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.

Fall 2023

ENGL 206 LEC A1: Introduction To Poetry
J. Quist

This course introduces Modern English poetry as the story of the rise of English as the hypercentral language of global literature and the resistance to this English-language domination. The story unfolds within a survey of major poetic and critical movements beginning with the Elizabethans, advancing through the Enlightenment, Romanticism, Modernism, and into Postcolonial and Queer and Feminist voices, among others, before approaching the open question of poetry in the age of machine composition. Our study of poetry is critical, technical, and artistic, covering formal versification, creative composition, and the reading and analysis of poetry for its aesthetic, affective, ethical, and activist aspects.

ENGL 207 LEC A1: Introduction To Narrative
S. Sucur

The Enduring Power of the Short Story

This course will focus on the compressed narrative power of the short story in its various forms (such as the tale and serialized novel) and also as interpreted through film. Short stories focused on will span the period from the early 19th to the mid-20th centuries, covering such topics as Romanticism and the Gothic, Modernism, and the aesthetic performance inherent to the short story. We will consider, among other issues, questions of narrative form, of dialogue, and of the nature of a short story. Representative texts and movies will be shared via the class syllabus.

ENGL 215 LEC A1: Reading Literature Across Time
C. Sale
We will range from Shakespeare to Canadian author Rawi Hage's 2009 novel Cockroach, reading along the way (amongst other things) Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure (1894/5), as we consider literary representations of a theme of increasing significance to Canadian society in the twenty-first century, radical inequality. Further details to come.

ENGL 217 LEC A1: Intro Literary & Critical Theory

ENGL 220 LEC A1: Reading Gender And Sexuality
D. Woodman
Using contemporary literary and cultural texts, this course section explores gender and sexuality in their relationships to other social and political identities such as race, class, and ability. Course texts will cover a variety genres and formats, ranging from academic articles to novels, from poetry to graphic literature. Through intersectional analysis and multiple genres, we will engage with gender and sexuality in a variety of forms and expressions. Authors will include, but not be limited to, Vivek Shraya, Kai Cheng Thom, Bishak Som, Joshua Whitehead, Elliot Page, Daniel Justice Heath, Anna-Marie McLemore, and Carmen Machado.

ENGL 221 LEC A1: Reading Class And Ideology
M. Simpson
This course offers an introduction to dynamics of class and ideology in literary and other cultural texts, and to the critical concepts and methods key to their study. We will focus on the ways in which these terms animate critical debate in particular strains of political, social, and cultural theory, while also considering the relevance and resonance of such critical debate for the interpretation of selected aesthetic case studies. At stake is a question about ways of knowing the world: less, that is, an ‘application’ of theory to cultural texts and more an engagement with the theoretical potential in different discursive modes – the diverse capacities offered by distinct critical and creative practices to ‘do’ theory so as to illuminate contradictions and tensions yet also possibilities and opportunities in social experience.

ENGL 250 LEC A1: Intro Canadian Literatures

ENGL 299 LEC A1: Essay Writing For Ed Students

Winter 2024

ENGL 206 LEC B1: Introduction To Poetry

ENGL 207 LEC B1: Introduction To Narrative

ENGL 212 LEC B1: Critical Approaches Engl Lang

ENGL 215 LEC B1: Reading Literature Across Time
P. Sinnema

Heroes and Heroines, Villains and Viragos

This course offers a highly selective and shockingly fragmented motorcycle tour through English (and in translation, one recent example of Dutch) literary history, starting in the 8th century and ending in the early 21st, with brief pit stops in the early modern and Victorian periods. Our chief focus will be on the related questions of literature in history and history in literature. Our central (but hardly exclusive) organizing schema will be the paired binaries, hero-villain/heroine-virago. Our ultimate if modest goal is to temporarily escape presentist tendencies by reading and giving critical thought to a few “old” and possibly defamiliarizing texts. Filmic adaptations of Beowulf, Hamlet, and (hopefully) Lady Audley’s Secret will be screened in class time, offering students an opportunity to consider remediation as one way of “reading” literature across time.

TEXTS (for purchase at the university bookstore):

Seamus Heaney (trans.), Beowulf: A New Verse Translation—W. W. Norton
William Shakespeare, Hamlet—W. W. Norton (2nd critical edition)
Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Lady Audley’s Secret—Broadview
Herman Koch, The Dinner—Hogarth

ENGL 220 LEC B1: Reading Gender And Sexuality
D. Woodman
Using contemporary literary and cultural texts, this course section explores gender and sexuality in their relationships to other social and political identities such as race, class, and ability. Course texts will cover a variety genres and formats, ranging from academic articles to novels, from poetry to graphic literature. Through intersectional analysis and multiple genres, we will engage with gender and sexuality in a variety of forms and expressions. Authors will include, but not be limited to, Vivek Shraya, Kai Cheng Thom, Bishak Som, Joshua Whitehead, Elliot Page, Daniel Justice Heath, Anna-Marie McLemore, and Carmen Machado.

ENGL 221 LEC B1: Reading Class And Ideology

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 was colonial discourse constructed? And what are 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

2022-23 Fall and Winter Term Courses

Fall 2021

Winter 2022

Winter 2020

Spring 2020

Fall 2020

Winter 2021

Spring 2021

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