English and Film Studies
Welcome to English and Film Studies!
Welcome to the Department of English and Film Studies, located on Treaty Six territory and in Region 4 of the Métis Nation of Alberta. One of the four founding departments of the University of Alberta in 1908 and today one of the largest in the Faculty of Arts, the Department of English and Film Studies is a dynamic place to study, learn and create. We are internationally-recognized and multi-disciplinary. Our faculty members are leaders in the field, with a reputation for high-quality research, innovative teaching, and meaningful community impact. Among our distinguished colleagues are three Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada, a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair, and many award-winning teachers.
Programs
Undergraduate Programs
Undergraduate Degree in English
Students have access to internationally renowned professors and can take courses spanning a broad range of topics, cultures, histories and perspectives. Study Medieval, Canadian, Indigenous, queer and children's literature and focus on a number of diverse areas including popular culture, creative writing, film studies, video games and new media.
Undergraduate Honors Degree in English
The English Honors program offers students the opportunity to enjoy even greater specialization in English than afforded by the Major. Students complete a unique course, ENGL 498, which involves mentored independent research culminating in an original honors essay.
Undergraduate Minor in English
Students who minor in English can explore language, literature, and other cultural forms - including popular culture and new media - across a diverse range of courses while majoring in a complementary discipline in arts or science.
Undergraduate Degree in Film Studies
Film Studies provides students with the tools to understand the vast and complex media landscape of the 21st century. Students will develop a theoretical and historical perspective on the evolution of film and understand moving images as a medium of self-expression and a carrier of cultural values.
Undergraduate Minor in Film Studies
A minimum of ★18 in Film Studies or approved cross-listed courses, including at least ★12 at the senior level. Students must take FS 100 (★3), ★6 at the 200-level, ★3 at the 300- or 400-level, ★3 at the 400-level and ★3 of any other FS or variable content/selected topics courses. See course descriptions for prerequisites.
Undergraduate Minor in Creative Writing
This program offers an exciting and diverse range of courses, including fiction, non-fiction and poetry, along with creative research and experimental forms of writing. Our program has our students work closely with active and talented writers, and we also have community-focused courses in which students engage in collective and grassroots creative writing and research projects, expanding thought, asking questions and attending to the voices of others.
Writing Studies
Writing Studies offers undergraduate and graduate courses in the exploration of writing. It also serves as an intellectual home for faculty and students who promote university-wide writing initiatives.
Graduate Programs
MA in English - Course-Based
The requirements for the MA in English - Course Based program are: Seven courses at the graduate level, Proseminar A, FSGR Ethics Requirement, Professional Development Requirement, MA Portfolio Proposal and Constitution of Supervisory Committee, and MA Portfolio.
MA in English - Thesis Based
The requirements for the MA in English - Thesis Based program are: Six courses at the graduate level, Proseminar A, FGSR Ethics Requirement, Professional Development Requirement, Language Requirement (for students admitted before Sept. 2017), MA Thesis Proposal and Constitution of Supervisory Committee, MA Thesis, and Examining Committee and Oral Defence of the Thesis.
PhD in English
The PhD program is designed to be completed in four years of full-time work. It is primarily intended as the first step in an academic teaching career, although some of our graduates find employment in fields such as publishing, librarianship, or government. Recent PhDs are in tenurable positions at numerous universities in Canada, the United States, and around the world. Still others have secured research employment in government and universities in Canada or internationally.
Undergraduate Programs
Learn more about the undergraduate programs available in the Department of English and Film Studies. Hear from undergraduate students and alumni about their experiences and the value of their programs.
Graduate Programs
Learn more about graduate studies in the Department of English and Film Studies. Hear from graduate students and alumni about their experiences and the value of their programs.
winter term 2026
TR 9:30 - 10:50 a.m.;
T 3:30-5:50 P.M.
FS 399 B1 - Special topics in Film Studies: Teen film
This course studies that vague, shifting conception of “youth” and how it has been presented in cinema from roughly the 50s until today. It explores how Hollywood, international and independent cinema draw on the teenage audience while constructing a complex relationship of gender, sex and youth. It also explores the interactions between the teen film and other genres, like horror, romance, sports and action. Amy Heckerling, the director of classics like Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) and Clueless (1995), serves as a case study as a specialist in the teen movie.
Murray Leeder
winter term 2026
TR 2:00 - 3:20 p.m.
ENGL 426 LEC B2 - Studies in Literary and Cultural Histories: The Many faces of Hamlet
As its title suggests, in this course we will approach the study of Hamlet from different angles. Shakespeare’s most famous play survives in three early seventeenth-century editions including the “Bad” Quarto. What difference does it make which of these texts we are reading? (Ophelia, for example, is a musician in the Bad Quarto!) And what difference does it make when we think about Shakespeare’s Hamlet in relation to one of its “sources,” the medieval Norse legend of Saxo Grammaticus? We will also consider the play from the perspective of famous readings, most notoriously, the view that we should see Hamlet as suffering from an “Oedipus complex.” These considerations will include asking what it means to read Hamlet now in relation to contemporary critical approaches including how we might read the play in relation to our current state of ecological crisis. We will also have the fun of considering famous adaptations, including Akira Kurosawa’s 1960 film noir, The Bad Sleep Well, and Tom Stoppard’s witty Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, which moves minor characters into the foreground, with the film version starring Gary Oldman and Tim Roth. We will conclude our study of Hamlet’s many “faces” with two film versions, Michael Almereyda’s 2000 Hamlet and Sherwood Hu’s The Prince of the Himalayas (2006). These films allow us to take up the question of how Hamlet continues to serve different historic moments and cultural purposes.
Carolyn Sale
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The department was founded in 1908 with a single professor, Edmund Kemper Broadus, and a single class of students.
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Famous graduates include Suzette Mayr, Giller Prize Winner in 2022 for her novel The Sleeping Car Porter and Jason Kapalka, founder of PopCap Games.
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There are three programs within the department: English, Film Studies, and WRITE (Creative Writing).
Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Decolonization Statement
The English and Film Studies Department considers the diversity of its faculty, students and staff to be critical to its educational mandate and we work towards an inclusive community, one that provides a rich learning environment for all people irrespective of their gender, race, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion, class, national origin, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, age, ability, socio-economic status, class, neurodiversity, and religion. We acknowledge that we learn and teach on Treaty 6 and Métis territory and we commit to the work of decolonizing our teaching and research. We acknowledge that knowledge-making practices, including the institution of literature, have historically excluded many populations and perspectives; we commit to the work of dismantling systemic barriers within our learning and working environments. We recognize that language and literature can be powerful tools and aim to use them to imagine a more equitable and socially just world.
News + Events
November 7 - SpokenWeb Listening Party
Join us on Friday, November 7 from 4-5 p.m. in the Salter Reading Room, HC 3-95 for the next SpokenWeb Listening Party!
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