Undergraduate Courses, Spring 2007
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.
Upper Division (3000–4000) 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 3285
What is Native American Literature?
This survey of literature by Native American authors from the 19th and 20th centuries will focus on providing some answers to the question “What is Native American literature?” – that is, who is a “Native American,” what is “literature,” and what are the specific problems and concerns associated with identifying a literary tradition associated with a diverse group of indigenous peoples? We will be discussing films, transcriptions of oral materials, and novels and memoirs by such writers as Sherman Alexie, Charles A. Eastman, Louise Erdrich, N. Scott Momaday, John Rollin Ridge, Leslie Marmon Silko.
AML 3673
Introduction to Asian-American Studies
This course is an introduction to the central critical debates in Asian-American studies as well as to major cultural and literary texts. Accordingly, the readings span a temporal range of Asian-American cultural production as well as the debates generated by the institutionalization of Asian-American studies to the present moment. The course includes writings by Chinese, Japanese, Korean, South Asian, and Filipino Americans, but the point is not simply to emphasize the cultural and national multiplicity of Asian-American writing. Rather, the readings are organized according to major questions that recur in Asian-American writing across different national boundaries: the narration of cultural conflict; colonial stereotypes and cultural identity; racial difference; redefining feminism; transnational and postcolonial identities. Our goal will not be to arrive at some definition of what it means to be Asian-American but rather to interrogate and scrutinize this category, to understand the complexities of being interpollated as such or in choosing such a marker of self definition in the US. Possible texts might include the following:
- David Henry Hwang’s M.Butterfly
- Jade Snow Wong’s Fifth Chinese Daughter
- Carlos Bulosan’s America is in the Heart
- Lois-Ann Yamanaka’s Blu’s Hanging
- Frank Chin’s Chickencoop Chinaman
- Bharati Mukherji’s Jasmine
- Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior
…as well as a number of critical essays.
AML 4170
Re-Reading the American Novel
What is the novel, and what makes a novel ‘American’? How should we read and interpret novels? The answers to such questions may seem obvious, but in this course, we will interrogate standard assumptions about genre and national literature by examining the range of novels Americans read and wrote in the eighteenth century. As we will see, some but not all of these novels addressed uniquely American topics, such as the American Revolution and the formation of the new United States. Furthermore, British novels, popular throughout the eighteenth century among American audiences, continued to be read and emulated by American authors after the Revolution. How can we claim that certain novels were American when they borrowed heavily from British literary conventions and themes? Additionally, once we consider that the eighteenth-century novel was a profoundly experimental genre that authors used to write history, romance, travelogue, science, science fiction, horror, and philosophy, can we even say that we know what a novel is? To deal with the challenges posed by the eighteenth-century novel in America, we will read, in addition to the novels, theoretical and critical works about the novel. In this sense, this course will introduce you not only to the eighteenth-century novel but also to key strategies for reading the novel and related narrative forms.
Readings may include Samuel Richardson’s Pamela, Laurence Sterne’s Sentimental Journey, William Hill Brown’s The Power of Sympathy, Hannah Webster Foster’s The Coquette, Susanna Rowson’s Charlotte Temple, Royall Tyler’s The Algerine Captive, William Godwin’s Caleb Williams, and Charles Brockden Brown’s Edgar Huntly, as well as critical works by Michael McKeon, Nancy Armstrong, Mikhail Bakhtin, Fredric Jameson, and Franco Moretti. Assignments will include weekly responses, two short papers to be turned in during the course of the semester, and a final, longer paper.
AML 4213
Transatlantic Circulations: Early ‘American’ Bodies, Borders, Texts
Since the American Revolution, American literary historians have had a tendency to posit a distinctly national literary history, overlooking the transatlantic contexts of American literature, particularly the ways that Britain continued to shape the literary culture of the Americas. This class will explore the ways England, Europe, and Africa (in particular) helped to develop the literary landscape of the Americas, resituating “classic” early American texts within their transatlantic contexts, while introducing less canonical texts that benefit from being read within this wider perspective. We’ll explore the production and reception of early American figures (from Pocahontas to the Puritans to Phillis Wheatley and Olaudah Equiano), and a range of literary genres (the Barbary captivity narrative, the novel of sentiment, the slave narrative, early national drama) whose influence and meanings are forged through transatlantic crossings and contexts. How did the literary landscape of the Americas develop and evolve in response? What forces (social, political, economic) helped shape American literary history? How do travel and forced migration shape cultural identity? How do they contribute to emerging ideas about gender and race? How does cultural crossing afford new modes of narrative self-fashioning? Overall, the course will provide an understanding of the more diverse origins of the early American literary tradition.
AML 4225
American Fiction to 1865
This course will begin with slave narratives by Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, and perhaps Olaudah Equiano. Then we’ll turn to a variety of short stories by Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne, partly to explore how white writers represent blackness, partly to showcase the range of their narratives, and partly because their stories are wonderful. Then we’ll consider Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. We’ll probably close with at least one or two essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson, then poems by Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. Everyone should already have read Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter.
We won’t be using an anthology: texts are likely to be Emerson’s essays (Dover ed.), Melville’s Moby Dick (Penguin ed.), Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Harper Classics ed.), Douglass’s 1845 Narrative, and Jacobs’s Incidents (both in the Mentor edition of Classic Slave Narratives, ed. Henry Louis Gates, along with Equiano’s), various stories familiar and unfamiliar by Poe and Hawthorne in their Library of America editions, and Whitman’s poetry, along with Dickinson handouts. Depending on students’ interests and backgrounds, I may change the syllabus to add some Thoreau or perhaps another Hawthorne romance or Melville’s crazy Pierre or “Bartleby, the Scrivener” or Benito Cereno or Billy Budd, or some Cooper, perhaps The Last of the Mohicans, or Margaret Fuller’s “The Great Lawsuit.”
Writing required: three comparative close readings, 4–6 pp. (90%, or 30% for each, with a little more weight for the better essays), and one initial exercise (10%). No final exam. If classroom discussions flag and the assigned e-mailings don’t work, I’ll institute weekly take-home quizzes. Grading will be based entirely on your writing, with three exceptions:
- Late essays will have their grades get a lower grade for each class period.
- I require attendance. Missing more than four classes without a valid excuse will lower your final grade, proportionate to the number of absences.
- E-mailed discussion topics. I’ll ask 8 to 10 of you, in rotation, to e-mail me the night or early morning before each class to state topics you’d like to discuss that day. Those who fail to do that more than once will find their grades docked.
Grading: I will give an A if the essay makes a complex and/or surprising and spirited argument, and supports that argument – not three or four arguments! – with well-developed analysis of language as well as themes and not many grammatical problems. I will give a B+ if the essay is relatively well-focused, organized, and developed, with sparks of analytic originality or daring, but has some grammatical errors and lacks complexity or analytic zing. I will give a B if the essay is relatively well-focused but needs more ample development, tends to summarize themes, and has recurrent grammatical errors or lapses. Lower grades indicate greater problems with development, organization, and grammar. Recurrent grammatical errors lower the grade; spelling errors and typos don’t, within reason. The best essays sustain complex and/or audacious arguments; a good “B” essay will capably compare themes. I encourage “prewrites,” if handed in a week before the assignment is due.
I grade your writing, not your contributions to class discussions. I try to make class sessions relaxed, a place where all of us can try out ideas without feeling silly, weird, or stupid. It’s often the case that what seems obvious or off the wall to you is exactly what needs to be said, and I hope you say it.
LIT 4242
The “Movement of Movements:” Frontism and Revolution at the End of the Century
Michael Rowley
In this course, we will examine how the logic of recent capitalism has influenced the representation of revolution in contemporary art, literature, and cultural documents. Readings may include selections from the following theorists: Paolo Virno, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Donna Haraway, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Slavoj Žižek, Manuel Castells, and Fredric Jameson, among others. In particular, we will explore exodus, swarm intelligence, lines of flight, refusal of work, network struggle, frontism, post-humanism, the cyborg, and other revolutionary concepts and techniques in our own moment that differ both tactically and strategically from those available during the first half of the twentieth century – the period that coincides with literary Modernism.
To explore these abstract concepts in an English department course, we will engage in the study of theories and methods of the interpretations of texts—i.e., in standard hermeneutics. We will read the fiction of David Foster Wallace, John Barth, and Ana Castillo, among others. We may also read the Porto Alegre Manifesto, several texts surrounding Tute Bianchi (White Overalls), F*cking Furious Theatre’s The Girls of May, Rage Against the Machine’s music video for “Sleep Now in the Fire,” and some texts surrounding the black bloc, among others.
Weekly readings will never exceed one hundred and fifty pages, and will rarely exceed one hundred pages. However, like most department courses, this one requires regular attendance and participation (during panels, presentations, and discussions) and approximately a three-hour weekly devotion outside of class. Assignments will include A) ten (250-word) responses for the theory readings and questions for the hermeneutic texts, B) a revised writing project (of at least 4500 words) and its presentation during one of the first sessions on Thursdays, and C) three group panels on Tuesdays during which students will lead discussion once (for ten to fifteen minutes), and will support other group members twice. For more information, contact mrowley@english.ufl.edu.
AML 4311
The Poetry of Emily Dickinson
The approach to Dickinson’s 1789 poems and 1049 letters is historical, interdisciplinary, biographical, and formalistic. Topics included are: tones, voices, punctuation, meters, metaphors, controlling ideas; dashes, compression, nonrecoverable deletions, verbs, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, variant words and phrases; rhymes; riddles; fascicles (or manuscript books); biographical criticism (an overview); the issue of morbidity; love; nature and consciousness; God and self; death, pain and aftermath; creativity; the enigma of self and other; feminist perspectives on recurring questions; gender and multiple meaning; Dickinson as comic poet; and biographical/cultural contexts. Fifteen-to-twenty pages of critical/scholarly response are required, together with a twenty-minute oral report on these pages.
AML 4311
Major Author: Philip Roth
Philip Roth is one of the most accomplished American novelists since WW II. He has been publishing fiction since 1959 and garnered popular attention, major literary awards, critical praise, and fierce condemnation. He is best known as the author of the controversial Portnoy’s Complaint (1969), but he has also written many other innovative novels, including the recent best-seller The Plot Against America. Even as he continued to focus on Jewish-American male identity in the period since World War II, he has grown from realist to postmodernist, conducting daring explorations across the boundary lines between fact and fiction, investigating both “real life” and the stories we construct about it and live by.
Goals:
We will read some of Roth’s major fiction. Time permitting, we will also view some film adaptations, such as Goodbye Columbus and The Human Stain. We will consider Roth in a number of contexts: as Jewish-American author, as an American author deeply concerned about American history, politics, culture, race, and gender, as a realist, and as a metafictionist.
This course aims to improve your understanding of post-WW II American fiction and Jewish-American culture through extensive reading and writing about the works of a single major author.
Readings:
- Goodbye, Columbus (Vintage)
- Portnoy’s Complaint (Vintage)
- My Life as a Man (Vintage)
- The Ghost Writer (Vintage)
- The Counterlife (Vintage)
- The Facts (Vintage)
- Patrimony (Vintage)
- The Human Stain (Vintage)
- American Pastoral (Vintage)
- The Plot Against America (Vintage)
About Philip Roth:
- Philip Roth and the Jews by Alan Cooper (SUNY Press)
- Philip Roth: New Perspectives on an American Author, ed. Derek Parker Royal (Praeger).
Requirements:
- Quizzes = 20%.
- Attendance and participation = 10%.
- Two papers: Paper 1= 25%; Paper 2= 35%. Paper 1 should be five pages and deal with one novel from Weeks 1–6. Alternatively, for Paper 1 (but not Paper 2), you may use the fiction to create your own short story: for example, “Further Adventures of Portnoy.” You may revise Paper 1 if it receives a grade less than B (but not if it is a late paper). Paper 2 should be a research paper (cite at least four critical sources) of seven pages dealing with a work read in Weeks 7–16.
- Oral report = 10%.
Note: There will be no midterm or final exam.
AML 4453
Modernism: New York City
New York City established itself as a significant “metropolitan” seaport, particularly during the 19th century. Although Boston remained a powerful seaport, from which both goods and a burgeoning American literary culture were exported, New York came to dominate such trade and, by the 20th century, took its place as a “world trade center.” In the early part of the 20th century, the cultural experiment called “modernism” found a home in this city, and this course is designed to take an in-depth look at New York through the eyes of the artists and writers who throve there – even when they went abroad.
Readings will include both poetry and prose, work by William Dean Howells, Edith Wharton, Theodore Dreiser, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hart Crane, and more.
AML 4685
Race and Ethnicity: Sounds of Blackness/Signs of Self
Blackness is a narrative conveyed through various mediums and genres. This class will investigate the writing of blackness and the sounds of blackness from the 20th and 21st century. We will note the influence of African-American musical aesthetics on African-American fiction, poetry, and drama, as well as the influence of African-American literary tradition on African-American music. Emphasis on the literary use of jazz/blues/be-bop, soul/neo-soul/ hip-hop, gospel/spirituals, funk, and go-go.
Emphasis on musical use of autobiographical techniques, folk traditions, nationalist thought, afrocentricity, science fiction, and pulp fiction aesthetics. Literary, musical, and cinematic texts to be supplemented with literary theory and ethnomusicology criticism.
AML 4685
Race and Ethnicity in Twentieth-Century American Literature: Jewish-American Fiction
This course traces the development of Jewish-American fiction within the context of twentieth-century American literatures and cultures and deals with the role of ethnic literatures within our multiethnic nation. Though diverse in form and style, most of the works we will read deal with problems of assimilation of Jews into American society and the quests of the protagonists for identity as both Americans and Jews.
We begin with the influence of Eastern-European Yiddish literature (stories in translation) and then read a selection of Jewish-American stories and novels from the beginning of the twentieth century up to the present. We will also view a documentary on the history of the Jews in America and a few fiction films (Hester Street and Daniel).
We will study how Jewish-American authors contributed to traditions of naturalism, realism, modernism, and postmodernism in twentieth-century American fictions. We will also study such topics as anti-Semitism, literary responses to the Holocaust and to the state of Israel , and the rise of Jewish feminism.
Although we will consider how Jewish religion and culture contributed to the literature, this is not a course in religion and you need not be Jewish to take it. An interest in American literature, history, and culture or in the issues of ethnic identity and assimilation is sufficient.
I hope this course will make you a more sensitive interpreter of American culture and a better writer.
Texts:
At Goering’s Books, 1717 NW 1 st Ave, next to Bageland:
- America and I: Short Stories by American Jewish Women Writers ed. Joyce Antler (Beacon)
- The Rise of David Levinsky by Abraham Cahan (Harper)
- Breadgivers by Anzia Yezierska (Persea)
- Call It Sleep by Henry Roth ( Avon )
- The Assistant by Bernard Malamud ( Avon )
- Collected Stories by Saul Bellow (Penguin)
- The Book of Daniel by E.L. Doctorow (Signet)
- Maus and Maus II by Art Spiegelman (Pantheon)
- A Weave of Women by E.M. Broner ( Indiana )
- American Pastoral by Philip Roth (Vintage)
- Cambridge Companion to Jewish American Literature, ed. Michael P. Kramer and Hana Wirth-Nesher
At Orange and Blue Texts, 309 NW 13 St, across from Krispy Kreme:
- Xeroxed readings from Handbook of American-Jewish Literature, ed. Lewis Fried
- Xeroxed readings from Jewish-American Stories, ed. Irving Howe
Requirements:
- Attendance and participation = 10%.
- Quizzes= 20%.
- Two papers: Paper 1= 25%; Paper 2= 35%. Paper 1 may be analytic or take the form of a brief fiction parodying the style or extending the narrative of one of the works we read. Paper 1 may be revised if the grade is less than B. Paper 2 is a research paper.
- Oral report = 10%.
Note: There will be no midterm or final exam.
CRW 3110
Imaginative Writing: Fiction
Course description not available at this time.
Submitting Manuscripts for Upper-Division Creative Writing Courses
To qualify for departmental registration for upper-division creative writing (CRW) courses, you must submit a manuscript to the instructor of the course you wish to take. Each manuscript you submit for each course to which you apply must be accompanied by a Manuscript Submission Cover Sheet, which is available from the link below or in TUR 4012-A. It tells us what you wish to do, and it will help us put you in a course when space is tight. It will allow us to put you in the course you prefer when we can. Please fill it in closely and completely.
For CRW 3310, submit four poems; for CRW 3110 or CRW 4905, submit one short story or excerpt from longer work (up to 20 pp.). For ENG 4133, submit a short (approx. 500 words) summary of the film script you want to write.
The Manuscript Submission Cover Sheet indicates whether individual instructors require you to submit hard copies of your manuscripts to their mailboxes in Turlington 4301 or via email.
All submissions must be received by the October 16, 2006 deadline.
CRW 3110
Imaginative Writing: Poetry
Text: The only text for this course is Ramazani, Ellmann and O'Clair’s Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, vol. 2 (contemporary). It is available at Goering’s Books and Bagels. The book is required; please do not depend on your fellow students to loan you the text during class.
Course objectives: The course is essentially a workshop; that is, the emphasis will be upon improving your own creative work. The goal of the course is to improve your writing, in terms of the standards by which poetry published in nationally recognized journals is judged. In addition, you should emerge with better critical skills for improving both your own work and that of your classmates. We will work on the assumption that a poet writes for both herself and others.
Turning in work: During the first class, we will all exchange e-mail addresses. Each week I will go over the assignment for the following week. No later than the following Tuesday at noon , each student should send the other students and me a copy of his or her poem by e-mail. If you send the poem by attachment, please also paste a copy into the body of the message. I will comment on each poem and return it during the following class. Save these copies, because I will want to see them again at midterm and at the end of the course as well, when you turn them in along with your notebook. You may occasionally wish to turn in a poem or two in addition to the assignment, perhaps only for my comments, and that is perfectly okay; but, as a rule, only one poem by each student will be discussed each week; some weeks we will not be able to cover all the poems, in which case I will try to make sure we discuss the work of the persons whose poems were missed as soon as possible. This does not apply to students who consistently turn in work late, and students who do this more than a couple of times will have their grade adversely affected. If you have a reason to request that the poem you turn in for a particular week not be discussed in class, or remain anonymous, please make a note to that effect on the poem you turn in to me.
After you have received your classmates’ poems, you should read them carefully, prepare some useful comments, look up any unfamiliar words or allusions, and otherwise do your best to become the ideal reader. Everyone should have plenty to say about any poem if called upon, and I will ask everyone to give the poet their annotated copies including the reader’s name. You should not, however, ask the poet to explain or comment on his or her poem before we do so in class. In general, we will first discuss each poem without the participation of the poet, only afterward turning to the writer for clarification, discussion, or help. This is not a game where prizes will be awarded to the first person to guess the meaning of a particularly obscure piece of writing.
In the first part of class, we will discuss poems by the writers assigned for that week, and we will discuss the particular writing assignment or exercise (if any) for the following week. You should be familiar with the poems from the anthology assigned that week; unless I state otherwise, read all the selections for each poet. From time to time we will have in-class exercises designed to help your writing and explore technical possibilities.
Absences : You are allowed two absences, which must be cleared in advance with me; e-mail me or call me at the office and leave a message. Any uncleared absence (including lateness over 15 minutes) lowers your grade by half a letter. You are responsible for finding out the details of any assignments you miss. If you miss a class, your work for the following week is still due at the ordinary time.
Grades: I will give you an idea of the grade you can expect (assuming you continue working at the same level) when we meet around midterm; at the end of term I will collect from you a notebook with copies of all your work, including my comments, and your own revisions of whichever poems you wish. Up to a point, the more poems you revise successfully, the more positively I am impressed. There are no papers and no exams, and poems and exercises will not be graded individually. Your final grade will be determined by the quality and/or improvement in your writing; by your attendance and participation in class, including your demonstrated preparedness; and by the wit, passion, and seriousness you bring to writing. My quantification of these elements may be somewhat subjective.
Submitting Manuscripts for Upper-Division Creative Writing Courses
To qualify for departmental registration for upper-division creative writing (CRW) courses, you must submit a manuscript to the instructor of the course you wish to take. Each manuscript you submit for each course to which you apply must be accompanied by a Manuscript Submission Cover Sheet, which is available from the link below or in TUR 4012-A. It tells us what you wish to do, and it will help us put you in a course when space is tight. It will allow us to put you in the course you prefer when we can. Please fill it in closely and completely.
For CRW 3310, submit four poems; for CRW 3110 or CRW 4905, submit one short story or excerpt from longer work (up to 20 pp.). For ENG 4133, submit a short (approx. 500 words) summary of the film script you want to write.
The Manuscript Submission Cover Sheet indicates whether individual instructors require you to submit hard copies of your manuscripts to their mailboxes in Turlington 4301 or via email.
All submissions must be received by the October 16, 2006 deadline.
CRW 3310
Imaginative Writing: Poetry
A workshop-cum-poetry-reading class, book or books still to be determined.
Submitting Manuscripts for Upper-Division Creative Writing Courses
To qualify for departmental registration for upper-division creative writing (CRW) courses, you must submit a manuscript to the instructor of the course you wish to take. Each manuscript you submit for each course to which you apply must be accompanied by a Manuscript Submission Cover Sheet, which is available from the link below or in TUR 4012-A. It tells us what you wish to do, and it will help us put you in a course when space is tight. It will allow us to put you in the course you prefer when we can. Please fill it in closely and completely.
For CRW 3310, submit four poems; for CRW 3110 or CRW 4905, submit one short story or excerpt from longer work (up to 20 pp.). For ENG 4133, submit a short (approx. 500 words) summary of the film script you want to write.
The Manuscript Submission Cover Sheet indicates whether individual instructors require you to submit hard copies of your manuscripts to their mailboxes in Turlington 4301 or via email.
All submissions must be received by the October 16, 2006 deadline.
CRW 4905
Advanced Seminar in Fiction Writing
This course is an advanced fiction workshop. Basically, it will be run in the ‘traditional’ workshop fashion with occasional lectures on structure, metaphor, plot, etc. Some writing exercises will be assigned at the beginning, but the primary emphasis is on self-generated work.
Optimally, students will turn in stories that they have taken as far as they can on their own. The workshop should be a venue to test the waters, to try new things, to present first drafts as well as polished works, but only after the writer has struggled with the work to the nth degree. The idea is for students rigorously to challenge themselves. Students not presenting work should take their jobs as critics and editors as seriously as they take their own writing.
Required reading TBA.
Submitting Manuscripts for Upper-Division Creative Writing Courses
To qualify for departmental registration for upper-division creative writing (CRW) courses, you must submit a manuscript to the instructor of the course you wish to take. Each manuscript you submit for each course to which you apply must be accompanied by a Manuscript Submission Cover Sheet, which is available from the link below or in TUR 4012-A. It tells us what you wish to do, and it will help us put you in a course when space is tight. It will allow us to put you in the course you prefer when we can. Please fill it in closely and completely.
For CRW 3310, submit four poems; for CRW 3110 or CRW 4905, submit one short story or excerpt from longer work (up to 20 pp.). For ENG 4133, submit a short (approx. 500 words) summary of the film script you want to write.
The Manuscript Submission Cover Sheet indicates whether individual instructors require you to submit hard copies of your manuscripts to their mailboxes in Turlington 4301 or via email.
All submissions must be received by the October 16, 2006 deadline.
CRW 4906
Advanced Poetry Writing
“He is currently writing a book, a sort of saltwater poet travel guide for the coast from Homosassa to Pensacola. ‘It’s going to have the information that poets really need – how wide is the boat ramp? Is there fuel? Is there enough room in the motel parking lot to park your trailer? Can you turn the car and trailer around in the restaurant parking lot? Do you need to wear socks?’ he said.
“But it will also include tackle and techniques, good spots and hazards. Thompson will also operate a concurrent website, because conditions – and property – along the coast can change and information will need to be updated.
“‘Hurricanes come and go,’ he reasoned.”
Prerequisite: CRW 3310 or permission of instructor.
No manuscript submission required.
ENC 3310
Advanced Exposition
This is a standard, traditional (old-fashioned) composition course focusing on familiar rhetorical modes of development (narrative, description, analysis, etc.) with a heavy emphasis on style and rhetorical effectiveness and perhaps a nod towards “creative nonfiction.” Four or five papers plus analysis of selected essays and assorted in-class writing activities.
No one who has missed the first three hours of class will be permitted to take this class.
ENC 3310
Advanced Exposition
Course description not available at this time.
ENC 3312
Advanced Argumentative Writing
This course offers precept and practice in written argumentation.
In the beginning, we will meet thrice weekly to read and discuss a major treatise on rhetoric (possibly Aristotle’s contribution to the subject).
After this period, and for the remainder of the semester, we will meet twice weekly to discuss specific issues of composition, including invention and prose style. In addition, the class will be apportioned into groups of two or three students, and these groups will meet with me each week to review each person's writing.
Assignments may include the following:
- quizzes and an exam on the treatise
- eight to ten argumentative essays
ENC 4956
Overseas Studies
Undergraduate Coordinator
Prerequisite: This course must be approved by the Undergraduate Coordinator before the student travels overseas. It may be repeated with a change of topic up to a maximum of 15-credit hours.
This study, which may count towards the English major, involves course work taken as part of an approved study abroad program.
ENG 3011
Roland Barthes
The career of Roland Barthes offers a fascinating overview of contemporary cultural theory, ranging from structuralism and narratology, to materialist semiotics, to postructuralism and queer theory, to cultural studies of music, fashion, and photography. In the words of one reader, “Barthes interests us precisely because he is stimulating, and it is hard to separate what engages us in his work from his perpetual attempt to adopt new perspectives, to break with habitual perceptions. A lasting commitment to particular projects would have made Barthes a less productive thinker.”
This course will provide an introduction to critical theory through the work of Barthes (emphasis on introduction: no great familiarity with theory is assumed or expected). This will also be a writing intensive course, with weekly writing assignments rather than one or two concentrated projects; a central goal of the course is the improvement of your critical writing skills.
ENG 3063
Advanced Grammar: Theory and Application
This course is intended primarily for students planning to be writing teachers or professional editors who will need to know essential terminology and reasons for grammatical changes to enhance their credibility as teachers and editors. We will cover as many aspects of formal grammar as we can cram into one semester, covering topics ranging from parts of speech and sentence patterns to diagramming, modification, and rhetorical grammar. No exams or major papers are required but some work – take-home or in-class exercises, editing work, reading tests, etc. – will be required for every class, and the final grade will be based simply on the success of these accumulated activities.
No one who has missed the first three hours of class will be permitted to take this class.
ENG 3122
Film History II
We will examine the international history of film from the introduction of sound through the sixties. The goal is to awaken an understanding of the historical use of film form by exploring changes that have taken place in film industries and technologies. Each week, we will view a film, examine its form of expression (looking closely at editing, set design, acting styles, dialogue, and narration). This will lead to our discussion of the film’s place in film history, as well as social history. We will look at issues of industry and audience, considering representations of gender, race and political change. Students will learn how to see films with a greater depth of visual understanding. Films to be screened include genres of Hollywood filmmaking, Independents, European, and Japanese films. We will look at directors whose talent shaped the development of cinema; we will also examine the role of actors and actresses, screenwriters, designers and producers in shaping the history of film.
Goals: A greater understanding of film history, form, and analysis, and increased knowledge of the US and international film industries. Greater knowledge of social context and history will also be a goal.
Course Requirements: One paper of 8 pages, using historical analysis of film, and short answer exams on readings, lecture material and scenes from films. Participation in class discussion will also be required, as will WebCT participation.
ENG 4015
Psychological Approaches
The course will focus on the theme of memory through a close reading of two works: William Wordsworth’s The Prelude and Nobel-prize winner Eric Kandel’s In Search of Memory. Both works, one literary and the other scientific, combine autobiography with theoretical reflection on the nature of mind and memory. In addition to studying each of these texts for its own sake, we will consider how their convergence of perspectives provides a context for understanding psychoanalysis, as exemplified by Freud’s paper, “Screen Memories.” Course requirements include a midterm, final, and one eight- to twelve-page term paper.
ENG 4060
History of the English Language
The History of the English Language traces the origins and development of English from prehistoric times to the present. About a third of the course will therefore treat the emergence and structure of Old English (with grammatical study adequate to read some Old English prose) and Middle English. However, because the linguistic study of English leans more towards preparation in the study of modern texts, the course will concentrate on the development of early modern literary English and on contemporary (and especially American) literary or dialectal forms. Main texts will therefore include C.M. Millward’s A Biography of English and Bill Bryson’s Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States. Course work will include three projects – the first involving training in the use of the Oxford English Dictionary; the second, a take-home midterm detailing phonological, grammatical and semantic changes in a specimen of Middle English prose translated by you into Modern English; and the third, a work in philological criticism on a literary text of your choice.
ENG 4110
Children’s Film
While, as adults, we occasionally watch children’s films in the company of young children, or as an exercise in nostalgia, or “just for fun,” we seldom think about how such films are produced, or what a surprisingly enormous role they play in shaping the culture in which we live. In the course of this semester, we will pay close attention to both the formal elements of children’s films and the ways such elements function and interact in order to transmit and sustain dominant cultural values. Our semester will be divided into three parts. During the first part of the semester, we will study animation – the form that is perhaps most conventionally associated with children’s film. How, we will ask, does animation “work”? How is it produced? What are its key elements? Why do we associate it with children and childhood, and what do we make of those animated films (such as Spirited Away or the Triplets of Belville) that seem to be aimed more toward adult audiences than toward child audiences? During the second part of the semester, we will analyze key elements of both animated and live-action film – such as sound, color, mise-en-scene and editing – as we study how such elements work together to produce narrative and to disseminate ideological assumptions regarding gender, race, class, and sexuality. Finally, in the third part of the semester, we will discuss film in relation to various audiences and aesthetic forms. For example, what might we make of films featuring child actors and protagonists that are produced for decidedly adult audiences? How might we evaluate film adaptations of children’s books? And what relationships might we observe between children’s film and the “teenpic”?
The texts for this class include Paul Wells’s Understanding Animation and David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson’s Film Art; there will also be a course-book that will include various critical and theoretical readings. We will watch a number of films in class, including (but not limited to) Fantasia, Cinderella, Spirited Away, The Littlest Rebel, Annie, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and Dirty Dancing.
ENG 4110
Jacques Tati
Sylvie Blum
“In a world of increasing conformity, the modern eccentric can be seen as a contemporary hero and guardian of individualism.” (Schulman)
The course as designed examines Tati’s career and contribution, his cinematic antecedents and heirs. Topics cover France’s culture at the time of the production of his films, i.e. post-World War II France of the late 40s, 50s and 60s. Readings, discussion and analysis will bear on contemporary literature and cultural production, everyday life, the use of space and architecture in film, the use of technology, the function of music and sound or silence in film, comedies, the representation of the male hero in French cinema, rural cinema and what I propose to read as a “Tati moment.”
Tentative Required Reading
- A comprehensive course pack including essays by André Bazin, Philip Brophy, Kristin Thompson, Lee Hilliker, John Fawell, Lucy Fischer, Henri Lefèbvre, Peter Schulman, Pierre Sorlin, and Jacques Tati. (etc.)
- Michel Chion. The Films of Jacques Tati. Trans. Antonio D’ Alfonso Toronto: Guernica, 2003.
- David Bellos. Tati: His Life and Art. London: Harvill, 1999. PN 1998. 3 T374 B45
Requirements: Bi-weekly reading quizzes, bi-monthly reaction papers and a final 15–20 pp. research project.
ENG 4133
Screenwriting
Course description not available at this time.
ENG 4133
Polish Science Fiction and Fantasy: Fiction, Films, Artwork
Christopher Caes
This course is crosslisted with PLT 3930 (6802) – Special Topics in Polish Studies and with EUS 3100 (6752) – Special Topics in European Studies. General Education Credit H & I pending.
This course introduces and examines one of the most imaginative and currently vibrant artistic currents of modern Polish culture – fantastyka, or “the fantastic,” in two of its most popular guises: science fiction and fantasy. Our focus in the course will be twofold. Firstly, developing a conceptual “tool kit” from the writing of Polish science fiction grandmaster Stanisław Lem, we will inquire into (and experience) the pleasure-giving dimensions of these genres, attempting some structural definitions and highlighting the peculiar blend of cognitive or metaphysical ambition and horror that defines the Polish fantastic. Secondly, considering representations of other worlds as unique reflections of this world, we will attempt to identify and investigate specific historical and social factors – from wartime catastrophe and communist censorship to the commercialization of publishing and availability of new computer technologies – that have led Poles to practice the genres of the fantastic.
Selected works will be drawn from three different media: fiction, film, and artwork. We will begin with tales by two classic practitioners of the fantastic – the supernatural fiction of Stefan Grabiński and the science fiction of Stanisław Lem. Later, we will turn to works of science fiction and fantasy by current authors – the metaphysical horror fiction of Marek Huberath, the Tolkienesque world of Andrzej Sapkowski, and the science fiction of Jacek Dukaj. We will also be viewing film adaptations of Lem’s fiction by Maetzig, Tarkovsky, and Soderbergh, as well as screening works from the dark existential sf cinema of Andrzej Żuławski, the oneiric cinema of Wojciech Has and the sociological science fiction films of Piotr Szulkin. Finally, we will look at the nightmare painting of Zdzisław Beksiński, the “fantastic hyperrealism” of artist/illustrator Wojtek Siudmak, the Escheresque fantasy painting of Jacek Yerka, the neobaroque fantasy painting of Tomasz Sętowski, as well as at digital sci-fi art by a number of contemporary Polish artists – Czarny, Drozd, Jasiczak, and Wojtowicz.
ENG 4133
Son of Psycho-Cinem-analysis
Why did the Enlightenment fail? Why is politics beyond the reach of reason? We will pursue these and similar questions by dialectically reading pyschoanalytic and media theory in relation to a series of films that engage fantasies of national (in)security and communications breakdowns or failures – along with their consequent catastrophes and disasters – in terms of analogies these films draw between media (the telephone, audio recording devices, silent film, automatic writing, and so on) and psychic processes (memory lapses, amnesia, slips of the tongue, telepathy, hypnosis, resistance, repression, the unconscious, deja vu, the uncanny, repetition compulsion, and so on). Our focus will be on the ways in which intrapsychic rather than interpsychic dynamics primarily block a passage from fantasy to understanding, and we will explore the close relationship between stupidity and wisdom, the desire not to know as much as the desire to know. For more information, please go to: <http://www.clas.ufl.edu/~rburt/sonofpsychocinemanalysis/>.
ENG 4133
Medievalism on Film
We will examine the Middle Ages on film in relation to medieval media that have been regarded as proto-cinematic. For more information, please go to: <http://www.clas.ufl.edu/~rburt/Medieval_Film_and_Media/>.
ENG 4134
Women and Film
This course will examine how women have been represented in film, how they have participated in film production, and how they consume film images. We will look at various feminist approaches and the range of debates as to how to address these issues.
The course will have several goals: to introduce you to the history of women in film, to increase your skills in reading film and in reading critical writing about film, and to enhance your understanding of the relation between writing critical analysis and feminist theory.
Emphasis will be on such basic issues as viewer identification and cultural context as currently formulated through various feminist and post-structuralist methodologies. We will explore how feminism intersects with psychoanalysis, ideology, deconstruction and related approaches. We will examine the conjuncture of theoretical issues with an experience of specific texts, and the function of these texts in the past and present workings of history.
Course Requirements: Two papers of 8 pages each (35% and 35%), plus class discussion and miscellaneous assignments (30%). Participation in class discussion is essential. WebCT participation as well. Students must attend scheduled screenings.
ENG 4135
New German Cinima
An introduction to “New German Cinema” from its inception in the 1960’s to its demise and its subsequent legacy, both in filmmaking and criticism.
ENG 4905
Independent Study
Faculty Member of Choice
An Independent Study course may be taken for 1 to 3 credit hours, but will only count toward the fulfillment of the 10-course requirement for the English major if a student registers for 3 credit hours.
This course is for advanced students who desire to supplement the regular courses by independent reading or research under the guidance of a member of the faculty. The student must find a faculty member who is willing to supervise the semester-long study, and together, the two create a project. The student must meet with the professor at designated times, agreed upon in advance, and complete all assignments in a timely manner.
ENG 4936
Honors Seminar: The Brain and the Book
I plan to open up what I take to be a fundamental question in literary studies. How does your brain make stories, movies, poems, and plays into pleasure? Along the way, we will consider other basic issues like the “willing suspension of disbelief” (why don’t you doubt the reality of Spider-Man?); why you feel real emotions toward people and events you know are not real; the reality of literary characters; how form works; the effect of being in an audience; how readers build “content;” how writers acquire a style; the nature of creativity; the ethical function of literature; why all cultures do literature – is it genetic?
This seminar comes out of the last three decades’ explosion of knowledge about the brain. It will explore a relatively new field, the application of cognitive science and neuropsychology to our understanding of literary creation and response. We will not be reading literature as such – I assume you have done a lot of that – but we will be discussing your experience as readers. We shall be reading such people as Noam Chomsky, George Lakoff, Mark Johnson, Hanna and Antonio Damasio, Jerry Fodor, Heinz Lichtenstein, Steven Pinker, Mark Solms, John Tooby and Leda Cosmides. And we will be reading some people who have begun to apply their ideas to literary and aesthetic questions: Nancy Aiken, Ellen Dissanayake, Patrick Hogan, Mark Turner, Ellen Winner, and Norman Holland. Students will be asked to learn a certain amount about brains, but I will keep this neuroscience to a necessary minimum.
Because a term paper is not appropriate for this level of this subject, I plan to give an hour exam and a final exam. If the seminar so votes, I will also assign reports on outside reading. Grades will be based on those plus participation in online and class discussion.
ENG 4936
Honors Seminar: Black Female-Centered Film
This course employs a comparative approach to study narrative and non-narrative films made about black women in the Americas, Europe, and Africa. Most of the film screenings cover films made by black women directors and screenwriters. However, the course also includes a few films made by non-black and/or male filmmakers.
Lectures and discussions will consider how the films explore generational, gendered, racial, religious, and class conflicts that result from immigration, globalization, and western education. Ideas about ethnicity, race, nation, class, gender and sexuality will be discussed in relation to how they transform notions about Africa and its diasporas in Europe and the Americas. Students are expected to learn and correctly employ film and theoretical terminology when they discuss and write about black female-centered film.
Students will analyze how various types of films imitate, appropriate, and/or resist the dominant representational regimes that determine black female subjectivity. The course introduces cultural theory and contemporary film history. Students will leave this course with a sharpened critical understanding of how black female filmmakers and video artists visually imitate, appropriate, and or resist certain dominant representational paradigms
Requirements:
- Ten submissions of a two-page, typed single-space reaction paper on the weekly readings, class discussions, and films due weeks 2-11. 20%
- Moderate two 15-minute discussions on a weekly reading and film screening. 20%
- Submission of a typed 15-18-page research paper and two-page bibliography-filmography. After obtaining the written approval of the instructor, a 15-minute video project may be submitted in lieu of the 15-18-page research paper. All students are responsible for a two-page bibliography-filmography. 40%
- Present a 15-minute oral presentation on the 15-18-page research paper or the 10-15-minute video project. 20%
ENG 4936
Honors Seminar: Sympathy and the Politics of the Body
Today, we tend to think of sympathy as a well-meaning, relatively harmless, and even insipid feeling of pity or compassion. In eighteenth-century Britain and the Americas, however, it had a far more complex and curious set of associations that shed light on theories of feeling, emotion, and the body, past and present. In this course, we will explore some of these theories, which included a quasi-magical belief in magnetic and animal attractions between individuals, as well as the idea that feelings could be transfused or passed through the blood from one person to another. Writers on sympathy also invented the concept of the nervous system, which came to be seen as the conveyor of both physical and emotional feeling and thus the central organ of the body. Simultaneously, the nervous system became a prominent metaphor for society as a whole, and political theories of sympathy became popular, as various writers posited that problems ranging from national fragmentation to slavery, class conflict, and gender inequality could be solved if people’s feelings and bodies could only be controlled properly. We will think about how this politics of the body worked and impacted specific individuals and their bodies, including those of women, men, slaves, and members of different socioeconomic classes. We will also compare eighteenth-century and present-day notions of sympathy and emotion to think about how our own politics of the body have changed or remained the same.
Eighteenth-century readings will include
- Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments
- Henry Mackenzie’s Man of Feeling
- Laurence Sterne’s Sentimental Journey
- Tobias Smollett’s Humphry Clinker
- John Stedman’s Narrative of an Expedition Against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam
- William Hill Brown’s Power of Sympathy
- William Godwin’s Caleb Williams
- Charles Brockden Brown’s Edgar Huntly
- Lydia Maria Child’s Hobomok
We will also read critical works by Markman Ellis, Julia Stern, Michelle Burnham, Michel Foucault, and Elaine Scarry, among others.
Assignments will include weekly responses, a midterm paper, and a final research project.
ENG 4940
Internship
Undergraduate Coordinator
The English Department at the University of Florida offers three* credit hours of internship to its majors who provide the following to the Undergraduate Coordinator for approval:
- An offer to hire (from the employer) which states that the student will be working at least 12 hours per week for the entire semester (Fall, Spring, or Summer C), or 24 hours per week for a Summer A or B term. Said document should be produced on the company letterhead and should outline the job duties for the internship position.
- A personal statement (submitted along with the offer of hire) about why the student wants to take the internship and how it relates to the student’s future plans.
Once the Undergraduate Coordinator has approved the internship requested by the student, the department will register the student for the internship credits.
Upon completion of the internship:
- The supervisor of the student must submit a job performance evaluation to the Undergraduate Coordinator by Wednesday of finals week so that a grade of Satisfactory or Unsatisfactory may be submitted to the Registrar. The evaluation may be faxed, mailed, or hand delivered.
- The student must submit a personal evaluation of the work experience provided by the internship by the same day as above.
*For two credit hours, the student would need to work 8 hours per week in a Fall, Spring, or Summer C semester; and 16 hours per week for Summer A or B.
*For one credit hour, the student would need to work 4 hours per week in a Fall, Spring, or Summer C semester; and 8 hours per week for Summer A or B.
Please note the following limitations on the English Internship:
- A student may register for the English Department Internship for three credits ONLY ONCE; no more than three hours worth of internship credit may be counted toward coursework in the major.
- Because no English Department course carrying fewer than 3 credit hours counts towards the major, your internship will not count as part of your major coursework if you register for fewer than 3 credits.
ENG 4953
Department Seminar: Joyce and Cultural Studies
The course will be an introduction both to James Joyce and to the broad field of cultural studies, using Joyce’s fictions as examples of literary texts with particularly rich cultural resonance – both representationally and as artifacts. We will read Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist, and Ulysses in conjunction with a cultural studies reader. Our emphases will include the areas of
- negotiations of “everyday life” (urban walking, recreation, consumption, etc.);
- high and popular culture interactions (especially with reference to modernism and the birth of “mass media”);
- subject construction and gender relations;
- postcoloniality (especially Orientalism);
- political dimensions.
Although the course will engage with theory, the stress will be upon specific implications of the literary texts rather than upon the theory in and for itself. As an aid in reading Ulysses, we will use Blamires’s guide to that novel entitled The New Bloomsday Book. I may bring in copies of newspapers and advertisements of the time as well as some examples of the popular reading to which Joyce alludes, show slides of Eugen Sandow the bodybuilder and memorial photography of children, and discuss other examples of material culture from turn-of-the-century Ireland. Since I am involved in the production of a hypertext Ulysses, we will discuss aspects of that project throughout the course, as it relates to issues raised by cultural studies.
Texts: The Norton Critical edition of Dubliners (ed. Norris) and the Bedford Books second edition of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (ed. Kershner); Hans Walter Gabler’s edition of Ulysses and Harry Blamires’s The New Bloomsday Book; I will also be distributing a good deal of material as handouts during the course. All books are at Goering’s Books and Bagels.
Requirements: (1, 2) Two papers incorporating literary-critical research, the first 8–10 pages long, the second 10–12 pages. (3) A final exam, including objective and essay sections. (4) About three or four unannounced quizzes – very simple ones – to make sure we're all keeping up with the reading. These four requirements will weigh roughly the same in determining 85% of your grade; an additional 15% will be determined by class participation.
ENG 4953
Department Seminar: The Journal
“On Michaelmas day I went to see the Collection of a Noble Venetian Signor Rugini: . . . a Cabinet of Medals both Latine & Greeke, with divers curious shells, & two fair Pearles in 2 of them: but above all, he abounded in things petrified, Walnuts, Eggs, in which the Yealke rattl’d, a Peare, a piece of beefe, with the bones in it; an whole hedg-hog . . .”
– the diary of John Evelyn, 1645
“Should you wish to make sure that your birthday will be celebrated three hundred years hence, your best course is undoubtedly to keep a diary.”
– Virginia Woolf, no mean diarist herself, on John Evelyn
This course will be an exploration, via reading and writing, of the diary and the journal. Why are most blogs boring? Who will be the great diary- and journal-keepers of the twenty-first century? You?
ENG 4970
Honors Thesis Project
Faculty members (2) of Choice
Students must have have completed at least one semester of ENG 4936, Honors Seminar. Open to English Honors students.
The student must select two faculty members: one to direct the reading, research, and writing of a thesis on a topic of the student’s and director’s chosing, and another as the second reader. An abstract (100 to 200 words) and one copy of the thesis (30 to 50 pages) must be delivered to the CLAS Academic Advising Center on Fletcher Road at least 10 days before graduation.
ENL 3112
18th Century British Novel
The theme for this semester will be good sex/good families. In the past twenty-five years, influential historians and literary scholars have described the eighteenth century as a period that witnesses the rise of “companionate marriage” and new versions of masculinity. We will look at a wide range of eighteenth-century British novels and analyze how they portray male and female roles in courtship and marriage.
We will read seven novels, one of them being Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa. Because of the length of Clarissa, we will take it in sections, reading roughly one hundred pages per week. We will study how these novels reflect and speak to changes in British society described by Aphra Behn in her late seventeenth-century prose narratives Oroonoko and The Fair Jilt. Most particularly, we will analyze the changing role of social status (which these writers typically use the word “quality” to reference) in courtship and marriage, as economic and social changes create new kinds of wealth. But we also will observe how these novels repeat plots and characters of earlier literature, notably the birth-mystery plot. By the end of the semester, students should have a full sense of these novels as, at once, products of a specific culture and of a long-enduring literary tradition.
Students will write two papers (between six to eight pages each) on topics that I offer. They also will keep a response journal in which they record their reactions to their daily readings. If the class is small enough (under twenty students), that journal will provide the basis for a one-half hour final oral examination. Should the class enroll more than twenty students, a written final examination will be offered. Students will be expected to participate in a Clarissa study group and to contribute to class discussions.
All papers must be word-processed. I am happy to read and comment upon early drafts of papers and encourage e-mail submission of them via attachments in richtext format.
Books:
All books will be available at Goering’s Books and Bagels, 1711 N. W. 1 st Avenue.
- Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel (California)
- Aphra Behn, Oroonoko, The Rover, and Other Works (Penguin)
- Daniel Defoe, Roxana (Penguin)
- Samuel Richardson, Clarissa (Penguin)
- Henry Fielding, Joseph Andrews (Norton)
- Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling (Norton)
- Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto (Penguin)
- Francis Burney, Evelina (Oxford)
- Elizabeth Inchbald, A Simple Story
ENL 3122
19th Century British Novel
This is a tentative description.
- Nancy Armstrong, Desire and Domestic Fiction
- Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
- Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre
- Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South
- Charles Dickens, Bleak House
- M. E. Braddon, Lady Audley’s Secret
- George Eliot, Mill on the Floss
- Olive Schreiner, Story of an African Farm
- related critical materials to be announced
The Course:
This course samples key developments in the British novel through the nineteenth century. We will examine the novels within three contexts: historical, literary-historical, and critical. If you have not had English 2022, you should plan to familiarize yourself with the period: the Norton Anthology introduction to the period is a good place to start. Gilmour’s and Houghton’s books are also very useful and are on reserve in the library.
The Victorian period was the great age of the novel’s emergence as a dominant popular form within a newly extensive literary marketplace, and Victorian novelists were consummate entertainers driven to sell widely and well. They were also preoccupied with the condition of their own culture; to paraphrase Richard Altick, rarely is the Present so much present in literature as it is in the novel of this period. Victorian novelists considered it their duty and pleasure to criticize, praise and generally comment upon current issues, and they developed new forms and genres to accommodate their purposes. These issues represent the formative phases of social concerns which we have inherited and which still define us: the role of mass media, the ethics of capitalism, gender roles, the responsibilities of liberal government, the welfare state, pollution, the role of nation in the global community, etc. We will read a range of representative genres and consider them not only in the light of the emergence of the novel as a dominant form, but as documents of a culture’s attempts to represent and work out these issues of contemporary importance – aesthetically and ethically – and consider the ways in which Victorian ideas resonate for us today.
This course provides upper-division credit in the major, and will be taught with that in mind; therefore, students will be expected to know how to do research in the field and to attempt the application of critical frameworks. Due to the nature of the material, there is a considerable amount of reading. Carefully consider your reading speed and the expectations of the other courses you are taking before committing to this course.
Attendance and Participation:
The most important “materials” in any class are the insights and knowledge that the class members bring to the information being discussed. In a sense, if a class member does not participate in discussion and related activities, that person is depriving the rest of the memembers of the class of one of the most important components of their education. Your participation is very important to everyone here.
If you must miss class, be sure to arrange to get the notes from a classmate. Poor participation or attendance will affect your grade; given that every absence is a week missed, more than one absence or two latenesses will lower your grade.
Grading:
Grading will reflect University standards, and will be based largely on the papers and the quizzes, as well as timely completion of non-graded activities. Poor attendance will lower your course grade, as will poor performance on quizzes and non-graded activities. Plagiarism is an automatic “F” in the course. You are responsible for understanding the definition of plagiarism – “ignorance of the law” is not an acceptable excuse.
- Short Paper 30%
- Long Paper 40%
- Quizzes 30%
Papers:
There will be two essays. The first will be approximately six pages. The second will be approximately twelve pages. You are expected to do reading/research beyond the assigned reading for these papers, which should demonstrate an original and critical engagement with a research topic. Papers should NOT re-present material from lecture or discussion, although they may use that material as a point of departure. Late papers will receive grade penalties. Essays will be typed, double-spaced, with one inch margins in a normal typing font (e.g. Times New Roman), with a point size of 10 (Courier)-12 (Times New Roman).
Discussion:
Because of the nature of the class and its upper division status, this class will be based on discussion and in-class activities. Each student is expected to participate – to speak in class, to answer and ask questions and to come prepared each day. I may call on students as a normal part of the class process. It is acceptable to make mistakes or not to know the answer to questions; it is not acceptable to give up or refuse to try.
Please do not underestimate the value of class participation. I don’t grade separately for discussion because it is a basic requirement of the course, like coming regularly or turning in papers on time. However, as with those other basic requirements, your responsible completion of them can push a “split grade” higher, whereas failing to take those responsibilities seriously will result in a substantially lowered grade, regardless of your performance on graded exercises.
ENL 3154
Modern British Poetry
The poets we will assess in this course reflect the onslaught of cultural changes that shaped the 20th century. We begin with Yeats, who responded to Irish nationalism and revolution, and then move to Wilfred Owen, the most famous poet of the Great War, which would kill him in 1918. In Eliot’s long poem The Waste Land, modernist innovation and postwar disillusionment combined in a vivid simulation of cultural decline. W. H. Auden’s work of the 1930s captured the sense of impending crisis that would erupt at the outbreak of WWII, while Stevie Smith’s darkly comic poems and drawings challenged restrictive gender roles in the years between the wars. Philip Larkin’s poems cast a cynical eye on modern romance and Britain’s diminished role on the world stage after WWII. For Ted Hughes, violence became the defining feature of our relationships with one another and with the natural world. Craig Raine portrayed an alien domesticity in the late 1970s, reflecting the tensions of changing gender roles during the rise of career women. In the 1980s, Carol Ann Duffy revitalized the dramatic monologue to give voice to women and immigrants. Course assignments include an explication and term paper, a sonnet, parody, and a panel presentation.
ENL 3241
The Romantic Period
This is an undergraduate survey of English romantic writers. It is roughly divided into nine parts: an introduction to romanticism, and then eight sections on individual writers. There is, relative to other English courses, little outside reading, as the main concern of the course is a careful reading of selected representative works. This is deceptive, for students might assume that the course will therefore be easy. There will be weekly quizzes (embarrassingly objective for an English course) and two short papers (not necessarily research papers). The quizzes give me a chance to get answers to questions I think are important; the papers give you a chance to form answers to questions you think are important. The class is informal and relaxed, but the quizzes and papers are not. The quizzes stress material covered in class and so it might be suggested that you take good and careful notes.
Texts
- Individual selections of Romantic poets
- Brontë, Wuthering Heights
- Stoker, Dracula
- Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde
- Shelley, Frankenstein
ENL 4221
17th Century Prose and Poetry (excluding Milton)
Kristen Smith
In this course we will be reading what are often regarded as the greatest lyrics along with some of the finest, most diversified prose in English. We will attend first to understanding the literature, and second to establishing contexts within which and approaches from which to read and write about it. Students will be responsible for twelve unannounced quizzes or brief take-home assignments and three papers. The brief unannounced quizzes/take-home assignments will occur intermittently and take a variety of forms (40% of the grade); one may be dropped. The three papers should be tightly argued, fully exemplified, and persuasively styled (each is to be approximately 2,500 words long and is worth 20% of the grade). One will interpret some piece of prose; another will interpret a single or several related secular lyrics of the era not covered in class; a last will interpret a single or several related sacred lyrics of the era not covered in class.
ENL 4221
Milton
The course will consist of a close reading of Milton’s epic poems, Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. The approach will be primarily theological and psychological, with attention to gender issues. No previous background in Milton is required, but some experience in reading poetry and curiosity about Renaissance literature would be helpful. Course requirements include a weekly one-page response paper, with a possible term-paper option, and a final examination.
ENL 4333
Shakespeare
This course will involve a close study of a dozen or so of the plays and a number of readings from the poems and elsewhere. Emphasis will be laid upon the problem-stating – solving – mediating nature of the dramas. This will necessitate a close reading of the texts; a recognition of the dramatic and verbal ironies that abound; close attention to the paradoxes and ambiguities which motivate the actions and observation of the stark oppositions which are continually reiterated.
We will be led into a contextual study of both the world within and the world without the Elizabethan theatre, with its concern for an orderliness and its doubts and confusions as the new seventeenth-century learning questioned and undermined the values and social/political /religious assumptions of its society. We may then come to appreciate how these great plays and poems still speak to us with immediacy after a span of nearly four hundred years.
I intend to spend time with the following plays and, in addition, may spare more than a passing glance at one or two others – particularly making use, at the beginning of the course, of the early plays Titus Andronicus and Richard III and also The Sonnets
- Romeo and Juliet
- A Midsummer Night’s Dream
- Henry 4 part 1
- Henry 4 part 2
- As You Like It
- Julius Caesar
- Hamlet
- Measure for Measure
- King Lear
- The Tempest
The Text for the course is The Norton Shakespeare edited by Stephen Greenblatt and others. It is in stock at Goering’s Bookstore. Any recent and annotated text would suffice but since I will be giving references to the texts in the above edition and occasionally referring to its introductory essays and bibliographies, it would be perhaps more prudent to use the recommended text. Throughout the course of the semester, I will draw your attention to particularly noteworthy essays and critical studies from the lists given by Greenblatt in his text. My intention is not simply to display my own preferences and prejudices, but also to let you know where much of the substance of my discussions of the plays comes from. In addition, I will frequently offer you recommended readings of recent criticism that has been published since our text went to press, particularly those arising from new historicist, feminist, psychological and anthropological approaches to the texts. I will also take it upon myself to advise you of the more useful websites I have encountered, particularly those that offer bibliographical, critical and explicatory information.
Assignments
Two essays will be required of you (each ca. 2500 words) and, in addition, there will be a number of in-class tests. There will be no final exam.
Oral participation will be expected and rewarded. Absences – I intend to make periodic register checks – will be penalized, as will late papers. Plagiarism which is detected will result in a failing grade for the course.
If at any time you need to see me or discuss a problem, I can be reached on the phone, 392-1060 ext 267. My office (Turlington 4342) hours will be 8:00 through 9:00 each morning of classes or by appointment. I can also be reached by email: <rthomson@english.ufl.edu>.
ENL 4333
Shakespeare: Learning by Doing
The assumption in all my theatre courses is that the text of a play is not just what is written on the page, but that text in performance, delivered by actors before an audience. This means the play’s text also includes gestures, movement, blocking (the stage picture), and sub-text (what the character is saying inwardly, beneath the lines delivered onstage, as well as the “history” for that character invented by the actor). In the theatre, we would further supplement this text with lighting, sound, set, costumes, props, and make-up. To be sure, one can approach a play in a thousand ways – as literature, as a repository for the thinking of an age, as the springboard for political or cultural issues. But, since I work both on campus and in the theatre, as an actor and director, and since the theatre itself is a unique medium with its own aesthetic principles, I approach the plays, with my students, and as a fellow “student,” as something meant to be performed by an actor and ratified by an audience. In my courses, each student has a scene partner with whom he or she stages several scenes each semester. Once performed, the class and I, as co-directors, “work” that scene with the two actors, trying out options, rehearsing it. This is a challenge, to be sure, but students, no matter what their background, should have no anxiety about doing things this way for, historically in my courses, Mechanical Engineering majors have done no worse than Theatre students who have done no better than those working in English or Anthropology. The emphasis, therefore, is on learning by doing, and I judge student work by intent, what goes into the performance – not by finesse. If there is finesse, that is considered a bonus.
In my Shakespeare course, we will thus consider A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Twelfth Night, Hamlet, Macbeth, The Taming of the Shrew, Othello, Much Ado about Nothing, and Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, which, of course, offers a playwright’s critique of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. During the semester students will also see a production, An Evening with Tom Stoppard, at the Acrosstown Repertory Theatre. There is a major course paper assessing your work as actor and using your own performance as the subject.
LIN 4605
World Englishes
Course description not available at this time.
LIT 3003
Narratology of New Media
A survey of critical and theoretical issues posed by narrative genres and operations of interactive digital media. Authors whose literary and critical-theoretical works we will read include: Seymour Chatman, Megan Heyward, Shelley Jackson, Michael Joyce, Nick Montfort, Stuart Moulthrop, Raymond Queneau, and Marie-Laure Ryan. A highlight of the course will be “World Building: Space and Community,” a two-day conference on games and digital media held at UF, March 1–2, 2007.
Students should have a basic knowledge of the WWW and other interactive digital media. All students must have access to a desktop computer system (Windows XP or Vista, Mac OS X) outside of the class meeting times. Course requirements include two take-home exams.
Please take note: this is not a “videogames course”. We will undertake careful, systematic narratological analysis of representative texts of the emerging digital field. A devotee of videogames or interactive fiction will have no more advantage in this course than would an enthusiast of popular films in a course on cinema theory and criticism. Critical readings for the course will be challenging; the digital texts we will discuss will require at least as much of your attention and time as an equal number of long and complex print narratives.
LIT 3041
Tudor/Stuart Drama
Randi Smith
We will read about one non-Shakespearean play per week from the greatest era for English drama, perhaps the greatest era for drama in any language – from the middle of Elizabeth’s reign to the closing of the theaters in 1642. We will focus on understanding these plays in a number of contexts such as stage conditions; illusion/reality/representation; language, rhetoric, and style; the development of techniques and genres; and social, political, and theological conditions.
The course will proceed along lines of generic development throughout the period. In the first part we will read tragedies by Kyd, Marlow, Webster, and others; in the second, comedies by Dekker, Beaumont, Jonson, and others; in the third, Marston. Throughout the course, students will take 11 unannounced brief quizzes (40% of the grade). At the end of each part, students will be responsible for a paper: Paper I on a tragedy (about 3,000 words, 15% of the grade) Paper II on a comedy (about 3,000 words, 20% of the grade), Paper III on any non-Shakespearean play of the era not assigned to the class (about 5,000 words, 25% of the grade).
Our focus will be on developing students’ skills and knowledge towards two ends: first, in order to enjoy reading knowledgably and independently such famous plays as The Spanish Tragedy, Tamburlaine I, The Duchess of Malfi, The Shoemakers Holiday, Bartholomew Fair, A King and No King; second, in order to speak and write convincingly.
The full syllabus is posted to my web page. Taking a Shakespeare course alongside this one could prove valuable for both.
LIT 3041
Modern Tragedy
We will read some 17 modern tragedies (20th century) in an attempt to come to some understanding of the genre and of the modern era. Plays by Brecht, Hellman, Ibsen, Lorca, Miller, O’Neill, Pirandello, Soyinka, Strindberg, Synge, and Williams will be read, and, as well, five plays by Anton Chekhov. We will read these plays as written texts, with maximum attention paid to the words on the page, minimal attention to staging. Written work, as is always true in English courses, will be required.
LIT 3043
Modern Drama: Learning by Doing
The assumption in all my theatre courses is that the text of a play is not just what is written on the page, but that text in performance, delivered by actors before an audience. This means the play’s text also includes gestures, movement, blocking (the stage picture), and sub-text (what the character is saying inwardly, beneath the lines delivered onstage, as well as the “history” for that character invented by the actor). In the theatre, we would further supplement this text with lighting, sound, set, costumes, props, and make-up. To be sure, one can approach a play in a thousand ways – as literature, as a repository for the thinking of an age, as the springboard for political or cultural issues. But, since I work both on campus and in the theatre, as an actor and director, and since the theatre itself is a unique medium with its own aesthetic principles, I approach the plays, with my students, and as a fellow “student,” as something meant to be performed by an actor and ratified by an audience. In my courses, each student has a scene partner with whom he or she stages several scenes each semester. Once performed, the class and I, as co-directors, “work” that scene with the two actors, trying out options, rehearsing it. This is a challenge, to be sure, but students, no matter what their background, should have no anxiety about doing things this way for, historically in my courses, Mechanical Engineering majors have done no worse than Theatre students who have done no better than those working in English or Anthropology. The emphasis, therefore, is on learning by doing, and I judge student work by intent, what goes into the performance – not by finesse. If there is finesse, that is considered a bonus.
In my Modern Drama course, we will look at Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Pinter’s Old Times and No Man’s Land, and Shepard’s True West and Curse of the Starving Class. There is a major course paper assessing your work as actor and using your own performance as the subject. Students will also see two productions at the Acrosstown Repertory Theatre – An Evening with Tom Stoppard and An Evening with Harold Pinter.
LIT 3374
The Bible as Literature
The Old Testament (Hebrew Scriptures) is emphasized. The approach is historical and formalistic. Topics include: narrative (Samuel, Judges, Ruth, Jonah, Genesis); prophecy (Amos, Hosea, Jeremiah, Isaiah); poetry (Psalms, Lamentations, Song of Solomon); and wisdom literature (Ecclesiastes, Job). Two six-page papers are required, or one twelve-page paper. Directions for the midterm and the noncumulative final are as follows: “Identify the following fifteen passages in no more than two sentences. Comment on two. Take class discussion into account and go beyond it.” The text is the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible.
LIT 3383
Women’s Poetry
The term “women’s poetry” isn’t as simple as it appears. It is the same thing as “feminist” poetry? Does domesticity restrict or expand women’s poetry? Does women’s poetry always challenge literary tradition, or counter popular culture? How does the “women’s poetry” label affect the ways we read, and how should it? In this course, we will study poetry by Edna Saint Vincent Millay, Gertrude Stein, H.D., Stevie Smith, Gwendolyn Brooks, Sylvia Plath, Rita Dove, and Julia Alvarez. We will also place the poems in biographical and cultural contexts. Assignments include 3 analytical papers (explication, anthology review, cultural analysis), a panel presentation, and a parody.
LIT 3383
African Women Writers
R. Lugano
This course is crosslisted with SSA4930 (0377) and WST 4930 (5110).
Course description not available at this time.
LIT 3400
Internet Literature
The topic for this seminar is the relationship of technology to literature. Specifically, we will focus on what happens to literary forms in the medium of the World Wide Web. Our interest in part is in the migration of print forms and modes onto the Internet, and also in the emergence of new forms of creativity native to the Internet.
The course is taught in the Networked Writing Environment (NWE), with the primary project being the composition of two Websites. We will experiment with the design of a new mode of literary study that takes advantage of the resources of hypermedia. The semester project is to design and test the “learning screen,” that does for Web media what the “research paper” did for print education. The Web projects call for basic application of Cascading Style sheets (CSS, XHTML). Previous experience with Website composition is helpful but not required. Recommended reading: Lev Manovich, The Language of New Media.
LIT 3400
Screening Literature: Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, Kurasawa
Dragan Kujundzic
Course description not available at this time.
LIT 4183
Empire and Gender
Taking imperialism as central to the construction of the United States’ national imaginary, this course will raise a number of questions about the intersection of empire and gender. How is the language of empire gendered? How does gender structure metaphors such as the frontier? How are representations of colonized spaces and racial others invested with discourses of gender? How does the captivity narrative persist in the narrative of contemporary imperialism? We will focus on specific sites of empire such as Hawai’i, Mexico, the Philippines, and Vietnam, and examine the literary and cultural texts that emerge from those sites. Most of our readings will be from the twentieth century, but there will be some nineteenth-century and eighteenth-century works as well. Possible texts include:
- Norman Taurog’s Blue Hawaii
- Lois-Ann Yamanaka’s Blu’s Hanging
- Le Ly Hayslip’s When Heaven and Earth Changed Places
- John Luther Long’s “Madame Butterfly”
- David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly
- John Rollin Ridge’s The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta
- Sarah Josepha Hale’s Liberia
We will also read the work of critics such as Edward Said, Anne McClintock, and Ann Laura Stoler.
LIT 4192
Caribbean Literature: Empire and Identity
“Have I given you the impression that the Antigua I grew up in revolved almost completely around England ? Well, that was so. I met the world through England , and if the world wanted to meet me it would have to do so through England .” – Jamaica Kincaid (A Small Place, 33)
Exile and Englishness have traditionally been viewed as the “ground zero” of Anglophone Caribbean literature. In the 1950s, V.S. Naipaul, George Lamming, Sam Selvon and many other writers from across the region emigrated to London where they attained international acclaim, establishing the West Indian literary tradition. (Ultimately, two members of this generation would win the Nobel prize for literature: Derek Walcott [1992] and V.S. Naipaul [2001].) Schooled in everything English, from language and literature to music and food, newly-arrived writers expected to be embraced by the mother country. Instead, they found systematic racism and war rations. This exile and discrimination became the core of much Caribbean literature, cultural theory, and literary criticism. This literary and critical tradition proved powerful in shaping not only Caribbean literary studies but also British literature and cultural studies in the twentieth century. The first half of this course traces this literary migration and creation from C.L.R. James’s arrival in England in 1932 to the emergence of black cultural studies and the contemporary success of Zadie Smith and Andrea Levy.
In the second half of the semester, we examine Caribbean literature and cultural criticism that does not so clearly fit this paradigm. How do we understand the powerful role of U.S. imperialism in the Caribbean and the large body of literature produced by Caribbean writers who emigrated to Canada and the United States ? How did this paradigm include Indo-Caribbean writers and literary subjects? To what extent and how did women writers find a place in this model? How did queer literature and film come to play such a critical and yet often marginalized role? Authors will include: C.L.R. James, Claude McKay, Una Marson, Isaac Julien, Stuart Hall, Paul Gilroy, Jamaica Kincaid, Shani Mootoo, Colin Channer, Andrea Levy, V.S. Naipaul, Sam Selvon, Nalo Hopkinson, and Marcia Douglas.
LIT 4305
Comics and Animation
This seminar will focus on a selective history and emergent theories of comic books, comic strips, and animated cartoons from the late 19th century to the present, with emphasis on earlier, “originary” works, and the 6000 + pages of texts of Carl Barks, the subversive Disney comic book artist/writer and animation story man from 1946–1966, who created Scrooge McDuck and whose work will be central to the theoretical, analytical, and historical issues of the class. ImageTexts of other artists, writers, animators, and studios to be studied will probably include Winsor McCay, George Herriman, Bill Cole, Chester Gould, Will Eisner, Frank Miller, Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, the Disney, Fleischer, Iwerks, and Warner Bros. Studios, and many others.
LIT 4322
The Folktale
For the purposes of this course, the term folktale will be held to encompass all forms of orally transmitted prose narratives, including myths, legends, memorates and wonder-tales. No knowledge of the folktale nor of the general field of folklore studies is assumed by the instructor. The first week or so of the course will attempt to orient all students to the place of the folktale in folklore studies. The three required texts have been chosen to give a representative collection of all types of prose narrative. While covering the major aspects of the familiar European tradition, the texts will also bring to our attention the ethnic traditions of the United States, particularly the oral narratives recorded from Native Americans in Wisconsin at the turn of the nineteenth/twentieth centuries and from African Americans in Eatonville, Florida in the 1920’s and ‘30’s. In addition, we will address those issues that have for half a century kept theorists and analysts struggling with the complexities of these “simple forms.”
Texts:
- Stith Thompson, The Folktale.
- Zora Neal Hurston, Mules and Men.
- Paul Radin, The Trickster: A Study in American Indian Mythology.
- William Bernard McCarthy, Jack in Two Worlds: Contemporary North American Tales & Their Tellers.
All the above texts are available from Goering’s Bookstore.
In addition to the study of tales within the texts above, we will address the following topics:
- The general field of folklore studies
- The types of oral narratives
- Varieties and characteristics of folktales
- The classification of folktales: Type and Motif indexing
- The collection of folktales
- Methods of analysis; typological, taxonomical, structural, historic/geographic, functional, psychoanalytical, contextual &c.
- The sublimated style of the folktale
There will be 3 tests given at roughly three week intervals during the course. In addition two reports, each of about 2500 words will be required.
LIT 4333
Literature for the Adolescent
This course is designed to provide a survey of major figures, historical trends, and critical approaches to that field of literature that occupies the shifting, transitional ground between children’s and adult literatures. This class examines a broad range of styles and genres intended for or chosen by the adolescent reader, beginning with classics from the 19th century and ending with some innovative novels from our own literary present. Taken together, these works will raise many of the questions (psychological, social, philosophical) that are asked by adolescents about their own challenging, demanding, and often defining experiences.
LIT 4333
Literature for the Adolescent: The Diary
The diary, we say, is a “secret” form which charts the interior development of a solitary individual. However, the diary may not be as “private” as we might originally imagine: the diarist always addresses herself to an interlocutor (if even an imagined one) and her writing is shape – as writing always is – by the multiple and often competing cultural discourses. Thus, the diary may be characterized as a liminal literary form, lying as it does at the intersection between private and public discourse. Bearing this characterization in mind, it may be argued that the diary is an especially useful form through which to study the representation of adolescence and adolescent (“YA”) literature. After all, adolescence, not unlike the diary, may be understood in terms of its liminal status: teenagers, we say, are poised precariously at the intersection between childhood and adulthood, and domestic (“interior”) life and public (“exterior”) life. Young adult literature is, as well, somethi