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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

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 (66)

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
LU1	2	In-Person	Discussion	Th	09:30 - 11:00
LP4	2	In-Person	Discussion	F	09:00 - 10:00
LC2	1	In-Person	Discussion	F	12:00 - 13:00	Guy-bray, Stephen
LS4	2	In-Person	Discussion	F	13:00 - 14:00
LR6	2	In-Person	Discussion	F	12:00 - 13:00
LF1	1	In-Person	Discussion	F	13:00 - 14:00	Cavell, Richard Anthony
LQ4	2	In-Person	Discussion	F	11:00 - 12:00
LQ3	2	In-Person	Discussion	F	11:00 - 12:00
LA3	1	In-Person	Discussion	F	09:00 - 10:00	Potter, Tiffany
LB4	1	In-Person	Discussion	F	10:00 - 11:00	Dick, Alexander
LT3	2	In-Person	Discussion	F	14:00 - 15:00
LR4	2	In-Person	Discussion	F	12:00 - 13:00
LF3	1	In-Person	Discussion	F	13:00 - 14:00	Cavell, Richard Anthony
LQ2	2	In-Person	Discussion	F	11:00 - 12:00
LP2	2	In-Person	Discussion	F	09:00 - 10:00
LR2	2	In-Person	Discussion	F	12:00 - 13:00
LS2	2	In-Person	Discussion	F	13:00 - 14:00
LE2	1	In-Person	Discussion	F	14:00 - 15:00	Luger, Moberley
LE1	1	In-Person	Discussion	F	14:00 - 15:00	Luger, Moberley
LC3	1	In-Person	Discussion	F	12:00 - 13:00	Guy-bray, Stephen
LR3	2	In-Person	Discussion	F	12:00 - 13:00
LP5	2	In-Person	Discussion	F	09:00 - 10:00
LA4	1	In-Person	Discussion	F	09:00 - 10:00	Potter, Tiffany
LT1	2	In-Person	Discussion	F	14:00 - 15:00
LB1	1	In-Person	Discussion	F	10:00 - 11:00	Dick, Alexander
LP3	2	In-Person	Discussion	F	09:00 - 10:00
LR1	2	In-Person	Discussion	F	12:00 - 13:00
LA5	1	In-Person	Discussion	F	09:00 - 10:00	Potter, Tiffany
LQ5	2	In-Person	Discussion	F	11:00 - 12:00
LS1	2	In-Person	Discussion	F	13:00 - 14:00
LB3	1	In-Person	Discussion	F	10:00 - 11:00	Dick, Alexander
LE3	1	In-Person	Discussion	F	14:00 - 15:00	Luger, Moberley
LC4	1	In-Person	Discussion	F	12:00 - 13:00	Guy-bray, Stephen
LC5	1	In-Person	Discussion	F	12:00 - 13:00	Guy-bray, Stephen
LP1	2	In-Person	Discussion	F	09:00 - 10:00
LE5	1	In-Person	Discussion	F	14:00 - 15:00	Luger, Moberley
LF4	1	In-Person	Discussion	F	13:00 - 14:00	Cavell, Richard Anthony
LC1	1	In-Person	Discussion	F	12:00 - 13:00	Guy-bray, Stephen
LR5	2	In-Person	Discussion	F	12:00 - 13:00
LT2	2	In-Person	Discussion	F	14:00 - 15:00
LT4	2	In-Person	Discussion	F	14:00 - 15:00
LF5	1	In-Person	Discussion	F	13:00 - 14:00
LA1	1	In-Person	Discussion	F	09:00 - 10:00	Potter, Tiffany
LA2	1	In-Person	Discussion	F	09:00 - 10:00
LB2	1	In-Person	Discussion	F	10:00 - 11:00	Dick, Alexander
LB5	1	In-Person	Discussion	F	10:00 - 11:00	Dick, Alexander
LB6	1	In-Person	Discussion	F	10:00 - 11:00	Dick, Alexander
LE4	1	In-Person	Discussion	F	14:00 - 15:00	Luger, Moberley
LS3	2	In-Person	Discussion	F	13:00 - 14:00
LC6	1	In-Person	Discussion	F	12:00 - 13:00	Guy-bray, Stephen
LS5	2	In-Person	Discussion	F	13:00 - 14:00
LQ1	2	In-Person	Discussion	F	11:00 - 12:00
LF2	1	In-Person	Discussion	F	13:00 - 14:00	Cavell, Richard Anthony

Approaches to 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 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

Challenging Language Myths

ENGL 140

cardoso-amanda stratton-james

2023 Winter Term 2Credits: 3

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

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. Credit will be granted for only one of ENGL 140 or LING 140. This course is not eligible for Credit/D/Fail grading. Equivalency: LING140

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?

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 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 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.

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 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.

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.

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).

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

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

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

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

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).

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).

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.

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).

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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 (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.

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.

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

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

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.

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)

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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