Only offered through the Division of Continuing Studies.

This course introduces students to the major literary and cultural trends of the first half of the twentieth-century. Through a selection of British, Canadian, American, and German literature, students will study the styles and themes of literary modernism in poetry, novels, short stories, and one play. The course studies the literature of the Great War, including the English war poets Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon and the German novel All Quiet on the Western Front. Students will also encounter such important modern poets as Thomas Hardy, W. B. Yeats, Ezra Pound, H. D., and T. S. Eliot. Students will learn why the short story is a particularly twentieth-century genre and how its innovations apply to the techniques of the modernist novel through discussions of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway. More generally, the course provides a regional and a planetary perspective on humanity, allowing us to consider variations in national and personal definitions of such themes as heroism, utopia/dystopia, issues of gender and sexuality, social and individual responsibility, and freedom. Students will be required to write several short response papers and one major essay. Although this is a distance course, it is also a discussion-intensive course, and all students will contribute frequently to the online discussion forum.

Note: Distance Learning computer requirements

Only offered through the Division of Continuing Studies.

This online course examines literature in English from the years following the Second World War to the present. It considers such authors as Michael Ondaatje, Nadine Gordimer, Chinua Achebe, Angela Carter, Kath Walker, Margaret Atwood, and Hanif Kureishi. The course examines how international writers have met the challenges of our increasingly diverse, technological, postcolonial, and globalized world, a world in which identities have become unstable and borders of all kinds have become fluid. Students will contribute to online discussion, write five short formal response papers, complete one formal essay, and write a final exam.

Note: Distance Learning computer requirements

This course introduces students to major literary and cultural trends from the early 1900s on, through selected works of Canadian, American, British, French, and German literature of the period. Special attention will be given to the varied pattern of social and psychological concepts, the continuous shifting of moral norms, and the search for an authentic set of cultural and spiritual values. Texts studied include novels, short stories, plays, and poetry; together, they offer both regional and global perspectives on humanity, allowing us to consider variations in national and personal "takes" on such topics as heroism, leadership, sexuality and gender issues, "thinking outside the box," social and individual responsibility, the environment, and coping with "The Five Cs": change, complexity, conflict, crisis, catastrophe. Instruction in writing skills is an important part of this course. Essays will be required in both the Fall and Winter Terms.

This course is an introduction to the cultural, ethnic, and literary histories that have informed the production of English Literature--and of much Western culture--for the past four millennia.   Students will examine how Greek, Roman, and Judeo-Christian texts reflect the values of the periods in which they were written, and why they are important today.

This course introduces key theoretical and practical questions which arise in the study of literature and contemporary culture such as "Why study literature?"  "What constitutes `great' literature"?"  "What aspects of culture--such as movies, TV shows, advertising, news media, or music--can be read as `texts"?" Students will also learn how to apply these theories in commenting on literature.  Emphasis will also be placed on effective essay-writing.