Undergraduate Courses, Spring 2010

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:

Spring 2010, Lower Division, Special Content

ENC 1145

Writing about Young Adult Fiction

Michele Lee

This course will address various issues closely related to the experience of reading, analyzing, and writing about young adult fiction, including questions of identity, social space, and censorship. With the current popularity of texts such as Twilight and Harry Potter, the young adult novel has become an important commodity marketed for a specific reader but often embraced by the larger culture. In order to discuss this current phenomenon, we will begin with the history of adolescence and the adolescent protagonist, and then move on to more contemporary texts.

ENC 1145

Writing about Adaptation

Lindsay Brown

Adaptation: a process of reworking content through a different medium or, less often, significantly transforming the content to apply to a new context. See Star Trek (2009). Appropriation: adopting, borrowing, recycling, or sampling elements of visual culture.

This course will explore adaptation and appropriation in various media in order to examine how media dictate production and reception of meaning. As they study such varied objects as digital video art, experimental music, fan fiction, hip-hop, manga, and modern painting, students will develop their critical and expository writing skills.

We will begin by surveying theories of reference and quotation, touching on myth, folk art, classical music, and the idea of authorship. After considering historically avant-garde artistic practices such as collage and montage, we will turn to new media, particularly the prevalence of sampling and the constraints put on new media objects by their mainstream origins.

There will be outside screenings and some outside reading. Students will be expected to connect their own interests to the themes at hand. They will be expected to explore unknown and unusual texts in their papers. Ultimately, the class will ask questions essential to media production today, such as: Who is the “author” of a mashup? What remains of the original song when it's sampled by Jay-Z? Is there anything subversive or transformative about the “Brokeback to the Future” trailer? What kind of world is portrayed by these artistic practices, and how do we engage it?

ENC 1145

Writing about 19th-Century British Literature

John Wiehl

This course will introduce students to the practice of writing about nineteenth-century British literature. Students will have the opportunity to write many different kinds of literary criticism (historical, close reading, theoretical), and they will get to polish their writing techniques generally.

ENC 1145

Writing about Nature

Renee Dowbnia

This course will examine the relationship between humans and nature from a variety of perspectives. Topics covered will include philosophical conceptions of nature; contemporary environmental concerns/debates and environmental sustainability; intersections of nature, gender, and race; and representations of nature and environmental activism in pop culture. We will pay special attention to evaluating mainstream and alternative worldviews and how they influence environmental policies and attitudes. Readings will cover both environmental theory and activism and will be supplemented with film, art, and print media sources.

ENC 1145

Writing about Testimony & Memory in Victorian Culture

J. Stephen Addcox

This course will examine the ideas of testimony and memory within legal and psychological contexts. We will consider the following questions: Can we trust memory to relate events properly, even when there is no incentive for deception? What happens to testimony when memory fails? How did Victorian literature approach these problems and questions?

Students will write persuasive arguments around the themes introduced in the course readings. We will review and discuss strategies for writing a thesis, organizing sentences and paragraphs, finding outside sources, and incorporating effective evidence into a well-crafted paper. Writing assignments will include three mid-length papers and a major research paper, along with shorter response papers throughout the semester. Students with the following interests should consider this class: Victorian literature and culture, 19th century British history (both legal and psychological), and theories of memory and evidence.

ENC 1145

Writing about the South

Jordan Dominy

Through a variety of assignments that will develop critical thinking and research skills, this course asks students to explore and critique conventional portrayals and constructions of the U.S. South in both literary and popular texts. “Southern” as a commodifiable identity will be emphasized. Texts will include essays, stories, poems, periodicals, popular music, television, and film.

ENC 1145

Writing about the University

Kiren Valjee

In this course, students will write about the current state of American higher education by drawing on their own experiences and by conducting research. Over the course of the semester, students will work together and individually to create a dynamic body of text in the style of a blog or wiki. Thus, they will continually add to, edit, and comment on their own and each other’s writing. No prior knowledge of html or other code is necessary.

ENL 2930

The Short Story in English

David Leavitt

Art is too long and life is too short.

– Grace Paley, when asked why she only wrote stories

This course will serve as an introduction to the tradition of the short story in twentieth-century American and English literature. Rather than working from an anthology, we will focus on six acknowledged masters of the form – including three who have devoted themselves exclusively to the short story and UF professor Mary Robison – and read extensively from their collections. Topics to be considered will include:

The reading list will draw from the short fiction of the following writers: