*The Course Schedules below are subject to change once the new Academic Calendar is published as well as pending enrolment pattern changes. Detailed course descriptions by instructors are added when available and are also subject to change.
**Please consult the Registrar's Time Table for mode of delivery for courses.
First-Year Courses
Course Title: Effective Writing
Course Code: ENG100H5F | Lecture TR 9-12
Instructor: Daniela Janes
This course provides practical tools for writing in university and beyond. Students will gain experience in generating ideas, clarifying insights, structuring arguments, composing paragraphs and sentences, critiquing and revising their writing, and communicating effectively to diverse audiences. This course does not count toward any English program.
Group n/a
Detailed Description by Instructor:
This course focuses on developing skills and strategies to empower students as writers. Beginning with the premise that we are all writers, the course helps students to recognize the different rhetorical situations in which their writing occurs, and to shape the writing they do as university students to suit their disciplinary audience and contexts. Students in this course will work on building tools, strategies, and approaches that will help them move from a zero draft to a polished assignment. The course focuses on writing as a dynamic process that includes pre-writing, drafting, revising, and editing. Students will also work on building their skills as researchers, as they learn how to find and evaluate secondary sources. Emphasizing the relationship between writers and their audience, this course teaches students the value of clear, concise prose and helps them locate themselves within the scholarly conversation. Please note that this course does not meet the needs of students primarily seeking to develop English language proficiency.
Selected major readings: A final reading list will be shared before the class begins.
First three texts/authors to be studied: TBA.
Method of instruction: Lecture and discussion.
Method of evaluation: short writing assignments and informed participation, including in-class activities. Attendance and participation are necessary to the successful completion of the course.
Course Title: Effective Writing
Course Code: ENG100H5S | Lecture MW 1-4
Instructor: Siobhan O'Flynn
This course provides practical tools for writing in university and beyond. Students will gain experience in generating ideas, clarifying insights, structuring arguments, composing paragraphs and sentences, critiquing and revising their writing, and communicating effectively to diverse audiences. This course does not count toward any English program.
Group n/a
Course Title: How to Read Critically
Course Code: ENG101H5F | Lecture MW 11-1 | Tutorials MW 1-2, MW 3-4
Instructor: Thomas Laughlin
This foundational course serves as an introduction to a wide range and variety of methods for literary and textual analysis, giving students a set of interpretive tools they can use to analyze texts in English classes and beyond. Emphasis will be on developing close, attentive reading skills as ways of thinking not just about, but through texts, and on deploying these skills effectively in essays and discussions. The class will draw on literary works from a variety of countries, centuries, genres, and media. We recommend that students considering a Specialist, Major, or Minor in English take this course.
Group 1 Literary Theory/Methods
Second-Year Courses
- ENG202H5F British Literature in the World I: Medieval to Eighteenth-Century
- ENG203H5S British Literature in the World II: Romantic to Contemporary
- ENG251H5S Introduction to American Literature
- ENG271H5F Toronto's Multicultural Literatures
- ENG280H5S Critical Approaches to Literature
- ENG289H5S Creative Writing
Course Title: British Literature in the World I: Medieval to Eighteenth-Century
Course Code: ENG202H5F | Lecture TR 1-3 | Tutorials TR 3-4, TR 5-6
Instructor: Michael Raby
This course serves as an introduction to influential texts that have shaped British literary history from Beowulf and Chaucer to Shakespeare, from Milton and Behn to Burney. Students will focus on questions such as the range and evolution of poetic forms, the development of the theatre and the novel and the emergence of women writers. The course will encourage students to think about the study of English literatures in relationship to history, including the history of world literatures.
Exclusion: ENG202Y5
Prerequisite: Open to students who have successfully completed at least 4.0 full credits. Students who do not meet the prerequisite but are enrolled in any 100-level ENG or DRE course (except ENG100H5) may petition the department in writing for approval to take the course. See the guidelines for written petitions on the department website.
Group n/a
Course Title: British Literature in the World II: Romantic to Contemporary
Course Code: ENG203H5S | Lecture TR 1-3 | Tutorials TR 3-4, TR 5-6
Instructor: Chris Koenig-Woodyard
An introduction to influential texts that have shaped British literary history from the Romantic period to the present, covering developments in poetry, drama and prose, from William Wordsworth to Zadie Smith and beyond. The course will address topics such as revolution and war; the increasing diversity of poetic forms; the cultural dominance of the novel; romanticism, Victorianism, modernism and postmodernism; feminism; colonialism and decolonization; the ethnic and cultural diversity of Anglophone literature in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries; literature and sexual identity; the AIDS epidemic; and technology and the digital age. The course will encourage students to think about the study of English literatures in relationship to history, including the history of world literatures.
Exclusion: ENG203Y5
Prerequisite: Open to students who have successfully completed at least 4.0 full credits. Students who do not meet the prerequisite but are enrolled in any 100-level ENG or DRE course (except ENG100H5) may petition the department in writing for approval to take the course. See the guidelines for written petitions on the department website.
Group n/a
Detailed Description by Instructor:
A survey of influential texts that have shaped the British literary heritage, covering poetry, drama, and prose from the Romantic period (1789-1832) to the 21st century. The course is intended to
1) familiarize students with selected major works of the history of British literature;
2) expand interpretative skills through a range of comparative and cultural studies approaches; and
3) focus on honing close reading, and critical writing and thinking skills.
All three serve to help with other courses, to broaden your historical sense of literature, and to polish critical and interpretative skills.
Course Texts
The following have been ordered through the UTM Bookstore, and are available through Google Play:
1] Broadview Anthology of British Literature: One-Volume Compact Edition: The Medieval Period through the Twenty First Century. (Print: $75.95; E-edition: $44.95) https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Joseph_Black_The_Broadview_Anthology_of_British_Li?id=Y7vxBwAAQBAJ
2] Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway. Ed. Jo-Ann Wallace. Broadview: ISBN: 9781551117232 (Print: $12.95; E-edition: %11.95) https://play.google.com/store/search?q=9781770483248&c=books
3] Other material posted to Quercus, under modules.
Recommended Texts:
1) A good glossary, such as The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms. (Ed. Murfin and Ray) Bedford.
2) A good dictionary: Oxford English Dictionary: http://www.oed.com.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/
First Text/Authors to be Studied: Blake, “London”
Method of Instruction: In Person lectures and tutorials; class discussion
Method of Evaluation: Written Assignments
Website: Quercus
Course Title: Introduction to American Literature
Course Code: ENG251H5S | Lecture MW 6-9
Instructor: Raji Soni
This course introduces students to major works in American literature in a variety of genres, from poetry and fiction to essays and slave narratives.
Exclusion: ENG250Y5
Prerequisites: Open to students who have successfully completed at least 4.0 full credits. Students who do not meet the prerequisite but are enrolled in any 100-level ENG or DRE course (except ENG100H5) may petition the department in writing for approval to take the course. See the guidelines for written petitions on the department website.
Group 6 American Literature
Course Title: Toronto's Multicultural Literatures
Course Code: ENG271H5F | Lecture MW 1-4
Instructor: Siobhan O'Flynn
Toronto is one of the world's most diverse and multicultural cities. This course is a study of literature by writers with strong connections to Toronto who explore issues such as diasporas, identity, nationality, place, origin, and the multicultural experience. Writers may include: Judy Fong Bates, Dionne Brand, Austin Clarke, Pier Giorgio Di Cicco, Rohinton Mistry, Michael Ondaatje, M. Nourbese Philip, Shyam Selvadurai, M. G. Vassanji.
Prerequisites: Open to students who have successfully completed at least 4.0 full credits. Students who do not meet the prerequisite but are enrolled in any 100-level ENG or DRE course (except ENG100H5) may petition the department in writing for approval to take the course. See the guidelines for written petitions on the department website.
Group 2 Race, Ethnicity, Diaspora, Indigeneity
Course Title: Critical Approaches to Literature
Course Code: ENG280H5S | Lecture TR 1-3 | Tutorials TR 3-4, TR 5-6
Instructor: Thomas Laughlin
An introduction to literary theory and its central questions, such as the notion of literature itself, the relation between literature and reality, the nature of literary language, the making of literary canons, and the roles of the author and the reader.
Exclusion: ENG267H5
Prerequisites: Open to students who have successfully completed at least 4.0 full credits. Students who do not meet the prerequisite but are enrolled in any 100-level ENG or DRE course (except ENG100H5) may petition the department in writing for approval to take the course. See the guidelines for written petitions on the department website.
Group n/a
Detailed Description by Instructor:
This course introduces students to some of the major authors who have inspired or directly contributed to the unique field of investigation called literary theory. Literary theory raises questions about literature’s relationship to reality, its ability or inability to reflect that reality and intervene in it by shaping or re-shaping an audience’s social and cultural values. At the heart of literary theory is an interrogation of how meaning is made, which investigates the surface meaning of a text as much as the deeper and more coded meanings for which it might be a vehicle. Insofar as it is through our narratives that we primarily construct a concept of self, literary theory asks how the study of literature might shed light on the nature of subjectivity as well. Students can expect to gain a working knowledge of important theorists and their contexts, improve their reading comprehension, and learn to parse the differences between opposing theories and schools of thought and how these apply to the study of literature.
Selected Major Readings:
A selection of readings from authors such as Plato, Aristotle, Friedrich Nietzsche, Georg Lukács, Walter Benjamin, Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Edward W. Said, bell hooks, Stephen Best and Sharon Marcus, Rita Felski, and Lauren Berlant.
First Text/Authors to be Studied:
Plato, Aristotle, Friedrich Nietzsche
Method of Instruction: Lecture; tutorial
Method of Evaluation: Reading Reports x 2; Essay; Exam
Course Title: Creative Writing
Course Code: ENG289H5S | Lecture WF 11-1 | Tutorials WF 1-2
Instructor:Jacob Scheier
Students will engage in a variety of creative exercises, conducted across a range of different genres of literary writing.
Prerequisite: Open to students who have successfully completed at least 4.0 full credits. Students who do not meet the prerequisite but are enrolled in ENG101H or ENG102H5 or ENG110H5 or ENG140Y5 or DRE/ENG121H5 and DRE/ENG122H5 may petition the department in writing for approval to take the course. See the guidelines for written petitions on the department website.
Group n/a
Third-Year Courses
- ENG316H5F Special Topic in Modern and Contemporary Literature (Comic Books, Race, and Gender)
- ENG331H5S Elizabethan Drama
- ENG361H5F Canadian Literature, Beginnings to 1920
- ENG371H5S Special Topic in World Literature (Theatres of Resistance)
Course Title: Special Topic in Modern and Contemporary Literature (Comic Books, Race, and Gender)
Course Code: ENG316H5F | Lecture TR 1-4
Instructor: Chris Koenig-Woodyard
A concentrated study of one aspect of modern or contemporary literature or literary culture, such as a particular subgenre or author, specific theme or the application of a particular critical approach.
Prerequisites: 1.0 credit in ENG and 3.0 additional credits.
Group n/a
Detailed Description by Instructor:
Before launching her own comic, Monstress, with illustrator Sana Takeda in November 2015, writer Marjorie Liu had penned over 80 comics that cover an impressive range of canonical characters and storylines in the Marvel-verse: NYX (2008-2009), Black Widow (2010), Dark Wolverine (2009-10), Daken: Dark Wolverine (2010-11), X-23 (2010-12), and Astonishing X-Men (2012-13). Liu describes her experience as an Asian-American female author working in a predominantly male industry (and in a comic universe comprised of mostly male characters) as one that was estranging:
For years I was the only woman on the X-Men panel at San Diego Comic Con or the only woman at the X-Men retreat. And for years I was the only woman of color, the only person of color, at these gatherings. I did fine, but that’s not the point. Why didn’t that ever strike anyone as odd or problematic?
Well, here’s the deal: being a woman or person of color in a space dominated by white men is like wearing a Klingon cloaking shield: as long as you don’t need to open fire, no one is going to notice whether you’re there or not. No one at these Marvel retreats noticed the absence of women because even the possibility of their participation didn’t exist. ‘Women can’t write superheroes,’ I was told by a top dude in the company.
Liu’s remarks stand at the heart of our course as we concentrate our reading of Liu’s and Takeda’s series Monstress through a critical lens focused on three primary areas: race, gender, and genre (alternative history, comic books, dark fantasy, gothic, and science fiction). Liu’s own sense of the comic book format—that it is a “useful tool of estrangement,” a form for exploring “themes about race, themes about colonialism, slavery, misogyny, patriarchy”—will guide our reading through Monstress as Liu and Takeda compose a politically-charged “postwar superhero comic,” to borrow Ramzi Fawaz’s phrase in The New Mutants: Superheroes and the Radical Imagination of American Comics (2016).
Required Reading and Texts/ Authors to be Studied (in this order):
I have not ordered our course texts through the UTM Bookstore. Paper and electronic copies are available at used books stores, local comic book stores, Amazon.ca/Comixology, and Image Comics (https://imagecomics.com/comics/list/series/monstress/collected-editions).
We are reading the first six trade paperback volumes of Monstress (which cover the first 35 issues of the comic):
1. Liu and Takeda, Monstress, Volume One: Awakening [$9.99 US] https://imagecomics.com/comics/releases/monstress-vol-1-tp
2. Liu and Takeda, Monstress, Volume Two: Blood [$16.99 US] https://imagecomics.com/comics/releases/monstress-vol-2-tp
3. Liu and Takeda, Monstress, Volume Three: Haven [$16.99 US] https://imagecomics.com/comics/releases/monstress-vol-3-tp
4. Liu and Takeda, Monstress, Volume Four: The Chosen [$16.99 US] https://imagecomics.com/comics/releases/monstress-vol-4-tp
5. Liu and Takeda, Monstress, Volume 5: Warchild [$16.99 US]
https://imagecomics.com/comics/releases/monstress-vol-5-warchild-tp
6. Liu and Takeda, Monstress, Volume 6: The Vow [$16.99 US] https://imagecomics.com/comics/releases/monstress-vol-6-the-vow-tp
Quercus (the following will be posted online on our course page):
Liu, Marjorie, (in alphabetical order): Astonishing X-Men, Daken: Dark Wolverine, NYX, Wolverine, X-23 Ramzi Fawaz, The New Mutants: Superheroes and the Radical Imagination of American Comics (2016). Robinson, Lillian S. Wonder Woman: Feminisms and Superheroes. New York: Routledge, 2004. [Excerpts] Scott, Anna Beatrice. “Superpower vs Supernatural: Black Superheroes and the Quest for a Mutant Reality” journal of visual culture 5.3 (2006): 295–314.
Schüssler Fiorenza, Elisabeth. But She Said: Feminist Practices of Biblical Interpretation. Boston: Beacon P, 1992.
Stuller Jennifer K., Ink-Stained Amazons and Cinematic Warriors: Superwomen in Modern Mythology. London: Bloomsbury, 2010).
Williams, Teresa Kay. “Race-ing and being raced: the critical interrogation of ‘passing’.” ‘Mixed Race’ Studies: A Reader. Ed. Jayne O. Ifekwunigwe. London: Routledge, 2004. 166-70.
Method of Instruction: Lecture and Discussion
Method of Evaluation: Essays, Test, and Participation
Website: Quercus
Course Title: Elizabethan Drama
Course Code: ENG331H5S | Lecture TR 9-12
Instructor: Jude Welburn
This course explores English drama to the end of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, with attention to such playwrights as Lyly, Kyd, Marlowe, and Shakespeare.
Exclusion: ENG332Y5
Prerequisites: 1.0 credit in ENG and 3.0 additional credits.
Group 3 Literature pre-1700
Course Title: Canadian Literature, Beginnings to 1920
Course Code: ENG361H5F | Lecture MW 9-12
Instructor: Daniela Janes
This course explores the origins of Canadian literature, with an emphasis upon the post-Confederation period. Students will examine work in a range of genres, which may include novels, short stories, life writing and poetry, and will consider how the nation is being created and debated in print. Topics may include settler colonialism, nationalism, and representation. Attention may also be paid to Canadian book history and print culture in the period.
Prerequisites: 1.0 credit in ENG and 3.0 additional credits
Group 5 Canadian Literature
Detailed Description by Instructor:
This course introduces students to the emerging literary culture of Canada from its beginnings through the First World War. Our readings will cover a range of genres including short stories, novels, plays, poetry, and non-fiction. We will also attend to the historical contexts that shaped the development of the Canadian literary market. We will consider how ideas about the new nation are shaped through stories, and how national narratives are constructed, challenged, and rewritten.
Selected major readings: Misao Dean’s Early Canadian Short Stories: Short Stories in English Before World War I (Tecumseh Press, ISBN. 978-1896133157) and L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables (Norton, ISBN. 978-0-393-92695-8). Additional readings are available online or will be shared via Quercus. A final reading list will be shared before the class begins.
First three texts/authors to be studied: TBA.
Method of instruction: Lecture and discussion.
Method of evaluation: written projects, discussion, and engaged participation.
Course Title: Special Topic in World Literature (Theatres of Resistance)
Course Code: ENG371H5S | Lecture WF 1-4
Instructor: Natasha Vashisht
A concentrated study of one aspect of postcolonial literature or literary culture, such as a particular genre, author, period, regional or national context, or theme, or the application of a particular critical approach.
Prerequisite: 1.0 credits in ENG and 3.0 additional credits.
Group 2 Race, Ethnicity, Diaspora, Indigeneity
Fourth-Year Courses
- ENG463H5F Comedy, Women, Theatre: 1660-1790
Course Title: Comedy, Women, Theatre: 1660-1790
Course Code: ENG463H5F | Lecture TR 5-7
Instructor: Terry Robinson
Prerequisites: 5.0 credits in ENG and 4.0 additional credits
Group 4 Literature 1700-1900
Detailed Description by Instructor:
This course provides a uniquely focused exploration of comedic dramas authored by women ca. 1660-1790. We'll read by playwrights such as Aphra Behn, Susannah Centlivre, Hannah Cowley, Mary Robinson, and Elizabeth Inchbald. In addition to considering eighteenth-century comedic theory and form, we'll think through differences between comedies written for the stage and those written for the page; explore how these authors address matters political, social, and sexual; learn about the professionalization of the woman writer in the eighteenth century; and analyze scholarly criticism in relation to the comedies studied.
Selected Major Readings:
Aphra Behn, The Rover
Susannah Centlivre, The Busy Body
Hannah Cowley, The Belle's Stratagem
First Three Texts/Authors to be Studied:
Aphra Behn, Margaret Cavendish, Susannah Centlivre
Method of Instruction:
Lecture and Discussion (In-Person)
Method of Evaluation:
Participation; Presentation; Essays; Other