A study of the diverse and vibrant forms of literary expression that give voice to the Black experience in Canada, with changing emphasis on authors, time periods, Black geographies, politics and aesthetics. The range of genres considered may include the slave narrative, memoir, historical novel, Afrofuturism and “retrospeculative” fiction, poetry, drama, as well as the performance cultures of spoken word, dub, rap, DJing and turntablism.

A study of selected topics in literary criticism. Schools of criticism and critical methodologies such as New Criticism, structuralism, poststructuralism, Marxism, psychoanalysis, gender and sexuality studies, New Historicism, and postcolonialism will be covered, both to give students a roughly century-wide survey of the field and to provide them with a range of models applicable to their own critical work as writers and thinkers. Recommended for students planning to pursue graduate study in English literature.

A literary analysis of the Hebrew Bible (Christian Old Testament) and of texts that retell the stories of the Bible, including the Quran. We will study Biblical accounts of the creation, the fall of Adam and Eve, Noah's flood, Abraham's binding of Isaac, the Exodus from Egypt, and the Judges, Prophets, and Kings of Israel as works of literature in their own right, and we will study British, American, European, African, Caribbean, and Indigenous literary texts that, whether inspired by or reacting against Biblical narratives, retell them.
Pre-1900 course.

A literary analysis of the New Testament and the ways that the stories of Jesus have been reworked in British, American, European, African, Caribbean, and Indigenous literature and visual art. The Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and the Book of Revelation will be considered as literature, and we will study later literary texts that, whether inspired by or reacting against Biblical narratives, retell them.
Pre-1900 course.

Over the course of five centuries, European empires changed the face of every continent. The present world bears the traces of those empires in the form of nation-states, capitalism, population transfers, and the spread of European languages. We will consider how empire and resistance to empire have been imagined and narrated in a variety of texts.

The world is increasingly interrelated - economically, digitally, and culturally. Migrants and capitalists move across borders. So do criminals and terrorists. Writers, too, travel between countries; novels and films are set in various locales. How have writers had to re-invent generic conventions to imagine the world beyond the nation and the new links among distant places?

This course traces the evolution of the antihero trope from its earliest prototypes in pre- and early modern literature, through its Gothic and Byronic nineteenth-century incarnations, twentieth-century existentialists, noir and Beat protagonists, and up to the “difficult” men and women of contemporary film, television, and other media. We will examine the historical and cultural contexts that enabled the construction and enduring popularity of this literary archetype, particularly in relation to gender and sexuality, race, class, religion, and (post-)colonialism.

A study of major novels in the Victorian period. Authors studied might include Charles Dickens, the Bronte sisters, George Eliot, and Thomas Hardy. Central to the study of the novel in the period are concerns about social and political justice, historical awareness, personal perspective and narration, and the development of realism.
Pre-1900 course

A study of popular fiction during the Victorian period. This course examines the nineteenth-century emergence of genres of mass-market fiction, which remain popular today, such as historical romance, mystery and detective fiction, imperial adventure, fantasy, and science fiction.
Pre-1900 course

A study of fantasy and the fantastic from 1800 to the present. Students will consider various theories of the fantastic in order to chart the complex genealogy of modern fantasy across a wide array of literary genres (fairy tales, poems, short stories, romances, and novels) and visual arts (painting, architecture, comics, and film).

This writing workshop is based on the art and craft of the personal essay, a form of creative nonfiction characterized by its commitment to self-exploration and experiment. Students will submit their own personal essays for workshop, and become acquainted with the history and contemporary resurgence of the form.

An introduction to the poetry and nonfiction prose of the Victorian period, 1837-1901. Representative authors are studied in the context of a culture in transition, in which questions about democracy, social inequality, the rights of women, national identity, imperialism, and science and religion are prominent.
Pre-1900 course

An exploration of major dramatic tragedies in the classic and English tradition. European philosophers and literary critics since Aristotle have sought to understand and define the genre of tragedy, one of the oldest literary forms in existence. In this course, we will read representative works of dramatic tragedy and investigate how tragedy as a genre has evolved over the centuries.
Pre-1900 course

An historical exploration of comedy as a major form of dramatic expression. Comedy, like its more august counterpart tragedy, has been subjected to centuries of theoretical deliberation about its form and function. In this course, we will read representative works of dramatic comedy and consider how different ages have developed their own unique forms of comedy.
Pre-1900 course

A study of fairy tales in English since the eighteenth century. Fairy tales have been a staple of children’s literature for three centuries, though they were originally created for adults. In this course, we will look at some of the best-known tales that exist in multiple versions, and represent shifting views of gender, race, class, and nationality over time. The course will emphasize the environmental vision of fairy tales, in particular, the uses of natural magic, wilderness adventures, animal transformations, and encounters with other-than-human characters.

Selections from The Canterbury Tales and other works by the greatest English writer before Shakespeare. In studying Chaucer's medieval masterpiece, students will encounter a variety of tales and tellers, with subject matter that ranges from broad and bawdy humour through subtle social satire to moral fable.
Pre-1900 course

A study of selected medieval texts by one or more authors.
Pre-1900 course

Long before the travel channel, medieval writers described exciting journeys through lands both real and imagined. This course covers authors ranging from scholar Ibn Battuta, whose pilgrimage to Mecca became the first step in a twenty-year journey across India, Southeast Asia, and China; to armchair traveller John Mandeville, who imagines distant lands filled with monsters and marvels. We will consider issues such as: how travel writing negotiates cultural difference; how it maps space and time; and how it represents wonders and marvels. Students will also have the opportunity to experiment with creative responses such as writing their own travelogues.

Pre-1900 course.

A study of the poetry, prose, and drama written in England between the death of Queen Elizabeth in 1603 and the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660. This course will examine the innovative literature of these politically tumultuous years alongside debates concerning personal and political sovereignty, religion, censorship, ethnicity, courtship and marriage, and women's authorship.
Pre-1900 course

A focused exploration of women's writing in the early modern period. This course considers the variety of texts produced by women (including closet drama, religious and secular poetry, diaries, letters, prose romance, translations, polemical tracts, and confessions), the contexts that shaped those writings, and the theoretical questions with which they engage.
Pre-1900 course

A study of the real and imagined multiculturalism of early modern English life. How did English encounters and exchanges with people, products, languages, and material culture from around the globe redefine ideas of national, ethnic, and racial community? In exploring this question, we will consider drama and poetry together with travel writing, language manuals for learning foreign tongues, costume books, and maps.
Pre-1900 course

Studies in literature and literary culture during a turbulent era that was marked by extraordinary cultural ferment and literary experimentation. During this period satire and polemic flourished, Milton wrote his great epic, Behn her brilliant comedies, Swift his bitter attacks, and Pope his technically balanced but often viciously biased poetry.
Pre-1900 course

An exploration of literature and literary culture during the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries. We will trace the development of a consciously national culture, and birth of the concepts of high, middle, and low cultures. Authors may include Johnson, Boswell, Burney, Sheridan, Yearsley, Blake, and Wordsworth.
Pre-1900 course

An examination of generic experimentation that began during the English Civil Wars and led to the novel. We will address such authors as Aphra Behn and Daniel Defoe, alongside news, ballads, and scandal sheets: and look at the book trade, censorship, and the growth of the popular press.
Pre-1900 course

A contextual study of the first fictions that contemporaries recognized as being the novel. We will examine the novel in relation to its readers, to neighbouring genres such as letters, nonfiction travel writing, and conduct manuals, and to culture more generally. Authors might include Richardson, Fielding, Sterne, Burney, Austen and others.
Pre-1900 course

From Augustine’s Confessions to Dante’s New Life, medieval writers developed creative means of telling their life stories. This course tracks medieval life-writing from Augustine and Dante to later figures such as Margery Kempe—beer brewer, mother of fourteen, and self-proclaimed saint—Thomas Hoccleve, author of the first description of a mental breakdown in English literature, and Christian convert to Islam Anselmo Turmeda/‘Abd Allāh al-Turjumān. In these texts, life writing is used for everything from establishing a reputation to recovering from trauma to religious polemic. The course will also explore how medieval life writing can help us to understand 21st century practices of self-representation, from selfies to social media.

Pre-1900 course.

How do video games connect to English literature? In what ways can they be “read” and assessed as storytelling texts? How do video game narratives reflect historical, cultural, and social concerns? Although active playing will be a required part of the course, students of all video game experience levels are welcome.

A study of the Romantic Movement in European literature, 1750-1850. This course investigates the cultural and historical origins of the Romantic Movement, its complex definitions and varieties of expression, and the responses it provoked in the wider culture. Examination of representative authors such as Goethe, Rousseau, Wollstonecraft, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake, P. B. Shelley, Keats, Byron and M. Shelley will be combined with study of the philosophical and historical backgrounds of Romanticism.
Pre-1900 course

An investigation of how nineteenth-century literature is translated into our contemporary world through art forms like music, architecture, film, television, graphic novels, or online and social media. What is it that makes us keep returning to the past, and how does each adaptation re-make the original into something new and relevant?
Pre-1900 course.

This course focuses on queer studies in a transhistorical context. It serves as an introduction to queer theory and culture, putting queer theory into conversation with a range of literary texts as well as other forms of media and culture. This course might explore contemporary LGBTQ2+ literature, media and popular culture; the history of queer theory; and literary work from early periods to recover queer literary histories.