Undergraduate English Courses 2019/20

An introduction to the skills of analyzing literature through an examination of the endlessly fascinating topic of love. Love in its many guises will be encountered by students throughout the entire span of literary history, from knights in shining armour and powerful princesses right to the present, and through a variety of genres: fiction, poetry and drama. Themes of this course may include the origins of erotic and romantic traditions, fantasies and realities, and contemporary relationships.

In addition to the lecture, students are required to attend a tutorial. All tutorials begin in Week 2.

different cultural traditions, literary movements and historical periods. We will also keep a number of questions in mind as we read this genre: What are the major conventions of short fiction? How does fiction “rebel” against these conventions? When does a story lose sight of “reality” and enter the realm of the fantastic or allegorical? What are the building blocks of literary analysis? Readings will include short stories and novels.

In addition to the lecture, students are required to attend a tutorial. All tutorials begin in Week 2.

This course introduces students to the conventions and expectations of writing at the university level. Through a variety of writing assignments, such as an article summary, an argumentative essay, a reflective journal, or a research paper, students will practice skills central to achieving sound academic writing, including planning, drafting, revising, and editing. Students will learn and apply the grammatical conventions fundamental to achieving fluency and clarity in written English, as well as be familiarized with practices of academic citation. Through continuous instructor and peer assessment, this course aims to equip students with the skills they need to achieve strong, polished texts.

Women writers and women's writing in a variety of literary genres. Some special attention is given to feminist literary criticism and theory and to reading women's literature through a spectrum of social and political perspectives.

Category 4

This course examines selected Arthurian narratives, myths, and traditions within a variety of contexts: textual, generic, national, cultural and technological. Students will examine the medieval origins and modern adaptations of Arthurian legends as well as the key figures of these stories, such as King Arthur, Sir Lancelot, Guinevere, Sir Gawain and Morgan La Fee. Though this course concentrates mainly on texts, it may also include examinations of Arthurian material within films and multi-media environments such as internet websites and video games. (No prior knowledge of medieval literature or computer technologies is necessary).

Exclusion: EN209w

Category 4

This course explores a selection of Shakespeare’s tragedies and history plays, with an emphasis on their literary, theatrical and cultural contexts. We will consider Shakespeare’s contribution to the genres of the “tragedy” and the “history play” by analyzing his narrative and theatrical strategies in the context of the early modern period. Along with close readings of the texts, we will focus on the production histories of these plays, drawing on audio and visual resources, to demonstrate how they have been adapted and why they remain so relevant to audiences around the world–in theatre, film, and television.

Exclusions: EN232, EN351

Category 1

Introduces students to the theoretical principles and practical methodologies that promote critical reading and writing in a literary context. Drawing on the rich theoretical heritage of "close reading" as analysis students are taught not only how but why to engage texts more slowly, thoroughly, and deliberately, with a view to developing a practice of scholarly writing that grows from such careful reading strategies.

Exclusion: EN110

Category 4

The course introduces students to some of the significant literary works and the principal historical periods of British Literature from the Romantic Period (circa 1800) to the mid 20th century. Ideally, students learn to situate literary works within their historical contexts and to trace patterns of influence and ideas that link certain literary works across the various periods. Authors studied may include Blake, Wordsworth, Eliot, Tennyson, Browning, Yeats, Dickens, Woolf, and Joyce.

Exclusions: EN122, EN244

Category 2

This course introduces students to American literature of the nineteenth century through an exploration of the fiction, poetry, and essays of some of the period’s leading authors—Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Frederick Douglass, Edgar Allen Poe. Through an investigation of a variety of literary genres and aesthetic forms, we will explore representations of some of the major political, social, and economic forces that shaped nineteenth-century American society: slavery, abolition, puritanism, democracy, subjectivity, and the constitution of national identity.

Exclusion: EN215

Category 3

This course offers a consideration of Canadian literature from the end of the Second World War to the present, with an emphasis on the emergence of a national literature. We will study a variety of texts (poetry, nonfiction, drama, and fiction) and examine changing definitions of contemporary Canadian literature from the 1990s forward, when nation-based definitions have become increasingly problematic in the face of global culture, transnationalism, resurgence in Indigenous flourishment, and debates about citizenship.

Exclusion: EN217

Category 3

This course will introduce students to the practice of creative writing and literary analysis by reading short fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction as models for students’ creative writing. The course will include an ongoing discussion of how to read like a writer, and will explore literary genres and creative methods with opportunities for writing practice in short assignments designed to broaden students’ skills and abilities. The dual guiding principles of the course will be examination of how language works in written forms and compositional experimentation with a variety of writing styles.

NOTE: This is a required course in the new Creative Writing Minor (for non-English majors) and the Creative Writing Concentration (for English majors).

Category 4

A study of influential 19th- and 20th-century dramatists, with an emphasis on tracing experiments in dramatic form such as realism, expressionism, and epic theatre. Playwrights include Ibsen, Brecht, Williams, and Beckett.

Category 3

Recent prose, poetry, drama and fiction-theory contributions to literature in Canada by women from various communities and perspectives. Questions of gender and sexuality, ethnicity, race and class considered alongside contemporary developments in literary theory and practice.

NOTE: The Barbara Parker Memorial Scholarship in English will be awarded each year to a continuing Laurier student with the highest grade in this course.

Exclusion: EN309r

Category 3

This course offers a cross-cultural and interdisciplinary examination of current human rights discourse through a variety of cultural forms (eg. literature, film, photos, Webmedia, music, legal documents, etc.). We will explore a variety of human rights issues such as imprisonment, torture, censorship, women's, children's, refugee rights, modern slavery, environmental rights, genocide and conflict resolution. Activism will be a key class component, as will personal reflection. Summer Reading Suggestions: Ben Jelloun's Blinding Absence of Light, Iweala’s Beasts of No Nation, Hatzfeld's Machete Season.

Exclusion: EN309z

Category 3

Creative nonfiction takes the real world as its subject, and like all writing, the composition of creative nonfiction in its various subgenres is a dedicated literary practice. Creative nonfiction is as old as writing itself but subgenres like memoir, narrative journalism, personal essay, and documentary poetry have recently become more popular than ever. This course will instruct students in the reading and writing of creative nonfiction by addressing form, voice, language, style, and structure, along with a study of the debates surrounding the challenges of working with nonfiction material. Assignments will offer students a variety of opportunities to develop their creative nonfiction styles via examples and exercises, and will consider the cultural uses of writing creative non-fiction.

Students who have passed EN272 are allowed into the course without portfolio; contact Joanne Buchan to confirm your credit in that course, and for assistance in registering. 

For students who have not taken and passed EN272: Introduction to Creative Writing, entrance to EN369 is by application only. Students must submit a portfolio of 7-9 pages of original creative non-fiction (i.e., personal essays, memoirs, literary journalism) written by the applicant to Prof. Tanis MacDonald. Please do not send scholarly essays.

Portfolios may be submitted between May 1 and September 15th, 2019, and will be evaluated in order of receipt until the course fills. These portfolios will form the basis of admission to the course.  Upon approval of the portfolio, successful applicants will be given overrides in order to register. For any further information or queries, please contact Prof. MacDonald directly.

Category 4

This course will trace the concept of narrative as it has evolved in video games.  While gaining a working knowledge of narrative theory, students will consider how stories are told in print fiction, film, and video games, comparatively, and consider problems of adaptation between the media.  Students will also explore how digital story-based media challenge, complicate, and extend narrative theories. Now rivaling the production budgets and consumer revenues of blockbuster films, video games are one of the twenty-first century's primary narrative forms.   What happens to stories when they are adapted from print or film to video game?  Are there certain kinds of stories, or genres, that are inherently more adaptable?  What is the difference between an interactive fiction and a video game?  Have games developed additional strategies to develop the stories they tell, or do they simply adapt strategies already in use in print and film? By asking the critical questions central to narrative analysis as it has been enunciated by theorists like Gerard Genette, Peter Brooks, Jesper Juul, Jean Baudrillard, Roland Barthes, and Paul Ricoeur, students will gain a foundational understanding of what stories are and what they do, while also considering what they might do in the coming century. 

Note: EN381 is primarily a theory intensive course with extensive practical application.  The material will be challenging, and students are expected to be active and engaged, and to work hard.  Students are expected to have access to at least one full-version video game for purposes of their research project.  Please also note that some of the primary course materials needed for tests/assessments/exams will be presented in class (game trailers, walkthroughs, etc.).  If you must miss class, it is your responsibility to find out what primary materials you may have missed.

Exclusion: EN209d

Category 4

This course explores plays written between the 1580s and 1642, when Parliament closed London theatres. These plays explore issues such as the exercise of power in the family and the state, social inclusion and/or isolation, and representations of race and gender. Students will analyze how language, dramatic techniques, and performance practices produce particular intellectual, emotional, theatrical, and political effects. Authors include Kyd, Marlowe, Jonson, Middleton, Webster, Ford, and others.

Exclusion: EN354

Category 1

This course introduces students to Victorian literature of the latter part of the nineteenth century (from the 1860’s through to the literary movements of aestheticism and decadence at the end of the century). Through an investigation of a variety of literary genres and aesthetic forms by some of the period’s leading writers, we will explore representations of the major political, social, and economic forces and cultural anxieties that shaped late nineteenth-century Britain. Some topics to be considered include literary responses to industrialism, imperialism, scientific discovery, religious crisis, the urban, the “New Woman,” and more generally the shocks of modernity. 

Exclusions: EN230, EN357

Category 2

Popular culture has been theorized as a feminine and feminizing construct; Andreas Huyssen, for example, in After the Great Divide, suggests that the division between “high” and “low” art was always in fact a gendered one, with popular forms enacting an equation between femininity, mass production, and “cheap and easy pleasure.”  At the same time, the material conditions of popular cultural production have meant that women have been both inadequately and under-represented, with popular culture itself serving as an especially effective tool for the continuing oppression of women.  This course will explore such popular culture forms as pulp fiction, film, advertising and “mall culture,” music videos,  cyberculture, and toys for girls.  While established feminist critiques of popular culture texts and practice will provide our theoretical groundwork, we will also be engaged with emergent studies which propose and plot sites of resistance within popular culture.

Category 4

Can reading lead to healing? How to express pain in words? How to represent and understand the suffering of others? These are some of the questions we will probe in this interdisciplinary course which explores the intersections of literature and medicine, through diverse forms of suffering. Examining the pathography genre, we will confront such issues as illness, grief, depression, disability, sexual abuse, old age, senility and death, to conclude with a couple of human rights testimonials. Summer Reading suggestions: Green=s The Fault in Our Stars. Bauby's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Bayley's An Elegy for Iris, Partnoy=s A Little School.

Category 4

This course will examine works in a variety of literary genres (such as novels, plays, poems, graphic novels and short stories) on the topics of crime and transgression. Students will be introduced to basic literary terms, explore issues of justice and social justice, representation, violence, guilt, power and gender. The readings cover a range of historical periods, from the 17^th century to the 21^st century. Note that this is not a detective fiction course.

In addition to the lecture, students are required to attend a tutorial. All tutorials begin in Week 2.

A detailed exploration of genres, techniques, and critical terminologies in prose fiction from different historical periods. While introducing central thematic concepts and analytical strategies required for the formal study of prose narratives, we will also be concerned with such over-arching issues as context, reception, genre evolution, and adaptation. The course is organized both historically, from Bram Stoker to William Gibson, and by genre, providing representation of four popular forms: fantasy, the gothic, historical romance, and science fiction.

The first-year English courses are an excellent introduction for the major and non-major alike.  Our 100-level courses emphasize effective reading, academic writing and argumentation, as well as critical analysis and inquiry.  These fundamental skills are highly sought in all academic disciplines and in a wide variety of professions. ​English courses provide students with a platform for success by helping them to become stronger, more attentive readers; more compelling and adaptable writers; and more confident in addressing such essential questions as: what is literature? what does it mean to be a reader or a writer at different moments in history? how does narrative impact our lives, personally and collectively?  Students will be introduced to a variety of genres and topics, and are sure to find something of personal interest, along with new favourites.

In addition to the lecture, students are required to attend a tutorial. All tutorials begin in Week 2.

This course introduces students to the conventions and expectations of writing at the university level. Through a variety of writing assignments, such as an article summary, an argumentative essay, a reflective journal, or a research paper, students will practice skills central to achieving sound academic writing, including planning, drafting, revising, and editing. Students will learn and apply the grammatical conventions fundamental to achieving fluency and clarity in written English, as well as be familiarized with practices of academic citation. Through continuous instructor and peer assessment, this course aims to equip students with the skills they need to achieve strong, polished texts.

An introduction to theories and patterns of tragedy from its origins to the present day. The course examines forms such as "revenge tragedy" and key features such as the "tragic hero."

Category 4

This course focuses on strategies for clear and effective communication, with an emphasis on genres of writing related to employment and business contexts. Writing exercises include letters, reports, memos, resumes, and policy documents. Attention is also paid to the links between effective writing and oral presentation skills.

Non-designated Writing Course

An introduction to the study of poetry in general, to the study of Middle English, and to various ideas current during the Middle Ages, this course explores three important and related themes of the medieval period: dreams, the fairy world, and the idea of the miracle. We shall examine influential works such as the bizarre and haunting Old English Dream of the Rood, the mysterious Old English nature charms, absurdly comic Scandinavian myths, powerful visionary and religious writings, evocative ballads and lyrics, fables and romances, the erotic and subversive poem “The Land of Cockayne,” and Geoffrey Chaucer’s profoundly philosophical Book of the Duchess. In terms of topics, the course includes study of dreams, magic, mystics, the body, medieval philosophy, fortune, mythological heroes, exotic beings such as werewolves, and ideas from psychoanalytical theory.

Exclusion: EN209f

Category 4

This course focuses on literature produced in the United States in the latter part of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Through a study of poems, plays, and fiction, the course will examine literary figures such as Toni Morrison, David Foster Wallace, Louise Erdrich, Lydia Davis, and Jhumpa Lahiri, and discusses recent trends in movements such as Postmodernism, Multiculturalism, the literature of 9/11, the graphic novel, and digital literature.

Category 3

A study of the influences and relationships between written/printed/literary texts and other media. Topics may include analysis of stage and film adaptations; the re-imagining of literary works for television, video, and digital audiences; and the reworking of printed texts in paintings, photography, radio documentaries, music, and other popular forms.

Category 4

Fairy tales are so short, yet their spell seems everlasting. Do fairy tales still enchant you? Do you still enjoy Disney films or fairy tale adaptations (e.g. the musical Into the Woods, the Shrek films or TV series Once Upon a Time)? Do you want to learn something about how fairy tales evolved historically? Finally – are you ready to take fairy tales seriously – via literary criticism? If so, then this is the course for you!  Studying a variety of fairy tales (e.g., Perrault, Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen), we will explore how fairy tales evolved historically  and continue to impact our lives today, and we will also investigate some of the critical lenses that can be applied to fairy tales (e.g. psychoanalysis, feminism, postmodernism).

Summer Reading: Angela Carter’s Bloody Chamber and the original fairy tales that Disney films are based on. (Please feel free to email the instructor, Dr. Madelaine Hron, for selections!) 

Exclusion: EN209r

Category 4

Classic readings in science fiction, from the Victorian era to the New Wave movement. Authors may include H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, Aldous Huxley, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury and Philip K. Dick.

Category 4

This course introduces students to some of the significant literary works and the principal historical periods of British Literature, dating from the eighth century up to the Romantic Period (circa 1800). Students learn to situate literary works within their historical contexts and to trace patterns of influence and ideas across various periods. The course also introduces students to some of the important forms of literature, e.g., epic, lyric, tragedy, satire. Possible authors for study include Chaucer, Shakespeare, Donne, Milton, Pope, Defoe, and Austen.

 

Exclusions: EN122, EN244

Category 1

This course offers a survey of the contexts and development of Canadian literature starting from early texts of encounter between Indigenous peoples and Europeans, to works produced through the end of the Second World War. Texts may include exploration writing, Indigenous oral culture, poetry, performance works, journalism, and fiction. Students explore how and where Canadian literature emerged, the challenges of defining Canadian Literature in the period before Confederation, and the development of modernism in Canada.

Category 3

This course introduces students to American literature of the twentieth century through an exploration of the fiction, poetry, and essays of some of the period’s leading authors – William Faulkner, Willa Cather, Toni Morrison, Langston Hughes. Through an investigation of a variety of literary genres and aesthetic forms, we will explore some of the major political and economic forces that shaped twentieth-century American society: capitalism, feminism, race, civil rights.

Exclusion: EN216

Category 3

This course focuses on the creative processes involved in the making of literature, especially fiction and poetry. Using authors' drafts, diaries, letters, and interviews, we will discuss the dynamics of the creative process through examples from historical and contemporary literature, including the effect of collaboration and the impact of events, people, and ideas that influenced the development of the texts. We will concentrate especially on changes the authors made during their revision process, coming to an understanding of the significance of rewriting as a crucial stage in the creative process. Texts may include work by Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu, W.B. Yeats, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Erin Mouré, Dennis Lee, Jordan Abel, Nourbese Philip, bp Nichol, and Raymond Carver, among others.

Exclusion: EN209n

Category 4

A survey of the literature of the early Romantic Period (c. 1780-1810) that foregrounds the influence of revolution and counter-revolution. The course explores works by writers in a variety of genres and styles: sonnets, odes, ballads, lyric poetry, epics, novels, polemic non-fiction, literary criticism and theory, letters, and journals, etc.

Exclusion: EN294

Category 2

This course offers a wide-ranging historical survey of the most enduring, influential and controversial critical approaches to literary studies. We will explore such contested territories as classical theory, formalism, historicism, structuralism, Marxism, psychoanalytic theory, gender studies, postcolonialism, cultural studies, post-structuralism and affect. The focus will be on theory and its application to the study of literary texts.

Exclusion: EN291

Category 4; required for Honours English majors.

An examination of literary representations of physical, economic, social and political instabilities and upheavals. The course will consider ways in which transgressive acts against authority of the law serve to interrogate the boundaries between self and other, between a culture's desires and fears.

Category 4

The 18th century is the first era in which the novel becomes both a popular and professional practice. Many authors capitalized on commercially viable topics, such as sex, scandal, crime, and shopping. Many also wrestled with philosophical and political themes, and an apparent war of extremes – sense and sensibility, science and religion, order and revolution. This course explores the many forms the novel adopted in this period, including “true history,” memoir, travel fiction, adventure and survival, comic romance, and the gothic.

Category 1

A critical and cultural survey of the flourishing of the novel as a literary form during the Romantic and Victorian periods. Six representative works are usually selected for study, with emphasis on form, narrative technique and social context (including class and gender). Authors often chosen include Jane Austen, Walter Scott, Mary Shelley, Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, Charles Dickens, George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), Wilkie Collins, W.M. Thackeray, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Elizabeth Gaskell, Thomas Hardy and Oscar Wilde.

Category 2

This course brings together the study and writing of literary short fiction. Students will be expected to read, analyze and discuss individual examples of short fiction, as well as writings by selected authors on aspects of artistic practice and craft. Students will also study and apply, in weekly workshops and take-home exercises, the elements of short fiction, such as perspective, characterization, place, atmosphere, structure and dialogue. A student's mark will be determined through written and oral assignments, culminating in the production of a final assignment in the form of a critical exegesis accompanying an original work of short fiction. The course will provide students with a sense of the basic craft necessary to begin writing fiction, including critical evaluation of the genre.

Students who have passed EN272: Introduction to Creative Writing are allowed into the course without portfolio; contact Joanne Buchan to confirm your credit in that course, and for assistance in registering. 

For students who have not taken and passed EN272, entrance to EN371 is by application only. Students must submit a portfolio to Prof. Mariam Pirbhai. The portfolio is a sample of creative writing (in this case, short fiction) written by the applicant, and must consist of one sample of 6-8 pages or 2-3 shorter samples totalling 6-8 pages.

Portfolios may be submitted between May 15 and October 15, 2019, and will be evaluated in order of receipt until the course fills. These portfolios will form the basis of admission to the course.  Upon approval of the portfolio, successful applicants will be given overrides in order to register.  For any further information or queries, please contact Prof. Pirbhai directly.

Exclusion: EN331

Category 4

This course relates the history of the English language from the medieval period to the present day, with an emphasis on the origins of the English language in the culture of the Anglo-Saxons. It will be structured around the elements of phonology, grammar, dialects, language families, the great shift from Old English to Middle English, and the present structure of the English language. We shall also take up many of the major cultural developments during the early Middle Ages, such as feud narratives, heroic myths, mystical expressions, and erotic riddles. This course is designed for Arts students of all disciplines, but students interested in teachers’ college should note that the structure and history of the language is at the centre of instruction in the language arts.

Category 1

take a different kind of voyage, through the writer’s pen rather than the tourist’s lens, and you will find, in the cross-cultural encounter between peoples of African, Asian and European origin, a vibrant literary tradition energized by an "island" sensibility and imbued with the "muse of history."  In this course, students will learn about the various contexts (such as Jamaica and Trinidad), innovations (such as calypso and dub poetry) and major figures of the Caribbean and its diasporas, including Shani Mootoo, Caryl Phillips and Sam Selvon.

Category 3

Industrialisation, increased mobility, and migration to cities ushered in enormous changes throughout the nineteenth century. Through a survey of selected fiction, prose, and, poetry of the Victorian era, by writers such as Dickens, Gaskell, Wilde, and Mayhew, this course will examine representations of the city and urban life, and the ways in which the changing Victorian city shaped the writing of the period. In exploring the Victorian city, we will consider the development of capitalism and the new science of economics, and investigate issues surrounding sex, crime, the law, disease, and class unrest, as well as travel, migration, and empire.

Category 2