School of Humanities
English Graduate Course Descriptions
Page Content
Fall 2026
ENG 626
Readings in Poetry
Readings in Poetry
Tuesday 6:00pm - 9:00pm
New Poetry Hire
** open only to creative writers
ENG 640
Critical Reading and Methods in English
New Poetry Hire
** open only to creative writers
ENG 640
Critical Reading and Methods in English
Tuesday 2:30pm - 5:15pm
Dr. Monika Gehlawat
** required for MA and PhD in lit, PhD in CW
Dr. Monika Gehlawat
** required for MA and PhD in lit, PhD in CW
This course is for first year students and designed to introduce or review the methods of research in literary studies, the conventions of scholarly conversations about literary works, the critical approaches to literary analysis, and the components and mechanics of literary-critical essays. Together we will read a novel and cultivate hermeneutic practices that include reading 鈥渁gainst the grain鈥� and situating one鈥檚 own critical voice in relation to other scholars. We will also study a host of theoretical models like Marxism, Feminism, Psychoanalysis, and Queer Theory, among several others. Students will have the opportunity to write a final seminar paper on a primary text and theoretical model of their choice.
ENG 644
Topics in Literary Theory: The Image of Reading
Tuesday 2:30pm - 5:15pm
Dr. Craig Carey
Fulfills the theory requirement
What do we see when we read? How does 鈥渢he image of reading鈥� change historically? In this theory rich seminar, we鈥檒l explore the dialectics of reading and seeing across three historical transitions: the invention of print and the book; the acceleration of capitalism and commodity fetishism in the nineteenth century; and the rise of operational images in the age of algorithms and AI. How do technologies of reading and seeing transform each other, and to what end?
In the first unit, we鈥檒l explore technologies of script, print, typography, the page, and the book, investigating the spatial and diagrammatic logics encoded into reading since the printing press. The second unit will then turn to the commodification of reading and seeing in the nineteenth century, working through Marx鈥檚 analysis of the commodity form, Walter Benjamin鈥檚 cultural and media criticism, and early theories of photography, film, and montage. Our third unit will explore the algorithmic capture of reading and seeing in computational infrastructures governed by data, capital, surveillance, and control. Along with selected readings, students will bring to the class their own literary case studies and interests, learning how to apply methods from the course to their creative and critical practice.
Readings will include selected theory and criticism by John Berger, W.J.T. Mitchell, Karl Marx, Sergei Eisenstein, Walter Benjamin, Walter Ong, Vil茅m Flusser, Fredric Jameson, Lev Manoich, Katherine Hayles, Andrew Piper, Anna Kornbluh, Hito Steyerl, and Simone Browne鈥檚 Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness. Literary selections will likely include Mark Twain鈥檚 No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger, poetry by Whitman, Dickinson, and Melville, Don DeLillo鈥檚 Point Omega: A Novel, and Johanna Drucker鈥檚 artist book Diagrammatic Writing. Films or film clips may include Citizen Kane, Man with a Movie Camera, The Battle of Algiers, JFK, Cache, Memento, and video installations by Harun Farocki and Trevor Paglen.
ENG 670
Studies in Early American Literature I: American Visions
Dr. Craig Carey
Fulfills the theory requirement
What do we see when we read? How does 鈥渢he image of reading鈥� change historically? In this theory rich seminar, we鈥檒l explore the dialectics of reading and seeing across three historical transitions: the invention of print and the book; the acceleration of capitalism and commodity fetishism in the nineteenth century; and the rise of operational images in the age of algorithms and AI. How do technologies of reading and seeing transform each other, and to what end?
In the first unit, we鈥檒l explore technologies of script, print, typography, the page, and the book, investigating the spatial and diagrammatic logics encoded into reading since the printing press. The second unit will then turn to the commodification of reading and seeing in the nineteenth century, working through Marx鈥檚 analysis of the commodity form, Walter Benjamin鈥檚 cultural and media criticism, and early theories of photography, film, and montage. Our third unit will explore the algorithmic capture of reading and seeing in computational infrastructures governed by data, capital, surveillance, and control. Along with selected readings, students will bring to the class their own literary case studies and interests, learning how to apply methods from the course to their creative and critical practice.
Readings will include selected theory and criticism by John Berger, W.J.T. Mitchell, Karl Marx, Sergei Eisenstein, Walter Benjamin, Walter Ong, Vil茅m Flusser, Fredric Jameson, Lev Manoich, Katherine Hayles, Andrew Piper, Anna Kornbluh, Hito Steyerl, and Simone Browne鈥檚 Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness. Literary selections will likely include Mark Twain鈥檚 No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger, poetry by Whitman, Dickinson, and Melville, Don DeLillo鈥檚 Point Omega: A Novel, and Johanna Drucker鈥檚 artist book Diagrammatic Writing. Films or film clips may include Citizen Kane, Man with a Movie Camera, The Battle of Algiers, JFK, Cache, Memento, and video installations by Harun Farocki and Trevor Paglen.
ENG 670
Studies in Early American Literature I: American Visions
Tuesday 6:00pm - 9:00pm
Dr. Luis Iglesias
Fulfills the American Literature pre-1865 requirement
"And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors' eyes鈥攁 fresh, green breast of the new world. [And] for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder."
From the moment of the Encounter, the Americas were both a vision of what could and could not be imagined 鈥� a landscape shaped by ideas that preceded their realization as well as an expression of wish fulfillment. This course will examine the evolving encounter between Anglo-American writers, artists, and the American landscape from the colonial period through the nineteenth century. Beginning with early contact narratives, we will explore how the American wilderness, frontier, and pastoral ideal were imagined, aestheticized, and contested in the literature and visual arts. Throughout, the seminar will foreground the reciprocal relationship between textual and expressive forms, by tracing a lineage of creative expression and their attempts to celebrate and ultimately master a landscape that exceeded these writers鈥� and visual artists鈥� imaginative grasp, asking how aesthetic forms shaped national identity, imperial ambition, environmental consciousness, and the mythologizing of the hemisphere.
Readings and Artists will include works by (and others):
John Smith (1579-1631)
John White (c. 1539-1593)
William Bradford (1590-1657)
William Bartram (1739-1823)
James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851)
Thomas Cole (1801-1848)
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)
Frederick Edwin Church (1826-1900)
Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
Thomas Moran (1837-1926)
ENG 721鈥�
Seminar in Fiction Writing鈥�
Dr. Luis Iglesias
Fulfills the American Literature pre-1865 requirement
"And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors' eyes鈥攁 fresh, green breast of the new world. [And] for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder."
From the moment of the Encounter, the Americas were both a vision of what could and could not be imagined 鈥� a landscape shaped by ideas that preceded their realization as well as an expression of wish fulfillment. This course will examine the evolving encounter between Anglo-American writers, artists, and the American landscape from the colonial period through the nineteenth century. Beginning with early contact narratives, we will explore how the American wilderness, frontier, and pastoral ideal were imagined, aestheticized, and contested in the literature and visual arts. Throughout, the seminar will foreground the reciprocal relationship between textual and expressive forms, by tracing a lineage of creative expression and their attempts to celebrate and ultimately master a landscape that exceeded these writers鈥� and visual artists鈥� imaginative grasp, asking how aesthetic forms shaped national identity, imperial ambition, environmental consciousness, and the mythologizing of the hemisphere.
Readings and Artists will include works by (and others):
John Smith (1579-1631)
John White (c. 1539-1593)
William Bradford (1590-1657)
William Bartram (1739-1823)
James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851)
Thomas Cole (1801-1848)
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)
Frederick Edwin Church (1826-1900)
Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
Thomas Moran (1837-1926)
ENG 721鈥�
Seminar in Fiction Writing鈥�
Thursday 2:30pm - 5:15pm
Dr. Rachael Fowler
** open only to creative writers
Thinking About and Beyond Workshop: Experimentation, Revision, and the Creative Life
In this course, we鈥檒l focus on generating new drafts, experimentation, and extended revision. In addition to submitting and workshopping two completed short stories, we鈥檒l also commit to in-class writing prompts. These prompts will require you to write by hand, to work with various fiction forms, and to revise previous in-class drafts with a focus on radical experimentation. These prompts may also have you reshape stories you鈥檝e already drafted.
Dr. Rachael Fowler
** open only to creative writers
Thinking About and Beyond Workshop: Experimentation, Revision, and the Creative Life
In this course, we鈥檒l focus on generating new drafts, experimentation, and extended revision. In addition to submitting and workshopping two completed short stories, we鈥檒l also commit to in-class writing prompts. These prompts will require you to write by hand, to work with various fiction forms, and to revise previous in-class drafts with a focus on radical experimentation. These prompts may also have you reshape stories you鈥檝e already drafted.
Our readings will be a mix of work from texts on the artistic process, the creative life, and from contemporary writers such as Solvej Balle, J.M. Coetzee, Angie Cruz, Sara Freeman, Lauren Groff, Samantha Harvey, Ariana Harwicz , Sheila Heti, Samantha Hunt, Claire Keegan, Sarah Manguso, Romina Paula, Olga Ravn, Aisha Sabatini Sloan, and Jessi Jezewska Stevens.
The final in this course will include revisions of your two workshopped stories, an extended version of one of your in-class writings, a short reflection on your revision decisions along with your current creative process, and a short description of writers you find yourself in conversation with in terms of content and/or form. Frequent in-class reflections will prepare you to complete this final project effectively.
In addition to developing your workshop skills, we鈥檒l establish a routine of generative writing, of risk-taking, of revision, and of thinking past the classroom in terms of your artistic and professional goals. With exposure to contemporary writers who approach form in various ways, you鈥檒l be able to situate your own writing within the contemporary publishing field (which will help you with your dissertation/defense, with applications to opportunities like fellowships or writing residencies, and with future query letters).
ENG 722
Graduate Poetry Workshop: The Five Obstructions
Wednesday 2:30pm - 5:15pm
Dr. Angela Ball
** open only to creative writers
Dr. Angela Ball
** open only to creative writers
This workshop has its source in Lars von Trier鈥檚 2003 film,鈥�The Five Obstructions, in which von Trier asks his mentor, director Jorgen Leth, to remake his 1967 short film,鈥�The Perfect Human鈥痠n accordance with various crippling stipulations, or 鈥渙bstructions,鈥� such as 鈥渘o frame longer than twelve frames,鈥� 鈥渟et it in the worst place in the world,鈥� etc. In the workshop version, the student submits his or her poem, which is commented on by the first respondent, also known as the 鈥渧ile obstructionist,鈥� then by the group as a whole.鈥� At the end of the discussion, the obstructionist provides the poet with one or more obstructions which he or she must use in the revision. We will workshop new poems by half the class each week, and the other half will serve as Vile Obstructionist. The semester will end with a reading of the obstructed poems.
ENG 745
The Junior Novel and the Pre-History of YA
Monday 2:30pm - 5:15pm
Dr. Eric Tribunella
Fulfills the Non-Traditional Literature requirement
Before the development of Young Adult (YA) literature in the late 1960s, the so-called 鈥渏unior novel鈥� was written for and marketed to young people who were thought to have outgrown children鈥檚 books and to be looking for alternatives to adult modernist fiction. The standard history of YA literature suggests that it offers grittier and more sophisticated fare than its predecessor, while the junior novel tends to be dismissed as sanitized and benign. We will reconsider this history of YA literature by reading a selection of junior novels from the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. The class will consider the complex ways they represent American youth culture, place these works in conversation with the history of adolescence and the American teenager, and conclude with texts that represent the turn to contemporary YA literature. Readings will include junior novels of different genres: adventure, historical fiction, romance, science fiction, the career novel, and the sports story. Selected readings may include the following:
Let the Hurricane Roar (1933), Rose Wilder Lane
Sue Barton (1936), Helen Boylston
Iron Duke (1938), John Tunis
Seventeenth Summer (1942), Maureen Daly
Hot Rod (1950), Henry Gregor Felsen
To Tell Your Love (1950), Mary Stolz
Tunnel in the Sky (1955), Robert Heinlein
South Town (1958), Lorenz Bell Graham
ENG 760
Shakespeare in Context
Dr. Eric Tribunella
Fulfills the Non-Traditional Literature requirement
Before the development of Young Adult (YA) literature in the late 1960s, the so-called 鈥渏unior novel鈥� was written for and marketed to young people who were thought to have outgrown children鈥檚 books and to be looking for alternatives to adult modernist fiction. The standard history of YA literature suggests that it offers grittier and more sophisticated fare than its predecessor, while the junior novel tends to be dismissed as sanitized and benign. We will reconsider this history of YA literature by reading a selection of junior novels from the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. The class will consider the complex ways they represent American youth culture, place these works in conversation with the history of adolescence and the American teenager, and conclude with texts that represent the turn to contemporary YA literature. Readings will include junior novels of different genres: adventure, historical fiction, romance, science fiction, the career novel, and the sports story. Selected readings may include the following:
Let the Hurricane Roar (1933), Rose Wilder Lane
Sue Barton (1936), Helen Boylston
Iron Duke (1938), John Tunis
Seventeenth Summer (1942), Maureen Daly
Hot Rod (1950), Henry Gregor Felsen
To Tell Your Love (1950), Mary Stolz
Tunnel in the Sky (1955), Robert Heinlein
South Town (1958), Lorenz Bell Graham
ENG 760
Shakespeare in Context
Wednesday 6:00pm - 9:00pm
Dr. Jameela Lares
Fulfills the British Literature pre-1800 requirement
This graduate seminar will examine Shakespeare鈥檚 sonnets and a representative sample of his plays in their cultural and historical context. Besides diligently reading and participating in weekly discussions, each seminar member will also be writing at least ten weekly discussion posts, presenting on an additional play by Shakespeare or a contemporary, and teaching a 60-minute class on the primary text assigned for a given class meeting. The required seminar paper can be on any topic with a demonstrable connection to the course material. Seminar members are encouraged to build on their own research interests as far as possible.
Course texts and contexts:
Sonnets and the Italian Renaissance
A Midsummer Night鈥檚 Dream and Shakespeare biography
Romeo and Juliet and performance
1 Henry IV and historical chronicles (Holinshed, Halle, Plutarch, etc.)
Henry V and epic
Love鈥檚 Labour鈥檚 Lost and classical rhetoric
Twelfth Night and music
Macbeth and politics
Hamlet and humor theory
Another play TBA
The Tempest and romance
Required text(s): Class members may elect to use either the online University of Victoria Shakespeare (https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/plays.html) for most of these plays or their own print copies of Shakespeare as long as those texts are university-level academic editions with line numbers for poetry and act/scene/line numbers for plays, along with scholarly notes and glosses. I will order for the bookstore some optional copies of the Norton Shakespeare anthology along with Folger copies of any individual plays not included in the U of Victoria website, but students are welcome to choose whichever acceptable texts work best for them.
ENG 764
Strange Cases: The Victorian Gothic
Dr. Jameela Lares
Fulfills the British Literature pre-1800 requirement
This graduate seminar will examine Shakespeare鈥檚 sonnets and a representative sample of his plays in their cultural and historical context. Besides diligently reading and participating in weekly discussions, each seminar member will also be writing at least ten weekly discussion posts, presenting on an additional play by Shakespeare or a contemporary, and teaching a 60-minute class on the primary text assigned for a given class meeting. The required seminar paper can be on any topic with a demonstrable connection to the course material. Seminar members are encouraged to build on their own research interests as far as possible.
Course texts and contexts:
Sonnets and the Italian Renaissance
A Midsummer Night鈥檚 Dream and Shakespeare biography
Romeo and Juliet and performance
1 Henry IV and historical chronicles (Holinshed, Halle, Plutarch, etc.)
Henry V and epic
Love鈥檚 Labour鈥檚 Lost and classical rhetoric
Twelfth Night and music
Macbeth and politics
Hamlet and humor theory
Another play TBA
The Tempest and romance
Required text(s): Class members may elect to use either the online University of Victoria Shakespeare (https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/plays.html) for most of these plays or their own print copies of Shakespeare as long as those texts are university-level academic editions with line numbers for poetry and act/scene/line numbers for plays, along with scholarly notes and glosses. I will order for the bookstore some optional copies of the Norton Shakespeare anthology along with Folger copies of any individual plays not included in the U of Victoria website, but students are welcome to choose whichever acceptable texts work best for them.
ENG 764
Strange Cases: The Victorian Gothic
Thursday 2:30pm - 5:15pm
Dr. Alexandra Valint
Fulfills the post-1800 British Literature requirement
Vampires, ghosts, haunted mansions, secret passageways, prophetic dreams, dark and stormy nights. Finding yourself suddenly alone鈥r, suddenly not alone. The gothic trades in fears, anxieties, surprises, and thrills; it attempts to speak the unspeakable, know the unknowable, and disrupt the normative. To explore the possibilities of this expansive genre, we will read a riveting assortment of 鈥渟trange cases鈥� (to borrow from the full title of Stevenson鈥檚鈥�Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde). We will seek not only to define the gothic, to itemize its trappings and set pieces, but also to interrogate the gothic鈥檚 functions and uses: what does using the gothic make possible? We will consider the gothic鈥檚 potential (and limits) for cultural transgression and critique, tracking how the gothic utilizes and transforms bodies, selves, environments, and relationships between the metropole and colony. To this end, we will read a variety of gothic theory and scholarship representing subfields such as ecogothic, female gothic, queer gothic, and imperial gothic. The gothic genre, much like a vampire, won鈥檛 stay dead鈥攍et鈥檚 learn why the Victorians, as well as authors since then, have continued to turn to its creepy possibilities. Likely texts include the following: Emily Bront毛's鈥�Wuthering Heights, Robert Louis Stevenson's鈥�Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,鈥疭heridan Le Fanu's鈥�Carmilla,鈥�"The Were-Wolf" by Clemence Housman, as well as works by Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Rabindranath Tagore.
ENG 771
Studies in Modern and Contemporary Literature
Dr. Alexandra Valint
Fulfills the post-1800 British Literature requirement
Vampires, ghosts, haunted mansions, secret passageways, prophetic dreams, dark and stormy nights. Finding yourself suddenly alone鈥r, suddenly not alone. The gothic trades in fears, anxieties, surprises, and thrills; it attempts to speak the unspeakable, know the unknowable, and disrupt the normative. To explore the possibilities of this expansive genre, we will read a riveting assortment of 鈥渟trange cases鈥� (to borrow from the full title of Stevenson鈥檚鈥�Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde). We will seek not only to define the gothic, to itemize its trappings and set pieces, but also to interrogate the gothic鈥檚 functions and uses: what does using the gothic make possible? We will consider the gothic鈥檚 potential (and limits) for cultural transgression and critique, tracking how the gothic utilizes and transforms bodies, selves, environments, and relationships between the metropole and colony. To this end, we will read a variety of gothic theory and scholarship representing subfields such as ecogothic, female gothic, queer gothic, and imperial gothic. The gothic genre, much like a vampire, won鈥檛 stay dead鈥攍et鈥檚 learn why the Victorians, as well as authors since then, have continued to turn to its creepy possibilities. Likely texts include the following: Emily Bront毛's鈥�Wuthering Heights, Robert Louis Stevenson's鈥�Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,鈥疭heridan Le Fanu's鈥�Carmilla,鈥�"The Were-Wolf" by Clemence Housman, as well as works by Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Rabindranath Tagore.
ENG 771
Studies in Modern and Contemporary Literature
Monday 6:00pm - 9:00pm
Dr. Charles Sumner
Fulfills the post-1865 American Literature requirement
This class will present a detailed study of selected American writers and movements since 1900.鈥� We will read writers including but not limited to Henry James, Wallace Stevens, T. S. Eliot, H.D. and Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, Kay Boyle, Djuna Barnes, Sinclair Lewis, Sylvia Plath, and Don DeLillo, and we will reflect on how the styles and themes of prominent American writers have changed over the last 125 years.
Dr. Charles Sumner
Fulfills the post-1865 American Literature requirement
This class will present a detailed study of selected American writers and movements since 1900.鈥� We will read writers including but not limited to Henry James, Wallace Stevens, T. S. Eliot, H.D. and Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, Kay Boyle, Djuna Barnes, Sinclair Lewis, Sylvia Plath, and Don DeLillo, and we will reflect on how the styles and themes of prominent American writers have changed over the last 125 years.