, especially as it pertains to articulations of the future for Indigenous, Black, and racialized communities. In doing so, we will aim to decentre settler colonial narratives, and centre the radical alternatives Indigenous futurities have to offer.
002	2		Lecture	M, W, F	12:00 - 13:00	Mccormack, Brendan

Indigenous Literature

ENGL 373

hunt-dallas justice-daniel

2024 Winter Term 1/2Credits: 3

Sections (2)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
001	1	In-Person	Lecture	M, W, F	15:00 - 16:00	Hunt, Dallas
002	2	In-Person	Lecture	T, Th	11:00 - 12:30	Justice, Daniel		Section Description Not Vanishing: Indigenous Literary Theory and Criticism The past forty years have seen significant methodological and theoretical shifts in the scholarly field of Indigenous literary studies, moving from ethnographically inflected outsider analyses of culture and identity or as extensions of nation-state literatures to Indigenous-grounded concerns of peoplehood, land, language, and sovereignty in intellectual and artistic production. The range of literary forms, genres, issues, and regions represented in the scholarship has increased dramatically as well, as has attention to Indigenous voices in the archive, becoming more intentionally international in scope, culturally specific in concern, and expansive in consideration of genre and form across time and space. The demographics of the field have changed, too, now centring Indigenous thinkers among the field’s major theorists and recognizing imaginative experimentation alongside continuity of Indigenous traditions and grounded knowledge. This course will survey the field’s key intellectual and creative genealogies through focused analysis of two novels: Almanac of the Dead, Leslie Marmon Silko’s sprawling post-apocalyptic fever dream, and Real Ones, katherena vermette’s more intimate study of a Métis family’s grappling with identity politics. Course readings: Silko, Almanac of the Dead Vermette, Real Ones Macfarlane and Ruffo, Introduction ot Indigenous Literary Criticism in Canada Online resources

Indigenous Literature

ENGL 373

mccormack-brendan hunt-dallas

2025 Winter Term 1/2Credits: 3

Sections (2)

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	Mccormack, Brendan		Section Description *Stories in New Skins: Transformation, Adaptation, and Innovation in Indigenous Literatures* In Stories in a New Skin: Approaches to Inuit Literature, scholar Keavy Martin turns to a recurring trope of transformation in Inuit stories—humans and animals exchanging their skins— to conceptualize the inherent adaptability of Inuit intellectual traditions. This course, adapting Martin’s metaphor and extending its scope to a wide range of literary arts from northern Turtle Island (Canada), will examine a variety of Indigenous storytelling cultures through the prisms of transformation, adaptation, and innovation. Transformations are a prominent feature in many Indigenous cosmologies and narrative traditions, though our focus will not be (primarily) on instances of transformation within stories. Rather, this course will invite us to explore the political, cultural, and aesthetic questions that arise when we consider the various ways that Indigenous stories themselves are, or have been, transformed, adapted, and (re)published in new forms, genres, and media. How do stories change their “skins,” and why? What forces and motivations propel transformation or adaptation? The metaphor of changing skins is neither benign nor simply celebratory; it has complex ties to both renewal and violence, generative innovation and destructive disfiguration. On one hand, Canada’s literary and publishing history has often subjected Indigenous writers, texts, and knowledges to appropriation and harmful editing practices that have transformed or distorted Indigenous narratives to suit dominant ideals. On the other, and despite the eliminatory efforts of settler-colonialism—including its fictions that delimit “authentic” Indigenous cultures to a static, unchanged past—Indigenous literary artists continue to make tradition new, storying vibrant living cultures in diverse genres and technologies of representation. With this ambivalence in mind, we’ll approach a historically and generically diverse selection of creation stories, orature, life-writing, fiction, poetry, animation, comics, film, and new media to consider the many new “skins” and remarkable breadth of contemporary Indigenous narrative traditions in Canada. From the publishing transformations of Maria Campbell’s pathclearing autobiography Halfbreed (1973) to the digital sci-fi retelling of the Haudenosaunee creation story in Skawennati’s “She Falls for Ages” (2017), our texts will prompt us to critically analyze, rigorously discuss, and creatively engage the possibilities and discomforts of transformation as stories adapt, write back, reimagine, and remediate Indigenous pasts, presents, and futures.
002	2	In-Person	Lecture	T, Th	11:00 - 12:30	Hunt, Dallas		Section Description Indigenous Futurisms In this course we will consider the intersections between critical theory and Indigenous Studies to explore the notion of Indigenous futurisms. To do so, we will read and discuss a selection of diverse literary and cultural texts that engage with both critical theory and Indigenous thought and practice in nuanced and creative ways, from short stories and poetry, to films and art installations. This will include examinations of historical and contemporary texts, tensions, and dialogues, which is intended to foster an understanding of the broader social, political, and historical contexts from which these critical and theoretical productions emerge. We will investigate not only engagements between Indigenous and “Western" thought, but also between Indigenous and other non-western thinkers, including from the traditions of Black studies and other anti-colonial traditions of critical analysis.

Post-colonial Literature

ENGL 374

ho-janice

2023 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

World literature in English focusing on decolonization and anti-colonial thought. Consult department website for current year's offerings. Credit will be granted for up to 6 credits of ENGL 374 and/or 478. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
001	2		Lecture	T, Th	14:00 - 15:30	Ho, Janice		Section Description Nationalism and Globalization in Postcolonial Literature The era of decolonization and postcolonial independence in the second half of the twentieth century heralded the arrival of multiple new nation-states on the global stage. This course will survey key postcolonial texts to think about the politics of nationalism: how did nationalism fuel anti-colonial and pro-independence movements? What kinds of political hopes and promises were invested in the formation of new nation-states? How did nationalism mask social and gender inequities in these new political entities? And how did the forces of globalization and economic neocolonialism continue to shape the histories of these nation-states, even as these countries achieved political independence? To keep a tighter literary, political, and geographical focus, it is likely that the reading list will be drawn to a large extent from African literature. Texts we may read include: Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness; Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart; Ayi Kwei Armah’s The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born; Ngugi Wa Thiong’O’s Petals of Blood, Ama Ata Aidoo’s Our Sister Killjoy, Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions; Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place; J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace; and Taiye Selasi’s Ghana Must Go. Assessment will take the form of regular reading quizzes, active participation, essays, and in-class exams.

Post-colonial Literature - Post-colonial Literature

ENGL 374A

culbert-john

2024 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_001	2	In-Person	Lecture	T, Th	14:00 - 15:30	Culbert, John		Section Description Nostalgia in Post-colonial literature This course introduces students to post-colonial studies through key debates in the field and a mixture of classic literary works and more contemporary texts. We will explore how discourses of gender, race and cultural identity are reflected in colonialist narratives, and we will study the ways marginalized voices have challenged the scripts of empire and settler colonialism. The theme of nostalgia, in particular, will allow us to focus on questions of time, history, identity, remembrance, and desire in postcolonial writing. Literary authors to be studied include Joseph Conrad, Derek Walcott and Jamaica Kincaid; critical texts include essays of Edward Said, Paul Gilroy and Gayatri Spivak.

Post-colonial Literature - Post-colonial Literature

ENGL 374A

antwi-phanuel

2025 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_002	1	In-Person	Lecture	M, W, F	13:00 - 14:00	Antwi, Phanuel

Global South Connections

ENGL 375

philip-kavita

2023 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Literary and cultural networks relating to societies in the Global South; may address areas such as colonization, decolonization, nationalism, social movements, forced and voluntary migrations of peoples, cultural hybridity, translation, and globalization. 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.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
001	2		Lecture	T, Th	12:30 - 14:00	Philip, Kavita

Global South Connections - Global South Connections

ENGL 375A

mustary-psyfun

2024 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

This course will be an exploration of disease narratives from and about the Global South, aiming to analyze the intertwinement between the figuration of disease, sedimented histories of colonialism, and radical imagination in select narratives in the context of public health in the Global South. The term “the Global South” gained traction in the wake…

Sections (1)

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	Mustary, Psyfun

Global South Connections - Global South Connections

ENGL 375A

dinat-deena

2025 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_001	2	In-Person	Lecture	T, Th	12:30 - 14:00	Dinat, Deena

Special Topics - Place, Power, Poetics and Narrative Discourse - SPECIAL TOPICS

ENGL 376A

burgess-miranda

2025 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Topics will vary from year to year. Consult the program website (https://english.ubc.ca/courses/) for further details.

Sections (1)

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	Burgess, Miranda		Section Description Reading here and away together This course builds student competencies in methods and practices of literary reading in conjunction with considerations of the situatedness of reading on the west coast of what is currently called Canada, in what is currently called BC and Vancouver, at UBC, and on unceded xwməθkwəy̓əm land. We will first develop theoretical vocabularies to aid us in reading “texts from elsewhere” in the context and setting of “here” and “texts from here.” We will consider a literary text from elsewhere in conjunction with a cluster of short texts by Musqueam and local Indigenous authors in dialogue with settler, diasporic, and Indigenous theories of mobilities, displacements, and understandings of place; continuing histories of settlement, colonization, dwelling, and survivance/surthrivance;relations among global and local spaces; and theories of power and its roles in, and in relation to, these topics. We will also theorize reading in dialogue with theories of reading that importantly complicate western European conceptions of what it means to read a “text” or a “book.” We will then turn to a selection of texts from elsewhere, closely reading these in conjunction with relevant learning resources local to UBC, to Musqueam, and to Vancouver and BC, including texts and learning materials from the Musqueam Nation. Our guiding questions will be: what does it, and what can it, mean, and do, to read, study, and research literature, here, at UBC and at Musqueam, and in the world? How can methods and practices of literary reading, here, best be put into dialogue with Indigenous, diasporic, and settler theories of place, emplacement, mobilities, and power, as well as practices of knowing and storying?

World Literature and Social Movements

ENGL 377

dinat-deena james-suzanne

2023 Winter Term 1/2Credits: 3

Transnational and world literature and art practices that reflect on the conceptual, linguistic and visual aspects of social movements, addressing histories of colonialism, transnational feminist literature and art practices, histories of protest and cultures of resistance. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.

Sections (2)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
002	2		Lecture	M, W, F	10:00 - 11:00	Dinat, Deena		Section Description Moving Images, Moving Texts: Adaptation, Migration, and World Literature “For me Africa is like the seas Melville missed so much.” – Claire Denis on Beau Travail Modernity is defined by movement: movements of people, movements of capital, and the movements of narrative. What possibilities emerge when we bring these movements into conversation? Does the transformation of text into image, or moving image into text, allow us to rethink our relationship to migration, to contemporary history, and to cultural influence? Drawing on a range of texts and films, we’ll look to bring together a range of otherwise distant people, spaces, and times into conversation. How does Herman Melville’s Billy Budd allow Claire Denis to interrogate the remnants of France’s colonial empire in East Africa in Beau Travail? Why might Nicole Krauss’s narrator in “Seeing Ershadi” be convinced that she has glimpsed the lead of Abbas Kiarostami’s Taste of Cherry? Why might Mati Diop transform her own short documentary about the hardships of economic refugees, Atlantiques, into a fantastical love story, Atlantics? Other texts include (subject to change): William Faulkner - Barn Burning Haruki Murakami - Barn Burning Lee Chang-Dong (dir.) - Burning Marjane Satrapi - Persepolis Marjane Satrapi and Winshluss (dir.) – Persepolis Susan Orlean - The Orchid Thief Spike Jonze - Adaptation
99A	1		Lecture			James, Suzanne		Section Description Coming of Age from the Margins: Youth, Migration, and Contemporary World Literature This asynchronous online course draws on a range of texts from around the world to ask how contemporary literature has represented and responded to crucial issues that mark our experience of the 21st century. Focusing on the stories of young protagonists from a diverse range of settings, we will explore how migration shapes what it means to be young in the modern world, and how youth shapes our experiences of migration. Drawing on novels, short stories, and an autobiographical graphic novel, this course encourages students to think about questions of belonging, race, gender, and sexuality beyond the familiar frameworks provided by the nation-state and traditional literary forms. Texts studied include Funny Boy by Shyam Selvadurai, What Strange Paradise by Omar El Akkad, Welcome to Our Hillbrow by Phaswane Mpe, Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi and Binti by Nnedi Okorafor.

World Literature and Social Movements - World Literature and Social Movements

ENGL 377A

dinat-deena james-suzanne

2024 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Sections (2)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_002	2	In-Person	Lecture	M, W, F	10:00 - 11:00	Dinat, Deena		Section Description Moving Images, Moving Texts: Adaptation, Migration, and World Literature “For me Africa is like the seas Melville missed so much.” – Claire Denis on Beau Travail Modernity is defined by movement: movements of people, movements of capital, and the movements of narrative. What possibilities emerge when we bring these movements into conversation? Does the transformation of text into image, or moving image into text, allow us to rethink our relationship to migration, to contemporary history, and to cultural influence? Drawing on a range of texts and films, we’ll look to bring together a range of otherwise distant people, spaces, and times into conversation. How does Herman Melville’s Billy Budd allow Claire Denis to interrogate the remnants of France’s colonial empire in East Africa in Beau Travail? Why might Nicole Krauss’s narrator in “Seeing Ershadi” be convinced that she has glimpsed the lead of Abbas Kiarostami’s Taste of Cherry? Other texts include (subject to change): William Faulkner - Barn Burning Haruki Murakami - Barn Burning Lee Chang-Dong (dir.) - Burning Susan Orlean - The Orchid Thief Spike Jonze – Adaptation Andreas Malm – How to Blow Up a Pipeline Daniel Goldhaber (dir.) – How to Blow Up a Pipeline
A_99A		Online	Lecture			James, Suzanne		Section Description This asynchronous online course draws on a range of texts from around the world to ask how contemporary literature has represented and responded to crucial issues that mark our experience of the 21st century. Focusing on the stories of young protagonists from a diverse range of settings, we will explore how migration shapes what it means to be young in the modern world, and how youth shapes our experiences of migration. Drawing on novels, short stories, and an autobiographical graphic novel, this course encourages students to think about questions of belonging, race, gender, and sexuality beyond the familiar frameworks provided by the nation-state and traditional literary forms. Texts studied include Funny Boy by Shyam Selvadurai What Strange Paradise by Omar El Akkad Welcome to Our Hillbrow by Phaswane Mpe Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi Binti by Nnedi Okorafor

World Literature and Social Movements - World Literature and Social Movements

ENGL 377A

james-suzanne

2025 Winter TermCredits: 3

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_99A		Online	Lecture			James, Suzanne		Section Description Coming of Age from the Margins: Youth, Migration, and Contemporary World Literature This asynchronous online course draws on a range of texts from around the world to ask how contemporary literature has represented and responded to crucial issues that mark our experience of the 21st century. Focusing on the stories of young protagonists from a diverse range of settings, we will explore how migration shapes what it means to be young in the modern world, and how youth shapes our experiences of migration. Drawing on novels, short stories, and an autobiographical graphic novel, this course encourages students to think about questions of belonging, race, gender, and sexuality beyond the familiar frameworks provided by the nation-state and traditional literary forms. Texts studied include Funny Boy by Shyam Selvadurai, What Strange Paradise by Omar El Akkad, Welcome to Our Hillbrow by Phaswane Mpe, Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi and Binti by Nnedi Okorafor.

Contemporary Literature

ENGL 378

severs-jeffrey

2023 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

A variety of genres organized by cultural movements, critical issues, theoretical approaches, and/or geopolitical regions. Consult department website for current year's offerings. Credit will be granted for up to 6 credits of ENGL 378 and/or 474. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
001	1		Lecture	T, Th	11:00 - 12:30	Severs, Jeffrey		Section Description U.S. Fiction of the 1970s This course will examine an under-studied and often misunderstood era in U.S. fiction, asking what kinds of traditions the great writers of the 1970s tapped into, what literary experiments they performed, and why. I will point us to some necessary historical background (on the Vietnam War, on countercultural legacies, on racial relations, on Nixon, etc.), but our main object of curiosity will be the undercurrents of paranoia, disillusionment, and “feel” for the times that these textual artifacts effect. It should be, like all deep reading experiences, a great adventure. Students will participate in discussions and write two analytical essays, each about 1500 words in length, and a final exam. Texts will include: Joan Didion, “Slouching Towards Bethlehem” and “The White Album” (essays); Don DeLillo, End Zone; Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon; Octavia Butler, Kindred; Tim O’Brien, Going After Cacciato; and Joan Didion, Democracy.

Contemporary Literature - Contemporary Literature

ENGL 378A

sharpe-jae

2024 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_001	2	In-Person	Lecture	M, W, F	09:00 - 10:00	Sharpe, Jae		Section Description Metafiction and Ontology in Contemporary American Postmodernism One of the most noticeable (and intimidating) features of postmodern writing is its willingness to engage with pluralistic realities, considering how slippery the distinctions between categories like the real and the artificial can be. In this course, we will examine how different postmodern American writers working in the second half of the twentieth century have employed stylistic choices like metafiction and self-reflexivity as means of examining U.S. culture’s fraught relationship with language in the aftermath of the major historical events of that century. Student writing will involve the application of theory to literary analysis, and students should expect to write two midterm papers and a final essay. Texts are likely to include Joan Didion’s The Last Thing He Wanted, Toni Morrison’s Home, George Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo, Vladimir Nabokov’s Bend Sinister, and Nabokov’s The Luzhin Defense.

Contemporary Literature - Contemporary Literature

ENGL 378A

baxter-gisele

2025 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_001	2	In-Person	Lecture	T, Th	14:00 - 15:30	Baxter, Gisele		Section Description Vampires Among Us “But the Countess herself is indifferent to her own weird authority, as if she were dreaming it. In her dream, she would like to be human; but she does not know if that is possible. The Tarot always shows the same configuration: always she turns up La Papesse, La Mort, La Tour Abolie, wisdom, death, dissolution.” -- Angela Carter, “The Lady of the House of Love” Despite their association with the Victorian Gothic and their implications of ancient lore, vampires’ longevity owes much to their enduring popularity, even among 21st century audiences. Their metaphorical possibilities remain vivid, potent, and diverse. When I decided to write a vampire novel, I set myself the limitations of its being contemporary in setting and secular in worldview, a narrative where its creatures of the night might manage to exist among mortals without being quite so obvious as in many tales of their doings. That process has inspired the basis of this course, where we will examine, in fiction and film, representations of vampires produced in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. While our texts might reference the famous vampire texts of the past (and even engage with characters from them), their worldview is arguably closer to ours, and their settings and characters more familiar to us. The text list will involve 3-4 novels (possibly including but not limited to Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire; Kim Newman, Anno Dracula; Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan, The Strain; and Helen Oyeyemi, White is for Witching), Angela Carter’s short story “The Lady of the House of Love” (from her collection The Bloody Chamber), and 1-2 films (again, likely chosen from though not necessarily limited to Katherine Bigelow’s Near Dark, Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive, Catherine Hardwicke’s adaptation of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight; Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi’s What We Do in the Shadows; possibly even Ridley Scott’s Alien, which according to Daniel Pietersen’s “Spiders and Flies: The Gothic Monsters of Sci-Fi Horror”, is a vampire film owing much to Dracula). Our examination will be situated in critical and theoretical approaches to the Gothic as a contemporary area of representation. Evaluation will tentatively be based on a midterm essay and a term paper (both 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.

Theory: Anti-/De-/Post-Colonization

ENGL 382

al-kassim-dina

2023 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Theoretical work concerned with confronting, resisting and overcoming various forms of colonialism and globalization. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
001	2		Lecture	T, Th	11:00 - 12:30	Al-kassim, Dina

Theory: Anti-/De-/Post-Colonization - Theory: Anti-/De-/Post-Colonization

ENGL 382A

al-kassim-dina

2024 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Sections (1)

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	Al-kassim, Dina

Theory: Anti-/De-/Post-Colonization - Theory: Anti-/De-/Post-Colonization

ENGL 382A

al-kassim-dina

2025 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Sections (1)

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	Al-kassim, Dina

Theory: Space and Displacement - Theory: Space and Displacement

ENGL 384A

cavell-richard-anthony

2024 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Critical theories of space and movement, place and displacement and how these theories reflect on cultural performances, subjectivity and social environment. 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.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_001	1	In-Person	Lecture	M, W, F	11:00 - 12:00	Cavell, Richard Anthony		Section Description Space, Media, Displacement Foundational to the study of media is the concept of extension: mechanical media (such as the automobile) extend the body, while electronic media (such as the computer) extend cognition. The effects of media are thus spatial. As extensions, however, media also displace that which they extend; they are prosthetic in the way that they function. This course examines various intersections of space, media, and displacement, including colonisation, minimalism in art, utterance as outerance, dance as the displacement of movement, digital nomadism, and the new global history. The course will develop the notion of a spatial methodology, arguing that space is a mode of critique. This critical methodology will be applied to three literary texts by student panel presentations at the end of the course.

Theory: Space and Displacement - Theory: Space and Displacement

ENGL 384A

cavell-richard-anthony

2025 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_001	1	In-Person	Lecture	M, W, F	11:00 - 12:00	Cavell, Richard Anthony		Section Description Media Displacement Foundational to the theory of media is the concept of extension: mechanical media (such as the automobile) extend the body, while electronic media (such as the computer) extend cognition. The effects of media are thus spatial. As extensions, however, media also displace that which they extend; they are prosthetic in the way that they function. This course examines various intersections of space, media, and displacement, including colonisation, minimalism in art, utterance as outerance, digital nomadism, and the global history movement. The course will introduce students to the basic elements of media theory, and will develop the notion of a spatial methodology. The course concludes with student panel presentations on novels that explore the intersections of space, media, and displacement.

Theory: Bodies - Theory: Bodies

ENGL 387A

mallipeddi-ramesh

2024 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Theories of corporeality and embodied thought. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.

Sections (1)

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	Mallipeddi, Ramesh		Section Description Bodies: Person, Flesh, Thing The basic premise of the course is that bodies are natural and social, biological and cultural. We have our bodies and we are our bodies. Bodies are both voluntary and involuntary. Our current understanding that the boundaries of one’s self are coextensive with the boundaries of one’s body had its origins in the eighteenth century. Using a broadly historical approach, we will begin with Richardson’s epistolary narrative Pamela and John Cleland’s 1747 pornographic novel Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure to consider bodily privacy and its invasions. From there, we will move on to slavery, judicial torture, and incarceration as systems that reduce persons to things and flesh. Readings: Mary Prince’s slave narrative The History of Mary Prince; Jean Amery’s memoir At the Mind’s Limits; James Baldwin’s If Beale Street Could Talk; and Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow. Finally, to develop the idea that bodies are subject not only to intentional harm, but also to involuntary forces such as sickness or impairment, the class will end with a text on disability. Critical and theoretical excerpts will be drawn from the work of Michael Foucault, Hortense Spillers, Didier Fassin, Elizabeth Hinton, and Jay Bernstein. Requirements: regular attendance and participation; Canvas posts; short essays; and a final essay.

Children's Literature - Children's Literature

ENGL 392-

bose-sarika

2023 SummerCredits: 3Pre-requisite

Genres and texts written for and appropriated by young readers. Consult department website for current year's offerings. Credit will be granted for up to 6 credits of ENGL 392 and/or 468. Prerequisite: Third-year standing and 3 credits from one of (a) 100-level ENGL or (b) 200-level ENGL or (c) ARTS 001 or (d) ASTU 100 or (e) ASTU 101 or (f) WRDS 150 or (g) WRDS 350. 6 credits of 100- and/or 200-level English courses is recommended. Prerequisites must be met by the first day of class or students will be withdrawn.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
-_98A		In-Person	Lecture			Bose, Sarika

Children's Literature

ENGL 392

james-suzanne gooding-richard bose-sarika

2023 Winter Term 1/2Credits: 3

Sections (3)

Section	Term	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Details Data
001	1	Lecture	M, W, F	11:00 - 12:00	James, Suzanne	Section Description Children’s and YA Fiction from Africa and the African Diaspora Children’s literature addressing the lives and concerns of Black youth, both in Africa and the African diaspora, is a flourishing sub-genre. In this course we will explore a range of contemporary texts including Chinua Achebe’s Chike and the River, Akwaeke Emezi’s Pet, Kacen Callender’s Felix Ever After, Lawrence Hill’s Beatrice and Croc Henry, Jason Reynolds’ Long Way Down, Adaobe Tricia Nwaubani’s Buried Beneath the Baobob Tree, Angie Thomas’ The Hate U Give, and Nnedi Okorafor’s Akata Witch. These very diverse texts explore issues of identity, black representation, police violence, trans and queer experience, and include works of realism, fantasy, and a novel in poems. As well as focusing on the core texts, we will engage with theoretical perspectives on children’s literature and YA fiction, and its increasingly fluid contemporary incarnations. Students will be encouraged to develop independent critical responses to both texts and theories. Assessment will include a critical response, an in-class essay, a term paper and a final examination.
003	2	Lecture	M, W, F	14:00 - 15:00	Gooding, Richard	Section Description Posthuman Bodies, Cybernetic Selves: Responses to Technology in Writing for Young Adults “We need to understand that five hundred years of humanism may be coming to an end, as humanism transforms itself into something that we must helplessly call posthumanism.” --Ihab Hassan, "Prometheus as Performer" What happens when young adult literature, which has traditionally guided adolescent readers through the task of identity formation, confronts technologies that trouble long-standing assumptions about what it means to be a self—or even a human? We will explore this question by examining recent novels, many of them dystopias, in which non-human entities lay claim to selfhood and humans are surgically, mechanically, and computationally altered in ways that call into question the very idea of human nature. Along the way, we will consider the relationship between young adult fiction and what Ihab Hassan, in an essay almost everyone interested in the topic eventually ends up quoting, called posthumanism. We will also take some opportunities to consider own relationship to--and status as--posthuman beings. Readings: Readings will include Madeleine L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time; Osamu Tezuka, “The Birth of Astro Boy”; Peter Dickinson, Eva; Neal Shusterman, Unwind; Robin Wasserman, Frozen; M.T. Anderson, Feed; Bernard Beckett, Genesis (2006); Robert Venditti and Brett Weldele, The Surrogates (2006)
99A	1	Lecture			Bose, Sarika	Section Description English 392 is a 14-week course that will guide you in the study and approaches to some classic Western texts and approaches to children's literature. The focus will be on British fantasy literature, by authors such as Gaiman, Tolkien, Pullman and Rowling, but we will also explore some connections with texts from other cultures. Our fully asynchronous course is part of the English Online Minor program in the Department of English Language and Literatures, but is open to English majors and to students in other programs such as Education, Language and Literacy, and Library and Information Studies. You will be reading novels, short stories and scholarly articles on children's literature throughout this term, and you will be sharing your ideas both formally, in the form of essays, and informally, in the form of discussion posts, peer reviews and games.

Children's Literature - Children's Literature

ENGL 392-

bose-sarika

2024 SummerCredits: 3

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
-_98A		In-Person	Lecture			Bose, Sarika

Children's Literature - Children's Literature

ENGL 392A

james-suzanne bose-sarika

2024 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Sections (2)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_002	2	In-Person	Lecture	M, W, F	14:00 - 15:00	James, Suzanne		Section Description Children’s and YA Fiction from Africa and the African Diaspora Children’s literature addressing the lives and concerns of Black youth, both in Africa and the African diaspora, is a flourishing sub-genre. In this course we will explore a range of contemporary texts including Akwaeke Emezi’s Pet, Kacen Callender’s Felix Ever After, Lawrence Hill’s Beatrice and Croc Henry, Jason Reynolds’ Long Way Down, Adaobe Tricia Nwaubani’s Buried Beneath the Baobob Tree, Asha Bromfield’s Hurricane Summer, Angie Thomas’ The Hate U Give, and Nnedi Okorafor’s Akata Witch. These very diverse texts explore issues of identity, gender, black representation, police violence, trans and queer experience, and include works of realism, fantasy, and a novel in poems. As well as focusing on the core texts, we will engage with theoretical perspectives on children’s literature and YA fiction, and its increasingly fluid contemporary incarnations. Students will be encouraged to develop independent critical responses to both texts and theories. Assessment will include a critical response, an in-class essay, a term paper and a final examination.
A_99C		Online	Lecture			Bose, Sarika		Section Description English 392 is a 14-week course that will guide you in the study and approaches to some classic Western texts and approaches to children's literature. The focus will be on British fantasy literature, by authors such as Gaiman, Tolkien, Pullman and Rowling, but we will also explore some connections with texts from other cultures. Our fully asynchronous course is part of the English Online Minor program in the Department of English Language and Literatures, but is open to English majors and to students in other programs such as Education, Language and Literacy, and Library and Information Studies. You will be reading novels, short stories and scholarly articles on children's literature throughout this term, and you will be sharing your ideas both formally, in the form of essays, and informally, in the form of discussion posts, peer reviews and games.

Children's Literature - Children's Literature

ENGL 392A

bose-sarika

2025 SummerCredits: 3

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_98A		Online	Lecture			Bose, Sarika		Section Description “Down the Rabbit Hole”: Child, Nation and British Fantasy Literature Children’s books—encountered in the earliest stages of children’s development—can have a lasting influence on children’s views of their world and themselves. English 392 investigates how narratives of national identity in the folklore and myth-narratives are deployed in fantasy texts written for children in England. Some of our texts will come from Canadian Indigenous traditions to provide a comparison with classic texts from England. Texts will include fairy tales, The Hobbit, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, “Coyote Columbus”, and The Graveyard Book. These will be examined through a broad range of critical perspectives which are literary, socio-political and historical. The pictures of nation constructed in children’s books represent particular national myths and culturally-informed identities. We will look at the ways both “classic” and less traditionally canonical children’s texts create intertextual narratives that expand, resist, subvert and adapt each other’s work. This fully asynchronous 13-week course runs from May to August, with writing assignments and weekly discussion posts. The final examination, set in August, is the only synchronous component, and will be invigilated through Zoom. This course is part of the English Minor program in the Department of English Language and Literatures, but is open to English majors and to students in other programs.

Children's Literature - Children's Literature

ENGL 392A

bose-sarika

2025 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_001	1	In-Person	Lecture	T, Th	09:30 - 11:00	Bose, Sarika		Section Description Fantasy Fiction and History in British Children’s Literature Children’s books can have a lasting influence on children’s views of their world and themselves. English 392 investigates how narratives of national identity are located in history and legend, and deployed in fantasy texts written for children. The main texts will include Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief, The Magician’s Nephew, and The Graveyard Book, with some additional texts. While this course cannot cover every nation, we will look at some significant fantasy texts from England, Canada and the U.S. to examine connections between particular national myths and culturally-informed identities. We will look at the ways both “classic” and less traditionally canonical children’s texts create intertextual narratives that expand, resist, subvert and adapt each other’s work. This course will require essays, group work and classroom work.

Ecocriticism

ENGL 393

nardizzi-vincent

2023 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Ecocriticism and the environmental humanities encompassing more specific methodologies, such as queer ecology, ecofeminism, postcolonial, decolonizing, and transnational environmentalisms, environmental art. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
001	2		Lecture	T, Th	9:30 - 11:00	Nardizzi, Vincent		Section Description The Lives of Plants This is a special topics course in “Ecocriticism.” It will introduce students to critical plant studies, which is a multidisciplinary field that centers the lives of plants. Plants nourish us; they can also please us, terrify us, physiologically alter us, and re/frame how we conceptualize long anthropocentric histories of empire, gender, race, and sexuality. Our readings will range across philosophy, Indigenous (Potawatomi) storytelling, anthropology, history, landscape design, the visual arts, film, and literary writing (poetry, memoir, short fiction). Expect to read lengthier texts by Amitav Ghosh, Jamaica Kincaid, and Jeff VanderMeer. There will be 2 in-class exams and a final term paper.

Ecocriticism - Ecocriticism

ENGL 393A

dick-alexander

2024 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_001	1	In-Person	Lecture	M, W, F	13:00 - 14:00	Dick, Alexander		Section Description Vancouver’s Coasts Vancouver is a city of coasts. It is situated at the meeting point of a major river (itself the hub for a network of tributaries, infrastructures, and waterways), an oceanic basin (a sea, a straight, an inlet), a mountain range, and an archipelago. It is built on the unceded territory of three coastal nations. The complex stories of its beaches, estuaries, and harbours continually dog, confront, and challenge its image as Canada’s gleaming, and futuristic city of glass. Vancouver also shares a history of migrations and dispossessions with several continents to which it is attenuated by ties of commerce, culture, and conflict. What does it mean to live, work, play, a thrive in such a place? This course will offer an interdisciplinary, multi-generic, and multi-media survey of writing from and about Vancouver’s coasts, their ecologies, and their colonialisms. The literary component of the course will feature poetry and stories by Daphne Marlatt, Rita Wong, Wayde Compton, and Lee Maracle, accompanied by selected readings from the wide field of “coastal studies” and in connection with the many different philosophical, historical, aesthetic, and environmental approaches scholars bring to it. In addition, the class will visit several of the sites mentioned and discussed in our readings, including Spanish Banks, Kits Point (Senakw), Still Creek, and Steveston. Assignments will combine creative and critical skills though presentations, journals, discussions, and essays. Group work will feature prominently.

Studies in Drama

ENGL 396

mota-miguel

2023 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Plays organized by thematic approach, cultural movements, critical issues, and/or geopolitical regions. Consult department website for current year's offerings. Credit will be granted for up to 6 credits of ENGL 396 and/or 405. For ENGL courses at the 200- or 300- level, prior completion of at least one 100- level ENGL course is recommended.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
001	1		Lecture	T, Th	9:30 - 11:00	Mota, Miguel		Section Description British Drama Since 1956 Histories of post-WWII British drama often point to 1956 as a watershed year. The year marked the celebrated success of John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger, a play which, in its examination and criticism of a post-war, class-ridden British society, recorded the frustration of the younger British generation (the so-called “angry young men”) with the traditional values of the “Establishment,” and signalled the beginning of a dramatic revival in Britain. The late 1950s initiated an explosion of dramatic activity that gave rise to the most exciting age of British drama since the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods. A growing interest in international theatre, increased government funding, the growth of regional repertory theatre, and radical changes in the social structure of the nation all contributed to a revitalized theatrical environment during the 1960s and 1970s. And though later cutbacks in public funding at times threatened their livelihood, British playwrights continued to address in vital and exciting ways many of the important and often contentious issues facing British society during and after Thatcherism. In this course, we will survey a cross-section of British drama since 1956, ranging from the plays of the angry young men and women (Osborne; Shelagh Delaney) to the work of such seminal playwrights as Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard and Caryl Churchill to more recent attempts by playwrights such as Ayub Khan-Din, Mark Ravenhill, Sarah Kane, Martin McDonagh, and debbie tucker green to articulate new ways of exploring theatrical representation.

Studies in Prose Fiction - Studies in Prose Fiction

ENGL 397-

james-suzanne

2023 SummerCredits: 3Pre-requisite

Novels and short stories organized by thematic approach, cultural movements, critical issues, and/or geopolitical regions. Consult department website for current year's offerings. Credit will be granted for up to 6 credits of ENGL 397 and/or 406. Prerequisite: Third-year standing and 3 credits from one of (a) 100-level ENGL or (b) 200-level ENGL or (c) ARTS 001 or (d) ASTU 100 or (e) ASTU 101 or (f) WRDS 150 or (g) WRDS 350. 6 credits of 100- and/or 200-level English courses is recommended. Prerequisites must be met by the first day of class or students will be withdrawn.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
-_951		In-Person	Lecture	T, Th	12:00 - 15:00	James, Suzanne

Studies in Prose Fiction

ENGL 397

james-suzanne

2024 SummerCredits: 6

Sections (2)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
951	2		Lecture	T, Th	12:00 - 15:00	James, Suzanne		Section Description “And the winner is . . .!”: The 2023 Canadian Scotiabank Giller Prize Shortlist “In short, prizes matter. . .With only an appearance on . . . [a] shortlist, a book moves from total obscurity in the classroom and pages of literary criticism to respectable showings in both—and it gets a healthy popularity boost along the way.” “As much as each prize is an institution unto itself, it also crystallizes a variety of other consecrating forces and actors, from the publishers who select and promote a title to the authors who blurb it and the reviewers who praise it.” (Alexander Manshel, Laura B. McGrath, & J.D. Porter) In this class, we will discuss the five fictional works shortlisted for Canada’s 2023 Giller Prize: Sarah Bernstein’s Study for Obedience, Eleanor Catton’s Birnam Wood, Kevin Chong’s The Double Life of Benson Yu, Dionne Irving’s The Islands and C.S. Richardson’s All the Colour in the World. We will consider the institutional components of this prestigious prize (evaluation criteria, selection of judges, procedures for submission and selection, history, past recipients) as well as what Manshall, McGrath & Porter refer to as the “consecrating forces and actors” which influence literary awards. In addition to writing a critical essay on one of the texts, students will participate as a jury member in an in-house “Fiction 2023” award committee to choose our own winner from the 2023 Giller shortlist.
W51	2		Waiting List	T, Th	12:00 - 15:00

Studies in Prose Fiction - Studies in Prose Fiction

ENGL 397A

james-suzanne

2024 SummerCredits: 6

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_951		In-Person	Lecture			James, Suzanne

Studies in Prose Fiction - Studies in Prose Fiction

ENGL 397A

james-suzanne

2025 SummerCredits: 3

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_001		In-Person	Lecture	T, Th	12:00 - 15:00	James, Suzanne		Section Description “And the winner is . . .!”: Canada’s Literary Prize Culture “In short, prizes matter. . .With only an appearance on . . . [a] shortlist, a book moves from total obscurity in the classroom and pages of literary criticism to respectable showings in both—and it gets a healthy popularity boost along the way.” --Alexander Manshel, Laura B. McGrath & J.D. Porter In this class, we will discuss five fictional works which won Canadian literary prizes in 2024: Anne Michael’s Held (Giller Prize), Jordan Abel’s Empty Spaces (Governor General’s Award for Fiction), Sheung-King’s Batshit Seven (Atwood-Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize), Catherine Leroux’s The Future (Canada Reads) and Darrel J. McLeod’s A Season in Chezgh’un (Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize). We will consider the institutional components of these prizes (evaluation criteria, selection of judges, procedures for submission and selection, history, past recipients) as well as what Manshel, McGrath & Porter refer to as the “consecrating forces and actors” which influence literary awards. In addition to writing a critical essay on one of the texts, students will participate as a jury member in an in-house “Fiction 2024” award committee to choose our own winner. If you’re interested in truly contemporary fiction, the exigencies of literary prizes, evaluating fiction, and current directions in Canadian literature, then this is the course for you!

Language Majors Seminar

ENGL 489

dollinger-stefan hill-ian

2023 Winter Term 1/2Credits: 3

Required of all Language Majors. See department website (www.english.ubc.ca) for seminar topics.

Sections (2)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
001	1		Seminar	T	14:00 - 16:00	Dollinger, Stefan		Section Description Attitudes towards Canadian English In the 1960s, the idea of a Standard Canadian English was conceptualized and illustrated to Canadians and the world in a series of four dictionaries. While in the 1970s many speakers were still somewhat sceptical about Canadian English as a “thing”, by the early 2000s the situation was very different. In this course we’ll learn about Canadian English and then aim to contribute to the existing knowledge pool as a capstone project. We will gather and analyze new data on what people think about “Canadian English”. You will learn how to write a linguistic survey, how to gather data and, most important of all, how to analyze the data using Excel. You will learn to write a paper on one variable from the survey, present work-in-progress in a class presentation and use feedback to improve your paper. Linguistic attitudes have long been neglected. In this course we’ll shine a light on them and show the real-life consequences of how people feel about their language(s).
002	2		Seminar	T	10:00 - 12:00	Hill, Ian		Section Description Non-Western Rhetorical Traditions How did Buddha compel his smartest acolytes to seek enlightenment without simultaneously confusing the masses? How might one logically prove the veracity of reincarnation within the Vedic system? How did future Somali dictator Mohamed Siad Barre motivate anti-colonial revolution? Can a single word communicate the entirety of human wisdom? This seminar will focus on Buddhist, Taoist, and Vedic theories of persuasion, as well as taking a look at 20^th century international theories of propaganda.

Language Majors Seminar

ENGL 489

stickles-elise de-villiers-jessica

2024 Winter Term 1/2Credits: 3

Required of all Language Majors. Restricted to fourth-year English Honours and Majors in Language and Language and Literature. See department website (www.english.ubc.ca) for seminar topics. This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.

Sections (2)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
001	1	In-Person	Seminar	T	14:00 - 16:00	Stickles, Elise		Section Description Multimodal Communication and Cognition In this interdisciplinary course, we will look at the interaction between language, co-speech gesture (i.e., the hand movements we make while speaking), and other forms of non-verbal communication (such as making facial expressions, shrugging your shoulders, or nodding your head). Course material will draw from research in cognitive linguistics, conversation analysis, psychology, anthropology, education, and other fields. Students will study how meaning emerges from combined linguistic and paralinguistic utterance ‘package’, and analyze a variety of data such as political speeches, news media, and talk shows, as well as everyday conversations. We’ll use English as our main language of study, but our English language data will be supplemented with evidence from a range of other spoken languages as well as signed languages. This will allow us to explore the diversity and universality of multimodal communication across languages, cultures, and linguistic modalities.
002	2	In-Person	Seminar	T	14:00 - 16:00	De Villiers, Jessica		Section Description Discourse and Analysis Discourse analysis is an important area within language study that typically involves exploration of a variety of linguistic features and functions to understand meaning making in texts. Aspects of language use examined can include semantics, syntax, phonological and phonetic structures, lexical choices, conversation skills and narrative structure. Analyses typically involve systematic descriptions of texts or corpora, with a focus on understanding how language is used in context. Analyses of discourse may also highlight how language use functions to construct and maintain social understanding of the world. In this seminar, students develop skills in performing discourse analyses and in evaluating discourse analysis research. Readings include classic and recent research papers in linguistic discourse analysis, with emphasis on information structure, conversation and interaction, hesitation phenomena, narrative analysis, multimodality and indirectness. A key part of learning discourse analysis is doing it. Students will therefore collect and transcribe some data at the beginning of the term.

Language Majors Seminar

ENGL 489

de-villiers-jessica dollinger-stefan

2025 Winter Term 1/2Credits: 3

Sections (2)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
001	1	In-Person	Seminar	T	16:30 - 18:30	De Villiers, Jessica		Section Description Discourse and Analysis Discourse analysis is an important area within language study that typically involves exploration of a variety of linguistic features and functions to understand meaning making in texts. Aspects of language use examined can include semantics, syntax, phonological and phonetic structures, lexical choices, conversation skills and narrative structure. Analyses typically involve systematic descriptions of texts or corpora, with a focus on understanding how language is used in context. Analyses of discourse may also highlight how language use functions to construct and maintain social understanding of the world. In this seminar, students develop skills in performing discourse analyses and in evaluating discourse analysis research. Readings include classic and recent research papers in linguistic discourse analysis, with emphasis on information structure, conversation and interaction, hesitation phenomena, narrative analysis, multimodality and indirectness. A key part of learning discourse analysis is doing it. Students will therefore collect and transcribe some data at the beginning of the term.
002	2	In-Person	Seminar	T	11:00 - 13:00	Dollinger, Stefan		Section Description Language, Nation & Colonization: the role of English The languages of Europe’s nation states have not only been major vehicles of nation building but also of colonization. They are vehicles that exported and reified hegemonial perspectives. The connection of language and nation has indeed been so powerful that today we are still confronted with the legacies of late 18^th and early 19^th-century thinking in our conceptualizations of “language”. Which linguistic varieties are afforded and which denied the label “language” is not so much linguistically informed as socio-politically conditioned and here lingering colonial legacies loom large. In this seminar we will study the roles of language in nation building and colonization, with special emphasis on the various instantiations of English. We will revisit the making of English as a national and imperial language, starting in Old English times and stretching all the way to the present. We will critically review the key achievements in the English language, such as Johnson’s dictionary, the prescriptive grammar tradition, the Oxford English Dictionary (Brewer 2007) or the Quirk et al. grammar (1985), and test their conceptualizations and presuppositions against notions that are associated with standard languages, such as homogeneity, superiority and purity. We will see that, surprisingly, in some present-day approaches to language the discourses of hegemony still lurk in unsuspecting corners relating to what is perceived as a “legitimate” language and what not. It is safe to say that these discourses have left their mark on most if not all standard varieties, often via a stifling of Indigenous voices. Class readings of selected papers to be forthcoming. Deliverables: Response pieces to some readings Term paper on an aspect of English and nation making Oral presentation

Literature Majors Seminar

ENGL 490

earle-bo

2023 SummerCredits: 3

Required of all Literature Majors. See Department Website (www.english.ubc.ca) for options. This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
951		In-Person	Lecture	T, Th	10:00 - 12:00	Earle, Bo		Section Description [Cross-listed with ENGL 491J-951] Love and Horror: Family Fictions since Frankenstein What is the relation between social and biological reproduction? How do cultural media shape material history and vice versa? Although initially unsuccessful, gaining popularity as a novel only after a carnivalesque stage adaptation went viral, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein became iconic for modernity because it opens rather than answers such crucial questions both for and about modernity. Shelley authored Frankenstein at 18 as a way of passing time in the shadows of the brightest literary celebrities ever--Lord Byron and Mary's husband Percy. The novel speaks to the relation between creation and destruction, trauma and growth, and to Mary's own traumatic experiences of both infant and maternal mortality. Frankenstein rehearses the ancient Promethean question of what it means to control God-like technology and engineer life, but also raises radically new questions about the capacity of art ‘to create the life it imagines,’ questions that have since only increased in force and consequence, fostering the genres of horror and sci-fi and key techniques of modern social and feminist critique.

Literature Majors Seminar

ENGL 490

paltin-judith echard-sian dalziel-pamela nardizzi-vincent pareles-mo severs-jeffrey burgess-miranda

2023 Winter Term 1/2Credits: 3

Required of all Literature Majors. See Department Website (www.english.ubc.ca) for options.

Sections (7)

Section	Term	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Details Data
001	1	Seminar	M	10:00 - 12:00	Paltin, Judith	Section Description Modern Political Fictions and Democracy This course uses literary analysis and critical and cultural theory to understand the genre of modern political fiction and its role in public culture. We will also extrapolate some of our findings to the contemporary moment. When Eloise Knapp Hay discusses T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land (1922) as a poem of “radical doubt and negation,” she argues that its city made no “convincing allusions… to St. Augustine's vision of interpenetration between the City of God and the City of Man in this world.” That vision of divine interpenetration was the unconscious of Anglophone political fiction for many centuries, the eternalized Form of social Utopia. But toward what does modern democratic politics gesture when the ideal City of God is unavailable as a schema? Modernism and its kinfolk carried out a lengthy thought-experiment during much of the twentieth century, devising new political fictions without the support of a divine guarantee of goodness. We will read a set of novels, shorter fiction, poems, and drama whose politics are overt and whose aesthetic prowess is distinctive, but not straightforward. We will support our literary readings with nonfiction essays by writers such as Woolf, Conrad, and Orwell, and theorists such as Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Michel Foucault, Stuart Hall, and Raymond Williams. Preliminary book list: Sean O’Casey, The Dublin Plays Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Sinclair Lewis, It Can’t Happen Here George Orwell, Animal Farm Wole Soyinka, Death and the King’s Horseman Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle Ursula Le Guin, The Dispossessed
002	1	Seminar	T	9:30 - 11:30	Echard, Sian	Section Description Medieval Meets Modern - Adapting Medieval English Literature Medieval literature can seem very distant from our present time, and yet certain texts have proven endlessly interesting to readers and creative artists for centuries, right up to our own moment. In her 2012 book How Soon is Now?, Carolyn Dinshaw explores the intersection between medieval texts and modern readers through “asynchrony: different time frames or temporal systems colliding in a single moment of now.” In this course we will explore such moments of collision by focusing on two medieval texts and some 21st-century responses to them. We will start with Beowulf, an Old English heroic poem that we will read, first, in a facing-page translation. Then we will look at two works by Maria Dahvana Headley, her 2018 novel speaking back to Beowulf, called The Mere Wife, and her own, resolutely modern, poetic translation of the poem, from 2020. Our second medieval text will be Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale, from the Canterbury Tales. We will read selections of Chaucer in Middle English with facing-page translation, and then we will look at poetic responses from Jean Binta Breeze (“The Wife of Bath in Brixton Market”) and Patience Agbabi (Telling Tales). We will finish by reading and thinking through Zadie Smith’s new play, The Wife of Willesden. Course assignments will include presentations, discussion, and the possibility of your own creative adaptation.
003	1	Seminar	Th	14:00 - 16:00	Dalziel, Pamela	Section Description Reimagining Jane Eyre and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland 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? We will attempt to answer these and other questions of cultural production in our discussions of the novels and some of their adaptations and reimaginings. 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 original works and in their reimaginings, and in our (and the Victorians’) readings of them. Our discussions will be wide-ranging: from Jean Rhys’s famous Jane Eyre prequel Wide Sargasso Sea to Paula Rego’s lithographs, Sujata Bhatt’s Rego poems, Sally Cookson’s devised stage production, and Patricia Park’s Re Jane (described by Park as “updating Jane Eyre to contemporary New York and the world of organic produce and identity politics”); from Walt Disney’s 1951 Alice in Wonderland, which continues to define Carroll’s novel in the popular imagination, to Salvador Dalí’s art edition, Damon Albarn and Moira Buffini’s musical wonder.land, Tara Bryan’s tunnel book Down the Rabbit Hole, and the “Alice industry.” *You will be required to have read Jane Eyre* in its entirety before our September 14th class. Please begin reading before our course begins.** Our reading and viewing list will include: Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (Oxford World's Classics); Jane Eyre, devised by the Company and directed by Sally Cookson, 2015 (Drama Online, UBC Library); Patricia Park, Re Jane (Penguin); Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Broadview); Alice in Wonderland, Walt Disney, 1951 (UBC Library); Alice in Wonderland, directed by Jonathan Miller, 1966 (Library Online Course Reserves, Canvas (only available during term)); wonder.land, directed by Rufus Norris, lyrics and text by Moira Buffini, music by Damon Albarn, 2015 (Drama Online, UBC Library).
004	1	Seminar	F	12:00 - 14:00	Nardizzi, Vincent	Section Description Tudor Revivals Our seminar takes its title from a style of architecture that was popular in late-nineteenth-century Britain and its colonies. Sometimes called “mock Tudor,” this style is steeped in the comforts of nostalgia; as such, it proves an historical fiction responding to cultural anxieties about mass industrialization and empire. In this seminar we shall activate the name of this architectural style, examples of which are still locatable in Vancouver and Victoria, to think about historical fictions that have been set in Tudor times. In their own ways, each of these texts is a “Tudor Revival” that is processing contemporary aesthetics and the political and racial economies of empire. Each student will submit weekly discussion questions, lead a seminar presentation, and submit a final essay. We’ll begin with William Morris’s utopian novel News from Nowhere, since Morris is so closely aligned with the architectural style. From there, we’ll explore historical fictions about Tudor England in the Shakespearean collaboration Henry VI, Part 1, Walter Scott’s Kenilworth, Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall (likely the tv adaptation), E.F. Benson’s Mapp and Lucia, C.J. Sansom’s Shardlake mystery series, and one of the many films about Queen Elizabeth I. We’ll pair each text with literary and visual artefact from the sixteenth century.
005	2	Seminar	M	10:00 - 12:00	Pareles, Mo
007	2	Seminar	W	14:00 - 16:00	Severs, Jeffrey	Section Description Twenty-First Century U.S. Fiction This seminar will examine U.S. fiction (novels and short story collections) of the first twenty years of the twenty-first century. Topics will include postmodernism and its putative end; new forms of experimentation such as autofiction; 9/11, its aftermath, and the U.S.’s place in geopolitics; and neoliberal economics as the dominant logic of contemporary capitalism. Students will write a seminar paper based in close-reading, a final research essay, and some online posts, as well as lead and participate in discussion. Texts will include the following and possibly a few others: David Foster Wallace’s Oblivion (2004) (selected stories); Toni Morrison’s Love (2003); Rachel Kushner’s The Flamethrowers (2013); Chang-rae Lee’s On Such a Full Sea (2014); short stories by John Edgar Wideman; and Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (2019).
008	2	Seminar	Th	10:00 - 12:00	Burgess, Miranda	Section Description Being together in the maritime world, 1790s-1850s At the beginning of the age of British imperial expansion, as writers imagined, described, and inventoried what they saw as colonizable or claimed as colonized spaces, they simultaneously confronted a new understanding of oceans: less as what William Wordsworth had called “the barrier flood” than as a medium connecting the world’s land masses and, by extension, its peoples. British writers often responded to the colonizing projects of their rulers and fellow citizens with anxious investigation and rumination over Britain’s porousness, its vulnerability to arrivals of people, illnesses, and emotions from abroad: in short, with defensive fantasy, or what psychoanalysts call projection. In this seminar, we will read 2-3 exemplary poetic imaginings of the unified autonomous individual of British Romantic poetry as one unstable, uncertain expression of these new understandings of being together, formulated in maritime imperial contexts in defensive response to British colonial activity. We’ll read excerpts from writings by major colonizers, e.g. James Cook, William Jones, Mungo Park, Samuel Hearne, or William H. Keating, and the engineer and economic historian Richard Phillips (who sought to position Britain as a future rival to the world’s oldest and richest empire, China) as resources for British imaginings of a maritime empire. We will take up 2-3 texts that respond to, resist, critique, and/ or set out alternatives to these models and understandings of imperial selfhood. We’ll examine critical and competitor British understandings of community or polity in protests for political reform, labour protest, and abolitionist activity (what we might think of as community-building from below.) And we’ll consider alternative models of being together in the world from Indigenous Nations, e.g. Haudenosaunee democratic traditions and the Two Row Wampum Treaty and Nuu-chah-nulth, especially Mowachaht, cosmology, kinship, and diplomacy.

Literature Majors Seminar

ENGL 490

ho-janice luger-moberley potter-tiffany deer-glenn mackie-gregory partridge-stephen gooding-rick

2024 Winter Term 1/2Credits: 3

Required of all Literature Majors. Restricted to fourth-year English Majors in Literature and Language and Literature. See Department website (www.english.ubc.ca) for seminar topics. This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.

Sections (7)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Details Data
003	1	In-Person	Seminar	F	14:00 - 16:00	Ho, Janice	Section Description Literature and the City A promise of opportunity; a site of misery and alienation; an escape from the country; a space of deviance and crime—the city has historically alternately fascinated and repelled, a spatial locus that mediates the dreams and fears saturating our cultural imaginaries. This course will focus on twentieth- and twenty-first century literary and filmic representations of the city and the urban experience. We will take a broad global and temporal perspective: that is to say, we will read early twentieth-century modernist texts that sought to come to terms with the experiences of alienation and consumerism signified by the city; move on to consider late twentieth-century postmodern representations of city space as a site of futuristic technology and simulacra; and finally, turn to postcolonial renditions of cities in what is known as the “global South”—in sites like Johannesburg, Mumbai, or Lagos—to think about how forms of global socioeconomic and racial inequities are spatially reproduced. Texts may include Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent; Jean Rhys's Good Morning, Midnight; J.G. Ballard's High Rise; Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities; Phaswane Mpe's Welcome to Our Hillbrow; Teju Cole's Open City; or Chris Abani's GraceLand.
004	2	In-Person	Seminar	M	12:00 - 14:00	Luger, Moberley	Section Description “The Hatred of Poetry” or Poetry and/in Crisis This seminar will consider contemporary poetry – not only individual poems but also the “social form” (Harrington) of poetry: the genre itself. What does it mean to say one “loves” or “hates” poetry? How are our attitudes toward poetry formed by popular culture or school? To explore these questions, we will consider how poems respond to crisis—both public and private—as we also consider whether the genre is, as some warn, itself “in crisis.” Is poetry dead, as critics seem perpetually to declare? Where does it lurk, on what occasions does it emerge, and how does it function in our social and political landscapes? If Taylor Swift’s album, The Tortured Poets Department, is currently ruling the Billboard charts, what might that mean for poetry, its pasts and futures? Readings will include 20^th & 21^st century poems by John McRae, Muriel Rukeyser, Amiri Baraka, Jordan Abel, Claudia Rankine, and more, as well as poetry criticism by scholars like Alan Golding, Joseph Harrington, Stephanie Burt, Carolyn Forché, and Ben Lerner.
002	1	In-Person	Seminar	W	12:00 - 14:00	Potter, Tiffany	Section Description Adaptation in/and/of the Eighteenth Century King Lear as a comedy. Antony and Cleopatra as romantic melodrama. Classical epistle as erotica. Jane Austen and zombies. Eighteenth-century literature adapted classical and conventional literary forms in ways that interrogated contemporary cultural practice, and in recent years, the era has been a rich source of historical fiction and film. In this seminar we will examine the theory and practice of literary adaptation in the long eighteenth century. First, we will first use a combination of both modern and historical theorizations of adaptation to examine practices of adaptation in the eighteenth century, including poetic forms like the classical imitation, dramatic adaptations of well-known plays, and fictional retellings. Once we have come to terms with the cultural work being performed by the period’s own narrative re-inventions, we will skip ahead to modern adaptations of eighteenth-century narratives with text and screen adaptations of Pride and Prejudice. Adaptation studies long ago left behind worrying about fidelity to source texts in order to address both the critical implications of the choices made by adapters and the revisionist engagements of culture that are embodied in these acts of artistic dialogue. Want to get ahead? Read or watch Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra to get ready for Dryden’s version, or King Lear to brace yourself for Tate’s adaptation (free through UBC library databases!). Or (re)read Pride and Prejudice and watch some adaptations. Be surprised by the intelligence of the book Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, but under no circumstance watch the Pride and Prejudice and Zombies film, which is so terrible it does not deserve even to be streamed for free.
001	1	In-Person	Seminar	T	11:00 - 13:00	Deer, Glenn	Section Description he Culinary Imagination: Reading Culture Through Food, Cooking, and Eating Food, cooking, and eating are biologically necessary and socially powerful: we produce and cook food to survive, but also to reinforce social bonds, to celebrate tradition, to evoke memories of home, to compete with other cooks, to impress the eater, and even to beguile and seduce. This course will explore food in literature, particularly life narratives, cookbook selections, and films across different cultures and borders, from the transnational to local Vancouver contexts. The production of food is essentially linked to histories of empire, colonial power, capital, racialized and gendered labour, and ecological change. Our discussions will explore these intersections. Readings will include selections from Gitanjali Shahani (Food and Literature), Amitav Ghosh (The Nutmeg’s Curse), Sandra Gilbert (The Culinary Imagination) , Monique Truong (The Book of Salt), MFK Fisher (How to Cook a Wolf), Cheuk Kwan (Have You Eaten Yet?), Fred Wah (Diamond Grill), and Austin Clarke (Pigtails ‘n’ Breadfruit). Tasteful excerpts from cookbooks by local artist Janice Wong and the local anthology edited by Brandy Lien Worrall-Soriano, Eating Stories: A Chinese Canadian and Aboriginal Potluck, will be sampled. Films will include Gabriel Axel’s Babette’s Feast, Juzo Itami's Japanese "noodle western" Tampopo, Ang Lee's Eat Drink Man Woman, the restaurant documentaries of Cheuk Kwan, and excerpts from the recent television series The Bear . We will host some class dialogue with food writers and filmmakers, and students will be able to research local restaurants, gardens, or farms as optional final projects. Multimedia examples of previous student projects for my food-themed courses can be found at the following Richmond Museum exhibit, “Our Journeys Here” (2017-2018)
007	2	In-Person	Seminar	Th	12:00 - 14:00	Mackie, Gregory	Section Description All About Sherlock Holmes This section of ENGL 490 (Majors seminar) will offer students the opportunity to explore the astonishingly resilient popularity of the greatest of all fictional detectives. Since his emergence into print in a British magazine in 1887, Sherlock Holmes has become a cultural icon around the world. In this course, we’ll be asking why, for whom, and to what end(s). We’ll read original (“canon”) Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle along with some non-original ones; we’ll also have a look at contemporary parodies and sleuthing competitors. Students will examine a multiplicity of Holmesian adaptations from the last hundred-plus years, and in the process we will embark on an investigation into the history of fandom and fan cultures. The game is afoot!
005	2	In-Person	Seminar	W	14:00 - 16:00	Partridge, Stephen	Section Description Contemporary Chaucers In the first few weeks we will read a number of the most important and influential Canterbury Tales in a modern English translation. One focus of our discussion will be the range of sources and traditions, from Europe and beyond, that informed Chaucer’s writing of the Tales. We will then consider some of the best-known modern and contemporary adaptations, focusing on particular pilgrims and tales (the Miller, the Wife of Bath, the Pardoner) and areas (including the African diaspora in Britain, America, and the Caribbean). Works we read together may include, for example, Patience Agbabi, Telling Tales; Zadie Smith, The Wife of Willesden; Marilyn Nelson, The Cachoeira Tales and Other Poems; Kim Zarins, Sometimes We Tell the Truth; one or more collections of Refugee Tales by various writers. Class members will develop projects exploring the many ways that Chaucer is represented in the 20^th-21^st centuries: adaptation in fiction, including for children and young adults, and in poetry; stage, film, animation; translation; illustration; various kinds of allusion such as dramatic monologues based in Chaucer’s work and life. Each class member will give a presentation; there will be opportunities to present on Chaucer and his contexts, and on contemporary responses to his work.
006	2	In-Person	Seminar	W	10:00 - 12:00	Gooding, Rick	Section Description Great Filters The Great Filter, a term coined by Robin Hanson in 1998, is a way of explaining why there’s no evidence of extra-terrestrial civilizations. The idea is that in the course of evolution some obstacle arises that constrains (or even destroys) life before it develops the capacity for sustained interstellar communication or travel. If that filter lies in our past—for example, in the difficulty of developing brains capable of abstract reasoning—then humans might be extremely rare and lucky lifeforms who are on the verge of exploring a vast (but possibly unpopulated) universe. But if the Great Filter still lies ahead, then humanity might be on the verge of an existential crisis. As mainstays of speculative fiction, Great Filters offer writers opportunities to examine present-day concerns. In this course we will read novels that use the idea of the Great Filter to comment on the priorities—and anxieties—of modern life. Some of these depict familiar apocalyptic scenarios: Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker takes place in the distant future after nuclear war devastates England, Greg Bear’s Blood Music chronicles the emergence of artificial intelligence from nanotechnology, and Catherynne M. Valente’s The Past is Red offers a deeply personal and heartbreaking representation of loneliness and hope in a post-climate-change civilization living on the Pacific Garbage Patch. Other novels are more whimsical. In Happiness, Will Ferguson imagines a very funny, world-ending contagion of self-help culture, while Jon Bois’ multimedia 17776 (What Football Will Look Like in the Future) imagines a world where the elimination of reproduction, aging, and death have resulted in a civilization devoted almost entirely to sports. Note: The reading list for this class is still under consideration, and we may add one or two titles—and modes of destruction—to the above list. A full list will be available later this summer.

Literature Majors Seminar

ENGL 490

te-punga-somerville-alice

2025 SummerCredits: 3

Cross-listed with ENGL_V 491A-921

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
921		In-Person	Seminar	M, W	12:00 - 14:00	Te Punga Somerville, Alice		Section Description Reading Indigenous Texts How do we read Indigenous texts? How can reading help us think about what it means to be Indigenous – here, there, anywhere? What are the connections between writing, museums and universities? How can we think about the global, and about specificity, by engaging with Indigenous texts? Why read Indigenous texts in this present moment? In this course, we will ask these questions by turning to recent collections of poetry by two very different Indigenous writers, Jenny Davis (Chickasaw) and Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner (Marshallese), as well as short creative and critical texts by other writers; we will also ask them by connecting with some Indigenous ‘texts’ at the Museum of Anthropology on campus. Students will have the opportunity to 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, and a short presentation.

Literature Majors Seminar

ENGL 490

baxter-gisele chapman-mary moss-laura dalziel-pamela paltin-judith deer-glenn

2025 Winter Term 1/2Credits: 3

Sections (7)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Details Data
001	1	In-Person	Seminar	T	12:30 - 14:30	Baxter, Gisele	Section Description Mad Science: Gothic Echoes in Passion Projects Gone Wrong Over 40 years ago, Patrick Brantlinger argued in “The Gothic Origins of Science Fiction” that a problem in reading Science Fiction as “realistic prophecy … arises from the fact that the conventions of science fiction derive from the conventions of fantasy and romance, and especially from those of the Gothic romance. Science fiction grows out of literary forms that are antithetical to realism.” More recently, two 2019 essays by Daniel Pietersen on Sublime Horror (republished on his own site), “The universe is a haunted house – the Gothic roots of science fiction” and “Spiders and flies – the Gothic monsters of sci-fi horror,” explore the intersection of terror and horror tropes in what we can only call Gothic Science Fiction. This course is not about slick shiny optimistic visions of the future; it’s not about bold exploration conducted aboard pristine spaceships by intrepid explorers wearing silver jumpsuits with diagonal zippers. It’s not about scientific research that has vastly benefitted worlds and their inhabitants: it’s about bizarre singular passion projects and their progeny, about science gone wrong, about the byways of pseudoscience. We will examine the theoretical bases of contemporary approaches to the Gothic as well as to Science Fiction and apply them to various examples of fiction and film. Core texts tentatively include Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein (1818 edition); Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; H.G. Wells, The Island of Doctor Moreau; Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake; Alien (dir. Ridley Scott), plus 1-2 other short novels and 1-2 other films (I will have the text list finalized by mid-June). Evaluation will be based on a presentation and its revised report, a presentation response and its report; a term paper; a final reflection essay to be written during the exam period, and participation in discussion. Keep checking my blog (https://blogs.ubc.ca/drgmbaxter/) for updates concerning texts and requirements.
004	2	In-Person	Seminar	M	14:00 - 16:00		Section Description Instructor: TBA
006	2	In-Person	Seminar	W	11:00 - 13:00	Chapman, Mary	Section Description Writing the Self This seminar is organized around the theme of the self: Self-making, self-deception, self-reliance, self-expression, self-representation, self-liberation 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 an early US philosopher (Emerson); lyric (self-expressive) poetry by Whitman and Dickinson; and life writing by a formerly enslaved woman (Jacobs) and the first Asian American author (Sui Sin Far). The course will wrap up with an experimental novel written by 13 contributors who together confront the American mythology of self-making and the idea of self-expression through voting OR a recent biography of five generations of a Chinese American family. Texts may include: Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jeremy McCarter, Hamilton: The Revolution ISBN-13: ‎ 978-1455539741 (available at bookstore or on amazon.ca) OR a print-out of the lyrics (on CANVAS) Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay “Experience” on CANVAS Selections from Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself on CANVAS Selections from Henry David Thoreau’s memoir, Walden (1854) (Princeton UP) 9780691169347 Herman Melville’s novella, Benito Cereno (1852) in Billy Budd, Bartleby , and Other Stories ed. Peter Coviello (Penguin) ISBN 978-0143107606 Harriet Jacobs’ autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) ed. Koritha Mitchell, Broadview P, ISBN 9781554815029 Selections from Sui Sin Far’s works on CANVAS (I will try to upload original PDF and a word doc) Elizabeth Jordan’s ed. Composite novel The Sturdy Oak (1917) OR Ava Chin, Mott Street: A Chinese American Family’s Story of Exclusion and Homecoming (2023)
007	2	In-Person	Seminar	Th	12:00 - 14:00	Moss, Laura	Section Description Censorship and Speech in Contemporary Canadian Literature “Artists have voices,” author Lawrence Hill states in an interview, “and their voices can help influence—profoundly, sometimes—the way we see ourselves, and the way we see our country and the world and our roles in them.” In this class we will turn to a series of questions I keep coming back to: Who speaks? Who gets a chance to speak? Whose voices are heard? Who listens? Who is listening? Who is silenced? Who chooses to be silent? Who profits from speaking? Who benefits? Thinking about censorship, freedom of speech, and creative activism, we will study a selection of fiction and poetry published in Canada that reflects on a wide range of topics and issues, including the climate crisis, race and racism, mobility and migration, decolonization, gender, sexuality, technology, and history. These writers tell stories where private lives and public histories often merge. We will examine the intersections of politics and art in texts from a range of geographies, genres, and cultures. These might include a graphic novel “Haida Manga,” a book of poetry that reflects on the Rwandian genocide, a collection of short stories about a Laotian family new to Canada, a novel that time travels between the west coast of Canada and Japan, a narrative about the legacy of violence for a family in Ontario, and a novel about a friendship between a song writer and an internet cover artist. This course will centre the voices of BIPOC writers.
003	1	In-Person	Seminar	Th	14:00 - 16:00	Dalziel, Pamela	Section Description Reimagining Jane Eyre and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland 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? We will attempt to answer these and other questions of cultural production in our discussions of the novels and some of their adaptations and reimaginings. 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 original works and in their reimaginings, and in our (and the Victorians’) readings of them. Our discussions will be wide-ranging: from Jean Rhys’s famous Jane Eyre prequel Wide Sargasso Sea to Jackie Kay’s “Would Jane Eyre Come to the Information Desk?,” Cathy Marston and Errollyn Wallen’s dance film Bertha, and Patricia Park’s Re Jane (described by Park as “updating Jane Eyre to contemporary New York and the world of organic produce and identity politics”); from Walt Disney’s 1951 Alice in Wonderland, which continues to define Carroll’s novel in the popular imagination, to Salvador Dalí’s art edition, Tara Bryan’s tunnel book Down the Rabbit Hole, Elizabeth LaPensée and KC Oster’s graphic novel Rabbit Chase, and the “Alice industry.” *We will be discussing Jane Eyre* in its entirety during our second (September 11th) class. Please begin reading before term begins.** Our reading and viewing list will include: Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (Oxford World’s Classics); extracts from Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea (Canvas); Jane Eyre, devised by the Company and directed by Sally Cookson, 2015 (Drama Online, UBC Library); Jackie Kay, “Would Jane Eyre Come to the Information Desk?” (UBC Library and reading by Kay); Bertha, choreographed by Cathy Marston, music by Errollyn Wallen, 2021 (Joffrey Ballet); Patricia Park, Re Jane (Penguin); Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Broadview print edition, eBook); Alice in Wonderland, Walt Disney, 1951 (UBC Library); Alice in Wonderland, directed by Jonathan Miller, 1966 (Canvas); Elizabeth LaPensée and K.C. Oster, Rabbit Chase (Annick Press).
002	1	In-Person	Seminar	W	11:00 - 13:00	Paltin, Judith	Section Description “Yes, I have read James Joyce’s Ulysses.” Let’s just admit this seminar is for a lifetime’s worth of bragging rights, but also because I know you will discover what fun it is to read and understand Joyce’s great book. It’s daunting, clever, about everything and nothing, completely frank, silly, shocking, obscene, intellectual, and really, really funny. Do you care about other people and enjoy their variety? Do you wonder about the universe? Do you like to try to make some sense out of a chaotic and often tragic world? Do you enjoy wordplay, puzzles, and games? Then Ulysses is for you! This is the book you’ll never forget reading… but it’s nice to have a guide along with you the first time you read it.
005	2	In-Person	Seminar	T	14:30 - 16:30	Deer, Glenn	Section Description The Culinary Imagination: Reading Culture Through Food, Cooking, and Eating Food, cooking, and eating are biologically necessary and socially powerful: we produce and cook food to survive, but also to reinforce social bonds, to celebrate tradition, to evoke memories of home, to compete with other cooks, to impress the eater, and even to beguile and seduce. This course will explore food in literature, particularly life narratives, cookbook selections, and films across different cultures and borders, from the transnational to local Vancouver contexts. The production of food is essentially linked to histories of empire, colonial power, capital, racialized and gendered labour, and ecological change. Our discussions will explore these intersections. Readings will include selections from Gitanjali Shahani (Food and Literature), Amitav Ghosh (The Nutmeg’s Curse), Sandra Gilbert (The Culinary Imagination) , Monique Truong (The Book of Salt), MFK Fisher (How to Cook a Wolf), Cheuk Kwan (Have You Eaten Yet?), Fred Wah (Diamond Grill), and Austin Clarke (Pigtails ‘n’ Breadfruit). Tasteful excerpts from cookbooks by local artist Janice Wong and the local anthology edited by Brandy Lien Worrall-Soriano, Eating Stories: A Chinese Canadian and Aboriginal Potluck, will be sampled. Films will include Gabriel Axel’s Babette’s Feast, Juzo Itami's Japanese "noodle western" Tampopo, Ang Lee's Eat Drink Man Woman, the restaurant documentaries of Cheuk Kwan, and excerpts from the recent television series The Bear . We will host some class dialogue with food writers and filmmakers, and students will be able to research local restaurants, gardens, or farms as optional final projects. Multimedia examples of previous student projects for my food-themed courses can be found at the following Richmond Museum exhibit, “Our Journeys Here” (2017-2018)

Senior Honours Seminar - SR HONORS SEMNR1

ENGL 491A

te-punga-somerville-alice

2023 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Required of all Honours Students. See Department Website (english.ubc.ca) for options.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
001	1		Seminar	T	10:00 - 12:00	Te Punga Somerville, Alice		Section Description Indigenous Non-fiction Why, how and what do Indigenous writers create when they produce non-fiction works? How does engaging Indigenous non-fiction provide opportunities to understand these genres, these writers and the contexts from which they come? With a focus on six recent books from very different Indigenous, colonial and political contexts, in this course we will engage with longstanding conversations about Indigenous non-fiction as we seek to understand, as Osage literary scholar Robert Warrior puts it, “the unrecognized centrality of nonfiction writing” to Indigenous literary, political and social worlds. Over the term we will weave together these six primary texts, a range of critical work, and the perspectives and training we bring with us into the class. Aguon – No Country for Eight Spot Butterflies Buchanan – Te Motunui Epa Miranda – Bad Indians Simpson & Maynard - Rehearsals For Living Washout & Warburton - Shapes of Native Nonfiction Watego – Another Day in the Colony

Senior Honours Seminar - Senior Honours Seminar

ENGL 491A

te-punga-somerville-alice

2025 SummerCredits: 3

Cross-listed with ENGL 490-921 (Literature Majors Seminar)

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_921		In-Person	Seminar	M, W	12:00 - 14:00	Te Punga Somerville, Alice		Section Description Reading Indigenous Texts How do we read Indigenous texts? How can reading help us think about what it means to be Indigenous – here, there, anywhere? What are the connections between writing, museums and universities? How can we think about the global, and about specificity, by engaging with Indigenous texts? Why read Indigenous texts in this present moment? In this course, we will ask these questions by turning to recent collections of poetry by two very different Indigenous writers, Jenny Davis (Chickasaw) and Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner (Marshallese), as well as short creative and critical texts by other writers; we will also ask them by connecting with some Indigenous ‘texts’ at the Museum of Anthropology on campus. Students will have the opportunity to 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, and a short presentation.

Senior Honours Seminar - Senior Honours Seminar

ENGL 491A

mallipeddi-ramesh pareles-mo britton-dennis

2025 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Required of all Honours Students. Restricted to English Honours students in third-year or higher. See Department website (www.english.ubc.ca) for seminar topics. This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.

Sections (3)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Details Data
A_003	1	In-Person	Seminar	Th	11:00 - 13:00	Mallipeddi, Ramesh	Section Description Postcolonial Literature This course introduces students to the work of authors from formerly colonized nations in the Caribbean, Africa, and South Asia. Focusing primarily, though not exclusively, on prose fiction, we will examine how postcolonial writers engage with issues of national identity and decolonization; negotiate the competing imperatives of English and vernacular literary traditions; and formulate both personal and collective strategies of self-representation. Possible writers include V.S. Naipaul, Joseph Conrad, Jamaica Kincaid, Ayi Kwei Armah, Titsi Dangarembga, and Wole Soyinka. This is a reading intensive course, with approximately 200-250 pages of primary and secondary materials a week. Complete the readings before class and come prepared to discuss them with the group. Required texts (on order at the UBC Bookstore): Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart Ayi Kwei Armah, The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born V.S. Naipaul, A Bend in the River Tsitsi Dangarembga, Nervous Conditions J.M. Coetzee, Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life Jamaica Kincaid, A Small Place Wole Soyinka, Death and the King’s Horseman Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Weep Not, Child
A_002	1	In-Person	Seminar	W	12:00 - 14:00	Pareles, Mo	Section Description Translation, Multilingualism, Poetics: Theory and Practice in Jewish and Muslim Diasporas Above all else, my languages release me without losing me. --–from Samira Negrouche, “Who is Speaking,” trans. Marilyn Hacker In this senior seminar, we will explore the theory and practice of diasporic poetics and of literary translation. Contemporary literature and translation from the Jewish and Islamic diasporas, and in particular literature that weaves intimacies between traditions, will be our central but not solo focus. We will linger on translated and multilingual literature and on the experimental, erotic, political, queer, feminist, and strange. We will also look at sources: Qur’an, Talmud, medieval poetry, visual art. Assigned reading will likely include work by Rahat Kurd, Denis Ferhatovic, Joyce Mansour, Celia Dropkin, Marilyn Hacker, Samira Negrouche, Mohja Kahf, Ozan Zakariya Keskinkılıç, Jennifer Croft, Jorge Luis Borges, Clarice Lispector, Lawrence Venuti, Jhumpa Lahiri, Suneela Mubayi, David Gramling, and others. Poets and translators will visit the classroom, and students will have the opportunity to practice poetic or prose translation for their final projects.
A_001	1	In-Person	Seminar	T	11:00 - 13:00	Britton, Dennis	Section Description Othello and Black Reimaginings Of Shakespeare’s works, none has sparked the imagination, interest, and ire of Black people more than Othello. This seminar will begin with an intensive study of Othello, reading it within the context of early modern concerns about race, religion, gender, sexuality, and social rank. We will then examine how Black actors, authors, artists, and critics have reimagined Shakespeare’s play to advance their political, artistic, and intellectual projects. We will analyze landmark performances by Black actors (Ira Aldridge, Paul Robeson, and James Earl Jones), Toni Morrison’s Desdemona, Djanet Sears’s Harlem Duet, Keith Hamilton Cobb’s American Moor, Stew’s Passing Strange, Jordan Peele’s Get Out, Rita Dove’s Sonata Mulattica, Jason Allen-Paisant’s Self-Portrait as Othello, and work by the visual artists Fred Wilson, Curlee Raven Holton, and Chris Ofili. Class assignments will include short papers, a group-presentation, and a research-based final project.

Senior Honours Seminar - SR HONORS SEMNR1

ENGL 491B

guy-bray-stephen

2023 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Required of all Honours Students. See Department Website (english.ubc.ca) for options.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
002	1		Seminar	W	10:00 - 12:00	Guy-bray, Stephen		Section Description In this course we’ll read a variety of lyric poems, usually about two or three per class. Some of these poems come from the sixteenth century; some from the twenty-first century; some from the centuries in between. We’ll investigate to what extent a poem can be about anything besides itself. In other words, does a lyric poem represent an emotional state, a landscape, a work of art, or any other of the ostensible subjects of lyric poetry, or does it chiefly (or most interestingly?) represent its own writing, its own workings as a text? Most of the poems will be available online through the library. In cases, where the library doesn’t have copies of the poems I’ll make them available from my own copies.

Senior Honours Seminar - Senior Honours Seminar

ENGL 491B

mota-miguel kim-christine severs-jeffrey dick-alexander

2025 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Sections (4)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Details Data
B_006	2	In-Person	Seminar	W	13:00 - 15:00	Mota, Miguel	Section Description British Drama Since 1956 Histories of post-WWII British drama often point to 1956 as a watershed year. The year marked the celebrated success of John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger, a play which, in its examination and criticism of a post-war, class-ridden British society, recorded the frustration of the younger British generation (the so-called “angry young men”) with the traditional values of the “Establishment,” and signalled the beginning of a dramatic revival in Britain. The late 1950s initiated an explosion of dramatic activity that gave rise to the most exciting age of British drama since the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods. A growing interest in international theatre, increased government funding, the growth of regional repertory theatre, and radical changes in the social structure of the nation all contributed to a revitalized theatrical environment during the 1960s and 1970s. And though later cutbacks in public funding under the Conservative governments of Margaret Thatcher at times threatened their livelihood, British playwrights continued to address in vital and exciting ways many of the important and often contentious issues facing British society during and after Thatcherism. In this course, we will survey a cross-section of British drama since 1956, ranging from the plays of the angry young men and women (Osborne; Shelagh Delaney) to the work of such seminal playwrights as Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard and Caryl Churchill to more recent attempts by playwrights such as Ayub Khan-Din, Mark Ravenhill, Sarah Kane, Martin McDonagh, and debbie tucker green to articulate new ways of exploring theatrical representation.
B_005	2	In-Person	Seminar	Th	09:30 - 11:30	Kim, Christine	Section Description The Asian Inhuman This course will examine the figure of the Asian as inhuman in contemporary literature and culture. It will draw on a body of creative and critical texts that address this figure in terms of techno-Orientalism; human rights discourse; race, migration and diaspora; gender and sexuality; migrant labour; and refugeeism. Creative Texts: (Subject to Change) Han Kang, The Vegetarian. SKY Lee. Disappearing Moon Cafe. Blaine Harden. Escape From Camp 14. Kazuo Ishiguro. Never Let Me Go. Y-Dang Troeung. Landbridge. There will also be a course packet with critical readings from critical refugee studies, critical Cold War studies, Asian diaspora and migration, on techno-Orientalism, and Asian Canadian and Asian American studies.
B_007	2	In-Person	Seminar	F	13:00 - 15:00	Severs, Jeffrey	Section Description Twenty-First Century U.S. Fiction This seminar will examine U.S. fiction (novels and short story collections) of the first twenty-plus years of the twenty-first century. Topics will include postmodernism and its putative end; new forms of experimentation such as autofiction; 9/11, its aftermath, and the U.S.’s place in geopolitics; and neoliberal economics as the dominant logic of contemporary capitalism. Students will write a seminar paper based in close-reading, a final research essay, and some online posts, as well as lead and participate in discussion. Texts will include the following (subject to change): David Foster Wallace’s Oblivion (2004) (selected stories); Toni Morrison’s Love (2003); Rachel Kushner’s The Flamethrowers (2013); Chang-rae Lee’s On Such a Full Sea (2014) or A Gesture Life (1999); short stories by John Edgar Wideman; and Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (2019). Some critical and theoretical texts will be included as well.
B_004	2	In-Person	Seminar	T	12:30 - 14:30	Dick, Alexander	Section Description Scottish Romanticism No country exudes the “Romantic” more than Scotland. Its gothic castles, sublime mountain ranges, and thrilling coastal vistas were all seminal to the formation of a Romantic mode in art, music, and literature. Scotland’s complex history—its divisions between Gaelic and English-speaking communities, its religious contentions and civil wars, its experiments with agricultural improvement and internal colonialism, even its status as a country (nation? region?)—was a subject of many works of poetry, drama, and fiction in the period and has been central to conversations about eighteenth-and nineteenth-century literature ever since. In this seminar, we will consider these issues by way of a selection of key texts by canonical Scottish Romantic authors (James MacPherson, Robert Burns, Walter Scott, James Hogg) as well as by lesser known, but critically important writers, especially women (incl. Anne Grant, Joanna Baillie, Mary Brunton, and Susan Ferrier). Our goals will be to understand how Scotland helped to define the movement we call “Romanticism” and to see how Scottish Romantic literature unpacks in sometimes odd ways the formative social and political transformations that were taking place in Scotland and Great Britain at the time—transformations that still have repercussions today. We will also think about how Scottish Romanticism has influenced the aesthetics and politics of other nations, including Canada and particularly British Columbia.

Senior Honours Seminar - SR HONORS SEMNR1

ENGL 491C

zeitlin-michael

2023 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Required of all Honours Students. See Department Website (english.ubc.ca) for options.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
003	1		Seminar	M	13:00 - 15:00	Zeitlin, Michael		Section Description The Western Front, 1914-18: International Retrospectives Neither will they understand--that will not be all my fault. ---Edmund Blunden, Undertones of War (1928) In “Thoughts for the Times on War and Death” (1915), written while two of his sons were serving in the Austrian army during the First World War, with a third son soon to volunteer, Sigmund Freud offered this astonishingly objective description of the escalating world war: Not only is it more bloody and more destructive than any war of other days, because of the enormously increased perfection of weapons of attack and defence; it is at least as cruel, as embittered, as implacable as any that has preceded it. It disregards all the restrictions known as International Law, which in peace-time the states had bound themselves to observe; it ignores the prerogatives of the wounded and the medical service, the distinction between civil and military sections of the population, the claims of private property. It tramples in blind fury on all that comes in its way, as though there were to be no future and no peace among men after it is over. It cuts all the common bonds between the contending peoples, and threatens to leave a legacy of embitterment that will make any renewal of those bonds impossible for a long time to come. Reflecting, moreover, on the scene of mass industrialized killing and Europe's dead millions from a post-World War II, post-holocaust, post-atom-bomb perspective, one comes to understand why George Kennan described the First World War as “the great seminal catastrophe” of the twentieth century. The visceral and visual perspectives of infantry soldiers, aviators, and military hospital nurses may enable us to grasp something of the war's terrible reality. Our readings will include eye-witness accounts from the zone of war by French, German, British, Canadian, and American participants. A warning: the course readings include graphic descriptions of extreme violence--killing, death, wounds, mutilation, corpses, soul injury--along with countless heart-rending accounts of young people "doomed to a short life" (The Iliad). Students will give a 30-minute presentation, write a three-page essay (to be circulated in advance and read aloud), do a ten-minute informal reading ("open the book, read something aloud, formulate a question or observation"), and write a final essay. Readings will include the following: Ellen La Motte, The Backwash of War: The Human Wreckage of the Battlefield as Witnessed by an American Hospital Nurse (1916) Henri Barbusse, Under Fire (1916) William ("Billy") A. Bishop, Winged Warfare (1918) Ernst Jünger, Storm of Steel (1920) Hervey Allen, Toward the Flame (1926) Edmund Blunden, Undertones of War (1928) Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front (1928) Mary Borden, The Forbidden Zone (1929) Robert Graves, Good-Bye to All That (1929) Siegfried Sassoon, Memoirs of an Infantry Officer (1930) Suggested Preliminary and Contextual Reading: W.E. B. Du Bois, "White Imperialism" (1914) Sigmund Freud, "Thoughts for the Times on War and Death" (1915) B.H. Liddell Hart, The Real War 1914-1918 (1930) B.H. Liddell Hart, World War I in Outline (1936) Barbara Tuchman, The Guns of August (1962) Ian Kershaw, To Hell and Back: Europe 1914-1949 (2015)

Senior Honours Seminar - SR HONORS SEMNR1

ENGL 491D

al-kassim-dina

2023 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Required of all Honours Students. See Department Website (english.ubc.ca) for options.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
004	2		Seminar	Th	14:00 - 16:00	Al-kassim, Dina

Senior Honours Seminar - SR HONORS SEMNR1

ENGL 491E

bain-kimberly

2023 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Required of all Honours Students. See Department Website (english.ubc.ca) for options.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
005	2		Seminar	T	14:00 - 16:00	Bain, Kimberly		Section Description Black Miscellanea: Black Experiments in Form As Katherine McKittrick writes, Black miscellanea, “signal[s] an experiment in coming to know black livingness without producing and reproducing an intellectual economy that is oversaturated with racial violence.” To that end, this course takes up considerations of Black experimental thought, methods, and forms to consider the question of Black life in the contemporary moment. Holding the experimental at the forefront of our thought, this course will sojourn with the work of Black theorists, activists, and artists that reimagine “a way of thinking the space/time of politics for those deemed disposable or socially dead within the contexts of heteropatriarchy and white supremacy” (Audre Lorde), attending to questions of the disjunctive, the genre flail, the palimpsestic, the miscellaneous, and so forth. For example, we will consider how novelistic, poetic, and critical writings join with the sonic, the spoken, the virtual, and the conceptual performance pieces to alchemize Black life. Our explorations will entail a critical interrogation of the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, ability, and class, with particular interest in how those social formations correspond and diverge. As part of this course, we will take a heterogenous and expansive definition of theory and include creative productions, engaging with myriad forms of texts including video games, poetry, performance art, visual art, and so forth. Students may also produce projects reflecting these forms (ex. collages, podcast episodes, short films, etc.)

Senior Honours Seminar - SR HONORS SEMNR1

ENGL 491F

partridge-stephen

2023 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Required of all Honours Students. See Department Website (english.ubc.ca) for options.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
006	2		Seminar	W	14:00 - 16:00	Partridge, Stephen		Section Description Contemporary Chaucers In the first few weeks we will read a number of the most important and influential Canterbury Tales in a modern English translation. One focus of our discussion will be the range of sources and traditions, from Europe and beyond, that informed Chaucer’s writing of the Tales. We will then consider some of the best-known modern and contemporary adaptations, focusing on particular pilgrims and tales (the Miller, the Wife of Bath, the Pardoner) and areas (including the African diaspora in Britain, America, and the Caribbean). Works we read together may include, for example, Patience Agbabi, Telling Tales; Zadie Smith, The Wife of Willesden; Marilyn Nelson, The Cachoeira Tales and Other Poems; Kim Zarins, Sometimes We Tell the Truth; one or more collections of Refugee Tales by various writers. Class members will develop projects exploring the many ways that Chaucer is represented in the 20^th-21^st centuries: adaptation in fiction, including for children and young adults, and in poetry; stage, film, animation; translation; illustration; various kinds of allusion such as dramatic monologues based in Chaucer’s work and life. Each class member will give a presentation; there will be opportunities to present on Chaucer and his contexts, and on contemporary responses to his work.

Senior Honours Seminar - Senior Honours Seminar

ENGL 491G

wong-danielle

2024 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
G_001	1	In-Person	Seminar	T	14:00 - 16:00	Wong, Danielle		Section Description Asian Artificiality: Race, Matter, Circuits “We’re so postracial we’re silicon.” -- Cathy Park Hong, Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning The above statement conjures popular images of Asians and Asianness as simulacra (AI, cyborgs, dolls, robots, or clones) and links contemporary anxieties about artificiality in the information age to a history of Yellow Peril. Hong’s lament, while equating silicon or the silicon age with postraciality, also racializes silicon as Asian, suggesting that the materiality of computational and digital processes is racial. This seminar approaches Asianness’s apparent artificiality or virtualness as an occasion to rethink racial materiality within and against genealogies of colonial modernity, militarism, and information capitalism. Considering “Asian artificiality” as a question of race, matter, and circuits, we will engage theory and cultural productions that historicize Asianness’s seemingly mediatic nature within the ongoing violence of settler colonial racial capitalism. Texts may include novels such as Hari Kunzru’s Transmission and R.F. Kuang’s Yellowface; poetry by Larissa Lai, Franny Choi, and Divya Victor; films including Jennifer Phang’s Advantageous and Kogonada’s film After Yang; and other media. This is a tentative seminar description; the course syllabus will be posted in Term 1.

Senior Honours Seminar - Senior Honours Seminar

ENGL 491H

mcneilly-kevin

2024 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
H_002	1	In-Person	Seminar	W	12:00 - 14:00	Mcneilly, Kevin		Section Description Surge, Pulse, and Flow: Tending and Attending to Bodies In this seminar, we will mix conceptual-theoretical work with practice-based research on media and literature to think about the aesthetics and the cultural politics of embodiment, particularly around questions of space, rhythm and sense. How do we come to keep time with ourselves as corporeal, material creatures? How are bodies framed, informed, and transformed by various registers of the rhythmic—social, haptic, aesthetic, diurnal, spatial, biotic, epochal? Investigating a set of six representative bodies of work—songs by Taylor Swift, stories by Alice Munro, comics by Lynda Barry, films by Alanis Obomsawin, essays and poems by Kathleen Jamie, journals and poems by Audre Lorde—we will consider the body as a representational and enactive network of troubled and troubling flows; we will couple these readings, listenings, and viewings with theoretically-inclined work by Annemarie Mol, Judith Butler, David Abram, Tricia Rose, Stefano Harney and Fred Moten, Isabelle Stengers, Dylan Robinson, and others, to begin to create a flexible conceptual framework for understanding how the body works both as and with poetic text. Students are invited to bring their creative practices into the classroom, to discover how their own thinking might mesh with these understandings of how body-awareness operates in contemporary experience, of how texture and rhythm can make meaning happen. How might addressing the body help shape our understandings of race, gender, indigeneity, (dis)ability, class and other significant fabrics of intersubjectivity and community? While students can expect to encounter writing and art that can sometimes seem challenging and daunting, this seminar is designed as a hands-on, participatory introduction to contemporary representations of the body, and provides students with an opportunity to begin to evolve their own theoretically informed critical and creative practices.

Senior Honours Seminar - Senior Honours Seminar

ENGL 491J

earle-bo

2023 SummerCredits: 3

Offerings in literary theory. This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.

The credit value for this course will be determined in consultation with the student prior to the registration

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
J_951		In-Person	Lecture	T, Th	10:00 - 12:00	Earle, Bo

Senior Honours Seminar - Senior Honours Seminar

ENGL 491J

dalziel-pamela

2024 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
J_003	1	In-Person	Seminar	Th	14:00 - 16:00	Dalziel, Pamela		Section Description Reimagining Jane Eyre and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland 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? We will attempt to answer these and other questions of cultural production in our discussions of the novels and some of their adaptations and reimaginings. 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 original works and in their reimaginings, and in our (and the Victorians’) readings of them. Our discussions will be wide-ranging: from Jean Rhys’s famous Jane Eyre prequel Wide Sargasso Sea to Paula Rego’s lithographs, Sujata Bhatt’s Rego poems, Cathy Marston and Errollyn Wallen’s dance film Bertha, and Patricia Park’s Re Jane (described by Park as “updating Jane Eyre to contemporary New York and the world of organic produce and identity politics”); from Walt Disney’s 1951 Alice in Wonderland, which continues to define Carroll’s novel in the popular imagination, to Salvador Dalí’s art edition, Tara Bryan’s tunnel book Down the Rabbit Hole, Elizabeth LaPensée and K.C. Oster’s graphic novel Rabbit Chase, and the “Alice industry.” *We will be discussing Jane Eyre* in its entirety during our second (September 12th) class. Please begin reading before our course begins.** Our reading and viewing list will include: Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (Oxford World's Classics); Jane Eyre, devised by the Company and directed by Sally Cookson, 2015 (Drama Online, UBC Library); Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea (Penguin); Bertha, choreographed by Cathy Marston, music by Errollyn Wallen, 2021 (Joffrey Ballet); Patricia Park, Re Jane (Penguin); Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Broadview); Alice in Wonderland, Walt Disney, 1951 (UBC Library); Alice in Wonderland, directed by Jonathan Miller, 1966 (Library Online Course Reserves, Canvas (only available during term)); Elizabeth LaPensée and K.C. Oster, Rabbit Chase (Annick Press).

Senior Honours Seminar - Senior Honours Seminar

ENGL 491K

hunt-dallas

2024 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
K_004	2	In-Person	Seminar	T	14:00 - 16:00	Hunt, Dallas		Section Description Modes of Indigenous Cultural and Political Resurgence This course will think through crucial questions about Indigenous communities and their relations (or lack thereof) to state structures in what is currently a Canadian and U.S. context, and how these Western political formations come into conflict/contention with Indigenous articulations of belonging, self-determination, gender, cultural expression and production, among many other things. We will examine some of the diverse ways in which creative and critical Indigenous theory texts and other modes of cultural production can facilitate meaning and knowledge about contemporary Indigenous community articulations. This will foster an understanding of how Indigenous studies conceptualizes and addresses the diversity of Indigenous political, historical, and cultural identity formations, and how these interact with the settler state. We will address Indigenous notions of gender and sexuality, kinship, social organization, and resurgence and the way these notions interface with states currently situated on Turtle Island.

Senior Honours Seminar - Senior Honours Seminar

ENGL 491L

rouse-robert

2024 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
L_005	2	In-Person	Seminar	F	12:00 - 14:00	Rouse, Robert		Section Description The Marvellous Medieval Romance Medieval 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. The 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 marvellously 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.

Senior Honours Seminar - Senior Honours Seminar

ENGL 491M

smilges-logan

2024 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
M_006	2	In-Person	Seminar	W	14:00 - 16:00	Smilges, Logan		Section Description Crip Rhetorics: A Seminar on Disability, Rhetoric, & Activism While rhetorical studies has long engaged disability on issues of access and accessibility, scholars such as Tara Wood, Jay Dolmage, Margaret Price, and Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson (2014) have urged the field to “move beyond mere lists and individual accommodations.” This honors seminar sets out to explore that “beyond,” teasing out the conflicts and potentials embedded at the intersection of disability, rhetoric, and activism. Over the course of the semester, we will ask two, interanimating questions: in what ways can we write about and theorize disability rhetorically? And in what ways might experiences of disability “crip” our understanding of rhetoric and rhetorical theory? Importantly, disability is an embodied experience (rather than a purely theoretical exercise), which means our readings will include a combination of genres, such as memoir, fiction, theory, and graphic literature, that speak to disability’s materiality. The course assignments, too, will demand a kind of engagement with the world of disability that exceeds traditional library research and a final paper. These assignments ask you to take up Rosemarie Garland-Thomson’s call to “start noticing” disability in your lives outside of school. Noticing disability is a rhetorical task because it involves rescripting the discourses that we use to name and address bodymind difference. Indeed, this course sits delicately on the border of theory and praxis, urging us to take up scholar-activism by reimagining disability and rhetoric in all aspects of our lives. As this seminar will make clear, studying crip rhetorics requires a commitment to disability liberation.

Senior Honours Seminar - Senior Honours Seminar

ENGL 491N

gooding-rick

2024 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
N_007	2	In-Person	Seminar	W	10:00 - 12:00	Gooding, Rick		Section Description Cross-listed with ENGL 490-006 Great Filters The Great Filter, a term coined by Robin Hanson in 1998, is a way of explaining why there’s no evidence of extra-terrestrial civilizations. The idea is that in the course of evolution some obstacle arises that constrains (or even destroys) life before it develops the capacity for sustained interstellar communication or travel. If that filter lies in our past—for example, in the difficulty of developing brains capable of abstract reasoning—then humans might be extremely rare and lucky lifeforms who are on the verge of exploring a vast (but possibly unpopulated) universe. But if the Great Filter still lies ahead, then humanity might be on the verge of an existential crisis. As mainstays of speculative fiction, Great Filters offer writers opportunities to examine present-day concerns. In this course we will read novels that use the idea of the Great Filter to comment on the priorities—and anxieties—of modern life. Some of these depict familiar apocalyptic scenarios: Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker takes place in the distant future after nuclear war devastates England, Greg Bear’s Blood Music chronicles the emergence of artificial intelligence from nanotechnology, and Catherynne M. Valente’s The Past is Red offers a deeply personal and heartbreaking representation of loneliness and hope in a post-climate-change civilization living on the Pacific Garbage Patch. Other novels are more whimsical. In Happiness, Will Ferguson imagines a very funny, world-ending contagion of self-help culture, while Jon Bois’ multimedia 17776 (What Football Will Look Like in the Future) imagines a world where the elimination of reproduction, aging, and death have resulted in a civilization devoted almost entirely to sports. Note: The reading list for this class is still under consideration, and we may add one or two titles—and modes of destruction—to the above list. A full list will be available later this summer.

Honours Essay

ENGL 499

2024 Winter Term 1/2Credits: 3

This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.

Sections (2)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
001	1	In-Person	Thesis	M	08:00 - 08:30
002	2	In-Person	Thesis	M	08:30 - 09:00

Honours Essay

ENGL 499

2025 SummerCredits: 3

This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
98A		In-Person	Thesis

Honours Essay

ENGL 499

2025 Winter TermCredits: 3

This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.

Sections (2)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
001		In-Person	Thesis
002		In-Person	Thesis

Research in English Studies

ENGL 500

mota-miguel

2023 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Required of all graduate students in the M.A. program. Pass/Fail.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
001	1		Seminar	Th	12:30 - 14:30	Mota, Miguel		Section Description Required of all graduate students in the M.A. program. Pass/Fail. This course will introduce new MA students in the Department of English Language and Literatures to graduate-level research skills and professional practices. Meetings will include a variety of guest presentations, workshops, and library visits. Sessions will focus on such topics as archival research, digital tools, applying for grants, writing seminar papers and conference proposals, and submitting articles for publications.

Research in English Studies - Research in English Studies

ENGL 500A

anger-suzy

2025 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Required of all graduate students in the M.A. program. Pass/Fail. This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_001	1	In-Person	Seminar	Th	12:30 - 14:30	Anger, Suzy		Section Description This course will introduce new MA students to graduate-level research skills and professional practices. Meetings will include workshops, guest presentations, and library visits. Sessions will focus on topics such as research areas, thesis supervision, archival research, digital tools, applying for grants, and attending conferences. There are no formal assignments and the course is marked Pass/Fail

Research in English Studies - RES ENGL STUDIES

ENGL 500B

tomc-sandra

2023 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Required of all graduate students in the M.A. program. Pass/Fail.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
002	1		Seminar	Th	12:30 - 14:30	Tomc, Sandra

Research in English Studies - Research in English Studies

ENGL 500B

tomc-sandra

2024 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Required of all graduate students in the M.A. program. Pass/Fail. This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
B_002	1	In-Person	Seminar	Th	12:30 - 14:30	Tomc, Sandra

Research in English Studies - Research in English Studies

ENGL 500B

tomc-sandra

2025 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Required of all graduate students in the M.A. program. Pass/Fail. This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
B_002	1	In-Person	Seminar	Th	12:30 - 14:30	Tomc, Sandra

Research in English Studies - Research in English Studies

ENGL 500C

anger-suzy

2024 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Required of all graduate students in the M.A. program. Pass/Fail. This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
C_001	1	In-Person	Seminar	Th	12:30 - 14:30	Anger, Suzy

Studies in Bibliography - BIBLIOGRAPHY

ENGL 501A

potter-tiffany

2023 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Sections (2)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
001	1		Seminar	M	14:00 - 17:00	Potter, Tiffany		Section Description Creating a Scholarly Edition This is a hands-on course in scholarly editing and publishing, in which we will work collaboratively across the term on a complete edition of Hobomok, the 1824 romance by American human rights campaigner Lydia Maria Child. The edition is under contract for 2025 publication by Broadview Press, and we will also develop some additional material for possible inclusion in the online resources for the Broadview Anthology of American Literature. We will work on the text itself (cruxes, textual editing principles), on the identification and selection of historical appendices and illustrations, and on the critical introduction, footnotes, headnotes and contextual essays for a classroom edition of this complex fictionalization: in the (historical) Plymouth Colony, a (fictional) woman resists Puritan constraint and later marries Hobomok, a (historical) Pokanoket pniese and advisor to the Wampanoag sachem Massasoit. Child also published actively in the anti-slavery movement, and the course includes opportunities to work on her abolitionist writings. Students who complete the course will be named on the acknowledgements page in the published edition, and there will be an additional published teaching resource to which student-editors may be able to contribute. This course will make use of scholarship on critical editing; on creating materials for decolonizing pedagogies; on the novel and its author; on women’s responses to Puritan patriarchies, romance as resistance, and the implications of colonial imaginings of Black and Indigenous lives by settler women; and on the historical Hobomok and his communities’ nuanced resistance to colonial violence and settler encroachment. Course work will include one article-length essay (focused on either original scholarship or critical scholarly pedagogy), reviews of secondary readings (with short presentation), and several short researched editorial contributions (annotations, appendices, headnotes, illustrations).
01W	1		Waiting List	M	14:00 - 17:00

Studies in Bibliography - Studies in Bibliography

ENGL 501A

echard-sian

2024 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_001	2	In-Person	Seminar	T	13:00 - 16:00	Echard, Sian

Studies in Criticism - Studies in Criticism

ENGL 502A

chapman-mary-ann

2024 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_001	2	In-Person	Seminar	W	13:00 - 16:00	Chapman, Mary Ann

Criticism and Theory - Criticism and Theory

ENGL 502A

bain-kimberly

2025 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_001	2	In-Person	Seminar	M	13:00 - 16:00	Bain, Kimberly		Section Description Black Studies Now What is Black studies? Although Black studies became institutionalized as an academic discipline in U.S. universities in the 1960s, it has existed since the 18th century as a set of intellectual traditions and liberation struggles. These traditions and struggles have borne witness to the production and maintenance of anti-Blackness, a mode of hierarchical distinction between humans. Black studies, therefore, is simultaneously a critique of Western modernity and as well as sizeable archive of social, political, and cultural alternatives. This course surveys recent monographs in Black Studies to think about what is possible and to consider the work that still needs to be done in this field of inquiry. Students will be introduced to the history, theory and philosophy of Black studies, as well as the methodological formations and critical debates occurring within the field in the contemporary moment. Key principal concepts and methods in Black studies will be addressed over the course of the semester. While this is primarily a theory course, students can also expect to engage with myriad other forms of media, including film, poetry, music, and novels.

Studies in Criticism - Studies in Criticism

ENGL 502B

pareles-mo

2024 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
B_002	2	In-Person	Seminar	F	12:00 - 15:00	Pareles, Mo

Studies in Prose - Studies in Prose

ENGL 503A

justice-daniel

2024 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_001	1	In-Person	Seminar	W	11:00 - 14:00	Justice, Daniel

Studies in Fiction - STUDIES FICTION

ENGL 505A

anger-suzy

2023 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Sections (2)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
001	2		Seminar	F	10:00 - 13:00	Anger, Suzy		Section Description Victorian Speculative Fiction In this seminar, we will explore Victorian fiction’s fascination with imagined futures, alternate histories, and wonderful inventions. The genre of scientific romance (later, science fiction) fully emerged in the period; utopian and dystopian fiction became popular; literature by leading authors envisioned fantastic new technologies, alternative cultures, and alien lifeforms. In recent years, Victorian criticism has come to appreciate that the non-realist fiction that was once critically undervalued is central to the literary culture of the period. The revaluation of these texts has been driven largely by a shift toward interdisciplinary modes of literary criticism. Nineteenth-century speculative fictions draw on scientific, psychological, biomedical, and political ideas that emerged in and transformed nineteenth-century culture. The literary texts we will read pose questions about gender, race, colonialism, globalization, industrialism, technological progress, political and social relations, and the nature of the human. Examining the fiction’s literary and cultural contexts, we will discuss such topics as automata and the boundaries between humans and machines, science fiction’s entanglement with colonialism, new conceptions of time and space, environmental concerns and apocalypse, and imagined evolutionary developments of body and mind. Assignments and Other Requirements: Seminar paper (roughly 20 pages) Presentation (roughly 25 minutes) Three sets of informal questions/comments on the readings Texts will include: Edward Bulwer-Lytton, The Coming Race Samuel Butler, Erewhon George Eliot, “The Lifted Veil” and “Shadows of the Coming Race” Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, “Sultana’s Dream” Karel Čapek, R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds Auguste Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, Tomorrow’s Eve Short fiction by Rudyard Kipling, Margaret Oliphant, Grant Allen, Israel Zangwill, Elizabeth Corbett, Edward Bellamy Selections from: Mary Gibson, ed. Science Fiction in Colonial India Frederic Jameson, “Progress or Utopia; or, Can We Imagine the Future”? Iwan Rhys Morus, “Looking into the Future: The Telectroscope That Wasn’t There” Louis Chude Sokei, The Sound of Culture: Diaspora and Black Technopoetics
01W	2		Waiting List	F	10:00 - 13:00

Studies in Poetry - STUDIES POETRY

ENGL 506A

antwi-phanuel

2023 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Sections (2)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
001	2		Seminar	M	14:00 - 17:00	Antwi, Phanuel
01W	2		Waiting List	M	14:00 - 17:00

Studies in Poetry - Studies in Poetry

ENGL 506A

guy-bray-stephen

2025 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_001	2	In-Person	Seminar	Th	14:30 - 17:30	Guy-bray, Stephen		Section Description Studies in Poetry In the last 75 years or so, much discourse in poetics has been concerned with the idea of the paraphrase—that is, with the prose version of the poem that is used to make the poem clearer. While paraphrases of this sort can be useful in teaching, there has been an unfortunate tendency among critics to discuss the paraphrase rather than the poem, to see a poem as merely a text like any other. The dominance of historicist approaches to literature in the last few decades has exacerbated this tendency. The result has been a tendency to discuss poetry as if it were not importantly different from prose. In this course, we’ll resist this tendency. After discussing a number of theoretical texts, we’ll consider lyric poems that insist on their status as poetry. We’ll look at a selection of poems from about 1600 to about 2020. These poems will fall into one of three groups: poems that deal with the relation between speech and writing, poems that focus on description, and poems that focus on form. Students will write a series of short analyses and one long essay.

Linguistic Studies of Contemporary English - LING CNTMPRY ENG

ENGL 508A

dancygier-barbara

2023 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Sections (2)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
001	1		Seminar	Th	15:00 - 18:00	Dancygier, Barbara		Section Description How We Construct Narrative Meaning in Literature, Film and Multimodal Discourse Narrative meaning relies essentially on conceptualization of viewpoint. In this course, we will study theories of viewpoint proposed within cognitive linguistics and poetics, also adding some of the analytical tools used to study conceptual frames, mental spaces and blending, and multimodal interaction. The goal is to build an understanding of how viewpoint effects, even if observed in different modes of communication, rely on similar conceptualizations. We will apply these theories to a range of phenomena where narrative meaning emerges, seeking a better explanation of the mechanisms which prompt stories to help us interpret creative representations of situations. We will first study the basics of current approaches to discourse viewpoint and narrative viewpoint, to then consider a range of examples from that perspective. Our readings, examples, and discussions will focus on a wide range of artifacts: novels, plays, films, graphic novels, video games, cartoons, advertisements, and, quite importantly, internet memes. Among more theoretical problems related to narratives, we will address deictic meaning, forms of Speech and Thought Representation (including representation of experience), role of figuration, the nature of embodiment, sequentiality and causation, construction of identity, and the role of images in contemporary discourse. Students will familiarize themselves with the methodologies and use the readings (scholarly articles and chapters) and in-class discussions to develop analytical skills that they would then use in their final project on relevant examples of their choice. All the readings will be available online via Canvas/UBC Library website.
01W	1		Waiting List	Th	15:00 - 18:00

Studies in Rhetoric - STDS RHETORIC

ENGL 509A

smilges-johnathan-logan

2023 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Sections (2)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
001	2		Seminar	F	13:30 - 16:30	Smilges, Johnathan Logan		Section Description Crip Rhetorics: A Seminar on Disability, Rhetoric, and Activism While rhetorical studies has long engaged disability on issues of access and accessibility, scholars such as Tara Wood, Jay Dolmage, Margaret Price, and Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson (2014) have urged the field to “move beyond mere lists and individual accommodations.” This seminar sets out to explore that “beyond,” teasing out the conflicts and potentials embedded at the intersection of disability, rhetoric, and activism. Over the course of the semester, we will ask two, interanimating questions: in what ways can we write about, theorize, and teach disability rhetorically? And in what ways might experiences of disability “crip” our understanding of rhetoric and rhetorical theory? To further complicate these questions, our readings will insist that we adopt an intersectional lens, one that accounts for the ways both disability and sexuality are always already racialized, gendered, and classed. By the end of the course, you will come away with a thorough understanding of both the scope and the stakes of crip activism. Whether you intend to take up disability as the primary subject of your research or as a critical methodology to enrich your perspective on another topic, you’ll become aware of the centrality of disability, of its looming presence in rhetorical studies. As Rosemarie Garland-Thomson puts it (2016), “Disability is everywhere once you start noticing it.” Importantly, disability is an embodied experience (rather than a purely theoretical exercise), which means our readings will include a combination of genres, such as memoir, fiction, theory, and graphic literature, that speak to disability’s materiality. The course assignments, too, will demand a kind of engagement with the world of disability that exceeds traditional library research and a final paper. These assignments ask you to take up Garland-Thomson’s call to “start noticing” disability in your scholarship, service, and lives outside of school. Noticing disability is a rhetorical task because it involves rescripting the discourses that we use to name and address bodymind difference. Indeed, this seminar sits delicately on the border of theory and praxis, urging us to take on a scholar-teacher-activist model of professionalism that reimagines disability and rhetoric in all aspects of our lives. As this seminar will make clear, studying crip rhetorics requires a commitment to fighting for disability liberation.
01W	2		Waiting List	F	13:30 - 16:30

Studies in Rhetoric - Studies in Rhetoric

ENGL 509A

smilges-logan

2024 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_001	1	In-Person	Seminar	M	13:00 - 16:00	Smilges, Logan

Studies in Rhetoric - Studies in Rhetoric

ENGL 509B

hill-ian

2024 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
B_002	2	In-Person	Seminar	W	10:00 - 13:00	Hill, Ian

Middle English Studies - MID ENGL STUDIES

ENGL 512A

rouse-robert

2023 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Sections (2)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
001	2		Seminar	W	9:30 - 12:30	Rouse, Robert		Section Description Whose Middle Ages? Race, History, and the Contested Imaginings of the European Middle Ages The European Middle Ages have, from their very beginning, been called forth into the world through acts of dreaming. From Shakespeare's history play cycles to Tennyson's Idylls, Tolkien's medieval world-making to 2021's Capitol riot Viking Shaman, acts of medieval re-creation punctuate the histories of the west, conjuring forth a Middle Ages manifold in form and ideological content. Identity politics, and the question of who owns the past - and to what purposes this past is deployed - are concerns that lie at the heart of this course. This course will examine the "Middle Ages" as a cultural phenomenon, tracing the continually reimagined idea of the medieval from its origins in the Early Modern through to its continual reinvention in early twenty-first century media. We will examine texts that track the slippery medieval through its long and varied history, taking in genres as diverse as theatre, poetry, the novel, film and TV, and the recent turn to the immersive digital medieval.
01W	2		Waiting List	W	9:30 - 12:30

Middle English Studies - Middle English Studies

ENGL 512A

rouse-robert

2025 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_001	1	In-Person	Seminar	T	12:30 - 15:30	Rouse, Robert		Section Description Studies in Poetry In the last 75 years or so, much discourse in poetics has been concerned with the idea of the paraphrase—that is, with the prose version of the poem that is used to make the poem clearer. While paraphrases of this sort can be useful in teaching, there has been an unfortunate tendency among critics to discuss the paraphrase rather than the poem, to see a poem as merely a text like any other. The dominance of historicist approaches to literature in the last few decades has exacerbated this tendency. The result has been a tendency to discuss poetry as if it were not importantly different from prose. In this course, we’ll resist this tendency. After discussing a number of theoretical texts, we’ll consider lyric poems that insist on their status as poetry. We’ll look at a selection of poems from about 1600 to about 2020. These poems will fall into one of three groups: poems that deal with the relation between speech and writing, poems that focus on description, and poems that focus on form. Students will write a series of short analyses and one long essay.

Studies in the Renaissance - ST'S RENAISSANCE

ENGL 514A

badir-patricia

2023 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Sections (2)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
001	2		Seminar	T	9:30 - 12:30	Badir, Patricia		Section Description For All time? Shakespeare, the First Folio, and the University of British Columbia In 2021, UBC acquired a copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio. Published in 1623, the book is the first printing for nearly half of Shakespeare’s plays. Since there are no surviving manuscripts of any of Shakespeare’s works, 18 plays, including Macbeth, Anthony and Cleopatra, The Tempest and Twelfth Night, are known to us today only because they were first published in the Folio. The recent UBC acquisition, along with the fact that 2023 marks the 400^th anniversary of the Folio’s publication, provides the occasion for this course. Our seminar will take the First Folio as its object of study. All of our encounters with this book will be mediated by an interrogation of its status as both a luxury commodity to be collected and cultural property to be protected. We will query where the book’s value comes from and question the assumption that the volume is imbued with the aura of Shakespeare himself. We will think about the book’s role in the settling of North America – that is how it became what scholar Jyotsna Singh has described, as “a key signifier within colonial discourse.” We will also think about the ways in which the Folio, as an artifact from a world distant from our own, penned by a figure that continues to tower over our collective imagination, provides an occasion for UBC students and faculty, living and working on the unceded lands of the Coast Salish people, to rethink our understanding of literary and cultural history. We will have limited access to the UBC copy at Rare Books and Special Collections, so we will take these opportunities to explore the things that make it unique. We will look for markers of use and readership and we will investigate the book’s previous owners. We will also look at how UBC is promoting this notable acquisition and we will consider the implications of our library’s policy around who is and is not given access to it. In class, students will explore the story of the Folio’s printing (the gathering of the plays as well as how the book was physically printed) and explore the volume’s idiosyncrasies. Students will have the opportunity to learn about about the printing of dramatic and literary works in early modern period and they will explore the value of digitization projects in our own period. Students will also spend some time with the Folio plays themselves in order to think about what they add to the Shakespearean canon. We will consider the resources the Folio provides for theatre practitioners and we will ponder why it is that actors are particularly drawn to this book. Reading for this course will include 3-4 plays and a selection of secondary material. Evaluation will include a seminar presentation and a research project. Participation will be evaluated and in person attendance will be mandatory Students participating in this seminar may have the opportunity to attend a symposium on the First Folio scheduled for the Fall of 2023.
01W	2		Waiting List	T	9:30 - 12:30

Studies in the Renaissance - Studies in the Renaissance

ENGL 514A

britton-dennis

2024 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_001	1	In-Person	Seminar	T	09:30 - 12:30	Britton, Dennis

Studies in the Seventeenth Century - STUDIES 17TH C

ENGL 520A

hodgson-elizabeth

2023 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Sections (2)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
001	1		Seminar	W	9:30 - 12:30	Hodgson, Elizabeth		Section Description Early Modern Women Writers Making Trouble Woman-identified writers of the English Renaissance in many fascinating ways both disturb and amplify the public discourses of their eras. They write into emergent Reformed nationalism and empire, speak for and against class hierarchies, create and subvert a politics of dissent, and reimagine authority. These writers thus intervene in the major narratives of this century: the Protestant Reformation; English nation- and empire-building; civil and regional wars--as they also build new literary alliances, new communities of readers, and new genres. This seminar will encounter a series of major English women writers from 1580-1680 and explore how they speak into their publics. Perspectives: This course will implicitly challenge Habermas’ history of an emergent public sphere: whose politics, which publics? We will use queer theory historians to study the roles of gender-identity and sexuality in these writers and in this era. We will deploy scholarship on early English racialization to analyze the emergent colonialism and nationalism in which these writers operate. Authors and Issues Mary Sidney Herbert (Psalms & dedicatory poems): scriptural nationalism Amelia Lanyer (Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum): women’s alliances & class-politics Mary Wroth (Pamphilia to Amphilanthus; Urania): desire, nostalgia, eco-politics Katherine Philips (Collected Poems; Letters): Royalist politics & female alliances Elizabeth Cary, Tragedy of Mariam: White Feminism & marriage-policy Margaret Cavendish, Convent of Pleasure: female pleasures, feminine communities Mary Rowlandson (Sovereignty and Goodness of God): captivity narratives, early settler colonization Margaret Fell (Women’s Speaking Justified): Quakers, revolution, & women’s spiritual voices Course-Organization: We will all be responsible for our collective learning in every class, since that’s how a seminar works. Graduate courses are also professional training grounds in which you become practiced in scholarly genres and modes. All of the scaffolded course-work (article reviews, a presentation, a research project, weekly discussions) will facilitate our community of learning and your own growing professional skills.
01W	1		Waiting List	W	9:30 - 12:30

Studies in the Eighteenth Century - Studies in the Eighteenth Century

ENGL 525A

burgess-miranda

2024 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_001	1	In-Person	Seminar	W	14:00 - 17:00	Burgess, Miranda

Rhetoric: Theory, Criticism, and Culture - Rhetoric: Theory, Criticism, and Culture

ENGL 533A

smilges-logan

2025 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_001	2	In-Person	Seminar	T	10:00 - 13:00	Smilges, Logan		Section Description Crip of Color Critique: A Seminar on Disability, Race, and Empire A seminar on the emerging field of crip-of-color critique, which brings together concepts and methodologies from critical disability studies, critical race theory, and post-colonial theory.

Rhetoric: Theory, Criticism, and Culture - Rhetoric: Theory, Criticism, and Culture

ENGL 533B

hill-ian

2025 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
B_002	2	In-Person	Seminar	Th	09:30 - 12:30	Hill, Ian		Section Description CROSS-LISTED WITH STS 501 Proseminar in Science and Technology Studies This course surveys foundational and important texts in Science and Technology Studies (STS). Beginning with Thomas A. Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, the reading list will focus on STS scholars who have helped define the field over the decades (e.g. Michel Foucault and Bruno Latour), in addition to more recent influential contributions from the likes of Kim Tallbear and Shobita Parthasarathy. Taking Kuhn’s exhortation to pay more attention to rhetoric seriously, this class will often (but not always!) emphasize texts that examine the intertwining of science, technology, and medicine from the perspectives of rhetoric, discourse, media, and language.

Studies in the Victorian Period - STD IN VICT ERA

ENGL 535A

mackie-gregory

2023 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Sections (2)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
001	1		Seminar	M	10:00 - 13:00	Mackie, Gregory		Section Description Oscar Wilde's Literary Worlds This seminar offers students a deep dive into the varied literary career and complex cultural afterlife of Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), the late-Victorian writer and personality. Although Wilde is perhaps best known as a playwright, he also published in multiple genres, including poetry, fiction, criticism, and fairy tales. Wilde was also a journalist, public speaker, and one of the inaugural figures in the modern phenomenon we now call celebrity culture. He reveled in paradox and contradiction: an Irish nationalist who adored Queen Victoria, Wilde was a self-proclaimed Socialist and Feminist who nevertheless gloried in his elite access to prestige and privilege. Wilde’s trials and subsequent imprisonment for “gross indecency” in 1895 remain a turning point in legal and literary history; those events also had, and continue to have, an indelible impact in shaping our understanding of queer identity and politics. In this course, we will consider Wilde’s writing and life by reading texts by him, about him, and even those erroneously attributed to him with an eye to the shifting contours of his reception and reputation. Students will also have an opportunity to work directly with rare and unique editions of Wilde’s writings at UBC Library’s Rare Books and Special Collections. *WARNING: one of our texts (Teleny) is pornographic.* Main texts: Anon., Teleny, or, the Reverse of the Medal (selections) F. Bloxam, “The Priest and the Acolyte” (Canvas) Alfred Douglas, “Two Loves” and “The Dead Poet” Merlin Holland, The Real Trial of Oscar Wilde (Harper Perennial) Oscar Wilde, The Major Works (Oxford) Salome (Illustrated by Aubrey Beardsley) The Soul of Man under Socialism and Selected Critical Prose (Penguin) “The English Renaissance” and “The House Beautiful” (Canvas)Our readings will also include the latest critical and theoretical developments in Wilde Studies.
01W	1		Waiting List	M	10:00 - 13:00

Studies in the Victorian Period - Studies in the Victorian Period

ENGL 535A

anger-suzy

2024 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_001	1	In-Person	Seminar	T	12:30 - 15:30	Anger, Suzy

Studies in the Victorian Period - Studies in the Victorian Period

ENGL 535A

anger-suzy

2025 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_001	1	In-Person	Seminar	F	10:00 - 13:00	Anger, Suzy		Section Description Nineteenth-Century Literature and the Senses The forming of the five senses is a labor of the entire history of the world down to the present. --Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 The senses are not immutable; they have social, political, and cultural histories. In the nineteenth-century, new understandings of the senses emerged. The senses were hierarchized and employed in arguments about gender, race, class, and empire. Developments in science and physiological psychology gave rise to laboratory studies of the senses. New technologies permitted the “extension” of the senses in telephones, x-rays machines, and powerful telescopes and microscopes. Sensorial disabilities were reconceived. Literary texts shared the culture’s fascination with the senses: “Sensation” fiction sought to produce sense experiences in readers; realism relied on vivid sensory description; early science fiction imagined alternative perceptual organizations. This seminar asks how the senses were categorized, conceptualized, and represented in nineteenth-century literature. Topics discussed will include depictions of deafness and blindness in fiction; imperialism and the senses; odor, race, and class; gender and dominant senses; the aesthetic movement and sensory experience; the sensory onslaught of the industrial city; the extrasensory world of the Victorian séance, and new sensory technologies. Texts will include: Wilkie Collins, Poor Miss Finch Charles Dickens, “Dr. Marigold”; and from American Notes Rudyard Kipling, “They” Sheridan Le Fanu, “Green Tea” Thomas Hardy, The Return of the Native Florence McLandburgh, “The Automaton Ear” Edith Nesbit, “The Five Senses” Georg Simmel, “The Metropolis and Mental Life” Rabindranath Tagore, “Vision” H.G. Wells, “The Country of the Blind”; “Davidson’s Eyes”; “Intelligence on Mars” from - Constance Classen, “Synaesthesia Unraveled: The Union of the Senses from a Cultural Perspective” - Jennifer Esmail, Reading Victorian Deafness - Hsuan L. Hsu, The Smell of Risk: Environmental Disparities and Olfactory Aesthetics - Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception - Andrew Rotter, “Empires of the Senses: How Seeing, Hearing, Smelling, Tasting, and Touching Shaped Imperial Encounters” - M. Smith, How Race is Made: Slavery, Segregation, and the Senses

Studies in the Twentieth Century - STUDIES 20TH C

ENGL 539A

nadel-ira

2023 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Sections (2)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
001	1		Seminar	T	14:00 - 17:00	Nadel, Ira		Section Description Virginia Woolf, War, and Post-Conflict Studies: From the First World War to the War in Ukraine Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), one of the most celebrated writers of the twentieth century, lived in a period punctuated by devastating international conflicts, including the First World War (1914-1918), the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), and the Second World War (1939-1945). As a member of the Bloomsbury Group, she associated with influential artists and intellectuals such as J. M. Keynes and Leonard Woolf, who intervened in public debates on the Treaty of Versailles (1919) and the League of Nations (1920-1946), respectively. For her part, Woolf reflected on the causes and effects of hostilities in occasional writings, a polemical essay, experimental novels, and late fictions. Since the publication of the signal collection Virginia Woolf and War (1991), scholars have paid increasing attention to this pivotal concern in her oeuvre. We revisit Woolf’s writings on total war and the rise of fascism in a time of climate emergency marked by the return of conventional military tactics and right-wing populist leaders. To what extent do Woolf’s innovative texts illuminate transhistorical problems in studies of war ranging from the First World War to the War in Ukraine? Conversely, how do her investigations of conflict expose ethicopolitical dilemmas–inequities, injuries, displacements, and divisions–particular to her era? We begin with timely theoretical interventions in war and post-conflict studies before turning to sociopolitical perspectives on the First World War and its aftermath by Woolf’s contemporaries (including Hogarth Press [1917-1946] editions in UBC Rare Books and Special Collections). In the next section, we grapple with key statements on militarism and pacifism in Woolf criticism prior to our deliberations on her occasional essays (ca. 1915-1940) and Three Guineas (1938). The third unit features prominent research on Woolf’s experimental fictions before we approach Jacob’s Room (1922) and Mrs. Dalloway (1925). Similarly, we address noted critical essays on Woolf’s late novels in the fourth part of the seminar before we interpret The Years (1937) and Between the Acts (1941). In the concluding section, we gauge the impacts of twenty-first century wars and conflicts in Woolf studies and we consider the limits and possibilities of post-conflict paradigms. Assignments may include a reading journal; a seminar presentation; a project proposal; and a final essay. In summary, this seminar orients students to multidisciplinary research on organized violence; promotes familiarity with diverse texts in Woolf’s oeuvre; fosters critical fluency in Woolf scholarship; and invites speculation on modes of theorizing war.
01W	1		Waiting List	T	14:00 - 17:00

Studies in the Twentieth Century - Studies in the Twentieth Century

ENGL 539A

paltin-judith

2024 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_001	1	In-Person	Seminar	F	10:00 - 13:00	Paltin, Judith

Literatures of the Twentieth Century - Literatures of the Twentieth Century

ENGL 539A

ho-janice

2025 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_001	2	In-Person	Seminar	M	10:00 - 13:00	Ho, Janice

Studies in the Twentieth Century - Studies in the Twentieth Century

ENGL 539B

kim-christine

2024 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
B_002	2	In-Person	Seminar	F	09:00 - 12:00	Kim, Christine		Section Description The Cold War in Asia: Asian American and Asian Canadian Responses The period post-WWII until the 1980s is conventionally understood in the West as the Cold War. Marked by events such as the Cuban missile crisis, the war in Vietnam, and the fall of the Berlin Wall, these years are remembered as a tense time when it seemed that the conflict between communist and capalist democratic ideologies might result in the outbreak of nuclear war. At the same time, it is important to remember that these same tensions played out very differently in Asia and took the form of multiple bloody and violent wars. This course will return to this historical period in order to rethink what is conventionally remembered in the West as a conflict between the US and the USSR as a struggle that also involved—and, indeed, was staged in—Asia. We will explore the legacies of Cold War logics and the afterlife of the wars in Asia for Canadians and Americans by engaging with works of literature and theory. How do these contradictory memories and competing historical narratives shape how Asian diasporas in North America imagine themselves and are understood by non-Asians? How does what critic Jodi Kim calls the “protracted afterlife” of the Cold War continue to influence current conversations about migration, citizenship, and global events and politics? We will contextualize our discussions of these literary texts with critical and theoretical material and documentary films in order to think critically about these competing cultural representations and the narratives they produce.

Literatures of the Twentieth Century - Literatures of the Twentieth

ENGL 539B

ho-janice

2025 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
B_002	2	In-Person	Seminar	M	10:00 - 13:00	Ho, Janice		Section Description Modernist Fiction, Imperial Decline, and Decolonization The literary historical period we call “modernism” (c. 1880-1945) sees the height of the British empire in its territorial span while also bearing witness to its decline in the face of anti-colonial and national independence movements. How was empire and its loss represented by modernist authors? How did their aesthetic strategies mediate racial and colonial difference? And how did authors from the colonies simultaneously take up and challenge modernist forms in their efforts at anti-colonial resistance and decolonization? What kinds of modernist literary and sociological institutions facilitated the emergence of postcolonial authors in the postwar period? This course will introduce students to key modernist novels; trace the evolution of modernism through its subperiods of high modernism, late modernism, and postcolonial modernity; and think through the political affordances of modernist aesthetic practices. We will focus primarily on the history of Britain and its colonies, though we may also turn to the Harlem Renaissance to consider modernism in a transatlantic frame. Given the focus on fiction, the course will be reading-intensive and students should be prepared to cover a novel (some longer, some shorter) each week. Texts we are likely to study include: E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India; James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; Elizabeth Bowen’s The Last September; George Orwell’s Burmese Days; Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World; Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable; Nella Larsen’s Passing, Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea; Sam Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners; George Lamming’s In the Castle of My Skin; and Doris Lessing’s The Grass is Singing.

Studies in American Literature to 1890 - AMER LIT TO 1890

ENGL 540A

tomc-sandra

2023 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Sections (2)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
001	2		Seminar	W	13:30 - 16:30	Tomc, Sandra		Section Description Horror Show: Reading American Gothic From Edgar Allan Poe to Jordan Peele Most of us have had the experience of paying good money so we can sit in a theatre, watch a film, and be terrified. What reward or pleasure is there in being artificially afraid? In this course we will investigate the genre of “terror,” partly by reading gothic materials themselves and partly by looking at a history of explanations of how the gothic works. Our focus in terms of primary texts will be on memorable gothic tales produced by nineteenth and twentieth-century US writers and filmmakers. Our focus in terms of explanatory models will be, first, on psychoanalytic and anthropological models that relate the gothic to the subject’s or the culture’s repressed or unconscious life; and, second, on constructivist and critical race theory models that see the gothic as a political structure. In this sense the course will look not just at a certain strand of the gothic itself but also at a rough map of twentieth and twentieth-first-century theorizations of the gothic. Fictional texts to be studied include: the stories of Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, H.P. Lovecraft, Henry James, and the poems of Emily Dickinson. Films to be studied include: George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, Ridley Scott’s Alien, Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, Robert Eggers’ The VVitch, Jordan Peele’s Us, and Ari Aster’s Hereditary. We will be reading essays from Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva, Slavoj Žižek, Silvia Federici, Michel Foucault, Alexander G. Weheliye, and Christina Sharpe.
01W	2		Waiting List	W	13:30 - 16:30

Studies in American Literature to 1890 - Studies in American Literature to 1890

ENGL 540A

tomc-sandra

2025 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_001	2	In-Person	Seminar	F	13:30 - 16:30	Tomc, Sandra		Section Description Modernist Fiction, Imperial Decline, and Decolonization The literary historical period we call “modernism” (c. 1880-1945) sees the height of the British empire in its territorial span while also bearing witness to its decline in the face of anti-colonial and national independence movements. How was empire and its loss represented by modernist authors? How did their aesthetic strategies mediate racial and colonial difference? And how did authors from the colonies simultaneously take up and challenge modernist forms in their efforts at anti-colonial resistance and decolonization? What kinds of modernist literary and sociological institutions facilitated the emergence of postcolonial authors in the postwar period? This course will introduce students to key modernist novels; trace the evolution of modernism through its subperiods of high modernism, late modernism, and postcolonial modernity; and think through the political affordances of modernist aesthetic practices. We will focus primarily on the history of Britain and its colonies, though we may also turn to the Harlem Renaissance to consider modernism in a transatlantic frame. Given the focus on fiction, the course will be reading-intensive and students should be prepared to cover a novel (some longer, some shorter) each week. Texts we are likely to study include: E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India; James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; Elizabeth Bowen’s The Last September; George Orwell’s Burmese Days; Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World; Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable; Nella Larsen’s Passing, Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea; Sam Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners; George Lamming’s In the Castle of My Skin; and Doris Lessing’s The Grass is Singing.

Studies in American Literature Since 1890 - AMER LIT 1890 ON

ENGL 541A

frank-adam

2023 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Sections (2)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
001	1		Seminar	Th	9:30 - 12:30	Frank, Adam		Section Description Twisted Naturalism: Stein, Wright, McCarthy The seminar will focus on three U.S. writers: Gertrude Stein, Richard Wright, and Mary McCarthy. These writers are most often associated with the aesthetics and politics of early- and mid-centiury modernism, but in this course we will think about their writing as it participates in that earlier, somewhat outré literary formation known as naturalism. With its origins in the work of the French writer Emile Zola and its uptake in the American scene by Frank Norris and others, naturalism is often characterized as an attempt to realize nineteenth-century materialist, scientific theories (of heredity and political economy, for example) in literary form. And while it bears some resemblance to nineteenth-century realism, naturalism's commitment to obscure forces that determine subjectivity and behaviour make it continuous with twentieth-century aesthetics often associated with modernism In this seminar we will ask questions that disturb any easy periodizations of literary practices. What role do naturalist formations play in twentieth-century writing that takes up these conventions in the critical, experimental modalities that we associate with modernism? What happens to gender, sexuality, race, class, and other categories when naturalizing tendencies come into relation to specific historical and political exigencies (such as changing institutions of gender and sexuality, racial segregation and protest, radical worker movements and anti-Communism)? What is there to be learned from a "weak theoretical" approach to literary writing (to cite Paul Saint-Amour citing Silvan Tomkins) that approaches these writers (and others) with close attention to phenomenologies of reading? Methodologically, this seminar offers a syncretic mix of literary and cultural history, American studies, modernist studies, and affect theory. In addition to the seminar's focus on Stein, Wright, and McCarthy, authors may include: Emile Zola, Frank Norris, W.E.B Du Bois, Mina Loy, Jesse Fausset, Nella Larsen, Hannah Arendt, and others, and selections from relevant secondary work by Mark Seltzer, Sianne Ngai, Christina Sharpe, Mark Goble, and others. Course currently under construction.
01W	1		Waiting List	Th	9:30 - 12:30

Studies in American Literature Since 1890 - Studies in American Literature Since 1890

ENGL 541A

severs-jeffrey

2024 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_001	1	In-Person	Seminar	Th	15:00 - 18:00	Severs, Jeffrey

Linguistic Structure and Theory - Linguistic Structure and Theory

ENGL 542A

dancygier-barbara

2025 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_001	1	In-Person	Seminar	Th	15:00 - 18:00	Dancygier, Barbara		Section Description Multimodal Communication: Text and Image Communicative genres combining language with visual forms have become extremely common, if not outright inescapable. We encounter examples of such multimodal artifacts in our daily interaction with the internet and social media, with news and advertisements, as well as in comics and graphic novels. All these media genres develop their own patterns of interaction between image and text, while also prompting remarkable changes in the use of standard linguistic forms. Also, multimodal genres have now started ‘infecting’ each other linguistically. This course will introduce students to analytical and theoretical tools we can use to better understand the meaning and form of multimodal artifacts. It will provide opportunities to study the linguistic and usage-related effects of the new genres in various contexts.

Studies in Canadian Literature - STUDIES CAN LIT

ENGL 545A

mcneilly-kevin

2023 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Sections (2)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
001	1		Seminar	F	13:30 - 16:30	Mcneilly, Kevin		Section Description Unsettling Country: Critical Studies in Improvisation, Culture, and Media “Improvisation,” says the American historian Robin D. G. Kelley, “is the most important tool you have to navigate both the catastrophe we’re facing and the counter-planning needed to move beyond that catastrophe.” “As a mode of being in the world,” write Daniel Fischlin, Ajay Heble and George Lipsitz in The Fierce Urgency of Now: Improvisation, Rights, and the Ethics of Cocreation (2013), “improvisation shows us that there are other ways of doing things, that social change is possible, that another world is possible.” The recent decade has witnessed the emergence (at conjunctions of Literary and Performance Studies, of Cultural Studies and Media Theory) of a vitally Canadian version of Critical Studies in Improvisation, in socially-engaged academic, artistic, and community contexts across North America and around the world. While improvisation is commonly associated with theatre, comedy and jazz, study has expanded to include the politics of protest and community formation, as well as the temporality and historicity of many forms of text and representation. This seminar will offer encounters with significant Canadian bodies of creative and co-creative work, enacted through the dynamic critical framework of Critical Studies in Improvisation. We will use the first four weeks of the seminar to begin to develop both theory and method around the study of improvisation, as a form of practice-based research and as a present-tense modality of “doing the work,” including such key concepts as attendance, close listening, risk, care, accompaniment, reciprocity and disruption; this stage of the work will involve addressing and interrogating tactics of decolonial unsettling that are changing how we understand the literary, cultural and media landscape of the country. In addition to key examples of improvisatory technique in fiction, poetry, song, theatre and film by, possibly among others, Michael Snow, Jordan Abel, Karen Solie, Michel and Jeannette Lambert, Lorna Goodison, George Elliott Clarke, The Weather Station, Dylan Robinson, François Houle, Cadence Weapon, Pierre Hébert, Esi Edugyan, and Michael Ondaatje, students in the seminar will be invited to bring in samples of current creative work in Canada that engages their interest. The second half of the seminar will involve two-week case studies of works by four crucial figures in contemporary Canadian arts: Dionne Brand, Don McKay, Fred Wah, and Alanis Obomsawin. We will take time to investigate and to navigate the imaginative potentials that their poetry, prose and film enact. In what ways do they unsettle Canada, but also present possibilities for imagining other kinds of community?
01W	1		Waiting List	F	13:30 - 16:30

Studies in Canadian Literature - Studies in Canadian Literature

ENGL 545A

moss-laura

2024 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_001	2	In-Person	Seminar	M	10:00 - 13:00	Moss, Laura

Canadian Literatures - Canadian Literatures

ENGL 545A

hunt-dallas

2025 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_001	2	In-Person	Seminar	W	13:30 - 16:30	Hunt, Dallas		Section Description "In Search of Our Better Selves:" Settler Colonialism and Narratives of Settler Replacement This graduate-level course will engage with critical questions surrounding the dynamics of settler colonialism, particularly the ways in which settler narratives of replacement and erasure intersect with Indigenous identities, histories, and struggles for self-determination. We will explore the frameworks of settler colonialism in the current contexts of Canada and the U.S., examining how these political systems have consistently sought to dispossess Indigenous peoples, not only geographically but also culturally and temporally. Through the lens of Indigenous cultural and political knowledge production, we will investigate how settler colonialism’s narratives of replacement shape the understandings of belonging, time, and community in settler states, and how these processes have been resisted, disrupted, and reimagined by Indigenous peoples and communities.

Studies in Commonwealth/Post-colonial Literatures - CMMNWLTH/POSTCOL

ENGL 546A

ho-janice

2023 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Sections (2)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
001	2		Seminar	Th	9:00 - 12:00	Ho, Janice		Section Description Fictions of Post/Colonial Development “Development”—and its myriad cognates, including “underdevelopment,” “uneven development,” “developing nations,” “human development index” and so forth—has been the central paradigm framing colonial and postcolonial geopolitical and economic structures over the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The aim of this seminar is twofold: first, we will trace the history and evolution of the term “development,” the ways it has been differently envisioned and defined; its historical impact on colonial, postcolonial, and international forms of governance; and its imbrication with other political discourses like human rights and gender equality. Second, the course will read twentieth- and twenty-first century colonial, postcolonial, and world Anglophone fiction to see how various novelistic forms, especially the Bildungsroman—the quintessential narrative of development—adapt themselves to different socio-historical conditions of development and intervene in broader political debates. Texts: Primary texts may include Joyce Cary’s Mister Johnson, Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable, Joseph Conrad’s Nostromo, Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions, Ayi Kwei Armah’s The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’O, Petals of Blood, Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place, Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide, and Linda Hogan’s Solar Storms. Secondary readings will be drawn from an intersection of humanities and social sciences scholarship (in the field of development studies), including work by Gilbert Rist, James Ferguson, Frederick Cooper, Gayatri Spivak, Frantz Fanon, Walter Rodney, Brian Larkin, Michael Rubenstein, Martha Nussbaum, and Amartya Sen.
01W	2		Waiting List	Th	9:00 - 12:00

Studies in Commonwealth/Post-colonial Literatures - Studies in Commonwealth/Post-colonial Literatures

ENGL 546A

al-kassim-dina

2024 SummerCredits: 3

This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_921		In-Person	Seminar	M, W	12:00 - 15:00	Al-kassim, Dina

Studies in Commonwealth/Post-colonial Literatures - Studies in Commonwealth/Post-colonial Literatures

ENGL 546A

culbert-john

2024 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_001	1	In-Person	Seminar	T	15:30 - 18:30	Culbert, John

Studies in Commonwealth/Post-colonial Literatures - Studies in Commonwealth/Post-colonial Literatures

ENGL 546A

lee-christopher

2025 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_001	1	In-Person	Seminar	W	10:00 - 13:00	Lee, Christopher		Section Description Keywords in Asian Diaspora Studies The West Coast of what is now Canada has long been shaped by its intricate connections to the Pacific World. Starting in the mid-nineteenth century, Asian migrants were subjected to systematic forms of exclusion and racial violence. Although these measures were largely abolished in the mid-twentieth century, their legacies continue to be lived and felt to this day. What does it mean to do Asian diaspora studies from here - from the unceded Indigenous territories on which we are located? What critical questions emerge from local histories of migration and racialization? This seminar takes up these questions by exploring a series of "keywords" in Asian diaspora studies. We will draw from fields such as postcolonial studies, ethnic studies, Asian Canadian critique, and inter-Asia critique in order to develop strategies for critically thinking and writing about transnational cultures. We will also engage with contemporary Asian Canadian cultural production by working with local institutions such as archives, museums, and galleries. Some classes may be held off campus - please contact the instructor in the summer if you have any questions about scheduling. Theoretical readings may include selections from: Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe Chen Kuan-hsing, Asia as Method Glen Coulthard, Red Skin, White Masks Iyko Day, Alien Capital Lisa Lowe, The Intimacy of Four Continents Patrick Wolfe, Trace of History: Elementary Structures of Race Takeuchi Yoshimi, What is Modernity?

Studies in Commonwealth/Post-colonial Literatures - Studies in Commonwealth/Post-colonial Literatures

ENGL 546B

al-kassim-dina

2025 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
B_002	1	In-Person	Seminar	W	13:30 - 16:30	Al-kassim, Dina		Section Description Introduction to Anti/Post/Decolonial Studies and Theory “…the power of deceit does not weaken upon exposure…” -- Taussig Designed as an introduction to anti/post/decolonial studies, issues and theories, this course will feature selections from major works in the field focalized through the topics of gender/sexuality, solidarity, colonial erasures and anti/post/decolonial power. We will read selections of major texts as listed below to organize conversations between the different authors. Assuming no prior knowledge of the field or theory, the course should provide you with concepts and engagements portable to your own area/subfields. Texts we will read in their entirety: History of Sexuality, Vol.1, Culture and Imperialism and The Wretched of the Earth. Short novels will be read in tandem with the discursive works and may include: Rabih Alameddine’s Wrong End of the Telescope, Roberto Bolano’s Amulet, Ibtisam Azem’s Disappearance, and Zoe Wicomb’s David’s Story. Selected chapters from: Judith Butler, The Force of Non-Violence: An Ethico-Political Bind Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth ---A Dying Colonialism Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality, Vol.1 ---Security, Territory, Population Karima Lazali, Colonial Trauma Achille Mbembe, On the Postcolony and Critique of Black Reason Afsaneh Najmabadi, Professing Selves: Transsexuality and Same-Sex Desire in Contemporary Iran Hortense Spillers, “Interstices” and “All the Things You Could Be By Now if Sigmund Freud’s Wife Was Your Mother: Psychoanalysis and Race” Gayatri Spivak, Other Asias ---Critique of Postcolonial Reason Michael Taussig, The Devil and Commodity Fetishism and Nervous System Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism ---After the Last Sky (w/ Yeats) Francoise Verges, Monsters and Revolutionaries Zahi Zalloua, Fanon, Zizek and the Violence of Resistance Solidarity and the Palestinian Cause: Indigeneity, Blackness and the Promise of Universality

Studies in Commonwealth/Post-colonial Literatures - Studies in Commonwealth/Post-colonial Literatures

ENGL 546C

akinwole-tolulope

2025 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
C_003	2	In-Person	Seminar	T	13:00 - 16:00	Akinwole, Tolulope		Section Description Postcolonial Auto/Mobility This seminar explores the interplay between postcolonial automobility and African literatures and cultures. We will take as our starting point of investigation the emergence of the motor vehicle in Africa, around the beginning of the twentieth century, and the cogent questions that arise from (post)colonial Africa’s encounter with vehicular technology. Through novels, plays, poetry, and films, we will consider Africa’s automobile network of road, spatiality, coloniality, infrastructure, motor vehicle, and oil and the corollary effects of all this on the artistic imaginations of African cultural producers in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In short, this course considers the keyword “automobility” as an entry point to unpacking the range of ideas that have shaped African literary production since the twentieth century. Primary readings will include works from authors and artists such as Peter Abrahams, Wole Soyinka, Nawal El-Saadawi, Ousmane Sembene, Ama Ata Aidoo, Karen King-Aribisala, Ben Okri, and Imbolo Mbue. We will ground our examinations in criticism from scholars such as Marti Kheel, Harry Garuba, AbdouMaliq Simone, Kenda Mutongi, Cajetan Iheka, and others.

Directed Reading - Directed Reading

ENGL 547A

2023 SummerCredits: 3

This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.

The credit value for this course will be determined in consultation with the student prior to the registration

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_942		In-Person	Independent Study

Directed Reading - DIRECTED READING

ENGL 547A

2023 Winter TermCredits: 3

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
001			Directed Studies

Directed Reading - Directed Reading

ENGL 547A

2024 SummerCredits: 3

This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.

The credit value for this course will be determined in consultation with the student prior to the registration

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_942		In-Person	Independent Study

Directed Reading - Directed Reading

ENGL 547A

2024 Winter TermCredits: 3

This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.

The credit value for this course will be determined in consultation with the student prior to the registration

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_001		In-Person	Independent Study

Directed Reading - Directed Reading

ENGL 547A

2025 SummerCredits: 3

This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.

The credit value for this course will be determined in consultation with the student prior to the registration

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_942		In-Person	Independent Study

Directed Reading - Directed Reading

ENGL 547A

2025 Winter TermCredits: 3

This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.

The credit value for this course will be determined in consultation with the student prior to the registration

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_001		In-Person	Independent Study

Directed Reading - DIRECTED READING

ENGL 547B

2023 Winter TermCredits: 3

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
002			Directed Studies

Directed Reading - Directed Reading

ENGL 547B

2024 SummerCredits: 3

This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.

The credit value for this course will be determined in consultation with the student prior to the registration

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
B_972		In-Person	Independent Study

Directed Reading - Directed Reading

ENGL 547B

2024 Winter TermCredits: 3

This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.

The credit value for this course will be determined in consultation with the student prior to the registration

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
B_003		In-Person	Independent Study

Directed Reading - Directed Reading

ENGL 547B

2025 SummerCredits: 3

This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.

The credit value for this course will be determined in consultation with the student prior to the registration

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
B_972		In-Person	Independent Study

Directed Reading - Directed Reading

ENGL 547B

2025 Winter TermCredits: 3

This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.

The credit value for this course will be determined in consultation with the student prior to the registration

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
B_002		In-Person	Independent Study

Master's Thesis - MASTERS THESIS

ENGL 549A

2023 Winter Term 1/2Credits: 9

Sections (3)

Section	Term	Format
001	1-2	Thesis
002	1	Thesis
003	2	Thesis

Master's Thesis - Master's Thesis

ENGL 549A

2024 Winter TermCredits: 9

This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.

The credit value for this course will be determined in consultation with the student prior to the registration

Sections (3)

Section	Delivery Mode	Format
A_003	In-Person	Thesis
A_001	In-Person	Thesis
A_002	In-Person	Thesis

Master's Thesis - Master's Thesis

ENGL 549A

2025 Winter TermCredits: 9

This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.

The credit value for this course will be determined in consultation with the student prior to the registration

Sections (3)

Section	Delivery Mode	Format
A_003	In-Person	Thesis
A_001	In-Person	Thesis
A_002	In-Person	Thesis

Master's Thesis - Master's Thesis

ENGL 549C

2023 SummerCredits: 9

This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.

The credit value for this course will be determined in consultation with the student prior to the registration

Sections (2)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
C_945		In-Person	Thesis
C_946		In-Person	Thesis

Master's Thesis - Master's Thesis

ENGL 549C

2024 SummerCredits: 9

This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.

The credit value for this course will be determined in consultation with the student prior to the registration

Sections (3)

Section	Delivery Mode	Format
C_973	In-Person	Thesis
C_946	In-Person	Thesis
C_945	In-Person	Thesis

Master's Thesis - Master's Thesis

ENGL 549C

2025 SummerCredits: 9

This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.

The credit value for this course will be determined in consultation with the student prior to the registration

Sections (3)

Section	Delivery Mode	Format
C_946	In-Person	Thesis
C_973	In-Person	Thesis
C_945	In-Person	Thesis

Studies in Literary Movements - ST'S LIT MOVEMNT

ENGL 551A

hunt-dallas

2023 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Sections (2)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
001	2		Seminar	T	13:30 - 16:30	Hunt, Dallas		Section Description INSTRUCTOR: Alice Te Punga Somerville Thinking about Literatures at the Edge of an Ocean In this course we will ask: what does it mean to read, theorize and teach Indigenous texts here where a continent meets an ocean? Bringing together key critical and creative Indigenous texts from the Western edge of this continent and from the vast Pacific region, we will consider critical foundations for our conversation, engage ocean-centered approaches to literary texts and the urgency of the climate crisis as it affects the Pacific, and trace several textual and structural sites in which ‘Indigenous’ and ‘Pacific’ interact.
01W	2		Waiting List	T	13:30 - 16:30

Studies in Literary Movements - Studies in Literary Movements

ENGL 551A

mota-miguel

2024 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_001	1	In-Person	Seminar	M	10:00 - 13:00	Mota, Miguel

Studies in Literary Theory - ST'S LIT THEORY

ENGL 553A

rosenberg-jordy

2023 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Sections (2)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
001	1		Seminar	T	10:00 - 13:00	Rosenberg, Jordy		Section Description Transgender Marxism: Theories, Debates, Cultural Productions This class is an opportunity for intensive study in one of the most promising areas of development in Trans Studies today: a field aptly described by Elle O’Rourke and Jules Gleeson as “Transgender Marxism.” The course will explore the intersection of Marxist thought and struggles around gender and sexuality, and will address and introduce classic areas in Marxist analysis - such as production/reproduction, the commodity-form, and fetishism - as well as more vanguard areas of the field - such as metabolic rift theory and eco-socialism - alongside major LGBTQIA movements, movements for racial justice, sex workers’ rights, industrial labor and workplace struggles, health activism, land struggles, mutual aid, and immigrant rights. Throughout, we will center a meta-methodological question that comes directly from a Transgender Marxist praxis itself: why is it that much of the most important and impactful work in trans theory and thought is being produced outside of academia proper? We will take seriously and discuss the historical conditions for this situation, and the majority of our materials and guest lectures will be drawn from non-academic or para-academic scholars and thinkers. Authors may include theorists, poets, activists, and artists such as Andrea Abi-Karam and Kay Gabriel, Eman Abdelhadi and M.E. O’Brien, Aren Aizura, Tithi Bhattacharya, Lou Cornum, Treva Ellison, Leslie Feinberg, Jules Gill-Peterson, Jules Gleeson and Elle O’Rourke, Sophie Lewis, Max Liboiron, Petrus Liu, Nat Raha, Dean Spade, and C. Riley Snorton.
01W	1		Waiting List	T	10:00 - 13:00

Studies in Literary Theory - Studies in Literary Theory

ENGL 553A

mallipeddi-ramesh

2024 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_001	1	In-Person	Seminar	Th	09:30 - 12:30	Mallipeddi, Ramesh

Studies in Literary Theory - Studies in Literary Theory

ENGL 553A

mackie-gregory

2025 SummerCredits: 3

This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_921		In-Person	Seminar	M, W	11:00 - 14:00	Mackie, Gregory		Section Description Decadence and the Origins of Camp: A Queer Genealogy “[Camp] is terribly hard to define but you’ll find yourself wanting to use the word whenever you discuss aesthetics or philosophy or almost anything.” – Christopher Isherwood This seminar examines the origins (and trajectories) of the much-debated aesthetic sensibility known as camp. Widely understood as a celebration of artifice and stylized exaggeration, camp still struggles to be taken seriously because of its orientation toward humor and the un-serious. Although one of its earliest theorists, Susan Sontag, famously argued that camp was at its core “apolitical,” one of the questions students in this seminar will ponder is the potential political value (to queer and non-queer people alike) of camp style, performance, and gender critique. We will attempt to situate camp historically by locating its origins in the aesthetic strategies of 1890s Decadence before exploring its manifestations, transformations, and characteristic patterns across the twentieth century and beyond. In pursuit of this objective we will read literary and theoretical texts in addition to viewing several films. Our aim will not be to construct a camp canon, but instead to observe how camp and Decadence speak to queer experience at distinct historical moments while at the same time retaining recognizably transhistorical characteristics. Readings will include (theory/criticism): Walter Pater, Susan Sontag, Fabio Cleto, Esther Newton, Eve Sedgwick, Judith Butler, David Halperin, Paul Baker, and others; (literature) Oscar Wilde, Aubrey Beardsley, Ronald Firbank, Noël Coward, Christopher Isherwood, Frank O’Hara, Joe Orton, and others. We will also view films by directors Robert Aldritch, John Waters, and Pedro Almodóvar.

Studies in Literary Theory - ST'S LIT THEORY

ENGL 553B

wong-danielle

2023 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Sections (2)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
002	2		Seminar	Th	14:30 - 17:30	Wong, Danielle		Section Description New Media, Race, and Information Capitalism This seminar explores the relationship between race, capitalism, and information technologies. By following these links, we attend to historical and contemporary racial formations and/as “new” technologies—including settler colonial figurations of enslaved and indentured labour that construct borders around the human, the nonhuman, and the machinic; techno-Orientalist discourses in the information age; border surveillance and computation; and the logics of algorithms in social and political practices. The seminar also takes up theories of race, gender, and sexuality as they pertain to new media performance, affect, and labour. With a particular focus on Asian North American and new media studies, we will read critical theory across different fields and engage a variety of texts, including visual art, film, literature, music, and digital media.
02W	2		Waiting List	Th	14:30 - 17:30

Studies in Literary Theory - Studies in Literary Theory

ENGL 553B

frank-adam

2024 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
B_002	2	In-Person	Seminar	T	10:00 - 13:00	Frank, Adam

Studies in Literary Theory - Studies in Literary Theory

ENGL 553B

frank-adam

2025 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
B_002	2	In-Person	Seminar	W	10:00 - 13:00	Frank, Adam		Section Description This seminar explores the variety of meanings associated with the terms performative and performativity. These terms and concepts initially belong to two very different discourses, speech act theory and theater studies, but have found their way into general use in the theoretical humanities. Our concerns are, in part, genealogical: we will track the emergence of these concepts in ordinary language philosophy (J.L. Austin. How to Do Things with Words), their uptakes in Continental philosophy, and their inflections and uses in feminist and queer theory. We will also be concerned with auxiliary terms and concepts that have followed from the performative (such as the distinction between illocutionary, locutionary, and perlocutionary aspects of speech acts and the idea of the para-performative). The course goal is to unpack the meanings these terms have come to have in the last two or three decades, their particular coherence and incoherence, their uses and intended consequences (for example, in the contrast between performativity and representation), and the values associated with these terms. Alongside explicitly theoretical readings we will encounter a handful of twentieth-century plays or scripts that themselves offer accounts of performativity in either a linguistic or theatrical sense, and the possible relations between these senses. Readings to include work by J.L. Austin, Samuel Beckett, Judith Butler, Stanley Cavell, Jacques Derrida, Shoshana Felman, Nathalie Sarraute, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Gertrude Stein, and others.

Studies in Literary Theory - Studies in Literary Theory

ENGL 553C

lee-christopher

2024 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
C_003	2	In-Person	Seminar	Th	09:30 - 12:30	Lee, Christopher

Studies in Literary Theory - Studies in Literary Theory

ENGL 553C

zeitlin-michael

2025 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
C_003	2	In-Person	Seminar	F	10:00 - 13:00	Zeitlin, Michael		Section Description Modernism and the Psychoanalysis of Fascism, 1894-1945 The people who have shown the best understanding of Fascism are either those who have suffered under it or those who have a Fascist streak in themselves. --- George Orwell, "Wells, Hitler and the World State" (1941) It seems to me a monstrosity; by that I mean something that is altogether beyond the bounds of common sense, truth and justice, a blind and stupid thing that would drag us back centuries in time, ultimately a thing that would lead to religious persecution, which is the worst of abominations and would bathe every country in blood. --- Émile Zola, "A Plea for the Jews" (1896) There were other swastikas. They were the chalk ones now; I followed them down Bergasse as if they had been chalked on the pavement especially for my benefit. They led to the Professor's door--- H. D., Tribute to Freud [1933] This seminar explores the critical and analytical writings of those whose experience of European fascism was visceral and immediate. We will proceed for the most part chronologically to perceive the unfolding of history as these key witnesses experienced it. We will assess this living history of the period both for its penetrating insights into the reality of things and for its dialectically potent forms of misrecognition. Invariably "alive to reverberations of the future" (André Breton qtd. by Walter Benjamin in "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"), these authors could not always know how the story would end. Activities and assignments will include a seminar presentation and a close reading of a selected passage. Students will also write one three-page essay, to be distributed and read aloud, and one final research paper. We will seek the definition of the key words of the seminar--modernism, psychoanalysis, fascism--as it flows up from our reading. Since we can read only a practical selection of the following reading list in our allotted twelve weeks (the final reading schedule will be available this summer), students will be invited in their independent research projects to explore some of the readings not covered in our weekly meetings. Reading List (in progress): Émile Zola, "A Plea for the Jews" (1896) Émile Zola, "J'accuse!" (1898) F.T. Marinetti, "The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism" (1909) F.T. Marinetti, "Let's Murder the Moonshine" (1909) Franz Kafka, "The Aeroplanes at Brescia" (1909) W.E. B. Du Bois, "World War and the Color Line" (1914) Richard Harding Davis, With the Allies (1914) Sigmund Freud, "Thoughts for the Times on War and Death" (1915) Edith Wharton, Fighting France: From Dunkerque to Belfort (1915) Ellen La Motte, The Backwash of War (1916) Mary Borden, The Forbidden Zone (1929) [1914-18] Franz Kafka, The Trial (1925) [1914-15] Henri Barbusse, Under Fire (1916) Rebecca West, The Return of the Soldier (1918) Ernst Jünger, Storm of Steel (1920) Sigmund Freud, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921) Ernest Hemingway, "Mussolini: Biggest Bluff in Europe" (1923) Ernest Hemingway, "Che Ti Dice La Patria?" (1927) Henri Barbusse, Thus and Thus (1927) Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920) Joseph Roth, The Wandering Jews (1926-7) Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents (1930) [1929] Walter Benjamin, "Surrealism: The Last Snapshot of the European Intellectual" (1929) Walter Benjamin, "Theories of German Fascism" (1930) William Faulkner, "Dry September" (1932) H.D. [Hilda Doolittle], Tribute to Freud (1956) [1933-44] Victor Klemperer, Victor, I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1933-1941 (Volume 1, 1998) Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1935) William Faulkner, Pylon (1935) Ernest Hemingway, "Notes on the Next War: A Serious Topical Letter" (1935) Ernest Hemingway, "Wings Always Over Africa: An Ornithological Letter" (1936) Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen, Diary of a Man in Despair (1947) [1930s and 40s] Kenneth Burke, "The Rhetoric of Hitler's 'Battle'" (1939) George Orwell, "Wells, Hitler and the World State" (1941) Richard Hillary, The Last Enemy (1942) George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language" (1946) Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia (1951) [1944] Susan Sontag, "Fascinating Fascism" (1975) Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (1992) Timothy Snyder, "Hitler vs. Stalin: Who Killed More?" (2011) Christopher R. Browning, "Hitler's Enablers." New York Review of Books LXXI, November 7, 2024, pp. 52-54. Suggested General and Preliminary Reading: Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (1900) Stanley G. Payne, A History of Fascism, 1914-1945 (1995) Barbara Will, Unlikely Collaboration: Gertrude Stein, Bernard Faÿ, and the Vichy Dilemma (2011) Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (Basic Books, 2010). Ian Kershaw, To Hell and Back: Europe 1914-1949 (2015) Maurice Samuels, Alfred Dreyfus: The Man at the Centre of the Affair (2024)

Studies in Literature and the Other Arts - Studies in Literature and the Other Arts

ENGL 555A

deer-glenn

2023 SummerCredits: 3

This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_951		In-Person	Lecture	T, Th	11:00 - 14:00	Deer, Glenn

Studies in Literature and the Other Arts - Studies in Literature and the Other Arts

ENGL 555A

deer-glenn

2024 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_001	2	In-Person	Seminar	M	13:30 - 16:30	Deer, Glenn

Topics in Science and Technology Studies - TOPICS IN STS

ENGL 561A

cavell-richard-anthony philip-kavita

2023 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Advanced seminar on a theme or topic of interest to both STS and English.

Sections (2)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
001	1		Seminar	W	13:00 - 16:00	Multiple instructors		Section Description Media and Misinformation: The History of Truth from Pseudoscience to Propaganda Jointly taught by Professors Kavita Philip and Richard Cavell Information and propaganda, science and truth, planetary crises and democratic responses are inter-dependent. The lives of people and the planet will depend on our ability to communicate accurately and effectively. Media Studies, traditionally the locus for the study of communication technologies, has, by necessity, expanded its field to engage with disciplines such as Science and Technology Studies, Information Studies, Infrastructure and Network analysis, as well as with established disciplines such as History, Geography, and English. This new iteration of Media Studies has now become the most consequential place—inside and outside the academy—for a new critical, interdisciplinary vocabulary to take effect. This course offers a design for a new kind of literacy. The future world citizen must be equally proficient in analyzing technical, historical, and narrative forms. Yet our disciplines parse, prioritize, and rank these forms of representation, creating students highly skilled in one or two but not across the diverse forms in which “truth” and “information” come packaged today. The future of education is interdisciplinary, because our crises are inter-connected, and because transdisciplinary citizens are needed to address planetary and political challenges. This course seeks to create a set of tools that will enable critique at the intersection of the history of truth and the future of citizenship. Instructors Cavell, Richard Anthony \| Philip, Kavita
01W	1		Waiting List	W	13:00 - 16:00

Topics in Science and Technology Studies - Topics in Science and Technology Studies

ENGL 561A

wong-danielle

2025 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Advanced seminar on a theme or topic of interest to both STS and English. This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_001	1	In-Person	Seminar	T	09:30 - 12:30	Wong, Danielle		Section Description Race, Artificiality, Information This graduate seminar examines the discursive and material intersections of artifice and information—most commonly expressed in popular imaginaries as "artificial intelligence" or machine learning—as inquiries into the digital age's racial logics and racial mattering. Bringing together critical ethnic studies, critical race theory, new media studies, studies of visual culture, and feminist science and technology studies, this seminar offers interdisciplinary approaches for studying the way computation's materiality reiterates and emerges from imperialist and colonial legacies. But it also engages critical frameworks and practices that navigate, and even reroute, such networks. Readings may include: Simone Browne's Dark Matters, Ramon Amaro's The Black Technical Object, Wendy Chun's Updating to Remain the Same, Leslie Bow's Racist Love, Anne Cheng's Ornamentalism, Marisa Elena Duarte's Network Sovereignty.

Studies in Environmental Humanities - Studies in Environmental Humanities

ENGL 565A

nardizzi-vin

2023 SummerCredits: 3

Advanced seminar on arts and humanities research related to ecology and environmentalism. This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_921		In-Person	Lecture	M, Th	10:00 - 13:00	Nardizzi, Vin

Studies in Environmental Humanities - STDS ENVR HUMAN

ENGL 565A

mccormack-brendan

2023 Winter Term 1Credits: 3

Advanced seminar on arts and humanities research related to ecology and environmentalism.

Sections (2)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
001	1		Seminar	F	9:30 - 12:30	Mccormack, Brendan		Section Description Storying Land: Canadian Literary Ecologies Since emerging as a multidisciplinary field in the early twenty-first century, environmental humanities research has variously interrogated the narratives and cultural concepts figuring humanity’s relations to the land and non-human nature. Imperative to literary criticism within this paradigm has been not only a reappraisal of “nature” as an object of study but a reorientation of anthropocentric understandings of humanistic “culture” (including the Humanities) toward its material and ecological embeddedness—pressingly, the inseparability of environmental crises from their historical and cultural foundations shaping how we imagine (and might reimagine) what it means to live in relation to the land. In the context of lands claimed by the state formation of Canada—the land beneath our feet at UBC—such crises and relations are profoundly marked by the history of colonization and encompass radical differences between settler and Indigenous epistemologies. Literature in Canada is implicated in the historical stabilization of foundational binaries between “human” and “nature” that have naturalized the eliminatory and extractive logics of settler-colonial territoriality, a violent structure both of land-based domination and environmental injustice. A grounding place for struggles towards decolonial and/as environmental justice in the work of many writers, artists, scholars, and activists in Canada today is thus the meaning of the land. How do we know the land in literature? Can literature write the land (without exploiting it)? How might the land itself speak through literature? How is it heard? In this seminar we will take up these (and other) questions by examining literature’s relationship with land in the context of Canada. Our concern will be to first establish a historical perspective, and then to ask what role stories and literary arts are playing in denaturalizing settler-capitalism by envisioning reciprocal land relations and more environmentally just futures. We will begin by examining the Eurodescendant epistemologies transposed by writers who mapped onto ostensibly “new” territory ideas about the sublime beauty or terror of a vast, unpopulated landscape—ideas like “wilderness” and “the North” that supported Canadian national identity, Indigenous erasure, and the work of “developing” lands and resources. We will consider how such land-claiming narratives delegitimated other ways of living and making meaning in relation to the land, displacing not only the storied knowledge of Indigenous peoples who have lived with the land for millennia, but other diasporic relations to place and ecology. We will look to decolonial epistemologies of land and kinship in contemporary Indigenous literary arts and activism to consider resurgence in relation to environmental justice (and in conflict with certain currents of “environmentalism”), and to cultural ecologies of non-Indigenous solidarity and anti-anthropocentric resistance. Our readings will broach both rural and urban lands in Canada, range from the Pacific coast to the Prairies to the high Arctic to the Maritimes, and address particular crises and sites of resource extraction (e.g., pipelines, tarsands, climate change), adopting an expansive sense of the “literary” in diverse genres and representational forms. Readings We’ll be localizing our approach to the diffuse field of environmental humanism within Canadian contexts, drawing on Indigenous studies and settler-colonial studies as they interface with thinking in ecocriticism, Anthropocene studies, petrocultures/energy humanities, critical race studies, and environmental and climate justice. Students can expect a mixture of creative and critical texts; while not a “theory” seminar exclusively, it encompasses theory and encourages students to consider stories and creative arts as theoretical. Generally, our weekly seminars will combine secondary readings with a primary text(s) in the form of novels, books of poetry, short stories, short and feature-length films, digital media, and visual art. A provisional list of authors/artists includes Jeannette Armstrong, Margaret Atwood, Di Brandt, Edward Burtynsky, Warren Cariou, Stephen Collis and Jordan Scott, Glen Coulthard, Cherie Dimaline, Margery Fee, Northrop Frye, Dina Gilio-Whitaker, the Group of Seven, Donna Haraway, Tasha Hubbard, Naomi Klein, Bruno Latour, Lee Maracle, Cecily Nicholson, Rob Nixon, Howard O’Hagan, Al Purdy, Eden Robinson, Zoe Todd, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Imre Szeman, Tanya Tagaq, Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers, Fred Wah, Kyle Powys Whyte, Patrick Wolfe, rita wong, Kathryn Yusoff, Zacharias Kunuk.
01W	1		Waiting List	F	9:30 - 12:30

Studies in Environmental Humanities - Studies in Environmental Humanities

ENGL 565A

dick-alexander

2024 SummerCredits: 3

Advanced seminar on arts and humanities research related to ecology and environmentalism. This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_951		In-Person	Lecture	M, W	10:00 - 13:00	Dick, Alexander

Studies in Environmental Humanities - Studies in Environmental Humanities

ENGL 565A

nardizzi-vin

2024 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

Advanced seminar on arts and humanities research related to ecology and environmentalism. This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_001	2	In-Person	Seminar	Th	14:30 - 17:30	Nardizzi, Vin

Studies in Environmental Humanities - Studies in Environmental Humanities

ENGL 565A

mccormack-brendan

2025 SummerCredits: 3

Advanced seminar on arts and humanities research related to ecology and environmentalism. This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading.

Sections (1)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)	Instructor(s)	Syllabus	Details Data	Details
A_951		In-Person	Seminar	T, Th	11:00 - 14:00	Mccormack, Brendan		Section Description Storying Land: Canadian Literary Ecologies Since emerging as a multidisciplinary field in the early twenty-first century, environmental humanities research has variously interrogated the narratives and cultural concepts figuring humanity’s relations to the land and non-human nature. Imperative to literary criticism within this paradigm has been not only a reappraisal of “nature” as an object of study but a reorientation of anthropocentric understandings of humanistic “culture” (including the Humanities) toward its material and ecological embeddedness—pressingly, the inseparability of environmental crises from their historical and cultural foundations shaping how we imagine (and might reimagine) what it means to live in relation to the land. In the context of lands claimed by the state formation of Canada—the land beneath our feet at UBC—such crises and relations are marked by the history of colonization and encompass radical differences between settler and Indigenous epistemologies. Literature in Canada is implicated in the historical stabilization of foundational binaries between “human” and “nature” that have naturalized the eliminatory and extractive logics of settler-colonial territoriality, a violent structure of both land-based domination and environmental injustice. A grounding place for struggles towards decolonial and/as environmental justice in the work of many writers, artists, scholars, thinkers, and activists in Canada today is thus the meaning of the land. How do we know the land in literature? Can literature write the land (without exploiting it)? How might the land itself speak through literature? How is it heard? In this seminar we will take up these (and other) questions by examining literature’s relationship with land in the context of Canada. Our concern will be to first establish a historical perspective, and then to ask what role stories, literary arts, and humanities research are playing in denaturalizing settler-capitalism by envisioning reciprocal land relations and more environmentally just futures. We will examine the Eurodescendant epistemologies transposed by writers who mapped onto ostensibly “new” territory ideas about the sublime beauty or terror of a vast, unpopulated landscape—ideas like “wilderness” and “the North” that supported Canadian national identity, Indigenous erasure, and the work of “developing” lands and resources. We will consider how such land-claiming narratives delegitimated other ways of living and making meaning in relation to the land, displacing not only the storied knowledge of Indigenous peoples who have lived with the land for millennia, but other diasporic relations to place and ecology. We will look to decolonial epistemologies of land and kinship in contemporary Indigenous literary arts and activism to consider resurgence in relation to environmental justice (and in conflict with certain currents of “environmentalism”), and to cultural ecologies of non-Indigenous solidarity and anti-anthropocentric resistance. Our readings will broach both rural and urban lands in Canada, range from the Pacific coast to the Prairies to the high Arctic to the Maritimes, and address particular crises and sites of resource extraction (e.g., pipelines, tarsands, water, climate change), adopting an expansive sense of the “literary” in diverse genres and representational forms. Readings We’ll be localizing our approach to environmental humanism within Canadian contexts, drawing on Indigenous studies and settler-colonial studies as they interface with thinking in ecocriticism, Anthropocene studies, petrocultures/energy humanities, critical race studies, and environmental and climate justice. Students can expect a mixture of creative and critical texts; while not a “theory” seminar exclusively, it encompasses theory and encourages students to consider stories and creative arts as theoretical. Generally, our seminars will combine secondary readings with a primary text(s) in the form of novels, books of poetry, short stories, short and feature-length films, digital media, and visual art. A provisional list of authors/artists includes Jeannette Armstrong, Margaret Atwood, Di Brandt, Edward Burtynsky, Warren Cariou, Stephen Collis and Jordan Scott, Glen Coulthard, Cherie Dimaline, Margery Fee, Northrop Frye, Dina Gilio-Whitaker, the Group of Seven, Donna Haraway, Tasha Hubbard, Naomi Klein, Bruno Latour, Lee Maracle, Cecily Nicholson, Rob Nixon, Howard O’Hagan, Al Purdy, Eden Robinson, Zoe Todd, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Imre Szeman, Tanya Tagaq, Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers, Kyle Powys Whyte, Patrick Wolfe, rita wong, Kathryn Yusoff, Zacharias Kunuk. Assignments The course will likely involve 2 short reading response/reflection papers, one individual seminar presentation, one creative/critical project, and a final conference-style paper

Doctoral Dissertation

ENGL 649

2023 Winter Term 1/2Credits: 0

Sections (3)

Section	Term	Format
001	1-2	Thesis
002	1	Thesis
003	2	Thesis

Doctoral Dissertation

ENGL 649

2024 SummerCredits: 0

Sections (3)

Section	Delivery Mode	Format
941	In-Person	Thesis
971	In-Person	Thesis
942	In-Person	Thesis

Doctoral Dissertation

ENGL 649

2024 Winter TermCredits: 0

Sections (3)

Section	Delivery Mode	Format
001	In-Person	Thesis
003	In-Person	Thesis
002	In-Person	Thesis

Doctoral Dissertation

ENGL 649

2025 SummerCredits: 0

Sections (3)

Section	Delivery Mode	Format
941	In-Person	Thesis
971	In-Person	Thesis
942	In-Person	Thesis

Doctoral Dissertation

ENGL 649

2025 Winter Term 1Credits: 0

Sections (3)

Section	Term	Delivery Mode	Format	Day(s)	Time(s)
002	1	In-Person	Thesis	M	08:00 - 09:00
003		In-Person	Thesis
001		In-Person	Thesis

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