2000-Level Course Descriptions
FALL 2026 | FALL WINTER 2026-27 | WINTER 2027
ENGL-2102-001 | Intro Creative Writing: Developing a Portfolio: Welcome to the Writers' Room | L. Wong
Course Delivery: IN PERSON
“If you’re struggling with what you’re writing—if you’re afraid to be your true self on the page—I dare you to stop listening to the outside voices and try listening only to yourself this one time. Write the book you most want to write…Write the book that is the most unapologetically YOU, no matter how long it takes.”- Nova Ren Suma, author of The Walls Around Us
“Overnight success is almost always a myth. Half of this industry is luck and half is the refusal to quit”--Victoria Schwab, author of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
“The first draft isn’t about getting it right, it’s about getting it done.” –Ava Jae, author of Beyond the Red
The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature, to those who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself. -Jim Rohn
In this workshop-based course, students concentrate on developing a portfolio of creative writing, including literary short fiction, young adult, and genre fiction. The course introduces students to strategies for writing in various prose genres and to the discipline involved in seeing a project through several drafts to its final stages. Through weekly writing exercises/prompts and assigned readings, this class emphasizes skills involved in self-editing and the professional preparation and submission of manuscripts suitable for a portfolio.
Students will be responsible for active participation, thoughtful feedback on peers’ work, and a willingness to generate new writing. This is a safe, supportive and inclusive learning environment. The workshop is also encouraged to think about submitting work to literary journals such as the University of Winnipeg’s Juice: https://www.uwinnipeg.ca/english/juice-journal-submissions.html
As this is a 200-level writing workshop, students should be fairly independent, committed, and motivated to improve their craft. Late assignments without permission will not receive instructor feedback and they will receive a zero if they are submitted a week after the deadline. This may sound harsh but I want us to adhere to the standards that professional writers follow in their daily practice.
Note: This course is recommended for students who plan to enroll in further creative writing courses at the undergraduate level.
Requisite Courses: 6 credit hours of First-year English, including ENGL-1001(6) or ENGL-1000(3) [prerequisite(s)].
ENGL-2102-002 | Intro Creative Writing:Short Forms | S. Pool
Course Delivery: IN PERSON
“What is poetry and if you know what poetry is what is prose?” -Gertrude Stein
This course is designed to give students a solid basis on which to build their understanding of Creative Writing practice and themselves as writers. Through a deep focus on the Prose Poetry and Flash Nonfiction students will be introduced to concepts, skills and tools, relevant to many forms of writing, and asked to consider how they might engage these in their own work, through in-class exercises and discussions. Students will be asked to read texts (critical, technical and creative) and engage in discussion around the ideas presented and how these might affect their own practice. Students may be asked to consider and experiment with forms and genres they do not usually write in. Learning to understand ourselves as legitimate writers, with valid, lived experience from which to draw from, is a core tenet of this course. This course will culminate in the production of a portfolio of connected short pieces which students can use to apply for upper-level Creative Writing courses or create submissions to literary journals. Wider discussions will include the responsibility of the writer, writing as craft, and the writer in the world. Students will have at least two opportunities to workshop new creative work in class.
ENGL-2102-003 | Intro Creative Writing | I. Adeniyi
Course Delivery: IN PERSON
ENGL-2113-001 | Picture Books for Children | H. Snell
Course Delivery: IN PERSON
ENGL-2603-001 | Short Fiction | Instructor TBA
Course Delivery: IN PERSON
ENGL-2604-001 | Poetry & Poetic Form | P. Melville
Course Delivery: IN PERSON
This course is designed to introduce students to various features, forms, and figures of poetic discourse. While historical context informs lectures and class discussion, the course proceeds, for the most part, according to the figural elements of poetry (such as rhythm and rhyme, diction and tone, metaphor and symbol). By engaging in thorough discussions and varied writing assignments, students learn to become more appreciative, alert readers of poetry, and in the process expand the possibilities of their own writing.
Please note that there will be no textbook to purchase, as all poems will be available through online links to websites such as poetryfoundation.org and poets.org.
ENGL-2703-001 | Play Analysis | J. Riley
Course Delivery: IN PERSON
ENGL-2750-001 | Intro: Classical Literature I | Instructor TBA
Course Delivery: IN PERSON
ENGL-2805-001 | Morphology | I. Roksandic
Course Delivery: IN PERSON
ENGL-2805-001 | Morphology | I. Roksandic
Course Delivery: IN PERSON
FALL/WINTER 2026-27
ENGL-2003-001 | Field of Children’s Literature | H. Snell
Course Delivery: IN PERSON
In this course we explore the characteristics of children's literature, unusually named for its readers rather than its producers. We study reading strategies; cultural assumptions about children and childhood; the economic and political contexts of the production, consumption, and marketing of texts for young people; and popular culture and media for young people. Texts covering a range of forms, including novels, chapbooks, poetry, diaries, conduct books, picture books, short stories, nursery rhymes, graphic novels, digital texts, folk and fairy tales, illustrated books, and historical fictions are considered. We will also discuss diversity in relation to book banning, censorship, literary prizes, and transmedia storytelling. Relevant theory and criticism supplement readings of texts in offering a sense of the debates that take place among children's literary and cultural studies scholars.
ENGL-2114-001 | Fairy Tales and Culture | C. Tosenberger
Course Delivery: IN PERSON
In this course we will study fairy tales, focusing not only on collected source material, but on literature written specifically for children based on these borrowed forms. We will trace the history of fairy tales from their origins in oral narrative to their impact on contemporary culture today. Students read and write critically about these tales and engage in comparisons on multiple fronts, exploring major themes and characteristics of these tales as well as the social and psychological aspects of them. The goal is to enrich our appreciation of these tales by strengthening our critical understanding of them as well as to gain insight as to how these tales function in our selves and our society.
ENGL-2142-001 | Field of Literary and Textual Studies | H. Milne
Course Delivery: IN PERSON
Field of Literary and Textual Studies offers an in-depth introduction to literary studies, including literary criticism and theory. We will read literary texts in relation to their historical, political, and social contexts; practice using various theoretical and critical approaches to reading literature; develop close reading skills and other strategies for literary analysis; and practice the skills needed for participating in seminar discussions. This course is offered in seminar format, which will enable more student participation and student-led participation than most general English courses.
ENGL-2142-002 | Field of Literary and Textual Studies | C. Rifkind
Course Delivery: IN PERSON
This course is designed for students in the early stages of the Honours BA program and other English students who want an intensive, discussion-based course that continues the breadth of first year English with added depth and complexity.
This version of ENGL 2142 will be a participatory seminar where we read a wide range of texts, from the 16th century to now, and from a variety of locations around the English-speaking world. The Fall term will focus on a series of canonical texts that have inspired literary responses and re-writings; Winter term will begin with a longer module on poetry and conclude with shorter modules on life writing, the short story, and a graphic narrative.
Alongside literary texts we will read a selection of criticism and theory that engages with larger questions shaping the field of English to deepen our understandings of literary forms, genres, styles, histories, movements, and experiments. Together, we will work to understand how a literary text is never a singular or static thing, but a rich and polyvalent source of meaning whose significance shifts over time and contexts. We will also think about what it means to study English literature within the colonial origins and decolonial possibilities of the discipline, as well as the status of the book as a cultural, historical, political, social, and economic object.
Time will be dedicated to developing advanced essay writing and research skills, as well as informal in-class exercises to work on ‘thinking through writing/visualizing’ so students emerge from this course with a range of skills and strategies to take into other courses (and wherever life takes them). Assignments will range from ongoing participation and short presentations to shorter textual responses and longer essays. Students should expect to both speak and write in class regularly. No Generative AI tools are permitted in this course in order for students to build essential skills in thinking, reading, and writing within a supportive environment.
ENGL-2146-050 | Screen Studies | A. Burke
Course Delivery: IN PERSON
This course provides an overview of history of that most fabled of screens, the cinema. The course is divided into three modules, each of which will take a different approach to thinking about film studies. The course will begin with an extended study of genre, zeroing in on the crime film, specifically the genre known as film noir. This will be followed by a module that considers a wide range of contemporary world cinema, using Girish Shambu’s concept of “the new cinephilia” to think about how we watch and talk about film in the Letterboxd age. The course will conclude with a module on films about childhood, examining the variety of ways in which the experience of being young or growing up has been represented onscreen. Do note that we will not be studying children’s films, but films that depict childhood experience. Some of them are not really suitable for children at all!
Films will primarily be accessible online via the UW Library and students are expected, with a few exceptions, to watch the films at home in advance of each class. I have minimized the readings for the course on the basis of this. We will treat the films themselves as primary texts.
Students need not have any prior experience studying film or other screen media! Part of the work of the course will be developing the basic skills to watch and write about moving images.
ENGL-2204-785 | Eighteenth-Century Studies | K. Sinanan
Course Delivery: HYFLEX: TUE ONLINE, THU IN PERSON
This course examines the eighteenth century as a period of opposites: transatlantic slavery and the spread of European empire occurred alongside the age of “improvement”; the category of the individual was developed in literary and cultural modes that also contributed to gender and race formation. Rationalism and sentiment competed as ways to understand the world. These historic changes were the context for what is called the Enlightenment and this course examines how white supremacy was core to Western ideas about “progress”, “civility”, “reason”, and myths of “discovery”. These ideas are also central to genre and literary endeavour. We will read poetry, novels, slave narratives, and present-day films that reimagine the period and its dilemmas.
ENGL-2205-001 | Romantic Period Literature and Culture | P. Melville
Course Delivery: IN PERSON
This course will pursue in-depth analyses of the literature and culture of the English Romantic period (c. 1789-1832). The course will not only consider the Romantic movement as a complex and conflicted response to a shared set of literary and philosophical anxieties but will also pay close attention to the interplay between the socio-political concerns of the Romantic period and the literature the period produced. Students will engage works from various Romantic discourses, including the poetry and prose of Mary Wollstonecraft, Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Charlotte Smith, William Blake, Samuel T. Coleridge, William Wordsworth, Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, John Keats, and the novels of Jane Austen and Mary Shelley.
Please note that there are only two textbooks to purchase for this course (both novels). All other course materials (poems, shorter prose works) will be available through online links to websites such as poetryfoundation.org and poets.org.
ENGL-2206-001 | Victorian Literature and Culture | C. Manfredi
Course Delivery: IN PERSON
In this course we will read a selection of Victorian novels (1832-1901). We will begin by reading as the Victorians did: serially. In the Fall, we will only read Charles Dickens’ Bleak House. Published in 1852-53, Bleak House appeared in serial form over the course of nineteen months and represents a complete narrative vision. We will be reading it slowly, carefully, and with a close attention to detail. In the Winter, we will cover Anne Brontë’s Agnes Grey (1847), George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss (1860), Amy Levy’s The Romance of a Shop (1888), and George Gissing’s The Odd Women (1893). In addition to these novels, we will also read a selection of short prose and poetry which will be available in a course pack.
Please note that this course will make very limited use of technology and no e-texts will be permitted (all required reading will be available for purchase the University of Winnipeg bookstore). Some assignments will be written during class time and by hand (unless the student has an accommodation with Accessibility Services).
ENGL-2310-001 | Shakespeare | Instructor TBA
Course Delivery: IN PERSON
ENGL-2903-001 | Queer Literature, Culture, and Theory | H. Milne
Course Delivery: IN PERSON
How have 2SLGBTQ+ writers used literary forms to explore identity and record personal and collective history? How have queer texts circulated, both within queer communities and beyond them? These are some of the questions that will inform our investigation of queer literature and culture in this course. The first semester will focus mainly on literature written prior to the gay liberation movement of the 1970s and will include readings by Oscar Wilde, Radclyffe Hall, Christopher Isherwood, Ann Bannon, and Audre Lorde. In the second semester, we will consider the complex and diverse 2SLGBTQ+ literary communities that emerged after gay liberation. We will spend several weeks looking at literature that takes as its focus the impact of AIDS on queer communities; we will consider how issues of race, nation, and religion have influenced queer writing; and we will examine trans literature as part of the broader category of 2SLGBTQ+ literature. We will also examine local queer histories by looking at archival and historical material about 2SLGBTQ+ culture in Winnipeg. We will supplement our analysis of literary texts and films with historical and theoretical materials. Throughout the course, we will critically analyze current events that pertain to 2SLGBTQ+ culture(s) and rights.
WINTER 2027
ENGL-2002-770 | The Creative Process | S. Pool
Course Delivery: ONLINE SYNCHRONOUS
ENGL-2102-004 | Intro Creative Writing | J. Wills
Course Delivery: IN PERSON
ENGL-2102-005 | Intro Creative Writing | Instructor TBA
Course Delivery: IN PERSON
ENGL-2102-006 | Intro Creative Writing | Instructor TBA
Course Delivery: IN PERSON
ENGL-2102-004 | Intro Creative Writing | J. Wills
Course Delivery: IN PERSON
ENGL-2203-001 | Literature of the 17th Century | Instructor TBA
Course Delivery: IN PERSON
ENGL-2220-001 | English Literature and Culture 700 - 1660 | Instructor TBA
Course Delivery: IN PERSON
ENGL-2221-001 | Medieval Literature: Chaucer | Z. Izydorczyk
Course Delivery: IN PERSON
ENGL-2603-002 | Short Fiction | Instructor TBA
Course Delivery: IN PERSON
ENGL-2613-001 | Fantasy Fiction | P. Melville
Course Delivery: IN PERSON
This course analyzes literary works within the fantasy genre in light of feminist, postcolonial, Marxist, and other cultural theories. While it considers the history of the fantasy genre and the “fantastic” as a literary mode, the course focuses primarily on the poetics and politics of “world-building,” a term that refers to fantasy’s production of imaginary “secondary” worlds whose historical, geographical, ontological, and cultural realities substantially differ from the world(s) inhabited by fantasy’s various readerships. The course covers a range of contemporary fantasy texts from different subgenres, including epic fantasy, urban fantasy, fairytale fantasy, and fantasy for young people. Readings include N.K. Jemisin's The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, Seanan McGuire's Every Heart a Doorway, Cassandra Clare's City of Bones, Alix E. Harrow's A Spindle Splintered, and Rebecca Roanhorse's Black Sun.
ENGL-2722-001 | Postcolonial Literature and Culture | I. Adeniyi
Course Delivery: IN PERSON
ENGL-2740-001 | Intro to African Literature and Culture | I. Adeniyi
Course Delivery: IN PERSON
ENGL-2802-050 | Syntax | Instructor TBA
Course Delivery: IN PERSON
ENGL-2803-050 | Phonetics and Phonology | Instructor TBA
Course Delivery: IN PERSON