English

Upper Level Courses: 3000-Level

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Fall 2012
Fall/Winter 2012-13
Winter 2013

Unless specifically noted, you do not have to take 2000-level courses before you take 3000-level courses. The prerequisite for all upper-level English is 6 credit hours in first-year English, and a few courses have additional prerequisites or permissions required. English courses fulfill the UW’s Humanities requirement. All students are welcome to take courses in English, provided they have the prerequisites. Students considering a major in English should read about our innovative Degree Programs.  

FALL 2013

CREATIVE FIELD RESEARCH: Creative Songwriting
ENGL 3102(1) – 050
D. Roy
(F) Wednesday Sept 25, Oct 2, Oct 9, and Oct 16. 6:00 – 9:00 p.m.

This workshop is intended for students who have an interest in learning the craft of songwriting – putting words to music. Although the first two sessions touch on the rudiments of song, rhyme and metric structures, the focus of the class is to bring out originality in both language and sound. Students will explore different writing approaches and techniques to expand their creative vocabulary. They will complete a minimum of two songs inspired by the techniques learned in the class, in addition to a short response paper for the course. Please note this course is one credit hour only, and it is graded on a pass/fail basis. Students may take this course for credit up to three times, if the topic varies. Prerequisite: 12 credit hours in English and permission of the department. Interested students should contact Margaret Sweatman at m.sweatman@uwinnipeg.ca to request permission.

CREATIVE FIELD RESEARCH: Shakespeare for Writers
ENGL 3102(1) – 002
D. Patterson
(F) Saturday Oct 26 and Nov 9. 10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.

In this workshop, students will explore how Shakespeare creates characters and conflict. They will approach Shakespeare’s rhythms, punctuation, language, sound, and figures of speech, as means of conveying status, intelligence, nobility and emotional states. They will then integrate these techniques into their own writing. Students will learn about comic and tragic structures and will acquire knowledge of dramaturgy that is applicable to all forms of writing: poetry, short fiction, novels, and scripts for stage and film. They will submit at least two creative writing assignments, in addition to a short response paper for the course. Please note this course is one credit hour only, and it is graded on a pass/fail basis. Students may take this course for credit up to three times, if the topic varies. Prerequisite: 12 credit hours in English and permission of the department. Interested students should contact Margaret Sweatman at m.sweatman@uwinnipeg.ca to request permission.

WRITING SHORT FICTION
ENGL 3113(3) – 001
Professor M. Sweatman
(F) Tuesday/Thursday 1:00 – 2:15 p.m.

This course is designed for students who wish to concentrate on the craft of writing fiction, with a focus on the short story. Topics include narrative technique, voice, genre, structure, elements of style, and research methods. Students will write two short stories, one of which will be workshopped, revised and resubmitted. Students will also write one short parody accompanied by a stylistic analysis of a passage of a story in The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. Classes will be comprised of short lectures with class discussion, improvised verbal and written exercises, class workshops and smaller group workshops. Students are required to keep up with extensive reading for this course, as well as working at the creative assignments on an on-going basis. Prerequisite: 6 credit hours of First-Year English, including 1001(6) OR 1000(3) and permission of the instructor. Restrictions: may not be taken by students with credit in the former ENGL-3113(3) Creative Writing: Fiction.

TOPICS IN FICTION FOR YOUNG PEOPLE: Myth
ENGL 3118(3) – 001
Professor M. Evans
(F) Tuesday/Thursday 2:30 – 3:45 p.m.

This course examines varieties of narratives produced for children and adolescents from the end of the 19th century to the present.  The focus is on the importance of myth for narrative structures and strategies as well as theories of children’s literature. We will sample some examples of ancient myth, with attention to recurring motifs of the dying god and the end of worlds, for example. A historical survey of theories of myth since the late nineteenth century, with attention to different fields such as psychoanalysis and aesthetics, will help define related key terms such as legend, history, science, religion, and sublime. Course reading may include texts by C.S. Lewis, Philip Pullman, Alan Garner, Michael Bedard, Tim Wynne Jones, Rick Riordan, and Gail Anderson-Dargatz. Term work will likely include an essay and a revision of that essay. Classes will proceed by class discussion and mini-lecture.

FALL/WINTER 2013-14

CREATIVE WRITING COMPREHENSIVE
ENGL 3101(6) – 001
Professors C. Hunter (Fall) and M. Sweatman (Winter)
(FW) Tuesday/Thursday 4:00 – 5:15 p.m.

This course surveys many aspects of writing. Topics include literary elements such as images, subtext, and structure, as well as workshop skills, self-editing skills, and other aspects of professional development. Reading assignments, writing assignments, and class participation are all important in this course. We will read works of fiction and poetry, and come to class prepared to discuss these works and learn from them as writers. Class activities also include readings by visiting writers; readings by students; workshop sessions for discussing students' works in progress; and a variety of in-class exercises, including games, writing challenges, and spoken improvisations to help us understand narrative and become more attuned to language as sound and action. In addition to reading and in-class work, students will hand in four creative writing assignments, plus two revision assignments and two critiques of readings they attend. Students are expected to help create a classroom atmosphere that is both challenging and supportive, to respect and encourage each other as artists, and to offer constructive criticism and questions. Prerequisites: ENGL-2002 and ENGL-2102. Portfolios: Please submit a completed portfolio checklist (see the final page of this document) along with ten pages of your own writing, including at least four pages of prose and two pages of poetry. Send your portfolios and/or your questions to c.hunter@uwinnipeg.ca or to m.sweatman@uwinnipeg.ca . We look forward to hearing from you.

PRACTICUM IN LITERATURE, LITERACY & LANGUAGE
ENGL 3120 (6) – 001
Professor N. Hamer
(FW) Monday 6:00 – 9:00 p.m.

Course description T. B.A.

 CRITICAL THEORY: An Intro
ENGL 3120 (6) – 001
Professor P. Melville
(FW) Thursday 10:00 – 12:45 p.m.

 This course introduces students to critical theory by way of a cultural studies approach to popular culture. Drawing on representative texts from a number of critical schools (from Marxism to psychoanalysis, from feminism to queer theory), class discussion will focus on how theory has both complicated and enriched our understanding of language, culture, and society. How is the process by which things like “literature” and “culture” are created, circulated, and understood caught up in questions of privilege and power? How do social differences shape one’s approaches to textual and cultural analysis? With these questions in mind, students will examine the changing views of the role that textuality, ideology, and popular culture play in a culture’s understanding of itself as well as that culture’s determination of what constitutes “knowledge.”

 

LITERATURE AND FILM
ENGL 3190 (6) – 001
Professor B.Cornellier
(FW) Wednesday 2:30 – 5:15 p.m.

 Course description T. B.A.

CANADIAN LITERATURE AND CULTURE AFTER 1914
ENGL 3716 (6) – 001
Professor C. Rifkind
(FW) Tuesday/ Thursday 11:30 – 12:45 p.m.

 This course introduces students to a diverse array of Canadian literature from 1914 to the present. We will read short stories, novels, poems, plays, and a graphic narrative that offer rich and inventive narratives, eccentric and ex-centric characters, expressive and innovative poetics. In reading and discussion, students will be encouraged to define, expand, and refine their understandings of both Canadian culture and literary studies. Throughout the course, we will consider Canadian writers, artists, and cultural producers within broader contexts to study the relationships between nationalism, internationalism, cosmopolitanism, exile, immigration, diaspora, and globalization.  In the Fall term we will focus on the first half of the twentieth century, from World War I to the Cold War. In the Winter term we will focus on the period after 1960, from the global village to globalization. This course takes a cultural studies approach to introduce students to a variety of texts, from the popular to the avant-garde, across a diverse set of media.

Classes will be organized around lectures, discussions, and collaborative projects that will draw on critical theory, visual art, films, music, and historical sources relevant to the texts. Evaluation will be based on analytical and research essays, a short class presentation, participation, and a final exam.

 TENTATIVE READING LIST (check back in July for final list)
Fall Term
Leacock, Stephen. Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town. 1912. Toronto: Penguin, 2006.
Ross, Sinclair. As For Me and My House. 1941. Toronto: New Canadian Library, 1989.
Wiseman, Adele. Crackpot. 1974. Toronto: New Canadian Library, 1989.

Winter term
Tremblay, Michel. Les Belles Soeurs. 1972. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1991. [English translation]
Highway, Tomson. The Rez Sisters. Calgary: Fifth House, 1988.
King, Thomas. Green Grass, Running Water. Toronto: HarperCollins, 1999.
Brand, Dionne. What We All Long For. Toronto: Knopf, 2005.
Wah, Fred. Diamond Grill: 10th Anniversary Edition. Edmonton: NeWest, 2006.
Lemire, Jeff. The Complete Essex County. Toronto: Top Shelf, 2009.

Additional short readings, including poetry and short fiction, will be placed on Nexus.

AMERICAN LITERATURE AND CULTURE TO 1914
ENGL 3720 (6) – 001
Professor J. Wills
(FW) Monday/Wednesday 4:30 – 5:15 p.m.

This course focuses on a variety of narratives, images, and ideologies created in the “United States” since the colonial period and up until the First World War. It is framed as a chronological survey of American literature, political rhetoric, philosophical thought, visual art, classical music, photography, and culture. However, we will also consider how the various historical moments explored in this course inspire, impact, and are revised by contemporary “American” ideologies and behaviours. Topics will range from early settlement to the Trail of Tears; the New England witch-hunts to the “original” Tea Party; from American gothic poetry to Jim Crow laws of racial segregation; from frontierism to “Paper Sons.” We will consider the rise of nationalism and exceptionalism as they were born out of revolution but also exploitation. Special attention will be paid to issues of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, settler colonialism, religion, and class as students will be encouraged to think about American myth-making and literary canonization from various (often-conflicting) perspectives. Literary Texts May Include Works By: Mary Rowlandson, Anne Bradstreet, Benjamin Franklin, Phillis Wheatley, Hannah Webster Foster, James Fenimore Cooper, Washington Irvine, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Herman Melville, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Wilson, Onoto Watanna, Mark Twain, Willa Cather, Emily Dickinson, and Robert Frost.

 

STYLISTICS / TEXTUAL ANALYSIS
ENGL 3800 (6) – 001
Professor K.Malcolm
(FW) Tuesday/Thursday 1:00 – 2:45 p.m.

In this course a variety of linguistics descriptive tools are taught in order to analyze literary and non-literary texts. In other words, this course is not a history of style, nor a history of talking about style, nor a theory of style; rather it presents a methodology and means of analyzing literary discourse for a variety of purposes.  The descriptive framework taught in the course will enable you to delve into the intricacies of language and come up with all sorts of interesting answers to these questions. In the course you are taught to "look" at language choices in a very close and detailed way. How do the author's choices of "sounding"/phonological features contribute to the reading of the passage? And likewise the "seeing"/graphological features? What does the sequential "patterning"/syntax of the sentences offer the interpretation? And how are the "meanings" of the words/lexis and semological roles predictable or provocative, freeing or constraining? How do all these resources work together in non-literary discourse to teach, entertain, illustrate etc. the language user, manipulate the reader, create group solidarity between encoder and decoder, challenge, confront, even anger the hearer etc. or in literature: advance the plot as opposed to describe a character or create a mood, create empathy for the protagonist as opposed to the antagonist, manipulate the reader's response by varying its pace etc.?

 

WINTER 2014

CREATIVE FIELD RESEARCH: Shakespeare for Writers
ENGL 3102(1) – 003
A. Daher
(W) Saturday Jan 25 and Feb 8 10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.

How has the young adult novel evolved through the years? What exactly makes a novel "young adult" versus adult or juvenile? Students will explore these questions and then, through a series of exercises and discussions, they will examine strategies to build memorable plots, believable characters, and sharp dialogue. With an emphasis on story structure, they will focus on opening and key scenes. Students will also learn how to prepare an effective manuscript submission package. They will submit at least two creative writing assignments, in addition to a short response paper for the course. Please note this course is one credit hour only, and it is graded on a pass/fail basis. Students may take this course for credit up to three times, if the topic varies. Prerequisite: 12 credit hours in English and permission of the department. Interested students should contact Margaret Sweatman at m.sweatman@uwinnipeg.ca to request permission.

 

TOPICS IN CANADIAN LITERATURE AND CULTURE: The Canadian Postmodern
ENGL 3709(3) – 001
Professor M. Sweatman
(W) Wednesday 2:30 – 5:15 p.m.

 Course description T. B.A.

 

LITERATURE OF WINNIPEG
ENGL 3714(3) – 001
C. Russell
(W) Tuesday/Thursday 4:00 – 5:15 p.m.

Course description T. B.A.

 

TOPICS IN INDIGENOUS TEXTS AND CULTURES
ENGL 3723(3) – 001
Professor P. DePasquale
(W) ONLINE

This course examines a range of literary and other texts, all available on the Internet, that call into question issues concerning the history of stereotypes and racism as they relate to Indigenous peoples. Texts that students will study, analyze, discuss, and research include various media available online, such as newspapers, magazines, film, video clips, visual art and images, and literature. Secondary sources, available through the UW Library’s electronic databases and other online sources, will enable students to think through the complex web of histories and texts that give rise to continuing forms of racism and neocolonialism. The course also examines the contributions of Indigenous and non-Indigenous activists, artists, community members, scholars, and others who are working to deconstruct older paradigms and perceptual frameworks. No previous knowledge of Indigenous histories or cultures is required.

 

BIBLICAL TEXTS IN LITERARY AND CULTURAL STUDIES
ENGL 3905(3) – 001
Professor K. Venema
(W) Tuesday/Thursday 10:00 – 11:15 a.m.

This course offers a critical introduction to biblical texts and their relationships to, and influences on, literary and cultural production. We read the biblical texts in several ways simultaneously: within the historical and cultural contexts in which they were first produced; as instances of literary genres; and in relation to a number of literary and cultural texts that they have prompted. This iteration of the course focuses on the relationships among selected biblical texts and selected epic poetry, devotional poetry, two 20th C novels, a graphic narrative, and selected episodes of a television series. We will examine the ways in which the biblical texts are negotiated in contemporary secular society in relationship to histories of colonization, the advent of “English studies,” feminist scholarship, and postcolonial and transcultural challenges.

REPRESENTATIONS OF DISABILITY IN LITERARY AND CULTURAL TEXTS
ENGL 3920(3) – 001
Professor K. Venema
(W) Tuesday/Thursday 1:00 – 2:15 p.m.

This course examines social, cultural, historical, political, and aesthetic ideas about disability as they are expressed in literary and cultural texts.  Students use the skills of textual and theoretical analysis to examine a range of texts that may include novels, performance texts, poetry, short stories, children’s and young people’s texts, feature films, documentary films, visual art, graphic narratives, blogs, YouTube videos, and other texts generated by social media.  Students consider representations of disability in relation to a wide range of topics, including aging, creative identity, colonialism, culture, cybernetics, ethics, ethnicity, family, gender, human rights, imperialism, memory, mythology, nation, posthumanism, and sexuality.