3000-Level Course Descriptions
FALL 2026 | FALL WINTER 2026-27 | WINTER 2027
ENGL-3110-770 | Writing Creative Nonfiction | J. Wills
Course Delivery: ONLINE SYNCHRONOUS
ENGL-3114-770 | Writing Poems | S. Pool
Course Delivery: ONLINE SYNCHRONOUS
This course is designed to give writers a detailed and focused understanding of poetry - and of themselves as poets - through weekly workshops. Each week we will be looking at a selection of work by contemporary poets, focusing on particular skills and techniques employed in the work. We will also discuss these techniques in relation to individual poetic practice. The rest of the workshop will be dedicated to workshopping student poems. Students will have at least two opportunities to workshop new creative work in class. Poets will be learning to think about their own writing practice dynamically in relation to other contemporary poets, developing their critical vocabulary and close reading skills, and working towards producing a collection of poems employing the techniques and skills learned in the course. By the end of the semester, students should have a sound and thorough understanding of their own practice as a poet, and have developed a series of tools and techniques to help them refine and develop their work. This course will require an application portfolio for admission emailed to cwportfolio@uwinnipeg.ca
ENGL-3169-001 | Films for Young People | H. Snell
Course Delivery: IN PERSON
This course explores a range of films for young people, such as teen films, animated films, films for babies, and films that do not necessarily target a young audience but which raise interesting questions for childhood and adolescent studies scholars. Among other topics, we consider ideas around ‘age appropriateness’; constructions of the child, the adolescent, and the young adult through elements of film such as sound, editing, mise en scène, and cinematography; child stardom and racial, sexual, and class politics; genre conventions; the enduring influence of Disney; Indigenous filmmaking; and film as decolonial practice. Some attention is paid to developing interpretive strategies and a vocabulary for reading film. Classes consist of a mix of lectures; individual, paired, and group activities; and whole-class discussions in a variety of formats.
ENGL-3709-001 | Topics in Canadian Literature and Culture: Life Writing | D. Wolf
Course Delivery: IN PERSON
In this course, we will explore a number of autobiographies and memoirs by Canadian writers. We will focus on a range of texts from celebrity, sports, and traumatic autobiographies to accounts of so-called everyday lives. Framing our readings through key concepts and recent theoretical discussions of life writing, we will examine the many ways in which these writers represent themselves. Autobiographies reveal as much about the present in which they were written as they do about the past in which events occurred; thus, we will explore their connections to contemporary political debates as well as their roles as agents of cultural memory. We will consider our own roles as ethical readers and witnesses of often traumatic and/or controversial pasts.
ENGL-3719-001 | Literatures of Manitoba | C. Russell
Course Delivery: IN PERSON
In this course, we explore the literary culture of the Canadian Prairies through poetry, fiction, and drama by authors who live or have lived in Manitoba, and in which Manitoba is a main setting. History and geography of the province will provide a framework as we examine representations of the experience of Indigenous people before and after European contact; colonization by French and British fur traders and settlers; subsequent waves of new immigrants; and contemporary life in this province. Themes examined will include: establishing new communities in unfamiliar territory while recalling a cultural history from another place; different perceptions of nature and the land; small town life versus big city life; and the search for intellectual, social, and religious freedom amidst perceived parochialism. Particular topics will include representations of the North End of Winnipeg, the Winnipeg General Strike, the fur trade, and rural life in the province. We will include some exploration of texts that represent Manitoba for children and young people. Evaluation in the course likely will include three tests, a group presentation, a term project, and a final exam.
ENGL-3723-760 | Topics in Indigenous Texts and Cultures: Historical and Contemporary Indigenous Representations | P. DePasquale
Course Delivery: ONLINE ASYNCHRONOUS
This course examines a range of literary and non-literary texts, all available on the Internet, fundamental to a study of the history of colonialism, stereotypes, and racism in North America, with emphasis on the experiences of Canadian Indigenous People. Students will examine, discuss, and research historical and contemporary representations in various formats, including literature, visual art, film, video, music, and a range of other media. Students will study the history and legacies of colonialism, including many of the issues and topics impacting Indigenous People today. The course is informed by the knowledges, worldviews, values, theories, and methodologies of Elders, community workers, artists, scholars, and others who are working today to deconstruct older paradigms and perceptual frameworks. Students taking this course will have the option of an experiential learning volunteer placement with a local Indigenous organization. This course meets the Indigenous Course Requirement.
ENGL-3725-490 | Topics in Cultural Studies: A Little More than Kin: Historical Understandings and Prepresentations of Family | K. Ready
Course Delivery: Stony Mountain Institution
What makes a family? This course considers both critical discussions and literary representations of family from the early modern period to the present day. We will look at how family structures have changed over time as a result of different historical factors and pressures and how understandings of family have contributed to shaping actual families. As we will explore, the family is an idea (sometimes even an ideology) and institution as much as it is about kinship. Moreover, as an idea and institution it is always changing. As we think critically about family from a variety of theoretical and critical perspectives, we will be interested specifically in how the family has functioned in a way that has sometimes been constraining and at other times empowering.
This course will be taught at the Stony Mountain Institution (SMI) in the rural municipality of Rockwood as part of 新月直播’s Walls-to-Bridges (W2B) program, with a mixture of UW outside students learning alongside inside students. It reflects the experiential learning approach of W2B, with a focus on group work and projects. An interview with the instructor for entry into this course will be necessary to register. Interested students should email the instructor directly at k.ready@uwinnipeg.ca.
ENGL-3742-001 | Topics in Caribbean Literature | K Sinanan
Course Delivery: IN PERSON
This course explores Caribbean literature, culture, theory, and history from the early modern period to the present day. It engages with orality and a range of genres and writings in translation, including primary documents, and creative responses that unsilence Caribbean history, and forge new forms of expression, challenging the incursions of race and domination. The course considers how Caribbean studies offers vital responses to the interlocking oppressions of gender, race, class, and disability, bearing in mind that many of these categories were products of the Western plantocracies that seized the land and its peoples.Typical topics may include: Indigenous Oral Traditions in the Caribbean; Critiquing the myth of ‘discovery'; Slavery and resistance; Black Freedom; Poetry and Caribbean Culture. This course may be repeated for credit when the topic varies.
ENGL-3756-001 | Topics in Ancient Literature: Ancient Folklore | C. Tosenberger
Course Delivery: IN PERSON
In this course, we will study popular narratives and beliefs in the Greek and Roman world, through the lens of folklore studies. We will examine some well-known works of literature, some that originate in oral culture and others written as novels (The Golden Ass); we will also look at how widespread folk beliefs about sex, death, and magic affected literature, art, politics, religion, and everyday life. We will pay special attention to narratives of magical transformation, and the role they play in the development of the European fairy tale tradition. Of particular interest will be stories and folk beliefs concerning concepts of the Other—in terms of gender, sexuality, social class, national origin, or religious practice—and their impact on Greco-Roman culture.
ENGL-3980-001 | TOpics in Comics and Graphic Narratives | Instructor TBA
Course Delivery: IN PERSON
FALL/WINTER 2026-27
ENGL-3151-001 | Critical Theory: An Introduction | A. Brickey
Course Delivery: IN PERSON
In her groundbreaking 1991 essay "Theory as Liberatory Practice," bell hooks writes: "I came to theory because I was hurting—the pain within me was so intense that I could not go on living. I came to theory desperate, wanting to comprehend—to grasp what was happening around and within me. Most importantly, I wanted to make the hurt go away. I saw in theory then a location for healing." In this class we will ask: what has theory offered us and how still could it be useful? Students will be introduced to the wide and diverse tradition of critical theory, beginning with its conservative roots in Western Metaphysics and moving historically through major schools of thought including Aestheticism, Marxism, Feminism, New Historicism, Queer Theory, Post-Colonial Theory, Black Studies, and more. We will dedicate ourselves to reading seriously and slowly, analyzing essays that have had significant impact on the history of ideas and taking a particular interest in Literary Studies and its critical attendants. We will read work from Plato, Philip Sidney, Roland Barthes, Gayatri Spivak, Judith Butler, Frantz Fanon, Sianne Ngai, Fred Moten, and more. Assignments will include regular in-class writing, pop quizzes on reading material, and tests. This class will be completely analogue. No tech will be permitted in class except in the case of accessibility accommodations. All graded work will be done in class, writing by hand.
ENGL-3724-770 | Topics in Race and Ethnicity | J. Wills
Course Delivery: IN PERSON
WINTER 2027
ENGL-3104-770 | Hybrid Genre Writing | S. Pool
Course Delivery: ONLINE SYNCHRONOUS
The prose poet Russell Edson once characterized the contemporary prose poem as “the offspring of a giraffe and an elephant, which may look grotesque but is hailed nonetheless as a ‘beautiful animal’” Poet James Richardson goes even further, suggesting that the prose poem’s “shifty position is akin to that of the tomato, which may be a fruit in botany class, but is a vegetable if you’re making fruit salad.” These whimsical descriptions attempt to locate prose poetry as a form which can only be truly understood as a blurring of both poetry and prose. In this course, students will explore and analyze these hybrid-genre forms and write their own short hybrid-genre pieces inspired by their own cultural literacies. Beginning with the prose poem, we will study hybrid-genre writing, including prose poetry, flash nonfiction, lyric/experimental essay, autotheory, comics, fragments, and digital projects. By the end of this workshop course, students will produce a portfolio of creative work, and develop a critical understanding of the political potential of hybrid forms. Classes will be comprised of short craft talks, discussion of assigned texts, and creative workshopping. You must come to class with the appropriate texts in hand and be prepared for discussion and productive creative workshopping. Participants will have at least two opportunities to workshop new writing and will also produce a critical afterward which will accompany their final creative portfolio. Participation in online classes workshopping is mandatory. This course requires a portfolio for admittance. Portfolios can be emailed to cwportfolio@uwinnipeg.ca
ENGL-3160-001 | Topics in Young People's Texts and Culture: Imagning Salem | C. Tosenberger
Course Delivery: IN PERSON
The Salem witch hunt occupies a key place in the American imagination. Despite the fact that the 1692 trials were small-scale, and far less lurid than their European analogues, their imagery—particularly of the howling “afflicted” girls—has become central to Western ideas not just of the early modern witch hunts, but also of the dangers of intolerance, misogyny, religious fanaticism, and judicial malfeasance. In this course, we will examine both historical documentation and literary/media interpretations of the Salem trials, with a special focus on the young people at the centre of the trials as both accusers and accused.
In the first part of the course, we will closely examine the trial documents themselves, to hear the voices of the participants in their own words; through focusing on specific individuals—such as Tituba, Abigail Hobbs, Ann Putnam Jr., and Mercy Lewis—we will see how early New Englanders, and Puritans specifically, constructed and interpreted categories of gender, race, age, class, and ability. Particular attention will be paid to the Puritans’ white supremacist theology, and the impact of ongoing war against Indigenous peoples, on the trials. The second part of the course will study modern creative responses to the trials, in both literature and film, that centre young people; we will be especially concerned here with how Salem has been imagined and invoked as a cultural touchstone.
ENGL-3403-001 | Canadian Drama | J. Riley
Course Delivery: IN PERSON
This course is dedicated to the study of plays written in the land known as Canada over the last fifty years. This is a course about legacies: artistic, stylistic, canonical, dramaturgical, ideological, and colonial. Through an examination of plays and supplementary readings our work together will be to explore where we have come from and where we are headed in theatre in this country.
ENGL-3725-001 | Topics in Cultural Studies: Photography and Cultural Studies | A. Burke
Course Delivery: IN PERSON
From its very beginnings, Cultural Studies has been concerned with questions of representation, the ways in which the political and the pictorial converge, and the clash and conjunction of ideology and image. From snapshot photography to social media, this course investigates a history of thinking about images and their circulation. We will explore how the image mediates memory and how the photograph is a vehicle that transports the past into the present. How does photography function as a technology of memory, not simply for the individual, but for family, community, culture, nation, and diaspora?
The course begins with the formative work of Walter Benjamin, whose “A Small History of Photography” still sets the contemporary agenda for thinking about photography as a cultural practice and the photograph as an object, whether analogue or digital. From there, we will extend our analysis to questions of art, the archive, activism, and the ordinary. Photography has made its way into the gallery and now counts itself among the fine arts, but there is also the long history of its use for purposes of control and surveillance. Yet, at the same time, photography has frequently been harnessed for positive political ends, allowing queer and racialized groups to make visible experiences and evidence of inequality and injustice. Finally, while photography has long been a mass practice and the primary mode through which everyday life is defined and documented, the ease of image-making in the digital age also makes it somewhat banal, as images are the primary currency in the frenzied circulations of social media.
Readings for this course will primarily consist of essays and articles that will be accessible via Nexus and the UW Library, but it will also include screenings of select films about photography.
ENGL-3756-002 | Topics in Ancient Literature: The Mortal Muses: Greek Female Poets Beyond Sappho | F. Amaral
Course Delivery: IN PERSON
While Sappho is hailed as the “Tenth Muse” in multiple ancient sources and is considered the most important ancient woman writer these days, she was not the only woman in the craft of poetry. From Erinna’s haunting laments over the loom to Corinna’s triumphs over the masters of epic, and Anyte’s invention of the pastoral landscape, female poetry navigated labor, desire, and identity. By analyzing primary and secondary sources on a selection of ancient Greek women poets, we will expand our vision on female poetry in ancient Greece and better understand their place and importance in ancient Greek literature and its reception across the centuries.
ENGL-3812-001 | History of English | Z. Izydorczyk
Course Delivery: IN PERSON
ENGL-3923-001 | Topics in Women Writers | Instructor TBA
Course Delivery: IN PERSON