Spring 2026 - ENGL 355 OL01
Canadian Literatures (4)
Class Number: 2225
Delivery Method: Online
Overview
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Course Times + Location:
Online
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Exam Times + Location:
Apr 13, 2026
Mon, 8:30–11:30 a.m.
Burnaby
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Instructor:
Clint Burnham
cba15@sfu.ca
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Prerequisites:
30 units or two 200-division English courses.
Description
CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:
Study of selected works of Canadian literature, including Indigenous, diasporic, and settler texts. May draw from a variety of methods, critical debates, regions, and historical periods. This course may be repeated for credit if a different topic is taught.
COURSE DETAILS:
COURSE TITLE: Canadian Literature during the polycrisis
In The Parrot and the Igloo: Climate and the Science of Denial, David Lipsky describes the nefarious activities of a US government official in the Bush administration of the late 1980s: “Phil Cooney is the man who rewrote the climate reports. He'd get a paper from the EPA, from the United States Climate Change Science Program, then set to work dismantling it. He was the dreamy humanities professor who is able to pick apart a poem, see through its surface sense, mine the rich seam of ambiguity below. Under Cooney's pen, yes was replaced by maybe, potentially nudged aside will.” What Lipsky’s analysis demonstrates is the power of the very thing we study in literature classes. Cooney used the power of textual analysis for evil: in this class, you will learn that English literature is the best training possible to fight not only climate change, but anti-Black racism, settler colonialism, and, why not, COVID-19. This class examines Canadian literature in the time of the “polycrisis,” or the pile-on of war, climate disaster, racism, pandemic and colonialism that characterizes the present epoch. We will watch Jeff Barnaby's 2019 Indigenous horror film Blood Quantum (available online thru the SFU library or through streaming services) and seek to understand its cinematic structure, its anti-reconciliation tropes, its political efficacy. We will then turn to Dionne Brand’s What We All Long For (2005), a novel that writes Toronto as not the destination of global flows, but as the object of diasporic desire. We then encounter a third genre, poetry, and read Lisa Robertson's 2022 collection Boat, which revisits the Vancouver writer's archive of notebooks and crafts a luminous journey through memory, the page, and language. We then turn to Global Warming and the Sweetness of Life: A Tar Sands Tale, by Matt Hern, Am Johal, and Joe Sacco, which offers a non-fiction/graphic novel exploration of the role of Canada’s “petro-state” in contributing to anthropogenic climate change: the Anthropocene. We will also read short fiction that continues our critique of a white supremacist, settler-colonial literature: Saeed Teebi’s short story “Her First Palestinian,” and stories from Sam Wiebe's anthology of crime fiction, Vancouver Noir. Black literature, feminist poetry, pulp fiction, cli-fi and Indigenous horror: make no mistake, these are concerns that we find in Canadian literatures today, but it is also by reading (and watching) literature, by engaging with the language, tropes, and poetics of form, that we learn about those texts and, in so doing, learn about ourselves, as reading subjects.
COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:
To use literary-critical skills to advocate for climate justice
Grading
- 10 online discussion posts 50%
- book review 15%
- response to author(s) interview 5%
- term paper proposal 10%
- term paper 20%
NOTES:
Since this is an online course, participation in online discussion is a must. I know from past iterations of hybrid (mixed online and in-person courses) and wholly-online classes, going back to 2020, that SFU English students are generous with each other but also offer rigorous and thoughtful - and lively - responses to literary texts and discussions. I look forward to chatting with you online. Please note that assignments and discussion prompts are renewed with each iteration of this course.
REQUIREMENTS:
In addition to the SFU academic integrity notice below, please know that AI – that is, generative programs like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, etc. which write or edit your essays for you – is not permitted in this course. In addition, the AI mode will NOT be enabled for this latest (Cloud-based) Canvas. I do not mean by this the AI that is involved in many aspects of computing today, from search engines to autocomplete in emails. However, the use of AI is unethical - is wrong - because you are not doing the work of responding to your classmates in chats, or conceiving an essay topic, writing and revising those ideas in sentences and paragraphs, and, further passing off a machine-created assignment as your own. Moreover, AI for writing essays tends to make up quotations from texts, invent characters in novels, get titles wrong, and so on. In addition, the work you would put into trying to generate an essay that refers to my lecture ideas and the parameters of the essay topic is, frankly, time better spent doing the assignment. If your T.A. suspects your assignment was written with AI they will pass it on to me and if I agree, I will ask you to meet me.
SFU policy says the following:
4.1.4 If an instructor finds, on a balance of probabilities, that a student has engaged in academic dishonesty, the instructor may, after consulting with the departmental Academic Advisor or Chair, impose one or more of the following penalties: a. give the student a warning; b. require the student to redo the work, or to do supplementary work, which may be related to academic integrity; c. assign a low grade for the work; d. assign a grade of “F” for the work.
I will assign an F for the assignment if I determine that you have cheated and/or used AI. I do not have to “prove” you cheated or used AI: I have been teaching university writing since 1996; I am an expert. If you have more than one Academic Integrity finding against you, you will receive an “FD” grade on your transcript (Failure for Disciplinary reasons).
There are many other reasons not to use AI to write an essay for you besides those of ethical responsibility. Reliance on AI actually inhibits your cognitive and reasoning abilities. Large Language Models (LLMs) on which AI is based scrape -- steal -- material from the internet, and reproduce it without attribution. The AI industry is responsible for a disproportionate amount of water and energy use and carbon. And AI is a major exploiter of Global South labor practices. For more see Emily Bender and Alex Hanna’s recent book The AI Con.
Materials
MATERIALS + SUPPLIES:
Vancouver Noir, ed. Sam Wiebe
Global Warming and the Sweetness of Life: A Tar Sands Tale, by Matt Hern, Am Johal, and Joe Sacco
Boat, by Lisa Robertson
What We All Long For, by Dionne Brand
(copies available through the SFU bookstore on the Burnaby campus)
Blood Quantum, dir. Jeff Barnaby (available thru SFU library, Crave, Netflix)
REQUIRED READING NOTES:
Your personalized Course Material list, including digital and physical textbooks, are available through the SFU Bookstore website by simply entering your Computing ID at: shop.sfu.ca/course-materials/my-personalized-course-materials.
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:
- SFU’s Academic Integrity Policy: S10-01 Policy
- SFU’s Academic Integrity website, which includes helpful videos and tips in plain language: Academic Integrity at SFU
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.