Simon Fraser University
Engaging the World

Course Outlines

Fall 2026 - ENGL 115W D100

Literature and Culture (3)

Class Number: 2634

Delivery Method: In Person

Overview

  • Course Times + Location:

    Sep 9 – Dec 6, 2026: Tue, 10:30 a.m.–12:20 p.m.
    Burnaby

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

An Introduction to the study of literature within the wider cultural field, with a focus on contemporary issues across genres and media. Students with credit for ENGL 105W may not take this course for further credit. Writing/Breadth-Humanities.

COURSE DETAILS:


Pop Culture in Poetry

This course introduces students to the study of literature through poetry that engages popular culture. Students will read poems that draw on music, film, television, celebrity, sports, digital media, advertising, fandom, and mass entertainment, treating popular culture as a field through which modern experience is shaped, circulated, and contested. A poem about Oprah, Mariah Carey, Elvis, Star Trek, Bob Marley, Bollywood, Barbie, Michael Jordan, or the early internet is never only about the reference itself. It is also about how culture teaches us to see, hear, desire, remember, identify, judge, and belong. Students will study how rhyme, rhythm, repetition, lineation, tone, mood, form, and structure shape meaning, while examining how forms such as the lyric, ode, dramatic monologue, collage, sonnet, dub, spoken word, and free verse organize thought, voice, audience, and emotion. Rather than stopping at recognition (“I know that reference”) the course examines how popular culture works inside the poem: how it shapes speaker, tone, rhythm, form, and audience, and how it activates cultural, historical, racial, gendered, technological, and political contexts. Through close reading, discussion, writing, revision, and spoken engagement, students will develop confidence as readers and writers while approaching poetry as a way of making complex experience vivid, memorable, and shareable.

COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:

  1. identify and describe key poetic forms, elements, and techniques, including speaker, persona, diction, tone, mood, image, sound, rhythm, repetition, lineation, stanza, and form;
  2. analyze the relationship between sound and sense, explaining how auditory and linguistic techniques shape meaning and audience impact;
  3. distinguish between poet, speaker, and persona, and assess how point of view shapes interpretation;
  4. explain how poems use popular culture references to produce meaning, feeling, critique, identification, and contradiction;
  5. examine how social, historical, political, racial, gendered, technological, and media contexts affect the meaning and reception of poems;
  6. assess the relationship among form, structure, content, and meaning;
  7. evaluate their own interpretations alongside the views of classmates, instructors, and critics;
  8. write and revise clear, coherent, well-supported literary arguments using close reading, textual evidence, quotation, citation, and appropriate critical vocabulary.

Grading

  • Tutorial Participation 15%
  • Paper 1 Draft, 1000 words 10%
  • Paper 1 Revision, 1000 words 15%
  • Paper 2, 1500 words 30%
  • Final Exam 30%

Materials

MATERIALS + SUPPLIES:

All readings will be provided through a course anthology that will either be made available on Canvas or via the SFU Bookstore.

Department Undergraduate Notes:

IMPORTANT NOTE Re 300 and 400 level courses: 75% of spaces in 300 level English courses, and 100% of spaces in 400 level English courses, are reserved for declared English Major, Minor, Extended Minor, Joint Major, and Honours students only, until open enrollment begins.

For all On-Campus Courses, please note the following:
- To receive credit for the course, students must complete all requirements.
- Tutorials/Seminars WILL be held the first week of classes.
- When choosing your schedule, remember to check "Show lab/tutorial sections" to see all Lecture/Seminar/Tutorial times required.

Registrar Notes:

ACADEMIC INTEGRITY: YOUR WORK, YOUR SUCCESS

At SFU, you are expected to act honestly and responsibly in all your academic work. Cheating, plagiarism, or any other form of academic dishonesty harms your own learning, undermines the efforts of your classmates who pursue their studies honestly, and goes against the core values of the university.

To learn more about the academic disciplinary process and relevant academic supports, visit: 


RELIGIOUS ACCOMMODATION

Students with a faith background who may need accommodations during the term are encouraged to assess their needs as soon as possible and review the Multifaith religious accommodations website. The page outlines ways they begin working toward an accommodation and ensure solutions can be reached in a timely fashion.