Undergraduate Course Listing

An introduction to critical practice and to the assumptions underlying a wide range of approaches to literature. Explores British, American, Canadian, and postcolonial works, and draws on parallels between literary and non-literary language and between literature and other forms of expression. Emphasis is placed on learning through writing. Offered only at Trent University Durham GTA.

An examination of Shakespeare's dramatic career through the study of representative works spanning the period from the early comedies to the last plays. Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits. Students may take only one of ENGL 2150Y or 2151H for credit.

Explores Shakespeare's plays as texts for public spaces. Emphasis is on "hearing the plays" and on engaging the material in contemporary contexts, preparing students to teach or perform the texts. Coursework includes scene presentations focused on imagining Shakespeare's theatrical intent and exploring how the texts awaken moral feeling in the audience. Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits. Students may take only one of ENGL 2152Y or 2153H for credit.

Explores intersections between medicine and literature with particular attention to the representation of outbreaks and pandemics in historical and contemporary fiction, graphic novels, dystopian works, and film. What does it mean to narrate contagion? What might fictions of contagion teach us about our communities, our priorities, and our (in)humanity? Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits.

Studies a range of works from different periods and genres that raise moral questions and ethical dilemmas concerning issues of social justice involving race, ethnicity, class, gender, age, and other variables. Considers literature's power to evoke the plight of the socially disadvantaged, and the implications for social change. Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits.

Cross-listed: GESO-2703H

An examination of selected works through a focus on the natural environment, including non-human forms of life. Studies examples of nature and environmental writing, but also brings ecocritical perspectives to a wide range of texts through discussions of the wilderness, gardens, waste, nature, culture, and other topics. Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits.

Cross-listed: ERST-2705H

Explores the diverse forms, history, social functions and concerns of popular genre fiction. Our study of romance, crime, adventure, horror, fantasy, and speculative fiction considers especially the gendering of affective reading practices, as well as issues of cultural capital, literary taste, and the relation between elite and commercial writing. Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits. Students may take only one of ENGL 2706Y or 2707H for credit.

A survey of graphic fiction and its subgenres. Topics may include the graphic novel, superheroes, comix, and manga. Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits.

Explores the Gothic as a literary genre and mode, beginning with its historical roots and tracking its permutations to the present day. Taking a range of interpretive methods (such as historical, aesthetic, and psychoanalytic approaches), it examines the enduring appeal of the frightening, the horrific, and the abject. Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits.

Surveying poetry from a variety of literary periods, this course examines the mechanics and cultural significance the genre. How does poetry work? What work does it do? Learn about the devices, modes, strategies, and contexts that make a poem meaningful. Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits. Students may take only one of ENGL 2802Y or 2803H for credit.

Surveying fiction from a variety of literary periods, this course examines the mechanics and cultural significance the genre. How does fiction work? What work does it do? Learn about the devices, modes, strategies, and contexts that make a piece of fiction meaningful. Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits. Students may take only one of ENGL 2806Y or 2807H for credit.

Examines the relationship between theatre and cinema, exploring the limitations of both genres through studying plays that have been made into films. Documentary, television and digital formats are also considered. Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits.

Focuses on poetry, stories, picture books, and theatre for children: the emphasis will be placed upon oral narratives, graphic culture, and performance. Texts include nursery rhymes, Where the Wild Things Are, Peter Pan, and Disney's Pinocchio. Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits.

An introduction to the practice of writing prose, both fiction and non-fiction, this course asks students to experiment with a variety of contemporary prose forms. The course will benefit both those interested in pursuing writing careers and those intending to be teachers who hope to incorporate creative writing in their teaching practices. Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits including ENGL 1851H (or permission of the department). Not open to students with credit for ENGL 2859H.

A broad introduction to the practice of writing poetry, this course asks students to experiment with poetic creation in a variety of contemporary modes, forms, and contexts. Weekly writing and editing tasks are required, as is a careful consideration of poetic concepts, modes of working, assigned readings, and poetics. Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits including ENGL 1851H (or permission of the department). Not open to students with credit for ENGL 2859H.

This introductory class on creative non-fiction exposes students to the variety of texts grouped in this genre (personal essay, memoir, journalistic essay, case study, and hybrids), through discussion, practice, and workshop. Students consider issues such as audience, literary strategies, diction, voice, tone, and ethical responsibilities to living subjects. Prerequisite: 0.5 ENGL credit. ENGL 1851H is strongly recommended. Offered only at Trent University Durham GTA.

An introduction to the practice of writing prose and poetry, this course asks students to experiment with a variety of contemporary forms. The course will benefit both those interested in pursuing writing careers and those intending to be teachers who hope to incorporate creative writing in their teaching practices. Prerequisite: 0.5 ENGL credit. ENGL 1851H is strongly recommended. Offered only at Trent University Durham GTA. Not open to students with credit for ENGL 2851H or 2853H.

The Legend of King Arthur and his court has captivated writers and audiences for more than 1000 years. This course covers the Arthurian Legend from its inception up to the present day. Topics covered include courtly love, magic, religion, chivalry, identity, gender, and race in Arthurian material. Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits.

Compares late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century satire with that of the late twentieth and early twenty-first. Authors such as Lord Rochester, Aphra Behn, Jonathan Swift, Mart Montagu, Alexander Pope, and John Gay are studied alongside comedians such as Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, Joan Rivers, George Carlin, Lewis CK, Sarah Silverman, and Amy Schumer. Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits.

A study of the "Romantic revolution" and its aftermath in politics, mores, philosophy, religion, and aesthetics. Romantic writers include Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, the Shelleys, Keats, Austen, and others (such as Rousseau, Burke, Wollstonecraft). Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits. Students may take only one of ENGL 3250Y or 3251H for credit. Not open to students with credit for ENGL 3253H.

Americans experienced the suffering of two civil wars in coming to a sense of nationhood and wrestled with formulating their own literary tradition into the twentieth century. This course surveys Americans' writing about themselves since the eighteenth century through the filters of geographical regions, racial segregation, urban alienation, and modern aestheticism. Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits. Students may take only one of ENGL 3300Y or 3301H for credit.

Although African American slaves were denied many civil liberties, including access to literacy, an African American literacy culture nonetheless emerged. This course examines that literary culture through its engagement with and contestation of canonical American literary texts. Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits. Students may take only one of ENGL 3308Y or 3309H for credit.

The term "Victorian" often denotes inhibition, prudery, or narrow-mindedness. This course tests such stereotypes by unearthing facets of Victorian culture that signify a "wild" refusal or inability to be governed by norms commonly associated with the era. Through close analysis of selected texts, we will uncover the fears, desires, and tensions that subvert and disrupt the era's staid self-projections. Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits. Not open to students with credit for ENGL 3402Y, 3405H, or 3407H.

The Victorian era (1837-1901) was one of upheaval, witnessing widespread industrialization and urbanization, as well as profound shifts in education, class structures, voting rights, belief systems, and popular entertainment. This course examines a range of Victorian texts from different genres to understand the ways that writers responded to, reflected, and contributed to these changes that continue to affect our world. Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits. Not open to students with credit for ENGL 3402Y or 3403H.

Examines the echoes of Empire and "Englishness" in twentieth-century British literature, and traces the emergence of a distinctly post-Empire sensibility in contemporary British culture. Emphasis is placed on the two world wars, the collapse of Empire, the "rise" of the working class, and "new" colonial voices. Prerequisite: 4.0 univeristy credits. Students may take only one of ENGL 3410Y or 3411H for credit.

Considers the range of contemporary poetry by Indigenous authors from Canada and the United States, and the poems' relations to traditional language forms and to literary traditions and genres. It begins with a brief study of "orature" and songs, and includes a discussion of one nineteenth-century exemplar. Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits.

Cross-listed: CAST-3483H, INDG-3483H

This course meets the Indigenous Course Requirement.

We explore critical, historical, aesthetic, and sociological contexts of the emergence of CanLit. Focusing on Anglophone cultural production since 1960, we read literary works alongside political speeches, government documents, visual artifacts, popular culture, and essays to explore how Canadians have formed and transformed a national literature over the last fifty years. Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits. Students may take only one of ENGL 3502Y or 3503H for credit.

Cross-listed: CAST-3503H

An examination of Canadian literature's attention to geographic and social spaces, from nature's landscapes to a city's underworlds to suburbia's sprawling expanse. Drawing on a range periods, genres, voices, and styles, this course investigates Canadian literature's unique desire to map the nation's geographies in order to contend with historical legacies and imagine possible futures. Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits. Students may take only one of ENGL 3504Y or 3505H for credit.

Cross-listed: CAST-3505H

Examines some of the major critical approaches to literature and interpretation in the twentieth century: formalism, structuralism and semiotics, reader-response criticism, new historicism, psychoanalytic criticism, deconstruction, and feminism. Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits. Not open to students with credit for ENGL 3600Y.

An introduction to critical theories on race, ethnicity, and national culture as they relate to literary theory, criticism, and production. Topics may include racialized identities and difference, power, intersectionality, bodies, decolonialism, Indigenous Knowledge, whiteness, and literature from a range of traditions. Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits. Students may take only one of ENGL 3604Y or 3605H for credit.

We read works that imagine disease, cure, and convalescence as gendered modes, asking how literature exposes pathologization and how authors rewrite illness beyond pathology. We focus on the regulation imposed by cultural and social understandings of "sickness" and the resistance posed by authors to medicalization. Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits.

Cross-listed: GESO-3609H

Studies how literary production is influenced by gender and sexuality, with selected works from different genres and literary periods in English. Areas of study may include the female literary tradition, discourses in masculinities, and queer and trans-gendered narratives, among others. Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits. Excudes ENGL-WMST 3700Y.

Cross-listed: GESO-3701H

Examines literary and cultural representations of queerness through historical, theoretical, and aesthetic approaches. What does it mean for a text to be "queer"? How do sexual identities intersect with racial, ethnic, and religious ones? What can explorations of queerness as an identity category tell us about identity itself? Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits.

Cross-listed: GESO-3704H

A study of literature and theory exploring the political, economic, cultural, and existential effects of globalization. With an emphasis on contemporary texts, approaches may focus on energy, cosmopolitanism, migration, technology, and environmentalism among others. Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits.

Studies selected girlhood bodies and narratives as they have developed within the contexts of Canadian and global literature and popular culture. Focusing on the negotiation of girlhood bodies and narratives through a variety of spaces and over diverse borders, this course considers relationships between Canadian and global girlhoods. Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits including 1.0 ENGL credit or permission of the instructor.

Cross-listed: GESO-3709H, CAST-3709H

A study of the development of the English novel, stressing both its thematic and technical aspects. Writers to be studied may include Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Sterne, Austen, Scott, Emily Bronte, Dickens, Eliot, Hardy, James, Conrad, Lawrence, and Woolf. Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits.

A writing-intensive workshop in original contemporary fiction, this course offers student writers an opportunity to deepen, extend, and enhance their current creative writing practices using a variety of fictional forms. Weekly writing, editing, reading, and live conversational critiques are required. Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits including ENGL 2851H or 2859H (or permission of the instructor, with portfolio submission). Students may take only one of ENGL 3850Y or 3851H for credit.

Aimed at poets already engaged in an ongoing poetic writing practice, this course asks students to complete weekly, original poetry writing in a variety of contemporary modes, complemented by ongoing readings and discussions of poetry and poetics and the development of peer editing skills. Prerequisite: Prerequisite: ENGL 2853H or 2959H (or permission of the instructor, with portfolio submission).

A double credit in which instruction in research methods leads to a thesis of about 15,000 words. The department deadline for a thesis abstract and bibliography (signed by the thesis supervisor) is May 1 of the student's third year. See www.trentu.ca/english for details.

See trentu.ca/english for details. Prerequisite: 4.0 ENGL credits (or permission of the department). Students may take only one of ENGL 4120Y or 4121H for credit.

See trentu.ca/english for details. Prerequisite: 4.0 ENGL credits (or permission of the department). Students may take only one of ENGL 4150Y or 4151H for credit.

See trentu.ca/english for details. Prerequisite: 4.0 ENGL credits (or permission of the department). Students may take only one of ENGL 4152Y or 4153H for credit.

What happens to the study of the materiality of texts when a screen replaces the paper or parchment, and the stability of the written or printed signs is no longer guaranteed? Topics include paratexts and metadata, archival theory, the Digital Humanities, hypertexts, technology, and the book as fetish. Prerequisite: 14.0 university credits with a minimum cumulative average of 80% and permission of the instructor.

See trentu.ca/english for details. Prerequisite: 4.0 ENGL credits (or permission of the department). Students may take only one of ENGL 4300Y or 4301H for credit.

See trentu.ca/english for details. Prerequisite: 4.0 ENGL credits (or permission of the department). Students may take only one of ENGL 4400Y or 4401H for credit.

See trentu.ca/english for details. Prerequisite: 4.0 ENGL credits (or permission of the department). Students may take only one of ENGL 4500Y or 4501H for credit.

Cross-listed: CAST-4501H

See trentu.ca/english for details. Prerequisite: 4.0 ENGL credits (or permission of the department). Students may take only one of ENGL 4800Y or 4801H for credit.

See trentu.ca/english for details. Prerequisite: 4.0 ENGL credits (or permission of the department). Students may take only one of ENGL 4806Y or 4807H for credit.

Develops leadership, analytical, and directorial skills for students with a background in reading dramatic texts. Students participate in group work with students in ENGL 1809H as they learn to read plays as guides to voice and movement. Prerequisite: 4.0 ENGL credits (or permission of the department).

Concentrating on literary prose, poetry, and/or creative non-fiction, this course requires student writers to engage actively in the creation of new works, peer discussions, critiques, and analyses of assigned literary readings. All writing for the course must be created for the literary page rather than the stage, microphone, or gallery. Prerequisite: 4.0 ENGL credits including 1.0 credit from ENGL 2851H, 2853H, 2855H, 2859H, 3850Y/3851H, 3853H, or 3855H; or permission of the instructor. Students may take only one of ENGL 4850Y or 4851H for credit.

Concentrating on literary prose, poetry, and/or creative non-fiction, this course requires student writers to engage actively in the creation of new works, peer discussions, critiques, and analyses of assigned literary readings. All writing for the course must be created for the literary page rather than the stage, microphone, or gallery. Prerequisite: 4.0 ENGL credits including 1.0 credit from ENGL 2851H, 2853H, 2855H, 2859H, 3850Y/3851H, 3853H, or 3855H; or permission of the instructor. Students may take only one of ENGL 4850Y or 4851H for credit.

The course allows the student to select, with the approval of the department, an area for research study which is then pursued under the direction of a member of the department. Students must obtain the agreement of a faculty member to supervise the course and must apply for admission to enrol prior to the commencement of the session in which the course will be offered. See trentu.ca/english for details. Prerequisite: 4.0 ENGL credits, including 2.0 credits at the 3000 level, and a cumulative average of 70% or higher in all courses taken (or permission of the department).

The course allows the student to select, with the approval of the department, an area for research study which is then pursued under the direction of a member of the department. Students must obtain the agreement of a faculty member to supervise the course and must apply for admission to enrol prior to the commencement of the session in which the course will be offered. See trentu.ca/english for details. Prerequisite: 4.0 ENGL credits, including 2.0 credits at the 3000 level, and a cumulative average of 70% or higher in all courses taken (or permission of the department).