1000-Level Course Descriptions

FALL 2023 | FALL/WINTER 2023-24 | WINTER 2024

ENGL-1000-001 | English 1A: The Content of Form | B. Christopher
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

This course invites students to read literary works in the context of the forms and genres in which they were written. We will discuss the conventions both of the broad generic categories by which the syllabus is organized and of subgenres of those categories. We will also examine the ways in which authors play with and subvert these conventions. Though genre will be our overarching theme in the course, we will also read the works on the syllabus with attention to the historical and cultural contexts in which they were written. After all, these genres did not develop in a vacuum. Over the course of the term, students will be introduced to a number of schools and techniques of literary criticism, and will be asked to apply some of these techniques in a variety of contexts, including group presentations, essays, workshops, and quizzes.

ENGL-1000-002 | English 1A: Literary Genres | P. Melville
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

This course introduces students to the major genres of English literature, including poetry, drama, and fiction. Although historical context will inform lectures and class discussion, the course will proceed, for the most part, according to the formal elements of each genre. Students will be asked to consider how form contributes to the meaning of a work of literature. With emphasis on the technical aspects of genre, the course will also encourage students to consider the socio-political conditions that likewise “structure” our own interpretations of literature. How does gender complicate the sonnet or the structure of a short story or novel? What about race? To what extent can literary form be re-structured to produce new and unexpected significance? By engaging in thorough discussions and varied writing assignments, students will learn to become more appreciative, critical readers of literature, and expand the possibilities of their own writing.

ENGL-1000-003 | English 1A | C. Manfredi
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

In this course, we will explore the dark side of the 19^th century by learning about the literary mode known as the Gothic. We will consider how and why the Gothic – which includes mad scientists, cannibalism, blood-thirsty vampires, and shape-shifting entities, vivisection, and unreliable narrators – permeates the literature of this era. We will also engage with key concepts at the heart of the Gothic, such as Freud’s uncanny.

Students will develop their critical reading, thinking, and writing skills by interpreting primary texts, making connections between them, and sharing ideas through written assignments. This course features weekly in-class quizzes and a series of in-class writing exercises that teach the essentials of close reading.

ENGL-1000-004 | English 1A | K. Sinanan
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

Course Description TBA

ENGL-1000-005 | English 1A | TBA
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

Course Description TBA

ENGL-1000-006 | English 1A | B. Pomeroy
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

Perhaps no other structure in society is as arbitrary and pervasive as class. Although often those trapped by class structures have few ways of articulating their situation, many artists have turned their hand to writing about and for the poor. In this course, we will read and analyze a number of texts which give voice to poverty and the oppressed, such as Thomas King's A Short History of Indians in Canada and Jonathan Swift's "Modest Proposal," as well as those written by people who are affected, like Jessica Amanda Salmonson's "Homeless Days, Homeless Nights" and Lars Eigher's "Dumpster Diving."

ENGL-1000-770 | English 1A | N. Decter
Course Delivery: ONLINE Synchronous

“Borders are set up to define the places that are safe and unsafe, to distinguish us from them. A border is a dividing line, a narrow strip along a steep edge.”

—Gloria Anzaldúa

This course will explore the concept of borders in literature. We will read texts from across the creative literary genres (novel, short fiction, poetry and creative non-fiction) that contain many types of borders: between nations, between childhood and adulthood, and between literary genres. Students will be encouraged to reflect upon how these works examine the divide between cultures, social classes, nations and especially what occurs in the liminal spaces in between. We will study the formal elements of each genre, and question how form can influence the meaning of a text. Research techniques will be emphasized, and students will be introduced to and practice a variety of critical literary theories, while also considering the historical context in which the texts were produced. Assignments will reinforce the fundamentals of essay writing technique while preparing students for more advanced literary study.

ENGL-1003-001 | Intro Topics in Literature: Horror | J. Ball
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

This topics course focuses on horror literature. Since this is a horror course, you should assume a blanket trigger warning across the material for a variety of frightening or offensive content.

We will explore how horror literature reflects social and cultural concerns of gender, race, sexuality, and politics. We will consider conventional horror, literary realism, and experimental narrative. We will examine concepts and themes associated with horror, including monsters, madness, and murder. Additionally, we will examine the formal techniques and common themes of horror, particularly as they concern narrative strategies and the role of the reader.

ENGL-1003-002 | Intro Topics in Literature | C. Anyaduba
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

This course introduces students to university-level literary study. It takes as its focus the literary representations of colonial schooling. The school (as well as the cultural practice of schooling) has been featured as a powerful institution of colonization in several literary works. We will read a variety of such works (including novels, poems, essays, etc.) that depict the links between school/schooling and colonization. Through close, contextual, and ideological readings of selected texts dealing with the experiences of colonial and postcolonial schooling in Africa, Europe, and North America, we will interrogate the cultural, psychological, political, moral, economic, and even biological dimensions of schooling. In addition, we will examine the literary/artistic strategies used by writers to thematize schooling as a colonial practice. We will also use the occasions of our study of the selected texts to explore some contemporary questions and issues associated with schooling, particularly with regard to university schooling.

ENGL-1003-003 | Intro Topics in Literature: Pandemics and Plagues | H. Milne
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

This course introduces students to the basic concepts of reading and writing about literature through the study of literary texts about pandemics and plagues. We will consider how narratives of contagion and containment have operated as a form of social commentary, political commentary, and spiritual commentary in fiction, poems, plays, films, and essays. We will examine literature that explores the bubonic plague, the Spanish Flu, AIDS, and COVID-19 as well as fictional viruses and plagues. We will also devote considerable attention to developing research and writing skills.

ENGL-1004-001 | Reading Culture: Visualizing Winnipeg | A. Burke
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

How has Winnipeg been pictured and portrayed? What is the image of the city that circulates locally, nationally, and internationally? This course traces and explores a history of visual representations of Winnipeg, in photographs, film, objects, and graphic novels. How have these visual forms captured and conveyed the spaces and places, people and communities that make up the city? How do they represent its geography, depict its history, grapple with its present, and imagine its future? How is the utopian idea of Winnipeg compromised by its divisions, inequities, and exclusions? This course provides an introduction to cultural studies, film studies and studies in visual culture through a consideration of Winnipeg and how it has been drawn, described, and depicted.

ENGL-1004-002 | Reading Culture | C. Lypka
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

What does it mean to live in an age of unravelling? What role does human culture—a set of practices encompassing a range of texts, events, experiences, and social institutions—play in everyday lives at a time of great global turmoil and uncertainty? Students will be encouraged to reflect on the meaning of unravelling as a metaphor for an age of pandemic, rapid environmental change, species extinction, and corporate domination. We will keep in mind the call of the environmental writer and philosopher Kathleen Dean Moore for "narratives of the moral imagination" and "a radical imaginary" as ways of responding to our current crises. We’ll discuss the work of the Dark Mountain Project in the UK (which suggests that "new stories are needed for dark times"), as well as selected works in which imagination and storytelling become strategies of exploration. Such works will include personal essays, short stories, documentary film, poems, and other texts.

The course will consist of a series of interactive, informal lectures and extensive small-group discussion. Assignments will include in-class responses, a personal essay, three short written assignments, two analytical essays, and a final research essay. This course may be of special interest to students who plan on pursuing further work in Cultural Studies.

ENGL-1004-770 | Reading Culture: It’s Just for Fun: The Cultural Resonances of Escapist Art | T. Penner
Course Delivery: ONLINE

For many of us, art is a chance to escape the realities of life, if only briefly, and have a little fun. Distinctions are often made for ‘serious’ art, like opera, theatre, literary novels, or art films, which are considered less fun, but more ‘important’ and ‘escapist’ fare: works that exists to ensure that the reader/viewer/listener can be entertained without having to consider the realities of life, at least for the duration of a book, movie, or song. This (untrue, yet widely believed) dichotomy is, of course, reductive, as all art engages with the culture around it, despite the genre or qualitative category into which it is placed. In this course, we will take a serious look at escapism by considering love stories that challenge prevailing economic systems, futuristic tales that speak to the present, sitcoms that capture the anxieties of their ages, pop stars that use their music to deconstruct their personae, crime thrillers that take on environmental catastrophe, and super-hero stories that highlight the political unrest of our time. In each work we will consider how escapist trappings can lead to deeper engagement with culture in sometimes surprisingly subversive ways.

ENGL-1005-001 | Intro: Reading to Write Speculatively | I. Adeniyi
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

This course introduces students to university-level creative literatures. Our focus will be on prose fiction, specifically the type described broadly as speculative fiction. These are fictions that ask what if about reality. We will explore the art of speculative prose writing from writerly and readerly perspectives. We will ask questions about what it means to imagine speculatively, about the craft of writing speculative stories, the strategies and methods used by writers to create speculative fiction, and the assumptions and rationales for doing speculative writing. In this course, we shall be reading and analysing stories with varying subject-matters and from a diversity of contexts. Our core objective is to learn to read and write critically about speculative fiction.

ENGL-1005-002 | Intro: Reading to Write | J. Scoles
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

This course introduces students to a variety of creative literature from a writerly perspective. This section of Reading to Write Creatively will examine short fiction and poetry, specifically, as well as the many ways of writing within the two genres. Students read as writers, closely and actively, learning to hear the nuances, cadences, and signatures of working artists. By reading closely, analyzing, and discussing published texts, we will gain an understanding of the strategies and methods writers use to write effectively. This course may be of special interest to students who plan on further work in Creative Writing.

FALL/WINTER 2023-24

ENGL-1001-001 | English 1: Introduction to Literary Study | A. Brickey
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

This course will introduce students to the academic study of English literature. We will encounter a range of literary genres including novels, poems, short fiction, and drama; and we will focus on building our skills in rhetorically strong literary analysis, close reading, clear evidence-based argumentation, and persuasive writing and speaking. We will study celebrated authors from diverse backgrounds and contexts, including Franz Kafka, Cherie Dimaline, Tennessee Williams, Nella Larsen, Christina Rossetti, and Nicholas Herring. This class will be highly participatory in nature, and will include regular in-class writing, workshops, collaborative discussions, and small group work. By the end of this course, you will not only have been exposed to compelling works of art, but you will also have honed your skills in critical writing and public speaking, which will benefit you in advanced university-level study and beyond. This course will suit you if you are already a lover of literature, if you’re curious to read some excellent stories, if you want to understand how a metaphor works, or even if you’re just looking to improve your essay writing skills. Assignments will include regular in-class writing, pop quizzes on reading material, and a final literary analysis essay based on a recent award-winning Canadian novel. The use of AI software such as ChatGPT is prohibited in this class, and students will do the majority of their written work in class, writing by hand.

ENGL-1001-002 | English 1 | M. Braith
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

This course will support students in developing and honing their critical reading and writing skills through the study of a wide range of short fiction, poetry, novels, a graphic novel, plays, film, and digital texts. In the first half of the course, we will move through time as students are introduced to literary periods and movements such as Romanticism, the Gothic, Realism, Modernism, and Postmodernism. In the second half of this course, we will turn our focus on Canadian literature and study three key areas: Indigenous voices, Transnationality & Belonging, and Children’s Literature. Works that we will read include Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Art Spigelman’s Maus, Marie Clements’s Burning Vision, and Linh S. Nguyễn’s No Place Like Home. Via class discussions, group work, research tasks, and writing assignments, students will improve their communication skills in addition to learning about literary theory and the basics of literary analysis.

ENGL-1001-003 | English 1: Monsters| S. Asselin
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

From Medusa to the Mummy, from Grendel to the Goblin Market to Godzilla, the disruptive presence of literary monsters always provides an educational opportunity for characters and readers alike. This class introduces students to major periods in literary history as we examine how manifestations of the monstrous become altered in tandem with changes in cultural contexts and literary aesthetics. The focus on monsters will allow us to deploy a variety of interpretative methods to account for and contextualize the presence of such entities, drawing particularly on theories of Otherness and difference, to discover how monsters manifest anxieties about race, gender, sexuality, religion, imperialism, warfare, gossip, and many other cultural phenomena. Along the way, students will be introduced to the analytical tools and vocabulary to work with poetry, prose, drama, and film. We will also dedicate class time to learning essay-writing skills and research methods compliant with academic integrity, which we will then practice in multiple writing exercises over the course of the year.

ENGL-1001-004 | English 1: Dystopias and Utopias | A. Leventhal
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

This course will introduce students to the fundamentals of literary study through the lens of dystopian and utopian writing. We'll investigate how authors have created fictional dystopias and utopias to explore and articulate the anxieties, hopes, and fears of their era and context, with a particular focus on issues of gender, race, class, technology, and the environment. Through engaged readings of short stories, novels, poetry, comics, and plays, students will examine how these works function within the historical context of their authors. Students will hone their critical reading and writing skills, and will practice the fundamentals of research and academic writing. Students will also develop their ability to identify literary devices and techniques, and will consider how they function within each text.

ENGL-1001-770 | English 1 | B. Pomeroy
Course Delivery: ONLINE

In this course we will discuss texts which are concerned with social change. Many literary texts, on the surface, seem to be merely fanciful stories, but many have been read as wishes for social change. For example, Kim Stanley Robinson's "A History of the Twentieth Century, with Illustrations" describes the personal aspect of endless war and Leonard Cohen's "Everybody Knows" questions the materialism of western society. As well, short story collections like Thomas King's One Good Story that One and novels such as Jeanette Winterson's Stone Gods use fantastic visions and brief portraits to question the effect of class structures, censorship, the position of women in society, environmental deterioration and governmental control. I hope that this course draws those students who have concerns about the direction of society and government and would like to learn how writers in English, at least, have dealt with those same concerns.

WINTER 2024

ENGL-1000-007 | English 1A | N. Decter
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

“Borders are set up to define the places that are safe and unsafe, to distinguish us from them. A border is a dividing line, a narrow strip along a steep edge.”

—Gloria Anzaldúa

ENGL-1000-008 | English 1A: Competing Interpretations | E. Maggiacomo
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

This course invites students into the dynamic world of literary analysis by exploring competing and coexisting interpretations of creative literature. We will consider how novels, short fiction, and poetry are part of the nuanced landscape of literary scholarship, where perspectives often clash, converge, and exist simultaneously. From examining the impact of historical and cultural contexts to analyzing language and form, this course aims to uncover the multiplicity of meanings inherent in literature.

We will read texts that are rich in literary interpretations, including Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” and selections of Sappho’s poetry. Alongside each text, students can expect to learn about various critical theories, including queer, feminist, disability studies, trauma, and critical race theories, among others.

Essays, in-class writing assignments, and other short assignments will reinforce critical thinking and reading skills, as well as fundamental essay writing skills. By the end of the course, students will have developed necessary skills applicable to further literary study or any field that requires critical thinking, research and writing skills, and openness to diverse perspectives.

ENGL-1000-009 | English 1A | K. Ready
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

This particular section of English 1A (subtitled “When Books Talk Back”) offers a select historical survey of poetry, fiction, and drama in English. The focus will be on texts that are engaged significantly in conversations with other texts and on contextualizing and understanding those conversations. As part of this process, students will be introduced to various critical theories and terms in order to get a sense of important developments in the history of different literary genres, of how different writers fit into literary history and culture, and, finally, of how different texts are speaking to each other within that history.

ENGL-1000-010 | English 1A | B. Pomeroy
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

ENGL-1000-011 | English 1A | J. Scoles
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

This course will introduce students to reading, researching, and writing about English literature by major authors in three distinct literary periods: Romantic, Victorian and Modern. A broad scope of genres will be considered—a significant amount of poetry, several short stories, and a novel, from authors such as Letitia Barbaud, William Blake & Felicia Hemans, John Keats & Christina Rossetti, Robert Louis Stevenson & William Butler Yeats, Alice Munro, Margaret Atwood & Zadie Smith—with lectures and assignments anchored in world history. We will examine the relationship between texts and contexts, and explore how specific narratives are represented and structured in relation to others in world literature & across the three major literary periods. We’ll also interrogate the evolving ‘landscapes’ of identity & conflict in our world over the years, with a focus on the forces (colonial, political, social, etc.) that shape and re-shape history. Students will gain skills & experience in close reading, analyzing texts & literary criticism, among other elements of literary study.

ENGL-1003-004 | Topics in Literature | Z. Izydorcyzk
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

Course description TBA

ENGL-1003-770 | Topics in Literature: Literature and Empire-Building | H. Snell
Course Delivery: ONLINE

This course introduces students to literary texts that highlight the complex relationship between literature and empire-building. Students read a variety of historical and contemporary texts that engage imperialism, from texts that represent empire-building in overseas territories to texts that constitute powerful vehicles of anti-imperial and anti-colonial critique. Because empire-building is a popular theme in children's literature, some children's texts are studied alongside texts produced for adults. Students are introduced to literary and cultural theory that can help in interpreting what in many cases amounts to rather ambiguous engagements with imperialism as well as key concepts in literary studies, including metaphor, metonymy, symbol, and allegory. While we read a variety of short-form texts, special attention is given to the novel; this literary form has a long history of participating in and representing empire-building, but it has also become a powerful tool in the hands of anti-imperial writers. To highlight differences in empire-building across disparate territories and European colonialist-imperialist projects, some texts are studied in English translation alongside key articles that argue for comparative study of European colonialist-imperialist projects.

ENGL-1004-003 | Reading Culture: Comics Studies | C. Rifkind
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

This course introduces students to the diverse and vibrant storytelling worlds of alternative comics and graphic novels. We will read a range of literary genres, including coming-of-age fiction, auto/biography, and speculative fiction, all in the form of comics and graphic narratives. Lectures and discussions will teach students the specific terminology and foundational theories of comics studies, an interdisciplinary field that draws on literary studies, cultural studies, media and communication studies, art history, and film studies. We will also pay attention to the similarities and differences between comics, literature, photography, and film.

ENGL-1004-004 | Reading Culture: Supernatural Folklore |C. Tosenberger
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

In this course, we will study narratives of the supernatural: ghosts, monsters, devilry, witchcraft, and assorted creepy things. We’ll examine the links and disjunctions between folk narratives and popular mass-mediated discourse; of special interest are the cultural "conspiracy theories" that create a fertile landscape for real-life persecution and prosecution, particularly the early modern European witchcraft craze and the "Satanic panic" of the 1980's. Throughout, we will examine how these narratives circulate in both folk and "official" culture, as well as within fictionalized mass media.

ENGL-1005-003 | Reading to Write | J. Wills
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

Course description TBA

ENGL-1005-004 | Reading to Write | N. Decter
Course Delivery: IN PERSON

This course introduces students to a variety of creative literature from a writerly perspective, as we pose not only the question, “What does it mean?” but also, “How is it made?” We will read texts from across the creative literary genres (short fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry) and analyze how their authors use literary techniques and devices to create their respective effects. Students will develop a strong lexicon of literary devices and study how form influences the meaning of a literary text. Genre will be emphasized, and we will question how our texts either take advantage of the strengths or challenge the conventions of their genres, while also taking into consideration the impact of the historical context in which they were produced. Assignments will ask students to respond both creatively and analytically to our readings. Significant time will be spent on research techniques and university level essay writing skills. This course may be of special interest to students who plan on further work in Creative Writing.

ENGL-1005-770 | Reading to Write | J. Scoles
Course Delivery: ONLINE