Second-year English courses at Langara offer students the opportunity to build on the foundations of literary and rhetorical analysis established in first-year courses while applying a much more specific focus in terms of content. Whether you are planning on getting a degree in English or you just want to take an interesting elective, the course offerings change each semester, so make sure you check back often!
For Creative Writing courses, click here.
All our second-year courses are fully transferable to UBC and SFU. For information about transfer credit and articulation of these courses, please visit the BC Transfer Guide.
For more information, check out the following video, or contact the individual instructors or the English Department Chair.
Download PDF of all Summer 2024 second-year English and Creative Writing courses.
Second-Year Courses for Summer 2024
ENGL 2224: English Literature from 1680 to 1900
This course introduces students to major works of literature and to the historical and aesthetic movements from which they came, starting with the Restoration of 1660 and ending in the late nineteenth century. Together, we’ll discover some strange solutions to social problems with Jonathan Swift, laugh at the lifestyles of the rich and famous with Alexander Pope, play matchmaker with Jane Austen, develop new relationships with nature with the Romantics, and explore the formation of identity with Charles Dickens. Note: ENGL 2223 is not a prerequisite for this course; students may take ENGL 2224 before, after, or at the same time as ENGL 2223.
Instructor: Noel Currie ncurrie@langara.ca | Tuesday/Tuesday 10:30 - 12:20
View Course Outline | Register for ENGL 2224 (CRN: 20742)
ENGL 2225: Canadian Literature
If you have ever wondered “what is Canadian literature anyway?,” you are not alone. In fact, such questions are fundamental to literature by and about Canadians. In this survey course, we read a range of genres (scholarly articles, poetry, non-fiction, short fiction, and a novel), historical periods (19th - 21st century), regions (rural and urban), and subject matter (including ghosts, magic, adventure, nationhood, violence, loss, memory, and much more). We cover some conventional “classics” as well as more experimental and diverse perspectives within Canadian literature and criticism (with particular consideration of Indigenous cultures, multiculturalism, and cultural hybridity). We read literature by Canadians of African, Indigenous, East-Asian, European, Middle Eastern, and South-Asian descent, and we explore how Canadian writers have anticipated, answered, and even challenged Northrop Frye’s question of “where is here?"
Instructor: Tiffany Johnstone tjohnstone@langara.ca | ONLINE (ASYNCHRONOUS)
View Course Outline | Register for ENGL 2225 (CRN: 20327)
ENGL 2231: World Literature in English: Images of Africa
How should we characterize African literature? This is the central question posed by J.M. Coetzee’s provocative essay, “The Novel in Africa.” For Coetzee, the question is inseparable from the non-African world’s stereotypical image of Africa as an unfamiliar, exotic, and dangerous place. Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness represents the most famous—and perhaps, the most damaging—example of this image. Yet, there have been countless counter-images of Africa to appear in African fiction over the last sixty or more years, beginning with Chinua Achebe’s world-renowned novel, Things Fall Apart. Africa has become a site of vibrant literary production and experimentation, incorporating, for example, folk histories and oral traditions and modes of storytelling into the traditional novel form. African literature has also been forced to grapple with horrifying histories of genocide, colonial exclusion and exploitation, and racism. The result is a relatively new but remarkably rich and experimental fiction tradition. This course represents a small sampling of that tradition.
Instructor: Sean McAlister smcalister@langara.ca | Monday/Wednesday 10:30 - 12:20
View Course Outline | Register for ENGL 2231 (CRN: 20743)
ENGL 2430: Film Through Theory: Psychoanalysis and Film
In this course, we will investigate psychoanalytic approaches to film interpretations. We'll consider how such approaches have had a profound impact not only on our understandings of the human mind but also on the development of film as a medium and film studies as a discipline. Our attention will be on both subject matter and form. Filmmakers have often made films about our traumas, anxieties, and desires, although the most distinguished examples also attempt to represent the complexities of our psychologies through editing, camera tricks, and special effects. The film selections in this course will emphasize cinematic form as a mode of psychological investigation in its own right, while course readings, lectures, and discussions will place these films into conversation with the conceptual vocabulary of psychoanalysis that animates the history of film studies. Topics may include dream analysis, the unconscious and uncanny, voyeurism/scopophilia, repression and disavowal, neurosis and psychosis, and much more.
Instructor: Marc Acherman macherman@langara.ca | Monday/Wednesday 14:30 - 16:20
View Course Outline | Register for ENGL 2430 (CRN: 20331)
Second-Year Courses for Fall 2024
ENGL 2223: English Literature to 1680 | Ciara Lawlor | clawlor@langara.ca
ENGL 2224: English Literature 1680-1900 | Sandra Friesen | sfriesen@langara.ca
ENGL 2235: American Literature | Simon Rolston | srolston@langara.ca
ENGL 2230: Survey of Narrative Film | Karen Budra | kbudra@langara.ca
ENGL 2233: Social Sci-Fi | Jon Newell | jnewell@langara.ca
ENGL 2237: Writing Lives: The Residential School Survivor Memoir Project (Part 1) | Jill Goldberg | jgoldberg@langara.ca
Second-Year Courses for Spring 2025
ENGL 2222: Classical Literature in Translation | Alex Grammatikos | agrammatikos@langara.ca
ENGL 2223: English Literature to 1680 | Tanya Lewis | tlewis@langara.ca
ENGL 2224: English Literature 1680-1900 | Noel Currie | ncurrie@langara.ca
ENGL 2225: Canadian Literature | Aubyn Rader | arader@langara.ca
ENGL 2235: American Literature | Sean McAlister | smcalister@langara.ca
ENGL 2237: Children's Literature | Erin Robb | erobb@langara.ca
ENGL 2530: Studies in Film Genre or Period: Biopic | Jacqueline Weal | jweal@langara.ca