This ain’t your high school English class!
Senior-level ENGL courses that will get you reading and writing in a whole new way.
Check out the list below of senior-level English courses being offered this coming academic year in the Faculty of Arts here at the University of Alberta.
*Please note that course content, delivery method and instructors are subject to change. Refer to the course syllabus for full and final details.
Fall 2021
English 208 (ENGL 208) — History of the Book
Number of Sections Offered: 1
Professor/Instructor: Dr. Kristine Smitka
Delivery Method: In-person, Entirely or mostly synchronous/real-time
Course Time: T/R from 2–3:20 PM
Pre-requisite: *6 of junior English, or *3 of junior English plus WRS 101 or WRS 102
Course Description: Take a look at this photo of a book called The Metaphorical Kindle, which is housed in the Bruce Peel Special Collections library right here at the UofA. If you feel curious about this object, you may be interested in this class on book history, which shifts attention away from cultural content (like analyzing the words on the page), and towards how this content moves through the world (like analyzing how books are made and sold). In this class, we will examine everything from hand-crafted luxury items to mass-produced consumer objects with the goal of reflecting on the relationship between the production of books and the production of culture. While we will cover a large range of historical moments and geographical locations, at least one-quarter of the course will focus on Canadian-, Edmonton-, and Indigenous-content.
Main Themes: Industry, Invention, Progress
Other Themes Covered: Identity | Social change | Technology | Power and authority | Social concerns, issues
Other faculties/programs that would take this as an option course: Education | Science
English 307 (ENGL 307) — Metis Literature
Number of Sections Offered: 1
Professor/Instructor: Marilyn Dumont
Delivery Method: In-person, Entirely or mostly synchronous/real-time
Course Time: T/R from 2–3:20 PM
Pre-requisite: *6 of junior English, or *3 of junior English plus WRS 101 or WRS 102
Course Description: Indigenous women and the many ways water is biological/spiritual/emotional
Main Themes: Identity | Nature and the environment | Time, cycles of life | Has significant Indigenous content | Equity, Diversity, Inclusivity and Decolonization
Other faculties/programs that would take this as an option course: ALES | Education | Native Studies | Women and Gender Studies
English 360 (ENGL 360) — Race in American Texts
Number of Sections Offered: 1
Professor/Instructor: Teresa Zackodnik
Delivery Method: Online, A combination of synchronous/real-time and asynchronous/any-time
Course Time: T/R from 11AM-12:20PM
Pre-requisite: *6 of junior English, OR *3 of junior English plus WRS 101 or 102.
Course Description: In this course we will study American literature and other cultural texts that represent and theorize racialization. Students can expect to learn about:
- “minoritized” writing traditions in the U.S.,
- technologies of racialization that vary historically and are ongoing,
- how “race” is represented, inscribed, challenged in literatures written in the U.S.,
- how genre, aesthetics and “race” can intersect, or how representing “race” can be reflected in the genre a writer chooses to work in, adapt, rework; and in representational and rhetorical choices they make.
To do this, we will study literature by white, African American, Asian American, and Indigenous writers and thinkers from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Main Themes: Equity, Diversity, Inclusivity and Decolonization
Other Themes Covered: Identity | Social change | Beliefs and values | Power and authority | Social concerns, issues
Winter 2022
English 467 (ENGL 467 — B1) Studies in Race and Ethnicity (English Literature)
Number of Sections Offered: 1
Professor/Instructor: Louise Harrington
Delivery Method: In-person, Entirely or mostly synchronous/real-time
Course Time: T/R 12:30–1:50PM
Pre-requisite: *6 of junior English or *3 of junior English plus WRS 101 or WRS 102; and *12 of senior-level English, *6 of which must be at the 300 level.
Course Description: Learn about the history, geography and politics of borders, lines and walls in a postcolonial context and in (post-)conflict societies through a discussion of literature and documentary film. We’ll explore the partitions of India, Ireland and Palestine, Apartheid in South Africa, and the US-Mexico border. In this course students will read “Borders and Borderlands”
Main Themes: Borders and identity
Other Themes Covered: Conflict and adversity | Hope | Equity, Diversity, Inclusivity and Decolonization
Other faculties/programs that would take this as an option course: Business | Education | Native Studies
English 306 (ENGL 306) — Life Writing
Number of Sections Offered: 1
Professor/Instructor: Julie Rak
Delivery Method: In-person, Entirely or mostly synchronous/real-time
Course Time: M/W/F from 12–12:50PM
Pre-requisite: *6 of junior English, OR *3 of junior English plus WRS 101 or 102.
Course Description: Is the truth stranger (and more fun) than fiction? YES! In this course, we will study works of auto/biography within the field of life writing, which looks at nonfictional texts like memoir, biography or automedia, the representation of the self in film or other media. We will begin with the development of autobiography from its early beginnings in religious confession and move to contemporary developments, including the “new” biography, Indigenous life writing, autobiographical film, and more. Issues we explore will include: genre and popular writing; the “culture of confession” and autobiography; Canadian and Indigenous autobiography; the explosion of autobiographical comics; trauma and testimony; and digital life narrative.
Main Themes: Identity
Other Themes Covered: Conflict and adversity | Social change | Beliefs and values | Heroes and Leaders | Time, cycles of life | Power and authority | Social concerns, issues | Has significant Indigenous content | Current Events and Pop Culture | Equity, Diversity, Inclusivity and Decolonization
Other faculties/programs that would take this as an option course: ALES | Education | Native Studies | Science
English 398 (ENGL 398-B1) — Histories of Reading
Number of Sections Offered: 1
Professor/Instructor: Professor Danielle Fuller
Delivery Method: In-person, Entirely or mostly synchronous/real-time
Course Time: T/R from 11AM-12:20PM
Pre-requisite: *6 of junior English, OR *3 of junior English plus WRS 101 or 102
Course Description: Reading is a practice you are doing right now — but have you ever stopped to consider the literacies, communities and industries that made you into a reader? In this course we will tackle that question alongside some others: What is the history of reading? What is the difference between an ‘ideal’ reader and an actual reader? How is the history of print reading part of the history of colonization? And what does it mean to be a reader now, in the twenty-first century, when we can access reading material through a range of devices on multiple platforms?
We will engage with the history of reading in various regions of the world, with an emphasis on North America and Western Europe. We will use a variety of historical and contemporary case studies, artefacts, online resources and secondary texts (historical and theoretical) to explore the different ways that readers have acted in different geographical places and at different times in history.
The aim of the course is to provide students not only with some knowledge of the history of readers and reading, but also with a vocabulary and with conceptual frameworks that they can use to think and write critically about different cultures and practices of reading.
Main Themes: Social concerns, issues
Other Themes Covered: Identity | Social change | Industry, Invention, Progress | Beliefs and values | Power and authority | Social concerns, issues | Current Events and Pop Culture
Other faculties/programs that would take this as an option course: Education | Science
English 250 (ENGL 250) — Introduction to Canadian Literatures
Number of Sections Offered: 1
Professor/Instructor: Professor Danielle Fuller
Delivery Method: In-person, Entirely or mostly synchronous/real-time
Course Time: T/R from 2–3:20PM
Pre-requisite: *6 of junior English, OR *3 of junior English plus WRS 101 or 102
Course Description: What are “Canadian Literatures”? How can we read them critically and responsibly? This course will introduce students to the study of Canadian literatures via a series of texts, problems and issues. It will do this by engaging critically with the nation, specifically Canada, as a framework for literary study by considering the relationship between Canadian Literature and colonization and by examining how postcolonial, diasporic and indigenous ways of thinking about literature can help us to interpret and analyse what we read.
You will read a selection of texts emerging from a range of communities. Texts written in different genres and time periods, and at various periods of time, ranging from the eighteenth century to the present. You will discuss, research and write about ideas that emerge from these texts and learn how to situate both ideas and texts in their cultural, social, linguistic, historical and political contexts.
Main Themes: (Literature and Culture) Made in Canada
Other Themes Covered: Identity | Conflict and adversity | Social change | Beliefs and values| Fantasy and imagination | Power and authority | Social concerns, issues | Equity, Diversity, Inclusivity and Decolonization
Other faculties/programs that would take this as an option course: ALES | Education
