Graduate Courses, Summer 2003

Times and locations of class meetings are subject to change. Consult the UF Schedule of Courses for an explanation of the class period abbreviations.

Summer Session B

Course no. Time(s) Course title Instructor
downENG 6077 M/W 3–4 Visual Narrative: Textual Displacement, Transformation, & Revision Ault
downLIT 6856 TR 4–5 Everyday Theory Kidd

ENG 6077

Visual Narrative: Textual Displacement, Transformation, and Revision

Donald Ault
Mondays & Wednesdays, per. 3–4

This seminar will emphasize close reading of texts that open up interpretive opportunities by virtue of their visual narrative properties and material production (including variant editions, different “versions,” problematic punctuation, spatial layout of syntax, marginal glosses, illuminations, incorporation of visual images, visual “panel” divisions, etc.). Such texts often call attention to their own self-revision and self-reflexivity, address (on the “static” printed page) the problem of “transformation,” and proceed by displacement and interruption of the space of the page. Texts to be considered include William Blake’s Songs of Experience (as they appear in published forms and in their early versions in his Notebook), The [First] Book of Urizen (which exists in radically different states), The Four Zoas (which exists only in a massively revised single manuscript), Coleridge’s “textually unstable,” seemingly “unfinishable” productions (especially The Rime of the Ancient Mariner), Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo in Slumberland, and George Herriman’s Krazy Kat. Texts such as Blake’s Four Zoas will not be read in their entirety, and texts by other authors may be added.

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LIT 6855

Everyday Theory

Kenneth Kidd
Tuesdays & Thursdays, per. 4–5

Hegel called everyday life “the prose of the world.” How do we read that prose – why should we try? This summer seminar addresses the everyday as a reality and concept, as something at once experiential and theoretical, lived yet formalized. To that end, we’ll look very selectively at three twentieth-century projects/genres that address theory and/as the everyday: psychoanalysis, the post 1950s (and largely French) critical discourse of “everyday life,” and contemporary reports on American society. In and around such, we’ll touch on phenomenology, ethnography, structuralism, post-structuralism, and cultural studies. Students will develop individual explorations of everyday theory, in keeping with their own interests as well as our collective concerns. No experience with critical theory is necessary, only some familiarity with everyday life.

Class will be conducted as a seminar. You’ll write several short papers, perhaps present on related topics, and develop a seminar paper of standard engagement (25 pp.). No exams or quizzes unless the everyday demands such.

Tentative Readings

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