Undergraduate Courses, Summer 2002
Times and locations of class meetings are subject to change. Consult the UF Schedule of Courses for official class times and locations and an explanation of the class period abbreviations.
Lower Division (1000–2000) Courses, Summer Sessions A & B
Note: Only course descriptions are listed below. For a comprehensive summary of course numbers, sections, times and locations, titles, and instructors, see the following web page:
ENC 1145
Writing about Television & Women: History, Representation, & Feminism
Rosa Soto
The aim of this course is to provide a broad view of Hispanic literature and culture, and to broach topics such as narrative technique and the literary canon. The class offers an introduction to some of the major writers of this century and an insight into Hispanic/Latino issues. In this way, we are then able to examine further issues of race, class, ethnicity, and gender. This in turn affords us the opportunity to examine other racial identities including Anglo identity and African American identity. It is important to question and investigate the contradictions and conflation of those often dual identities within Hispanic culture.
ENC 1145
Writing about Sexual Dissidence
Nishant Shahani
It is the agenda of contemporary queer politics to interrogate compulsory heterosexuality and draw attention to the manner in which heteronormativity is deeply embedded in legal institutions, political decisions and cultural domains. To be queer is not a desire to be normal, “like everyone else” – it is the attempt to critique the very construction and constitution of what has come to be defined as “normal.” “Writing about Sexual Dissidence” explores the manner in which contemporary thinkers, writers and creative artists have attempted to forge models of queer liberation. Readings include Sarah Schulman’s “Girls, Visions and Everything,” Eve Sedgwick’s “How to Bring up Your Kids Gay” and Judith Butler’s “Critically Queer.”
Students will analyze arguments that foreground the workings of heteronormativity, identifying the interpretive and rhetorical strategies that make them effective. In sequenced writing assignments, students will then practice these strategies, developing original arguments about the operations of heteronormativity in sites and spaces that exist around them – the classroom, the University, the State and the Nation. The class will look closely at the rhetoric of homophobia, and ways in which one can “queer” this rhetoric through logical argumentation and critical analysis.