English Undergraduate Courses

Please always refer to the current year's academic calendar for the most accurate list of courses offered by the Department. The courses listed below are not offered every semester. Please refer to the Bridge for current offerings and to register for courses.

Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
An introduction to the study of English language and literature, involving an exploration of various genres of literature and non-literary texts and requiring a series of critical assignments designed to encourage analytical reading, thinking and writing.
Lib Ed Req: Fine Arts and Humanities

Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
Canadian literature from early exploration writings to the present in relation to historical and social contexts. Selected and representative works of such writers as Hearne, Moodie, Roberts, Birney, Munro and Atwood.
Prerequisite(s): One of English 1900 or a previous course (3.0 credit hours) in English
Lib Ed Req: Fine Arts and Humanities

Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
Defining characteristics and fundamentals of poetry. This course familiarizes the student with the skills necessary to read poems, as well as the basic theories, literary terms and concepts found in responses, interpretations and critical analyses of them.
Prerequisite(s): One of English 1900 or a previous course (3.0 credit hours) in English
Lib Ed Req: Fine Arts and Humanities

Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
Defining characteristics and fundamentals of drama. This course familiarizes the student with the skills necessary to read plays, as well as the basic theories, literary terms and concepts found in responses, interpretations and critical analyses of them.
Prerequisite(s): One of English 1900 or a previous course (3.0 credit hours) in English
Lib Ed Req: Fine Arts and Humanities

Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
Defining characteristics and fundamentals of prose. This course familiarizes the student with the skills necessary to read fiction, as well as the basic theories, literary terms and concepts found in responses, interpretations and critical analyses of it.
Prerequisite(s): One of English 1900 or a previous course (3.0 credit hours) in English
Lib Ed Req: Fine Arts and Humanities

Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
English literature from its beginnings to 1800 in relation to historical and social contexts. Selected and representative works of such writers as Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Donne, Milton, Dryden, Pope and Swift.
Prerequisite(s): One of English 1900 or a previous course (3.0 credit hours) in English
Lib Ed Req: Fine Arts and Humanities

Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
English literature from 1800 to the present in relation to historical and social contexts. Selected and representative works of such writers as Blake, Wordsworth, Keats, Tennyson, Browning, Woolf, Joyce and Auden.
Prerequisite(s): One of English 1900 or a previous course (3.0 credit hours) in English
Lib Ed Req: Fine Arts and Humanities

Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
American literature from its Puritan beginnings to 1900 in relation to historical and social contexts. Selected and representative works of such writers as Mather, Bradstreet, Hawthorne, Melville, Whitman, Dickinson and James.
Prerequisite(s): One of English 1900 or a previous course (3.0 credit hours) in English
Lib Ed Req: Fine Arts and Humanities

Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
American literature from 1900 to the present in relation to historical and social contexts. Selected and representative works of such major writers as Pound, Williams, Faulkner, Hurston, Plath and Morrison.
Prerequisite(s): One of English 1900 or a previous course (3.0 credit hours) in English
Lib Ed Req: Fine Arts and Humanities

Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
Children's literature from its beginnings in both the oral and written traditions to the present, in light of cultural assumptions such as gender, class and literary fashion. Selected and representative works of such writers as Andersen, Carroll, Twain, Milne, Tolkien and Montgomery.
Prerequisite(s): One of English 1900 or a previous course (3.0 credit hours) in English
Lib Ed Req: Fine Arts and Humanities

Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
A range of literary texts from the non-Western world in relation to historical, political and social contexts. Emphasis on theoretical concepts such as nationalism, cultural translation and intersectionality. Selected and representative works of such writers as Marquez, Ishiguro, Tolstaya, Kincaid, Lahiri and Bulawayo.
Prerequisite(s): One of English 1900 or a previous course (3.0 credit hours) in English
Equivalent: English 2700 (Survey of World Literature) (prior to 2017/2018)
Lib Ed Req: Fine Arts and Humanities

Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
Surveys of literature, such as World Literature or Women's Literature. Offerings vary depending upon student interest and available faculty.
Prerequisite(s): One of English 1900 or a previous course (3.0 credit hours) in English

Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
Offerings explore approaches to literature such as the question of canon or the influence of historical contexts (nationalism, war, revolution and so forth) on literary production. Offerings vary depending upon student interest and available faculty.
Prerequisite(s): One of English 1900 or a previous course (3.0 credit hours) in English

Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
Rhetoric as a pragmatic art and classical discipline that develops the student's use of argumentative discourse and other means of persuasion in written and oral forms. Emphasis on historical as well as modern models of rhetoric and on analyses and detection of rhetorical tropes, techniques and fallacies.
Prerequisite(s): One of English 1900 or a previous course (3.0 credit hours) in English
Lib Ed Req: Fine Arts and Humanities

Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
The basic structures of English: word classes, sentence elements and basic aspects of syntax and morphology. Primary emphasis on descriptive grammar, though some attention will be paid to prescriptive approaches.
Prerequisite(s): One of English 1900 or a previous course (3.0 credit hours) in English
Lib Ed Req: Fine Arts and Humanities

Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
Development of Canadian poetry from the late 18th Century to the present with emphasis on the poetry of the past half-century.
Prerequisite(s): One of English 2000 or English 2100
Lib Ed Req: Fine Arts and Humanities

Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
The significance and variety of forms in Canadian theatre. Selected and representative works of such writers as Tremblay, Fennario, Reaney, Pollock, Highway and MacDonald.
Prerequisite(s): One of English 2000, English 2200, Drama 2120, or Drama 2130
Lib Ed Req: Fine Arts and Humanities

Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
The historical context of Canadian literature written between Confederation and World War I. An examination of developing notions of Canadian identity and citizenship in poetry and prose written for both adults and children.
Prerequisite(s): Two 2000-level courses (6.0 credit hours) in English
Lib Ed Req: Fine Arts and Humanities

Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
A survey and examination of major and recurrent issues and questions concerning the nature, function and value of literature and art from Plato to the present day.
Prerequisite(s): One of English 1900 or a previous course (3.0 credit hours) in English AND
Second-year standing (a minimum of 30.0 credit hours)
Lib Ed Req: Fine Arts and Humanities

Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
A study of gender issues in contemporary culture and literature, including feminism, construction of masculinity, and gender and ethnicity. Both theoretical and literary texts will be examined in the course.
Prerequisite(s): Two 2000-level courses (6.0 credit hours) in English
Lib Ed Req: Fine Arts and Humanities

Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
An examination of the relationship between imperialism, nationalism and children's literature in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Selected and representative works of such writers as Ingalls Wilder, Kipling and Montgomery.
Prerequisite(s): Two 2000-level courses (6.0 credit hours) in English
Lib Ed Req: Fine Arts and Humanities

Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
Representative works of important dramatists (excluding Shakespeare) of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, such as Kyd, Marlowe, Jonson, Middleton and Webster.
Prerequisite(s): One of English 2200, English 2400, Drama 2120, or Drama 2130
Lib Ed Req: Fine Arts and Humanities

Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
A study of the early development of this genre in English and its audience. Novels throughout the formative eighteenth century (and slightly beyond) that are representative, popular and/or canonical.
Prerequisite(s): Two 2000-level courses (6.0 credit hours) in English
Lib Ed Req: Fine Arts and Humanities

Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
Development of the novel in England during the nineteenth century. Examination of issues such as heredity, family, courtship and the place of the individual in society as illustrated by works of representative novelists such as Austen, Brontë, Eliot, Dickens, Thackeray and Hardy.
Prerequisite(s): One of English 2300, English 2400, or English 2450
Lib Ed Req: Fine Arts and Humanities

Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
An examination of the literature of various genres of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a period (1660-1800) critically transitional in the movement of world views and literary modes that are late Medieval and Renaissance to those that evolve into the post-Romantic and recognizably Modern.
Prerequisite(s): Two 2000-level courses (6.0 credit hours) in English
Lib Ed Req: Fine Arts and Humanities

Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
An examination of the literature of various genres that characterizes the literary, ideological and social/political phenomenon of Romanticism, from the 'cult of the sublime' of the later eighteenth century through to the full-blown Romantic writing of the early nineteenth century and the advent of the Victorian period.
Prerequisite(s): Two 2000-level courses (6.0 credit hours) in English
Lib Ed Req: Fine Arts and Humanities

Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
Selected and representative Middle English poetry, prose and drama of the twelfth to fifteenth centuries.
Prerequisite(s): Two 2000-level courses (6.0 credit hours) in English
Lib Ed Req: Fine Arts and Humanities

Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
English poetry and prose of the seventeenth century. Selected and representative works of such writers as Donne, Jonson, Herbert, Vaughan, Browne, Marvell, Bunyan and Milton.
Prerequisite(s): Two 2000-level courses (6.0 credit hours) in English
Lib Ed Req: Fine Arts and Humanities

Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
The study of Old English language and literature. Instruction in basic Old English grammar and syntax, translation practice, and an introduction to the language's literary and historical context.
Prerequisite(s): Second-year standing (a minimum of 30.0 credit hours)
Lib Ed Req: Fine Arts and Humanities

Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
An examination of the various genres, including poetry, non-fiction prose, short story and drama, that contributed to the literature of the Victorian era. Selected and representative works of such writers as Carlyle, Tennyson, the Brownings, Hopkins, Rossetti, Eliot, Doyle and Wilde.
Prerequisite(s): One of English 2100, English 2200, English 2300, English 2400, or English 2450
Lib Ed Req: Fine Arts and Humanities

Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
The writings of Geoffrey Chaucer, including selected minor works and major works such as The Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseyde.
Prerequisite(s): Two 2000-level courses (6.0 credit hours) in English
Lib Ed Req: Fine Arts and Humanities

Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
Representative Shakespearean drama. The structure, language and themes of his comedies, tragedies, histories and romances.
Prerequisite(s): One of English 2200, English 2400, Drama 2120, or Drama 2130
Lib Ed Req: Fine Arts and Humanities

Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
An examination of the major impulse in Western art that emerged in the years between 1880 and 1945. The ways in which literature sought to respond to the modern world by adapting aesthetic innovations developed across a variety of disciplines.
Prerequisite(s): Two 2000-level courses (6.0 credit hours) in English
Lib Ed Req: Fine Arts and Humanities

Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
The major movements in European and American theatre in the first half of the twentieth century. The significance and variety of forms in the theatre. Selected and representative works of such writers as Ibsen, Strindberg, Synge, Brecht, O'Neill and Pirandello.
Prerequisite(s): One of English 2200, English 2450, English 2550, Drama 2120, or Drama 2130
Lib Ed Req: Fine Arts and Humanities

Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
Fiction written in Europe and the United States during the first half of the twentieth century. The formal innovations that defined prose in this period and the thematic preoccupations of major novelists in the modern world. Selected and representative works of such writers as Conrad, Stein, Joyce, Faulkner, Dos Passos and Lawrence.
Prerequisite(s): Two 2000-level courses (6.0 credit hours) in English
Lib Ed Req: Fine Arts and Humanities

Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
An examination of interesting and innovative novelists, poets and playwrights writing from the 1970s to the present on a range of contemporary issues and ideas.
Prerequisite(s): Two 2000-level courses (6.0 credit hours) in English
Lib Ed Req: Fine Arts and Humanities

Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
Selected plays of dramatists in Europe and the United States from mid-century to the present. Emphasis on distinguishing developments in the contemporary theatre. Selected and representative works of such writers as Beckett, Albee, Genet, Churchill, Hwang and Friel.
Prerequisite(s): One of English 2200, English 2450, English 2550, Drama 2120, or Drama 2130
Lib Ed Req: Fine Arts and Humanities

Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
General interest areas in literature, such as science fiction, the short story or autobiography. Offerings vary depending upon student interest and available faculty.
Prerequisite(s): Will be specified (including any recommended background) for individual offerings

Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
A workshop for students with some experience in creative writing. Focus placed on in-class discussion of works in progress with the goal of completing a portfolio.
Prerequisite(s): One of English 1900 or a previous course (3.0 credit hours) in English AND Second-year standing (a minimum of 30.0 credit hours) AND Submission of writing samples AND Interview
Lib Ed Req: Fine Arts and Humanities

Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
The work of Canadian writers who have achieved world-wide recognition in recent decades, as well as others who have added significantly to our knowledge of ourselves and this country. Multiculturalism, history and intertextuality, ethnicity, aboriginal issues, feminism, post-colonialism and postmodernism in the Canadian context.
Prerequisite(s): Two 2000-level courses (6.0 credit hours) in English
Lib Ed Req: Fine Arts and Humanities

Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
An introduction to significant issues, perspectives and voices within the study of post-colonial literatures in English. The course will include literature from such countries and regions as Africa, Australia, Canada, the Caribbean, India and the Pacific Rim.
Prerequisite(s): Two 2000-level courses (6.0 credit hours) in English
Lib Ed Req: Fine Arts and Humanities

Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
Nature and development of the English language from its beginnings to the present. Basic features of the three main stages in the language's development: Old, Middle and Modern English. Internal and external forces that brought about change.
Prerequisite(s): Two 2000-level courses (6.0 credit hours) in English
Lib Ed Req: Fine Arts and Humanities

Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
Senior seminars involving intensive and rigorous study of themes, issues or individual works of Canadian or post-Colonial literatures, or both. Offerings vary depending upon student interest and available faculty.
Prerequisite(s): Will be specified (including any recommended background) for individual offerings

Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
Senior seminars involving intensive and rigorous study of subjects such as contemporary literary theory, new developments in literary analysis, modern autobiography, non-fictional contexts for literary movements and the history of the book. Offerings vary depending upon student interest and available faculty.
Prerequisite(s): Will be specified (including any recommended background) for individual offerings

Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
Senior seminars involving intensive and rigorous study of an individual author. Offerings vary depending on student interest and available faculty.
Prerequisite(s): Will be specified (including any recommended background) for individual offerings

Credit hours: 6.00
Contact hours per week: Variable
This is a challenging, work-intensive, research-oriented course in which students will conduct research, report orally and submit a report in the form of an Undergraduate Thesis which will be made publicly available.
Prerequisite(s): Fourth-year standing (a minimum of 90.0 credit hours) AND
A cumulative GPA of 3.30 or higher AND
A minimum of eight courses (24.0 credit hours) in English AND
Application to the Department of English
Note: Contact hours will vary. Students should be aware that this course involves regular contact with the Thesis Supervisor as well as considerable independent work.