200 Level English

Courses at the 200 level introduce students to a diverse range of theories and methods relevant to literary and cultural study. These courses typically combine literary and theoretical readings, with an emphasis on key concepts, paradigms, and debates. You do not need to take 200 level courses in your second year - but because the theories and methods you encounter in these courses will likely inform perspectives and approaches at the 300 and 400 levels, you may want to consider taking at least one 200 level course early in your program.

Please consult the University Calendar for a full listing of our ENGL courses, not all of which are offered in a given year. Our department also offers Film Studies and Creative Writing courses.

English students: are you interested in theories of linguistics and the use of language? You can take LING 299 in Winter 2024 and have it count towards your English BA. Course information: LING 299 Special Topics in Linguistics: Metaphor in Language and Mind MWF 9:00-9:50 Instructor: Herb Coulston. Contact Craig Soars at efsadvsr@ualberta if you are interested.

fall 2024

ENGL 206 LEC A1: Introduction To Poetry
R. Brazea

ENGL 207 LEC A1: Introduction To Narrative

ENGL 215 LEC A1: Reading Literature Across Time
C. Sale

ENGL 217 LEC A1: Intro Literary & Critical Theory
M. Litwack

We are, after all, talking about words, as we realize that by their efficacy we are damned or saved. –Hortense Spillers, "Interstices: A Small Drama of Words"

You can never be too sure what a word will do. –George Lamming, In the Castle of My Skin

This course introduces participants to the theoretical foundations of contemporary literary and cultural criticism. We will consider a breadth of critical concepts and arguments from the nineteenth century to the present that have shaped practices of reading in the humanities and that you will likely encounter throughout your studies in English. Reading closely and situating texts in their intellectual contexts, participants will become fluent in a variety of frameworks for thinking rigorously and creatively about language, writing, rhetoric, interpretation, subjectivity, desire, difference, culture, historicity, and politics.

Throughout our collective inquiry into histories of modern and contemporary theory, a question posed by Louis Althusser—“what is it to read?”—will oversee our work. This question will bear directly on one of the objectives of this course: to learn to appreciate the pleasures and frustrations, the insights and surprises that accompany the pursuit of reading and rereading complex theoretical texts.

This course consists of three units: (I) Language, Signification, Writing; (II) Subjects, Ideologies, Antagonisms; (III) History, Representation, Fabulation.

ENGL 220 LEC A1: Reading Gender And Sexuality
N. Hurley

ENGL 221 LEC A1: Reading Class And Ideology
M. Simpson

ENGL 222 LEC A1: Reading Race and Ethnicity
O. Okome

ENGL 223 LEC A1: Reading Empire and Postcolinial
T. Tomksy

ENGL 250 LEC A1: Intro Canadian Literatures
D. Fuller

What are “Canadian Literatures”? How can we read them critically and responsibly? This course will introduce students to the study of Canadian literatures via a series of texts, problems and issues.  It will do this by engaging critically with the nation, specifically Canada, as a framework for literary study by considering the relationship between Canadian Literature and colonization and by examining how postcolonial, diasporic and indigenous ways of thinking about literature can help us to interpret and analyse what we read.  

You will read a selection of texts emerging from a range of communities. Texts written in different genres, and at various periods of time, ranging from the eighteenth century to the present. You will discuss, research and write about ideas that emerge from these texts and learn how to situate both ideas and texts in their cultural, social, linguistic, historical and political contexts.

Primary texts will consist of: a twenty-first-century novel - Jael Richardson Gutter Child (2021); a coursepack containing an anthology of short stories, poems and essays, and some online texts that are public domain/out of copyright.

Secondary material will include a selection of literary criticism, contextual essays, and new media genres and/or sound recordings.

Delivery:

Classes will include various ways of learning such as lectures, seminar-style discussion, in-class small group work and independent research. 

Assessments include a mix of graded and ungraded assignments, for example, short critical commentaries (ungraded); a close reading assignment, a research essay and a final unseen in person exam (all graded elements). 

winter 2025

ENGL 206 LEC B1: Introduction To Poetry
C. Bracken

ENGL 215 LEC B1: Reading Literature Across Time
Women Behaving Boldly
L. Schechter

This course hopscotches from the early medieval period to our current moment, covering key texts from roughly 1000 CE to the 2020s. These works share an interest in cultural and social change: they reflect recent shifts, they evaluate current conditions, they agitate for new thinking, or they offer ways for modern readers to imagine anew what earlier moments were like. The texts may reflect our changing sense of history as much as they reflect historical change itself, in other words. These works also share an interest in women behaving boldly: we will read texts authored by women along with texts that focus on women as characters. Some of these women will be writing and/or living at the margins of society, while others will be at the very centre of power, and still others will be somewhere in the middle. While all materials will be read or watched in modern English, some pieces will be translated from earlier Englishes or other languages. 

ENGL 216 LEC B1: Introduction to Indigenous Literary Methods

ENGL 217 LEC B1: Introduction to Literary and Critical Theory
K. Ball

ENGL 220 LEC B1: Reading Gender And Sexuality

ENGL 221 LEC B1: Reading Class And Ideology
E. Kent

ENGL 222 LEC B1: Reading Race And Ethnicity

ENGL 223 LEC B1: Reading Empire & Postcolonial
L. Harrington

This course will introduce theories, literatures and histories of imperialism and postcolonialism. We will ask how colonial discourse was constructed and consider the links between cultural production and political narratives of power. In so doing we will examine key terms such as coloniality, Empire, postcolonialism and decoloniality through our readings and discussions of a range of literary and cultural texts. These will mainly come from the region of South Asia and the South Asian diaspora. Our focus will begin in the late 19th century taking into account key essays and political writings as well as poetry and short stories before moving to 20th and 21st century texts.

Previous Offerings

2023-24 Fall and Winter Term Courses
2022-23 Fall and Winter Term Courses

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