English Department 3000 Level Courses
Students should normally have completed nine (9) credit hours in English at the 2000 or 3000 level before taking 4000-level ENGL courses.
4405.1(.2) Advanced Studies in Chaucer
Prerequisite: English 3404.1(.2)
In this course students will examine Chaucer's achievement as a late medieval writer in English within the context of European literature, and especially in relation to early renaissance developments in Italian. Works to be studied in detail may include The Book of the Duchess, The House of Fame, The Parliament of Fowls, Boece, and Troilus and Criseyde.
4417.1(.2) Feminist Literary Theory
[WMST 4417.1(.2)]
This course will engage students in a study of feminist literary theory. Some of the most influential theorists in this area will be analyzed as well as the dominant cultural systems to which they have responded. Students will not be required to have any prior knowledge of the field.
4421.1 Egl Poetry & Prose of 17th C
4422.1(.2) Studies in Renaissance Love Poetry
Prerequisite: twelve (12) credit hours in ENGL at the 2000-level or above.
The course focuses on a representative selection of Renaissance love poetry in its cultural, social and philosophical contexts. It examines the poetic strategies used to explore the meaning and value of love in its relation to sexuality and gender. Special attention will be given to the sonnet form, its relationship to the courtly love tradition and the cult of the "Virgin Queen," Elizabeth I, but other poetic genres will be studied as well. Intellectual and thematic contexts will be constructed from various classical and Italian texts, such as Plato's _Symposium_, the poems of Catullus and Sappho and Petrarch's sonnets. Writers studied may include Wyatt, Sidney, Spenser, Marlowe, Cavendish, Wroth, and Marvell.
4423.1(.2) John Donne and the Literary Traditions of the Renaissance
Prerequisite: twelve (12) credit hours in ENGL at the 2000-level or above.
This course will focus on the work of John Donne, an influential early 17th c. English writer, the founder of the so-called "metaphysical" school of style. Through his work, students will become acquainted with various social and cultural contexts of the Renaissance. Readings will include selections from Donne's devotional and love poems, elegies, verse epistles, sermons and other prose. Also, Donne's work will be compared to the work of other Renaissance writers, and placed within the context of the European Baroque, as represented in visual art and literature.
ENGL 4424.1(.2) Renaissance Literature: Advanced Study
Prerequisite: twelve (12) credit hours in ENGL at the 2000 level or above
The subject of the course will vary from year to year. It allows the opportunity to explore an aspect of Renaissance literature in more depth than is possible in other courses. The following are some examples of possible topics: a single major author or group of authors from the period (e.g. Spenser, Bacon, More); a literary movement or form (e.g. the Metaphysical school of poetry; the Cavalier school of poetry; the epic; the sermon; a social or cultural issue (e.g. "the woman issue"; literature and the institution of the Elizabethan or Jacobean Court); or a close study of one of the major literary works of Renaissance era (_The Faerie Queene_ , _Paradise Lost_, _The Anatomy of Melancholy_)
4427.1(.2) Language, Gender and Power
[LING 3427.1(.2); WMST 4427.1(.2)]
This course examines the role of language and its use in constructing and negotiating social positions of men and women and by men and women. It compares discourse strategies used by powerful/powerless speakers and gender-associated discourse strategies. It examines dialect and generic features used in constructing and maintaining social identities and differences.
4431.1(.2) The Modern Irish Novel
[IRST 4431.1(.2)]
This course will involve a study of the modern Irish novel, placing each work in its social and cultural context. It may include works by James Joyce, Elizabeth Bowen and/or Samuel Beckett, as well as a selection of contemporary novels by writers like Anne Enright and John Banville.
4433.1(.2) Biography
A course focusing on the special features and problems of biographical writing such as subjectivity, bias, historical perspective and the problems of evidence.
4434.1(.2) Autobiography
This course explores the many ways in which various narrative forms are used to represent and relate the self. Texts to be examined will range from classics of autobiographical writing such as De Quincey to modern and contemporary works.
4441.1(.2) The Irish Short Story
[IRST 4441.1(.2)]
This course will examine the short story as a major form in the fiction (in English) of Ireland, tracing its development from the Irish folktale to the sophisticated modern stories of internationally read practitioners such as Joyce, O'Connor, O'Faolain and Lavin.
4455.1(.2) The Modern Novel
A close critical analysis of representative works of a number of prominent late 19th and 20th century novelists in the light of certain literary, cultural, socio-political and philosophic tendencies which have exercised a decisive influence in the formation of the modern imagination.
4456.1(.2) The Postmodern Novel
Prerequisite: twelve (12) credit hours in ENGL at the 3000-level or above.
This course focuses on some of the major novelists of the second half of the twentieth century in the context of the cultural and political climate that has given rise to this fiction and the term postmodernism.
4457.1(.2) Advanced Studies in American Literature
Prerequisite: twelve (12) credit hours in ENGL at the 2000-level or above.
This advanced course in American literature offers intensive treatment of authors, genres, and themes addressed at the intermediate level. Possible topics in the course may include: (1) intensive study of single authors in relation to historical trends in literary criticism (‘reception history'); (2) intensive exploration of particular currents in the development of a specific genres; (3) concept-based courses; or (4) broad-based ‘cultural studies' approaches to American literature.
4458.1(.2) Scottish Literary Traditions
Prerequisite: twelve (12) credit hours in ENGL at the 2000-level or above.
A selective examination of Scottish literary traditions from the late Middle Ages to the 1960's. As required for particular writers, attention will be paid to the Scots language and to cultural background.
4459.1(.2) Contemporary Scottish Literature
Prerequisite: twelve (12) credit hours in ENGL at the 2000-level or above.
A study of Scottish literature from the last quarter of the twentieth century to the present. As required for particular writers, attention will be paid to the Scots language and to cultural background. The study will proceed from the older generation of writers (MacDiarmid, Morgan, Iain Crichton Smith, S. MacLean, G. M. Brown, Spark) who are still influential, to the transitional group (Gray, McIIvanney, Dunn, Kellman), and on to younger contemporary figures (Kuppner, Lochheed, Welsh, Galloway, Kennedy, Rankin and D. McLean).
4462.1(.2) Native North American Literature
Prerequisite: ENGL 1205.1(.2), ENGL 2344 and/or ENGL 2345.1(.2) are strongly recommended.
A course on the literature arising from the awakening of Native American political consciousness in the late twentieth century. The course explores representative works of prose, poetry, drama and fiction in the context of theories generated by borderland studies and Native studies. The course will allow students to study representative works by Native North American writers in more detail than in other courses in Canadian and American literature.
4463.1(.2) Imagining the North in Canadian Literature
An interdisciplinary course that explores the representation of Canada as “true north” in literature and media. Beginning with Glenn Gould's “The Idea of North” and working through representative texts, including selections of Inuit literature written in English, the course emphasizes the mutual influence of the various genres through which Canadians imagine the north. The course exposes students to the effects of the post-modern “blurring of genres” and to the possibilities and problems of interdisciplinary study.
4464.1(.2) Postcolonial Literature: Special Topics
Prerequisite: English 1205.1(.2) and either ENGL 2261.1(.2) or ENGL 2262.1(.2)
This course examines the literatures of specific postcolonial regions. These regions may include Canada, the Caribbean, Africa, New Zealand, Australia and South Asia.
4470.1(.2) The Rise and Fall of the Printed Book
This course focuses on the history of the printed book and examines the phenomenon of mass literacy and its implications in the development of different types of literature.
4475.0 Writing Fiction - Advanced
Additional prerequisite: written permission of Creative Writing Coordinator.
A course designed for students with some experience in writing fiction. Many aspects of the writer's craft, from the germination of a story to the polishing of a final draft, will be explored in workshops. Students who have not completed either ENGL 3375.1(.2) or 3376.1(.2) will be asked to submit a sample portfolio of their work before registration.
4477.1(.2) Writing Poetry (Advanced)
Prerequisite: ENGL 3381.0 or, prior to registration, submission of portfolio to creative writing coordinator.
An advanced creative-writing course, which provides students with opportunities to develop their craft beyond its beginning stages and to have their poems discussed in workshops. The course may include emphasis on poem sequences, long poems, and poets' poetics, including their prose commentaries on subjects ranging from sources of inspiration to arguments about technique.
4485.1(2) Victorian Literature – Advanced Study
The subject of the course will vary from year to year. It allows the opportunity to explore an aspect of Victorian literature in more depth than is possible in other courses. The following are some examples of possible topics: a single major author or group of authors from the period (e.g., Charles Dickens or the Brontës); a literary movement or form (e.g., the aesthetic movement or the sensation novel); a social or cultural issue (e.g., the “woman question” or industrialism in literature); or the literature of a narrowly defined historical period (e.g., the novel in the 1840's or the literature of the fin de siècle).
ENGL 4493.1(.2) Doing Discourse Analysis
(LING4493.1(.2))
Prerequisite: At least twelve (12) credit hours at the 3000 level in English or Linguistics (or permission of the instructor)
The focus is on learning how to do discourse analysis. We will focus on developing skills in the analysis of talk and text using models drawn from linguistics, structuralism and semiotics. The course will explicitly develop skills in analyzing discourse functions as configurations of interaction, experience and organization meaning.
ENGL 4494.1(.2) Approaches to Discourse Analysis
(LING 4494.1(.2))
Prerequisite: At least eighteen (18) credit hours at the 3000 level in English or Linguistics (or permission of the instructor)
Linguistic, structural, post-structural, and semiotic perspectives on discourse analysis are addressed through reading and discussion of key works by authors of “landmark” texts such as R. Jakobsen, J. L. Austen, H. P. Grice, etc. The goals of the course are to (a) familiarize students with some of the “landmark” texts and perspectives on discourse analysis and (b) to develop abilities to develop abilities to relate analyses to cultural and situationally relevant contexts
4552.0; 4555.1(.2)/4556.1(.2) Honours Seminar
Topics chosen will be of a general nature in order to permit the representation of a diversity of historical periods, genres, and the various literary traditions of the English-speaking world. Students will be required to present papers on aspects of the chosen topic and members of the English Department will conduct seminars in their areas of expertise.
4800.0 – 4825.0 Special Author, Special Subject
Additional prerequisite: enrolment in the English honours program or special recommendation of the Department.
These courses provides the opportunity to study a particular author in considerable depth and detail, and requires some measure of independence and initiative in the student.
Tutorials by arrangement with supervisor. 2 semesters
4826.1(.2) -4849.1(.2) Special Author, Special Subject
These courses provide the opportunity to study a particular author, subject, or period in considerable depth and detail and will require some measure of independence and initiative in the student.
ENGL4422.1 STUDIES IN RENAISSANCE LOVE POETRY
Time: TR 10:00 – 11:15
Instructor: T. Tak š eva
Description: This course focuses on a representative selection of Renaissance love poetry in its cultural, social and philosophical contexts. It examines the poetic strategies used to explore the meaning and value of love in its relation to sexuality and gender. Special attention will be given to the sonnet form and its relationship to the courtly love tradition and the cult of the "Virgin Queen," Elizabeth I, but other poetic genres will be studied as well. Intellectual and thematic contexts will be constructed from various classical and Italian texts, such as Plato's Symposium, the poems of Catullus and Sappho and Petrarch's sonnets. Writers studied will include Sir Thomas Wyatt, Sir Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe, Margaret Cavendish, Mary Wroth, Katherine Philips, Sir Walter Raleigh, John Donne, Thomas Nashe, Aphra Behn, the Earl of Rochester and Andrew Marvell.
Texts: TBA
ENGL4424.2 RENAISSANCE LITERATURE ADVANCED STUDY
Time: MW 4:00 – 5:15
Instructor: J. Baxter
Description: The subject of the course will vary from year to year. It allows the opportunity to explore an aspect of Renaissance literature in more depth than is possible in other courses. This year the topic is Shakespeare: The Poet.
Texts: TBA
ENGL4431.1 THE MODERN IRISH NOVEL
Time: TR 11:30 – 12:45
Instructor: S. Kennedy
Description: This course will be a survey of recent Irish novels, including works by Patrick McCabe, John Banville, William Trevor, Anne Enright and other contemporary Irish writers.
Texts: TBA
ENGL4457.2 AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE: THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE
Time: TR 2:30 – 3:45
Instructor: S. Beckford
Description: The Harlem Renaissance is one of the landmarks of African American literary, artistic, and intellectual history. This course covers, selectively, the literature, culture, politics, art, music, photography, and political figures of the Harlem Renaissance. The literature of this period will be studied in the context of the political and historical moment, while engaging literary critical materials about this cultural movement and the writers it produced. We will explore cultural events such as the Great Migration, read selected writings of W.E.B. Du Bois and the N.A.A.C.P.'s Crisis Magazine, and look at Marcus Garvey's "Back to Africa" movement, the Jazz Age, and the post-war social and economic conditions that influenced African American arts.
Students focusing on the Modernist movement will find this course of interest.
Texts:
Claude McKay, Home to Harlem (1928)
Nella Larsen, Quicksand and Passing (1929)
Jessie Redmon Fauset, Plum Bun (1929)
Coursepack
ENGL4463.2 IMAGING THE NORTH IN CANADIAN LITERATURE
Time: MW 1:00 – 2:15
Instructor: R. Hulan
Description: An interdisciplinary course that explores the representation of Canada as “true north” in literature and media. Beginning with Glenn Gould's “The Idea of North” and working through representative texts, including selections of Inuit literature written in English, the course emphasizes the mutual influence of the various genres through which Canadians imagine the north. The course exposes students to the effects of the post-modern “blurring of genres” and to the possibilities and problems of interdisciplinary study.
Texts: The course covers a selection of drama, fiction, film and poetry. There are also critical readings.
Coursepack
Mordecai Richler, Solomon Gursky Was Here
Audrey Thomas, Isobel Gunn
*See the Department website for a complete syllabus
Texts: TBA
ENGL4464.2 POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURE
Time: R 4:00 – 6:30
Instructor: G. Hlongwane
Description: This course examines the literatures of specific postcolonial regions. These regions may include Canada, the Caribbean, Africa, New Zealand, Australia and South Asia.
Texts: TBA
ENGL4475.0 WRITING FICTION – ADVANCED
Time: T 7:00 – 9:30
Instructor: A. MacLeod
Additional prerequisite: Submission of samples of work, and permission of creative-writing coordinator.
Description: A course designed for students with some experience in writing fiction. Many aspects of the writer's craft, from the germination of a story to the polishing of a final draft, will be explored in workshops. Students who have not completed either ENGL 3375.1(.2) or 3376.1(.2) will be asked to submit a sample portfolio of their work before registration.
Texts: TBA
ENGL4485.1 VICTORIAN: LITERATURE: AVANCED STUDY - LITERATURE, TECHNOLOGY, AND VISUAL CULTURE
Time: MW 1:00 – 2:15
Instructor: S. Malton
Description: A study of a selection of fiction of the second half of the nineteenth century will form the basis of our consideration of the social and literary significance of what we can loosely term “technological” developments in the period. We will seek to examine how the advance of the railway, the telegraph, photography and print technologies at once occasioned vast changes in individuals' experience of their world and coincided with monumental social transformations, which altered the understanding and negotiation of public and private space; labour and conceptions of class; gender relations; the relationship between identity, surveillance, and spectacle.
In doing so, we will also consider the form and function of these “technologies”: How did the railway change the natural and social landscape? What was the relationship between advertising and “the masses?” What had the development of photography to do with the discourse surrounding “criminality” and its detection? How did national and political agendas play a role in the development of these technologies? How and why did women become particularly connected to these developments? Secondary readings on these and related topics will thus supplement and enhance our study of the literature.
Texts: TBA
ENGL4494.2 APPROACHES TO DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
Time: R 4:00 – 6:30
Instructor: E. Asp
Description: Linguistic, structural, post-structural, and semiotic perspectives on discourse analysis are addressed through reading and discussion of key works by authors of “landmark” texts such as R. Jakobsen, J. L. Austen, H. P. Grice, etc. The goals of the course are to (a) familiarize students with some of the “landmark” texts and perspectives on discourse analysis and (b) to develop abilities to relate analyses to cultural and situationally relevant contexts.
Texts: TBA
ENGL4554.1 LITERARY REGIONALISM
Time: M 12:00 – 2:30
Instructor: A. MacLeod
Description: TBA
Texts: TBA
ENGL4555.1 HONOURS SEMINAR: POSTHUMANISM
Time: T 4:00 – 6:30
Instructor: T. Heffernan
Description: Over the last twenty years the question of what it means to be human has been a source of contentious debate in the humanities. The revolutionary Enlightenment narratives that challenged an oppressive feudal order and re-envisioned "man" as rational, autonomous, unique, and free have been in turn challenged and critiqued. The emancipatory impulse of liberal humanism has come to be understood as being (un)wittingly complicit in colonialist, patriarchal, and capitalist structures. This critique has since engendered a new understanding of subjectivity. Conceived as local, fluid, contingent, and as contesting and rending the hierarchies of nature/culture, male/ female, human/nonhuman, this posthuman subject is by now a familiar alternative to the conception of the self as fixed, autonomous, authentic, coherent, and universal. Yet the implications of this radical redefinition of subjectivity are only beginning to be unpacked: globalization and its relationship to reproductive, information and bio-technologies represents a new chapter in theorizing posthuman subjectivity. This course will track how the discourse of posthuman subjectivity is being deployed in contemporary society to legitimate social action in the public and private spheres in a transnational context and consider the theory of posthumanism as it concerns the issues of transculturalism, globalization, and ethics. It will address the questions about whether, in the era of late capitalism and the global market, the discourse of posthumanism offers the possibility of an emancipatory politics or conversely whether it is bound by an entirely new set of constraints: it will investigate the possibilities and problems of community, agency, and politics embedded in this theory.
Texts:
Badmington Posthumanism;
Atwood, Orxy and Crake;
Houellebecq, Elementary Particles; Possibility of an Island;
Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go
ENGL4556.2 HONOURS SEMINAR: BECKETT AND IRELAND
Time: T 4:00 – 6:30
Instructor: S. Kennedy
Description: A study of the major works of Samuel Beckett in the context of Ireland.
Texts: TBA
ENGL4826.1 EARLY EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY NOVELS
Time: MW 10:00 – 11:15
Instructor: D. Kennedy
Description: This course focuses on the development of the English novel in the early eighteenth century.
Texts:
Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders (Penguin)
Eliza Haywood, Fantomina (Longman)
Samuel Johnson, Rasselas (Penguin)
Samuel Richardson, Pamel a (Penguin)
Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels (Oxford)
ENGL4827.2 LATE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY NOVELS
Time: MW 10:00 – 11:15
Instructor: D. Kennedy
Description: This course focuses on the development of the English novel in the late eighteenth century.
Texts:
Jane Austen, Emma (Oxford)
Frances Burney, Evelina (Oxford)
Henry Fielding, Tom Jones (Oxford)
Ann Radcliffe, The Romance of the Forest (Oxford)
ENGL4828.1 SHAKESPEARE'S “MINOR” PLAYS
Time: TR 11:30 – 12:45
Instructor: G. Stanivukovic
Description: In this course we will study some of Shakespeare's plays that remain in the shadow of his (so-called) “major” works, but which are remarkable in their own right.
Texts:
William Shakespeare, The Two Gentlemen of Verona; Titus Andronicus, The Comedy of Errors, King John, Timon of Athens, The Taming of the Shrew (Oxford World's Classics Series)
ENGL 4801: Shakespeare and Modern Drama: Theatre and Text
This is a study abroad course which takes place in the spring of 2010. The instruction is at Stratford-upon-Avon and London, UK. For more information, contact Goran Stanivukovic ( goran.stanivukovic@smu.ca ), MN 308, Phone: 420-5708.
This page last modified Tuesday, 01-Nov-2011 10:53:12 ADT