Department of English Second-Year English

Tuesdays & Thursdays 1030-1220 (CRN: 10417)

Instructor: Erin Robb | erobb [at] langara.ca (erobb[at]langara[dot]ca) 

Come discover a world of myth, epic adventures, and dark tragedies as we travel through the ancient Mediterranean to encounter monsters, heroes, gods, kings, and warrior women. From the Underworld to the battlefields to the cosmos and back, immersing ourselves in ancient classical literature will help us understand where today’s Western traditions come from, why they’ve developed, and how they’ve changed.

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Mondays & Wednesdays 1230-1420 (CRN: 10418)

Instructor: Ciara Lawlor | clawlor [at] langara.ca (clawlor[at]langara[dot]ca) 

Storm the castle! Discover the very foundations of English literature in this saucy survey of the classics.

Have you ever grappled with monsters (Beowulf) or enjoyed ribald humour (Chaucer)? Join us as we also explore love, enslavement, and forgiveness in Shakespeare's The Tempest and sonnets. You will then enter the realm of seduction, devotion, and the cosmos in the Metaphysicals and Donne. Finally, you will be immersed in the ultimate battle between Heaven and Hell (Milton).

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Tuesdays & Thursdays 1430-1620 (CRN: 10419)

Instructor: Noel Currie | ncurrie [at] langara.ca (ncurrie[at]langara[dot]ca) 

This course introduces students to major works of literature within their historical and aesthetic contexts, 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, consider how epic conventions can be turned to mockery and gaslighting with John Dryden and Alexander Pope, play matchmaker with Jane Austen, develop new relationships with nature with the Romantics, explore questions of identity with Robert Louis Stevenson, and laugh at everything and everyone with Oscar Wilde. All readings are in the Norton Anthology of English Literature. *ENGL 2223 is not a prerequisite for this course; students may take ENGL 2224 before, after, or at the same time as ENGL 2223.

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Tuesdays & Thursdays 1630-1820 (CRN: 10429)

Instructor: Jonathan Newell | jnewell [at] langara.ca (jnewell[at]langara[dot]ca) 

The course will consider how works of speculative and science fiction call on us to examine and reevaluate our perceptions and constructions of gender, sexuality, race, class, ability and disability, and our relationship with the more-than-human world, engaging with queer, Afrofuturist, indigenous, crip, and anti-capitalist perspectives. It will ask students to critically engage with issues of progress, sustainability, inequality, identity, technology, and time. Apart from a variety of essays analyzing the stories and novels in the course - including Frank Herbert's Dune, Ursula Le Guin's The Dispossessed, Nnedi Okorafor's Binti, and short stories by Octavia Butler - students will also produce a creative response related to the themes and futures of the texts, showcasing their ability to “imagine otherwise” and speculate productively themselves.

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Mondays & Wednesdays 14:30-16:20 (CRN: 10421)

Instructor: Sean McAlister | smcalister [at] langara.ca (smcalister[at]langara[dot]ca) 

We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate” - Henry David Thoreau, Walden (84) 

This course is a survey of American literature, spanning the Early National period (1780-1830) to the present. We will use the phrase “the old, weird America” (coined by Greil Marcus in reference to the Anthology of American Folk Music) as a point of access for considering the peculiarity—that is, both the uniqueness and the strangeness—of U.S. history and literature. We will place particular emphasis on the ways that emergent communication technologies (print, telegraphy, radio, television, the internet, etc.) have both mediated connections and sown dramatic, sometimes violent divisions between people throughout the history of the republic.

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Tuesdays 18:30-21:50 (CRN: 10425)

Instructor: Jill Goldberg | jgoldberg [at] langara.ca (jgoldberg[at]langara[dot]ca) 

In the second half of Writing Lives (English 2286), students who have completed English 2226 (Writing Lives 1) meet with Elders who attended residential school to interview them about their experiences. Students will transcribe the interviews and collaborate with the Elders to write their memoirs. Students will learn interviewing techniques, memoir-writing, and will participate in a closing ceremony where the memoirs are given to the Elders and their families. This is a life-changing opportunity to learn from community members and to participate in creating a culture of reconciliation. *Only students who are currently taking ENGL 2226 are eligible to register for this course.

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Wednesdays 18:30-21:50 (CRN: 10426)

Instructor: Mono Brown | mmbrown [at] langara.ca (mmbrown[at]langara[dot]ca) 

As a film genre, horror is known for depicting scenes of gratuitous violence that force audiences to confront their deepest insecurities and fears, from the primal to the societal. Over a hundred years ago, for example, Nosferatu (1922) exposed early film audiences to their fears of the unknown as expressed in anxieties about disease, foreigners, and sexuality. This course invites students to engage with the perspective that, far from baseless, horror’s capacity to unsettle audiences makes it a powerful vehicle for challenging perspectives on a range of social issues. After being introduced both to the genre’s conventions and to horror’s history and longstanding reputation as social commentary, students will apply this knowledge to their study of contemporary, commentary-driven horror films, including Jennifer’s Body (2009, dir. Karyn Kusuma), The Babadook (2014, dir. Jennifer Kent), Get Out (2017, dir. Jordan Peele), and Parasite (2019, dir. Bong Joon-Ho).

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