Graduate Course Offerings

Note: English 6999 (Master's Research Essay) is available every semester, though students are encouraged to take this course in the Spring semester.

Winter 2023

ENGL 7450, Indigenous Voices: Reading for All My Relations/Wahkohtowin 

Michelle Porter; Wednesdays 10:00 to 1:00

Reading for All My Relations/Wahkohtowin invites student to journey into the stories of a range of Métis literature. Students will learn to read the stories of the Métis Nation of Western Canada with attention to relationality—the author’s, the story’s and their own—and in doing so will develop the tools to learn how to approach and read the stories of other Indigenous Nations after the class is over. Students will read fiction, nonfiction and poetry by storytellers including Katherena Vermette, Jesse Thistle, Maria Campbell and others.

ENGL 7357, Genre Studies: Ecopoetics

Joel Deshaye; Tuesdays, 1:00 pm to 4:00 pm

This course is a small but representative survey of contemporary Canadian poetry, which we will read largely through rhizomes (à la Deleuze and Guattari) of ecopoetics, media ecology, and acoustic ecology. It begins with two canonical but contemporary figures, Jan Zwicky and Don McKay, before moving on to mid-career writers from various places and backgrounds: Oana Avasilichioaei, Kaie Kellough, Marvin Francis, and Karen Solie.

ENGL 7210: Creative Writings: Supernatural Novellas

Lisa Moore; Thursdays, 7:00 to 10:00pm

Details forthcoming. 

ENGL 7604, Period Studies: Medieval Drama

John Geck; Wednesdays, 12:00 pm to 3 pm

In this class, we will read the York Cycle, watch modern revival performances, and discuss the thematic, historical, and dramaturgical aspects of this massive and unique example of civic theatre. Throughout Medieval Europe, the feast of Corpus Christi, was devoted to the symbolic unifying meaning of the Eucharist, expressed by carrying the Host in solemn procession through the city. In the northern English city of York, from about 1377 to 1569, almost fifty individual short plays were introduced to this celebration, offering a way to enact, visualize, and participate in a grand chronologically and cosmologically unifying event, depicting the whole of time from Creation to Last Judgement.

Fall 2022

ENGL 7353:
Genre Studies (Women Travelers Writing North)

Dr. Valerie Legge, valerie@mun.ca

Mondays, 10-1pm

This course will examine a number of travel narratives written by unusually intrepid women: Aritha van Herk, Josephine Peary, Elizabeth Taylor, Edith Watson, and Mary Schaeffer. Though oriented northward, these women described their remote destinations as "exotic geographies" (Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism). In Orientalism Said suggests that travel literature contributed to the formation of imperial attitudes and helped empires rule distant lands and unruly people: "From travelers' tales ... colonies were created and ethnocentric perspectives secured" (117). Central to Said's argument is the notion that stories about remote regions of the world enabled writers to assert their own sense of superiority and to privilege their own cultures and histories. This course investigates why women travelers were attracted to northern regions of the world and what attitudes they expressed about the people who inhabited those regions. We will begin by reading “Ellesmere, Woman as Island,” an excerpt from Aritha van Herk’s Places Far From Ellesmere.

ENGL 7214: 
Creative Writings: Nature Writing

Dr. Robert Finley, rfinley@mun.ca

Wednesdays 7-10pm

 

To walk attentively through a forest, even a damaged one, is to be caught by the abundance of life: ancient and new; underfoot and reaching into the light. But how does one tell the life of the forest? We might begin by looking for drama and adventure beyond the activities of humans. Yet we are not used to reading stories without human heroes… Can I show landscape as the protagonist of an adventure in which humans are only one kind of participant?  (Anna Tsing)

In English 7214 we will be taking up Anna Tsing’s challenge by helping students establish an attentive nature writing practice through a combination of extended periods of time outdoors collecting field notes and finding points of contact; an intense writing schedule (daily lyric, and fortnightly nonfiction/essay pieces); peer critiques; and readings (including contemporary models of the genre and theoretical work). Work done during the semester will be collected into a final portfolio of writing, optionally in the form of a “story map” https://storymaps.arcgis.com/. This final portfolio of creative work, a presentation on at least one of the course readings, participation in peer critiques and group work will form the basis for evaluation in the course.

ENGL 7601: 
Period Studies: Global Renaissance

Dr. Robert Ormsby, rormsby@mun.ca

Tuesdays, 12pm-3pm

 

The Renaissance was as much about making new connections with civilizations in various parts of the world through exploration and trade as it was a matter of Europeans connecting with the Classical Graeco-Roman past. In this course we will study how the literature of early modern England both romanticized the supposed adventure of overseas encounters and tallied the costs for those on the losing end of global expansion. The works we will consider tell stories of piracy and conquest, detail a fascination with the perceived exoticism of foreign cultures, reflect early modern English conceptions of race and empire, and reveal the threat that England felt from both the Ottomans and Catholic Europe.

ENGL 7003: 
Contemporary Theory and Practice

Dr. Danine Farquharson, daninef@mun.ca

Fridays, 10am-1pm

All too often, people think of “theory” as disconnected from action. Not so for this class! Together, we’ll be reading foundational texts of contemporary theory and working collaboratively to discuss praxis: a term used since Aristotle, for whom praxis is one of the three basic activities of human beings (the others being theoria or theory, and poiēsis, or skilful manufacture). Readings will include Marx and Engels’ The Communist Manifesto and Legacy Russell’s Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto.

Winter 2023 (details forthcoming)

  • Indigenous Voices
  • Writing the Supernatural
  • Medieval Drama: York Mystery Plays
  • Ecopoetics

Recent (past) grad courses:

  • ENGL 7358: Weird Fiction (C. Lockett)
  • ENGL 7212: Playwriting (Megan Coles)
  • ENGL 7357: Ecopoetics (J. Deshaye)
  • ENGL 7603:  Tudor Mythmaking (A. Juhasz-Ormsby)
  • ENGL 7755: Narrative and Play (S. Thorne)
  • ENGL 7003: Trends in Contemporary Critical Theory (N. Pedri)
  • ENGL 7104: Shakespeare and the Question of Authorship (Dr. Robert Ormsby)
  • ENGL 7205: Creative Writing: The Podcast (Angela Antle)
  • ENGL 7305: Low Culture in 1850s New York City (Dr. Andrew Loman)
  • ENGL 7650: Newfoundland Drama (Dr. Denyse Lynde)