1020E - Understanding Literature Today
By studying a broad range of exciting and important literary works from the past and present, this course will increase your understanding and appreciation not just of the richness and power of the works themselves, but also of the role of literature in reflecting and shaping our perceptions of the world and of ourselves. 1.0 course

1022E - Enriched Introduction to English Literature
Why does literature matter? This course will pose this question by examining works of literature from the fourteenth century to now and through assignments that ask you to hone a range of interpretive, critical, and creative skills necessary to your future success as students and leaders. Above all the course will explore how the writing and reading of literature are inherently political acts that ask us to think through our most pressing issues – environment, sexuality, race, gender, class – with tolerance for others and hope for the future. 1.0 course

1027F - The Storyteller’s Art I: Introduction to Narrative POPULAR!
The act of storytelling has been essential to human culture from the time of the ancient Greeks to the present day. Stories are integral to the way we define ourselves – and manipulate others. This course will examine the story teller’s art not only through novels and short stories but also in its ancient and modern forms, ranging from the epic to more recent forms such as the graphic novel. As diverse as these stories may seem, they share a central concern with the way we represent ourselves and interpret others. 0.5 course

Fall 2025	1027F / 001	A. Lee	Syllabus
Fall 2025	1027F / 002	G. Ceraldi	Syllabus

1028G (001) - The Storyteller’s Art II | Introduction to Narrative - Strange Stories and Disturbing Narratives POPULAR!
This course explores a particular theme, mode, or genre of storytelling. Instruction is by lecture and tutorials; emphasis on developing strong analytical and writing skills. 0.5 course

1028G (002) - The Storyteller’s Art II | Introduction to Narrative - Stories about Stories: From Realism to Fairy Tale POPULAR!
Since the time of Jane Austen, literary excellence has been associated with realism. The nomination lists for major literary awards are often dominated by texts characterized by realistic settings, complex characters, and an attention to the small details that make up the fabric of ordinary life. Nevertheless, in recent years the cultural landscape has come to be dominated by the fantasy genre: ranging from the Harry Potter series to post-apocalyptic fantasies like The Last of Us, fantasy tropes have become increasingly central to the way we tell our stories, examine our politics, and think about our future. This course will examine the dominance of realism by looking not only at realist novels but also at texts that feature characters who are themselves authors (or artists) struggling to balance the demands of realism with the appeal of fantasy and fairy tale. 2 lecture hours, 1 tutorial hour, 0.5 course

Winter 2026

1028G / 002

G. Ceraldi

Syllabus

2016G - Papyrus to Pixels: A History of the Things We Read
This course explores the broad sweep of book history from early manuscript culture to the eBook. Much of this course will be “hands-on,” working with the material artifacts or facsimiles of book culture. Field trips and guest lectures will enhance our understanding of the book’s long and complex history. 0.5 course

2017 - Reading Popular Culture
"If Shakespeare were alive today, he'd be writing for television." This course addresses the many forms of popular culture, including television, music, popular fiction and film, urban myths, and celebrities. The aim of this course is to encourage students to develop a critical understanding of all aspects of popular culture. FINAL EXAM WILL BE HELD IN-PERSON ON CAMPUS. 1.0 course

2018A - The Culture of Leadership I
This course addresses the complex nature of leadership represented in key works of literature and culture, from Malory to Alice Munro, Shakespeare to David Mamet. We will focus on the ethical dilemmas and moral choices faced by leaders to ask what role a leader plays: hero, manager, thinker, strategist, artist, figurehead, authority? 0.5 course

2032F - Harry Potter
The phenomenal success of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series may relate to its roots in a variety of genres including the gothic novel, detective fiction, fantasy, and adventure. This course studies all seven books alongside other novels and short stories that illustrate the generic conventions used and adapted by Rowling. 0.5 course

Fall 2025

2032F / 001

G. Ceraldi

Syllabus

2033E - Children’s Literature POPULAR!
This course examines the development of literature for and about children from its roots in fairy tales, nursery rhymes, and nonsense literature. Animal stories, adventure tales, picture books, and domestic novels will be considered alongside visits to fantasy realms like Wonderland, Neverland, or the Land of Oz. A central focus will be the assumptions about children and childhood that shape these texts, all produced by adults based on what they believe children enjoy, want, or need. 1.0 course

Fall/Winter

2033E / 001

G. Ceraldi

Syllabus

2034F - Young Adult Literature NEW!
This course examines literature for and about adolescents to interrogate what it means to be an adolescent and how the adolescent experience is represented in literature. Focusing on texts written from the 1940s on, we use key critical and theoretical debates to understand YA literature’s place within larger scholarly trends. 0.5 course

2041F - Special Topics in Drama: Machinal
In this course, students participating in the Department of English and Writing Studies' Drama Production - Machinal, explore in theory and practice approaches to text in performance. Only students working as an actor, director, stage manager, assistant stage manager, lighting, set or costume designer may enroll. Please note: Auditions are held prior to the course start date so that students can register and receive a course credit for their part in the production. See course page for more details. Permission required to enroll. 0.5 course

2071F/G - Speculative Fiction: Science Fiction
From Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, a consideration of the history and development of science fiction. Will include science fiction themes such as the Other, new technologies, chaos theory, cybernetics, paradoxes of space/time travel, first contact, and alien worlds. FINAL EXAM FOR SECTION 650 WIL BE HELD IN-PERSON ON CAMPUS. 0.5 course

2072F - Speculative Fiction: Fantasy
A study of the purposes and historical origins of fantasy, and modern developments in fantasy: alternate worlds, horror or ghost stories, sword & sorcery, heroic fantasy. May include writers such as Tolkien, Simmons, Peake, Herbert, Beagle, Rowling. 0.5 course

2073G - Speculative Fiction: Utopias and Dystopias
An examination of major utopian and dystopian texts. Will concern ways in which humanity has tried to imagine a perfect world, fix the current world, or construct an exaggerated version of the world in order to demonstrate its flaws and weaknesses. 0.5 course

Winter 2026

2073G / 001

G. Ceraldi

Syllabus

These courses require prerequisites. Students are responsible for ensuring that they have successfully completed all course prerequisites and that they have not taken an antirequisite course, as stated in the Academic Calendar.

2112F - Adapting Across Page, Stage, and Screen (cross-listed with Film 2212F and Theatre Studies 2212F)
How does the shape an artwork takes contribute to its aesthetic and political power? When artworks flex across form and media how do their messages change? What did Marshall McLuhan mean when he said “the medium is the message”? How do genre and form shape social and political discourse? In this course, students explore these questions and more as they investigate texts that assume multiple cultural forms and represent a diversity of perspectives. 0.5 course

2200F - History of Theory and Criticism
An introduction to important issues in the history of literary criticism and theory from Plato to the twentieth century. 0.5 course

2201G - Contemporary Theory and Criticism
This course builds on the historical foundations of English 2200F/G to concentrate on important issues in contemporary literary theory and criticism. English 2200F/G is recommended as preparation for English 2201F/G. 0.5 course

2202G - Studies in Poetics
An introduction to important issues and concepts in the theory and analysis of poetry from different periods. 0.5 course

2301E - British Literature Survey
This survey course charts the history of British and Irish literature through study of its major authors, from the anonymous poet who wrote Beowulf to the very recent Irish novelist Claire Keegan. Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales), John Donne's love poetry and devotional verse, Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Jane Austen (Sense and Sensibility, Emily Brontë, (Wuthering Heights) and T.S. Eliot are read along the way. 1.0 course

2401E - American Literature Survey
A survey of American literature from the period of imperial exploration and contact in North America to the postmodern era. In this class, we will read some of the most fascinating literary works of the United States in a variety of modes and genres. We will consider the aesthetic and formal properties of each text and consider how writers were shaped by the social conditions, ideological conflicts, economic forces, and political developments of their times, such as the forced removal of Native Americans and the practice of chattel slavery. As we study the evolution of major artistic movements and periods, we will also trace the development of important assumptions, myths, and fundamental beliefs about the United States that still influence American discourse today.

In this survey, we will also pay close attention to the voices that are heard—and not heard—in different moments of US history. The pressure of attempting to read 400 years of literary history will force us to pose questions about the limits of the American literary canon. Why do we read what we read, and who benefits from that? How have ideas of what constitutes “literature” (or “America,” for that matter) changed over time? What could lesser-known writers contribute to our understanding of the US nation and its literature? And is it possible to read so-called canonical writers in a way that produces new kinds of knowledge?

Readings will include novels such as Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Ernest Hemingway’s In Our Time, and Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar; short fiction by Herman Melville, Henry James, and Leslie Marmon Silko; personal narratives such as Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Zitkala-Sa’s Impressions of an Indian Childhood and Henry David Thoreau’s Walden; and poetry by Anne Bradstreet, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes, and Allan Ginsberg. Assignments will include 4 essays, participation quizzes, a library assignment and a final exam. 1.0 course

2501E - Canadian Literature Survey
What does literature tell us about the making of a nation and its citizens? Spanning the period from imperial exploration to Confederation to the present day, this course examines Canada’s vibrant literary culture. Students will encounter a diverse range of genres and authors, from accounts of early explorers to current internationally acclaimed and award-winning writers. 1.0 course

2601E - Global Literatures in English Survey
This course offers students a great opportunity to survey of the links between and among different literary traditions and innovations across such diverse geographic regions as Asia, Africa, Australia, South America, and the Caribbean. Through close reading of literary texts written in English, students will explore how cultures produce different--often competing--ways of making meaning. 1.0 course

These courses require prerequisites. Students are responsible for ensuring that they have successfully completed all course prerequisites and that they have not taken an antirequisite course, as stated in the Academic Calendar.

3204F - Critical Race Theory (cross-listed with GSWS 3324F)
This course explores key concepts in critical race theory, focusing on: cultural constructions of race and their connection to settler colonialism and imperialism; the links between race, class, gender, and sexuality; processes of racialization; whiteness as an “invisible” category; the hypervisibility of racialized subjects; and anti-racist cultural production. 0.5 course

3209G - Topics in Theory (cross-listed with GSWS 3173F and SASAH 3392G)
This course offers advanced study in a narrowly defined area of theory and criticism. Specific content will vary from year to year depending on the instructor. 0.5 course

3300 - History of English Language
A study of the historical development of English phonology, morphology, orthography and syntax from Old English to the modern period. At the same time, we examine the changing roles of English (commercial, literary, and administrative) and the different varieties of the language available to its many speakers. 1.0 course

3316E - Love in the Middle Ages
This course explores representations of love and desire in the culture of Europe from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries. While introducing the Middle English language, we will read romances, dream visions, mystical visions, love letters, and plays in their scientific, historical, and religious contexts. 1.0 course

3321F - Paradise Lost
This half-course will examine such topics as Milton’s grand style, Satan, epic heroism (is Paradise Lost an epic or anti-epic?), the nature of innocence, what it means to “fall,” and whether there can be a “fortunate fall.” Attention will also be paid to seventeenth-century politics, science and astronomy. 0.5 course

3326F - Death in the Renaissance
Drawing on poetry, drama and prose, this course will consider a range of literary responses to death during the period 1590 to 1670. It will begin with discussion of the period’s funeral and mourning customs, and then turn to such works as Shakespeare’s Hamlet, John Donne’s devotional poetry and his “Death’s Duel” (described by some as his own funeral sermon), a range of funeral elegies (including John Milton’s “Lycidas” and selections from Paradise Lost) and Sir Thomas Browne’s meditation on ancient Roman burial urns Urn Burial. As student interests lead, we may also relate these literary works to depictions of death in the visual arts and to funeral music from the period. 0.5 course

3331G - Adapting Shakespeare
Shakespeare invented few of the plots of his plays; instead he used others’ writing. Later artists (including stage and film directors, playwrights, and novelists) have likewise drawn on Shakespeare's plays as inspiration. This half-course explores this range of “Shakespearean adaptation” through close study of two or three major plays. 0.5 course

3341F - Sex, Death, and Philosophy: Libertinism and Eighteenth-Century British Literature
The restoration of the monarchy in 1660 ushered in a new and sometimes frightening era of philosophical, social, and sexual freedom. This course explores Libertinism, a subversive doctrine that challenged cultural and sexual norms, through the poems, plays, and prose of the late 17th and early 18th centuries. 0.5 course

3344G - Black Lives in the Eighteenth Century (cross-listed with GSWS 3451G)
This course explores Black writers’ narratives and imaginative writing about the Black experience during the period before and during the British abolition of the slave trade. We will investigate the mechanisms of oppression on enslaved Africans and expressions of their resistance to white power. 0.5 course

3351F - Romantic Revolutions
Revolt, radicalism, counter-revolution, reaction, reformation; hope, crisis, peace, war, invention, imagination, catastrophe, wonder, terror. What shadows did revolution cast upon the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries? This course examines a range of texts that reflect Romantic and post-Romantic transformations, upheavals, and reversals in aesthetic, socio-political, scientific, and/or psychological thought and writing. 0.5 course

3353F - The Woman Question: Nineteenth-Century Woman Writers
In the nineteenth century, women readers and women writers were an important part of the new mass market for English literature, often leading in the emergent campaign for women’s rights. This course will discuss these and other issues in fiction, non-fiction, and poetry by women from the 1790s to 1900. 0.5 course

3370G - Modernism and the Birth of the Avant-Garde
Fascinated by innovation and revolution, modernism is obsessed with the new, celebrating the speed, alienation, and fragmentation of modernity. Yet it is also steeped in nostalgia, in a world dashed by modernity itself. This course offers a range of texts that explore modernist reimaginings of art, politics, psychology and identity. 0.5 course

3371F - Contemporary Experimental Literature
Several contemporary poets and fiction writers express a profound dissatisfaction with traditional literary genres, preferring to focus on radical innovations in technique. This course examines a range of texts that offer a more clinical approach to writing, inspired by such structures as dreams, arbitrary constraints, and game theory. 0.5 course

3571G - Be/Longing: Global Literature in Canada
Where is "here" for writers of migrant and diasporic heritages living in Canada? How does writing from “elsewhere” reshape collective understanding? These and other questions will be studied in vibrant and provocative works by such writers as Dionne Brand, Anita Rau Badami, Rawi Hage, Michael Ondaatje, and Kim Thuy. 0.5 course

3679G - Topics in Postcolonial Literature (cross-listed with Theatre Studies 3952G)
This course will be broad enough to provide an introduction to Postcolonial Literature, but narrower in focus than the general survey. It may concentrate on a particular geographical area, or use some other principle of selection. 0.5 course

3680F - Indigenous Literatures of Turtle Island (cross-listed with Indigenous Studies 3880F) CANCELLED
This course will introduce students to a diverse range of Indigenous storytelling practices from Turtle Island (North America), which may include oral narratives, literature, and visual and performance arts. Students will consider how these practices both shape and are shaped by specific historical and geographical contexts. 0.5 course

3724G - Banned and Challenged Books NEW! (cross-listed with SASAH 3390G)
Students will read a variety of banned, challenged, and controversial books for children and young adults. In focusing on such books, we consider the impetus behind challenging books, what it tells us about a particular historical moment, and what it tells us about literature in general. 0.5 course

3776F - Canadian Drama
Canada is an intercultural nation – on stolen land. What does it look like, in 2025, to represent this place at the theatre? What did it look like in 1975? In this class we will pair “Canadian drama" then – a moment of resurgent theatrical nationalism – with work on our stages today – a moment of ongoing resistance to white supremacy and settler colonialism. Our class will place a strong emphasis on work by POC, Indigenous, and queer and trans artists as we unpack the issues, tactics, and theatrical strategies that have resonated across the last 50 years of performance making on our part of Turtle Island. We will read and watch plays in equal measure, and we’ll react to them in print and in performance ourselves.

Course outline coming in August. Questions now? Email Professor Kim Solga at ksolga@uwo.ca. 0.5 course

4311E – Seminar in Medieval Language and Literature: Tolkien and Old English (cross-listed with English 9171)
In 1908, a master at a public school in Birmingham gave his most promising student a recently-published primer of Old English, which he devoured with enthusiasm before turning to read Beowulf in Old English, then Middle English, Old Norse, and Germanic philology more generally. He was fascinated by medieval languages, and the next year invented a language based on the Finnish in the Kalevala. At Oxford, that student started in Classics but shifted to the English school partway through his degree, after which he served in the Great War on the front lines. He was already a poet and storyteller, and on his return became a lexicographer and then a medievalist. In 1930, while marking student papers for the UK government, he famously found a blank page and wrote "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit." In this course we will learn Old English, starting with the basics and practising a lot, while reading J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings in the first term, looking also at some short passages, easy prose, and one or two poems. In the second term we will look at some Old English riddles and elegies, consider some of Tolkien’s scholarship and other works, read The Hobbit, and focus in the final six weeks on the Old English poem Beowulf which was at the centre of Tolkien’s intellectual and imaginative world. 1.0 course

Fall/Winter

4311E / 001

M.J. Toswell

Syllabus

4320F – Seminar in Renaissance Literature: Shakespeare and Friends: Writing and Amity
Topics vary from year to year. Description TBA. 0.5 course

4321G – Seminar in Renaissance Literature: The Royal Court (Tudor and Stuart) and English Literature
Topics vary from year to year. Description TBA. 0.5 course

4350F – Seminar in Nineteenth-Century Literature: Romantic Ways of Knowing
Topics vary from year to year. Description TBA. 0.5 course

4370G – Seminar in Twentieth-Century British and Irish Literature
Topics vary from year to year. Description TBA. 0.5 course

4470F - Seminar in American Literature: Climate Humanities
Topics vary from year to year. Description TBA. 0.5 course

4580G - Seminar in Indigenous Literature: Indigenous Futurisms
Topics vary from year to year. Description TBA. 0.5 course

4871F - Seminar in Literary Studies: From Ecopoetics to Cli-Fi: Writing in Response to Climate Change (cross-listed with Writing 4880F)
Focusing on the topic of climate change, this course will encourage and support students to develop a sustained work of fiction, poetry, or creative nonfiction through shared reading, writing, and workshopping. We will examine how other creative writers grapple with climate change, discuss topics such as mourning, extinction, care, activism, and hope, and explore our own relations to the land and creatures we live with and among. Regular writing exercises and workshopping will allow us to try new approaches, support each other’s writing, and deepen and strengthen our creative work. 0.5 course

4999E - Thesis
Individual instruction in the selection of a topic, the preparation of materials, and the writing of a thesis. Students who wish to take this course must apply to the Chair of Undergraduate Studies, Department of English and Writing Studies. This course is restricted to students in fourth year of an English Program with a minimum A average. Additional registration in 4000-level English courses require permission of the Department. See English Studies 4999E - Undergraduate Thesis for details. 1.0 course

1020E - Understanding Literature Today
By studying a broad range of exciting and important literary works from the past and present, this course will increase your understanding and appreciation not just of the richness and power of the works themselves, but also of the role of literature in reflecting and shaping our perceptions of the world and of ourselves. 1.0 course

2033E - Children’s Literature
This course examines the development of literature for and about children from its roots in fairy tales, nursery rhymes, and nonsense literature. Animal stories, adventure tales, picture books, and domestic novels will be considered alongside visits to fantasy realms like Wonderland, Neverland, or the Land of Oz. A central focus will be the assumptions about children and childhood that shape these texts, all produced by adults based on what they believe children enjoy, want, or need. 1.0 course

2071F - Speculative Fiction: Science Fiction
From Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, a consideration of the history and development of science fiction. Will include science fiction themes such as the Other, new technologies, chaos theory, cybernetics, paradoxes of space/time travel, first contact, and alien worlds. 0.5 course

2072F - Speculative Fiction: Fantasy
Wizards, vampires, fairies, and the Chosen One – these figures are no longer confined to a genre ghetto but have instead moved to the mainstream. This course examines the roots of the fantasy genre in novels such as Dracula and The Lord of the Rings and considers how the tropes of the genre have been reproduced and transformed by authors like J.K. Rowling and Angela Carter. We will examine the continuing appeal of stories about magic, whether they involve supernatural intrusions, visits to the realm of faerie, or extraordinary powers hidden in apparently ordinary places. 0.5 course

2401E - American Literature Survey
This course offers a survey of important texts and authors from the Puritan and Revolutionary periods to the present. It addresses not only the major movements and styles of American literature associated with such authors as Poe, Dickinson, Twain, Hemingway, and Morrison, but also the innovative work of less familiar Indigenous and ethnic authors. 1.0 course