ENGL 1202 + ENGL 1204 | KPU.ca - Kwantlen Polytechnic University

KPU English Students

In both ENGL 1202 and ENGL 1204, students will engage in writing-intensive activities as they analyze literary texts. They will apply literary analysis through close reading, informed discussion, and formal writing. Most ENGL 1202 sections focus on topics chosen by the individual instructors. ENGL 1204 involves the study of genres (poetry, drama, fiction, etc.) and some instructors of ENGL 1204 have topics as well. NOTE: This list is subject to change without notice.

ENGL 1202 and 1204 Topics for Spring 2025

SURREY:

ENGL 1202 S10 & S11 (Blended Asynchronous) - Robert Dearle
Let Me Out! In this section of English 1202 we will explore literature and other materials based on themes of liberation, emergence, escape, and transformation. What are the structures that control or threaten? How can we resist or evade them? And what happens to us if we do manage to escape? We will consider these and other questions while building our reading, writing, and analytic skills. Please note that this class is partially online: a 90-minute in-person class (Tuesday morning) will be followed by an asynchronous online component in which students will complete coursework independently.

ENGL 1202 S13 & S14 (In Person) - Kirsten Alm
Against The Status Quo: What happens when the "status quo" is stifling, restrictive, or oppressive? How does literature respond to and challenge entrenched perspectives? Focusing on personal essays, short stories, poems, and two novels written in the first half of the 20th century, we will explore how authors actively resisted and sought to revise the social and political scripts prepared for them by the established Euro-American culture of North America. We will pay close attention to concerns of gender and race, and will also note connections between the concerns of this radical revisionary literature and the concerns of our own time.

ENGL 1202 S15 (In Person) - Kelly Doyle
Contemporary Horror: What political and personal impact does horror have on our lives? How does horror explore liminality, sexuality, racism, being human, and more? In this course we will critically examine the horror genre via webcomics, graphic novels, short fiction, the novel, and film/television clips/viewings. We will explore the relevance of form on genre and examine the horror genre’s exploration of sexuality and gender, class and race, nature versus civilization, liminality, and how monsters come to be defined.

ENGL 1202 S16 (In Person) - Philip Aghoghovwia
Introduction to Postcolonial Writing and Narration

ENGL 1202 S17 (In Person) - Jennifer Williams
Resistance and Conformity in Literature: Explore individuals’ struggles to be true to themselves and how they come to an understanding of their roles in society. Through discussions of poems, a play, a novel, and short stories, we will investigate what influences perceptions of self and others.

ENGL 1202 S95 (In Person) - Brian Swail
Replays and Remixes: Why is it that some stories keep getting retold? We will look at some ancient tales and trace the ways that newer versions seek to recover an underlying truth, or perhaps correct mistaken ideas of the past.

ENGL 1204 S10 (In Person) - Kris Singh

Borders and Border Crossings: What functions do borders serve? In this course, we will study literary texts that examine this question. We will explore what is at stake in defining geographical borders, policing social borders, and blurring textual borders. We will ask who has the power to create such borders and why might someone seek to challenge them. Through close reading, informed discussion, and formal writing, we will dig into all the ways borders can make ourselves and the world seem coherent while they may splinter and divide the very same.

ENGL 1204 S11 (In Person) - Craig Stensrud
Words to Change the World: This course poses some fundamental questions about reading and writing literature: Why read? Why write? Why study literature? Does literature offer us a way to make sense of—or even change—the world? Students will tackle these questions by discussing literary texts from various genres (poetry, drama, fiction, non-fiction) and completing assignments that introduce university research and writing practices. We will think about reading and writing as practices that are shaped by and help to shape different cultural, political, and artistic moments across history. Different authors at different times have held contrasting views of literature’s role in the world – from those who insist that reading and writing are essential for political liberation to those who lament literature’s powerlessness. We will consider how authors have thought their work could fight social evils like slavery, racism, sexism, capitalist exploitation, and environmental destruction.

LANGLEY:

ENGL 1202 L10 & L11 (In Person) - Lindsey Seatter
Unrealiable Narrators/Narratives: This offering of ENGL 1202 introduces you to a selection of drama and fiction written over the span of nearly 200 years with one critical thing in common: the narrator and/or the narratives are—in some way or another—unreliable. This course will explore the ways that voice commands, contextualizes, and complicates how stories are told and how readers interpret them.

ENGL 1202 L12 (In Person) - Brian Swail
Replays and Remixes: Why is it that some stories keep getting retold? We will look at some ancient tales and trace the ways that newer versions seek to recover an underlying truth, or perhaps correct mistaken ideas of the past.

RICHMOND:

ENGL 1202 R10 & R11 (In Person) - Paul Ostrowski
Relationships.

ENGL 1202 R13 & R14 (Online Async) - Elizabeth Gooding
People and Other Animals. Whether they are companions, antagonists, symbols, or food, animals play significant roles in our lives. In this section of English 1202, we’ll explore a range of animal-populated literary and film texts.

ENGL 1202 R15 & R16 (In Person) - Deborah Blenkhorn
Literature Then and Now: Reading from a completely online syllabus (no textbook required), rediscover some of the classics along with some of today's cutting-edge literary works. Writing about literature and sharing our interpretations in a way that informs our perspective on life will be the focus of our course.

ENGL 1202 and 1204 Topics for Fall 2024

SURREY:

ENGL 1202 S10 (In Person) - Jennifer Williams
Resistance and Conformity in Literature: Explore individuals’ struggles to be true to themselves and how they come to an understanding of their roles in society. Through discussions of poems, a play, a novel, and short stories, we will investigate what influences perceptions of self and others.

ENGL 1202 S11 (Blended) - Robert Dearle
Let Me Out! In this section of English 1202 we will explore literature and other materials based on themes of liberation, emergence, escape, and transformation. What are the structures that control or threaten? How can we resist or evade them? And what happens to us if we do manage to escape? We will consider these and other questions while building our reading, writing, and analytic skills. Please note that this class is partially online: a 90-minute in-person class (Tuesday morning) will be followed by an asynchronous online component in which students will complete coursework independently.

ENGL 1202 S12 (In Person) - Kris Singh
Borders and Border Crossings: What functions do borders serve? In this course, we will study literary texts that examine this question. We will explore what is at stake in defining geographical borders, policing social borders, and blurring textual borders. We will ask who has the power to create such borders and why might someone seek to challenge them. Through close reading, informed discussion, and formal writing, we will dig into all the ways borders can make ourselves and the world seem coherent while they may splinter and divide the very same.

ENGL 1202 S13 (In Person) - Heather Cyr
Space & Place: In this course we will investigate the theme of “place and space” in works of several different genres including the short story, the graphic novel, and the novel. We’ll examine how these works construct unique places and spaces, how characters create, maintain and attempt to reconcile the places and spaces they inhabit and why these places and spaces are often seen as refuge, opportunity, or even threats. Looking at authors such as Shaun Tan, and Julia Alvarez, we will discuss the relationship between setting and the construction of character, emphasizing how the works we study are the historical product of a specific time and place even though they often have universal themes that transcend that.

ENGL 1202 S14 & S15 (Online) - Unita Ahdifard
Students will engage in writing-intensive activities as they explore literary texts related to the theme of “Creatures and Creaturely Bodies.” What is a “creature”? How can we think of creatures within the texts as beings that occupy space between the human and the animal? What role does mythology play in our understanding of creatures? What is the role of the body in relation to being “creaturely”? What is the role of the mind? We will explore the various creatures of the texts, from the “snake woman” mythology that runs across several cultures, to the monstrous creations of Frankenstein and Frankenstein in Baghdad. The aim of this thematic structuring is to ensure that students will not only receive a foundational understanding of how and why we read literary texts, but how to create and grasp connections between texts, and how to build writing arguments that compare these thematic connections.

ENGL 1202 S16 (In Person) - Jessica Swain
What is a garden? How do we impose meaning on a garden? This course explores literary representations of gardens in short stories, poetry, and drama to delve into key concepts such as labour, inclusion, power, resilience, and equity. By investigating how and why gardens in literature intersect with class, gender, sexuality, and race, we will consider how the garden acts as a space to adhere to and subvert shared cultural ideas.

ENGL 1202 S90 (In Person) - Brian Swail
Literature allows us to “be” someone else and inhabit another world. We may even see ourselves and our own world differently after returning from this imaginative journey, if we have been paying attention. In this course we will visit the worlds of “once upon a time,” dystopia, utopia, the psyche, madness, absurdity, the past, the future, dream worlds, and nightmare worlds. With luck this may shed some light on how we are shaped by our world, and perhaps how we can help to shape it.

ENGL 1204 S10 (In Person) - Jennifer Hardwick
Literatures of Resistance: Through a close examination of contemporary North American literature and media, this section of 1204 will explore how individuals and communities use stories to challenge power structures, demand justice, and seek personal and collective rights. Together, we will think closely and critically about the stories we are taught, stories that are silenced, and stories that could change the world.

ENGL 1204 S11 & S12 (In Person) - Ann Tso
Monsters: Literary Systems and Outcasts. Surely, you will recognize a monster if you see one: what, then, are some readily identifiable traits of a monster? Is it always possible to make sense of the world categorically and, in this sense, systematically? Is knowledge (of literature) systematic? In what ways do systems—approaches to representation, conventions, and genres—facilitate understanding? What are some established ways of knowing and to what extent can they be challenged? While a literary archetype, the monster also embodies a way of re-imagining knowledge. We will learn about literary conventions and their reinventions through the monster, interpreted literally as an outcast and metaphorically as a means of subversion. We will discuss monsters as conceived in different space-times; in so doing, we will consider how poetic devices and stylistic decisions invariably rejuvenate the idea of monstrosity (so that monsters will stay frightening forever). This class will give you the opportunity to explore which breeds of monstrosity incur your intense (dis-)pleasure—and why.

ENGL 1204 S50 (In Person) - Mark Cochrane
Love and Power: “How do people get power over one another?” asks Anne Carson’s book The Beauty of the Husband. This course will feature literary works (by David Henry Hwang, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Edith Wharton, and others) that expose the structures of power within which, and in resistance to which, love relationships arise. At the same time, these texts explore love as projection, illusion, interpellation, fantasy—as a product of the roles that culture invites individuals to play, in dynamics both imaginary and real.

ENGL 1207 S10 (In Person) - Greg Chan
Thinking inside the box, students in this course will be given the challenge of analyzing film and television as narrative art forms. Studying blogs (Screen Rant, The A.V. Club, and TV Tropes) alongside a selection of streaming series (Bridgerton, Squid Game) and films (The Grand Budapest Hotel, Parasite) will be the focus of this introduction to film and television studies.

LANGLEY:

ENGL 1202 L10 (In Person) - Robert Pasquini
The Nonhuman World: This course explores representations of nonhumans in fiction, poetry, and nature documentary, delving into the imagined worlds of wolves, insects, birds, trees, the land itself, and more. In doing so, we will investigate topics including kinship, resilience, and climate change through literature and media that lean toward the speculative and the fantastic. But these often strange and weird works are rarely neutral—by determining how the issues surrounding gender, race, or class are bound up in narratives of nature, we will, in turn, reveal the nature of narrative.

ENGL 1202 L11 (In Person) - Lindsey Seatter
Unreliable Narrators/Narratives: This offering of ENGL 1202 introduces you to a selection of drama and fiction written over the span of nearly 200 years with one critical thing in common: the narrator and/or the narratives are—in some way or another—unreliable. This course will explore the ways that voice commands, contextualizes, and complicates how stories are told and how readers interpret them.

ENGL 1202 L12 (In Person) - Brian Swail
Literature allows us to “be” someone else and inhabit another world. We may even see ourselves and our own world differently after returning from this imaginative journey, if we have been paying attention. In this course we will visit the worlds of “once upon a time,” dystopia, utopia, the psyche, madness, absurdity, the past, the future, dream worlds, and nightmare worlds. With luck this may shed some light on how we are shaped by our world, and perhaps how we can help to shape it.

ENGL 1204 L10 (In Person) - Philip Aghoghovwia
This introduction to literature course offers an exciting exploration of literary landscapes, with a focus on developing essential literary appreciation and analytical skills. Through a careful selection of texts drawn from across genres, time periods, and cultural contexts, students will engage in intensive reading and writing activities that explore the complexities of the human experience while at the same time enhance their understanding of literary terms and techniques. Students will also learn to analyze literature through close reading, informed discussions, and formal writing. In the end, students will have cultivated a deeper appreciation for the power of storytelling.

RICHMOND:

ENGL 1202 R10 (In Person) - Cara Hedley
Bodies in Motion: Sport and Movement in Literature. This course introduces students to representations of sport and movement written by Canadian authors. We will consider representations of sport and physical activity in a variety of genres, including a collection of short stories, a novel, and a selection of poems. Performing a close analysis of each text, we will highlight topics such as representations of physical movement through language; writing as play and game; racial, gendered, and socioeconomic divisions within sport; sport as metaphor and state of mind. As we explore these issues, students will learn how to read texts closely and critically, and to organize and effectively communicate their ideas through writing lessons and assignments.

ENGL 1202 R11 (In Person) - Duncan Greenlaw
Creative Destruction: Through writers such as Knut Hamsun, Albert Camus, Allen Ginsberg, Sylvia Plath, and Lauren Groff, we will look at how people refuse to conform—or fail to conform—to societal norms, and how new codes and beliefs are re-built from the wreckage of old ones.

ENGL 1202 R12 & R13 (In Person) - Paul Ostrowski
Throughout this course, we will look at how poetry and short fiction depict relationships between individual humans, humans and society, and humans and nature.

ENGL 1202 R14 & R15 (Online) - Elizabeth Gooding
People and Other Animals. Whether they are companions, antagonists, symbols, or food, animals play significant roles in our lives. In this section of English 1202, we’ll explore a range of animal-populated literary and film texts.

ENGL 1202 R16 (In Person) - Craig Stensrud
Words to Change the World: This course poses some fundamental questions about reading and writing literature: Why read? Why write? Why study literature? Does literature offer us a way to make sense of—or even change—the world? Students will tackle these questions by discussing literary texts from various genres (poetry, drama, fiction, non-fiction) and completing assignments that introduce university research and writing practices. We will think about reading and writing as practices that are shaped by and help to shape different cultural, political, and artistic moments across history. Different authors at different times have held contrasting views of literature’s role in the world – from those who insist that reading and writing are essential for political liberation to those who lament literature’s powerlessness. We will consider how authors have thought their work could fight social evils like slavery, racism, sexism, capitalist exploitation, and environmental destruction.

ENGL 1204 R10 & R11 (In Person) - Deborah Blenkhorn
How can the various genres of literature help us to understand the world and our place within it? In what interesting ways do the traditional categories of genre overlap? We will work towards some answers as we examine and respond to works of fiction, poetry, and drama in their social and historical contexts.

ENGL 1202 and 1204 Topics for Summer 2024

SURREY:

ENGL 1202 S10 (In Person) - Unita Ahdifard
Students will engage in writing-intensive activities as they explore literary texts related to the theme of “Creatures and Creaturely Bodies.” What is a “creature”? How can we think of creatures within the texts as beings that occupy space between the human and the animal? What role does mythology play in our understanding of creatures? What is the role of the body in relation to being “creaturely”? What is the role of the mind? We will explore the various creatures of the texts, from the fairies and Bottom of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, who is turned into a half-man half-beast, to the monstrous creations of Frankenstein and Frankenstein in Baghdad. The aim of this thematic structuring is to ensure that students will not only receive a foundational understanding of how and why we read literary texts, but how to create and grasp connections between texts, and how to build writing arguments that compare these thematic connections.

ENGL 1202 S11 (In Person) - Greg Chan
Asia-Pacific Stories of Resilience and Visibility: What if you could peek inside the hidden worlds of corner stores, nail salons, Vancouver’s Chinatown, and dragon dancers? Set to coincide with Asian Heritage Month in May, this section of ENGL 1202 focuses on stories that centre first-, second-, and third-generation immigrants from the Asia-Pacific. Learning more about Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, and Laotian cultures across a selection of literary genres—novels, graphic novels, plays, and short fiction—students will discover the power of transnational Asians telling their own stories.

ENGL 1202 S12 (In Person) - Kelly Doyle
What political and personal impact does horror have on our lives? How does horror explore liminality, sexuality, racism, being human, and more? In this course we will critically examine the horror genre via webcomics, graphic novels, short fiction, the novel, and film/television clips/viewings. We will explore the relevance of form on genre and examine the horror genre's exploration of sexuality and gender, class and race, nature versus civilization, liminality, and how monsters come to be defined.

ENGL 1202 S13 & S14 (In Person) - Gavin Paul
Mysteries of the Self: Our literary journey will explore texts that ask vital questions about selfhood and our place in the world. Who am I? Where do I come from? Who made me? Who—or what—else can I become? Can anyone ever truly know who I am?

ENGL 1202 S15 & S16 (In Person) - John Rupert
Satan, Sex, and Demoniacs: "There are more things in heaven and earth...than are dreamt of in your philosophy." In this course, we will explore how masters of horror represent demonic possession in poetry, fiction, and film. Enter, if you dare, a realm where demons attack and destroy the powerful and the vulnerable: aristocrats and intellects, lovers, loners, and families! Join me and watch with mortal dread as malevolent entities forge the destinies of children and adults alike--none is immune to the diabolical threat! Warning: this course not for the weak of heart.

ENGL 1204 S10 (In Person) - Leanne MacDonald
The Once and Future Arthur: Since first appearing in the written record over a thousand years ago, stories of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table have been adapted and retold in virtually every genre of literature and entertainment. In this class, we will analyze the ways in which authors from Geoffrey Chaucer to Zadie Smith have taken advantage of the storytelling potential of fiction, poetry, drama, and film to explore timeless themes of love, loss, and identity in new and powerful ways.

ENGL 1207 S50 (In Person) - Steve Weber
Does Film Offer a Unique Aesthetic? In the age of video streaming services such as Netflix, the audiovisual narratives of TV and film are often referred to as “content,” which is a term that suggests consumption rather than aesthetic appreciation. However, can the great films of the last few decades offer us much more than content? Might they offer us aesthetic glories that can’t be found anywhere else? While answering these questions, this course will be an introduction to the aesthetics of TV and film.

LANGLEY:

ENGL 1202 L10 (In Person) - Robert Pasquini
In exploring the topic of “The Nonhuman World,” students will engage with representations of nonhumans in fiction, poetry, and nature documentary, delving into the imagined worlds of wolves, insects, birds, trees, the land itself, and more. In doing so, we will investigate topics including kinship, resilience, and climate change through literature and media that lean toward the speculative and the fantastic. But these often strange and weird works are rarely neutral—by determining how the issues surrounding gender, race, or class are bound up in narratives of nature, we will, in turn, reveal the nature of narrative.

ENGL 1202 L11 (In Person) - TBA

RICHMOND:

ENGL 1202 R10 & R11 (Online Asynchronous) - Janey Dodd
In English 1202: Spaces and Places, students will investigate how literature engages with ideas of space and place. Focusing on texts from across genres, including poetry, memoir, and fiction, this class will explore how the places we live, read about, and imagine, shape our identities, our lived experiences, and our understandings of the world.

ENGL 1202 and 1204 Topics for Spring 2024

SURREY:

ENGL 1202 S11 & S17 (In Person) - Kim Larsen

ENGL 1202 S12 (In Person) - Jennifer Williams
Don't Tell Me What to Think: Resistance and Conformity in Literature. Explore individuals’ struggles to be true to themselves and how they come to an understanding of their roles in society. Through discussions of poems, a play, a novel, and short stories, we will investigate what influences perceptions of self and others.

ENGL 1202 S13 (In Person) - John Rupert
Satan, Sex, and Demoniacs: Enter, if you dare, a realm where demons attack and destroy the powerful and vulnerable: aristocrats and intellects, lovers, loners, and families! Let us explore how masters of horror represent demonic possession in poetry, fiction, and film.

ENGL 1202 S14 (In Person) - Kelly Doyle
What political and personal impact does horror have on our lives? How does horror explore liminality, sexuality, racism, being human, and more? In this course we will critically examine the horror genre via webcomics, graphic novels, short fiction, the novel, and film/television clips/viewings. We will explore the relevance of form on genre and examine the horror genre’s exploration of sexuality and gender, class and race, nature versus civilization, liminality, and how monsters come to be defined.

ENGL 1202 S15 (In Person) - Paul Ohler
An Introduction to the Literature of the United States. Students will engage in writing-intensive activities as they read selected works of U.S. literature from the period 1914-1945.

ENGL 1202 S16 (In Person) - Robert Dearle
Supernatural Stories: This section of English 1202 will focus on stories and other literature with a supernatural element. Join us as we consider the possibility that reality might be stranger than it seems.

ENGL 1202 S18 (In Person) - Konstantinos Pozoukidis
Ever since the appearance of humans on earth, our species is believed by some to have the unique ability to labor and radically change the world around it. This is an exciting and scary prospect since we are the only mammal that can inflict change on such a massive scale, for the better or for the worse. The process of altering and changing the world is called worldmaking. The term bears echoes of revolutionary aspirations, utopic dreams, and extreme technological advancements, as it does about scary futures that we call dystopias. These terms read and sound more like science fiction terms and it is true that the genre of science fiction has paid its dues when it comes to worldmaking. Worldmaking is more complex than that, nonetheless. In this course we will read, discuss, closely examine, and analyze how various authors, playwrights, and directors use different genres and different media, from poems to short stories, to plays, and finally to films, to develop their understanding of what other worlds are, how they are structured, how they operate, and if and in what sense may be different from our own. Along with worldmaking, we will read some end-of-the-world narratives because in many cases, worldmaking happens when a world appears to be ending. Keep in mind that what world, worldmaking, and end of the a/the world mean may be very different than what you have in mind.

ENGL 1204 S10 & S13 (Online Asynch) - Janey Dodd
Spaces and Places: This course investigates how literature engages with ideas of space and place. Focusing on texts from across genres, including poetry, memoir, fiction and drama, this class will explore how the places we live, read about, and imagine, shape our identities, our lived experiences, and our understandings of the world.

ENGL 1204 S11 & S14 (Online Synch) - Taylor Green
Subverting Genre: How have writers pushed artistic and cultural boundaries? In this class, we will examine the ways that literary works have subverted traditional genres and created new ones. We will read closely to analyze the form and content of works and to think critically about the historical and contemporary genres to which they belong. This course will include readings from a variety of genres including poetry, novels, short stories, drama, stand-up comedy, essays, and more as we think about how groups of texts come to be identified as constituting a genre.

ENGL 1204 S12 (In Person) - Philip Aghoghovwia
This introduction to literature course offers an exciting exploration of literary landscapes, with a focus on developing essential literary appreciation and analytical skills. Through a careful selection of texts drawn from across genres, time periods, and cultural contexts, students will engage in intensive reading and writing activities that explore the complexities of the human experience while at the same time enhance their understanding of literary terms and techniques. Students will also learn to analyze literature through close reading, informed discussions, and formal writing. In the end, students will have cultivated a deeper appreciation for the power of storytelling.

LANGLEY:

ENGL 1202 L10 (In Person) - Lindsey Seatter
Unreliable Narrators/Narratives: This offering of ENGL 1202 introduces you to a selection of drama and fiction written over the span of nearly 200 years with one critical thing in common: the narrator and/or the narratives are—in some way or another—unreliable. This course will explore the ways that voice commands, contextualizes, and complicates how stories are told and how readers interpret them.

ENGL 1202 L11 & L12 (In Person) - Brian Swail
Literature allows us to “be” someone else and inhabit another world. We may even see ourselves and our own world differently after returning from this imaginative journey, if we have been paying attention. In this course we will visit the worlds of “once upon a time,” dystopia, utopia, the psyche, madness, absurdity, the past, the future, dream worlds, and nightmare worlds. With luck this may shed some light on how we are shaped by our world, and perhaps how we can help to shape it.

ENGL 1202 L13 (In Person) - Jessica Swain
What is a garden? How do we impose meaning on a garden? This course explores literary representations of gardens in short stories, poetry, and drama to delve into key concepts such as labour, inclusion, power, resilience, and equity. By investigating how and why gardens in literature intersect with class, gender, sexuality, and race, we will consider how the garden acts as a space to adhere to and subvert shared cultural ideas.

RICHMOND:

ENGL 1202 R10 (In Person) - Gillian Bright
Confrontations between the Self and the World: In this class, we will explore poetry and fiction that engage with questions about how "the self" gets shaped by the world around us. Though the stories we read are very diverse (narrating immigrant experiences, romance, family histories, dream lives, and adventures in outer space), they all question how one’s specific context constructs a person’s sense of who they are, and who they are not.

ENGL 1202 R11 & R17 (In Person) - Kirsten Alm
“You . . . Can’t Choose Your Family” – The Family in 20th Century Literature. The novelist Harper Lee wrote, “You can choose your friends but you sho' can't choose your family, an' they're still kin to you no matter whether you acknowledge 'em or no.“ In this course, we will explore how writers treat the marvelous, bewildering, and sometimes painful nature of family relationships in short stories, memoir, poetry, and one novel. Special attention will be given to analyzing intersecting gender, race, ethnic, sexual, and class identities in representations of these family relationships.

ENGL 1202 R12 & R13 (Online Asynch) - Elizabeth Gooding
Looking at the Natural World: In this course we will encounter poems, stories, and short films that explore interactions of plants, animals, people, and land. We will consider past, present, and future representations of our relationship with nature, written from a variety of perspectives.

ENGL 1202 R14 (In Person) - Duncan Greenlaw
Creative Destruction. Through writers such as Knut Hamsun, Albert Camus, Allen Ginsberg, Sylvia Plath, and Lauren Groff, we will look at how people refuse to conform—or fail to conform—to societal norms, and how new codes and beliefs are re-built from the wreckage of old ones.

ENGL 1202 R15 & R16 (In Person) - Paul Ostrowski
Throughout this course, we will look at how poetry and short fiction depict relationships between individual humans, humans and society, and humans and nature.

ENGL 1202 R18 & R19 (In Person) - Craig Stensrud
This course poses some fundamental questions about reading and writing literature: Why read? Why write? Why study literature? Does literature offer us a way to make sense of—or even change—the world? Students will tackle these questions by discussing literary texts from various genres (poetry, drama, fiction, non-fiction) and completing assignments that introduce university research and writing practices. Rather than looking at reading and writing as unchanging acts, we will think about them as practices that are shaped by and help to shape different cultural, political, and artistic moments across history. Different authors at different times have held contrasting views of literature’s role in the world – from those who insist that reading and writing are essential for political liberation to those who lament literature’s powerlessness. We will consider how authors have thought their work could fight social evils like slavery, racism, sexism, capitalist exploitation, and environmental destruction.

ENGL 1204 R10 (In Person) - Deborah Blenkhorn
How can the various genres of literature help us to understand the world and our place within it? In what interesting ways do the traditional categories of genre overlap? We will work towards some answers as we examine and respond to works of fiction, poetry, and drama in their social and historical contexts.

ENGL 1202 and 1204 Topics for Fall 2023

SURREY:

ENGL 1202 S10 (In Person) - Dale Tracy

Instructions to Photograph the Heart. An artificial spider programmed to protect oil interests. A cyborg infecting stories with decolonial code. A man trying to do right by the new desires of his transplanted heart. In the drama, poetry, and fiction that we will read together, these and many more characters wonder if they can intervene in suffering, loss, and violence by representing their perspectives and values in their actions in the world. These characters want to show their true hearts to make something good happen. Do they know themselves and their contexts well enough to succeed?

ENGL 1202 S11 (In Person) - Jennifer Williams

Don't Tell Me What to Think: Resistance and Conformity in Literature. Explore individuals’ struggles to be true to themselves and how they come to an understanding of their roles in society. Through discussions of poems, a play, a novel, and short stories, we will investigate what influences perceptions of self and others.

ENGL 1202 S12 (In Person) - Kirsten Alm

“You . . . Can’t Choose Your Family” – The Family in 20th Century Literature. The novelist Harper Lee wrote, “You can choose your friends but you sho' can't choose your family, an' they're still kin to you no matter whether you acknowledge 'em or no.“ Explore how writers treat the marvelous, bewildering, and sometimes painful nature of family relationships in short stories, memoir, poetry, and one novel. Special attention will be given to analyzing intersecting gender, race, ethnic, sexual, and class identities in representations of these family relationships.

ENGL 1202 S13 (Online Async) - Ranjini Mendis

The Journey and The Traveler: This fully asynchronous section of ENGL 1202 on the topic ‘The Journey and the Traveler" invites you to read about physical, imaginary, and metaphorical journeys of diverse characters in selected texts. You will have many opportunities to respond through informal reader-response forums and formal assignments. While reading good literature will deepen your understanding of human experience, analyzing and interpreting literature will train you in academic writing.

ENGL 1202 S14 (In Person) - TBA

ENGL 1202 S16 (In Person) - Paul Ohler

An Introduction to the Literature of the United States. Students will engage in writing-intensive activities as they read selected works of U.S. literature from the period 1914-1945.

ENGL 1202 S19 (In Person) - TBA

ENGL 1204 S10 & S11(Online Sync) - Wendy Smith

Through the study of short stories, poems, and plays, you will learn how to analyze literary texts and develop skills and techniques for writing about literature.

RICHMOND:

ENGL 1202 R10 (In Person) - TBA

ENGL 1202 R11 (In Person) - Duncan Greenlaw

Creative Destruction. Through writers such as Knut Hamsun, Albert Camus, Allen Ginsberg, Sylvia Plath, and Lauren Groff, we will look at how people refuse to conform—or fail to conform—to societal norms, and how new codes and beliefs are re-built from the wreckage of old ones.

ENGL 1202 R12 & R13 (In Person) - Paul Ostrowski

Relationships.

ENGL 1202 R14 (In Person) - TBA

ENGL 1202 R15 (In Person) - TBA

ENGL 1202 R16 (In Person) - TBA

ENGL 1202 R17 & R18 (Online Async) - Elizabeth Gooding

Looking at the Natural World: In this course we will encounter poems, stories, and short films that explore interactions of plants, animals, people, and land. We will consider past, present, and future representations of our relationship with nature, written from a variety of perspectives.

ENGL 1204 R10 & R11 (In Person) - Deborah Blenkhorn

How can the various genres of literature help us to understand the world and our place within it? In what interesting ways do the traditional categories of genre overlap? We will work towards some answers as we examine and respond to works of fiction, poetry, and drama in their social and historical contexts.

ENGL 1204 R50 (In Person) - Mark Cochrane

Love and Power. “How do people get power over one another?” asks Anne Carson’s book The Beauty of the Husband. This course will feature literary works (by Edith Wharton, David Henry Hwang, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, and others) that expose the structures of power within which, and in resistance to which, love relationships arise. At the same time, these texts explore love as projection, illusion, interpellation, fantasy—as a product of the roles that culture invites individuals to play, in dynamics both imaginary and real.

LANGLEY:

ENGL 1202 L10 (In Person) - Lindsey Seatter

Unreliable Narrators/Narratives: This offering of ENGL 1202 introduces you to a selection of drama and fiction written over the span of nearly 200 years with one critical thing in common: the narrator and/or the narratives are—in some way or another—unreliable. This course will explore the ways that voice commands, contextualizes, and complicates how stories are told and how readers interpret them.

ENGL 1202 L11 (In Person) - Robert Pasquini

The Nonhuman World: This course explores representations of nonhumans in fiction, poetry, and nature writing, including animals, insects, flora, waterways, and landscapes to investigate topics including kinship, resilience, and climate change. But these often strange and weird literary representations of the natural world are rarely neutral. By determining the ways that gender, race, class, or environment are bound up in narratives of nature we will, in turn, reveal the nature of narrative.

ENGL 1204 L10 (In Person) - Jessica Swain

What is a garden? How do we impose meaning on a garden? This course explores literary representations of gardens in fiction, poetry, and drama to delve into key concepts such as labour, inclusion, power, resilience, and equity. By investigating how and why gardens in literature intersect with class, gender, sexuality, and race, we will consider how the garden acts as a space adhere to and subvert shared cultural ideas.

ENGL 1202 and 1204 Topics for Summer 2023

SURREY:

ENGL 1202 S10 (Online Asynch) - Janey Dodd

Spaces and Places: This course investigates how literature engages with ideas of space and place. Focussing on texts from across genres, including poetry, memoir, fiction and graphic texts, this class will explore how the places we live, read about, and imagine, shape our identities, our lived experiences, and our understandings of the world.

ENGL 1202 S11 (Online Asynch) - Kirsten Alm

ENGL 1202 S12 (Online Asynch) - Janey Dodd

ENGL 1202 S13 (In person) - Gavin Paul

Mysteries of the Self: Our literary journey will explore texts that ask vital questions about selfhood and our place in the world. Who am I? Where do I come from? Who made me? Who—or what—else can I become? Can anyone ever truly know who I am?

ENGL 1202 S14 (Online Sync) - Greg Chan

Grey Matters: What do a Québécois homicide detective, a dark web hitwoman, and an Afghan refugee seeking redemption have in common? While their stories are unique, these literary characters find truth by breaking free from their black and white confines. Grey, the colour associated with compromise, impartiality, old souls, and intelligence, can play a dynamic role in literature. In this section of ENGL 1202, students will exercise their grey matter by exploring morally grey characters, grey symbolism, grey settings, and grey areas across multiple genres.

ENGL 1204 S10 (In Person) - TBA

ENGL 1204 S11 (In Person) - TBA

ENGL 1204 S50 (In Person) - Steve Weber

Escaping Solipsism: Contemporary Literature and the Possibility of a Better World. The study of contemporary literature is, among other things, an attempt to understand experiences that can be vastly different from own. As a society, we seem to have forgotten this basic lesson about the literary art form: literature is a form of knowing—knowing ourselves, knowing others, and knowing the world. We should never forget that imagination is limited by knowledge—the less we know, the less we are capable of imagining. The opposite is also true: the more we know about our contemporary world, the more we are capable of imagining a better one. Why study contemporary literature? We study, perhaps, because we are dissatisfied with the world as is, and we have the humble goal of achieving a better one.

Richmond:

ENGL 1202 R10 & R11 (In Person) - Tom Andrews

Speculation and Warning in Fiction: in this ENGL1202 course we will be looking at how authors have used speculative/sci-fi/weird fiction to speak to the problems of their given time period. How do these texts represent the issues of the day? What warnings do they include? What can we learn from texts predicting future technological states or apocalyptic post-climate scenarios? We will be working with short stories, novellas, and short novels to try to understand our fascination with catastrophe and the end of the world!

ENGL 1204 R50 (In Person) - Mark Cochrane

Love and Power: “How do people get power over one another?” asks Anne Carson’s book The Beauty of the Husband. This course will feature literary works (by Edith Wharton, David Henry Hwang, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, and others) that expose the structures of power within which, and in resistance to which, love relationships arise. At the same time, these texts explore love as projection, illusion, interpellation, fantasy—as a product of the roles that culture invites individuals to play, in dynamics both imaginary and real.

Langley:

ENGL 1202 L10 (In Person) - Kelly Doyle

Why are so many people drawn to horror stories? Critically examine the horror genre via comics, graphic novels, short fiction, and film/television clips/viewings in this class. Via monsters, zombies, witches, and more, we’ll discuss representations of sexuality and gender, class and race, animals and humans, liminality, and how monsters/humans are defined to cultural and political ends.

ENGL 1202 L11 (In Person) - Robert Pasquini

ENGL 1202 and 1204 Topics for Spring 2023

SURREY:

ENGL 1202 S10 (Online Asynch) - Ranjini Mendis

The Journey and the Traveler: This course invites you to go on physical, imaginary, and metaphorical journeys with characters in selected texts. You will have many opportunities to respond through informal reader-response forums and formal assignments. While reading good literature will deepen your understanding of human experience, analyzing and interpreting literature will improve your academic writing skills.

ENGL 1202 S11 (In Person) - Heather Ladd

The Ocean in Literature: In many literary works, the ocean is more than just a powerful natural symbol but also a narrative device, as characters embark on journeys across the ocean and find themselves at the mercy of the sea. Marine environments are themselves subject to human-caused environmental threats. In this class, we will discuss what the ocean represents and how it is used by a selection of authors from different literary traditions. Skills classes interspersed throughout the semester will guide you through the process of planning, writing, and editing an academic essay.

ENGL 1202 S12 (Online Asynch) - Paul Ohler

ENGL 1202 S13 (Online Asynch) - Paul Ohler

ENGL 1202 S14 (In Person) - John Rupert

Satan, Sex, and Demoniacs: Enter, if you dare, a realm where demons attack and destroy the powerful and vulnerable: aristocrats and intellects, lovers, loners, and families! Let us explore how masters of horror represent demonic possession in poetry, fiction, and film.

ENGL 1202 S15 (In Person) - Brian Swail

Mything You: We will begin by examining some ancient myths and then some modernized versions, as well as some novels that draw upon mythology. We will investigate what myths “do”, and consider the nature and motivation for the changes in later versions.

ENGL 1202 S16 (In Person) - Brian Swail

ENGL 1202 S17 (In Person) - Alois Sieben

The internet is changing us in terms of how we communicate and connect with each other, but how exactly and what is the significance of this change? In this course, we'll log off and try to track these changes through different forms of media than the internet, ranging from books to films to video games to visual arts. Students will gain a better understanding of the social impact of the internet, as well as understanding how various media can represent the same social phenomenon in totally different ways.

ENGL 1202 S19 (In Person) - Alois Sieben

ENGL 1202 S20 (In Person) - Kim Larsen

ENGL 1204 S10 (In Person) - TBA

ENGL 1204 S11 (In Person) - Cara Hedley

Bodies in Motion: Sport and Movement in Literature: This course introduces students to representations of sport and movement written by Canadian authors. We will consider representations of sport and physical activity in a variety of genres, including a collection of short stories; in the novel, Indian Horse, by Richard Wagamese; and in a selection of poems. Performing a close analysis of each text, we will highlight topics such as representations of physical movement through language; racial, gendered, and socioeconomic divisions within sport; writing as play and game; sport as metaphor and state of mind. As we explore these issues, students will learn how to read texts closely and critically, and to organize and effectively communicate their ideas through writing lessons and assignments.

ENGL 1204 S12 (Online Asynch) - Cara Hedley

ENGL 1204 S13 (Online Asynch) - Wendy Smith

Through the study of short stories, poems, and plays, you will learn how to analyze literary texts and develop skills and techniques for writing about literature.

ENGL 1204 S14 (Online Asynch) - Wendy Smith

Through the study of short stories, poems, and plays, you will learn how to analyze literary texts and develop skills and techniques for writing about literature.

ENGL 1207 S10 (Blended Synch) - Paul Tyndall

Richmond:

ENGL 1202 R10 (Online Asynch) - Elizabeth Gooding

People and Other Animals: Whether they are companions, antagonists, symbols, or food, animals play significant roles in our lives. In this section of English 1202, we’ll explore a range of animal-populated literary texts.

ENGL 1202 R11 (Online Asynch) - Elizabeth Gooding

ENGL 1202 R12 (In Person) - Duncan Greenlaw

Creative Destruction: Through Camus, Beckett, Plath, Ginsberg, Hamsun, and other writers, we will look at how people refuse to conform—or fail to conform—to societal norms, and how new codes and beliefs are re-built from the wreckage of old ones.

ENGL 1202 R13 (In Person) - Paul Ostrowski

This course offers an introduction to literature and some of its basic conventions. The genres selected will be poetry and short fiction. Your homework will consist of reading the poems, and short stories which we will discuss in the context of their themes and techniques. Our discussions will then, hopefully, inspire you to write good essays about these pieces. A good deal of attention will be paid to the organization and development of academic literary essays. Upon completion, you should recognize the formal elements of the texts covered, identify and clearly formulate their themes, and produce well-developed essays about them. You will also be expected to post your informal comments on those pieces in the forum for which bonus points will be added to your final grade. These comment, however, are optional, so it’s up to you to post them or not.

ENGL 1202 R14 (In Person) - Paul Ostrowski

ENGL 1202 R15 (In Person) - Heather Ladd

ENGL 1204 R10 (In Person) - Deborah Blenkhorn

ENGL 1204 R11 (In Person) - Deborah Blenkhorn

ENGL 1204 R50 (In Person) - TBA

Langley:

ENGL 1202 L10 (In Person) - Kelly Doyle

ENGL 1202 L11 (In Person) - Kelly Doyle

ENGL 1204 L10 (In Person) - Craig Stensrud

Words to Change the World: This course poses some fundamental questions about reading and writing literature: Why read? Why write? Why study literature? Does literature offer us a way to make sense of—or even change—the world? Students will tackle these questions by discussing literary texts from various genres (poetry, drama, fiction, non-fiction) and completing assignments that introduce university research and writing practices. Rather than looking at reading and writing as unchanging acts, we will think about them as practices that are shaped by and help to shape different cultural, political, and artistic moments across history. Different authors at different times have held contrasting views of literature’s role in the world – from those who insist that reading and writing are essential for political liberation to those who lament literature’s powerlessness. We will consider how authors have thought their work could fight social evils like slavery, racism, sexism, capitalist exploitation, and environmental destruction.

ENGL 1207 L10 (Blended Synch) - Joakim Nilsson

ENGL 1202 and 1204 Topics for Fall 2022

SURREY:

ENGL1202 S10 - Paul Ohler

An Introduction to the Literature of the United States. Students will engage in writing-intensive activities as they read selected works of U.S. literature from the period 1914-1945.

ENGL1202 S11 - TBA

ENGL1202 S12 - Paul Ohler

An Introduction to the Literature of the United States. Students will engage in writing-intensive activities as they read selected works of U.S. literature from the period 1914-1945.

ENGL1202 S13 - Brian Swail

Mything You. We often think of myths as stories told by ancient people to explain the world, simple fictions they needed because they weren’t clever and didn’t have iPhones. I want to suggest that myths continue to be fundamental to how we understand the world, ourselves, and those around us. We will look at some early narratives before turning to modern revisions of some very old stories.

ENGL1202 S14 - TBA

ENGL1202 S15 - Jennifer Williams

Don't Tell Me What to Think: Resistance and Conformity in Literature. Explore individuals’ struggles to be true to themselves and how they come to an understanding of their role in society. Through discussions of short stories, a play and other genres we will investigate what influences perceptions of self and others.

ENGL1202 S16 - Leanne MacDonald

The Once and Future King Arthur. Since first appearing in the written record over a thousand years ago, stories of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table have been adapted and retold in virtually every genre of literature and entertainment. In this class, we will analyze the ways in which poets, fiction writers, playwrights, and filmmakers have taken the themes of leadership, family, community, and nation from these stories and adapted them to explore new ideas and contemporary concerns.

ENGL1202 S17 - Kim Larsen

Writing on the Edge: Madness, Murder, Obsessive Desire. Come join us as we explore stories and poems that deal with extreme or abnormal states of mind, analyzing the ways in which these texts portray the potential monstrosity that lurks just beneath the surface of rational humanity.

ENGL1202 S18 - Jennifer Williams

ENGL1202 S19 - TBA

ENGL1202 S20 - Simon Rolston

Black Lives Matter: An Introduction to African American Resistance Literature. This course is a survey of African American resistance literature. In particular, we’re going to explore how African American literature played and continues to play a key role in fighting three systems of racial oppression: slavery, segregation, and the criminal justice system. The literature that we’re going to discuss will vary, from fugitive slave narratives to life writing, from works of fiction that redefine the meaning of race in America to poetry and art that challenge public perceptions of institutions that seemed permanent or inevitable. Ultimately, students will be introduced to African American literature’s rich cultural history, will learn how literature can foment social and political change, and will consider how to be anti-racist activists themselves.

ENGL1202 S50 - Kim Larsen

ENGL1204 S10 - Wendy Smith

Reading and Writing about Genre: An Introduction to Literature. Through the study of short stories, poems, and plays, you will learn how to analyze literary texts and develop skills and techniques for writing about literature.

ENGL1204 S11 - Wendy Smith

ENGL1207 S10 - Paul Tyndall

Film, Television, and Visual Narration. In this course, you will learn to analyze and understand the main elements of film and television as sophisticated forms of visual storytelling, including narrative style and structure, mise-en-scene, cinematography, editing and sound. You will also learn to "read" films and television series within their specific social, historical, and cultural contexts.

RICHMOND:

ENGL1202 R10 - Paul Ostrowski

Introduction to Literature. Students will engage in writing-intensive activities as they analyze selected literary texts. They will apply skills of literary analysis to literature through close reading, informed discussion, and formal writing.

ENGL1202 R11 - TBA

ENGL1202 R12 - Elizabeth Gooding

Must Love Trees: Looking at the Natural World. What does literature suggest about our connection to nature -- or our disconnection from it? Bring your metaphorical hiking boots as we explore poems, stories, documentaries, and a couple of novels that address this question.

ENGL1202 R13 - Paul Ostrowski

ENGL1202 R14 - Deborah Blenkhorn

Facing Life's Challenges. Our course will focus on understanding, through literary depictions from the past, the metaphorical resonance of health for the challenging times we face in our lives today.

ENGL1202 R15 - Gillian Bright

The Outcast Figure. When “mainstream” society excludes certain groups or individuals, what values get reinforced? What strategies are used to debase the outcast, and how do outcasts resist devaluation? In this course, we will consider the competing feelings of desire and disgust towards outcast figures in novels, short stories, fairy tales, poems, and television programs. We will develop a nuanced understanding of how those who are excluded may prove fundamental to the identities of those who exclude.

ENGL1202 R16 - Duncan Greenlaw

Creative Destruction. Through Camus, Beckett, Plath, Ginsberg, Hamsun, and other writers, we will look at how people refuse to conform—or fail to conform—to societal norms, and how new codes and beliefs are re-built from the wreckage of old ones.

ENGL1202 R17 - Elizabeth Gooding

People and Other Animals. Whether they are companions, antagonists, symbols, or food, animals play significant roles in our lives. In this section of English 1202, we’ll explore a range of animal-populated literary texts.

ENGL1204 R10 - Deborah Blenkhorn

Introduction to the World of Literary Genres. How can literature help us to understand today's world? Discover your own answers as we examine and respond to literary works in English from the genres of drama, poetry, and fiction.

ENGL1204 R50 - Mark Cochrane

Love and Power. How do people get power over one another?” asks Anne Carson’s book The Beauty of the Husband. This course will feature literary works (by Edith Wharton, David Henry Hwang, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, and others) that expose the structures of power within which, and in resistance to which, love relationships arise. At the same time, these texts explore love as projection, illusion, interpellation, fantasy—as a product of the roles that culture invites individuals to play, in dynamics both imaginary and real.

LANGLEY:

ENGL1202 L10 - Brian Swail

ENGL1204 L10 - TBA

ENGL 1202 and 1204 Topics for Summer 2022

ONLINE:

ENGL1202 A10 - TBA

ENGL1202 A11 - N.P. Kennedy (Synchronous)

The Other Shakespeare. William Shakespeare, the man, breathed his last in 1616. For 400 years, however, he has continued to exert a profound influence on English-speaking cultures—in part, through the immortality of art—the love and admiration that his plays and poems continue to inspire. In addition to that art, though, the idea of the man who created that art has persisted, and continues to haunt the stage, the screen, pop culture and academia. In this course, we will consider a number of the ways in which ideas about the man or from the man or both continue to haunt our imaginations—in plays, films, novels and biographies.

ENGL1202 A12 - Kiran Clements (Asynchronous)

Quick Lit and Questioning It. We dispense with heavy novels and focus on literary works that can be read in less than a day (often in less than an hour!) and ask ourselves: "Can a short work be a literary masterpiece?"

ENGL1202 A13 - Kiran Clements (Asynchronous)

SURREY:

ENGL1202 S10 - Kelly Doyle

Contemporary Horror. Why are so many people drawn to horror stories? Critically examine the horror genre via comics, graphic novels, short fiction, and film/television clips/viewings in this class. Via monsters, zombies, witches, and more, we’ll discuss representations of sexuality and gender, class and race, animals and humans, liminality, and how monsters/humans are defined to cultural and political ends.

ENGL1202 S11 - Will Best

Literature in Brief. This course introduces students to the literary styles, tropes, and techniques from an array of time periods and cultures, but focuses particularly on the development of a singular, arguably under-studied genre: short story. After considering predecessors in myth and folklore, the course will analyze short narrative forms from the “birth” of the modern short story in the 19th century through its development in the 20th and 21st centuries. The primary focus will be on how the length of a work influences the style of writing, as well as historical contexts for the genre's development, but the course will also cover the broader close-reading and formal writing techniques needed for university study.

ENGL1202 S12 - Robert Pasquini

The Nonhuman World. This course explores representations of nonhumans in fiction, poetry, and nature writing, including animals, insects, flora, waterways, and the land to investigate topics including kinship, resilience, and climate change. But these often strange and weird literary representations of the natural world are rarely neutral. By determining the ways that gender, race, class, or environment are bound up in narratives of nature we will, in turn, reveal the nature of narrative.

ENGL1204 S10 - Leanne MacDonald

Genres of Arthurian Legend. Since first appearing in the written record over a thousand years ago, stories of King Arthur, Queen Guinevere, and the Knights of the Round Table have been adapted and retold in virtually every genre of literature and entertainment. In this class, we will analyze the ways in which authors have taken advantage of the unique features and conventions of several different literary genres to tell these old stories in new and powerful ways, including through the use of the poem, novel, Broadway musical, graphic novel, and film.

RICHMOND:

ENGL1204 R50 - Mark Cochrane

Love and Power. “How do people get power over one another?” asks Anne Carson’s book The Beauty of the Husband. This course will feature literary works (by Edith Wharton, David Henry Hwang, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, and others) that expose the structures of power within which, and in resistance to which, love relationships arise. At the same time, these texts explore love as projection, illusion, interpellation, fantasy—as a product of the roles that culture invites individuals to play, in dynamics both imaginary and real.

ENGL 1202 and 1204 Topics for Spring 2022

Online:

ENGL1202 A10 - Kris Singh (Synchronous)

Borders and Border Crossings. What is at stake in crossing geographical borders, mapping social borders, and blurring textual borders? In this course, we will engage with literary and cultural texts near to and far from our present location in order to contemplate how and why borders are established and challenged. Let's dig into all the ways borders can make ourselves and the world seem coherent while they may splinter and divide the very same.

ENGL1202 A11 - Duncan Greenlaw (Synchronous)

ENGL1202 A12 - Blair Hemstock (Asynchronous)

Modernism, The Shock of the New. At the beginning of the 20th Century, the old Victorian certainties shook and crumbled. Faith, Identity, and Reality fell before the shock of the new.

ENGL1202 A13 - N.P. Kennedy (Synchronous)

ENGL1202 A14 - Ranjini Mendis (Asynchronous)

The Journey and the Traveller. In this fully online section of ENGL 1202 on the topic ‘The Journey and the Traveler,’ we will read fiction featuring physical, imaginary, and metaphorical journeys spanning a range of diverse cultural contexts and experiences. You will have opportunities to engage with selected texts through informal reader-responses as well as formal assignments. While reading literary works will expand your understanding of human experience, textual analysis and critical interpretation will help you to improve your academic writing skills.

ENGL1202 A15 - Dale Tracy (Asynchronous)

The Meaning(s) of Life. How do literary texts help us live meaningfully? How do literary texts make meaning? Making meaning involves a tension between openness and constraint. Literary texts work with the constraints of what already exists—like artistic conventions, historical events, and social facts—to open up new possibilities. Attending to openness and constraint, we will read fiction, poetry, and drama to consider meaningful worlds full of possibility: the worlds of literary texts and the wide world that we share and fail to share.

ENGL1204 A10 - Betty Anne Buirs (Synchronous)

Literary Analysis: Unplugged. No tantalizing literary topics. Just the nuts and bolts. In this section of 1204, we’ll discuss how to analyze stories, plays, and poems as well as how to write about them—clearly, concisely, and persuasively.

ENGL1204 A11 - Betty Anne Buirs (Synchronous)

ENGL1204 A12 - Wendy Smith (Synchronous)

ENGL1204 A13 - TBA

ENGL1204 A14 - Heather Cyr (Synchronous)

Double Lives. In this course we will focus our attention on the theme of “double lives” in works of several different genres including the short story, the graphic novel, and the novel. We’ll examine how these works construct unique characters who live double lives, how people create, maintain and attempt to reconcile multiple selves and why these double lives are often seen as assets or threats. We will discuss the relationship between genre and the construction of character, emphasizing how the works we study are the historical product of a specific time and place even though they often have universal themes that transcend that. Throughout the term, we will also consider how the literature we read addresses the recurring concerns of gender, race, and class identity as they are presented through various genres and as they relate to our theme of “double lives.”

ENGL1204 A50 - Mark Cochrane (Synchronous)

Love and Power. “How do people get power over one another?” asks Anne Carson’s book The Beauty of the Husband. This course will feature literary works (by Edith Wharton, David Henry Hwang, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, and others) that expose the structures of power within which, and in resistance to which, love relationships arise. At the same time, these texts explore love as projection, illusion, interpellation, fantasy—as a product of the roles that culture invites individuals to play, in dynamics both imaginary and real.

Richmond:

ENGL1202 R10 - Paul Ostrowski (In-person)

Students will engage in writing-intensive activities as they analyze selected literary texts. They will apply skills of literary analysis to literature through close reading, informed discussion, and formal writing.

ENGL1202 R11 - Andrew Bartlett (In-person)

Human-Animal Relationships. Cats and dogs at home, song birds in the sky, creatures wild in oceans and forests, others kept on farms or captive in zoos --- our human lives have always included and overlapped with the lives of animals. This section focuses on literature about human-animal relationships, stories and poems from various countries and continents. The texts are mostly short and almost all of them use modern English.

ENGL1202 R12 - Andrew Bartlett (In-person)

ENGL1202 R13 - Elizabeth Gooding (In-person)

Looking at the Natural World: What does literature suggest about our connection to nature—or our disconnection from it? Bring your metaphorical hiking boots as we explore poems, stories, and a couple of novels that address this question.

ENGL1204 R10 - TBA

Langley:

ENGL1202 L10 - Kelly Doyle (In-person)

ENGL1202 L11 - Kelly Doyle (In-person)

Surrey:

ENGL1202 S10 - Heather Ladd (In-person)

Journeys and Homecomings. Home is where the journey begins and (sometimes) ends. This course explores narratives of travel and conceptions of home within imaginative works from several literary traditions. We will read an abridged English translation of Homer’s The Odyssey as well as an innovative dramatic adaptation of this foundational work, Father Comes Home from the Wars by the Black American playwright Suzan-Lori Parks. Skills classes interspersed throughout the semester will guide you through the process of planning, writing, and editing an academic essay.

ENGL1202 S11 - TBA

ENGL1202 S12 - Jennifer Williams (Hybrid: in-person with some online asychronous)

ENGL1202 S13 - Jennifer Williams (In-person)

ENGL1202 S14 - Brian Swail (In-person)

ENGL1202 S15 - Lindsey Seatter (In-person)

A Woman’s Place: Revising, Resisting, and the Rise of Feminism in Romantic Literature.

ENGL1202 S16 - John Rupert (In-person)

Satan, Sex, and Demoniacs. Enter, if you dare, a realm where demons attack and destroy the powerful and vulnerable: aristocrats and intellects, lovers, loners, and families! Let us explore how masters of horror represent demonic possession in poetry, fiction, and film.

ENGL1202 S17 - TBA

ENGL1204 S10 - TBA

ENGL1300 S10 - Joakim Nilsson (hybrid)

This course will develop students’ critical reading, writing, and researching skills, and will discuss the conventions and citation format used in various disciplines, such as Criminology, Psychology, History, and English. We will explore current social issues, with a focus on the past and present experiences of Indigenous peoples in Canada.

Note: KPU English 1300 transfers to UBC as WRDS 150. Students who expect to transfer to UBC to complete an Arts degree should consider taking this course, instead of English 1100. Please consult the BC transfer guide or an advisor for more information.

ENGL 1202 and 1204 Topics for Fall 2021

Online:

ENGL1202 A10 - Kiran Clements

ENGL1202 A11 - Deborah Blenkhorn

Love in the Time of Cholera. We are borrowing the title of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's timeless novel to encapsulate our course theme, which has to do with understanding, through literary depictions from the past, the metaphorical resonance of health for the challenging times we face in our lives today.

ENGL1202 A12 - Andrew Bartlett

Human-Animal Stories. Cats and dogs at home, song birds in the sky, creatures wild in oceans and forests, others kept on farms or captive in zoos --- our human lives have always included and overlapped with the lives of animals. This section focuses on literature about human-animal relationships, stories and poems from various countries and continents. The texts are mostly short and almost all of them use modern English.

ENGL1202 A13 - Duncan Greenlaw

ENGL1202 A14 - Duncan Greenlaw

ENGL1202 A15 - Andrew Barlett

ENGL1202 A16 - Blair Hemstock

The Shock of the New. Modernism was born when institutions no longer were trusted, and traditional behaviour no longer applied.

ENGL1202 A17 - Elizabeth Gooding

ENGL1202 A18 - Elizabeth Gooding

Richmond Campus:

ENGL1202 R10 - Gillian Bright - Switched to online (synchronous)

Reading and Writing about Ghost Stories. Through reading drama, poetry, short stories, and novels that span 500 years of creative production, we will gain an understanding of how literature has imagined the idea of being haunted. We will consider how different historical periods and events impacted the way writers thought about ghosts, and we will question the various functions ghosts and haunting served. Are literary specters merely for our chilling entertainment, or are they manifestations of something else? Are ghosts shadows of the mind? Visions of the spirit world? Forgotten remnants of history? This course will pursue these mysteries—from ghostly graveyards to haunted houses.

ENGL1202 R11 - Kegan Doyle - Switched to partially online

Rebel, Rebel. In this section, we will focus on poems, songs, stories, films, and plays by, about, and for rebels. We will discuss rebels without causes and rebels with them, political rebels, hip hop rebels, rock and roll rebels, religious rebels, and artistic rebels. This course is also a broad-based introduction to fiction, poetry, and drama. As this is a literature course, our focus will inevitably be on the artistry of the short stories, poems, and plays we read. But it will also be on literature’s relationship to our own lives, to the world we see around us, and to the stories we tell about ourselves and each other.

Langley Campus:

ENGL1202 L10 - Heather Ladd - Switched to online (synchronous)

Journeys and Homecomings. Home is where the journey begins and (sometimes) ends. This course explores narratives of travel and conceptions of home within imaginative works from several literary traditions. We will read an abridged English translation of Homer’s The Odyssey as well as an innovative dramatic adaptation of this foundational work, Father Comes Home from the Wars by the Black American playwright Suzan-Lori Parks. Skills classes interspersed throughout the semester will guide you through the process of planning, writing, and editing an academic essay.

Surrey Campus:

ENGL1202 S11 - Jennifer Williams

ENGL1202 S12 - Brian Swail

Mything You. We often think of myths as stories told by ancient people to explain the world, simple fictions they needed because they weren’t clever and didn’t have iPhones. I want to suggest that myths continue to be fundamental to how we understand the world, ourselves, and those around us. We will look at some early narratives before turning to modern revisions of some very old stories.

ENGL1202 S13 - Heather Cyr - Switched to online (synchronous)

Double Lives. In this course we will investigate the theme of “double lives” in works of several different genres including the short story, the graphic novel, and the novel. We’ll examine how these works construct unique characters who live double lives, how people create, maintain and attempt to reconcile multiple selves and why these double lives are often seen as assets or threats. Looking at authors such as Robert Louis Stevenson, Shaun Tan, and Julia Alvarez, we will discuss the relationship between genre and the construction of character, emphasizing how the works we study are the historical product of a specific time and place even though they often have universal themes that transcend that. Throughout the term, we will also consider how the literature we read addresses the recurring concerns of gender, race, and class identity as they relate to our theme of “double lives.”

ENGL1202 S14 - John Rupert - Switched to online (asynchronous)

ENGL1202 S16 - Kim Larsen (switched to partially online)

Writing on the Edge: Madness, murder, obsessive desire. Come join us as we explore stories and poems that deal with extreme or abnormal states of mind, analyzing the ways in which these texts portray the potential monstrosity that lurks just beneath the surface of rational humanity.

ENGL1202 S18 - Kim Larsen (switched to partially online)

ENGL1202 S19 - Cara Headley (switched partially online)

ENGL1207 S10 - Paul Tyndall - (switched to partially online)

*More topics may be announced in the coming weeks

All prerequisite waivers for ENGL classes must be approved by the Chair of English, Dr. Heather Cyr. Please contact her by email: Heather.Cyr@kpu.ca