For more information on our course offerings, please go to the York Course Website.
Calendar Year
Term
Course #
Course Title
2025
F
gs/en 6000A
Literary Research Methods
Situating literary research methods in the context of those of other disciplines, this course is designed to introduce new graduate students in English department to conceptual and methodological frameworks which characterize literary scholarship; how to perform literature reviews; specialized research and writing resources; critical methods for interrogating those resources; and relevant, emerging issues in scholarly communication.
Instructional Format: SEMR
Instructor(s): L. Sloniowski
2025
F
gs/en 6010A
Directed Reading
Instructional Format: DIRD
2025
SU
gs/en 6010A
Directed Reading
Instructional Format: DIRD
2026
W
gs/en 6010M
Directed Reading
Instructional Format: DIRD
2025
S1
gs/en 6151A
The City in Translation: Negotiating Linguistic Plurality in Urban Spaces
This interdisciplinary course investigates translation and multilingualism as they relate to the experience of the city. It provides an opportunity to study translation and various forms of languaging in narrative and poetic praxis, and explore the multilingual condition as a lived experience of translation in various cities, with an emphasis in Toronto.
Instructional Format: HYFX
Instructor(s): E. Basile
2026
W
gs/en 6157M
Comparative and World Literature Seminar: History and Practice
Cross-listed in English, Humanities, and Translation Studies, this seminar introduces students to the conditions of emergence and development of the discipline of Comparative Literature from its beginnings in nineteenth-century Europe to its most recent global iteration of World Literature. Students will experience how expanded understandings of cultural translation and textuality have radically altered and expanded the Eurocentric character of the discipline. Questions for investigation include: How have the aesthetics and politics of Comparative Literature changed over the past two hundred years? What factors have influenced those changes? How is World Literature related to Comparative Literature? How do both relate to colonial, post-colonial, diasporic, cultural and translation studies and digital humanities?
Instructional Format: SEMR
Instructor(s): K. O'Briain
2025
SU
gs/en 6320A
Eighteenth-Century Intellectual Texts
In the British 18th Century, descriptions of art insist over and over again that it presents things as they really are - a critical demand which masks deeply felt desires, for certainty, for an ideal image of moral nature, including moral feeling, and for objectivity. Art furthers social consensus to the degree that it creates the conditions for an ideally impartial, and therefore shareable, judgment of history, justice, truth and morality.
Instructional Format: SEMR
Instructor(s): K. Valihora
2026
W
gs/en 6465M
The Gothic Afterlives of the Brontës
This course examines the writings of the Brontës alongside the literary rewritings, film adaptations, and Gothic mash-ups that their works and lives have inspired.
Instructional Format: SEMR
Instructor(s): N. Neill
2025
F
gs/en 6580A
South Asian Diaspora: Literary Journeys
This course focuses on the texts and theories of South Asian diasporic literature. The content and method change from year to year depending on the instructor.
Instructional Format: SEMR
Instructor(s): V. Dadawala
2026
W
gs/en 6582M
'You Better Work:' Sexuality, Labour, and Blackness in America
This seminar takes a historical, theoretical, and interdisciplinary approach to sexuality, labor, and blackness in the genocidal territory known as the United States. We will engage in black feminist, trans, and queer methodologies of selected literature, film, and artwork while we also consider the limits of labor as a conceptual apparatus.
Instructional Format: SEMR
Instructor(s): T. Reid
2025
F
gs/en 6595A
Special Topics: Literary Non-Fiction
Instructional Format: SEMR
Instructor(s): J. Creet
2025
SU
gs/en 6601A
(Anti)Nationalisms and the (Un)Making of Post- Colonial Nations
This course traces debates around and resistance to the form of the nation-state within post-colonial nations. We will explore the following questions: How do literary works, visual art, films, and theoretical texts critique the coloniality of post-colonial nation-states? What shape do these (anti)nationalisms take? What forms of nonnation sovereignties emerge in these struggles? We will focus primarily on South Asia and Africa.
Instructional Format: SEMR
Instructor(s): S. Bhat
2025
S1
gs/en 6623A
The American Campus Novel
This course considers fictional representations of American academic life, novels about the social and intellectual lives of students and/or professors and instructors (a popular subgenre sometimes referred to as the Academic Novel, or in Elaine Showalter's term, the Professorroman), and sometimes staff and administrators.
Instructional Format: SEMR
Instructor(s): A. Redding
2025
F
gs/en 6739A
Jazz Modernism
This course challenges now-canonical definitions of modernism by tracing the jazz inflections and infusions that were first heard in the early 1920s and continued to inspire-and incense-cultural workers, critics, and readers into the 1950s and 1960s. We will consider poetry, fiction, essays, and experimental jazz 'experience-books.'
Instructional Format: SEMR
2025
F
gs/en 6776A
Seminar-Workshop in Creative Writing: Poetry
Along with matters of craft, this workshop course considers questions that confront poets: how to make poetry relevant in today's society, what forms of attention does poetry allow, what relationship to poetic tradition is most effective, what is an effective relationship towards formal tradition and innovation, etc. All students will write both poetry and academic papers (critical and/or theoretical engagements with elements of contemporary poetry and poetics). Students taking the course as part of the GDiP in Creative Writing will be evaluated primarily on their poetry; other students will be evaluated on the basis of their academic work.
Instructional Format: SEMR
Instructor(s): A. Weaver
2026
W
gs/en 6777M
Transformations & Multimodalities: Writing in the Expanded Field
An overview of multimodal writing and associated techniques for creative writers working in an expanded field, including methods of reading and critiquing multimodal works, from visual poetry to digital media. We will develop a shared vocabulary across mediums, and consider the applications and effects of artistic choices, implications for the field(s), and workshop individual pieces and projects.
Instructional Format: SEMR
Instructor(s): K. Allen
2026
W
gs/en 6779M
Seminar-Workshop in Creative Writing: Fiction
What exactly is realism in fiction? How is it challenged by other ways of telling? Where is the border between factual and fictional narrative? How do we engage creatively with a world in crisis? Readings will be drawn from a range of contemporary fiction and criticism, spanning regions and genres. Students will write fiction and a short critical paper.
Instructional Format: SEMR
Instructor(s): P. Malla
2025
F
gs/en 6801A
Studies in Canadian Literature: Critical Theory
This course will give an overview of Canadian literature criticism and theory since the nineteenth century with an emphasis on contemporary theory, highlighting major debates in the formation of a national literature and influential theorists in anglophone Canada.
Instructional Format: SEMR
Instructor(s): R. Zacharias
2026
W
gs/en 6989M
Feminist Refusal in Contemporary Writing and Theory
Through an intersectional feminist lens, this course considers how contemporary writers and theorists explore refusal as a personal and political tactic.
Instructional Format: SEMR
2025
F
gs/en 6997A
Issues in Contemporary Theory
This course focuses on current matters of concern and debate in contemporary literary and cultural theory. Issues will vary with Faculty expertise and contemporary developments. Students will acquire knowledge of the field and how it is variously transformed in practice.
Instructional Format: SEMR
Instructor(s): M. Boon
2026
W
gs/en 7000M
Dissertation Proposal Writing Workshop
This writing workshop analyses the components of the dissertation proposal, discusses appropriate writing strategies, and provides a faculty-member-facilitated, peer-review setting for students to develop their dissertation topics and draft their proposals according to Faculty of Graduate Studies' guidelines.
Instructional Format: SEMR
Instructor(s): R. Zacharias
Learn More
The Graduate Program in English at York is an exciting environment to pursue innovative, socially engaging, career-ready education. Contact our Graduate Program Assistant to learn more.