COURSE DESCRIPTIONS SUMMER 2008
SUMMER A
AML 3031 50759 Periods of Early American Literature
Jason Mauro
TR 610-940
AML 3102 51360 American Fiction
Bart Welling
TR 1240-410
America has always been a fertile place for fiction; as many scholars have observed, “America” was itself a powerful fiction long before the establishment of the United States, and even before all but a tiny fraction of the lands of the western hemisphere had been claimed and mapped by Europeans. In this class we will explore key schools and developments in the fiction of the United States in the context of some of the larger cultural narratives that have inspired, shaped, and often bedeviled our identities, values, and lifeways as inhabitants of a bewilderingly diverse “New World.” Our goal will not simply be that of using literature to identify and deconstruct these master narratives (America as Promised Land, the United States as America, Americans as Rugged Individualists, the U.S. as Bastion of Freedom, and so on). Rather, we will carefully track the complex interplay between master narratives and historical realities, and between foundational group narratives and the individual literary productions of some of our most talented professional fictionists. We will also frequently turn back to scrutinize the contemporary American “storyscape,” asking how our private life stories mesh with new master narratives, how cultural fictions that have been officially disavowed (having to do, for instance, with white superiority) continue to haunt us, how old narratives have adapted to new social trends and technologies of expression, and how the most useful American fictions may be bequeathed to future generations.
Requirements: Strong attendance and participation; one research paper and presentation; regular Blackboard postings; short quizzes.
CRW 3930 50723 Poetry Workshop
Katherine Espano
Distance Learning
CRW 3930 51362 Fiction Workshop
Mark Ari
TR 900-1230
ENC 3250 51365 Professional Communications
Timothy Donovan
TR 610-940
ENG 4013 50083 Approaches to Literary Interpretation
Timothy Donovan
TR 1240-410
ENG 4505 51366 International Film
Jason Mauro
TR 1240-410
ENL 3501 50758 Periods of Early British Literature
Tiffany Beechy
MW 1240-410
This course will introduce students to major literary works and cultural movements from the early Anglo-Saxon period through Chaucer (roughly 600AD-1400AD). The medieval island of Britain was a nesting-ground for unique and often cross-fertilized forms of art and literature. Anglo-Saxon England was a crossroads of several cultures: Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, Roman, Roman Christian, Viking Scandinavian, and at the end of the period, Norman French. The main body of surviving Old English texts combines elements of all these traditions, most obviously the Anglo-Saxon and Latin (Roman Christian). After the French invasion of England in 1066, multiple influences from the Continent poured into England, and the Middle English we see emerge in the thirteenth century is a hybrid of a new sort. We will consider both the vast changes that occur across the period often lumped together as “medieval” and the things that seem to persist as elements of literary “Englishness.”
LIT 3331 50091 Children’s Literature
Betsy Nies
MTWR 1240-220
Did you know the little mermaid of the Hans Christian Andersen’s tale by that name doesn’t get her man and the wicked stepsisters of the Grimm version of Cinderella get their eyes pecked out for all of their wickedness? Not how you remember these stories? Come find out how these ancient fairy tales have changed over the years in response to changing concepts of childrearing and shifting cultural values. Find out why the original story of Pinocchio about a wicked puppet who kicks his father upon birth morphed into the Disney version of an innocent young puppet who acts likes a sweet little boy. Why might Disney have changed that puppet into the wide eyed innocent child? What ghosts lurk in his own past that might inform his endless revisions of these horrifying tales? Texts will include Maria Tatar’s Classic Fairy Tales, Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio, J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan, Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden, and various Disney revisions of classic fairy tales. Students will be asked to give one presentation and write daily responses to their reading. In addition to reading fairy tales and novels, students will read historical documents covering the history of childhood. Be prepared for a heavy yet interesting reading load.
LIT 4934 51372 Early British Women Writers
Chris Gabbard
MW 1240-410
Historically speaking, the novel is a relatively recent literary development. It did not burst onto the cultural scene in full form; rather, it developed over several centuries. Women played a key role in developing the techniques of story-telling that eventuated in the emergence of the novel as our culture’s preeminent literary expression. Women acted this role in the face of moral condemnation because it was not considered respectable for a woman to publish her writing. And yet, it was because of this condemnation and because women writers felt the urgency of the issues pressed upon them by their gender that the novel developed as it did.
We will read each text on the syllabus with an eye for the innovations it introduces with regard to story telling. We are going to begin with a number of Aphra Behn's relatively short fictional works: "The Unfortunate Bride," "The Fair Jilt," "The History of the Nun," and "The Adventure of the Black Lady" before going on to her novella, OROONOKO: OR, THE ROYAL SLAVE (1688). Next we will read a novel of amorous intrigue, PHILIDORE AND PLACENTIA (1730), by one of the most popular and prolific writers of the first half of the eighteenth century, Eliza Haywood. Then comes SENSE AND SENSIBILITY (1811) by Jane Austen, many of whose novels in the last twenty years have been adapted for the screen. Two of the most popular novels in English, WUTHERING HEIGHTS (1847), by Emily Brontë, and JANE EYRE (1847) by Charlotte Brontë, will close the semester.
This class will place a strong emphasis on writing. Students will produce an interpretive analysis of some aspect of one of the texts on the reading list. Through multi-draft revision and peer-editing processes, we will strive to render each essay’s argument clear, coherent, and concise, to free the prose from mechanical and grammatical errors, and to make the use of evidence persuasive.
Grade components: Participation (both in class & Blackboard), reading quizzes, semester paper, final exam
LIT 4991 50498 Problem of Evil
Mary Baron
MW 900-1230
This course explores the nature, causes, effects, and possible responses to human evil through readings in history, literature, psychology, sociology, and theology. The material is often disturbing to students. I do not recommend that you enroll during a semester when you are having a difficult time with life in general.
The course requires no previous work in the disciplines listed above, but students should have completed the Gordon Rule sequence or should have equivalent skills in reading and writing about complex texts.
THE 4923 51503 Play Production
Pamela Monteleone
MW 610-940
Question: What 413 year-old Shakespearean comedy speaks personally to young people today?
Answer: The Taming of the Shrew
Have you ever been crazy in love? Have you ever played a role to get a “guy” or a “girl” to notice you? Has it ever worked? Has it ever backfired? Have you ever admired or mocked the role playing of others? Have you ever been fooled by the role playing of others? Have you ever noticed the discrepancy between what people seem and what they really are? Have you ever questioned who you are in relation to the roles you play?
Shakespeare’s plays come alive in performance. This course will focus on making one comedy from the 1590s speak to the concerns of young people in 2008. Specifically, we will focus on the connection between love and role playing, on both role playing’s positive and negative aspects, on its transformative power and its limitations. We will begin with brief lectures on how to read a script, on Shakespeare's dramatic technique, and on how to develop a character. The remainder of the course will be devoted to a fully realized production of The Taming of the Shrew for the university and Jacksonville communities.
Mark Twain once said, “The fellow holding the cat by the tail is getting twice as much information as the fellow just watching.” This is a hands-on course. Holding the cat by the tail means students will participate in the planning and execution of all aspects of play production. This course offers opportunities for students who wish to focus on different kinds of work for course credit: academic research, acting, technical and other behind-the-scenes work, business/production management. There are roles for 20 male and females of all ages and races. Auditions will be held during the first week of class. There is no extensive reading list for this course, but if you audition for and are cast in a major role expect to rehearse both inside and outside of class.
This course has four objectives: (1) to learn how to read a Shakespeare play as actors looking for clues to performance (2) to learn how to translate a script into a theatrical event (3) to learn how to concentrate on our lives in the present by living in the moment as part of an ensemble (4) to learn about our “selves” through focusing on the transformative power of role playing. For more information contact Dr. Pam Monteleone at pmontele@unf.edu; 704-3207.
SUMMER B
AML 3041 51359 Periods of Later American Literature
Bart Welling
TR 900-1230
CRW 3930 50724 Screenwriting Workshop
Allan Marcil
TR 1240-410
LIN 3010 50763 Principles of Linguistics
Tiffany Beechy
MW 1240-410
This course will provide an introduction to the field of linguistics and its application in literary studies. If one wants to know how the body works, one studies biology and chemistry. To know how the universe works, one studies physics. To understand how language works, we study linguistics. Language is a subtle and largely unconscious cognitive phenomenon. It operates on both “hardware” (specific parts of the brain) and “software” (programming that runs at set stages of human development) that appear to be genetically endowed. We are born with the innate ability to learn language, in a way that we are not born with in relation to learning differential calculus, for instance. What specific cultures provide is the raw data of experience, and this experience leads to the differences between any two languages—differences that are much more superficial than they might seem. This may be an unfamiliar way of thinking about language, but it can provide great insight into how language operates both within us as individuals and socially in our culture. Furthermore, the study of language is a powerful tool for understanding how literature—the artful use of language—makes its many kinds of impacts. It helps us get past the statement, “I just like it,” and achieve the ability to describe just what in a given word, phrase, or poem makes it pleasing.
After the first section of the course, in which we explore what Steven Pinker calls “the language instinct,” students should be able to:
identify what is scientific about linguistics;
describe the major design features of human language (Universal Grammar);
describe the sounds of English, and how those sounds are arranged in a system
(phonology);
describe the structure of words in English (morphology);
describe the structure of sentences in English (syntax);
describe the significance of different dialects and historical change in English (comparative analysis).
The second section of the course will apply these tools to the analysis of texts, resulting in students’ ability to describe the structure of literary works, verbal exchanges in a variety of settings, and other forums in which language plays a role, and to consider their political implications.
LIT 3043 51369 Modern and Contemporary Drama
Clark Lunberry
MW 610-940
“‘Dying in Front of Our Eyes’: Theaters of Disappearance and Loss”
The modern French dramatist Antonin Artaud wrote that “. . . the highest possible idea of the theater is one that reconciles us philosophically with Becoming.” In this class, we will be training our vision onto such manifestations of performed “becoming,” through theater (and theory), looking carefully at the works of various modern and contemporary European dramatists (Büchner, Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekhov, Artaud, Brecht, Beckett....). Through the readings, we will direct our attention onto the movements of staged disappearance and loss, by looking at those more “experimental” writers who have chosen to work at the extremities of theater, within the “avant-garde,” those who have insisted on always testing the theater’s (porous) borders, expanding its capacities. Expanding it towards what, one might ask? And why bother? And if, becomingly, disappearance and loss emerge as our “endgame,” what remains—nonetheless—to be seen?
LIT 4931 51370 Wild Encounters
Bart Welling
TR 900-1230
Why do “trained” wild animals turn on their human masters? Why do good pets go bad? What happens when humans give expression to “the beast within”? Our airwaves and movie houses in the U. S. have long been full of sensationalistic or simply trivial answers to problems like these. Meanwhile, generations of writers, filmmakers, and theorists have been dealing with animal behavior, human/animal interactions, and questions of human/animal identity in ways that challenge our most fundamental assumptions about who we are, what—or who—“they” are, and how “we” ought to be treating “them.” In this class we will not just encounter some of the most famous “beasts” in modern literature and film, from Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’s human and animal yearlings to Jaws to James Dickey’s nightmarish backwoodsmen in Deliverance, but will frame our encounters with them by means of critical engagement with leading animal rights philosophers, biologists, ecocritics and ecofeminists, and other participants in the growing field of what might be called animal studies. Instead of advocating a particular political agenda, our goal will be to create an open and informed dialogue about the functions animals and “beastliness” serve in modern culture, and, more broadly, about the roles literature and film can play in helping humankind make sense of its place in a world full of other life forms.
Primary texts: Erica Fudge, Animal (Reaktion); Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, The Yearling (Scribner); J.M. Coetzee, The Lives of Animals (Princeton); James Dickey, Deliverance (Delta); Marc Bekoff, Minding Animals: Awareness, Emotions, and Heart (Oxford UP).
Requirements: Strong attendance and participation; one research paper; one field experience and related presentation; regular Blackboard postings; short quizzes.
LIT 4934 51371 Faulkner and Film
Nancy Levine
MW 610-940
I'm interested in ways that Faulkner has been represented in the medium of film. Viewed as commodities sold to a public under Faulkner's name, most of the film adaptations of his work make one forget that Faulkner wrote for the movies. His career as a Hollywood screenwriter brought him in touch with film methods that he had been incorporating in his work before he even set foot on a film lot. His early short stories, if looked at as potential screenplays, dispel the myth that Faulkner's most notable quality was an addiction to impossibly long sentences. Filmed versions of Faulkner's texts, even those that come short of his multi‑dimensional treatment of time and character, function as useful critical commentary, however. We will try to demonstrate why Faulkner's complex, truncated plotting is essential to his vision. The course will focus on short stories and novels on film, as well as filmic novels. Readings will include: "A Rose for Emily," "Barn Burning," "The Bear," "Spotted Horses," "Old Man," "Tomorrow," and such novels as Sanctuary, Absalom, Absalom! and Intruder in the Dust. Expect to be asked to read selected critical texts, such as Peter Lurie's Vision's Immanence . Grades will be based on weekly quizzes, and a final paper, subject to be discussed.
LIT 4935 51374 Fantastic Cosmologies
Mary Baron
MW 900-1230
In this course we will analyze fantasy fiction that creates an entire alternate cosmos. We will read C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkein and Philip Pullman with a view to outlining and analyzing the rules that govern their fictional worlds.
We will also discuss whether, individually and/or as a group, their proposed worlds are dystopias or utopias.