Second-Year Course Offerings
Check back frequently for updates.
Fall 2012
| Course # | Course Title | Professor | Day & Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 203 | Intermediate Academic Writing: Hoaxes, urban legends, and culture jamming | Burgoyne | |
| 204 | Business and Technical Writing | TBA | Multiple sections |
| 221 | North American Indigenous Literatures: Orality, Literacy, Transformations | Thompson | |
| 231 | Speculative Fiction: Contemporary Fantasy | Doughty | |
| 240 | Ways of Reading | Rout | |
| 273 | Ancients and Moderns | Arnold | |
| 274 | Traditions and Transformations: Telling Stories: The Narrating Voice | Beedham | |
| THEA 203 | Communication/Public Speaking | TBA | 2 sections |
Spring 2013
Course # |
Course Title |
Professor |
Day & Time |
| 204 | Business and Technical Writing | TBA | Multiple sections |
| 220 | Canadian Literature in Context: Ghosts and Other Unsettled Remains | Martin | |
| 230 | Literature and Popular Culture: Canadian Comics: Rebels and Heroes | Stanley | |
| 232 | Children's Literature | Wytenbroek | |
| 240 | Ways of Reading—Readers Reading | Beedham | |
| 273 | Ancients and Moderns: Medieval Revival | Burgoyne | |
| 274 | Traditions and Transformations: The Elegy and the Elegiac | Sprout | |
| THEA 203 | Communication/Public Speaking | TBA | 2 sections |
*Note the prerequisites for composition courses: "a minimum C in each of two first-year university English courses (one of which is usually Engl 115)"; and for literature courses: "Two semesters in first-year university English courses, with at least one literature course, and a minimum grade of "C" in both."
2012-13 Timetables
Fall 2012 - Course Descriptions
ENGL 203: Intermediate Academic Writing: Hoaxes, urban legends, and culture jamming
Professor Daniel Burgoyne
This is a course in written composition--its theory and practice, its production and reception. The course emphasizes the writing process and the rhetorical concerns and principles that govern that process.
In order to provide a unified area of 
exploration for the class, we will focus our research and writing on hoaxes and urban legends. A hoax may be defined as a singular, deliberate public deception. We will attempt to go beyond common sense accounts and moralistic reactions to hoaxes by tracing different literary antecedents and exploring related phenomena such as urban legends, culture jamming, imaginary texts, plagiarism, and parody.
This is a writing intensive course. You should be prepared to write on an on-going basis, to share your writing with fellow students, and to read others’ writing and provide constructive feedback.
Texts:
Janet Giltrow et al., Academic Writing: An Introduction, 2nd Edition (Broadview, 2010)
Alex Boese, The Museum of Hoaxes (Plume, 2003)
Jan Harold Brunvand, Too Good to Be True: The Colossal Book of Urban Legends (Norton, 2001)
Writing Resources available via Moodle
Selected articles and case studies available via Moodle
ENGL 204: Business and Technical Writing
Multiple sections (TBA)
An introduction to business and technical communication skills with a focus on documents (such as letters and reports) and presentations. Topics may include planning, outlining, summarizing, presenting data, handling references, and editing. The course comprises several practical assignments, including a formal report and an oral presentation. ENGL 204 was formerly called ENGL 225; credit will not be granted for both courses.
ENGL 221: North American Indigenous Literatures
ORALITY, LITERACY, TRANSFORMATIONS
Professor Dawn Thompson
In this course we will explore not only the development of Aboriginal literature from its oral traditions, but also the many different possibilities for merging oral and literate artistic productions, how each culture transforms the other, and how together they permit, even demand, a variety of critical responses. In the process, we will learn about the radical differences between oral and literate cultures, how they impact peoples' visions of themselves, of language, and of the world. We will consider a number of different genres - transcribed orature, fiction, drama, poetry, and essays – looking at how each reflects and transforms oral and literate ways of knowing and being.
Tentative Reading List
Joseph Boyden, Three Day Road
Marie Clements, Unnatural and Accidental (dir. Carl Bessai)
Louise Erdrich, Tracks
LeAnne Howe, Evidence of Red
Thomas King, One Good Story, That One
Ellen Rice White, Legends and Teachings of Xeel’s The Creator
Reading package of transcribed oral tales and theoretical articles
ENGL 231: Speculative Fiction: Contemporary Fantasy
Professor Terri Doughty
No orcs or hobbits here! For some, the term fantasy brings to mind formulaic, bloated epics set in pseudo-medieval worlds; however, contemporary fantasy explores the intersection of the fantastic and the mundane in recognizably modern settings.
Just as these texts play with the boundary between the real and the unreal, they also tend to explore generic boundaries, combining elements from fantasy, science fiction, mystery, myth, folktale, and horror. As we examine this genre play, we will focus particularly on how contemporary fantasy interrogates the workings of the imagination and our constructions of reality.
Texts: A selection of 6 novels from the following: Neil Gaiman, American Gods; Charles de Lint, Spirits in the Wires or Someplace to be Flying; Nalo Hopkinson, Brown Girl in the Middle of the Ring or Skinfolk; Lisa Tuttle, The Mysteries; Robin McKinley, Sunshine; Lev Grossman, The Magicians; and Jo Walton, Among Others.
This course is offered in a blended delivery format: it can be taken face-to-face, entirely online, or as a combination of the two.
The wall painting in the photograph is by artist Mariusz Waras, Poland
ENGL 240: Ways of Reading
Professor Katharina Rout
Do books from different parts of the world have to be read differently? How do we read in a globalized world anyway?
In order to explore ways of reading contemporary global fiction, we will study examples of transnational writing and learn about the impact of cultural globalization on literary studies.
As we listen to the voices of trans-lingual storytellers, we will examine the blurred line between fiction and literary non-fiction; discuss migration and the changing notions of “home” as they shape the setting of a novel; and learn about the fluidity of a nomadic identity and about racial or ethnic identities in multicultural metropolises.
With Zadie Smith’s White Teeth (2000) we will travel to London and Bangladesh, with Dave Eggers’s What is the What (2006) to Atlanta and Sudan, with Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss (2006) to India and New York, and with Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007) to New Jersey and the Dominican Republic. Paul Jay’s critical study Global Matters: The Transnational Turn in Literary Studies (2010) will provide us with a map for the journey.
Texts:
Eggers, Dave, What Is the What (2006) [excerpts]
Desai, Kiran, The Inheritance of Loss (2006)
Diaz, Junot, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007)
Jay, Paul, Global Matters: The Transnational Turn in Literary Studies (2010)
Smith, Zadie, White Teeth (2000)
ENGL 273: Ancients and Moderns
Professor Richard Arnold
An examination of the power of the past in the literary present. The course may focus on the shaping influence of ancient traditions on contemporary literature, on the origins of literature in religious traditions and the continuing power of myth, or on the shift from oral to written culture.
ENGL 274 Traditions and Transformations—Telling Stories: The Narrating Voice
Professor Matthew Beedham
In this course we examine the transformations that have occurred in the narrating of fiction by reading six novels published over a span of almost 200 years. Our concern will be more formal than topical; that is, we will be interested in discovering how these various works are narrated. We will be interested in questions like the following: What voice has the author chosen and can we figure out why? What rules has the author created for the narration? Are they always followed? What are the consequences of choosing this voice? As well as these questions, and many more we will develop along the way, we will be interested in charting the development of the narrating voice as we move from one era to the next.
Reading List:
Jane Austen, Persuasion (1818)
Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights (1847)
Henry James, What Maisie Knew (1897)
Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway (1925)
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita (1955)
Kazuo Ishiguro, A Pale View of Hills (1982)
Evaluation:
Participation 5%
Short Weekly Writing Assignments 10%
Short Essay 20%
Research Essay 35%
Final exam 30%
THEA 203: Communication/Public Speaking
Two sections (TBA)
A practical course designed to develop awareness of the skills involved in effective oral communication and to improve techniques of organization and presentation.
Spring 2013 - Course Descriptions
ENGL 204: Business and Technical Writing
Multiple sections (TBA)
An introduction to business and technical communication skills with a focus on documents (such as letters and reports) and presentations. Topics may include planning, outlining, summarizing, presenting data, handling references, and editing. The course comprises several practical assignments, including a formal report and an oral presentation. ENGL 204 was formerly called ENGL 225; credit will not be granted for both courses.
Engl 220: Canadian Literature in Context: Ghosts and Other Unsettled Remains
Professor Jeannie Martin
Bad spirits cannot be supposed to linger near a place where crime has never been committed. The belief in ghosts, so prevalent in old countries, must first have had its foundation in the consciousness of guilt.
—Susannah Moodie, Roughing it in the Bush
As to ghosts or spirits they appear totally banished from Canada. This is too matter-of-fact country for such supernaturals to visit. Here there are no historical associations, no legendary tales of those that came before us. Fancy would starve for lack of marvellous food to keep her alive in the backwoods.
—Catherine Parr Trail, The Backwoods of Canada
Despite what its first literary settlers observed, Canadian literature is haunted by ghosts. The phantoms and unsettled remains of our history mark that from which we have been wrenched or have attempted to banish from memory. Yet the dead, the displaced, and the forgotten persistently creep into our stories, informing our values, shaping our mythologies, and shadowing our sense of self and belonging. Spectral figures in the haunted houses of our fiction—the windigos and lost children, the abandoned and the forsaken—inspirit the Canadian literary imagination with guilt-ridden secrets and unplumbed mysteries that trouble over-easy notions of identity. Reading Canadian literature in its historical context, we will disturb some of those unsettled remains that haunt our current narratives to ask: what frightens us and on what structures do our dread and horror rest?
Tentative Texts:
Anderson-Dargatz, Gail. The Cure for Death by Lightening
Boyden, Joseph. Three Day Road
Hayden Taylor, Drew. The Night Wanderer: Native Gothic Novel
Vanderhaeghe, Guy. The Englishman’s Boy
Watson, Sheila. The Double Hook
Selected essays from Sugars, Cythia, and Gerry Turcotte, eds. Unsettled Remains: Canadian Literature and the Postcolonial Gothic (VIU digital library holdings)
Method of Evaluation:
Participation 10%, In-Class Essay 20%, Take-Home Essay 20%, Research Essay 25%, Final Exam 25%
ENGL 230: Literature and Popular Culture: Canadian Comics: Rebels and Heroes
Professor Marni Stanley
“Did your mother ever tear up your comic books? Did you ever receive warnings about how comic books were going to ruin your mind? Were you given lecture about how comics were cheap trash put out by evil men?” Robert Crumb
Let English 230 introduce guilt free comic book reading. Graphic Narrative is the general term for comic books, graphic novels, graphic memoir and reporting, and other genres within the art. It is narrative that uses both text and image. If we accept that comics are a language then the images must be read and not just received. One way to do that is by looking at both the page and its component parts—panels, balloons, lettering, composition within the frame, & sound effects. The narrative of the graphic text is created by the interaction of language and the visual. In this course we will focus on Canadian comics as both a literary form and a cultural phenomenon.
Authors may include: Seth, Chester Brown, Julie Doucet, Gord Hill, Jillian and Mariko Tamaki, and Jeff Lemire.
ENGL 232: Children's Literature
Professor Lynn Wytenbroek 
One of the most prevalent motifs running through Children’s Literature, from the Nineteenth century on, is that of nature. From formal gardens to the wilderness, nature provides not only a background for action but also a rich environment for all sorts of themes. There are even books in which nature is a character in and of itself. This course will look at picture books as well as novels for children and young adults from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries which feature nature in a significant way. Part of the emphasis throughout this course will be the great ability of children's literature "to teach and to delight" both child and adult readers.
Texts will be taken from the following:
Picture Books: Lottridge, The Name of the Tree; Seuss: The Lorax; Spalding: Solomon’s Tree; Steptoe: The Story of Jumping Mouse; Wood: The Rainbow Bridge
Novels: Anderson, Speed; Bell: Speak to the Earth; Cooper, The Dark Is Rising; Grahame, The Wind in the Willows; Hodgson-Burnett, The Secret Garden; Hughes: Invitation to the Game; Katz, Whalesinger; Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea; Lewis, The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe; McNaughton: Secret Under My Skin; Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables; Tolkien, The Hobbit.
ENGL 240: Ways of Reading—Readers Reading
Professor Matthew Beedham
In this course we will examine the different theoretical approaches to analysing literature that focus on the experience of the reader. We will discuss Rhetorical Criticism and the ways that readers are coaxed into various experiences while reading. Investigating Reader-response Criticism we will explore the freedoms and consequences of elevating the reader’s interpretation above all others. Finally, turning to Cognitive Poetics we will start to uncover the wealth of interpretive strategies offered at the intersection of cognitive linguistics and psychology. Alongside these theoretical readings, we will read one novel and a wide selection of poetry and short fiction.
Reading List:
Selected fiction (poetry and short stories).
Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day. Vintage. 1989.
Evaluation:
Participation 5%
Short Weekly Writing Assignments 10%
Short Essay 20%
Research Essay 35%
Final exam 30%
ENGL 273: Ancients and Moderns: Medieval Revival
Professor Daniel Burgoyne
This course will provide background in a range of medieval stories and mythology, including Arthurian Romance, Celtic mythology, and Gothic architecture. It will then trace examples of Gothic revival in the eighteenth century and again in the late Victorian period, the turn to Arthurian themes in Romantic and Victorian poetry, including the Pre-Raphaelites, and the ambitious reinvention of the medieval found in modern fantasy literature.
Texts:
Medieval source texts/resources (available via Moodle)
Horace Walpole, Castle of Otranto
William Morris, The Wood Beyond the World
Alfred Lord Tennyson, Idyll of the Kings
Marion Zimmer Bradley, The Mists of Avalon
George R. R. Martin, A Game of Thrones
ENGL 274: Traditions and Transformations: The Elegy and the Elegiac
Professor Frances Sprout
This course will examine the traces of the Classical elegy in contemporary poetry and prose, following its development through Milton into the pastoral elegy and then through the challenges posed to the form by Romanticism. While considering how responsive this form has (or has not) been to the social changes of the 20th century with its refusal of the elegy’s traditional consolation, we will look for its influence in prose fiction and non-fiction. So many novels begin with a statement of death, and their focus is so often on the protagonists/narrators reconciling themselves to that loss. How much of their formal structure can be traced directly back to the Classical elegy? Similarly, what of the memoir of loss? Does the elegy’s form still reflect social expectations of mourning?
Tentative Texts:
Courseware, including a representative selection of poems as well as several theoretical readings (Freud’s “On Mourning and Melancholia,” for example); Several short stories including Bronwen Wallace’s “The Scuba Diver in Repose,” Madeleine Thien’s “Simple Recipes”
3 or 4 books chosen from the following: Mark Doty’s Dog Years: A Memoir; Joan Didion’s Year of Magical Thinking; Thomas King’s Medicine River; Timothy Findley’s The Piano Man’s Daughter; Johanna Skibsrud’s The Sentimentalists
THEA 203: Communication/Public Speaking
Two sections (TBA)
A practical course designed to develop awareness of the skills involved in effective oral communication and to improve techniques of organization and presentation.