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English Courses
Spring 2017
ACADEMIC WRITING – First Year
English 100 – Academic Writing Strategies (multiple sections)
We offer many sections of our foundational writing course, Academic Writing Strategies. English 100 teaches students the
fundamentals of first year university writing, as well as valuable transferable skills. You’ll hone your ability to read critically,
respond thoughtfully in discussions, and compose well-structured and well-reasoned arguments. And you’ll be introduced
to the basics of citing sources and researching responsibly.
The course examines aspects of contemporary culture through a variety of print and other media. Course themes and
cultural content are chosen by individual instructors, who ensure the course material is both engaging and relevant.
Assignments such as the critical response, the narrative argument, and the documented research essay prepare students
for the demands of thoughtful reading and writing at university.
CREATIVE WRITING – First Year
English 190-01 – Creative Writing I: Crystal Hurdle
When is a poem really a story? When should you leave a draft alone? Through in-class writing, weekly homework
assignments, and personal projects, you will write up a storm in a number of genres. You’ll be introduced to professional
writers, from Sharon Olds to Vladimir Nabokov, from William Carlos Williams to Sylvia Plath, to visiting writers, as well as to
the work of your colleagues, in aid of developing your style, articulating your voice. Texts include Gary Geddes, ed. 20thCentury Poetry & Poetics, Gary Geddes, ed. The Art of Short Fiction.
English 190-02 & 03 – Creative Writing I: Ryan Knighton
In this course students will be introduced to the complexity of our two main cognitive modes of literary composition –
poetry and prose. We will create our own portfolios of work using both, provide each other with constructive editorial
feedback, and isolate various exercises and developmental tasks in a varied body of short works, ranging from the lyrics of
John Prine to the microsatires of McSweeneys, and much in between. Lunch will not be served, but it may be described.
English 191-01 – Creative Writing II: Crystal Hurdle
Develop your creative skills as you explore and write prose and poetry; transmute personal experience into creative nonfiction and a motley crew of other literary projects. You’ll be introduced to professional writers, from Lorna Crozier to bp
Nichol, from Thomas King to Gabriel Garcia Márquez, to visiting writers at the Open Text series, as well as to the work of
your colleagues, in aid of developing your style, articulating your voice. Texts include Gary Geddes, ed. 20th-Century Poetry
& Poetics, Gary Geddes, ed. The Art of Short Fiction.
LITERATURE – First Year
English 103-01 & 02 – Studies in Contemporary Literature: Crystal Hurdle
From the menacing playfulness of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? to the black comedy of Sylvia Plath’s The
Bell Jar, sex and death intersect with fantasy and reality in a number of the course’s readings in poetry, fiction, and drama.
Texts include Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Ed. Gary Geddes’ 20th Century Poetry and Poetics 5th ed.,
Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, Tony Kushner’s Millennium Approaches from Angels in America, Print Package of readings,
including short stories, and student work.
ENGLISH | www.caplianou.ca | Questions? Call us: 604.984.4957 | Email: [email protected]
English 103-03 – Studies in Contemporary Literature: Tim Acton
In this course, we will study representative literary works of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. We will explore
various current issues and how literature has been used as a medium for artists to confront and define experience. While
the works are primarily in the Modernist tradition, we will give some consideration to recent critical strategies that depart
from Modernist approaches. The course will help students understand how to analyze ways literature represents or
illuminates human experience, develop the ability to read critically and thoughtfully, and introduce some of the vocabulary
available to critical readers of literature.
English 103-04 – Studies in Contemporary Literature: Rae Nickolichuk
In this section of 103, we will be looking at contemporary fiction, drama, and poetry which explores ideas of urban space
and experience generally and Vancouver specifically. How does literature reflect or mark alienation, poverty, violence,
community, and other urban issues? How does the city, Vancouver specifically, shape the various relationships among its
diverse inhabitants? What can our literature help us see and understand about Vancouver and, by extension, urban life?
English 103-05 & 06 – Studies in Contemporary Literature: Vicky Ross
The Life of the City
Designed for students who love to travel but have commitments on campus in the spring semester, this course offers
literary and filmic journeys to cities around the world. Through fiction, poetry, and drama, we’ll visit such diverse urban
centres as Montreal, St Petersburg, Tokyo, New York, Lahore, and London. Class discussions will focus on how each text
comments creatively on the life of the city and works will include Nikolai Gogol’s “The Overcoat”, Haruki Murakami’s
Sputnik Sweet, Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Caryl Churchill’s Serious Money.
English 109-01 & 07 – Contemporary Issues in Literature and Culture: Roger Farr
iSpy: Facts and Fictions from the Surveillance Society
We will explore the interdependence of contemporary culture, the media, and technology, focusing on an important
current issue: the fate of privacy in a surveillance society. In approaching this subject, we will consider popular
representations of surveillance and social control, as well as “tactical media” responses by groups such as the Surveillance
Camera Players and the Institute for Applied Autonomy. Texts include Lyon, David. Surveillance Studies: An Overview.
London, UK: Polity, 2007; Moore, Alan. V for Vendetta. New York, NY: Vertigo, 1991; Raban, Jonathan. Surveillance. New
York, NY: Vintage, 2008; Surveillance Camera Players. We Know You Are Watching: Surveillance Camera Players (19962006). Queens, NY: Factory School, 2006.
English 109-02 & 06 – Contemporary Issues in Literature and Culture: Andrea Westcott
This course explores contemporary issues and how they are interpreted in literature, film, and music. Just as mythic
narratives have always been with us, so too have expressions about our longings and anxieties been with us in story form,
as the twin poles of our need for love, and our fear of death, underpin our psychic reality. We rationalize this fear of death
with denial, but, then counter it with a desire for love and self-expression, often without realizing that these polarities are
driven by an underlying erotic and daimonic compulsion. Thus, we’ll survey some of the history of the Gothic genre, along
with a selection of short stories from The Broadview Anthology of Short Fiction (2nd edition). We’ll read David Ives’ play
Venus in Fur and look at a selection of poems about love and death. Finally, we’ll read Claudia Casper’s novel The Mercy
Journals, where she offers us the journals of Allen Quincy, her hero struggling to survive in North America at the end of the
21st century.
English 109-05 – Contemporary Issues in Literature and Culture: Reg Johanson
“And the next time someone says ‘there is one law for everyone,’ say, ‘I’m sorry, but you’re an idiot.’” Marie Clements,
Burning Vision
Giorgio Agamben argues that the law functions by including through excluding, by capturing bodies through expelling them.
This function of the law becomes apparent when we study the stories of people who are captured and expelled from the
category of “citizen”—migrants, refugees, Indigenous people, and racialized bodies within the nation-state. Texts include
Gord Hill, The 500 Years of Resistance Comic Book, No One Is Illegal, r/ally, Harsha Walia, Undoing Border Imperialism, Joe
Sacco, Palestine, Sleep Dealer (film), dir. Alex Rivera, This is England (film) dir. Shane Meadows, Jordan Scott, Clearance
Process.
ENGLISH | www.caplianou.ca | Questions? Call us: 604.984.4957 | Email: [email protected]
CREATIVE WRITING – Second Year
English 291-01 – Narrative Fiction: Anne Stone
This upper level workshop in fiction is designed to foster innovative writing practices in an open and supportive
environment. Students will spend most of their time writing and workshopping fiction. On the one hand, you’ll be
encouraged to experiment with new techniques, and on the other, you’ll receive guidance on traditional elements of fiction
to help further develop your craft (such as dialogue, language use, characterization, and point of view). Readings: King,
Stephen. On Writing (see bookstore for edition information). Other readings to be provided via Moodle links or handed out
in class.
English 296-1A & 1B – Writing for the Stage: Hiro Kanagawa/Dawn Moore
In this course students will write a ten-minute play and see it through a complete revision and rehearsal process
culminating in a public production with actors and directors from the Acting for Stage and Screen program. While exploring
formal issues common to all creative writing, the course emphasizes narrative structure, character development, dialog,
subtext, and ultimately the collaboration between playwright, director, and actors.
LITERATURE – Second Year
English 201-01 – Literature from 1660 to the early 20th century: Vicky Ross
This course is for students who love variety and like to travel through time. We’ll study drama, journalism, poetry and
fiction by some of the bravest, most innovative and most notorious writers of the past 300 years. From Aphra Behn to
Virginia Woolf, with Mr. Spectator, the Romantics and the Victorians in between – we’re spoilt for choice. Texts include
Aphra Behn’s The Rover, selections from the Tatler and Spectator (best read in 18th century coffee shops), The Beggar’s
Opera, poetry by William Blake, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Dickens’s Oliver Twist and Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway—
the latter two with film translations.
English 203-01 – Canadian Literature: Sheila M. Ross
This study of Canadian literatures surveys the period from the early 19th century to the present to give students a sense of
the great range and depth of Canadian literatures in English. As well, we’ll study 3 striking contemporary works by writers
working in quite different genres: the graphic/comics history Louis Riel by Chester Brown, the narrative poem,
Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson, and the dystopic fictional narrative Player One by Vancouver artist and writer
Douglas Coupland. The course will introduce students to important cultural issues such as our dark colonialist past and our
now increasingly globalized present, as well as to such critical issues as our abiding self-consciousness about the act of
representation and our enduring interest in the poetics of landscape.
English 213-01 – World Literature in English: Brook Houglum
This course will read 21st century international fiction that takes up the dynamics of the “coming of age” story. We’ll read
novels such as Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend (2012) and Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go (2005) and graphic novels
such as Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis (2003). We’ll talk about characters’ experiences with pop culture and political culture
and ask questions like: what does 21st-century coming-of-age literature suggest about living in the 20th/21st centuries, in
different places?; how can current theories about human development illuminate the works we read?; at what point does a
person “grow up”?
English 219-01 – Reel Lit: Literature into Film: Rae Nickolichuk
In this course, we will examine various literary texts and how they are realized (or not) in film. Using works such as
Shakespeare’s Othello and Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, we can compare multiple film interpretations over time. Other
works will include Banks’ The Sweet Hereafter and the award winning Egoyan film, Welsh’s Trainspotting and Boyle’s
acclaimed film of the novel, among others.
ENGLISH | www.caplianou.ca | Questions? Call us: 604.984.4957 | Email: [email protected]
CREATIVE WRITING – Third Year
English 391-01 – Advanced Narrative Fictions: Anne Stone
Stories are at the heart of many mediums, from film to the printed page. But before the pages are printed, before the
cameras roll, there is you and the blank page. In this open and supportive fiction workshop, we’ll focus on bringing your
stories to full fluorescence. We’ll mine published works with a writer’s eye (our focus, this semester, will be on literarygenre mash ups, digital fiction, bio fiction, & micro fiction). We’ll also do sessions on the craft of writing itself, developing
our ability to bring our writing – from the level of the sentence to the level of the scene – to fuller fruition. Books include
Ishiguro, Kazuo. Never Let Me Go, Mandel, Emily St-John. Station Eleven, Sinker, Dan. The F***ing Epic Twitter Quest of
@MayorEmanuel, Wah, Fred. Diamond Grill. Other readings to be provided via Moodle links or handed out in class.
LITERATURE & WRITING – Third Year
English 300-01 – Writing, Rhetoric, Style: Brian Ganter
Digital Writing Studio
This course introduces students to various genres and platforms of “writing” (composition, research, and scholarship)
in the age of digital environments. As an advanced writing course, the course builds on students’ existing foundational
writing skills to develop an awareness of writerly rhetorical choices that occur through all phases of the composition
process. As a course in digital writing we will approach writing as an inherently multimodal act, a practice that can
include any combination of written, visual, spatial, gestural (think of “writing” on a tablet surface) and audio
components. An intensive theoretical engagement with theories and critiques of the concept of the “digital” (the
writings of Heidegger, Ong, Kittler, Hayles, Ulmer, Deleuze, Manovich, Barthes and others) will supplement projectdriven written and visual essays that will allow students to take part in hands-on, studio work in digital scholarly
publication and web authoring. Texts include K. Arola, et.al, Writer/Designer: A Guide to Making Multimodal Projects
(2014), Sunspring (2016) – a short experimental science-fiction film written by an artificial intelligence bot. Course
Reader and other readings TBA.
English 305-01 – Studies in Canadian Literature: Reg Johanson
For much of the first two decades of the 21 st century, Canada’s history of colonialism has been denied or downplayed. This
course takes up the contention of the late Australian scholar Patrick Wolfe that colonialism is a structure, not an event, and
is the dominant power structure of our lives. We read stories about Canada that come from historical and contemporary
experiences of colonial power relations, revealing the ways in which we are shaped by these dynamics, as well as how we
might shape a decolonial future. Texts include Afua Cooper, The Hanging of Angelique, Dionne Brand, Inventory, Cecily
Nicholson, From the Poplars, Fred Wah, Diamond Grill, Marie Clements, Burning Vision.
ENGLISH | www.caplianou.ca | Questions? Call us: 604.984.4957 | Email: [email protected]