Course Descriptions 300-Level

This page gives fuller descriptions of 300-level courses based on past syllabi. Note that the specific details of syllabi can vary from term to term, so there may be some variation in course content. See the Undergraduate Calendar for official catalogue descriptions.

Special Topics in Digital Design (ENGL 303): In this course students will learn advanced digital design theory. They will participate in workshops with professional designers, develop specialized digital materials, and contribute signature work to their digital portfolio.

Designing Digital Sound (ENGL 304): In this course students will be introduced to sound production and analysis. Students will learn to record, edit, and implement sound in a variety of genres and formats, with possible areas of investigation including podcasting, documentary, digital games, music, and audio art.

Old English Language and Literature (ENGL 305A): An introduction to the English language in its earliest form, and study of selected prose and poetry from pre-Conquest England in the original language, with attention to historical, cultural, and religious contexts.

The Age of Beowulf (ENGL 305B): A study of the earliest English literature in translation. The heroic epic Beowulf will be studied in depth, along with a selection of Old English poetry and prose, such as lyrics, riddles, and historical and religious writing.

Introduction to Linguistics (ENGL 306A): This course covers the core areas of linguistics: phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics. Linguistics is a science, very different in its approach to language from the literary and rhetorical approaches with which you may be familiar. You will have to learn to see language abstractly, like a geologist looks at rocks, an astronomer at stars. We study what it means for a native speaker to know and use a language: they need to know the sounds, the words, the way words group together, and how those word groups fit into a web of meaning. We're also going to see how that knowledge interacts with other, nonlinguistic areas of cognition—in particular, perception, categorization, abstraction processes, and reasoning—to get some purchase on the way we express and exchange ideas and thoughts through weird little noises or marks on a page or lines and circles on a screen, like these ones.

Also offered online.

How English Grammar Works (ENGL 306B): This course analyzes English grammar structures, "grammar rules," and the reasoning behind them. The course then examines English-language change, and considers grammar in pedagogical and multicultural contexts.

Prereq: ENGL 306A

The History of the English Language (ENGL 306D): This course explores the history of the English language, from Anglo-Saxon dialects ("Old English"), through the combining of Anglo-Saxon and Norman French, its evolution in medieval and early modern Britain, up to its transformation within multilingual and multicultural contexts. The course examines not only the evolving vocabulary and grammar of the language, but also its social history.

Introduction to Semiotics (ENGL 306F): Semiotics is the discipline that studies the capacity of humans (and, in some respects, non-humans) to make, disseminate, and comprehend signs. What is a sign? Basically, a sign is anything that can stand for something else. Obviously, then, the range of semiotic inquiry is very broad—from the language you use, the way you sit, the clothes you put on, the way you wear your hair, the car you drive or the bus you take, etc. In this course we'll have three main tasks: to study the history and theory of semiotics; to learn the vocabulary and methodology of semiotics; and to practice this vocabulary and methodology on all kinds of everyday things.

Critical Discourse Analysis (ENGL 306G): This course provides an introduction to the theory and practice of critical discourse analysis (CDA), the close study of language and its effects in social context. Students will learn to apply discourse-analytical tools to a wide range of texts, conversations, images, and other artifacts.

Race and Resistance (ENGL 308): An examination of how contemporary literary and cultural texts represent, reconfigure, and resist ideas of race. Analyzing literature, film, art, popular culture, and social movements, this course covers major debates in critical race theory and anti-racist practices.

Rhetoric, Classical to Enlightenment (ENGL 309A): A study of rhetorical theories from antiquity through the Renaissance to the eighteenth century, with an emphasis on how these theories reflect changing attitudes towards language, society, and the self.

Prereq: Level at least 2A.

Contemporary Rhetoric (ENGL 309C): An examination of contemporary rhetorical theory and its relationships to criticism, interdisciplinary studies, and digital applications. We will survey the key authors, concepts, issues, and debates of contemporary rhetoric and place them in a practical context. The course will focus on the work of  contemporary rhetoricians such as Richard Weaver, I. A. Richards, Kenneth Burke, Stephen Toulmin, and Chaim Perelman, and will concentrate on contemporary rhetoric at work in culture through power relations, discourse, sexuality, race, media, advertising, and propaganda. Recognizing with Kenneth Burke “how overwhelmingly much of what we mean by ‘reality’ has been built for us through nothing but our symbol systems,” we will examine theories of rhetoric to better understand the pervasiveness of rhetoric in our ways of knowing.

Prereq: Level at least 2A.
Also offered online.

Speech Writing (ENGL 309E): The analysis, writing, and editing of speeches. Analysis will focus on the reading and viewing of several famous 20th-century speeches using theories of communication. Writing and editing will focus on implementing oral/aural communication strategies.

Prereq: Level at least 4A English Rhetoric and Professional Writing or English Rhetoric, Media, and Professional Communication.

The Discourse of Dissent (ENGL 309G): A study of the social, historical, and rhetorical dimensions of collective action. Topics may include health and welfare movements, civil rights and anti-war protests, and environmentalism. Potential activities include historical analyses of resistance groups, rhetorical analysis of texts of resistance, and even collective action as a group project.

Middle English Literature (ENGL 310A): A study of English writings during the later Middle Ages. Possible representative works include romances such as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; alliterative literature, such as The Vision of Piers Plowman; selections from Chaucer; spiritual prose writings; Middle English lyrics and verse.

Prereq: Level at least 2A.

Chaucer 2 (ENGL 310B): A study of Geoffrey Chaucer's writings. Depending on the instructor, this course may focus on a single work such as The Canterbury Tales, or a selection.

Prereq: Level at least 2A.

Early Canadian Literatures (ENGL 313): This course examines a selection of pre-1920 Canadian texts concerning first contact, imperialism, colonization, incipient nationhood, and early multi-racial immigration that participate in the ongoing invention of Canada. This era is home of a surprising variety of genres (the fantasy, the gothic tale), a fascinating range of documents (the letters of the Jesuit missionaries, the journals of pioneer women, the treaties between First Nations and Euro-settler migrants), and forms of writing adapted to suit the particular needs of Old World immigrants in the New World (the long poem on Canada). We will study the early literary history of Canada through a representative selection of its letters, narratives, poetry, and legal documents.

Prereq: Level at least 2A.

Modern Canadian Literature (ENGL 315): This course focuses on the varied ways in which 20th-century writers of poetry and prose participate in the shaping of Canadian literary culture, with emphasis on the literature of the middle decades. Modernism, an international movement in the arts, is variously understood as a period, a style, a particular approach to writing and responding to literature, and a particular response to the political and social issues of the mid-twentieth century. As a period, Modernism in Canada is usually considered to span the middle years of the twentieth century, from 1920 to 1970. In this course, we will look at the impact that Modernism has had on Canadian literature. By reading a number of poetic and prose texts, we will also examine the many definitions of Modernism as they relate to Canadian writing.

Prereq: Level at least 2A.
Also offered online.

Canadian Drama (ENGL 316): This course explores traditions and experiments in Canadian drama through an analysis of Canadian plays, especially those from 1960 to the present, in their historical and theatrical contexts. Students will emerge from this course with a thorough appreciation of the key issues that impacted the development and content of Canadian drama in the twentieth century.

Contemporary Canadian Literature (ENGL 318): This course examines Canadian Literature written in the latter decades of the 20th century and into the 21st century. Literature is one of many powerful discourses that shape how we think about ourselves and our world. In this course we will analyze how specific works of Canadian literature engage with discourses that shape aspects of contemporary Canadian culture. This is NOT a course about “Canadian identity.” It is a course about how ideas about “identity” are formed, reformed, dismantled, critiqued, stablilized, destabilized, argued about, remembered, forgotten . . . in language. Questions to be explored include what are the texts teaching us and how? How do you respond to those messages? How does literature do certain kinds of social, political and cultural work? And what (if anything) is Canadian about all of this?

Prereq: Level at least 2A.

History and Theory of Writing and Print Media (ENGL 319): This course explores the social, political, and cultural contexts and consequences of the media technologies of writing and print (including the book) from their beginnings to the 20th century.

Prereq: Level at least 2A.

History and Theory of Pre-Internet Media (ENGL 320): This course explores the social, political, and cultural contexts and consequences of media technologies such as newspapers, photography and film, radio, recorded music, television and early computing.

Prereq: Level at least 2A.

Postcolonial Literature of the Americas (ENGL 322): This course introduces students to key themes and reading strategies in postcolonial literatures through a comparative study of selected Caribbean, U.S., and Canadian literatures. We will focus on both written and oral genres and discuss how language practices adapt to and are created in colonial and postcolonial environments. The course is organized, in part, to establish literary and cultural contexts for comparing writers and texts from a range of historical and social positions, including colonial, postcolonial, diasporic, and First Nations writers, from 1492 to the present. Issues to be discussed will include national identity and belonging, resistance and creativity, gender and sexuality, and migration and multiculturalism. The core texts will be literary (short fiction, novels, poetry, drama, essays), but we will also explore the importance to postcolonial cultures of music, dance, religious ritual, storytelling, and public performance.

Modern and Contemporary American Drama (ENGL 324): This course explores traditions and experiments in American drama through an analysis of American plays, especially those from the 1940s to the present, in their historical, textual, and theatrical contexts.

Austen (ENGL 325): A study of selected novels by Jane Austen, including Pride and Prejudice and Emma. Her letters and juvenilia may also be considered, as well as some of the films based on or inspired by her novels.

Prereq: Level at least 2A.

Language, Life, and Literature in the Caribbean (ENGL 326): This course introduces students to the ways in which language shapes and sustains various forms of cultural expressions in the Caribbean region. Students will use the creative output of storytellers, poets, DJs, and playwrights as a lens to investigate and trace the evolution of a distinctly Caribbean identity from the post-colonial period (1960s) up to the present. Students are also introduced to the social dynamics of Creole language use in the Caribbean and an exploration of the ways in which these languages are implicated in diverse cultural art forms.

Prereq: BLKST 101 or BLKST 102; Level at least 2A or students pursuing the Diploma in Black Studies or the Diploma in Fundamentals of Anti-Racist Communication

Black Diasporic Lives: 1740-1900 (ENGL 327): An introduction to cultural productions of the Black diaspora pre-1900, with an emphasis on political writing, memoir, fiction, and journalism. Students will engage works from a variety of regions, situated in their historical and cultural contexts, even as connections will be drawn to later social movements.

Prereq: Level at least 2A or students pursuing the Diploma in Black Studies or the Diploma in Fundamentals of Anti-Racist Communication

Introduction to Black Canadian Writing (ENGL 328): An analysis of Black writing and cultural achievement in Canada. Theoretical and literary texts will be studied to explore how contributions from this field have helped to shape Canada from the 18th century to the present.

Prereq: Level at least 2A or students pursuing the Diploma in Black Studies or the Diploma in Fundamentals of Anti-Racist Communication

Sixteenth-Century Literature 1 (ENGL 330A): A study of short poems by such writers as Wyatt, Gascoigne, Whitney, Ralegh, Spenser, the Sidneys, Shakespeare, and Donne. One aim will be to develop your ability to talk and write about how this poetry is written, as well as about what it says. A second will be to understand how the forms of lyric poetry contribute to the languages of love, politics, religion, and philosophy in early modern England.

Prereq: Level at least 2A.

Sixteenth-Century Literature 2 (ENGL 330B): A study of selected genres, topics, and works from Tudor literature.

Prereq: Level at least 2A.

Topics in Creative Writing (ENGL 332): This course will focus on a selected genre, approach, creative method, or other aspect of creative writing. Please see course instructor for details.

Prereq: Level at least 2A

Creative Writing 1 (ENGL 335): Aimed at encouraging students to develop their creative and critical potentials, the course consists of supervised practice, tutorials, and seminar discussions, and lots of opportunities to write, with units on poetry, short fiction, and creative non-fiction. Students will finish the term with a fat, messy folder of first drafts, and a portfolio of professionally polished work.

Prereq: Level at least 3A.

Creative Writing 2 (ENGL 336): Designed to assist advanced creative writers to develop their skills in various genres by means of workshop processes, supervised practice, and critical discussion of one or more major projects. Instructor consent required; admission by portfolio review.

Prereq: Level at least 3A and ENGL 335.

American Literature to 1860 (ENGL 342): A study of developments in early American Literature, possibly including Anglo-European movements such as gothicism and romanticism; captivity narratives and other colonial writings; Afro-American, Native American, and other minority traditions; sentimental and domestic fiction; and indigenous American forms such as the frontier romance, and other minority literatures. We will examine what the literary record tells us about early encounters between European colonists and indigenous peoples, literary contributions to the formation of "America" as an idea, important American cultural figures and movements, and literary reactions to colonial expansion into the West, slavery, and women's place and rights.

Prereq: Level at least 2A.

American Literature 1860-1910 (ENGL 343): A survey of literary developments in America from the Civil War through the turn of the twentieth-century, including significant movements of the period such as realism, regionalism, and naturalism; the New Woman's writing and other developments in women's literatures; popular forms such as the Western; and minority literatures.

Prereq: Level at least 2A.

Modern American Literature (ENGL 344): A study of American Literature from the early twentieth century through the second world war, emphasizing aesthetic innovation in the modernist movement, and its aftermath in the social writings of the 1930s.

Prereq: Level at least 2A.

American Literature in a Global Context (ENGL 345): Traditional literary study began as the study of the literature of nations. The study of British, American, and Canadian literature attempts to define what is unique about a nation´s literary output. While this is certainly a valuable course of study, much literature does not neatly fit national boundaries or express a unified national identity because it arises from the movement of and exchange between different communities. In this course, we will study American narratives (primarily novels) that have arisen from conditions of migration and intercultural exchange. These include narratives about slavery, immigration, border conflicts, colonization, and global capitalism. We will focus on topics including the fluidity of identity, the idea of race and racial hybridity, colonialism, and intercultural exchange.

Prereq: Level at least 2A.
Also offered online.

American Fiction (ENGL 346): A study of four to five writers. Topics may include the evolution of narrative style, realism and anti-realism, literature and story, fiction and history, the novel and film, gender and ethnicity.

Prereq: Level at least 2A.  

Global Asian Diasporas (ENGL 346R): This course explores the literature and culture from one or more global Asian diasporas, with particular emphasis on cultures of East Asian origin. Topics may include identity, transnationalism, imperialism, war, labour, migration, and popular culture.

Prereq: Level at least 2A

American Literature Since 1945 (ENGL 347): We will explore a selection of American writing produced since 1945 in the context of cultural and political history, attending to the ways in which literature not only reflects, but filters, mutates, and re-imagines social material. We will read context not just as "background" but as revealed through close examination of literary activity in its small and large features.

Prereq: Level at least 2A.

American Poetry Since 1850 (ENGL 348): A study of poems, poets, ideas, and movements, contributing to the growth of a distinctive American poetry from Whitman and Dickinson to the twenty-first century. A course on poetry and poetics, poems and theories, ENGL 348 will look at poetry that explores American answers (and a few others) to the question what is poetry? In the absence of a native literary tradition, American poetry, at least since Whitman, has been both experimental and theoretical. The question of what poetry is, or what it’s for, is always implicit.

Prereq: Level at least 2A.

Seventeenth-Century Literature 1 (ENGL 350A): A study of literature by such writers as Jonson, Donne, Wroth, Herbert, Bacon, Milton, Behn, and Dryden. This class will introduce you to the poetry written in seventeenth-century England. Although a perfect understanding of these poems will forever exceed our grasp, we will learn about their relationship to the public life and poetic forms of their time and reflect on the challenges and opportunities they present to modern readers. By making us more perceptive and knowledgeable readers of this poetry, the class also aims to make us more responsive to the experiences that the poems invite us to consider and to the pleasures and sorrows that they invite us to share.

Prereq: Level at least 2A.

Seventeenth-Century Literature 2 (ENGL 350B): This course will further your knowledge of historical British Literature. Our special focus will be John Milton's great epic poem, Paradise Lost. We will make a thorough study of the poem, and come to a better understanding of what it says, how it says it, and why it is as powerful, moving, and compelling as it is. In addition to our work on Paradise Lost, we will explore the popular culture of the period, and work closely with selected seventeenth-century documents.

Prereq: Level at least 2A.
Also offered online.

Early Modern Worlds on Stage (ENGL 361): This course explores plays from the English Renaissance in their historical and theatrical contexts. Topics may include playhouses and staging, censorship, and collaboration.

Shakespeare 1 (ENGL 362): A study of the plays written before 1599-1600, excluding Julius Caesar. Close study of the plays is encouraged, with attention given to Shakespeare's techniques of plot construction, to his accomplishments in language, and to elements of his stage craft. We will reflect on social and political themes, and on the intellectual contribution of Shakespeare's writings. We will discuss the 16th century cultural and theatrical contexts from which the plays arise, and reflect on the uses to which Shakespeare's works are put in the present day. The course introduces students to developments in Shakespeare studies.

Prereq: Level at least 2A.
Also offered online.

Shakespeare 2 (ENGL 363): A study of the plays written after 1599-1600, including Julius Caesar. The principle aim of this class is to make us better--more careful, more knowledgeable--readers of Shakespeare's plays, and thereby to make us more alert and alive to the problems that the plays invite us to experience and contemplate. Although we cannot hope to "know" these plays with any finality, we can become more aware of their involvement with the issues of their time or the challenges they present to modern readers.

Prereq: Level at least 2A.
Also offered online.

Shakespeare in Performance at The Stratford Festival (ENGL 364): An historical, theoretical, and analytical introduction to Shakespeare's plays in performance, both on stage and screen, this course focuses on specific problems and decisive issues of past productions and of those in the current Stratford Festival season.

Prereq: Level at least 2A.

Selected Studies (ENGL 365): Designed to provide a study in-depth of problems and/or authors selected by the instructor. Students interested in initiating such courses are encouraged to do so by bringing their ideas to the attention of individual instructors.

Department Consent Required.

Selected Studies (ENGL 366): Designed to provide a study in-depth of problems and/or authors selected by the instructor. Students interested in initiating such courses are encouraged to do so by bringing their ideas to the attention of individual instructors.

Department Consent Required.

Voice and Text at the Stratford Festival (ENGL 367): Taught by faculty and Stratford Festival coaches, this practical course invites students to explore acting techniques and exercises to develop their stage voice with a particular focus on Shakespeare's plays. This is a block course that meets in Stratford for two weeks in May, and may be taken with ENGL 364, as the two courses are offered at complementary times. The course is offered as part of a consortium with faculty from five universities. Students are required to arrange their own transportation to Stratford.

Prereq: Level at least 2A.

Editing Literary Works (ENGL 371): Investigating scholarly, educational, popular, and electronic editions, this course explores the theory and practice of editing literary texts. More information coming soon.

Prereq: Level at least 2A.

Writing Anti-Racism (ENGL 373): In this course students will be introduced to counterstory as research method, genre, and organizing rhetoric within anti-racist movements. Students will examine counterstory in the context of Critical Race Theory and read classic counterstories by figures such as Derrick Bell, Patricia Williams, Richard Delgado, Bryan Brayboy, Tomson Highway, and Lee Maracle. Course activities will challenge students to assess and assert the value and truth of the Black lived experience, Black epistemologies, and Black knowledge production, including that of Black Canadians and their Indigenous and Allies of Colour. Students will write, workshop, revise, and publish their own actionable anti-racist commitments.

Prereq: One of BLKST 101, BLKST 102, BLKST 103, BLKST 203; Level at least 2A or students pursuing the Diploma in Black Studies or the Diploma in Fundamentals of Anti-Racist Communication

Topics in Black Language and Linguistics (ENGL 375): This course focuses on the formal linguistic, sociolinguistic, and communicative aspects of either a single Black language or a combination of Black languages or language varieties spoken within the contemporary African diaspora, e.g., in Africa, the Caribbean, Canada, or the United States. Attention will be given to the ways in which Black language has developed, how it is deployed by speakers and writers, and attitudes and debates about Black language use in culture, education, and society.

Prereq: One of BLKST 101, 102, 103; Level at least 2A or students pursuing the Diploma in Black Studies or the Diploma in Fundamentals of Anti-Racist Communication

Professional Communications in Statistics and Actuarial Science (ENGL 378): This course introduces students to oral and written communication in the fields of Statistics and Actuarial Science. With emphasis on the public presentation of technical knowledge, the ability to give and receive constructive feedback, and communication in a collaborative environment, this course helps students develop proficiencies in critical workplace skills. This course is writing intensive and includes extensive collaborative assignments.

Students are encouraged to complete this course by their 4A term.

Prereq: At least 70% in one of EMLS 101R, 102R, EMLS/ENGL 129R, ENGL 109, SPCOM 100, 223; (STAT 331,371 or ACTSC 331). For Actuarial Science or Statistics major students only; not open to General Math students.

Information Design (ENGL 392A): The theory and practice of design for print and digital media, including the study of design concepts such as space, colour, typography, interactivity, immersion, motion, and presence. Students apply this knowledge by developing or revising documents. We will look at information design both as a rhetorical practice and as a professional activity, applying this knowledge to everything from document design to urban design and wayfinding.

Prereq: Level at least 2B

Visual Rhetoric (ENGL 392B): This course introduces students to the study of images from a rhetorical perspective, including the interaction of texts and images in such professional writing fields as advertising, book illustration, technical documentation, journalism, and public relations. Issues may include visual and textual literacy, the semiotics and rhetoric of design, and the ideological basis of visual communication.

Prereq: Level at least 2B