Undergraduate Course Listing

An introduction to critical practice and to the assumptions underlying a wide range of approaches to literature. Explores British, American, Canadian, and postcolonial works, and draws on parallels between literary and non-literary language and between literature and other forms of expression. Emphasis is placed on learning through writing.

Digital Humanities is the fusion of digital tools with humanities research and scholarship. Students learn how to bring a solid grounding within the humanities to technological innovations and development, engaging with the use of digital resources and their application in different ways grounded in the fields of the Humanities. Prerequisite: 3.0 university credits.

Cross-listed: HIST-2020H

An introduction to medieval English literature and traces the development of new genres and national, social, and cultural identities. Texts studied feature monsters and dragons, beautiful maidens and courageous knights, fairy lovers, and poor shepherds. Old English texts are read in translation; most Middle English texts are read in the original language. Prerequisite: 1.0 ENGL credit at the 1000 level with a minimum 60% in each course. Not open to students with credit for ENGL 2100Y.

This course explores the literature of the Reformation and Renaissance, including the development of new genres and literary responses to historical events, the revival of classical learning, and the emergence of new national, social, and cultural identities, the romantic and heroic impulses, and the concepts of sacred and profane love. Prerequisite: 1.0 ENGL credit at the 1000 level with a minimum 60% in each course. ENGL 2121H strongly recommended. Not open to students with credit for ENGL 2100Y.

An examination of Shakespeare's dramatic career through the study of representative works spanning the period from the early comedies to the last plays. Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits. Students may take only one of ENGL 2150Y or 2151H for credit.

Explores intersections between medicine and literature with particular attention to the representation of outbreaks and pandemics in historical and contemporary fiction, graphic novels, dystopian works, and film. What does it mean to narrate contagion? What might fictions of contagion teach us about our communities, our priorities, and our (in)humanity? Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits.

Studies a range of works from different periods and genres that raise moral questions and ethical dilemmas concerning issues of social justice involving race, ethnicity, class, gender, age, and other variables. Considers literature's power to evoke the plight of the socially disadvantaged, and the implications for social change. Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits.

Cross-listed: GESO-2703H

Explores the diverse forms, history, social functions and concerns of popular genre fiction. Our study of romance, crime, adventure, horror, fantasy, and speculative fiction considers especially the gendering of affective reading practices, as well as issues of cultural capital, literary taste, and the relation between elite and commercial writing. Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits. Students may take only one of ENGL 2706Y or 2707H for credit.

A survey of graphic fiction and its subgenres. Topics may include the graphic novel, superheroes, comix, and manga. Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits.

The main goal of this course is to examine the various literary renditions of the world's most popular sports. Discover, for instance, hockey's dependence on violence, football's ties to war culture, and baseball's troubling national fantasies--all by reading an eclectic collection of plays, poems, novels, and short stories. Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits.

An introduction to the works of some of the important poets writing in English in the twentieth century, designed to give an overview of modernism and its democratization of poetic language. Writers to be studied may include Yeats, Eliot, Pound, Williams, Stevens, Frost, Thomas, Auden, Bishop, Plath, Klein, and Page. Prerequisite: 4.0 univeristy credits. Excludes ENGL 3802Y/3803H. Students may take only one of ENGL 2802Y or 2803H for credit.

Studies in the works of twentieth-century English, Irish, Canadian, and American playwrights. Writers to be studied may include Shaw, Wilde, Osborne, Pinter, Stoppard, Beckett, Churchill, Gems, Williams, Miller, Albee, Thompson, Walker, and Tremblay. Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits. Students may take only one of ENGL 2804Y or 2805H for credit.

Examines the development of modern fiction from the flourishing of experimental modernism in the 1920s to contemporary voices and trends. The texts are interpreted from both a social/historical perspective and a formal aesthetic perspective. Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits. Students may take only one of ENGL 2806Y or 2807H for credit.

Examines the relationship between theatre and cinema, exploring the limitations of both genres through studying plays that have been made into films. Documentary, television and digital formats are also considered. Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits.

A study of children's literature from the eighteenth century to the present, addressing such topics as folk and fairy tales, the eighteenth-century popular press, the late nineteenth-century cult of the child, illustration, the "Golden Age," and contemporary novels for middle-grade and YA readers. Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits including 1.0 ENGL credit.

Focuses on poetry, stories, picture books, and theatre for children: the emphasis will be placed upon oral narratives, graphic culture, and performance. Texts include nursery rhymes, Where the Wild Things Are, Peter Pan, and Disney's Pinocchio. Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits.

An introduction to the practice of writing prose, both fiction and non-fiction, this course asks students to experiment with a variety of contemporary prose forms. The course will benefit both those interested in pursuing writing careers and those intending to be teachers who hope to incorporate creative writing in their teaching practices. Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits including ENGL 1851H (or permission of the department). Not open to students with credit for ENGL 2859H.

A broad introduction to the practice of writing poetry, this course asks students to experiment with poetic creation in a variety of contemporary modes, forms, and contexts. Weekly writing and editing tasks are required, as is a careful consideration of poetic concepts, modes of working, assigned readings, and poetics. Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits including ENGL 1851H (or permission of the department). Not open to students with credit for ENGL 2859H.

This introductory class on creative non-fiction exposes students to the variety of texts grouped in this genre (personal essay, memoir, journalistic essay, case study, and hybrids), through discussion, practice, and workshop. Students consider issues such as audience, literary strategies, diction, voice, tone, and ethical responsibilities to living subjects. Prerequisite: 0.5 ENGL credit. ENGL 1851H is strongly recommended. Offered only at Trent University Durham GTA.

An introduction to the practice of writing prose and poetry, this course asks students to experiment with a variety of contemporary forms. The course will benefit both those interested in pursuing writing careers and those intending to be teachers who hope to incorporate creative writing in their teaching practices. Prerequisite: 0.5 ENGL credit. ENGL 1851H is strongly recommended. Offered only at Trent University Durham GTA. Not open to students with credit for ENGL 2851H or 2853H.

The Legend of King Arthur and his court has captivated writers and audiences for more than 1000 years. This course covers the Arthurian Legend from its inception up to the present day. Topics covered include courtly love, magic, religion, chivalry, identity, gender, and race in Arthurian material. Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits.

Popular and aristocratic literary forms collided and intermixed in the English Renaissance, producing some of the greatest poetry and drama in English, and fascinating experiments in the new genre of prose fiction. We examine a range of Renaissance bestsellers, considering how writers and editors courted the reading public. Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits.

Compares late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century satire with that of the late twentieth and early twenty-first. Authors such as Lord Rochester, Aphra Behn, Jonathan Swift, Mart Montagu, Alexander Pope, and John Gay are studied alongside comedians such as Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, Joan Rivers, George Carlin, Lewis CK, Sarah Silverman, and Amy Schumer. Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits.

Examines both the rapid evolution of print media from 1660 through to the later eighteenth century brought about by the two-person printing press, and the new genres made possible by this technology: newspapers and magazines, pamphlets, encyclopaedias, cookbooks, comic books, engravings and cartoons, printed music, board games, maps and, of course, novels. Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits.

Cross-listed: MDST-3209H

A study of the "Romantic revolution" and its aftermath in politics, mores, philosophy, religion, and aesthetics. Romantic writers include Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, the Shelleys, Keats, Austen, and others (such as Rousseau, Burke, Wollstonecraft). Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits. Students may take only one of ENGL 3250Y or 3251H for credit. Not open to students with credit for ENGL 3253H.

An examination of American fiction from the flourishing of modernism in the 1920s to contemporary voices and trends. The texts are interpreted as products of American culture, and also as examples of literary genres or aesthetic movements which have a complex history and development within and outside of American literary circles. Prerequisite: 4.0 univeristy credits. Students may take only one of ENGL 3304Y or 3305H for credit.

Looks at the fiction of American writers of Latina/Latino backgrounds whose work addresses issues of maturation and the experience of living outside the dominant culture, and attempts to express the uniqueness of their experience in the United States through innovative narrative techniques. Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits. Students may take only one of ENGL 3306Y or 3307H for credit.

Although African American slaves were denied many civil liberties, including access to literacy, an African American literacy culture nonetheless emerged. This course examines that literary culture through its engagement with and contestation of canonical American literary texts. Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits. Students may take only one of ENGL 3308Y or 3309H for credit.

In the aftermath of the defeat of Napoleon, Europe was convulsed by upheavals that continued throughout the century and culminated in the first modern terrorist bombings during the 1880s. Using novels and essays, this course looks at England in the Victorian era as it attempted to come to terms with its own political unrest. Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits. Not open to students with credit for ENGL 3402Y or 3403H.

Examines the echoes of Empire and "Englishness" in twentieth-century British literature, and traces the emergence of a distinctly post-Empire sensibility in contemporary British culture. Emphasis is placed on the two world wars, the collapse of Empire, the "rise" of the working class, and "new" colonial voices. Prerequisite: 4.0 univeristy credits. Students may take only one of ENGL 3410Y or 3411H for credit.

Modernism was the twentieth century's most influential literary movement. Its repudiation of the modes of thought and art that preceded it worked to reconfigure our ideas of what literature is or can be. This course examines British High Modernism and its various legacies, most importantly anti-modernist and post-modernist approaches. Prerequisite: 4.0 unversity credits. Students may take only one of ENGL 3412Y or 3413H for credit.

In Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Botswana, Zimbabwe, and South Africa, an Anglophone African literature has emerged to address issues of neo-colonialism, national identity, the violence of civil war, the failure of democracy, and the effects of globalization. We examine both the politics and aesthetics of this literature. Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits.

Considers the expectations and functions of narrative, and examines the ways in which the fictions of Indigenous authors draw on, extend, and defy white European literary traditions, and incorporate narrative methods of their own traditions. Fictions by authors in both Canada and the United States will be included. Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits.

Cross-listed: CAST-3481H, INDG-3481H

This course meets the Indigenous Course Requirement.

An overview of developments in Canadian literary culture since the year 2000, this course examines how contemporary Canadian writing challenges CanLit's traditional notions of regionalism, multicultural inclusivity, gender performance and identity, community, feminism, white settler cultures, Indigenous reconciliation, cultural appropriation, nationalism, and various subjectivities. Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits.

Cross-listed: CAST-3509H

Examines some of the major critical approaches to literature and interpretation in the twentieth century: formalism, structuralism and semiotics, reader-response criticism, new historicism, psychoanalytic criticism, deconstruction, and feminism. Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits. Not open to students with credit for ENGL 3600Y.

This course addresses literary and aesthetic theory from Aristotle's time until 1900. It addresses the various principles, suppositions, and standards which have been used in discussions of aesthetic and literary merit over the centuries, and interrogates the judgments and pre-judgments that tend to be involved whenever aesthetic determinations are made. Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits. Not open to students with credit for ENGL 3600Y.

An introduction to critical theories on race, ethnicity, and national culture as they relate to literary theory, criticism, and production. Topics may include racialized identities and difference, power, intersectionality, bodies, decolonialism, Indigenous Knowledge, whiteness, and literature from a range of traditions. Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits. Students may take only one of ENGL 3604Y or 3605H for credit.

We read works that imagine disease, cure, and convalescence as gendered modes, asking how literature exposes pathologization and how authors rewrite illness beyond pathology. We focus on the regulation imposed by cultural and social understandings of "sickness" and the resistance posed by authors to medicalization. Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits.

Cross-listed: GESO-3609H

Examines literary and cultural representations of queerness through historical, theoretical, and aesthetic approaches. What does it mean for a text to be "queer"? How do sexual identities intersect with racial, ethnic, and religious ones? What can explorations of queerness as an identity category tell us about identity itself? Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits.

Cross-listed: GESO-3704H

A study of literature and theory exploring the political, economic, cultural, and existential effects of globalization. With an emphasis on contemporary texts, approaches may focus on energy, cosmopolitanism, migration, technology, and environmentalism among others. Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits.

Studies selected girlhood bodies and narratives as they have developed within the contexts of Canadian and global literature and popular culture. Focusing on the negotiation of girlhood bodies and narratives through a variety of spaces and over diverse borders, this course considers relationships between Canadian and global girlhoods. Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits including 1.0 ENGL credit or permission of the instructor.

Cross-listed: CAST-3709H, GESO-3709H

A writing-intensive workshop in original contemporary fiction, this course offers student writers an opportunity to deepen, extend, and enhance their current creative writing practices using a variety of fictional forms. Weekly writing, editing, reading, and live conversational critiques are required. Prerequisite: 4.0 university credits including ENGL 2851H or 2859H (or permission of the instructor, with portfolio submission). Students may take only one of ENGL 3850Y or 3851H for credit.

Aimed at poets already engaged in an ongoing poetic writing practice, this course asks students to complete weekly, original poetry writing in a variety of contemporary modes, complemented by ongoing readings and discussions of poetry and poetics and the development of peer editing skills. Prerequisite: Prerequisite: ENGL 2853H or 2959H (or permission of the instructor, with portfolio submission).

A double credit in which instruction in research methods leads to a thesis of about 15,000 words. The department deadline for a thesis abstract and bibliography (signed by the thesis supervisor) is May 1 of the student's third year. See www.trentu.ca/english for details.

Designed to permit students, under the direction of a faculty member and with the approval of the department, to apply their skills in written and oral communication as well as their understanding of the role and function of literary culture to practical endeavours. See trentu.ca/english for details. Prerequisite: 4.0 ENGL credits, including 2.0 credits at the 3000 level, a minimum cumulative average of 70%, and permission of the department. Students must obtain the agreement of a faculty member to supervise the course and apply for permission to enrol prior to the commencement of the session in which the course will be offered. Students may take only one of ENGL 4040Y or 4041H for credit.

What happens to the study of the materiality of texts when a screen replaces the paper or parchment, and the stability of the written or printed signs is no longer guaranteed? Topics include paratexts and metadata, archival theory, the Digital Humanities, hypertexts, technology, and the book as fetish. Prerequisite: 14.0 university credits with a minimum cumulative average of 80% and permission of the instructor.

See trentu.ca/english for details. Prerequisite: 4.0 ENGL credits (or permission of the department). Students may take only one of ENGL 4300Y or 4301H for credit.

See trentu.ca/english for details. Prerequisite: 4.0 ENGL credits (or permission of the department). Students may take only one of ENGL 4500Y or 4501H for credit.

Cross-listed: CAST-4501H

See trentu.ca/english for details. Prerequisite: 4.0 ENGL credits (or permission of the department). Students may take only one of ENGL 4600Y or 4601H for credit.

Literary scholars have reclaimed the term "crip" to explore overlaps between queer and disability cultures in neoliberal contexts. The course starts with disability approaches to literature and culture, then considers the emergence of crip theories, studying topics such as heteronormativity, compulsory able-bodiedness, futurities, cure, and "slow death." Prerequisite: 4.0 ENGL credits (or permission of the department). Not open to students with credit for ENGL 4601H in 2018-2019 or 2021-2022.

See trentu.ca/english for details. Prerequisite: 4.0 ENGL credits (or permission of the department). Students may take only one of ENGL 4800Y or 4801H for credit.

See trentu.ca/english for details. Prerequisite: 4.0 ENGL credits (or permission of the department). Students may take only one of ENGL 4802Y or 4803H for credit.

Concentrating on literary prose, poetry, and/or creative non-fiction, this course requires student writers to engage actively in the creation of new works, peer discussions, critiques, and analyses of assigned literary readings. All writing for the course must be created for the literary page rather than the stage, microphone, or gallery. Prerequisite: 4.0 ENGL credits including 1.0 credit from ENGL 2851H, 2853H, 2855H, 2859H, 3850Y/3851H, 3853H, or 3855H; or permission of the instructor. Students may take only one of ENGL 4850Y or 4851H for credit.

Concentrating on literary prose, poetry, and/or creative non-fiction, this course requires student writers to engage actively in the creation of new works, peer discussions, critiques, and analyses of assigned literary readings. All writing for the course must be created for the literary page rather than the stage, microphone, or gallery. Prerequisite: 4.0 ENGL credits including 1.0 credit from ENGL 2851H, 2853H, 2855H, 2859H, 3850Y/3851H, 3853H, or 3855H; or permission of the instructor. Students may take only one of ENGL 4850Y or 4851H for credit.

This course offers students practical experience in creating live theatre in collaboration with Peterborough's Electric City Players. Students may explore on-stage and back-stage opportunities, and will help realize a production of a play and engage in community educational outreach along the way. Enrolment requires the approval of the instructor. Prerequisite: 4.0 ENGL credits and permission of the instructor. Strongly recommended: ENGL 2150Y/2151H or 2152Y/2153H.

The course allows the student to select, with the approval of the department, an area for research study which is then pursued under the direction of a member of the department. Students must obtain the agreement of a faculty member to supervise the course and must apply for admission to enrol prior to the commencement of the session in which the course will be offered. See trentu.ca/english for details. Prerequisite: 4.0 ENGL credits, including 2.0 credits at the 3000 level, and a cumulative average of 70% or higher in all courses taken (or permission of the department).