We will look at two groups of writers, separated by over a century, but treading on some of the same physical ground. First we will read the work of some of the American Puritans, who settled in Massachusetts, and spread out to form New England. And then we will read the work of a few of the canonical writers of the 19th century “New England Renaissance.” While they differ dramatically in terms of subject matter, style, genre and world view I would like to read them closely enough to see if there are any echo effects that have traveled across the gulf of time which separates them. Are there any important similarities between Ralph Waldo Emerson and John Cotton? Or between Henry David Thoreau and John Winthrop? Are New England’s Puritan roots still feeding the literary fruits that emerge two centuries later? Can such nourishment be detected in writers like Emerson and Thoreau who quite self-consciously distance themselves from the specific theological, moral, and social visions of their region’s first settlers? My hope is that asking the questions, even if they are answered in the negative, will prompt us to get closer to these writers, and allow us to get underneath some of the assumptions and biases that they are often shrouded within.
Be warned, that the Puritan writers are often a bit off-putting for some students—we will be reading through sermons, letters, transcripts and journals, but no fiction, poetry or drama. And we will often be reading through mere fragments of massive works, with all of the difficulties associated with that gesture—references that are obscure or unknown, and pieces of correspondence whose entire context is not available to our eyes. Yet I must encourage us to read closely when we might be tempted to just run our eyes down the page.
Be further warned that the Bible is the principle subject of the Puritan writers, and I will refer you to certain passages from it that might help make sense of what we are reading. We will, however, regard the Bible as simply a text among other equally important texts. The Bible has no more moral or religious authority than the Greek myths would have in a class on Greek epic poetry.
“. . . for has not some wise man of old remarked, that the perfect women are those who leave no histories behind them . . .” (Braddon, Aurora Floyd)
The literature of the Victorian period (1832-1901) reflects a concern with “The Woman Question,” with what should be the role of women within society, the family, and the home, a contentious and recurrent subject of debate during this time. During the latter half of the period, novels steeped in the conventions of the gothic produce some of the most provocative contributions to this debate. In particular, the sensation novels of the 1860s and the sensational fiction of the decadence or fin de siecle period challenge the image of the home and of marriage as something sacred. In addition to examining the way the fiction of this period subverts the middle class myth of domesticity, we’ll examine the difference between the female gothic of the sensation novel and the male gothic of the late nineteenth century. Finally, we’ll read a neo-Victorian novel, Sarah Waters’s Fingersmith, which re-writes the terms of the debate from a lesbian perspective.
Reading List: Lady Audley’s Secret (Mary Elizabeth Braddon), The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (R.L. Stevenson), Dracula (B. Stoker), Fingersmith (Sarah Waters).
Writing Assignments: three (3) short essays (approx. 750 words each).
In this course, we focus on the work of four Southern writers who will help us define “southerness.” In his fiction, William Faulkner created a fictional replica of the town in northern Mississippi where he grew up: Oxford, located in Lafayette County. He named the replica “Jefferson” and placed it in the center of Yoknapatawpha County, of which, as inventor, he claimed to be sole owner and proprietor. Flannery O’Connor based most of her thirty-one stories on her hometown, Milledgeville, Georgia, and Andalusia, the farm where she lived with her mother, outside Milledgeville. Harry Crews was born in Bacon County, Georgia; he also lived in the Springfield section of Jacksonville, which, as he writes in A Childhood: The Biography of a Place, “came up in conversations like the weather.” It was where “all of us from Bacon County went” when their luck gave out and the crops failed. Lee Smith, a Virginian, seems to live on the outer reaches of the South (some experts in regional culture argue that Appalachia is a distinct entity). But her representations of “Southerness” are no less compelling than those conceived by Faulkner, O’Connor and Crews. If we’re going to look for an answer to the question of what the South has meant in twentieth-century American Fiction, these are writers who literally “wrote the book.”
What does “setting” mean to these writers? How do they express their “sense of place”? Eudora Welty, a Mississippi writer of the generation following Faulkner’s, wrote that “the art that speaks most clearly, explicitly, directly, and passionately from its place of origin will remain the longest understood.” Among the things we will try to understand in this course is that anomaly, a sense of place, by which we don’t mean “local color” or even “regionalism.” Faulkner, O Connor, Crews, and Smith have re-defined those terms. How they represent the South will be the focus of this course. Texts will include the following: Harry Crews, A Childhood: The Biography of a Place; William Faulkner, Selected Short Stories; Flannery O’Connor, Flannery O’Connor: Collected Works; Lee Smith, Fair and Tender Ladies. Grades will be based on the collected scores of online quizzes and a “compare and contrast” essay.
“Smoke and Mirrors: Georg Büchner’s Theater of Disappearance/Werner Herzog’s Films of Appearance”
The little-known German writer Georg Büchner (1813-1837) wrote his three plays, a single short story, some political tracts, advanced scholarly projects on biology, and many letters to family and a girlfriend, and then—quite suddenly—died at the ripe young age of 23 from typhus. Soon after, Büchner was quickly forgotten, disappearing into his own death, as very little of what he had written had been published in his lifetime. As with most of us, oblivion seemed his fate. And besides, Büchner’s style, his themes, his politics, his philosophy were perhaps so far “ahead of their time” as to make his work, even if published, largely inaccessible to those around him. However, though he may or may not have known it, could it be that Büchner was writing for us, foreseeing a room full of readers in Florida, some of whom would instantly get what it was that he was writing, what it was that he was seeing in the modern world arising around him, and that has arisen around us? In this class, we will examine closely the writings of Georg Büchner. Our investigation will in part be directed by a parallel examination of Büchner’s compatriot, the modern filmmaker Werner Herzog (born 1942), watching a number of his films, such as his adaptation of Büchner’s Woyzeck, Aguirre: The Wrath of God, Fitzcarraldo and Grizzly Man.
Literary interpretation is an art. And it is a foundation for sophisticated critical thinking and writing within history, philosophy, culture, politics, media, arts, and even sciences. The goal of the class is to teach you how to read literature, and thus any text, with intensity. The course is designed to teach English majors reading, writing, and interpretation skills for the major, but it is appropriate for anyone who likes to read or who wants to learn to read well. We will read short stories, novels, and plays as a means of learning literary techniques, terms, and concepts. Frequent writing exercises and two interpretation papers as well as lots of enthusiasm are required. This course is required for film minors (and a prerequisite for several film classes).
Do you ever wonder why you read the same types of books over and over again? Or watch the same television shows? This course will explore why. Focusing on the Western, hard-boiled detection, romance, and science fiction, this course gives you a broad introduction to the genres that historically have captured the public’s imagination. We will explore the philosophical underpinnings of each genre in addition to examining ways of reading the genre, with particular attention paid to issues of race, class, and gender. Students will be expected to participate heavily, give one presentation, write responses to both critical articles and primary texts, and write a final
This course satisfies a post-1800 (EA18) and American literature (EAML) requirement. Short stories constitute a distinct genre: they vary from novels as much as lyric poems differ from epics or plays from films. Short fiction follows its own logic, one involving the economical use of language. A short story must be spare, describing scenes and situations, depicting characters, and unfolding and resolving conflicts using few words. As opposed to novelists, its practitioners can never digress. Every word matters. We are going to read the work of some of today’s foremost short story writers: Tobias Wolff, Amy Tan, Junot Díaz, George Saunders, Elizabeth McKenzie, Jim Shepard, zz Packer, T. Coraghessan Boyle, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Charles Johnson. Graduate students will produce a research paper.
LIT 4650-51152: Caribbean/American LiteratureNow that studies of cross-culturality, hybridity, and global migrations have moved from the margins to the center of literary and cultural studies, the Caribbean has been recognized as a dynamic space of sea changes wherein new structures of knowledge and performance emerge from longstanding and intense engagement with plantation ties to transnational economies and identities. The Caribbean is an intensely multicultural region. We will be reading works by some of the most powerful Caribbean writers and performers (working in both the Caribbean and the U.S.), including Bob Marley, Edwidge Danticat, Lydia Cabrera, Alejo Carpentier, Patrick Chamoiseau, Aime Cesaire, Kamau Brathwaite, Derek Walcott, Jean Rhys, and Paule Marshall. We will be immersing ourselves in Caribbean culture and its migrations as we engage topics such as Afro-creole languages and religions, carnival and music, postcolonial politics, tourism, hurricanes, and especially Florida's own Caribbean history and presence.
Students will choose an issue to explore in literature ranging form picture books through Young Adult novels. Possible topics include: 1. Cannibalism in fairy tales 2. The ³problem novel² for adolescents 3. The portrayal of Native Americans in young peoples¹ literature 4. Racism in picture books 5. The Disneyfication of children¹s texts and culture6. Who is in charge? 6. The role of the narrator 7. Put your issue here____________
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. Students will participate in the planning and execution of all aspects of play production. We will audition, cast, and produce Beth Henley’s Pulitzer-prize winning tragi-comedy, Crimes of the Heart. Students will have the opportunity to earn credit in areas that address their diverse interests and competencies: academic research, acting, technical and other behind-the-scenes work, business/production management. There are roles for 6 actors, 4 women and 2 men between 20 and 30 years of age. Auditions will be held during the first week of class and are open to class members and other members of the university community. Those planning on auditioning should be prepared for a rigorous five-week rehearsal period. We will rehearse both inside and outside of class. For more information, contact Dr. Pam Monteleone at pmontele@unf.edu or 704-3207. This course may be repeated for up to twelve (12) credits. The final product will be a fully realized production, an evening of two one-act plays presented for the university and Jacksonville communities. The production itself will celebrate not only the African American experience, but the collective experience of those students who, in recreating the voices of the past, perhaps learn to listen differently. An African American student majoring in Communications and minoring in Drama has chosen and will direct the two plays. This course offers opportunities for students who wish to focus on differing kinds of work for course credit: or the director, Jessica Rich (Jrich604@aol.com; 954-464-6175).
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 in the creative nonfiction workshop. Each of us, however long we’ve been writing, are wherever we are and hoping to get “better,” whatever this means to anyone at a particular time. We are always, every one of us, “beginners.” In this workshop, we explore possibilities that range from Gonzo to Tinker Creek and everything between and beyond. We tackle technical concerns and seek methods by which the reliable resources of imagination can be tapped in the service of the factual. We read and write creative nonfiction. We talk and write about the creative nonfiction written by others. We bite nails and open veins and tend to the work at hand. Traditional and nontraditional approaches will be discussed. Experimentation is encouraged. Laughter is relished.
Hollywood is quick to absorb historical events into filmic representations, but it stuttered over the Vietnam War, not quite sure how to appropriate the images from the first televised war, not sure what cultural questions needed to be addressed, and not quite able to find the narratives and characters that made sense within the complexity of Vietnam. Consequently, the Vietnam Film not only provides a rich cinematic text in itself, but it also prompts us to look back to the war film genre and forward to current representations of war to understand how it has formed as a genre and as a tool for cultural inquiry. Students will be expected to perform formal, thematic, and cultural analysis, so prior film class experience is recommended.
This course will provide an introduction to the field of linguistics. 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.
By the end of the course, students will 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)