The National Foundation for the Arts defines creative nonfiction as “factual prose that is also literary – infused with the stylistic devices, tropes and rhetorical flourishes of the best fiction and the most lyrical of narrative poetry.” That is our starting point . This course provides an introduction to the forms and methods of creative nonfiction, everything from immersion journalism to recorded reverie, from Gonzo to Tinker Creek. Emphasis will be on the lyric essay and collage. We will bite nails and open veins and tend to the work at hand. Experimentation is encouraged. Laughter is relished.
This course is an introductory workshop in writing for film. We will explore the fundamentals of dramatic writing- character, structure, dialogue, genres- screenplay style and format and produce a fully realized, 100-120 page, professional level feature length motion picture screenplay. We will also include "real-world" sessions on how to pursue careers in writing, producing and directing for film and television as well as discuss further educational opportunities for the study and practice of cinematic arts.
This course is an introductory workshop in writing for television. We will explore the fundamentals of dramatic writing- character, structure, dialogue, genres- screenplay style and format and produce a fully realized, 100-120 page, professional level feature length motion picture screenplay. We will also include "real-world" sessions on how to pursue careers in writing, producing and directing for film and television as well as discuss further educational opportunities for the study and practice of cinematic arts.
This is an introductory course for people who are fascinated by other people. It’s for people who try to imagine what these other people think and feel, and how they act when they’re alone. It’s for people who imagine people in their craziest, cruelest, sweetest, and most self-destructive moments and know they have to record them. We’ll learn how to describe these moments in ways that are both interesting and comprehensible, so that we can begin to craft our visions of the world.
This workshop will focus on academic-style poetry with the goal of publishing in literary magazines. By the end of the semester, you will learn how to use similes, metaphors, line breaks, stanzas, free verse, and rhyme. To help you become a better writer, we will analyze published poems as well as critique student poems through online forums. The class will take place entirely on Blackboard and offers a flexible schedule. This class will involve a lot of work and will include honest critiques of your writing, so it is not for those with a thin skin or busy schedule. For the serious writer, though, the work will be rewarding. As a community of fellow writers, we will support each other's efforts to explore the art of poetry.
This course will introduce students to scientific, technical, and professional writing with a focus on practical information about communicating in different workplace environments and professional/technical discourse communities.
Students will analyze rhetorical situations and issues (of audience, organization, visual design, style, and the material production of documents) common to different scientific, technical, and professional writing genres, including emails, letters, resumes, memos, reports (progress, lab, etc.), proposals, technical descriptions, technical definitions, and technical manuals.
In this version of ENC 2930, we will concentrate on working with and in the digital environment. Digital Humanities is an emergent field, and given the trajectory of our culture, the digital is the world in which much of our composing and comprehending is and will be done. For the purpose of this course, we will use the “archive” as our digital portal and home.
Our project will be to produce, in web writing and design, a digital archive of the literature and history of Jacksonville, Florida. The project will involve blogging progress reports, gathering and digitizing (if needed) primary and secondary sources, designing a website devoted to the gathering, and finally, producing an analytic and reflective website in tangent with your work in the class.
We will read several texts, including a HTML/CSS guide, short theoretical pieces by Walter Benjamin, Gregory Ulmer, Jorge Luis Borges, etc., but the bulk of our analyses will be self directed. Also, we will examine the new and upcoming issues of digital journals such as Vectors, to find ideas for approaching the digital media.
ENC 2930, The Informed Writer, is a selection in the Writing Sequence courses in the General Education program at UNF. This class will focus on Topics in Genetic Research. Students in this class will engage various types of arguments covering these topics and develop essential skills for textual analysis, critical thinking, creativity, self-awareness and reasoned argument in a variety of written, spoken, and technological formats relative to research and writing in the disciplines of the natural sciences. Students must earn a grade of C or better to receive credit for this class.
Designed as a writing course for prospective physical & occupational therapists as well as for nursing students and others heading into the health field, this class will explore the world of medicine and rehabilitation from the patient’s perspective. The purpose of this orientation is to help future health professionals become better patient advocates. To understand the world from the patient’s point of view, we shall read and write about a number of texts by people who have been patients. To that end, we shall examine a number of texts by and about patients. Some of the composition assignments will be geared toward writing about texts (books, stories, & films) presenting the patients’ viewpoint. A few are:
The Long Road Home by G. B. Trudeau (graphic novel about an American soldier wounded in Iraq); The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby (chief editor of Paris’s Elle magazine); Breathing for a Living by Brown University student Laura Rothenburg (young woman with cystic fibrosis); My Left Foot by Christy Brown (Brown encountered physical therapy when it was in its infancy); The Waterdance, 1992 film (directors Neal Jimenez & Michael Steinberg; acting credits: William Forsythe, Helen Hunt, Wesley Snipes, Eric Stoltz); Born on the Fourth of July, 1989 Academy Award-winning film (director: Oliver Stone; acting credits: Tom Cruise, William Dafoe, Kyra Sedgwick).
What is education? What are educators’ responsibilities? What should we teach? What is the relationship between “teacher” and “student”? How can education face the challenges of a changing and diverse society? Especially in trying economic times, how should we fund schools and programs? How should we grade or evaluate students, or should we grade at all? Conversely, how do we hold educators, schools and systems “accountable”? What roles do standardized tests and rubrics, like the FCAT or SAT, have in such evaluation and accountability?
Though this course will explore these questions and more, the central emphasis of the course is writing as a means of deepening our knowledge of what we have read and discussed. Through reading in different genres about these topics, writing in different genres about them, and discussing both reading and writing, students will become familiar with the topics and discourse of education, and become more skillful writers, readers, thinkers and speakers.
Please contact me with questions or concerns:
Russ Turney
rturney@unf.edu
620-1261
This course is designed for students interested in examining the controversial topic of immigration. We will investigate the issues and propose solutions. This will require self-examination. After all, America was founded by immigrants or maybe not. Perhaps we will need to clarify this country’s origins and surely we will read some interesting texts in a variety of genres which pose provocative questions about who we are as a country, how we feel about newcomers, and how we treat people who want to be like us.
We will begin with government-generated literature, such as the Citizenship Test. Will you pass it? We will look at the Oath of Allegiance to this great country. Could you swear to uphold the principles this oath requires? Maybe we will see the need to re-write this document. Our reading of immigrant narratives will take us on fascinating journeys after which we will examine immigration theory. “Do the metaphors that have been used to describe the way immigrants have integrated into American society shed any light on the process: Melting pot? Salad bowl? Mosaic?” (from Immigration: A Wadsworth Casebook in Argument by Sharon Walsch and Evelyn D. Asch). Furthermore, a course on immigration cannot ignore Mexico and we will consult experts to help us develop the broadest possible perspective in “The Case of Hispanic Immigration” (Walsch and Asch chapter 6).
This course will culminate with a final research project in which we will construct oral histories of real immigrants. Will our views about immigration change during the course of the semester? Will we take a “Love Train” approach to this national concern or will some of us scream, “Hey! You! Get Off of My Cloud”? Contact Barbara Roberts at broberts@unf.edu for further information.
This course will build on the rhetorical strategies, principles, and practices developed in ENC1101 with a focus on research-based writing in diverse academic and non-academic situations. Assignments will be relevant to the writing needs of those students planning a career in business. We will discuss conventions and expectations in the academic and professional communities associated with various business/office situations; assignments will include production of business documents (reports, letters, resumes, and more); writing practice in a variety of genres, including the argumentative essay; practice in addressing (in writing and in speech) a variety of audiences; and practice in using research strategies relevant to professional communities.
Great Feats!:
Writing about invention in engineering and technology.
This course will examine the role of engineering in context of cultural necessity. We will ask the question: what drives engineering invention and innovation? What is driven by the innovation and invention? We will focus on rhetorical, research, and revision skills that will help as we move into our major fields. Emphasis will be placed on documentation and compositional styles used in the field of engineering, but all majors are welcome.
Possible texts:
Petroski, Henry. The Evolution of Useful Things: How Everyday Artifacts-From Forks and Pins to Paper Clips and Zippers-Came to be as They are
Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Casey, S.M. Set Phasers on Stun: And Other True Tales of Design, Technology, and Human Error
LIT 2932 is the last of the Writing Sequence courses in the General Education program at UNF. The theme for this course is Jazz. Through group assignments, term papers, and creative writing exercises, students in this class will continue to develop essential skills for textual analysis, critical thinking, creativity, self-awareness and reasoned argument in a variety of critical, technological, and performance settings. Students must earn a grade of C or better to receive credit for this class.
This section of LIT 2932 explores the uncanny across a wide range of texts and contexts. The uncanny describes not so much a literary theme or movement as an aesthetic quality of literature that provokes eerie, strange, creepy, unsettling, haunting, or disturbing feelings. Discussion will focus on a number of elements linked to such sensations, including odd familiarities, haunted architecture, doppelgangers, coincidences, prosthetics, animism, identity disturbances, death, laughter, language, and acts of writing.
The uncanny, by its nature, disrupts intellectual certainty and thus offers extensive possibilities for exploration. As a general-education writing course, this course asks students to engage the uncanny through reading and critical analysis skills, intensive reflection on uncanny literature and experiences, and development of organized and reasoned arguments.
What is Jewish Literature? Do we know it by its subjects and themes, or is it simply literature created by Jews. In 1914, Franz Kafka wrote in his diary “What have I in common with Jews? I have scarcely anything in common with myself.” Maybe Kafka’s question is the question of Jewish literature itself. Maybe the answer is in the spirit of questioning ingrained over millennia. We’ll explore this and other possible answers together. We’ll take slivers of angst, self-doubt, and ties that bind and chafe, layering them between the sour dough of exile and crusty redemption. Then we’ll sprinkle liberally with ethical fervor and top off the whole meshugas with a healthy dollop of apostasy. Our emphasis will be on contemporary voices at this ragged edge of history, though earlier authors will be represented. Some writers whose work we may consider include Shalom Auslander, Etgar Keret, Yoel Hoffman, Amy Bender, Tova Reich, Nathan Englander, Lara Vapynar, Cynthia Ozick, Zvi Kolitz, Franz Kafka, Bruno Schulz, and S. Ansky.
This course is an introduction to acting. We will focus on techniques and challenges associated with the acting process, with the ultimate aim of creating a character and interacting with others in a dramatic scene. The course will include acting exercises, monologue and scene work. This course is highly recommended for students who plan to participate in English department productions and may be repeated for up to six (6) credits.