Courses

Course: CRWR 314: Topics in Writing Fiction | Crafting the Literary Short Story
Term: Fall 2024
Session: AS01
Instructor: Lisa Martin

What makes a short story “literary”? Other than length, what are the differences between short fiction and longer fiction? What skills do writers need to develop in order to craft a unified and cohesive literary short story? Through the use of targeted writing exercises, this course will help students to identify and develop the component skills for crafting the literary short story.

Prerequisites: A minimum grade of C- in CRWR 295.

Permission Required: No

Course: ENGL 218: Reading Gender | Women in Gothic Literature
Term: Fall 2024
Session: AS01
Instructor: Lana Krys

This course will explore the theme of gender in Gothic literature, starting from the nineteenth century to the present. We will study the manner in which the Gothic literary sensibility, associated with horror, violence, mystery, eroticism, sentimental excess, ghost-haunted rooms, secret passages, and sinister settings, became a fitting mold for writers to both expose and express a number of concerns associated with patriarchy, women’s entrapment in domestic spheres, their fears of expected childbirth, their demands for universal suffrage, the rise of feminism, and views on sexuality and the body. Exemplary texts will be considered to examine how writers inquired into the horrors that arose from public mythologies related to gender and sexuality and how they created space to explore hidden aspects of gender formulation.

Prerequisites: Minimum grades of C- in ENGL 102 and in three credits of university ENGL, not including ENGL 108, ENGL 111, ENGL 199, or ENGL 211.

Permission Required: No

Course: ENGL 350: Topics in Romantic Literature | Prose Works of the Romantic Period
Term: Fall 2024
Session: AS01
Instructor: Mark Smith

In this course, students will read a selection of prose works by novelists and essayists of the Romantic period (roughly 1780-1830) such as William Godwin, Matthew Lewis, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Sir Walter Scott, James Hogg, Mary Shelley, Thomas Love Peacock, Jane Austen, and Thomas De Quincey

Prerequisites: A minimum grade of C- in three credits of 200- or 300-level ENGL, not including ENGL 205, ENGL 207, ENGL 211, or ENGL 297.

Permission Required: No

Course: ENGL 368: Topics in Race and Gender | Queer Women's Writing of the 20th and 21st Centuries
Term: Fall 2024
Session: AS01
Instructor: Kathryn Holland

This course introduces students to texts by and about queer women that have advanced debates about identity, art, and agency within the larger cultural upheavals of the past century. The course will focus on narrative techniques and language depicting women’s varied sexualities; the formation of intertextual networks; and the reception of queer literature by generations of readers.

Prerequisites: Minimum grades of C- in ENGL 102 and in three credits of university ENGL, not including ENGL 108, ENGL 111, ENGL 199, or ENGL 211.

Permission Required: No

Course: ENGL 381: Topics in Post-Colonial Lit | The Pakistani Novel
Term: Fall 2024
Session: AS01
Instructor: Sara Grewal

This course considers the wide range of writing from Pakistani novelists in the late 20th and 21st century, including works by Bapsi Sidhwa, Mohsin Hamid, Kamila Shamsie, Sorayya Khan, Muhammad Hanif, and Fatima Bhutto. In considering these works that range from poignant memoir to political satire to social drama, students will gain a familiarity with the historical, social, economic, and political circumstances that influence the shape of Pakistani society. We will also discuss the historical trajectory that brought the novel to prominence as an English-language literary genre in Pakistan. Finally, we will ask to what extent these writers’ works can and/or should be circumscribed by the label “Pakistani”; how do each of these authors simultaneously address both national audiences and international audiences, as well as both local and global concerns?

Prerequisites: Minimum grades of C- in ENGL 102 and in three credits of university ENGL, not including ENGL 108, ENGL 111, ENGL 199, or ENGL 211.

Permission Required: No

Course: ENGL 389: Topics in Children's Lit | Monsters and the Monstrous
Term: Fall 2024
Session: AS01
Instructor: Bill Thompson

This course examines monsters and the monstrous in children’s and young adult fantasy and science fiction, from Alice’s Adventures to Harry Potter, and from John Christopher to Suzanne Collins. Using a range of texts, the course will examine the monsters of children’s and young adult literature in relation to shifting definitions of the monstrous and cultural constructions of the child.

Prerequisites: A minimum grade of C- in three credits of 200- or 300-level ENGL, not including ENGL 205, ENGL 207, ENGL 211, or ENGL 297

Permission Required: No

Course: ENGL 405: Topics in Canadian Literature | Diasporic and Indigenous Intersections in Contemporary CanLit
Term: Fall 2024
Session: AS01
Instructor: Camille van der Marel

Texts by Indigenous and diasporic authors are often taught in the same Canadian literature classes and tend to share concerns with race, displacement, national community’s limits, and anti-colonial resistance. Despite these overlaps, scholars are only beginning to place diasporic and Indigenous literature in direct dialogue. Instead of isolating each in single-subject analyses or routing their study through a larger CanLit survey, this class draws on a range of Indigenous and diasporic texts—novels, poetry, drama, essays, films, comics, and short stories—to ask: how are Indigenous and diasporic texts marketed, taught, and archived differently from one another in Canada? How have events like the 1994 Writing Thru Race conference drawn connections between Indigenous and diasporic literary communities, and what do lasting controversies over this conference tell us about literary production in Canada today? Is there a role for racialized diasporic communities in Truth and Reconciliation? What about in Indigenous resurgence This class will additionally address the criminalization of racialized and Indigenous peoples, guest-host hierarchies, urban Indigeneity, solidarity’s possibilities and limits, and constellations of co-resistance in Canadian contexts.

Prerequisites: Minimum grade of C- in 12 credits of 200- or 300-level ENGL courses.

Permission Required: No

Course: ENGL 495: Twentieth Century Literature | Narrative Theory: Narrators and Narratees
Term: Fall 2024
Session: AS01
Instructor: Sarah Copland

This course explores the range of innovations narrative fiction writers have undertaken in their use of narrators and narratees, exposing students to concepts of unreliability, omniscience, focalization, unnatural narration, second-person narration, “we” narration, and the often-overlooked narratee. Focusing mostly on modern and contemporary short stories and novels, the course hones students’ understanding of narrative technique and its relation to the texts’ diverse themes and subjects. For example, the political, ethical, and affective engagements of texts like Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day, Junot Diaz’s “How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, or Halfie,” and William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” will be understood as rooted in and inextricably tied to these texts’ use of unreliable narration, second-person narration, and “we” narration, respectively. The course pairs primary texts with accessible selections from narrative theorists.

Prerequisites: Minimum grade of C- in 12 credits of 200- or 300-level ENGL courses.

Permission Required: No

Course: ENGL 496: Intersections-Theory & Culture | Historioplastic Metafiction
Term: Fall 2024
Session: AS01
Instructor: Josh Toth

Since (at least) the 1990s, critics have struggled with the ostensible death of postmodernism. While many have argued (or simply assumed) that postmodernism’s cultural dominance has come to an end, its most notorious narrative form—metafiction (or “self-aware” fiction)—has continued to flourish. If postmodernism has indeed come to an end, how do we account for the persistence of metafiction? Are these new works of metafiction no longer postmodern, no longer corrosively ironic? Alternatively, does the persistence of metafiction simply denote the persistence of postmodernism—or even the possibility that postmodernism has dangerously metastasized in the new millennium? How, in short, does this new metafiction tend to function, and to what end? Students will grapple with these questions—and their broader implications (e.g., our contemporary understanding of mimesis, ontology, ethics, etc.)—by examining American metafictional texts produced in the so-called “post-postmodern” era. More specifically, and while considering metafiction’s relation to a number of disparate philosophical trends (from German idealism to “speculative materialism” and “object-oriented ontology”), students will consider texts such as Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves, Saldivar Plascencia’s The People of Paper, Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad, Percival Everett’s Percival Everett by Virgil Russell, Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House, and Craig Gillespie’s I, Tonya. Proof of metafiction’s persistence, such texts seem indicative (also) of an emergent aesthetic trend that is both a repetition and an “overcoming” of postmodernism. More specifically, students will explore the possibility that recent works of metafiction often sublate the apparent nihilism and moral vacuity of postmodernism by renewing the possibility of grasping what is true, what is real.

Prerequisites: Minimum grade of C- in 12 credits of 200- or 300-level ENGL courses.

Permission Required: No

Course: CRWR 316: Topics in Literary Non-Fiction | Why I Write: Writing about Writing
Term: Winter 2025
Section: AS01
Instructor: Lisa Martin

This course will focus on personal autobiographical writing about literary artistic practice. Together, we will consider a number of approaches to “writing about writing” and students will write, workshop, and revise their own original literary essays. Possible model texts will range from James Baldwin’s personal essays to Seamus Heaney’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech to the work Joan Didion famously “stole the title” for from George Orwell—i.e. “Why I Write.” Each student will also leave the course having drafted and revised a short-form Artist Statement suitable for grant applications or applications to graduate programs in Creative Writing.

Prerequisites: A minimum grade of C- in CRWR 295

Permission Required: No

Course: CRWR 317: Topics in Creative Writing | Film Adaptation
Term: Winter 2025
Section: AS01
Instructor: Jackie Baker

In this intermediate screenwriting course, students will build on writing and workshop skills learned in CRWR 295 and short film conventions and structures learned in previous screenwriting courses by selecting a short story in the public domain and adapting it to an original short film script. This course will be structured as a workshop. Collaborative peer editing will be weighted equally with creative work.

Prerequisites: A minimum grade of C- in CRWR 295

Permission Required: No

Course: CRWR 404: Advanced Seminar in Creative Writing | The Ghost Story
Term: Winter 2025
Section: AS01
Instructor: Jackie Baker

This intensive seminar will focus on the development of writing and editing skills in the short fiction subgenre of the literary ghost story. In original short stories, students will explore broadly the idea of what it means to be “haunted,” ranging from the purely supernatural or speculative to how hauntings can manifest out of issues of grief, loss, and trauma. Work may include elements of classic horror, fantasy, or science fiction, but high fantasy, YA, and children’s literature will not be appropriate for this course. During the workshop process, students will be required to act as professional writers and editors, critiquing and making suggestions for revision in the work of their peers. Collaborative peer editing will be weighted equally with creative work. Students will be expected to be reading widely both contemporary and classic ghost stories and to make reference to the techniques of the writers of those stories in peer edits and during class discussions.

Prerequisites: Minimum grades of C- in 12 credits of 300-level CRWR and consent of the department. By October 15, 2024, students should write to the instructor (bakerj20@macewan.ca) with a rationale for wishing to take the course and a list of creative writing courses they have already taken. Eligible students will be notified in early November and will be issued a permission number. Please note that after October 30, 2024, applications will be considered on a first-come, first-served basis.

Permission Required: Yes

Course: ENGL 364: Topics 20th/21st Century Lit | Feminism, Gender, and Sexuality in Virginia Woolf and Her Heirs
Term: Winter 2025
Section: AS01
Instructor: Sarah Copland

This course explores selected novels, short stories, essays, and lectures by modernist writer Virginia Woolf, as well as contemporary novels, graphic novels, films, and other media productions based on her work. Our central aim is to understand Woolf’s contributions to the feminist movement, gender theory, sexuality studies, and women’s writing and her legacy in these areas on contemporary writers, artists, and theorists. We trace a lineage of descent and development from, for example, Woolf’s Orlando (1928), whose protagonist changes sex and gender and lives for centuries, to Sally Potter’s 1992 film adaptation. We explore Woolf’s To the Lighthouse (1927), whose representation of marriage, motherhood, childhood, and art are central to the ways in which Alison Bechdel comes to grips with her sexuality, her vocation, and her relationship with her mother in her graphic novel Are You My Mother? (2012). We ground our engagement with the work of Woolf and her heirs in a survey of contemporary feminist Woolf scholarship.

Prerequisites: Minimum grades of C- in three credits of 200- or 300-level ENGL, not including ENGL 205, ENGL 207, ENGL 211, or ENGL 297.

Permission Required: No

Course: ENGL 368: Topics in Race and Gender | Passing
Term: Winter 2025
Section: AS01
Instructor: Josh Toth

This course will consider the way in which “passing”—the act of racial passing, especially—has been depicted in American literature and film since the late-19th century. By considering a wide spectrum of texts—from Mark Twain’s Pudd'nhead Wilson and Alan Crosland’s The Jazz Singer to James Weldon Johnson’s Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, Nella Larsen’s Passing and (even) Billy Wilder’s Some Like it Hot and Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?—we will consider the way in which representations of passing highlight while often subverting America’s tendency toward exclusionary identity politics. Students will consider (also) the ways in which the very possibility of passing frustrates assumptions about race, gender, sexuality, class, national belonging, and humanity. At the same time, students will explore the possibility that literature itself can (and often does) “pass” in ways both radical and subversive.

Prerequisites: Minimum grades of C- in ENGL 102 and in three credits of university ENGL, not including ENGL 108, ENGL 111, ENGL 199, or ENGL 211.

Permission Required: No

Course: ENGL 382: Topics in Literary Studies | EcoGothic
Term: Winter 2025
Section: AS01
Instructor: Lana Krys

This course traces the representation of human relationships with the environment in literature and film that have been labelled “ecoGothic.” The course will focus on the cultural productions of the mid to late twentieth century and twenty-first century, exploring the environmental imagination of the Gothic/horror genre through the framework of ecoGothic/ecohorror theories (drawing on recent scholarly investigations in Anthropocene Gothic and folk horror). A selection of readings will include (but is not limited to) works by Margaret Atwood, Stephen King, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Halyna Pahutiak, Helen Simpson, Olga Tokarczuk, Jeff VanderMeer, and several films.

Prerequisites: A minimum grade of C- in three credits of 200- or 300-level ENGL, not including ENGL 205, ENGL 207, ENGL 211, or ENGL 297

Permission Required: No

Course: ENGL 388: Topics in Film Studies | The Horror Movie
Term: Winter 2025
Section: AS01
Instructor: Mike Perschon

Horror is a popular genre that has historically lacked critical and popular respect, despite master director Brian De Palma’s contention that horror is “the closest thing we have today to pure cinema.” This course will look at some of the greatest horror movies ever made, from the silent era all the way to today’s “new horror.” We’ll start with one of the earliest horror films, the German classic Nosferatu, and proceed with a noteworthy example from each decade, experiencing some of horror’s definitive moments, with classics such as Bride of Frankenstein and Cat People, along with drive-in "trash" such as Night of the Living Dead and Texas Chainsaw Massacre, reviled cult classics like John Carpenter’s The Thing, and more recent hits like It Follows. Using Julian Hanich's excellent study of the horror film and affect, Cinematic Emotion in Horro Films and Thrillers, we'll investigate the peculiar pleasure of choosing to be scared out of our minds.

Prerequisites: A minimum grade of C- in three credits of 200- or 300-level ENGL, not including ENGL 205, ENGL 207, ENGL 211, or ENGL 297

Permission Required: No

Course: ENGL 391: Topics in Literary Theory | Imitation, Translation, Modernity
Term: Winter 2025
Section: AS01
Instructor: Mark Smith

In this course, students will trace the literary theoretical concepts of imitation and translation from canonical ancient texts by Plato, Aristotle, and Horace through critical statements by writers of the late 17th c., 18th c., Romantic, and modernist periods. After the Enlightenment and the Romantic reaction to it, the concepts of historicity and modernity (or “the modern”) become central to most working theories of poetics and writing. The question is no longer only how does one write? or how does one learn the craft of writing well? It becomes as well how does one write in a way that is right or fitting for the (modern) era in which one lives? How to represent “modern life” in poetry or narrative? The concept of modernity, coiled around the older concepts of mimesis and translation, insinuates itself into all of the texts we will read in the second half of the semester.

Prerequisites: A minimum grade of C- in three credits of 200- or 300-level ENGL, not including ENGL 205, ENGL 207, ENGL 211, or ENGL 297

Permission Required: No

Course: ENGL 401: Studies in Genres | Lyric Theory
Term: Winter 2025
Section: AS01
Instructor: Sara Grewal

This course will focus on the genre of lyric poetry by examining theoretical approaches to the form in various schools of thought, from Romanticism to New Criticism to Post-structuralism and beyond. The course will also trace a historical trajectory through which lyric ballooned from a designation for a specific sub-type of poetry to a designation for poetry and “poetic-ness” as a whole. Finally, we will examine debates in approaches to lyric poetry in academic scholarship produced within the last 5-10 years, while also discussing the extent to which lyric holds as a genre and/or theoretical body when applied to poetic practices outside of the West.

Prerequisites: Minimum grade of C- in 12 credits of 200- or 300-level ENGL courses

Permission Required: No

Course: ENGL 489: Themes, Traditions, Phenomena | Nonhuman Narration
Term: Winter 2025
Section: AS01
Instructor: David Hollingshead

This course examines the use of nonhuman narrators in literary fiction over the last fifty years and asks why representations of nonhuman consciousness – including animals, aliens, artificial intelligence, and even inanimate objects – have become an increasingly common response to a variety of sociopolitical problems, from anthropogenic climate change to the afterlives of slavery and settler colonialism. Nonhuman narration is not a recent invention: folk and Indigenous literary traditions have invoked animal perspectives for millennia, while the genre of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century “it-narratives” depicted capitalism’s global of extraction and exchange from the commodity’s point of view. And yet, the recent insistence on rendering nonhuman narrators as active political agents suggests that literature’s capacity to imagine perspectives beyond the human makes it an important site for theorizing the uneven and sometimes unpredictable dynamics of social change.

Prerequisites: Minimum grade of C- in 12 credits of 200- or 300-level ENGL courses

Permission Required: No