English and Film Studies
Welcome to English and Film Studies!
Welcome to the Department of English and Film Studies, located on Treaty Six territory and in Region 4 of the Métis Nation of Alberta. One of the four founding departments of the University of Alberta in 1908 and today one of the largest in the Faculty of Arts, the Department of English and Film Studies is a dynamic place to study, learn and create. We are internationally-recognized and multi-disciplinary. Our faculty members are leaders in the field, with a reputation for high-quality research, innovative teaching, and meaningful community impact. Among our distinguished colleagues are three Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada, a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair, and many award-winning teachers.
Programs
Undergraduate Programs
Undergraduate Degree in English
Students have access to internationally renowned professors and can take courses spanning a broad range of topics, cultures, histories and perspectives. Study Medieval, Canadian, Indigenous, queer and children's literature and focus on a number of diverse areas including popular culture, creative writing, film studies, video games and new media.
Undergraduate Honors Degree in English
The English Honors program offers students the opportunity to enjoy even greater specialization in English than afforded by the Major. Students complete a unique course, ENGL 498, which involves mentored independent research culminating in an original honors essay.
Undergraduate Minor in English
Students who minor in English can explore language, literature, and other cultural forms - including popular culture and new media - across a diverse range of courses while majoring in a complementary discipline in arts or science.
Undergraduate Degree in Film Studies
Film Studies provides students with the tools to understand the vast and complex media landscape of the 21st century. Students will develop a theoretical and historical perspective on the evolution of film and understand moving images as a medium of self-expression and a carrier of cultural values.
Undergraduate Minor in Film Studies
A minimum of ★18 in Film Studies or approved cross-listed courses, including at least ★12 at the senior level. Students must take FS 100 (★3), ★6 at the 200-level, ★3 at the 300- or 400-level, ★3 at the 400-level and ★3 of any other FS or variable content/selected topics courses. See course descriptions for prerequisites.
Undergraduate Minor in Creative Writing
This program offers an exciting and diverse range of courses, including fiction, non-fiction and poetry, along with creative research and experimental forms of writing. Our program has our students work closely with active and talented writers, and we also have community-focused courses in which students engage in collective and grassroots creative writing and research projects, expanding thought, asking questions and attending to the voices of others.
Writing Studies
Writing Studies offers undergraduate and graduate courses in the exploration of writing. It also serves as an intellectual home for faculty and students who promote university-wide writing initiatives.
Graduate Programs
MA in English - Course-Based
The requirements for the MA in English - Course Based program are: Seven courses at the graduate level, Proseminar A, FSGR Ethics Requirement, Professional Development Requirement, MA Portfolio Proposal and Constitution of Supervisory Committee, and MA Portfolio.
MA in English - Thesis Based
The requirements for the MA in English - Thesis Based program are: Six courses at the graduate level, Proseminar A, FGSR Ethics Requirement, Professional Development Requirement, Language Requirement (for students admitted before Sept. 2017), MA Thesis Proposal and Constitution of Supervisory Committee, MA Thesis, and Examining Committee and Oral Defence of the Thesis.
PhD in English
The PhD program is designed to be completed in four years of full-time work. It is primarily intended as the first step in an academic teaching career, although some of our graduates find employment in fields such as publishing, librarianship, or government. Recent PhDs are in tenurable positions at numerous universities in Canada, the United States, and around the world. Still others have secured research employment in government and universities in Canada or internationally.
Undergraduate Programs
Learn more about the undergraduate programs available in the Department of English and Film Studies. Hear from undergraduate students and alumni about their experiences and the value of their programs.
Graduate Programs
Learn more about graduate studies in the Department of English and Film Studies. Hear from graduate students and alumni about their experiences and the value of their programs.
spring Term 2024
MWF 3:00 - 5:00 P.M.
ENGL 426/635: Shakespeare and Ecological Crisis: Four Shakespeare Plays and the Issue of Our Times
This course gives students the opportunity to engage an urgent question for literary studies, with four Shakespeare plays as our starting point: in the face of an ever-increasing global ecological crisis, how does literature help us imagine responses to the rapidly growing threat to humanity’s existence that scientists have predicted and warned about for decades?
The Shakespearean drama is especially helpful in this regard. Written on the brink of modernity, Shakespeare’s work reflects developments in Shakespeare’s lifetime that precipitated our current crisis. At the same time, Shakespeare’s work powerfully exemplifies the immense imaginative capacity that literary writers bring to the problems that humanity has created for itself and for the planet’s non-human beings.
We will study four plays — A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Macbeth, Hamlet, and The Tempest — in relation to select secondary readings that help us situate both the Shakespearean drama and ecological crisis in relation to historical and contemporary thought. Our governing question as we discuss the plays in relation to select secondary readings: how does Shakespeare represent human relations to the “natural” world?
Secondary readings will include a couple of key scholarly articles as well as excerpts from Amitav Ghosh’s The Nutmeg’s Curse; Jairus Victor Grove’s Savage Ecology: War and Geopolitics and the End of the World; Robin Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass; George Monbiot’s Regenesis; the recent collection Solarities edited by Cymene Howe, Jeff Diamanti, and Amelia Moore; and Tyson Yunkaporta’s Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World.
Carolyn Sale
-
The department was founded in 1908 with a single professor, Edmund Kemper Broadus, and a single class of students.
-
Famous graduates include Suzette Mayr, Giller Prize Winner in 2022 for her novel The Sleeping Car Porter and Jason Kapalka, founder of PopCap Games.
-
There are three programs within the department: English, Film Studies, and WRITE (Creative Writing).
Message from the Chair
Welcome to the Department of English and Film Studies, located on Treaty Six territory and in Region 4 of the Métis Nation of Alberta.
I am delighted to welcome you to the Department of English and Film Studies, one of the four founding departments of the University of Alberta in 1908 and today one of the largest in the Faculty of Arts. We are internationally-recognized and multi-disciplinary. Our faculty members are leaders in the field, with a reputation for high-quality research, innovative teaching, and meaningful community impact. Among our distinguished colleagues are three Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada, a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair, and many award-winning teachers.
Students can choose from a broad range of courses within our programs. At the undergraduate level, we offer Major, Minor, and Honors programs in English; Major and Minor programs in Film Studies; and a Minor in Creative Writing. Graduate students can study at the MA and PhD levels in English. Our graduate program, consistently ranked as one of the top English graduate programs in Canada, supports students' innovative projects and their professional development as critics, researchers, teachers, and innovators. In EFS we are a community of students, teachers, writers, and researchers who work in interrelated ways on the study of imaginative expression. Among our alumni are teachers, journalists, professors, editors, lawyers, digital content creators, publishers, game developers, novelists, screenwriters, producers, entrepreneurs, speechwriters, marketing executives, and more.
We are proud of our students’ accomplishments and their innovative work in our programs and beyond!
Julie Rak
Department Chair
Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Decolonization Statement
The English and Film Studies Department considers the diversity of its faculty, students and staff to be critical to its educational mandate and we work towards an inclusive community, one that provides a rich learning environment for all people irrespective of their gender, race, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion, class, national origin, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, age, ability, socio-economic status, class, neurodiversity, and religion. We acknowledge that we learn and teach on Treaty 6 and Métis territory and we commit to the work of decolonizing our teaching and research. We acknowledge that knowledge-making practices, including the institution of literature, have historically excluded many populations and perspectives; we commit to the work of dismantling systemic barriers within our learning and working environments. We recognize that language and literature can be powerful tools and aim to use them to imagine a more equitable and socially just world.
News + Events
Video spotlight: ‘You need to hear it to understand it’
U of A professors are making a vital archive of Canadian cultural history accessible to new generations of listeners.
Giving
Leave a Legacy
Your donation supports new learning opportunities and experiences for students, funds research and builds spaces for innovation and education.