Course Catalog

Discipline

POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURES AND THEORY (CW5081)

Any text that speaks truth to power and gives voice to the voiceless has affinities with postcolonial studies, if not a claim to being postcolonial. This course will address key concepts in postcolonial studies to interrogate representations of race, gender, colonial capitalism and the environment. Straddling languages, genres, cultures and continents, our texts create a space for hybrid identities. No prerequisites.

DIGITAL POETICS (CW5083)

How do words change when we use them on and offline? What happens to writing and reading when we move between physical books and digital environments? What are the relationships between Literature and the Internet? How do ‘traditional’ or ‘canonical’ literary works dialogue with social media, computer games and Google-generated poetry? What does it ‘mean’ to ‘read’ ‘books’ in our very connected – and AI-enabled - world?

THEORY AND WRITING: BLACK THOUGHT (CW5085)

This course gives centre stage to written and performative forms of Black resistance. We will examine foundational Black works in Arabic, English and French by Black Arab medieval Poets, Frederick Douglass, Aimé Césaire, Edouard Glissant and others. We will counterpoint these texts with theoretical works that deploy Marxist, postcolonial, feminist and queer approaches to critique slavery, colonialism and neocolonialism. No prerequisites.

TOPICS IN CREATIVE WRITING (CW5091)

Topics vary by semester

Offered in Spring 2026 as TOPICS: SERIALISATION (CW5091A)
Offered in Spring 2026 as TOPICS: WRITING THE ARCHIVES (CW5091D)

THESIS (CW5095)

This course marks the culmination of a student's graduate studies in creative writing. Offered in the last semester of the final year of their studies, this course will guide students as they put together their book-length MFA thesis under the supervision of their mentor. The course will conclude with a final presentation that is open to the public.

INTERNSHIP (CW5098)

This four-credit internship option offers MFA students the chance to work in creative fields, whether literary programming for cultural institutions, curation, work with agents, editorships, or magazine work.

DIRECTED STUDY (CW5900)

Offered in Spring 2026 as DIRECTED STUDY (CW5900)