Spring 2016
English Courses
Fall 2016
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 are Gary Geddes, ed., 20th-Century Poetry & Poetics, and Gary Geddes, ed., The Art of Short
Fiction.
English 190-02 – Creative Writing I: Anne Stone
In this open and supportive first year creative writing workshop, you’ll develop a strong and consistent writing
practice. You’ll stretch yourself as a writer, trying out new techniques. Together, we’ll mine contemporary
works, examining them with a writer’s eye, and you’ll sharpen your writing as you take on weekly exercises and
prompts. Texts are: English 190-01 Coursepack and a blank journal (about 8.5 x 5.5).
English 191-01 – Creative Writing II: Roger Farr
English 191 carries on with work started in ENGL 190, but does not presuppose or require that students have
taken creative writing before. It is a fun and practical course designed to help students develop their writing,
and their thinking about writing, through creative experimentation with language. We will keep regular writing
journals, share revised work with other class members, and aid each other in developing a critical vocabulary
with which to discuss this work. Students will be asked to read and experiment with a wide variety of writing.
Note: this course will examine the conventions of literary, linguistic, and social etiquette. Participants should
come with open minds.
ENGLISH | www.caplianou.ca | Questions? Call us: 604.984.4957 | Email: [email protected]
Spring 2016
LITERATURE – First Year
English 103 Studies in Contemporary Literature
English 103-01 & 02: 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 103-03 & 04: Anne Stone
Contemporary Literature with Anne Stone
In this class, we’ll place contemporary short stories and poems side-by-side with short films (a suburban crack
stay-cation next to a teen-crush during the zombie apocalypse; a boy’s high-dive into adolescence next to an
intense encounter in a café, and on). Next, we’ll read Richard Matheson’s seminal book, I am Legend – and
explore its filmic adaptations. Finally, we’ll turn to a place where image meets word on the page – the graphic
novel Skim. Texts are: Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki, Skim; Richard Matheson, I am Legend; English 103
Coursepack.
English 103-05: Brian Ganter
Litflix: Literature after Television
In this crossover course students will read contemporary classics of American literature alongside of
three Netflix television series: Breaking Bad, House of Cards, and Orange is The New Black. The course is an
introduction to the study of contemporary literature and an exercise in “literary” approaches to the medium of
television and visual storytelling. Students will explore the pre-history of literary serial storytelling; the clash of
commercialism and creativity; and the links between politics, philosophy and popular culture. We will move
from overt literary references (Breaking Bad’s use of Shelley’s “Ozymandias” and Whitman’s Leaves of Grass) to
a critical exploration of the modern Western, the feminist gothic, and the demands of reading in the age of the
moving image. Texts include Junot Diaz, This is How You Lose Her, Octavia Butler, Fledgling, and Cormac
McCarthy, Blood Meridian.
English 103-06: Carlos Reyes
Life, Literature, and the Pursuit of ___? Literature as Pathology and Eudaemonics
Pathology (from Greek páthos, suffering): The study of dis-ease, suffering.
Eudaemonics (from Greek eudaímōn, a good or benevolent spirit): The art of happiness.
“Storytelling…is medicine against misery, despair, and death. It is a way of choosing and prolonging life,” says
Stephen Greenblatt. Studying comics, poetry, biography, memoir, fiction, and film, we shall examine how
literature illuminates the dynamics of suffering—its causes, development, effects. Moving from pathology to
eudaemonics, we shall consider literature’s potential to contribute to the pursuit, creation, and nurturing of
happiness and human flourishing. Texts are: Adrian Tomine, Killing and Dying; Lynda Barry, One Hundred
Demons; Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red; W.S. Merwin, Moon Before Morning; Sarah Bakewell, How to Live:
Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer. Tentative films: Happy-Go-Lucky,
Mike Leigh; Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Michel Gondry; The Son, Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc
Dardenne.
ENGLISH | www.caplianou.ca | Questions? Call us: 604.984.4957 | Email: [email protected]
Spring 2016
English 109 Contemporary Issues in Literature and Culture
English 109-01 & 02: Reg Johanson
We listen to the stories of people who the Law and the State capture yet expel—migrants, refugees, Indigenous
people—and learn how they fight for their freedom. The books and films we explore are: Gord Hill’s 500 Years of
Resistance Comic Book, Anne-Marie Nakagawa’s film Between: Living In The Hyphen, Joe Sacco’s comic
Palestine, Jordan Scott’s Clearance Process, Harsha Walia’s Undoing Border Imperialism, Alex Rivera’s sci-fi film
Sleep Dealer, Shane Meadows’s film This Is England, and the documentaries Taxi To The Dark Side by Alex
Gibney, and The Road To Guantanamo by Mat Whitecross and Michael Winterbottom.
English 109-03: Andrea Westcott
Love and Death
Just as mythic narratives have always been with us, so too have expressions about our longings and anxieties, as
the twin poles of our need for love, and our fear of death, underpin our psychic reality. These polarities are
driven by an underlying erotic and even daimonic compulsion. We’ll survey selections from the Gothic genre,
including A. C. Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles, accompanying film versions, and a selection from The
Broadview Anthology of Short Fiction (2nd edition). We’ll read David Ives’ play Venus in Fur and look at some
love/death poetry. Finally, we’ll read Claudia Casper’s The Mercy Journals, 2016, where she offers us the
journals of her hero, Allen Quincy.
English 109-04: Sheila M. Ross
The Antihero in Dystopic Fiction
In this course we’ll explore the figure of the “antihero” in a selection of dystopic novels and other media to
understand why the heroic protagonist of the well-made story is so often retired in favour of the consummate
misfit or loser, whom we nevertheless grow to love and admire. Is this because a different definition of what’s
heroic is called for? Or is being heroic foreseen as impossible or irrelevant in these future worlds? Our examples
include the oblivious “Jimmy” in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake, the Asperger’s-endowed “Rachel” in
Douglas Copeland’s PlayerOne, and the repentant “Titus” in M.T. Anderson’s Feed. In the course, students
develop their close reading and writing skills, learn what distinguishes each work studied, and take part in
thoughtful discussions.
CREATIVE WRITING – Second Year
English 290-01 – Creative Writing: Letter and Line: Roger Farr
“Poetry is having nothing to say, and saying it," wrote John Cage. English 290 is an intensive course designed to
assist students in developing their writing, and their thinking about writing, through creative experimentation
with language. We will keep regular writing journals, share revised work with other class members, and aid each
other in developing a critical vocabulary with which to discuss this work. We will also experiment with
contemporary forms and practices, including prose poetry, procedural, serial, closed, open, and other forms.
Students will be asked to read and experiment with a wide variety of writing. Note: this course will examine and
question literary, linguistic, and social norms and conventions. Participants should come with open minds.
ENGLISH | www.caplianou.ca | Questions? Call us: 604.984.4957 | Email: [email protected]
Spring 2016
LITERATURE – Second Year
English 200-01 – English Literature from Beowulf to Paradise Lost: Vicky Ross
What inspired the best writers in English during the Medieval and Renaissance Periods; anything to interest us
today? Only demons stalking warriors, scholars bargaining with Lucifer, swindlers perfecting the art of the con,
cosmic battles, romantic love... If perhaps you’re intrigued by these topics and would like to see them explored
in literary genres like the epic, the sonnet, the romance, or on stage in city comedy, this course will offer you the
chance. Required texts: The Longman Anthology of British Literature, Vols 1A The Middle Ages and 1B The Early
Modern Period (4th edition).
English 205-01 – Modern American Literature: Jenny Penberthy
The course will examine experimental writing – including its production and its reception – in modern America
beginning in the mid-19th century with Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, moving into the early 20th century
with Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams, into the 1920s and 30s with the African-American writers of the
Harlem Renaissance, into the 50s with the Beats and the New York School, and finally into post-70s realist and
postmodern fiction by a variety of writers. Required text: Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God.
English 207-01 – Literary Theory and Criticism: Ian Cresswell
This course is intended to introduce students to a variety of critical thinkers and literary schools within the
Western tradition. Starting with classical notions of the nature and function of poetry, we will move on (through
an examination of Kantian aesthetics) to examine aestheticism (reading Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray).
Poe’s The Purloined Letter will take us into the world of psychoanalytical criticism, and essays by Freud and
Lacan. We will go on to explore Structuralism, Russian Formalism, Deconstruction and Marxism, with particular
reference to Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Finally, with these theories in mind, we will read
Shakespeare’s King Lear.
English 208-01 – Studies in Fiction: Tim Acton
In this course, we will study a variety of novels and conventions looking specifically at the socio-historical
context and the intellectual climate in which the novel developed. We will consider various critical perspectives
to gain an understanding of the evolution of the genre, to analyze how fiction represents or illuminates human
experience, and to develop the ability to read critically and thoughtfully. Texts are: J.M. Coetzee, Foe; Daniel
Defoe, Robinson Crusoe; George Eliot, Silas Marner; Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter; Virginia Woolf,
Mrs. Dalloway.
LITERATURE & WRITING – Third Year
English 317-01 – Traditions in Western Literature: Dan Munteanu
Revolution and Continuity
This course will examine Influential works of literature (often in translation) from various periods and countries,
with reference to mythology, religion, and history, for how they have informed Western literary conventions
and Western constructions of history. Identifying some of the major concepts that define Western culture, the
course looks at their evolution and the way they appear to us today. Texts will be selected from the following:
Honore de Balzac, Pere Goriot; The Book of Job; Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margareta; Calderon de la
Barca. Life Is a Dream; Anton Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard; Carlos Fuentes, “Constancia”; Franz Kafka, The Trial;
Thomas Mann, “Death in Venice”; Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus; Herman Melville, “Billy Budd, Sailor”;
Sophocles, The Theban Plays; Miguel Unamuno, Mist.
ENGLISH | www.caplianou.ca | Questions? Call us: 604.984.4957 | Email: [email protected]