ENGL 243/001: Speculative Fiction (January 2024)

Posted on May 1, 2023 by Gisèle M. Baxter

ENGL 243/001: Speculative Fiction

Term 2 | TTh 2:00-3:30 p.m.

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Synthetic Humans, Posthuman Dystopias

“We make Angels. In the service of Civilization. There were bad angels once … I make good angels now.” – Niander Wallace, Blade Runner 2049

“Whole generations of disposable people.” – Guinan, “The Measure of a Man”, Star Trek: The Next Generation (season 2)

The near-future and alternate-reality landscapes of science fiction are often terrifying places and have been since Gothic and dystopian impulses intersected in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Shelley’s landmark tale evokes dread in the implications of Victor’s generation of a humanoid Creature; this dread echoes in more recent products or accidents of science: clones, robots and replicants, artificial intelligences, cyborgs. Such texts raise issues of gendered exploitation, consciousness and rights, research ethics, and fear, in the realization that these creatures are, ultimately, not human but posthuman, yet often more sympathetic than their makers. However, despite their apparent superiority, such humanoids tend to be defined as commodities. In this course, we will consider the posthuman element of dystopian speculations reflecting on the present and recent past, especially concerning threats of mass surveillance, profit-motivated technology, environmental crisis, and redefinitions of human identity.

Core texts tentatively include William Gibson, Neuromancer; Madeline Ashby, Vn; Lana Wachowski and Lilly Wachowski, The Matrix: Shooting Script; Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go; Blade Runner 2049 (dir. Denis Villeneuve) and Ex Machina (dir. Alex Garland).

Evaluation will tentatively be based on a midterm essay, a term paper requiring secondary academic research, a final reflection essay, and participation in discussion.

Keep checking this post for updates concerning the course, its texts, and its requirements.

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ENGL 110/013: Approaches to Literature and Culture (January 2024)

Posted on May 1, 2023 by Gisèle M. Baxter

ENGL 110/013: Approaches to Literature and Culture

Term 2 | TTh 11:00-12:30 p.m.

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Literary Monsters and Monstrous Literature

Rey: “You are a monster.”
Kylo Ren: “Yes, I am.”
– Star Wars: The Last Jedi

“Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time into this breathing world” – Richard III 1.i

What is a monster? We know monsters from myths and legends, folktales, horror fiction and film. We know their variety: the grotesque, the beautiful, the terrifying, the pitiable, the sports of nature and the forces of evil. Dragons, werewolves, vampires, zombies, Frankenstein’s Creature, Dorian Gray, the Joker, Hannibal Lecter, Marisa Coulter, many of the characters in The Walking Dead or Game of Thrones: they’re everywhere, from under the bed to the house next door to the battlefield, and right into a great deal of literature. Which leaves us here: in this section of 110 we’ll focus on how literary texts across the genres use representations of monstrosity in ways that inspire both terror and horror, as well as (let’s be honest) fascination and even enjoyment.

We’ll look at William Shakespeare’s Richard III (a play that meditates on villainy and ambition in demonizing its subject for Tudor audiences, yet still fascinates contemporary ones) and at Ian McKellen’s 1995 film adaptation, which shifts the setting to an alternate-reality 1930s England where fascism takes hold. We will also consider various stage and screen adaptations as approaches to the play, including recent ones using race and gender-diverse casting, and casting as Richard actors who are themselves physically disabled or disfigured. Other core texts include two novels: Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle, as well as selected poetry (with a focus on the sonnet form).

Evaluation will be based on two timed essays, a home paper, and a final exam, plus participation in discussion.

Keep checking this post for updates concerning the course, its texts, and its requirements.

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ENGL 365/002: Modernist Literature (January 2024)

Posted on May 1, 2023 by Gisèle M. Baxter

ENGL 365/002: Modernist Literature

Term 2 | TTh 9:30-11:00 a.m.

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Haunted Landscapes of Gothic Modernism

“in the middle of my party, here’s death, she thought” – Mrs. Dalloway

Modernism was born out of seismic, revolutionary shifts in society and culture. World wars, political revolutions in Europe and beyond, murderous civil and colonial/imperial wars, economic depression, and successive waves of technological modernization offering mixed psychological and social benefits and injuries laid siege to assumptions that the world was in any way well-ordered or reliably understood. Its literature both reflects conscious innovation and experiment and sometimes opposes these passions for change. Its obsessions respond in complex ways to those seismic shifts in its representations of gender and sexuality, social structures, race and culture, in all cases often in terms of transgression.

And yet, in its drive to make things new, Modernist literature is often a haunted place: spectres of ancestry, of war, of places escaped from collide with the present moment, creating a dark, Gothic modernity. This troubled place will be our focus as winter turns to spring.

Core texts tentatively include Henry James, The Turn of the Screw (to be read as a Modernism precursor), Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison; D.H. Lawrence, Women in Love; Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway; James Joyce, “The Dead”; and Katherine Mansfield, “Prelude” and “At the Bay”.

Evaluation will be based on a midterm essay, a term paper requiring secondary academic research, a final reflection essay, and participation in discussion.

Please keep checking this post for more information about the course, its texts, and its requirements.

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ENGL 301/001: Technical Writing (September 2023)

Posted on May 1, 2023 by Gisèle M. Baxter

ENGL 301/001: Technical Writing

Term 1 | MWF 12:00-1:00pm

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English 301: Technical Writing examines the rhetorical genre of professional and technical communication, especially online, through analysis and application of its principles and practices. You will produce a formal report, investigating resources and/or concerns in a real-life community, as a major project involving a series of linked assignments. This project will involve the study (and possibly practical application) of research ethics where human subjects are involved (e.g. in conducting surveys or interviews). Evaluation will be based on a series of four linked assignments culminating in the formal report, as well as participation in discussion and completion of various textbook exercises.

Think of this course as an extended report-writing Boot Camp: intensive, useful preparation for the last phase of your undergraduate degree, as you start applying to professional and graduate programs, and for the years beyond of work and community involvement. Technical Writing is closed to first- and second-year students in Arts and cannot be used for credit towards the English Major or Minor.

The course text will be Lannon et al, Technical Communication, 8th Canadian Edition, Pearson, 2020 (ebook).

Please note that this is a blended course and will require both participation in synchronous lectures and workshops (which will be conducted and recorded on Zoom) as well as asynchronous but scheduled independent work of the sort done in a conventional online course (including weekly Canvas-based exercises based on textbook readings and occasional peer feedback on drafts).

Also note that while 301 is not a course in remedial grammar, this section will provide online Canvas-based writing resources and workshops designed to help identify writing and proofreading problems, and to provide strategies to address them.

Purchase options:

The UBC Bookstore will order access tokens for the textbook. Other options for ordering include the following:

The 8th Canadian edition of Technical Communication is the only acceptable edition.

Please keep checking this post for more information about the course, its texts, and its requirements. Please email me (Gisele.Baxter@ubc.ca) if you have any questions.

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ENGL 100/002: Reading and Writing About Language and Literatures (September 2023)

Posted on May 1, 2023 by Gisèle M. Baxter

ENGL 100/002: Reading and Writing About Language and Literatures

Term 1 | MWF 10:00-11:00 a.m.

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Haunted Houses

“What is a ghost? A tragedy condemned to repeat itself time and again? An instant of pain, perhaps. Something dead which still seems to be alive. An emotion suspended in time. Like a blurred photograph. Like an insect trapped in amber.” – The Devil’s Backbone (dir. Guillermo Del Toro)

Where is the fascination, even when the deepest mysteries of the universe are being scientifically unlocked, in stories of haunted houses? What accounts for the lure, and even the enjoyment, of tales of terror and horror, even in the 21st century? This course examines the Gothic influence in texts where collisions of past and present, and implications of the uncanny, allow fascinating investigations of social codes and their transgression.

Core texts include a small selection of public-domain short stories (to be announced); Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House; Sarah Waters, The Little Stranger; Helen Oyeyemi, White is for Witching; and The Others (dir. Alejandro Amenábar); possibly another film; as well as Gardner and Diaz, Reading and Writing About Literature (5th edition). Through readings in current criticism and theory, we will develop strategies for textual analysis in literary and cultural studies. We will also consider the difficulty, if not impossibility, of reaching a “fixed” or consensus reading of any text.

Evaluation will be based on a short focused analysis, a midterm essay, a term paper requiring secondary academic research, a short final reflection essay, and participation in discussion.

Text acquisition options:

The UBC Bookstore will order print editions of the novels and ebook access tokens for Reading and Writing About Literature.

The Others will be available to stream through Library Online Course Reserves, linked to our Canvas site.

If you want to start reading, here are some options:

Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, Helen Oyeyemi’s White is for Witching, and Sarah Waters’s The Little Stranger are available in print through Amazon and Indigo, as well as on the following digital platforms: Apple Books, Kindle, Google Play; The Haunting of Hill House and White is for Witching are also available on Kobo (choose the Penguin edition of the novel The Haunting of Hill House on Kobo, NOT the study guide, which is a waste of money!).

Reading and Writing about Literature (5th edition) is available as an ebook on Vitalsource and as a paperback (much more expensive) on Amazon.

All the texts can be read as ebooks using an app or browser; they do not require a specific e-reader.

Only legally published editions of material under copyright (this includes all the novels and Reading and Writing about Literature) will be acceptable for use in this course. Extraordinarily cheap or free editions of books still under copyright are unauthorized and risk errors and/or missing material. Email me (Gisele.Baxter@ubc.ca) and provide a link if you have any questions about an edition.

Please keep checking this post for more information about the course, its texts, and its requirements.

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ENGL 242/001: Introduction to Children’s and Young Adult Literature (September 2023)

Posted on May 1, 2023 by Gisèle M. Baxter

ENGL 242/001: Introduction to Children’s and Young Adult Literature

Term 1 | MWF 9:00-10:00 a.m.

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Something in the Shadows is Watching

“You are always in danger in the forest, where no people are.” Angela Carter, “The Company of Wolves”

From The Turn of the Screw to The Others, creepy children frequently haunt Gothic texts. But what of Gothic texts assuming a young audience? Children’s/YA literature so often focuses on successful (or not so successful) negotiation of threats and learning opportunities in the intimate and public worlds around the child that “children’s” tales are often scarier than adult fiction. In this section, we will study a variety of texts through a literary/cultural studies lens, exploring their (sometimes) evolving genre features. We’ll start with familiar (and not-so-familiar) oral-tradition folk and fairy tales, to consider how their recurring devices establish tropes still frequently recurring. Then we will stray from the path and consider how a selection of novels might challenge or subvert perceived boundaries and conventions, especially in engaging with Gothic themes and motifs, ending with a graphic novel examining adolescent engagement with 1990s Goth culture.

We will also discover approaches to children’s/YA texts in literary/cultural studies at the university level.

Core texts tentatively include a selection of traditional folk and fairy tales; Alan Garner, The Owl Service; Francesca Lia Block, The Rose and The Beast; Neil Gaiman, Coraline; and Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki, Skim.

Evaluation will tentatively be based on a midterm essay, a term paper requiring secondary academic research, a final reflection essay, and participation in discussion.

Text acquisition options:

The traditional folk/fairy tales will be made available through links to Project Gutenberg and/or Wikisource on our Canvas site. I will provide a list of links later this summer.

If you want to start reading ahead, the texts are available, in print and ebook format, in the locations listed below. The UBC Bookstore will order print copies of these texts, with the exception of The Owl Service, which is until January only available as an ebook (though you might find out-of-print or secondhand editions at Book Warehouse or used-book stores).

  • The Owl Service (Alan Garner): Kindle, Kobo, GooglePlay, Apple Books (ebook);
  • The Rose and the Beast (Francesca Lia Block): Amazon, Indigo (print); Kindle, Kobo, GooglePlay, Apple Books (ebook)
  • Coraline (Neil Gaiman; the novel not the graphic novel): Amazon, Indigo (print); Kindle, Kobo, GooglePlay, Apple Books (ebook)
  • Skim (Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki): Amazon, Indigo (print); Kindle, Kobo, GooglePlay, Apple Books (ebook)

The ebooks can be read using an app or browser, and do not require a specific e-reader. In looking at search results, make sure the text has both the title and author correct.

Only legally published versions of material under copyright (the four texts listed above) will be acceptable for use in this course. Extraordinarily cheap or free editions of books still under copyright are unauthorized and risk errors and/or missing material. Email me (Gisele.Baxter@ubc.ca) and provide a link if you have any questions about an edition.

Please keep checking this post for more information about the course, its texts, and its requirements.

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ENGL 110/JL3: Approaches to Literature and Culture (Summer 2023)

Posted on February 8, 2023 by Gisèle M. Baxter

ENGL 110/JL3: Approaches to Literature and Culture

Term 2 | TTh 12:00-3:00pm

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Literary Monsters and Monstrous Literature

Rey: “You are a monster.” Kylo Ren: “Yes, I am.” – Star Wars: The Last Jedi

“Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time into this breathing world” – Richard III 1.i

What is a monster? We know monsters from myths and legends, folktales, horror fiction and film. We know their variety: the grotesque, the beautiful, the terrifying, the pitiable, the sports of nature and the forces of evil. Dragons, werewolves, vampires, zombies, Frankenstein’s Creature, Dorian Gray, the Joker, Hannibal Lecter, Marisa Coulter, many of the characters in The Walking Dead or Game of Thrones: they’re everywhere, from under the bed to the house next door to the battlefield, and right into a great deal of literature. Which leaves us here: in this section of 110 we’ll focus on how literary texts across the genres use representations of monstrosity in ways that inspire both terror and horror, as well as (let’s be honest) fascination and even enjoyment.

We’ll look at William Shakespeare’s Richard III (a play that meditates on villainy and ambition in demonizing its subject for Tudor audiences, yet still fascinates contemporary ones) and at Ian McKellen’s 1995 film adaptation, which shifts the setting to an alternate-reality 1930s England where fascism takes hold. We will also consider various stage and screen adaptations as approaches to the play, including recent ones using race and gender-diverse casting, and sometimes featuring as Richard actors who are themselves physically disabled or disfigured. Other core texts include selected poetry (with a focus on the sonnet form) and two novels: Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle.

Evaluation will be based on two timed essays, a home paper, and a final exam, plus participation in discussion both in class and on our Canvas site.

Please keep checking this post for more information about the course, its texts, and its requirements.

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ENGL 362/921: Victorian Period Literature (Summer 2023)

Posted on February 8, 2023 by Gisèle M. Baxter

ENGL 362/921: Victorian Period Literature

Term 1 | TTh 2:00-5:00pm

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Ghosts are Real (So are Vampires): The Supernatural and Victorian Gothic Terror and Horror

“Ghosts are real, this much I know” – Edith Cushing, Crimson Peak

“There are such beings as vampires; some of us have evidence that they exist” – Abraham Van Helsing, Dracula

Whether we take Edith Cushing or Abraham Van Helsing at their word, the 19th-century Gothic revival certainly emphasized possibilities for terror and horror in tales of the supernatural. However, these interventions of spectral and un-dead beings often take place in the recognizable present; they speak to its anxieties. Perhaps they speak to ours as well, given our recent fascination with Neo-Victorian representations of the 19th century, such as Penny Dreadful, From Hell, Crimson Peak, etc. We will examine stories addressing issues of gender and sexuality; class, race, and culture; realism and the supernatural; urban and rural settings, all in a century known for developments in science and technology (especially photography), social upheaval, and a veneer of respectability, yet with monsters lurking in closets and under beds. Our focus will also permit consideration of the boom in publication of popular literature in a variety of formats, as well as the rise of the professional writer during the 19th century.

Core texts include Margaret Oliphant’s The Library Window, Sheridan LeFanu’s Carmilla, Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, and short fiction possibly including M.R. James, “Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad”; Elizabeth Gaskell, “The Old Nurse’s Story”; Charlotte Riddell, “The Open Door”; Sheridan LeFanu, “An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street”; R.L. Stevenson, “The Body Snatcher”; E. Nesbit, “John Charrington’s Wedding” and maybe a couple of Victorian werewolf stories (since werewolf stories feature prominently in the research done for both Carmilla and Bram Stoker’s infamous Dracula). A page of links to the short stories will be in the Notes and Course Materials Module on our Canvas site, as well as a link to the Project Gutenberg edition of Carmilla.

Evaluation will be based on a midterm essay, a term paper, a final reflection essay, and participation in discussion both in class and on the course’s Canvas site.

Keep checking this post for more information about the course, its texts, and its requirements.

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ENGL 365/001: Modernist Literature (September 2022)

Posted on May 1, 2022 by Gisèle M. Baxter

ENGL 365/001: Modernist Literature

Term 1 | MWF 3:00-4:00p

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Haunted Landscapes of Gothic Modernism

“in the middle of my party, here’s death, she thought” – Mrs. Dalloway

Modernism was born out of seismic, revolutionary shifts in society and culture. World wars, political revolutions in Europe and beyond, murderous civil and colonial/imperial wars, economic depression, and successive waves of technological modernization offering mixed psychological and social benefits and injuries laid siege to assumptions that the world was in any way well-ordered or reliably understood. Its literature both reflects conscious innovation and experiment and sometimes opposes these passions for change. Its obsessions respond in complex ways to those seismic shifts in its representations of gender and sexuality, social structures, race and culture, in all cases often in terms of transgression.

And yet, in its drive to make things new, Modernist literature is often a haunted place: spectres of ancestry, of war, of places escaped from collide with the present moment, creating a dark, Gothic modernity. This troubled place will be our focus in the darkening days of autumn.

Core texts include Henry James, The Turn of the Screw (to be read as a Modernism precursor), Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison; D.H. Lawrence, Women in Love; Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway; James Joyce’s “The Dead” and Katherine Mansfield’s “Prelude” and “At the Bay”; plus perhaps one more work of short fiction.

Evaluation will be based on a midterm essay, a term paper requiring secondary academic research, a final exam, and participation in discussion.

Keep checking this post for updates concerning the course, its texts, and its requirements.

See Recent Posts or Archives (May 2022) in the right sidebar menu for descriptions of my other 2022-23 courses. See Archives (February 2022) for descriptions of my Summer 2022 courses.

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ENGL 301/002: Technical Writing (January 2023)

Posted on May 1, 2022 by Gisèle M. Baxter

ENGL 301/002: Technical Writing

Term 2 | TTh 9:30-11a

Canvas Login | My Website

Now with added grammar! While 301 is not a course in remedial grammar, this section will provide online Canvas-based writing resources and a series of workshops, designed to help identify writing and proofreading problems, and to provide strategies to address them.

English 301: Technical Writing examines the rhetorical genre of professional and technical communication, especially online, through analysis and application of its principles and practices. You will produce a formal report, investigating resources and/or concerns in a real-life community, as a major project involving a series of linked assignments. This project will involve the study (and possibly practical application) of research ethics where human subjects are involved (e.g. in conducting surveys or interviews).

Think of this course as an extended report-writing Boot Camp: intensive, useful preparation for the last phase of your undergraduate degree, as you start applying to professional and graduate programs, and for the years beyond of work and community involvement. Technical Writing is closed to first- and second-year students in Arts, and cannot be used for credit towards the English Major or Minor.

The course text will be Lannon et al, Technical Communications, 8th Canadian Edition, Pearson, 2020.

Please note that this is a blended course, and will require both participation in synchronous lectures and workshops as well as asynchronous independent work of the sort done in a conventional online course (e.g. Canvas-based textbook exercises and peer feedback on drafts).

Keep checking this post for updates concerning the course, its texts, and its requirements.

See Recent Posts or Archives (May 2022) in the right sidebar menu for descriptions of my other 2022-23 courses. See Archives (February 2022) for descriptions of my Summer 2022 courses.

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