Undergraduate English Courses 2021/22

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 (see EN249: Mystery and Crime Fiction).

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

In this course, we will focus on the genre of fiction, considering the way writers are influenced by 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.

An intensive reading course that introduces students to the elements of literature and literary analysis through a variety of approaches and texts (fiction, poetry, drama, and prose) from different historical periods and cultural contexts.  Students will read three novels (19th century to the present), a selection of poetry derived from various genres and periods, and one play.

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.

This course will introduce poetry as a genre, parsing historical development and contemporary practices. We will study poetry and poetic theory from a variety of traditions, emphasizing the practice of close reading, attention to literary devices, and discussion of poetry as a cultural force.

Category 4

This course explores global and postcolonial literature from Africa, Asia and the Americas, in light of questions of migration (roots), identity (race) and power (resistance) in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Category 3

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 1

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

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 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

This course offers a consideration of Canadian literature from 1980 to the present. Nation-based definitions for literatures have become increasingly problematic in the face of global culture, transnationalism, resurgence in Indigenous literature, and debates about citizenship. We will study a wide range of genres (poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and drama) and examine both the emergence of a national literature and changing definitions of contemporary Canadian literature.

Exclusion: EN217

Category 3

This course will introduce students to the practice of creative writing and literary analysis in the genres of short fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction. The course will include discussion of how to read like a writer, and will explore literary genres and creative methods with opportunities for writing practice in shorter and longer 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 Creative Writing Minor (for non-English majors) and the Creative Writing Concentration (for English majors).

Category 4

This course will examine literature by Indigenous writers (mainly from what is now Canada), with a particular focus on key concepts and historical events that have shaped the field of Indigenous Literature. We will consider how Indigenous people represent themselves, their cultures, and their physical environments, as well as how they respond to non-Indigenous representations via expressions that range from creation stories and other orature, to speeches, letters, short stories, poems, plays, and novels. We will also explore stories of resilience and humour that counter the assumption that Indigenous stories are only ever tragic ones. Students will develop skills in commenting critically on these works while also gaining knowledge of the historical, political, and cultural contexts out of which they emerge.

Exclusion: ID280

Category 3

This course will introduce students to the vibrant and still emerging cyberpunk movement in literature and film, as well as to more recent trends post-2000. Students will explore central literary and cinematic texts of the cyberpunk movement, including foundational works by William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Philip K. Dick, and Ridley Scott. Students will also have the opportunity to consider the current direction of science fiction in more recent texts, including the spate of original science fiction series produced by streaming services. The course is loosely organized around the central figure of the cyborg. Additionally, students will investigate a number of theoretical concepts central to cybercultures, including Baudrillard on the simulacrum, Benjamin and the panopticon, and Benedikt on the architecture of lightness.

Exclusion: EN209d

Category 4

A survey of the literature of the later Romantic Period (c.1810-1840) that foregrounds the influence of, and resistance to, dystopian visions of the world. The course explores works by writers in a variety of genres and styles, including sonnets, odes, verse dramas, lyric poetry, manifestos, novels, confessional non-fiction, literary criticism and theory, letters, and journals.

Exclusion: EN294

Category 2

This course involves the study of poetry and fiction published during the interwar period (1918 to 1939).  It will focus on the development of modernism as a literary mode in relation to the social, intellectual, and political movements of the time.  The assigned novel will be Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, and other authors for study include Thomas Hardy, D. H. Lawrence, William Butler Yeats, Dorothy Richardson, Stevie Smith, T. S. Eliot, Katherine Mansfield, and W. H. Auden. 

Exclusion: EN258

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, deconstruction, and ecocriticism.

Exclusion: EN291

Category 4; required for Honours English majors.

This course will develop close readings of five nineteenth-century texts to examine how the period’s prose fiction explored central issues including gender, class, social status, and race.  These themes (among others) will be discussed through a focus on the use of narrative voice, the relationship between gothic devices and realism, the use of Bildungsroman structures, and through two of the author’s efforts to combine tragedy with the novel.  The works studied are: Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey; Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol; Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights; George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans), The Mill on the Floss; Thomas Hardy, The Mayor of Casterbridge.

Category 2

A study of a selection of 16th-century poetry, drama and prose, together with other art forms and cultural discourses that contributed to early modern ideologies and constructions of gender, the body and the state. The texts to be studied include Thomas More's Utopia; Elizabeth Joscelin's The Mother's Legacy to her Unborn Child; poetry by Shakespeare and by English and continental women writers; selections from Spenser's Faerie Queene; Marlowe's Doctor Faustus; and Elizabeth Cary's The Tragedy of Mariam.

Exclusion: EN353

Category 1

Life writing narrates the story of one’s own or another’s life. In this course, we examine the use and relationship of digital media (digital images, videos, social media, internet), improved communication (email, social media, web 2.0), and increased mobility (tourism, migration) to life writing. We explore the ways identities are fashioned, mediated, remediated, and performed in various forms of 21^st century life writing, including the memoir, graphic narrative, film, autobiographical novel, video and on-line blogs.

Texts to be studied include: Noah Trevor’s Born of a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood; Samra Habib’s We Have Always Been Here; and others. Please read one or two of these books over the summer.

Category 4

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

An introduction to the skills of analyzing literature through an examination of the endlessly fascinating topic of love. We will draw a variety of genres throughout literary history to examine the representation of love, its common themes and its diverse qualities. We will consider love in relation to desire, friendship, ethics and well-being.

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.

A study of selected comedies and dramatic romances by William Shakespeare. These extremely popular works will be examined in terms of their generic structures and Early Modern theatrical traditions and practices. Textual analysis will be supplemented by cutting-edge theoretical approaches, including psychoanalytical approaches, the connections of the plays to fairy-tales, and a variety of exciting cultural representations of gender as a category of identity and performance.

Exclusions: EN232, EN351

Category 1

This course examines the development of the fairy tale genre from its origins to contemporary adaptations. It explores a range of representative texts in their social and historical contexts, and draws on a variety of critical approaches.

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 eras of British literature, covering from the Anglo-Saxon Period (circa 800) into the Age of Reason (18^th Century).  The major works studied will be the Old English poem Beowulf (in translation), “The Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale” from Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, and Shakespeare’s Hamlet.  Students learn to situate literary works within their historical contexts and to trace patterns of influence and ideas across time.  The course also introduces students to some of the important forms of literature such as epic, lyric, elegy, tragedy, and satire.  Other authors for study include John Donne, Aemilia Lanyer, John Milton, Aphra Behn, and Jonathan Swift.

Exclusions: EN122, EN144

Category 1

A study of different sports as portrayed in contemporary literature, with attention to both competitive and leisure pursuits. The course will consider poems, stories, songs, novels, and essays, looking at how authors use different aesthetic approaches to write about team and individual sports. Themes to be examined will include: the body as a site of exhilaration, effort, and pain; the highs and lows of spectacle and spectatorship; heroes and anti-heroes; amateurism versus professionalism; sport’s relationship to fantasy, ritual and myth; the role of gender, race, and performance in sports; and connections between sport, nationalism, and other forms of group identity.

Exclusion: EN209t

Category 3

According to Claudia Mitchell and Jacqueline Reid Walsh, the tween is commonly understood to be a "construction of the present day"—one that is largely market-driven, defined by commodity culture, and "exclusively or almost exclusively female"(Seven Going on Seventeen 6). In this course, we will consider these claims. What is it about our current cultural moment that has brought this new category into being? How does this category affect literary activity? Why is it gendered?  And if the tween is a market driven category based on the disposable income of 8-12 year girls, then how do we ethically engage with representations of children who lie beyond its purview? We will consider these questions as we explore a diverse range of literature produced for children in intermediate school. Emphasis will be on texts published since the 1960s.

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

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

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. Our focus will be both on understanding the cultural contexts of the literature, as experienced by readers in the eighteenth century, and on discovering the relevance of this literature to current issues.

Category 1

A critical and cultural survey of the novel as a literary form in 20th-century Britain and Ireland, with emphasis on form, narrative technique, and social context. Authors studied may include James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, George Orwell, and Kazuo Ishiguro.

Category 2

This course is designed to teach the fundamentals of writing poetry to students who demonstrate an active interest in the genre. The core texts will introduce students to the practice of writing poetry, including traditions and techniques as they have been developed or adapted in contemporary Canadian poetry. Students should arrive in the class prepared to write often, submit original poetry for feedback frequently (from both peers and the instructor,) and demonstrate an appetite for revision. A wide array of poetic styles and methodologies will be assigned as research work.

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 EN370 is by application only. These students must submit a portfolio to Prof. Tanis MacDonald. The portfolio is a 6-8 page sample of poetry on any subject in any style, written by the applicant.  

Portfolios can be submitted from April 1 to December 20, 2021, and will be evaluated in order of receipt until the course fills. 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.

Exclusion: EN331

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: EN309k

Category 4

Critical study of change and resistance in later 19th-century English literature (1860-1900), with some emphasis on writings involved in symptomatic critical and public controversies, from the so-called "fleshly school of poetry" (the PreRaphaelites) to the notorious Decadent Nineties and the trial of Oscar Wilde. The exploration of other literary cultures or communities might include the Aesthetic Movement, the pseudonymous "Michael Field" (a collaboration of two women poets), the cult of sensation fiction, and the increasingly sharp tensions between writers and the "Victorianism" of their public readership and reviewers. Authors often selected for study include Christina and Dante Rossetti, George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans), Wilkie Collins, Gerard Manley Hopkins, "Michael Field" (Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper), Lionel Johnson, Oscar Wilde and Thomas Hardy. 

Exclusions: EN230, EN357

Category 2

A study of novels and other texts from the 1960s to the beginning of the 21st century that interrogate "truths" or grand narratives of Western culture through such devices as parody, irony, self-conscious narration, and intertextuality. Readings from influential theorists and critics, such as Jameson, Huyssen, Hutcheon, Lyotard, and others will be studied along with the texts.

Exclusions: EN309v, EN362

Category 2

This course provides students with an in-depth analysis of the bildungsroman, or coming of age novel. We begin with a brief history of the genre as it takes its form in the later half of the 18th century in response to new notions of "development." We will turn to different definitions of development (personal, historical, economical) as we attempt to understand how the genre charts individual formation alongside, and in response to, notions of social and national progress. While we are interested in the genre as a literary form, we will pay particular attention to the way gender has been represented within its confines. What are the markers of maturation for females in canonical coming-of-age novels, and how are these markers changed and reprioritized as the genre is taken up in various contexts?

Category 4

This course will examine recent novels, memoirs, comics, poetry, plays, songs, and screenwriting/filmmaking by Indigenous artists in North America. Students will primarily study works that have emerged within the last decade as part of the Indigenous Literary Renaissance’s second wave. We will consider not only how Indigenous artists draw upon oral tradition, but also how they reinvent genres like speculative fiction, horror, or detective fiction to tell Indigenous stories. The course will include Indigenous authors and artists from both Canada and the United States to give students a broader understanding of contemporary Indigenous artistic production across Turtle Island. It will also provide an opportunity for comparative study of the development of Indigenous Literary Studies in two distinct but overlapping settler-colonial contexts. Authors to be studied may include Louise Erdrich, Layli Long Soldier, Stephen Graham Jones, Waubgeshig Rice, Joshua Whitehead, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, and Jordan Abel.

Category 3