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200-level / Introductory Courses

All 500-level courses and a certain number of 200-, 300- and 400-level courses have limited enrolment and require instructors' permission. Students hoping to enroll in these courses should consult the course descriptions on the Department of English website for the procedures for applying for admission. 


ENGL 202 Departmental Survey of English Literature I

Professor Maggie Kilgour
Fall 2017
MWF 14:35-15:25

Full course description

Prerequisite: Open only to English Majors and Minors.

 Description: Required for English Majors and Minors, ENGL 202 is foundational to further study of literature in the department of English. Through readings of and lectures/discussions on a range of major non-dramatic works from the Anglo Saxon period to the mid 18th century, it introduces students to English literary history, while reflecting upon the meaning of tradition, the idea of a canon and of literary history, the concept of “Englishness,” and the significance and purpose of literature. We will trace the development through time of specific literary forms and genres, including lyric, elegy, epic, satire, sonnet, romance, and pastoral. At the same time, we will consider the relation between literature and religion, politics, and culture broadly, asking why people read and write literature, and following the changing ideas of the writer and his/her role in society. This course gives students a knowledge of early literature in English that prepares them for more advanced and specialized study in the department. Class discussions (especially in conferences) and written assignments will help students develop skills of interpretation and communication.

Texts: (texts are available at McGill Bookstore):

Norton Anthology of English Literature. Vol 1. 9th Edition.
Edmund Spenser’s Poetry. Norton Critical Edition. Ed. Anne Lake Prescott and Andrew D. Hadfield. (Included with the Anthology if purchased at the Bookstore)
The Canadian Writer’s Handbook. 6th Edition. Ed. William E. Messenger et al. Toronto: Oxford, 2015. (RECOMMENDED)

Evaluation: 20% mid-term; 40% 5-6 page term paper; 30% formal final exam;10% conference participation

Format: Lectures, conferences, discussion


ENGL 203 Departmental Survey of English Literature 2

Professor Monica Popescu
Winter 2018
MTR 11:35-12:25

Full course description

NB: This course is intended for Faculty of Arts or Faculty of Science Students in a Major or Minor Program in literature in the Department of English.  Not open to students in other Faculties.

Prerequisite: English 202. Not open to students who have taken English 201, the non-Departmental Survey of English Literature.

 Description: This is a survey of British literature from the late 18th century to the present. We will consider the main periods and literary directions—Romantic, Victorian, modern, postmodern and postcolonial—while simultaneously asking questions about the principles of periodization. As this timeframe covers a rich range of texts and authors from various backgrounds, we will discuss both established authors as well as writers who, until a few decades ago, were seldom considered to be part of the canon: women, writers of color, outsiders (Mary Wollstonecraft, Olaudah Equiano, Hanif Kureishi, Angela Carter, Linton Kwesi Johnson). In the case of the well-established writers (William Blake, Charles Dickens, Joseph Conrad, T.S. Eliot) we will draw on texts that showcase the plight of the working classes, distant imaginary or real landscapes, gender and sexuality, and less explored themes. We will study the characteristics of various literary genres, identify the cultural concerns specific to each period, and read the themes and formal elements of poetry, fiction and essays against the social and political background of each era. Finally, the class will assess how authors view literary tradition as well as perceived breaks with tradition to understand how the literary canon comes to be formed and how it changes from one historical moment to another.

Texts:
The Norton Anthology of Literature, Major Authors, Volume 2, 9th edition (Please purchase the recommended edition as it includes two novels that we will study: Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness, Virginia Woolf Mrs. Dalloway)
Mary Shelley: Frankenstein
Sam Selvon: The Lonely Londoners
Kazuo Ishiguro: The Remains of the Day
Course pack (online)

Evaluation (tentative): Paper 25%, Midterm 25%, Final exam 35%, Conference assignments and participation 15%

Format: Lecture and conference


ENGL 204 English Literature and the Bible

Professor Wes Folkerth​
Fall 2017
MWR 10:35-11:25

Full course description

 Description: This course has a dual focus. First, we will study the Bible – the “book of books” composed by multiple authors in multiple languages – in terms of its overall structure, the varied poetic and narrative genres it contains, and its prominent themes and characters. Our text will be the King James Version, a masterpiece of English literature in its own right. We will pay close attention to individual books from the New and Old Testaments. Secondly, we will examine the Bible’s connections with the work of English authors from the medieval to the postmodern periods. This is a very large topic to pursue in a single semester; bear in mind this will be an introductory course on the subject.

Texts: 

The English Bible: King James Version. The Old Testament. A Norton Critical Edition. Ed. Marks, Herbert. New York: WW Norton, 2012.
The English Bible: King James Version. The New Testament and The Apocrypha. A Norton Critical Edition. Eds Hammond, Gerald and Austin Busch. New York: WW Norton, 2012.
Other texts TBD.

Evaluation: midterm essay (30%); final essay (40%); final exam (30%).

Format: Lecture and class discussion


ENGL 215 Introduction to Shakespeare

Professor Kenneth Borris
Fall 2017
MWF 8:35-9:25

Full course description

 Prerequisite: none

Description:A representative sampling of Shakespeare’s plays will provide an introduction to the scope and variety of his drama as it relates to his cultural context and to most of the main genres of his writing.  Shakespeare began creating plays around 1589, and the plays addressed in this course represent the development of his art from somewhat after its beginnings, up to its final phase, around 1612.  They will be dealt with in chronological order, as in the following list of the course readings.  The course will thus provide a strong foundation for appreciating and understanding Shakespeare’s drama.

Texts will be available in paperback for purchase at the Word bookstore, 469 Milton Street, 514-.845-.5640.

Since this course will have conferences, there will be no Friday class after the first week or two (TBA) of term, and conferences will instead be provided at various times on Fridays instead.  You will choose the Friday conference time that suits your other commitments.  As soon as the conferences begin, you will thus have two 8:30 meetings per week for this course, unless you choose the 8:30 conference on Fridays.

Texts:

A Midsummer Night’s Dream
As You Like It
Twelfth Night
Othello
King Lear
The Winter’s Tale
The Tempest

Evaluation: term paper, 50%;  take-home final exam, 40%;  conference attendance and participation, 10%

Format: lectures and weekly conferences


ENGL 225 American Literature I

Professor Peter Gibian
Winter 2018
MWF 12:35–13:25 (with weekly conference sections)

Full course description

 Prerequisite: none

Description: A survey of American literature from its beginnings to the Civil War (1860). While we may begin with early writing—Native Americans, explorers, Puritans, or 18th-century figures such as Benjamin Franklin, for example—the main emphasis will be on literature from the first half of the 19th century: authors such as Irving, Douglass, and Stowe, with a special focus on the major writers of the “American Renaissance”--Emerson, Thoreau, Melville, Poe, Hawthorne, Whitman, and Dickinson. Particular attention will be paid to representative American themes, forms, and literary techniques. No attempt will be made to cover all major writers or writings.

Texts:

Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography and Other Writings
The Norton Anthology of American Literature: 8th edition, Vol. B (1820-1865)

Evaluation (tentative): 20% mid-term exam; 25% essay; 15% conference participation; 40% final exam. (All evaluation—on exams as well as essays—tests abilities in literary-critical writing and analysis; none involves short-answer or multiple-choice exams graded by computer.)

Format: lectures and weekly conferences


ENGL 227 American Literature 3

The American Novel Since 1945

Professor Merve Emre
Fall 2018
TR 11:35-12:55 

Full course description

 Description: This course traces the formal and thematic developments in the American novel from 1945 to the present. We will pay special attention to the relationship between writers and readers, the conditions of publishing, the rise of popular genres, minority voices, and fiction’s engagement with politics. The reading list includes works by Richard Wright, Patricia Highsmith, Vladimir Nabokov, James Baldwin, Thomas Pynchon, assorted Beat writers, Erica Jong, Maxine Hong Kingston, Toni Morrison, Junot Diaz, Lydia Davis, and a final novel selected by student vote.

Texts: 

Richard Wright, Black Boy
Patricia Highsmith, The Price of Salt
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room
Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49
Jack Kerouac, On the Road
Erica Jong, Fear of Flying
Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior
Toni Morrison, Beloved
Junot Diaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Lydia Davis, Can’t and Won’t

Evaluation: TBD

Format: Lecture and conferences


ENGL 228 Canadian Literature 1

Survey of English-Canadian Literature to 1950

Professor Eli MacLaren
Fall 2017
MWF 11:35–12:25

Full course description

 Description: An introduction to Canadian non-fiction, fiction, and poetry in English from its beginnings through the Second World War. Far from being a coherent tradition, early Canadian literature comprises a scattered succession of texts that shed light on both local experiences and global developments. Written in an international language and influenced by a publishing industry centred in London and New York, early Canadian writing in English reflects a country changing with waves of colonization and modernization. In this course, students will become familiar with the major genres that writers in this country adopted to express their experience of Canada: exploration narrative, satire, sketch, nature lyric, short story, long poem, free verse, novel. Emphasis will be placed on the poetics practised by nineteenth-century writers (metre, rhetorical figures). We will look at the ways in which literature manifested major issues in the evolution of Canada, including contact between European immigrants and the First Nations (the fur trade, residential schools), Christianity, French-English political relations, rivalry with the United States, the settlement of the Prairies, and the cultural effects of the First World War. The central goal and challenge of the course will be to understand why early Canadian writers wrote as they did and what ideals structured their visions of the nation.

Texts: 

Robert Lecker, ed. Open Country: Canadian Literature in English (Thomson Nelson)
William E. Moreau, ed. The Writings of David Thompson. Vol. 1, The Travels, 1850 Version (McGill-Queen’s)
Sinclair Ross. As For Me and My House (New Canadian Library)

Evaluation: essay 1 (20%): 4 pp.; essay 2 (20%): 4 pp.; short assignments (incl. pop reading quizzes) (20%); active participation in conference sections (10%); final exam (30%)

Format: lectures and weekly conference sections


ENGL 229 Introduction to Canadian Literature 2

Professor Robert Lecker
Winter 2018
MTR 16:30–17:30

Full course description

Prerequisite: None

 Description: A survey of English Canadian poetry and prose from the Second World War to the present. We will read poetry and short fiction to explore the development of Canadian literature. In addition to looking at the work of specific authors from 1945 to the present, the lectures will cover such topics as Canadian literary nationalism, realism, postmodernism, and different forms of experimentation. We will also look at the idea of nordicity as a central metaphor in Canadian writing and discuss the economic and cultural forces accounting for the construction of a national literature.

Texts: Lecker, Robert, ed. Open Country: Canadian Literature in English. Toronto: Nelson, 2007.​

Evaluation: TBA.

Format: Lecture.


ENGL 230 Introduction to Theatre Studies

Professor Fiona Ritchie​
Fall 2017
TR 08:35-09:55

Full course description

 Description: This course provides a critical introduction to theatre studies, in its branches of dramatic literature, dramatic theory, and theatre history. Our point of departure for this introduction to the field will be plays drawn from the major episodes of western theatre history, beginning with Ancient Greek tragedy through contemporary Canadian and postcolonial performance, and including the Department of English mainstage show. Through the plays, we will examine what “theatre” is in different periods and places, how it is constituted by the material conditions of performance, codified in dramatic genres, and conceptualised in dramatic theory. 

Texts (to be confirmed): J. Ellen Gainor, Stanton B. Garner, Jr. and Martin Puchner (eds), The Norton Anthology of Drama, Shorter Second Edition.

Evaluation (tentative): participation in conference sections (20%), midterm essay or exam (30%), production analysis or short paper (10%), final exam (40%)

Format: lectures, conferences


ENGL 237 Introduction to Study of a Literary Form

Reading Poetry

Professor Michael Nicholson
Winter 2018
MWF 13:35-14:25

Full course description

 Description: In this course we will study a range of British and American poets from the Restoration to Modernity. As we consider the literary histories and cultural contexts of poetry and poetic styles, we will pay significant attention to prosody and poetics. Our survey will explore innovations in poetic form such as the sonnet, the ode, and the ballad, and examine why they appeared within particular literary periods. “Reading Poetry” provides an understanding of how to read diverse poetic genres—from the pastoral to the elegy—as both ancient and modern literary forms. This course ranges across various poetic traditions in order to discover how poets have desired their works to be read as either traditional or innovative in their time. As the semester progresses, we will grapple with the important question of what it means to be a poet. On the one hand, we will encounter claims to spontaneity, innovation, and genius. On the other hand, we will meet with accusations of plagiarism, imitation, and influence.

Besides these aims, “Reading Poetry” offers a guide to reading the ethics and politics of alternative literary traditions, styles, and forms. Primarily in the second half of the semester, will consider the fraught relationship between the English canon and women, queer, African American, and laboring-class poets. The landmark works of these historically marginalized writers renegotiate and reverse the binary myths that obtained throughout much of the modern era: the poet as “primitive” autodidact and the poet as the so-called civilized bearer of cultural capital. Our inquiries into poetry will conclude with reflection on the equally important and problematic roles that the literary critic has played in the development of the genre. At the end of the term, we will discover how the history of criticism continues to shape our present-day concepts of which poets and poems matter, and whose works we call significant, original, and universal.

Texts:

T.S. Eliot, “Tradition and the Individual Talent”
Percy Shelley, “Defence of Poetry”

John Dryden, Mac Flecknoe
John Wilmot (Earl of Rochester), “The Disabled Debauchee,” The Imperfect Enjoyment, “A Song of a Young Lady to her Ancient Lover”
Aphra Behn, Song (“Love Armed”), The Disappointment, Song (“On Her Loving Two Equally”)
Anne Finch (Countess of Winchilsea), Spleen, “Adam Posed,” Nocturnal Reverie
Phillis Wheatley, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (esp. “On Being Brought from Africa to America”)
Edward Taylor, God’s Determinations Touching His Elect and the Elects Combat in Their Conversion and Coming up to God in Christ: Together with the Comfortable Effects Thereof
Jonathan Swift, “Stella’s Birthday,” “A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed,” “The Lady’s Dressing Room,” Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift
Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock, selections from Essay on Man and Essay on Criticism
Thomas Gray, “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”
Oliver Goldsmith, The Deserted Village
Charlotte Smith, Elegiac Sonnets, The Emigrants
George Gordon (Lord Byron), selections from Don Juan
John Keats, “Ode to Psyche,” “Ode to a Nightingale,” “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” “Ode on Melancholy,” “To Autumn,” “To Homer,” “On the Sonnet,” and “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer”
William Wordsworth, selections from Lyrical Ballads (including the preface)
Walt Whitman, “O Captain! My Captain,” selections from Song of Myself
Emily Dickinson, selected poems, especially “I hear a Fly buzz – when I died – ”, “They shut me up in Prose – ”, “There’s a certain slant of light”; “I felt a funeral, in my Brain,” and “Tell all the Truth but tell it slant – ”
Alfred Tennyson, “The Lotos-Eaters,” “Ulysses,” “Mariana,” and The Lady of Shallot
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, selections from Aurora Leigh
Robert Browning, “Porphyria’s Lover,” “My Last Duchess,” “The Bishop Orders his Tomb at Saint Praxed’s Church,” “Fra Lippo Lippi,” “‘Childe Harold to the Dark Tower Came’”
Gerard Manley Hopkins, “God’s Grandeur,” “The Windhover,” “Pied Beauty,” “Felix Randall,” “As Kingfishers Catch Fire, Dragonflies Draw Flame,” “Spring and Fall,” “Carrion Comfort,” “No Worst, There is None. Pitched Past Pitch of Grief,” “Thou Art Indeed Just, Lord . . .”
Algernon Charles Swinburne, “The Roundel,” “Hermaphroditus”
Robert Frost, “Mending Wall,” “Home Burial,” “After Apple Picking,” “The Wood-Pile,” “The Road Not Taken,” “The Oven Bird,” “Birches,” “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” “Acquainted with the Night,” “Neither out Far Nor in Deep,” “Design,” “Provide, Provide,” “The Silken Tent,” “Come In,” “Never Again Would Birds’ Song be the Same,” “The Most of It,” “The Gift Outright,” and “Directive”
W. H. Auden, “The Shield of Achilles,” selections from The Sea and the Mirror, “In Memory of W. B. Yeats,” “Musée des Beaux Arts,” “September 1, 1939,” “In Praise of Limestone,” “As I Walked out One Evening,” and Twelve Songs
Ezra Pound, “In a Station of the Metro” Langston Hughes, “The Weary Blues,” “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” “Dream Variations,” “Cross,” “Song for a Dark Girl,” “Harlem,” “Theme for English B,” “Dinner Guest: Me”
Gwendolyn Brooks, “kitchenette building,” “the birth in a narrow room,” “the rites for Cousin Vit,” “We Real Cool,” “Medgar Evers,” “Boy Breaking Glass,” and selections from Annie Allen
William Butler Yeats, “Sailing to Byzantium,” “The Second Coming,” “Easter 1916,” “When you are Old,” “Adam’s Curse,” “The Stolen Child,” “Lapis Lazuli,” “Long-Legged Fly,” “The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” “No Second Troy,” “Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop” 
Seamus Heaney, “Digging,” “Punishment,” “The Skunk,” “A Dream of Jealousy,” “Casting and Gathering,” selections from Station Island, Clearances, Squarings
Derek Walcott, “A Far Cry from Africa,” selections from Schooner Flight, “Midsummer,” and selections from Omeros
Adrienne Rich, Diving into the Wreck, “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers,” “Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law,” “Modotti,” and “When we Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-vision”
Sylvia Plath, “Tulips,” “Daddy,” “Ariel,” and “Lady Lazarus”
Robert Lowell, “Skunk Hour,” selections from Life Studies, “Mr. Edwards and the Spider,” “My Last Afternoon with Uncle Devereaux Winslow,” “Water,” “For the Union Dead,” and “Epilogue”
Elizabeth Bishop, “Casabianca,” “The Fish,” “Filling Station,” “Sestina,” “In the Waiting Room,” “One Art,” and “The Man-Moth” 

Evaluation: Participation: 10%; Mid-Term: 25%; Essay: 30%; Final Exam: 35%

Format: Lecture and conferences


ENGL 269 Introduction to Performance

Professor Sean Carney
Winter 2018
MW 13:05-14:55

Full course description

Prerequisite: This class is restricted to declared Majors in Drama and Theatre who have completed or are completing ENGL 230 and ENGL 355. Admission is by permission of the instructor only: sean.carney [at] mcgill.ca

 Description: This course will introduce you to basic tools and techniques used in acting, improvisation, and dramatic analysis.  You will develop vocal and physical warm-ups, learn about breath support and a free and placed voice, explore the performance of Shakespeare monologues, participate in improvisation exercises, explore spontaneity, imagination and creativity, learn about the analysis of a contemporary dramatic script and the use of that analysis in the actor’s work.  Throughout the course you will be asked to commit fully to the class, the group and the process, and you will be expected to work on your own, outside of class, rehearsing your monologues and scenes.

Texts: TBD

Evaluation: A combination of class participation (various exercises and presentations totaling approximately 50% of the evaluation) and various types of written assignments (approximately 50% of the evaluation).

Format: Group discussions, practical exercises, class presentations


ENGL 275 Introduction to Cultural Studies 

Instructor Josie Torres Barth
Fall 2017​
MWF 8:35-9:25 

Full course description

 Description: This course, a required course for Cultural Studies majors and minors, will introduce various critical efforts to theorize the aesthetics, semiotics, and politics of popular culture over the past century. Beginning with a few crucial theoretical touchstones (Marx, Freud, structuralism), we will survey such movements as the Frankfurt School, the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, critical race studies, queer theory, affect theory, and various feminisms, as they each formulate critical frameworks to explain how popular culture works. Along the way, we will consider the following questions: What does the “popular” in “popular culture” mean? Does the distinction between “high” and “low” culture have a political dimension? Furthermore, when we do cultural studies, whose culture should be investigated? What is the role of the critic? Finally, how can we grasp the meanings of popular culture: by examining the texts themselves, or by studying the audiences’ interpretations and uses of these texts?

Texts: 

Roland Barthes, Mythologies
Course pack with essays by Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Andreas Huyssen, Raymond Williams, Stuart Hall, Dick Hebdige, Louis Althusser, John Fiske, Janice Radway, Laura Kipnis, Constance Penley, and others.

Evaluation: Evaluation: short papers, midterm quiz, conference participation, final exam

Format: lecture, weekly TA-led conferences


ENGL 277 Introduction to Film Studies

Professor Ned Schantz
Fall 2017
MWF 9:35-10:25 | Screening: TBA

Full course description

 Description: This course is designed to prepare students for future film courses at McGill.  It is therefore dedicated to three main goals: establishing a frame of reference for the history of film and film theory, introducing key analytical concepts and skills, and inspiring an ongoing interest in film.

This course is restricted to Cultural Studies majors/minors and Film Studies minors.

Texts: coursepack

Evaluation: quiz 10%, 3-4 page paper 15%, 5-6 page paper 25%, conferences 15%, posted class notes 5%, final 30%

Format: lecture and conferences plus weekly screenings


ENGL 297 Introduction to Postcolonial and World Literature

Professor Sandeep Banerjee
Winter 2018
TR 14:35–15:55

Full course description

 Description: This course provides a critical introduction to the field of postcolonial and world literature studies, drawing specifically on texts from South Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean. We will examine how these authors conceptualize and represent their lifeworlds and ideas about community, family, history, space, gender, race, and class in their works. As we read these texts we will query the various – and often contested – meanings of the term “postcolonial” and ask how it relates to categories such as “anti-colonial” and “colonial.” The course will also familiarize students with some of the key concepts from postcolonial theory (for instance, “orientalism” and “the subaltern”). The course offers the fundaments of the field and prepares students for further study in postcolonial and world literature.

NOTE: Attendance to film screening(s) and conference(s) is mandatory.

Texts:

Joseph Conrad – The Heart of Darkness
Ngugi wa Thiong’o – The River Between
Aime Cesaire – Discourse on Colonialism
Abdullah Hussein – The Weary Generations
Buchi Emecheta – Second-Class Citizen
Salman Rushdie – Haroun and the Sea of Stories
Film: Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne (Dir: Satyajit Ray, 1969)

Evaluation: TBA

Format: Lectures, discussions, conferences, and screenings

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