If there’s anything I learned over my five years at UBC, it’s that university is the place to be if you want to nerd out. I started at UBC knowing that I wanted to major in English Literature. Now, five years later as I’m finishing my English Honours degree, I’m thinking back on the courses I loved most in my major, the ones that really brought out the English geek in me.
ENGL 344: Arthur of the Britons (Dr. Siân Echard)
King Arthur is pretty much larger than life in the Western canon of English literature. It was amazing to be able to learn all the nitty gritty details of the history of Arthurian legends (and to watch some Monty Python while we were at it!). This class also had one day where some fencing experts came in and demonstrated sword fighting technique and acted out some of the battle scenes in the Arthurian texts.
ENGL 362: The Victorian Novel (Dr. Gregory Mackie)
Although Victorian novels have a reputation for being long-winded (and we read Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens in this class, so believe me I get it) I also discovered some lovely gems in this class. The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins, the first-ever detective novel, has become one of my favourite books. We also read Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Wuthering Heights, and Tess of the D’Urbervilles, which were all wonderful.
ENGL 419: History of the Book (Dr. Siân Echard)
This class was incredibly cool. We talked about the history of books from medieval manuscripts (complete with a class where we made our own quills and wrote on real parchment so that we could see what it was like to be a medieval scribe) to e-books. We had some really fun projects like analyzing book covers (I took the opportunity to consider what the covers of different language editions of Harry Potter were trying to communicate) and looking up the history of particular fonts.
ENGL 468: “Who Are You?” Child and Nation in British Fantasy Literature for Children (Dr. Sarika Bose)
This course was wonderfully nostalgic and it gave me an opportunity to reflect on some of the stories that had enraptured me as a child, now with an analytical eye. I was particularly excited that I got to write an essay on world-building in the universes of Harry Potter and The Chronicles of Narnia. This course definitely helped me to look at some familiar stories with fresh eyes –I’ll certainly never read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland the same way again!
ENGL 491C Rhetorics of Dispute in Health and Medicine (Dr. Judy Segal)
I found this to be one of the most intensely practical courses I ever took at university, which is not something one necessarily expects from an English course. This honours seminar was about health, illness, treatment –and how people talk about those things. It taught me to think critically about how we receive health information on topics like breast cancer, breastfeeding, mental illness, and pharmaceuticals.