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A workshop course in writing poetry which also involves wide reading in the genre.

A workshop course in writing short fiction which also involves wide reading in the genre. Entry to this course is by selection.

A workshop course in writing creative nonfiction (e.g. memoirs, travel writing) which also involves representative reading in the genre.

A topic in creative writing. Course materials will be an additional cost.

A topic in creative writing. Course materials will be an additional cost.

This creative writing workshop is a practical paper for students who wish to produce fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry or scriptwriting which is informed by Māori or Pasifika perspectives, cultures and origins, the process of colonisation, or que...

'Wild Civility' introduces some of the great English texts from the medieval to the Romantic period (1380-1830). It explores literature from the bawdy tales of Chaucer, to the drama and poetry of the age of Shakespeare, to the verse of the Romantic p...

How does fiction work? What happens when we approach the reading of fiction as an experience? What does it mean to respond to a voice crafted in prose? This course will provide students with essential tools for the study of narrative. You will read o...

A survey of British, Irish and American literature from 1899 to the Second World War. This course studies many of the major writers of the Modernist period and includes poetry, short stories, novels, plays, film and the visual arts. Particular attent...

How do literary texts represent and respond to the climate crisis? How can literature develop our imaginative, affective, and interpersonal capacities for inhabiting the present and future of the planet? In this course, you'll explore these questions...

This course traces the gothic from Romanticism up until the the present. Particular attention will be paid to how representations of monstrosity, haunting and sexual transgression have changed from the nineteenth century female gothic through fin-de-...

What makes a poem 'modern'? How have poets in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries responded to the challenge of imaging the modern? Reading poets from Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand and the United States, this course explores how modern...

This course traces the gothic from Romanticism up until the present. Particular attention will be paid to how representations of monstrosity, haunting and sexual transgression have changed from the nineteenth-century female gothic through fin-de-sièc...

Pō evokes multiple translations—darkness perpetual, the unknown, the night, realm of death, obscurity. It is a pivotal epistemology in Māori literary studies and throughout the Pacific region. You will explore a bespoke selection of creative works by...

Pō evokes multiple translations–darkness perpetual, the unknown, the night, realm of death. It is a pivotal epistemology in Māori literary studies and throughout the Pacific region. You will explore a bespoke selection of creative works in English by...

This course will explore literature written in the Romantic period (1789-1832) and its afterlives. We will study the major canonical British writers of the period as well as Black and Indigenous writers who engaged with Romanticism and its legacies. ...

This course will explore the literary and cultural landscape of the Victorian period (1837-1901) through extended engagement with one major novel. Reading together in community, we’ll explore how seriality (publishing in monthly parts) allowed the no...

This course examines how consciousness and selfhood are represented from the Renaissance onward. We will explore interiority as a literary effect that re-emerges in the period and shapes modern subjectivity. How is the “I” in our heads related to sel...

What does it mean to put a literature in place? How do the terms “New Zealand” and “literature” relate to one another? What tensions are there in this relationship? This course explores how New Zealand has been imagined, challenged, narrated and clai...

This course will be concerned with studying the developments in American Literature, in prose and poetry, from the turn of the 20th century to the present. The course considers the impact of major literary movements of the 20th century, including Mod...

This course is a study of the representation of gender in literature from the English Renaissance to the twenty-first century, with a focus on literary representation of queer and non-binary gender identities. You will explore provocative and influen...

A study of the scope and possibility of the modern lyric; issues in contemporary poetic theory including concepts of voice, race, the politics of form and the role of the lyric in a time of crisis; and the relation between the poetry and poetics of s...

A study of the innovative forms that contemporary writers are developing to extend the possibilities of life writing beyond the conventional autobiography. There is an option to work on your own experiment in life writing, or to focus entirely on cr...

This course explores the ubiquitous mode of complaint in early modern English literature, including Shakespeare’s The Rape of Lucrece and Hero and Leander , and the poetry of women writers. Focused on the woeful expression of amorous, political, reli...

This course explores the work of Anne, Emily and Charlotte Brontë, including Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre and Agnes Grey. These writers will be situated within both their Victorian contexts and more recent feminist criticism. The ‘Bronte myth’ will a...

This course will explore different ways that the novel form has explored the relationship between embodied human thought and moments of historical transition or transformation. We will read five novels by great British and American writers of the pas...

In this course you will pursue an independent research project under supervision. You will develop specialised knowledge of your topic as well as a critical awareness of its importance within the discipline. There are different options for the parame...

MA thesis in English.

PhD course.

Great Ideas is a course reflecting on some of the most exciting, important and revolutionary ideas that have shaped society and culture as it is today. It also considers how those ideas have an ongoing influence. It’s an interdisciplinary course look...

This course teaches the art of imaginative writing underpinned by decolonial and transcultural thinking of the 20th and 21st centuries. You will closely read and critically analyse a selection of contemporary literary and artistic works that exemplif...

The course teaches skills in both critical and creative reading and writing, through engagement with a wide range of poetry. You will explore the effects of concision, ornament, sentence structure, repetition, metre and form.

Narrative helps us understand and share our lives; it is essential to many forms of communication, from artworks made to last, to fleeting exchanges between acquaintances, or even testimony in a courtroom record. But what makes stories work, and work...

This course explores the relationship between English literature and journalism from the 18th to the 21st century. It considers questions of fact and fiction, objectivity, and style, across a range of genres. Students have the opportunity to produce ...

Not merely a tool of academic assessment, the essay is an art form with a long and rich history in English and other literatures. This course analyses classic essays from the Renaissance to the 21st century, and uses these as models for students' own...

The proliferation of digital media is pushing the boundaries of literary and creative communication in Oceania. This course is grounded in the digital and environmental humanities as it asks students to navigate Indigenous transformations of writing ...

In this course we will explore the dynamic relationship between contemporary creative nonfiction, storytelling, and shifting ecological imaginings. You will encounter a diverse range of engagements with homes and hauntings, ecosystems and environment...

This course offers advanced critical analysis and creative practice in specialised non-fiction writing. We will focus on cultural criticism, journalism, and creative or personal essays, examining these forms within traditional and digital media conte...

Tangata whenua writers, artists, and scholars have engaged with and in English for over two centuries. This course examines the interweaving of Māori concepts from early textual practices and visual literacies, to Indigenous ecocriticism and theories...