Course Descriptions

This is an intensive course in fundamental writing and reading skills. It is not transferable to university, but successful completion guarantees admission to English 100.

This university writing course introduces students to foundational strategies for critical reading, analytical thinking, and clear writing. Through the exploration of topical questions in local and global contemporary culture, the course teaches core skills for active reading and discussion, and provides students with opportunities to write in a range of forms and genres from blog posts to critical analysis to research projects. Revision and detailed individual feedback are fundamental components of the course. Modules on research literacy are taught in collaboration with the university library. Modules on editing, revision, and digital literacy are taught in collaboration with the Capilano Writing Centre.

This course introduces students to a rich variety of literature in both traditional and new genres, including novels, plays, poems, screenplays, memoirs, and graphic novels. See the Department of English website for the focus of the course in a specific term.

This course focuses on Indigenous poetry, plays, screenplays, films, novels, and memoirs across national boundaries. The course may also include work by some non-Indigenous writers on Indigenous subjects. See the Department of English website for the focus of the course in a specific term.

This course explores contemporary issues as represented in literature, film and music. The specific issue investigated differs between sections, instructors and years. See the Department of English website for the focus of the course in a specific term.

This course will support first-year students in their development as writers in a university context, targeting skills in attentive reading, thoughtful writing, and dialogical exchange through the study of short texts (literary, popular, and multimedia) about global cultures and issues.

In this introductory Creative Writing workshop, students sharpen their writing craft by writing and workshopping in multiple genres while also studying contemporary practice. All sections of ENGL 190 involve creation of writing through prompts and exercises, editorial feedback through a variety of means, and the curation of a substantial written portfolio.

In this course, students develop their writing craft by writing and workshopping in multiple genres while studying contemporary practice. All sections of ENGL 191 involve creation of writing through prompts and exercises, editorial feedback through a variety of means, the curation of a substantial electronic portfolio with an artist statement, and a focus on writing "the series," or long project. This project will provide students with the skills needed to research and write a coherent and comprehensive serial or longer form work, which will form a significant portion of the curated ePortfolio.

There is no single beginning to the story of Literature in English. The literary arts of the British Isles between the 10th and 17th centuries rise from tangled roots: mass migrations, linguistic and cultural borrowings, political and religious crises, colonial occupations, and philosophical revolutions. The bewildering variety of literary artforms from these centuries challenge modern notions of history and fiction, spirituality and the secular, selfhood and society. Reading widely across this long period, students will consider what it means to tell the story of literary history: whose voices count? Who gets left out? How does our sense of the past shape our present, and vice versa?

Our sense of the modern world has been shaped by radical changes in how people tell stories that arose between the late-seventeenth and early-twentieth centuries, including (but not limited to) the invention of the modern novel, revolutions in poetic language, and the rise of cinema. In this course, students will consider how these and other genres responded and contributed to historical disruptions both massive and intimate: global wars, colonial resistance movements, scientific advancements, and new ways of experiencing sexuality, citizenship, and selfhood. Explorations of course readings will be animated through visual art, music, film, manuscripts, and digital archives.

This course provides an introduction to Canadian literature from early European contact to the twenty-first century by examining a variety of storytelling genres that address prevalent themes and debates surrounding the complex, contested notion of “the nation.” Students will consider how the context of ongoing settler-colonialism informs Canada’s diverse literary cultures and understandings of “the nation.”

This course introduces students to the study of American literature and culture. What has been the contribution of US writing to the histories of the novel, poetry, theatre, and film, in conversation with a broader range of artforms? How has America’s literary imaginary been shaped by its colonial and revolutionary history, slavery and postslavery, Indigenous dispossession, consumerism, industrialization/deindustrialization, and US geopolitical hegemony? Students will explore these and other questions through a sampling of some of the most exciting works in US literary history and criticism.

This course introduces students to the dynamic history of literary theory and criticism, focusing on the last century and approaches such as formalism, structuralism, psychoanalysis, feminism, Marxism, poststructuralism, postcolonialism, critical Indigenous theories, queer theory, ecocriticism, and critical races studies.

This course deepens knowledge of storytelling genres by exploring selected works of narrative fiction, such as novels, novellas, short stories, and graphic novels. Students will examine the literary, cultural, and historical qualities and contexts of these texts.

This course examines literature from a variety of countries, cultures and traditions around the globe, either written in or translated into English.

This course examines experimental and/or radical texts, genres, and topics. Students will study cultural and literary figures, movements, and art that resist mainstream society and that exist on the margins of traditional literary culture.

This course explores the rich variety of children's literature, from picture books to YA (young adult) novels, and considers how writing for children delights, instructs, and subverts. The course will explore oral traditions such as Indigenous storytelling and folklore and critically examine Anglo-American dominance within the canon of children’s literature. Attending to constructions of gender, sexuality, race, and class within books intended for children, we will also consider complex questions of audience in a body of work written for children primarily by adults.

This course examines works of literature alongside their film or television adaptations, exploring the textual and visual as distinct modes of expression while considering what is lost or gained in the translation of content from one medium to another.

This course will help students from diverse fields improve the clarity and style of their writing. Students will read widely across scientific, social-scientific, and humanistic disciplines, applying strategies from a range of writers to their own written work. Drawing connections between academia and community, students will practice writing from their own fields of study with care, depth, and craft, experimenting to find their own unique voices while adapting to audience and context.

This course introduces students to the practices, networks, and traditions that sustain the work of writing and storytelling in their myriad forms. Bridging the divide between creative and academic literary contexts, the course explores a range of histories, methods, and critical interventions to illuminate what it means to write within and for a given community. Examining key institutions of literary culture, scholarship, and community building (e.g., archives, movements, readings, journals, conferences), students will become familiar with the social processes that support literary research and will collaborate on final creative-scholarly projects.

This is an intensive workshop in the writing of poetry, concentrating on understandings of poetic forms, voices, styles, and communities. Students will have the opportunity to experiment with a variety of traditional and innovative forms, such as the short lyric, the long poem, narrative verse, digital poetics, prose poetry, and expand their writerly voices.

This is an intensive workshop in the writing of fiction, concentrating on narrative techniques in student writing and in a variety of published works of contemporary fiction. Students will have the opportunity to develop an awareness of voice, rhythm, dialogue, diction, character, and point-of- view as well as important cultural and decolonial contexts for reading and producing creative work.

This is an intensive workshop in writing literature for children of various ages. Students will work on such forms as text for picture books, poetry and nonsense rhymes, and chapters of young adult novels. Critically examining gendered and settler colonial biases that have historically shaped creative writing workshops and the field of children’s literature, students will respond to diverse artistic voices on their own terms and manifest self-awareness about their positionality as it relates to the learning environment and the kinds of children’s literature they produce.

This is an intensive workshop in the writing of creative nonfiction, concentrating on contemporary nonfiction forms, such as magazine articles, memoir, personal narrative, literary journalism, lyric essay, etc., as well as professional aspects of writing, such as "the pitch," book proposals, and the editing process. Students will have the opportunity to explore important cultural and decolonial contexts for reading, developing, and distributing creative work.

The focus of this Creative Writing course is determined by the individual instructor in consultation with the department. See the Department of English website for the focus of the course in a specific term.

This is an introductory workshop in playwriting, covering fundamentals such as dramatic structure, characterization, and dialogue. Students will develop, edit, and rewrite works through readings and feedback. They will explore a variety of approaches to play creation and dramaturgy, which may include but are not limited to Indigenous, Euro-Western, and feminist practices.

This is an intensive introduction to the writing of screenplays and scripts that builds and draws extensively on the literary arts. Focusing on short-form works, students will learn the fundamental key concepts of scriptwriting and the film production process, including the roles of the director, cinematographer, and other creative collaborators in the film and televisual arts. Students will explore the basic theory and formal aspects of story, dramatic structure, character development, and dialogue. Assignments may include original short screenplays and/or screenplay adaptations of one or more literary works.

Building on writing, research, and revision skills introduced in ENGL 100, this course will deepen the writer's knowledge of rhetorical choices and awareness of current essay genres. Students will learn to effectively take the investigative project through all stages of composition - from inception and handling of research to revision and stylistic editing - and will gain confidence in writing in a variety of modes.

This course studies selected works of Canadian literature in any genre(s) that are important for their artistic, cultural, and/or historical content and contexts. Depending on the term, iterations of the course may focus on specific approaches, critical issues, and/or literary periods. Sample course titles: Canadian Ecocritical Literature, Postcolonial and Decolonial Literatures in Canada, Canadian Literary Urban Fiction, the Canadian Graphic Novel.

This course will focus on a specific topic in postcolonial, transnational, diasporic, or global Indigenous literature and poetics. Students will explore how writers around the world have recrafted their art in response to the forces that have shaped our global society. Readings may include both historical and contemporary works as well as texts in translation.

This course focuses on the emergence and persistence of a specific literary or non-literary genre, such as the gothic novel, lyric poetry, modernist elegy, tragic drama, detective story, travel narrative or memoir/autobiography. The course is intended to develop a deep critical awareness of the formal techniques and social contexts of a given genre's representation of experience.

This course examines literary performances, plays, and practices, as well as the performative dimensions of other types of expression. Students will be introduced to, and will use, a range of theoretical perspectives and methods to analyze a variety of performance texts and contexts. This might include studying theatre, film, dance, gesture and physicality, gender, the internet and online performances, and everyday site specific performances.

This course engages students in the study of literature from the standpoint of politics. Questions to be explored may include the following: what can literary study teach us about justice, freedom, and sovereignty? What role has literature played in political struggles such as those connected to settler colonialism, inequality, and climate change? How do the techniques of literary criticism draw from or contribute to political analysis? What would it meant to read a literary artwork as a form of political theory - or as a political act?

This course explores literary art criticism within the framework of media studies. Students will consider the diverse forms and technologies that have shaped written and oral literature, and will situate literary texts within our increasingly diverse landscape of media forms.

This course explores literature in the context of recent environmental and ecological thought.

Pre-modern poetic cultures were characterized by a dizzying variety of literary and interpretive practices, encompassing oral and written poetry, political rhetoric, prose narrative, dramatic performance, fable, history, confession, and philosophical speculation. But these practices were not understood to belong under a single unifying idea of “literature” as a distinct discipline of fiction-making and interpretation. How did such works fit in their historical worlds, and what can they teach us about our own moment?

The invention and institutionalization of “literature” as we know it occurred between the late-sixteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, alongside vast political and cultural changes—the rise of settler-colonial empires, a reading middle class, women’s entrance into the literary marketplace, scientific and industrial revolutions, and the first truly global wars. How were literary innovations in realism, character, diction, prosody, and performance shaped by these historical contexts, and what do they reveal about the world we live in now?

The idea of literature as a distinct discipline developed side-by-side with the capitalist world system, which from the mid-nineteenth century onward has faced a series of crises that have revealed violent global interdependencies and prompted radical social change. The literary arts correspondingly underwent profound transformations in form, language, and media that persisted through to the end of the twentieth century. How can we understand these innovations in relation to historical shifts in sexuality, decolonization, race, science, technology, and the environment?

This course studies distinctive features of contemporary culture through works of literature written from roughly 1970 to the present day.

This course focuses on the diverse and creative survival, resistance, and healing strategies Indigenous peoples have developed in the face of systemic oppression. Reading lists may include Indigenous literatures from around the world, and may focus on a single author, a literary movement, or a theoretical perspective.

This course investigates key genres of English literature and the processes of their formation and transformation. In a seminar setting foregrounding accountable reading, shared inquiry, and collaborative critical dialogue, students will study a wide range of prose, poetry, and performance texts - from the classical to the modern to the contemporary - exploring the ways in which the formal conventions of genres and subgenres have been shaped and reshaped by the particular contexts in which they emerge.

This course investigates literary and cultural traditions and countertraditions with a focus on their local, global, and postcolonial contexts. In a seminar setting foregrounding accountable reading, shared inquiry, and collaborative critical dialogue, students will study how a wide range of writers, artists, and other thinkers have imagined, articulated, critiqued, and in some cases revised such concepts as personhood, citizenship, justice, and community through varied uses of narrative, storytelling, and other modes of representation.

This course offers experiential study of the literature, history, and culture of a Land School location, with a focus on introducing students to Indigenous ways of knowing. The Land School may be organized around critical approach, historical period, decolonizing practices, or geographical and cultural area. The course has three parts: classroom time, a one- to two-week immersive Land School experience that encourages students to consider place as a form of learning, and opportunities for reflection.

This course is designed for students in any discipline who wish to learn about some of the philosophies and practices involved in the teaching of writing and revision. With a special focus on preparing students for roles in peer-tutoring contexts, the course offers a hands-on, experiential approach to a range of writing and revision pedagogies that will not only equip students for future positions as writing tutors but also help them sharpen their own writing skills.

This course focuses on developments in poetry and poetics since the 1970s such as the long poem, serial forms, procedural writing, language-centred writing, ecopoetics, conceptual writing, visual poetry, prose poetry, documentarian forms, poet's theatre, guerrilla poetry, dialect and patois, and new media. See the Department of English website for the focus of the course in a specific term.

This course focuses on developments in fiction and narrative since the 1970s such as new narrative, genre fiction, graphic novels, microfiction, the city-novel, appropriated narratives, biofiction, new media, and other forms and modes.

This course offers students an opportunity to write and read about the different ways of interacting with place. The course will explore the world’s histories, landscapes, violence, decay, marvels, and futures through diverse geographical, cultural, aesthetic, and thematic outlooks. The workshop component of the course will allow students to critically and creatively engage with the world they inhabit and transform their engagement into powerful stories.

This course presupposes that students have current portfolios. It addresses advanced practices, methods, and techniques used by writers working in a variety of literary genres. Topics include conceptualizing large projects, research methods in the literary genres, global restructuring of manuscripts, examining the writing process, and experimenting with new procedures. In addition to lectures and workshops, local guest writers will visit the class to discuss these aspects of their practice.

Students will adapt material (such as short stories, poems, and essays) from other writing classes, as well as from other sources, for text-based performance genres such as the screenplay, the radio drama, poets theatre, "movie telling," and/or the podcast. Collaboration will be encouraged.

The focus of this Creative Writing course is determined by the individual instructor in consultation with the department. Examples might include New Media, Writing and the Body, Transmissions, or Writing from the Land.

This course in Literary Publishing will focus on the creation and production of a print and online publication, from concept to design to publication to launch. This studio-style class will provide opportunities for students to fill multiple roles in literary publishing—in publicity, acquisitions, editorial and event planning. Assignments will reflect the multiple roles on a production team, including marketing, design, writing and editing. The year will culminate in a public reading and launch event for the print edition of the publication.

This course focuses on digital genres of creative writing. Engaging with texts in a range of forms, students will learn to analyze and model sources that emerge specifically from online communities of writers. The outcome of this class is greater writing versatility through a deep engagement with the online literary archive and hands-on experimentation with diverse written forms.

This upper-level course focuses on versatility and cross-pollination in creative writing genres. Students will read diverse literary samples, from the traditional to the experimental, to examine how form is connected to the cultural and societal impact of literary texts. Students will then attempt multiple creative experiments by modeling and adapting form with a range of cultural and societal considerations in mind.

This course offers an in-depth study of a single author.

This course offers an in-depth study of a selected topic in literary-critical theory.

This course examines electronic literature (literature created exclusively on and for digital devices, such as computers, tablets, and mobile phones). Students will consider the genre as a form possessing computer-driven aesthetics - such as speed, animation, and multimodal semiotics - that produce different literary effects and reading practices.

This course investigates histories and modes of criticism and the relation between theory and other creative and cultural formations. In a seminar setting foregrounding accountable reading, shared inquiry, and collaborative critical dialogue, students will survey a wide range of critical and literary theories, analyze the social and institutional contexts of their emergence, situate them in relation to each other, and evaluate their impact on both scholarly and creative practices in the 20th and 21st centuries.

In this course, students will refine a creative or critical work of their own making as well as collaboratively produce a professional-quality anthology publication for both print and web formats. Beginning with a brief history and assessment of the anthology form itself, the course will guide students through every stage of the production process, inviting them to try a variety of tasks and allowing them to specialize in the publishing-related role of their choice.

This is a work-experience course that connects students with a host organization in a relevant field or industry. The Practicum is conducted under the mentorship of a Capilano faculty member and a supervisor from the host organization. Students gain valuable experience applying their skills in research, writing, critical thinking, and imaginative problem-solving in a unique real-world setting, discovering how their training and knowledge can be used in various business, education, research, or cultural contexts.

Students will work with an English faculty member and be guided in the development of a research-based project. Specific course details will be arranged between individual students and faculty members. Registration is by permission of the instructor and the English Department Coordinator.

In this course students in the English Honours program undertake a research project culminating in a graduating honours thesis. The course is delivered over two terms, the first devoted to reading and research for the project, the second to the drafting and completion of the written thesis.

Students will work with an English faculty member and be guided in the development of a research-based project. Specific course details will be arranged between individual students and faculty members. See the Department of English website for complete details on the application process. Admission is by permission of the instructor and the department.

Students will work with an instructor to guide them with a topic-based analytical/creative project, approved by the student's advisor. Specific course details will be arranged between individual students and faculty members. Registration is by permission of the instructor and the Creative Writing Convenor.