Undergraduate Courses, Fall 2003
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) Special Content Courses
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:
AML 2410
Issues in American Literature & Culture
Washella N. Turner
This course examines the African-American experience. Beginning with Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, students will contrast the effect gender had on slavery. Students will study the conflicting views held by African Americans after emancipation as presented by Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois. Through the novels of Nella Larsen and Ralph Ellison and the theoretical works of bell hooks and Frantz Fanon, students will be exposed to the post-World War I struggles of African Americans.
AML 2410
Postwar American Surburbia
Andrew Reynolds
What is “Suburbia”? Who lives there? How does it function in/as American culture? This course will explore these issues – and possibly trouble our preconceived answers – by looking at a range of post-war novels and films set in this most beloved and most reviled of modern landscapes.
As a means to our primary objective of writing about literature and film, we will consider the texts (listed below) through a variety of theoretical frameworks, including critical discourses on race, gender, class, and environmentalism as they pertain to suburbia. For instance, we will examine life in the suburbs in the context of various ideologies operative during the Cold War era and beyond, including the American Dream, the Suburban Ideal, White Flight, Traditional Family Values, and Sprawl. We will also address some of the aesthetic issues associated with the literary genres of realism, postmodernism, and science fiction: for instance, how do our authors work within these categories to represent suburbs? Finally, we might ask: Is there a distinctly suburban genre?
In Unit 1: “Shaping the Dream”: Classic Postwar Suburbia, we will focus on the construction of the ideals of Home, the Child, and the Family during the “long 1950s,” ranging from the uplifting vision of It’s a Wonderful Life to the disturbing confessions of a child-molester in Lolita. Unit 2: “American Nightmare”: Vietnam-era Suburbia, will further complicate matters as we consider how phenomena such as domestic violence, incest, war and television relate to the suburbs. Finally, in Unit 3: “Fortress and Ghetto”: Contemporary Suburbia and Beyond, we turn to study the post-1970s developments of black suburbs and gated communities, ending with a look at Hollywood’s recent portrayals of suburbia at the turn of the century.
Novels are available at Wild Iris Books (802 W. Univ.).
- Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita (1955)
- Joyce Carol Oates’s Expensive People (1968)
- Don DeLillo’s Americana (1971)
- Gloria Naylor’s Linden Hills (1985)
- Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower (1994)
Films are available at Library West and video stores.
- It’s a Wonderful Life. (1946, 125 min.)
- Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House. (1948, 93 min.)
- The Truman Show. (1998, 102 min.)
- Pleasantville. (1998, 123 min.)
- American Beauty. (1999, 120 min.)
Additional readings will also be placed on reserve at Library West:
- Mumford, Lewis. “Suburbia – And Beyond” from The City in History.
- Jackson, Kenneth T. “Federal Subsidy and the Suburban Dream” from Crabgrass Frontier.
- Baudrillard, Jean. “The Implosion of Meaning in the Media” from Simulacra and Simulation.
- Davis, Mike. “Fortress L.A.” from City of Quartz.
You will be required to write three essays (each 1250–2000 words; each worth 20% of your final grade) and five response papers (500–750 words each; worth 5% each). This course satisfies the requirements of the Gordon Rule if all assigned work is completed.
AML 2410
A Picture of Youth: Identity Formation & Mobility in the American School System
Julie Sinn
The influence of the American school system in adolescent literature serves as the central theme of this course. We will examine depiction of youth within various stages of schooling (both inside and outside of education’s walls) in order to explore identity and gender construction, as well as boundaries and mobility within the school setting. Texts include, but are not limited to, novels such as Chocolate War and Daddy-Long-Legs, as well as films like Heathers and Cry Baby.
AML 2410
Writing New York City into Cultural Memory
Nicole Larose
This course is based on the assumption that no city in America has defined the national character, throughout history, better than New York City. This course will examine textual representations, or mappings of New York City in order to define what it means to be an individual living in a metropolis, a New Yorker living in America, and a global citizen living in our contemporary world. We will survey the development of the representations of New York City, focusing specifically on class, race, and other identity constructing classification. Our focus will hopefully permit us to think critically about the changes and developments of the City in cultural memory, particularly concerning crucial historical moments such as the Stock Market Crash and September 11th.
We will look at a variety of genres and writers, including Melville, Wharton, Sinclair, Capote, Morrison, Alvarez, and Auster.
AML 2410
Crime & Punishment in American Literature & Culture
Todd Reynolds
This course is designed to explore the complicated relationship between narratives and historical mappings of crime/criminal that has been marshaled to aid in the construction of “nation.” How has narrative not only represented the role of the juridical within American culture, but also grappled with this particular mode of arranging national identity – an identity that has systematically engineered the population to be subjected within nationalist sovereignty? Indeed, as this class hopes to show, the key terminology – crime, criminal, policing, detection, punishment, deterrence, discipline – extend well beyond a juridical formulation; and the narratives and texts we will examine this semester will show how these particular conceptions all have a significant weight in how “American” and “culture” is even defined.
Readings for the course may include works by:
- Rebecca Harding Davis
- Herman Melville
- Allan Pinkerton
- Pauline Hopkins
- Angelina Weld Grimke
- Jean Toomer
- William Faulkner
- Gayl Jones
- Angela Davis
- Michel Foucault
- Georgio Agamben
- Donna Haraway
- Jean Baudrillard
- Karl Marx
- Fredric Jameson
CRW 2300
Honors Poetry Workshop
This is an introductory level class in the writing of poetry. We will be reading hundreds of poems and analyzing, in detail, a dozen or so, for the purposes of instruction. Students will be charged with leading the discussion on one of these poems and turning in an extensive written analysis of the piece. Students will be asked to turn in responses to writing assignments on a weekly basis. Class participation is crucial and graded, as the workshop format requires generous criticism from all participants.
ENC 1145
Writing About Football
“Writing About Football” fulfills 3 hours of the General Education requirement in English Composition; has two required texts (The Dark Side of the Game – My Life in the NFL by Tim Green and Fightin’ Gators – A History of University of Florida Football); has five assigned essays (each having 1,200 words because this is a Gordon Rule course) in such types as the Argumentative Essay (Should high schoolers be allowed/encouraged to jump to the NFL? Should there be a cap on rookie salaries in the NFL?), the Comparative-Contrastive Essay (on two different football teams or positions or leagues or on the difference between football and another sport), the Descriptive Essay (on one player or team or league), and a Critique Essay about some aspect of football; and presupposes no previous knowledge of football. In addition to the five essays (each worth 12% of the final grade), there will be five tests (for a total of 30% of the final grade), and required attendance and participation (for a total of 10% of the final grade).
ENC 2210
Technical Writing
Instructor Varies
Texts
- Technical Communication (sixth edition) by Mike Markell
- University of Florida Technical Writing – Custom Textbook (only available at Goering’s)
- Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace by Joseph M. Williams
*Texts are available at Goering’s Bookstore
Overview
The aim of this course is to prepare you for writing and designing documents in technical and professional discourse communities. You will produce a number of technical genres – correspondence, reports, a proposal, and instructions – for various technical and lay audiences. Some of these assignments are taken from cases based on real-world situations and present you with a set of rhetorical considerations and constraints. Other assignments ask you to help identify actual situations to which you will respond. In both cases we will approach technical writing rhetorically, discussing such topics as organizational conventions, visual design, and style in the context of specific rhetorical situations.
Class will usually take place in a discussion or workshop format in which you will at different times discuss assigned readings, complete in-class writing and other exercises, critique sample documents, critique peers’ documents, and even lead discussions. Come to class prepared to interact. Because technical writing in the workplace is often collaborative, you will write the last three assignments in small teams.
This course satisfies the requirements of the Gordon Rule if all assigned work is completed.
Course Objectives
- Understand some of the features and processes of technical and professional discourse communities.
- Specify and adapt to the constraints of specific rhetorical situations, including audiences, purposes, and uses.
- Develop strategies for accommodating multiple audiences in one document and for accommodating both technical and lay audiences.
- Learn strategies for making documents accessible and user-centered. These include setting the context and creating pathways through a document.
- Learn to strategically orchestrate elements of document design, including type, spacing, and color.
- Design and integrate tables and figures in a user-centered way.
- Develop individual and collaborative writing processes appropriate for technical documents.
- Learn superstructures and conventions for common technical documents such as correspondence, reports, proposals, and instructions.
- Refine writing style for more strategic clarity, concision, coherence, cohesion, and emphasis.
- Critique and revise your own documents to insure that they fulfill their purposes.
- Form a community of writers with your peers in which you provide one another with extensive written and oral feedback.
LIN 2670
English Grammar
“English Grammar” is a practical course in the basics of English grammar, including vocabulary, syntax, semantics, spelling, and pronunciation. No previous knowledge of English grammar is presumed. Because this will be an intensive course, students must come to class prepared to participate in every session. The course has seven tests, each worth 14 points and cumulative, with two additional points on the final test, for a total of 100 points. The tests are administered on Thursdays in class, beginning on September 4. There are no make-up tests. If students miss a particular test, the following one is doubled in value. The final test, which is cumulative (as are all the tests), is mandatory. The text is a grammar packet available at a local bookstore.