English Department

This course introduces students to the critical tools and methods of literary study, including close reading and argumentative writing. Students will learn about the history of genres (e.g. poetry, drama, and the novel) and forms of literature (e.g. tragedy, realism). Texts may include the earliest writing in English to more recent works in various media. Credit will be granted for only one of ENGL 100, ENGL 110 or ENGL 111/112. Restricted to students in the Humanities Colloquium. Six credits.

This course provides students with the key skills needed to succeed at university. You will learn how to write argumentatively; how to build a question or problem from a close-reading of a literary work; how to develop that argument by presenting and analyzing evidence; how to engage in scholarly debate; how to do university-level research. Credit will be granted for only one of ENGL 111, 100 or 110. Three credits.

In its first printing, Hamlet’s famous speech runs “To be, or not to be, Ay there’s the point.” This course explores how Shakespeare’s plays make meaning in different material and digital contexts: in print and manuscript, in performance on stage and screen, and online. Topics covered will include the history of printing Shakespeare’s works, their early reception, current editorial practices, and how that informs performances of Shakespeare’s plays. Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or 111 or equivalent. Three credits.

What does it mean to put bodies into narrative? How does literature figure the body and how have literary forms and figures been taken up in other fields concerned with bodies? To answer these questions, the course will draw both on literature and other fields (medicine, psychology, the use of science to support racialized or racist discourse) that have scripted bodies in a variety of ways. Topics will vary from year to year. Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or 111/112 or equivalent. Three credits.

This course builds on the skills acquired in first year English. We will broaden our understanding of what literature is and how it works. We will develop our abilities to see how different approaches to texts allow us to understand their formal, gendered, historical, political, psychological, racial and sociological impacts. We will expand our practical skills by: enlarging our critical vocabularies; sharpening our argumentative writing abilities; and increasing our proficiency with sources and databases. Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or 111 or equivalent. Three credits.

Chefs on Top Chef, athletes on ESPN Stories, corporate brand spokespersons, politicians and orphaned wizards: despite their differences, all these persons are tasked with telling stories. But what makes one narrator more compelling than another? How does the order and speed in which a story gets told affect its meaning? Does knowing one’s audience matter? Grasping how narrative works is crucial to understanding why only some stories capture attention. Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or 111 or equivalent. Three credits.

Horror is closely connected to science fiction and fantasy. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is the founding text of science fiction, but its central monster belongs generically to horror. In this course, we will discuss horror’s evolution, the reasons some people love scary stories while others avoid them, and how horror functions as a genre. The course will contain texts that some students may find disturbing, including violence. Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or 111 or equivalent. Three credits.

Students will write stories and/or poetry, in a weekly workshop setting, whose audience is children and young adults, using best-selling books in these categories as models for their work. Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or 111 or equivalent. Three credits.

This book history course examines how texts have been disseminated over time in order to demonstrate how material contexts affect textual meaning. Topics might include changing practices and ideas of authorship, publication, and reading. Evidence considered could span from early textual objects (clay tablets) to today’s technologies (computers, tablets, phones). Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or 111 or equivalent. Three credits.

This course will consider the rich literature of the Atlantic region with particular focus on the many and diverse voices (including African Nova Scotian, Mi’kmaw, Scottish and Irish Gaelic, and Acadian in translation) emerging in the post-Centennial era of Atlantic Canada. Various genres including poetry, novels and short story along with art and film will be encountered. Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or 111 or equivalent. Three credits.

Why do we develop such strong attachments to literary characters? They aren’t real. Their stories don’t continue. They don’t interact with us. And yet often keep them closer to us than people we know. In this course, we will try to sort out why characters – from Emma to Harry Potter – matter so much in both our imaginary, real and virtual lives. Credit will be granted for only one of ENGL 232 and ENGL offered in 2017-2018. Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or 111 or equivalent. Three credits.

Using the landmark publication of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland as a starting point, this course provides a critical survey of children’s literature in Britain, America, and Canada. Students will examine different types of media that may include novels, picture books, graphic novels, comics, and digital content. Credit will be granted for only one of ENGL 233 or ENGL 234. Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or 111 or equivalent. Three credits.

Children’s film and television are highly lucrative and competitive fields. This course will survey landmarks in children’s media across the world, looking at questions of adaptation, suitability, merchandising-driven story, and franchising. Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or 111 or equivalent. Three credits.

This course introduces students to some of the central texts and debates in two connected fields: environmental literature, a longstanding, rich facet of the literary field sometimes also identified as “ecofiction,” and climate fiction (cli-fi), a recent, currently booming sub-section of environmental literature. Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or 111/112 or equivalent. Three credits.

This course examines a figure who haunts modern culture from the nineteenth century to the present—the detective. Ranging from Poe’s important nineteenth-century detective stories, to Sherlock Holmes, to present-day fiction and film, course discussions will consider why the detective develops as a cultural phenomenon in this period, how the figure of the detective changes over time, and what cultural problems detective fiction addresses. Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or 111 or equivalent. Three credits.

The focus in 2023-2024 is Conversation. Using the 18th century coffeehouse as our starting place, we will study the period’s obsession with conversation. By reading The Spectator, a periodical that aimed to formulate middle class culture, and essays designed to teach readers how to interact socially and politely, we will examine how conversation is modelled, performed, and satirized in a variety of 18th century works, including a card game. The course, like the coffeehouse, will encourage conversation and discussion in class. Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or 111 or equivalent. Three credits.

Women in the Margins. We will explore some early modern women writers who were marginalized, chastised, and ridiculed for their gender and daring to write, publish, and flourish in a man’s world. Featured are “Mad Marge,” the “crack-brained” Duchess of Cavendish, author of early science fiction; Aphra Behn, a successful playwright, novelist, and poet who demanded respect for her “Masculine Part:” and Eliza Haywood, a prolific writer deemed “the Arbitress of Passion” for her novels. Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or 111 or equivalent. Three credits.

This course will introduce students to recent formal and generic developments in the American novel and situate these trends within the history of the novel as a literary form. Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or 111 or equivalent. Three credits.

Students are introduced to the techniques of writing creatively in the genres of poetry, short stories, drama, etc. Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or 111 or equivalent. Three credits.

How does literature address (in)justice, particularly injustices that are global in scale? From the movement for the abolition of slavery to anti-colonial resistance and contemporary refugee narratives, literature has long been a means of advancing claims for justice and fostering understanding across global divides. The course will focus mostly on 20th and 21st century works and topics like colonialism, conflict and displacement, genocide and the climate crisis. Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or 111/112 or equivalent. Three credits.

A study of some of the most influential works of Tudor England, outside Shakespeare. These may include Thomas More’s Utopia; Sidney’s An Apology for Poetry; Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy; Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great, The Jew of Malta, and Edward II; and selections from Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene. Prerequisite: 9 credits ENGL. Three credits.

This course introduces students to current directions and interests in literary and cultural criticism, including eco-criticism, theories of film and visual culture, gender and sexuality, psychology, and digital culture. Besides reading relevant theoretical texts, we’ll examine works of contemporary television and film, literary texts, and contemporary music. Credit will be granted for only one of ENGL 314 or ENGL 445. Prerequisite: 9 credits of ENGL; ENGL 215 recommended. Three credits.

Students will be expected to choose one genre through which they will continue to explore and develop the basic elements of creative writing in ENGL 231. Prerequisite: ENGL 100, 111 or equivalent; three credits creative writing (ENGL 267 or equivalent). Three credits.

327 Celtic Kings, Heroes and Monsters- Medieval Ireland
From hot-headed heroes to terrifying monsters and death-tales, this course will examine topics and texts from medieval Irish literary tradition in detail. Credit will be granted for only one of CELT 327 and CELT 221. Cross-listed as CELT 327. Three credits. Not offered 2017-2018.

From King Arthur to Culhwch and from dragons to giants, this course will examine topics and texts from medieval Welsh tradition in detail. Credit will be granted for only one of CELT 328 and CELT 222. Cross-listed as CELT 328. Three credits. Not offered 2017-2018.

How do the struggles feminists engage in inform literary works? An introduction to diverse feminist debates within their historical, cultural and political contexts, this course explores the relationships between particular feminisms and the literary texts that exemplify or extend them. In 2023-2024, the course will focus on 21st century feminisms. Cross-listed as WMGS 329. Prerequisite: 9 credits ENGL. Three credits.

What is performance and why/how do we study it? In this class, students explore how performance impacts all of our identities. Considering that Nova Scotia was the site of the first documented performance in what we now call Canada, this course investigates theatre as history-making and nation-building acts. Introducing students to theatrical forms such as vaudeville, minstrelsy, and verbatim theatre, this course simultaneously considers how theatre influences social justice issues of race, culture, and gender. Credit will be granted for only one of ENGL 338 or ENGL 366. Prerequisite: 9 credits ENGL. Three credits.

This course introduces students to the classical texts of and contemporary developments in cultural theory. The course will practically apply these theories through the study of popular culture. Students will learn the basics of cultural analysis and familiarize themselves with what theorists have come to understand as the “critique of everyday life.” Credit will be granted for only one of ENGL 339 and ENGL 318. Prerequisite: 9 credits ENGL. Three credits.

This course focuses on later 20th and early 21st century Canadian prose fiction in English, including novels, short stories, and memoir. Many of these works invite you to explore ideas of the construction of the self, the use and development of voice, and the challenge of delineating identity or identities in relation to place, time, and community. Various aspects of narrative technique and of ways of entering and conveying a story will be explored. Credit will be granted for only one of ENGL 365 and 367. Prerequisite: 9 credits ENGL. Three credits.

The topic for 2023-2024 is Happiness. This course examines the very recent interest in happiness studies. We’ll think about what happiness entails and the difficulties involved in its achievement. Topics discussed will include: sex, money, occupation, marriage, music, family, the quotidian and authenticity. Prerequisite: 9 credits ENGL. Three credits.

This course focuses primarily on medieval romance – stories of chivalry, courtly love, and adventure – while focusing on how they both encourage and disguise how medieval knighthood really worked. In addition, the course will discuss medieval ideas of gender, politics, and ethnicity. Prerequisite: ENGL 100 or 111/112 or equivalent. Three credits.

The topic for 2023-2024 is The Poetry of Atlantic Canada. See ENGL 491 for course information. Prerequisite: 9 credits ENGL. Three credits.

The topic for 2023-2024 is The Coquette. See ENGL 492 for course information. Prerequisite: 9 credits ENGL. Three credits.

Honours students write a thesis under the supervision of a faculty thesis director. Students must meet the thesis director in March of the junior year to prepare a topic. Honours students must register for the thesis as a six-credit course in their senior year. The thesis must be submitted no later than March 31 of the senior year. See chapter 4. Six credits.

The topic for 2023-2024 is The Poetry of Atlantic Canada. The Atlantic region is an oft-overlooked geographic and cultural locus of emergent and divergent voices in the literature of Canada. We will examine the rich development of Atlantic Canadian poetry from colonial to post-colonial eras, encountering a variety of poetic forms and genres, Mi’qmaq and African-Canadian voices, along with those of women and men from settler societies. This course invites you on an exploration and discovery of the voices of this region through time and space. Prerequisites: third-year standing and 15 credits ENGL. Three credits.

The topic for 2023-2024 is The Coquette. The 18th-century coquette, a woman who transgresses social and gender boundaries, is also a trope for modernism. Using Eliza Haywood’s novel The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless as our central text, we will examine how the coquette is characterized variously as inconsequential, threatening, flighty, flirty, feminist, and in need of reform. A conspicuous consumer, she resists marriage, refuses to settle, and “chooses too much.” The coquette is damned or delightful depending on who judges her. Prerequisites: third-year standing and 15 credits English. Three credits.

Advanced major students write a thesis as part of the senior seminar. See chapter 4. No credit.