Under the direction of the student's approved thesis or major research paper advisor, a course of reading and study which leads to the development of both a significant bibliographical essay (or annotated bibliography) and a thesis proposal. The latter includes at least the following: major question(s) to be addressed; significance of the issue(s); methodologies to be used; theories to be addressed and primary sources to be examined.

Topics may vary.

Designed to orient students to the crucial transition from modernist to postmodernist and post-postmodernist models of texts and interpretation, models that depend on changing philosophical views of truth and reality. It examines the main interpretive paradigms in literary studies in order to show how views of reason, language, and textuality continue to shape one's life horizons.

Examines the long history of fantasy texts by first locating works of George MacDonald, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Madeleine L'Engle within the Anglo-Saxon epic and the Medieval romance literary traditions in English literature, including Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The course also considers how these works have shaped the imagination of creators of modern fantasy as well as the argument that modern fantasy is a response to post-Enlightenment rationalism.

The course examines children's literature from the seventeenth century to the present, analyzing representative texts and changing attitudes toward children and their books. Beginning with early didactic stories and traditional folk and fairy tales, and then moving on to British, American, and Canadian novels, the course focuses on questions of history, philosophy, authorship, readership, and genre. The emphasis is on close critical readings of the texts.

This course is designed to give students the opportunity of studying for an entire semester the works of up to two significant authors.

A study of representative works of contemporary Canadian fiction and the development of the post- modern, post-colonial, post-national novel. Authors (a minimum of six) may include a selection of Margaret Atwood, Dionne Brand, Timothy Findley, Jack Hodgins, Hugh Hood, Thomas King, Yann Martel, Rohinton Mistry, Alice Munro, Michael Ondaatje, Sky Lee, Jane Urquhart, Guy Vanderhaeghe, and Rudy Wiebe.

This course focuses on issues related to post- colonialism and literature through the study of literature written in English by writers from post- colonial nations.

This course studies representative works in British prose, fiction and poetry that both shape and reflect contemporary British literary sensibilities. It includes a selection of poetry from writers such as W.B. Yeats, W.H. Auden, T.S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, D.H. Lawrence, Philip Larkin and Seamus Heaney; prose from George Orwell and Virginia Woolf; and novels from A.S. Byatt, Joseph Conrad, John Fowles, David Mitchell and Graham Swift.