100 Level English

ENGL 103 LEC 800 (Online): Reading Racial Capitalism
R. Jackson
What is capitalism and how does it work? What is the relationship between the exploitation of labour and other vectors of social domination like race, gender, sexuality, and colonialism? Who does capitalism serve and who does it harm? How do state institutions like law and the university support the accumulation of wealth for some and misery for most? In this course, we will explore these questions through a sustained close reading of R.F. Kuang's novel Babel: or the Necessity of Violence. You can expect to encounter a range of theories drawn from Marxist, anti-racist, anti-colonial, feminist, and queer scholars who each offer different perspectives on the history of capitalism and its reproduction. Moreover, you will be introduced to the practice of scholarly research in the Humanities through a series of research labs.

ENGL 103 LEC A01: Witches in Literature
J. Millard
In “The Witch as a Category and as a Person” from his book Critique of Identity Thinking Michael Jackson explains that the stereotypical witch encompasses “notions of deviance, resentment, wildness, and sickness”(43) such that they are the “dialectical inversion [of] … moral personhood”(50). Thus representations of witches in literature inevitably focus on the relationship between the individual and structures of social order, particularly as they relate to religious order, moral justice, and prescriptive gendered behavior.

This course is thematically organized around texts that represent witches in ways that interrogate these aspects of social organization. Unlike RELIG 274, this course does not approach witchcraft within a specifically religious framework; rather the study of witches is merely employed as a focal point to study literary conventions and attendant cultural motifs across various genres and time periods.

ENGL 103 LEC A02: Technology, Utopia, and Dystopia
J. Quist
In this section, swiftly advancing Artificial Intelligence technologies are considered through methodical, well-informed literary research. Cultural and academic responses to very old and very new technologies will be approached in two ways: 1) through experience and experimentation 2) through more conventional literary research using utopian/dystopian fiction in print, film, and in video games as data. Through methods including experiential learning, establishing theoretical contexts, library-based research, peer workshop sessions, and readings/viewings/playings of texts, students will learn to express and document their findings, interpretations, and insights in ways that contribute to discourses already in progress about historical, imagined and emergent technological utopias and dystopias.

ENGL 103 LEC A03: Contemporary Adaptations of Classic Fairy Tales
A. Daignault
In the first part of the semester, we will use classic fairy tales as an anchor point to develop skills that are foundational to the research process, and a base of shared knowledge about the fairy tale genre. In this section of the course, students can expect to read a wide variety of short texts, and to complete focused weekly assignments related to those texts. This part of the course will feature open exploration and discussion of fairy tales, and direct instruction on skills that are necessary to the research and writing process.

In the second part of the semester, each student will design and complete an independent research project. There are two options for this project: the first is to select a contemporary adaptation of one of those classic fairy tales, and write a traditional research paper about a particular aspect of that work; the second is to develop expertise about one of the tales and use it to write a new adaptation. In this section of the course, there will be less direct instruction, and more collaboration and troubleshooting among students.

ENGL 103 LEC A04: Twenty-First Century Fantasy Fiction
M. Dickeson
In this section we'll study fantasy as a genre of literature, learning about how it has grown and iterated, how it works, and how it speaks to the culture that surrounds it as a kind of popular storytelling. While we'll explore the history of the fantasy field in our lecture material and discussions, our readings will be drawn from material published since 2010. This case study will give us a focus for the course's introduction of the process and practice of the discipline of English and how its interest in scholarly conversation can help us communicate across our courses and fields -- the hows, whats, and whys of literary analysis and academic research. We will work through a series of skill-building assignments practicing important elements of academic writing and research such as close reading, argumentative structure, and finding and working with helpful scholarly sources. These lower stakes assignments will prepare students for the course's central project, a self-directed research essay for which every participant in the class will choose their own novel on which to write (from a list of texts in our class's focus genre) and conduct their own conversation with scholarly sources.

ENGL 103 LEC A05: Cree and Métis Poetry
A. Van Essen
According to Indigenous scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith, “research” “is probably one of the dirtiest words in the Indigenous world’s vocabulary” (Decolonizing Methodologies 30). Given the context of historical and ongoing colonialism in Canada, what does it mean to do research respectfully? How do we read, write about, research, and discuss Cree and Métis literature with care and respect? In this course, these questions will anchor our research through case studies in Cree and Métis poetry.

ENGL 103 LEC A06: Literary Explorations of Racism in North America 
W. Agorde
This section analyses literary texts, essays and videos written by and about racialised groups in North America. Focussing on how various authors employ varied literary techniques to show how racism is presented as a hierarchical system of power and privilege. Class readings and research will critically explore how racism is produced and manifested at the individual, institutional and societal levels. A key component will examine the different forms of racism: representational, ideological, discursive and interactional racism. The various literary texts and media will expose students to the intersectionality of racism through factors such as gender, sexual orientation, class, religion and race. Aside from examining the experiences of Indigenous peoples in Canada and the United States, this course will use black people’s experiences in both countries as its baseline for studying racial relations in North America. At the end of the course, students will comprehend how race is socially constructed and the persistent socio-political consequences of race.

ENGL 103 LEC A07
A. Chowdhury

ENGL 103 LEC A08: Representations of Illness
L. Schechter
This section will focus on representations of illness from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century. Students will take up a range of genres and texts to consider how authors have responded to, reflected, or developed broader understandings of health conditions such as tuberculosis, cancer, depression, stuttering, and HIV/AIDS, focusing especially on how we make use of figurative language in discussions of illnesses that we fear and/or do not understand well.

ENGL 103 LEC A09: Adventures in Magical Literature
N. Beauchesne
Adventures in Magical Literature introduces the skills of literary research through an exploration of what magic is and what it means across different time periods and cultural contexts. Case studies comprise of poetry, fiction, essays, and a play. This course focuses on texts with magical themes and/or texts written by “real” historical magicians. Whether or not one believes in “magic,” students will learn that magic is a touchstone across all cultures, and has indelibly shaped Western culture in spite of its Christian roots and current “secular” standing. As students develop strong, independent research and writing skills, they will see how some of the finest writers in the English language have been fascinated with the concept of magic.

ENGL 103 LEC A10
E. Harris

ENGL 103 LEC A11: Adventures in Magical Literature
N. Beauchesne
Adventures in Magical Literature introduces the skills of literary research through an exploration of what magic is and what it means across different time periods and cultural contexts. Case studies comprise of poetry, fiction, essays, and a play. This course focuses on texts with magical themes and/or texts written by “real” historical magicians. Whether or not one believes in “magic,” students will learn that magic is a touchstone across all cultures, and has indelibly shaped Western culture in spite of its Christian roots and current “secular” standing. As students develop strong, independent research and writing skills, they will see how some of the finest writers in the English language have been fascinated with the concept of magic.

ENGL 103 LEC A12: TOYS! (Literary Representations and Socio-political Implications)
E. Harris
“My friends are toys. I make them.” Sebastian, Bladerunner (Film)

In his famous essay “The Philosophy of Toys” (1853), French poet and “enfant terrible” Charles Baudelaire proposed that our earliest play with toys signifies our earliest initiation “into art.” Together, we will study a wonderland of literary representations of toys across genres and cultures. We will encounter soldiers, puppets, dolls and robots in fiction, poetry, lyric essays, fairy tales (and in visual and performing arts). We will apply research, writing and discussion towards exploring the socio-political implications of these toys (which range from instruments of socialization and normativity, to figures of queernness, transgression, and alterity). At the back of our minds, let us ask: can research and interpretation also be forms of play (as Alan Levinovitz proposes)? Course texts include: Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky (poetry), The Lost Daughter by Elena Ferrante (novel), and the children’s book William’s Doll (by Charlotte Zolotow) - among many others.

ENGL 103 LEC A13: Bibliomania, Byromania, and Digital Approaches to Literature
S. Webb
The digital turn has meant that much of our reading, research, and lives take place in a virtual space. Popular media demands our attention and social media mines our predispositions to make it all the more appealing. Yet, many of the characteristics of our present digital mass media moment can be likened to precursors in the Romantic period in Britain and Europe with the burgeoning of print culture, the rise of literacy, and the literary celebrity of Lord Byron. The twin phenomena of Byromania and Bibliomania represent case studies for understanding our own infatuations with celebrity personas and the devices that deliver their content to us. Students will engage with the poetry, letters and journals of Byron, as well as scholarly criticism around Byron, Romanticism, book history and print culture. They will also employ approaches from the emerging field of digital humanities, whereby they will conduct text analysis, network analysis, and mapping of literary works and the books that contained them to gain new insights into the fields of literature, book history, and digital humanities.

ENGL 103 LEC A14
W. Defehr

ENGL 103 LEC A15: Monsters, Consumption, and the Life/Death Divide
B. Kerfoot
This course explores cultural fears of consumption and the living dead through their embodiment in four monsters: Frankenstein’s creature, vampires, wheetagos, and zombies. We will track their origins, evolutions, and appropriations to consider why these monsters endure in the popular imagination.

Course skills include how to find and evaluate credible sources and how to respond to them to develop an original argument. The sequenced assignments will gradually introduce these research skills and culminate in a substantial research paper.

ENGL 103 LEC A16: Monsters in Beowulf, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Peter Jackson
D. Bargen
J. R. R. Tolkien both had a profound influence on the interpretation of Beowulf and wrote fantasy novels that were influenced by his scholarship. We will be considering how monsters are represented by Beowulf, Tolkien, and Peter Jackson's films based on Tolkien's novels. You will have the opportunity to develop your own topic for research from the course texts.

ENGL 103 LEC A17: Why Horror?
L. Rasmussen
Although it is often derided or thought to be ‘low-brow’, horror fiction provides us with many opportunities to contribute important knowledge through research. Examples of topics we may explore as case studies in this class include techno-horror, cryptozoology, the portrayal of queerness in horror, domestic horror, misogyny in horror, children and horror, apocalyptic horror, and others. While we will read one Gothic novella published before 1900, our focus will primarily be on contemporary writers who create horror and horror adjacent works. The research we do on these texts will enable us to better understand the social contexts that give rise to the horror genre’s creation and reception, thus confirming the importance of these works. You do not need to have watched or read horror in the past to participate meaningfully in this class. Its content is geared to a broad audience as opposed to specialists. If you would like to see a list of works we are reading prior to confirming your place in the course, feel free to email at lmr4@alberta.ca.

ENGL 103 LEC A18: Cree and Métis Poetry
A. Van Essen
According to Indigenous scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith, “research” “is probably one of the dirtiest words in the Indigenous world’s vocabulary” (Decolonizing Methodologies 30). Given the context of historical and ongoing colonialism in Canada, what does it mean to do research respectfully? How do we read, write about, research, and discuss Cree and Métis literature with care and respect? In this course, these questions will anchor our research through case studies in Cree and Métis poetry.

ENGL 103 LEC 850: Reading Racial Capitalism
R. Jackson
What is capitalism and how does it work? What is the relationship between the exploitation of labour and other vectors of social domination like race, gender, sexuality, and colonialism? Who does capitalism serve and who does it harm? How do state institutions like law and the university support the accumulation of wealth for some and misery for most? In this course, we will explore these questions through a sustained close reading of R.F. Kuang's novel Babel: or the Necessity of Violence. You can expect to encounter a range of theories drawn from Marxist, anti-racist, anti-colonial, feminist, and queer scholars who each offer different perspectives on the history of capitalism and its reproduction. Moreover, you will be introduced to the practice of scholarly research in the Humanities through a series of research labs.

ENGL 103 LEC B01: Marginality and Resistance in Indian Literature
A. Khan

ENGL 103 LEC B03: Twenty-First Century Fantasy Fiction
M. Dickeson
In this section we'll study fantasy as a genre of literature, learning about how it has grown and iterated, how it works, and how it speaks to the culture that surrounds it as a kind of popular storytelling. While we'll explore the history of the fantasy field in our lecture material and discussions, our readings will be drawn from material published since 2010. This case study will give us a focus for the course's introduction of the process and practice of the discipline of English and how its interest in scholarly conversation can help us communicate across our courses and fields -- the hows, whats, and whys of literary analysis and academic research. We will work through a series of skill-building assignments practicing important elements of academic writing and research such as close reading, argumentative structure, and finding and working with helpful scholarly sources. These lower stakes assignments will prepare students for the course's central project, a self-directed research essay for which every participant in the class will choose their own novel on which to write (from a list of texts in our class's focus genre) and conduct their own conversation with scholarly sources.

ENGL 103 LEC B04
L. Chen

ENGL 103 LEC B05
L. Robertson

ENGL 103 LEC B06: Literary Explorations of Racism in North America 
W. Agorde
This section analyses literary texts, essays and videos written by and about racialised groups in North America. Focussing on how various authors employ varied literary techniques to show how racism is presented as a hierarchical system of power and privilege. Class readings and research will critically explore how racism is produced and manifested at the individual, institutional and societal levels. A key component will examine the different forms of racism: representational, ideological, discursive and interactional racism. The various literary texts and media will expose students to the intersectionality of racism through factors such as gender, sexual orientation, class, religion and race. Aside from examining the experiences of Indigenous peoples in Canada and the United States, this course will use black people’s experiences in both countries as its baseline for studying racial relations in North America. At the end of the course, students will comprehend how race is socially constructed and the persistent socio-political consequences of race.

ENGL 103 LEC B07: Contemporary Dystopias
R. Prusko
This section of English 103 will closely examine two examples of dystopic fiction: Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven and Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go. We will begin with close reading and progress through the stages of literary research as we explore each book’s rich cultural and critical contexts

ENGL 103 LEC B08: Contemporary Adaptations of Classic Fairy Tales
A. Daignault
In the first part of the semester, we will use classic fairy tales as an anchor point to develop skills that are foundational to the research process, and a base of shared knowledge about the fairy tale genre. In this section of the course, students can expect to read a wide variety of short texts, and to complete focused weekly assignments related to those texts. This part of the course will feature open exploration and discussion of fairy tales, and direct instruction on skills that are necessary to the research and writing process.

In the second part of the semester, each student will design and complete an independent research project. There are two options for this project: the first is to select a contemporary adaptation of one of those classic fairy tales, and write a traditional research paper about a particular aspect of that work; the second is to develop expertise about one of the tales and use it to write a new adaptation. In this section of the course, there will be less direct instruction, and more collaboration and troubleshooting among students.

ENGL 103 LEC B09: Graphic Literature: Representation Through Images and Texts
D. Woodman
Most people are aware of comics – from the comic strips to comic books sold in grocery stores and comic bookstores. However, there is so much more. The field of graphic literature encompasses a vast range of topics, themes, genres, and styles. In this course, we’ll explore a diverse array of contemporary graphic literature by North American/Turtle Island creators that participate in social and cultural discourses and challenge conventional ideas about representation and interpretation.

Course texts will include: Abdelrazaq’s Baddawi, Butler, Duffy, and Jennings’ Parable of the Sower: A Graphic Novel, King and Donovan’s Borders: A Graphic Novel, Martini and Martini’s Bitter Medicine, and Som’s Spellbound: A Graphic Memoir.

ENGL 103 LEC B10: Contemporary Dystopias
R. Prusko
This section of English 103 will closely examine two examples of dystopic fiction: Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven and Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go. We will begin with close reading and progress through the stages of literary research as we explore each book’s rich cultural and critical contexts

ENGL 103 LEC B11: Why Horror?
L. Rasmussen
Although it is often derided or thought to be ‘low-brow’, horror fiction provides us with many opportunities to contribute important knowledge through research. Examples of topics we may explore as case studies in this class include techno-horror, cryptozoology, the portrayal of queerness in horror, domestic horror, misogyny in horror, children and horror, apocalyptic horror, and others. While we will read one Gothic novella published before 1900, our focus will primarily be on contemporary writers who create horror and horror adjacent works. The research we do on these texts will enable us to better understand the social contexts that give rise to the horror genre’s creation and reception, thus confirming the importance of these works. You do not need to have watched or read horror in the past to participate meaningfully in this class. Its content is geared to a broad audience as opposed to specialists. If you would like to see a list of works we are reading prior to confirming your place in the course, feel free to email at lmr4@alberta.ca.

ENGL 103 LEC B12
C. Scott

ENGL 103 LEC B13
L. Chen

ENGL 103 LEC B14: Bibliomania, Byromania, and Digital Approaches to Literature
S. Webb
The digital turn has meant that much of our reading, research, and lives take place in a virtual space. Popular media demands our attention and social media mines our predispositions to make it all the more appealing. Yet, many of the characteristics of our present digital mass media moment can be likened to precursors in the Romantic period in Britain and Europe with the burgeoning of print culture, the rise of literacy, and the literary celebrity of Lord Byron. The twin phenomena of Byromania and Bibliomania represent case studies for understanding our own infatuations with celebrity personas and the devices that deliver their content to us. Students will engage with the poetry, letters and journals of Byron, as well as scholarly criticism around Byron, Romanticism, book history and print culture. They will also employ approaches from the emerging field of digital humanities, whereby they will conduct text analysis, network analysis, and mapping of literary works and the books that contained them to gain new insights into the fields of literature, book history, and digital humanities.

ENGL 103 LEC B15: Little Women and Its Legacies
M. Leeder
Louisa May Alcott's Little Women (1868/9) is one of the most famous American novels. This course will examine the novel itself, the contexts of Alcott's career and family life, and its cultural legacy. This includes both direct film adaptations (especially those of 1933, 1994 and 2019) but also its reworkings into novels such as March (Geraldine Brooks, 2005), Jo: An Adaptation of Little Women (Sort Of) (2020) and even Little Women and Werewolves (2010).

ENGL 103 LEC B16: Contemporary Adaptations of Classic Fairy Tales
A. Daignault
In the first part of the semester, we will use classic fairy tales as an anchor point to develop skills that are foundational to the research process, and a base of shared knowledge about the fairy tale genre. In this section of the course, students can expect to read a wide variety of short texts, and to complete focused weekly assignments related to those texts. This part of the course will feature open exploration and discussion of fairy tales, and direct instruction on skills that are necessary to the research and writing process.

In the second part of the semester, each student will design and complete an independent research project. There are two options for this project: the first is to select a contemporary adaptation of one of those classic fairy tales, and write a traditional research paper about a particular aspect of that work; the second is to develop expertise about one of the tales and use it to write a new adaptation. In this section of the course, there will be less direct instruction, and more collaboration and troubleshooting among students.

ENGL 103 LEC B17: Representations of Adoption
J. Millard
Peter Parker; Sherlock Holmes; Mowgli; Tony Stark; Oliver Twist.

What do all of these characters have in common? Their stories range wildly in terms of genre and sensibility, but they are united by the fact they are all adoptees.But what does it mean to be adopted? Why is it such a common feature in stories? What does this tell us about the way that we approach and understand the concept of adoption as a society? How much has our understanding of adoption changed over time, and how much does it vary across cultures? What assumptions and value-systems have been and continue to be engaged in response to adoption? How do those ideas influence our understanding of what it means to construct and be part of a family, and part of society?

ENGL 103 LEC B18: Marginality and Resistance in Indian Literature
A. Khan

ENGL 103 LEC B19: Post-apocalyptic literature
J. Millard
The “post-apocalyptic” is defined broadly as denoting or relating to the time following a nuclear war or other catastrophic event. More specifically, it might refer to a biblical end of days, or make reference to a variety of religious literatures or cultural narratives that discuss the end of the known world. It is related to, but distinct from, dystopian fiction, which explores a world where an imagined state, or society has taken hold, often one with marked by suffering, injustice, or lack of reason.

From our current vantage point at the beginning of 2025, literatures of the apocalypse offer us a way to process and make sense of the previous three years of experience, collective and personal, with the global COVID-19 pandemic. The selections in this course frequently explore scenarios related to race, health, illness, aging, and medical interventions. Selections are deliberately drawn from a variety of authors, in an attempt to offer consideration that is both historically broad as well as socially inclusive.

ENGL 103 LEC B20: Technology, Utopia, and Dystopia
J. Quist
In this section, swiftly advancing Artificial Intelligence technologies are considered through methodical, well-informed literary research. Cultural and academic responses to very old and very new technologies will be approached in two ways: 1) through experience and experimentation 2) through more conventional literary research using utopian/dystopian fiction in print, film, and in video games as data. Through methods including experiential learning, establishing theoretical contexts, library-based research, peer workshop sessions, and readings/viewings/playings of texts, students will learn to express and document their findings, interpretations, and insights in ways that contribute to discourses already in progress about historical, imagined and emergent technological utopias and dystopias.

ENGL 103 LEC B21
C. Scott

ENGL 103 LEC B22
W. Defehr

ENGL 103 LEC B23
A. Chowdhury

ENGL 103 LEC B24
L. Harrington

ENGL 103 LEC B25
R. Brazeau

ENGL 103 LEC B26: Monsters in Beowulf, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Peter Jackson
D. Bargen
J. R. R. Tolkien both had a profound influence on the interpretation of Beowulf and wrote fantasy novels that were influenced by his scholarship. We will be considering how monsters are represented by Beowulf, Tolkien, and Peter Jackson's films based on Tolkien's novels. You will have the opportunity to develop your own topic for research from the course texts.

ENGL 103 LEC B27
G. Blomquist

ENGL 103 LEC B28: Heroes & Villains!
M. Kosman
Who gets to be a hero? More curiously, who gets to be a superhero? In this course we will investigate the social and political resonances of “heroes” and “villains” in Canadian and Western popular culture. In addition to thinking critically about what kinds of people get to be heroes and superheroes, students will develop their research skills in order to better understand how the Western superhero figure reproduces hierarchies of race, sex, ability, and class; what we understand to be the material conditions of villainy; and, ultimately, how despite opening up the category of the “hero” to previously marginalized subjects, villains continue to serve as a socially acceptable repository for oppressive discourses.

ENGL 103 LEC B60: Literary Explorations of Racism in North America 
W. Agorde
This section analyses literary texts, essays and videos written by and about racialised groups in North America. Focussing on how various authors employ varied literary techniques to show how racism is presented as a hierarchical system of power and privilege. Class readings and research will critically explore how racism is produced and manifested at the individual, institutional and societal levels. A key component will examine the different forms of racism: representational, ideological, discursive and interactional racism. The various literary texts and media will expose students to the intersectionality of racism through factors such as gender, sexual orientation, class, religion and race. Aside from examining the experiences of Indigenous peoples in Canada and the United States, this course will use black people’s experiences in both countries as its baseline for studying racial relations in North America. At the end of the course, students will comprehend how race is socially constructed and the persistent socio-political consequences of race.

ENGL 103 LEC X50: Heroes & Villains!
M. Kosman
Who gets to be a hero? More curiously, who gets to be a superhero? In this course we will investigate the social and political resonances of “heroes” and “villains” in Canadian and Western popular culture. In addition to thinking critically about what kinds of people get to be heroes and superheroes, students will develop their research skills in order to better understand how the Western superhero figure reproduces hierarchies of race, sex, ability, and class; what we understand to be the material conditions of villainy; and, ultimately, how despite opening up the category of the “hero” to previously marginalized subjects, villains continue to serve as a socially acceptable repository for oppressive discourses.

ENGL 103 LEC X53: Stories of the Multiverse
N. Barnholden