Sample classes

Instructors:  English department faculty

English 1000 is about variety. The reading list and syllabus for each section can take you everywhere and anywhere. On the theory that English instructors teach best what they love to read, lecturers choose their favourite short stories, essays, novels, plays, and poems from English literature. Check the class descriptions on the Department of English website before choosing which section to register. These tell you more about what is taught in any given section.

Prerequisites: Anyone admitted to a degree program at Dalhousie is eligible to take English 1000. Students from nearly every degree program take this introductory course because it fulfills the Writing Requirement.


Instructor: K. Cawsey



J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings trilogy is one of the most popular works of speculative fiction from the twentieth century, and established the norms for modern fantasy fiction as a genre. In creating Middle Earth and in the writing of The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, The Silmarillion, and other works, Tolkien was at once remarkably derivative and startlingly original. Drawing on his extensive knowledge of medieval literature and Norse mythology, but also incorporating modern concepts such as the anti-hero, pacifism, total war, weapons of mass destruction, industrialization and ecological devastation, Tolkien created a work that stands as one of the landmarks of twentieth-century culture and literature.

Prerequisites: Open to anyone who has successfully completed a Writing Requirement class in any field.

Instructor:  D. Evans

“A low dishonest decade” was W. H. Auden’s description of the 1930s and American art of the period often stands in the shadow of the revolutionary aesthetic developments of the preceding decade. Yet in spite, or perhaps in part because, of the disastrous economic conditions, the era of the Great Depression was in fact one of remarkable political, social, and artistic creativity, even exuberance.  At another moment of acute economic distress, it seems especially valuable to think about how American culture mobilized its resources against an overwhelming crisis. This course will look at cultural responses – literary, artistic, musical, and cinematic -- to the challenge of the times.

Prerequisites: 4000-level seminars are open only to students in our honours and major programs.