Simon Fraser University
Engaging the World

Course Outlines

Fall 2025 - ENGL 213 D100

Reading Across Media (3)

Class Number: 3950

Delivery Method: In Person

Overview

  • Course Times + Location:

    Sep 3 – Dec 2, 2025: Thu, 12:30–2:20 p.m.
    Burnaby

  • Prerequisites:

    12 units or one 100-division English course.

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

Explores texts in relation to their different material forms, including oral, manuscript, print, film, and digital media. May be further organized by methodology (e.g. book history, textual scholarship, media studies, adaptation studies, digital humanities), historical period, or genre. Breadth-Humanities.

COURSE DETAILS:

Speculative Literatures: Utopian and Dystopian Imaginations of the Future

This course introduces students to speculative fiction and arts as a genre that imagines possible futures while being in dialogue with our actually existing present. Students will gain a grasp of the history of speculative arts, utopian thinking, and critical practices. To do this, we will begin with Thomas More’s Utopia, first published in 1516, to locate the diverse and important role of utopian thinking as a form of hope and a mode of critique. With this groundwork, we will jump forward to examine two speculative fiction classics – Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 (the temperature at which books burn). How do these two books, set in imagined futures with utopic yearnings and dystopic forces, uncannily speak to our present society?  We will watch and analyze François Truffaut’s stylish 1966 film version of Fahrenheit 451. Moving closer to our own place, if not time, we will engage with Larissa Lai’s Canadian speculative fiction classic, Salt Fish Girl – set in a dystopian future Vancouver, altered through climate change, where borders and boundaries between human and nature, self and other have become blurred. Cherie Dimaline’s The Marrow Thieves will ground us in Indigenous futurism and decolonial thinking set in a North America radically altered through climate change. Listening and looking across media, we will dive into (fly along with) Afrofuturism through the music of George Clinton (Parliament Funkadelic), Sun Ra and his arkestra, and Moor Mother and learn from the future-oriented art practice of Black Quantum Futurism.

COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:

Students will develop and an understanding of the role of speculative cultural practices today

Students will learn the context and the historical role of utopian/dystopian thinking

Students will learn to critically analyze literary and theoretical texts

Students will sharpen their writing in relation to expression and critical thinking

Students will gain an appreciation of speculative thinking

Grading

  • Participation 20%
  • Three short response papers 40%
  • Creative response 15%
  • Final essay 25%

Materials

REQUIRED READING:

Required Texts:

Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451.

Cherie Dimaline, The Marrow Thieves

Larissa Lai, Salt Fish Girl

Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed

Thomas More, Utopia

Available from SFU Bookstore

Other readings will be available through Canvas.


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: 


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.