Course Descriptions

AML 6507 83436 Later American Literature (Ecocritical Approaches to U.S. Environmental Writing and Green Visual Culture) M 6-8:45 Bart Welling

Who cares about environmental writing and visual representations of nature? These days, it would make more sense to ask who can afford not to care about them. We live in an era of unprecedented ecological degradation, compounded by the fact that the world’s human population is projected to keep expanding well into this century. But we’re also living at a time when new local and global grassroots movements are emerging to deal with these challenges.  Far from merely celebrating rocks and trees, the authors and image-makers who focus on questions about our place in the biosphere and our relationships with nonhuman beings can challenge our most deeply help assumptions about who we are and how we live. Moreover, they can help us envision a future defined not by scarcity and conflict but by greater abundance for all of the world’s species and cultures. The tradition that Henry David Thoreau’s Walden (1854) helped usher in has played a major role in the creation of national parks and the preservation of wilderness areas, but it has also participated in key debates on issues that affect the lives of people in the heart of the city: sprawl and overpopulation, smog and nuclear radiation, pesticides and organic farming, homelessness and urban planning. Creators of environmental culture will continue to light our way as we move (I hope!) towards greener sources of energy, wiser systems of transportation, and cultures centering on sustainability and compassion rather than hyper-consumption and techno-narcissism. In short, if you’re interested in literature that has the potential to spark profound transformations in how people think, work, eat, shop, build, get around, and even express themselves spiritually, then you should care about environmental writing. 

Despite the unfortunate fact that environmental issues tend to be coded as liberal concerns in contemporary U. S. culture, this class avoids trying to “convert” students to any one political perspective. Rather, it aims to introduce students to a set of environmentally-oriented literary texts and new ways of analyzing them—critical practices that have proliferated in recent years under the sign of ecocriticism—that will involve everyone in non-partisan political activities of the best kind: engaging in spirited dialogue with the authors on our list and with each other; analyzing and producing environmental and ecocritical rhetoric; getting our hands dirty as we leave the classroom to test and build arguments about the everyday places we inhabit; and asking deep questions about how these places might be transformed.

*American, late/post-1860 requirements.

CRW 6925 83443 Story and Anti-Story R 6-8:45 Mark Ari

What is a story and where does it come from? What are its essential components? In this course, students will consider various answers to these questions. They will create and discuss works that explore and challenge assumptions, opening up unforeseeable possibilities for their own imaginative expression. Finally, students will prepare a portfolio of 25-30 pages, though the page count is flexible depending on the nature of the work.

*Concentration in Creative Writing or elective requirement.

ENC 5720 81959 Problems in Contemporary Composition W 6-8:45 Linda Howell

This course will introduce students to the major theories of contemporary composition, the major theories of sentence and paragraph construction, and the design of writing assignments and assessments of those assignments.

*Concentration in Composition and Rhetoric requirement.

ENG 6019 80335 Contemporary Literary Criticism and Theory T 6-8:45 Jennifer Lieberman

This face-to-face course will serve as a graduate-level introduction to literary theory and criticism. We will explore rise of English as a discipline and a survey of major literary theories and critical debates—potentially including topics such as formalism, phenomenology, reception theory, structuralism and poststructuralism, semiotics, deconstruction, psychoanalysis, Marxism, feminism, postcolonialism, and multiculturalism. We will learn to read difficult primary and seminal texts by Freud, Barthes, Foucault, Derrida, Said, Gates, Jameson, Williams, Butler, Haraway, among others. We will pay special attention to recent trends and other theories that are on the rise in the field.

Unlike the traditional, dry, academic theory course, this section will have a fun twist: we will be studying theory for life. We will practice and analyze both academic and nonacademic forms of writing about theory and examine as a class how theory can be relevant to our lives beyond academia. Students should expect to participate in class regularly, engage in some class co-facilitation, and practice writing in different modalities.

*M.A. requirement. 

LIT 5934 Slavery and the Enlightenment MW 1:30-2:45 Chris Gabbard

Course description: Scholars usually associate the eighteenth-century Enlightenment with the rise of notions of liberty and human rights. This course will explore the Enlightenment’s dark side, examining its literature as well as the lived experience of enslaved peoples of the African diaspora as they document it in their life writing. Readings will concern the plantation economy of the British pan-Atlantic, focusing on not only the Caribbean, Florida, the British colonies in America, and the U.S. up through the Civil War, but also Britain.

Primary readings include Aphra Behn’ Oroonoko, Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding (excerpts), Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations (excerpts), Olaudah Equiano’s The Interesting Narrative, Mary Prince’s The History of Mary Prince, Quobna Ottobah Cugoano’s Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evils of Slavery, Ignatius Sancho’s Letters (excerpts), Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the Virginia Colony (excerpts), Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address

Secondary readings: Adorno and Horkheimer’s The Dialectic of Enlightenment (excerpt), Michel Foucault’s “What Is Enlightenment?” Stefanie Hunt-Kennedy’s Between Fitness and Death: Disability and Slavery in the Caribbean (excerpts), and Justin Roberts’ Slavery and the Enlightenment in the British Atlantic, 1750-1807 (excerpts).

*British, early/pre-1800 requirements.

AML 2020 51337 American Literature II (Anthropocene Edition) Bart Welling MTWR 10:50-12:30 (Summer B)

Just as the United States has led the world in developing the technologies and modes of capitalist economics that are currently destroying the world, writers in the U.S. have long worked at the forefront of thinkers questioning the rightness and wisdom of this way of life. Far from merely celebrating rocks and trees, authors who focus on questions about our place in the biosphere and our relationships with nonhuman beings can challenge our most deeply help assumptions about who we are and how we live. Moreover, they can help us envision a future defined not by scarcity and conflict but by greater abundance for all the world’s species and cultures. The tradition that Henry David Thoreau’s Walden; or, Life in the Woods (1854) helped usher in has played a major role in the creation of national parks and the preservation of wilderness areas, but it has also participated in key debates on issues that affect the lives of people in the heart of the city. And creators of eco-media increasingly focus on the intersectionality of environmental problems—for example, how global warming is a moral issue as much as (or even more than) it is a technological and political challenge, because the people who have benefited the least from burning fossil fuels are paying the heaviest price for the developed world’s petro-prosperity. I and other practitioners of Earth-oriented humanities scholarship—ecocritics—share eco-artists’ concern over the plight of humanity and nonhuman life, and work to illuminate how artists’ representations shape audiences’ ways of thinking and feeling about our common planetary home.

Environmental writers, image-makers, and critics will continue to light our way as we move (I hope!) towards greener sources of energy, wiser systems of transportation, and cultures centering on sustainability and compassion rather than hyper-consumption and techno-narcissism.  In short, if you’re interested in literature that has the potential to spark profound transformations in how people think, work, eat, shop, build, get around, and even express themselves spiritually, and if you’re interested in learning how to analyze environmental media ecocritically, then this class is for you.

CRW 2600 50576 Introduction to Screenwriting DL Stephan Boka (Summer A)

This course covers the basics of the craft of screenwriting such as formatting, structure, theme, character, and more. Students will pitch movie ideas, write a treatment, outline, and learn scene construction for a feature film. Students will participate in workshops to further develop their work and apply lessons to the development of the work of their peers.

CRW 4924 51365 MW 6:10-9:40 Advanced Creative Writing Workshop Mark Ari (Summer A)

This workshop explores fiction and creative nonfiction—though we may stretch and explode the boundaries of genre. We will consider various approaches to prewriting, revising, editing, and publication to identify and apply methods that best reflect your own artistic character. We will explore techniques to help you tap the reliable resources of your imagination to create a portfolio of 15 pages, though the page count is flexible depending on the nature of the work. 

ENC 3310 50206 Writing Prose DL James Beasley (Summer A)

In ENC 3310, we will examine three of the most widely-held writing rules in American institutions in the 21^st century: that every paper must have a thesis statement, every paper must be free from grammar error, and every paper may only examine one topic. In short, ENC 3310 is truly an intermediate writing course. By intermediate, I mean that it serves as a pause, a time to examine the writing you have already done, but also a time to anticipate and identify the writing you would like yet to do. We will examine the difference between the effect your writing has had, and the affect you would like it to have.

ENC 4403 51355 Grant Writing DL Jennifer Lieberman (Summer B)

Do you know of a community service organization that needs funding? Do you hope to start one of your own? Do you want to fund your own research one day? Grant writing is an important skill that could serve students in myriad professions—including students who want to help nonprofit organizations, students who want to fund their own research, and students who want to give back to their college and their community. This asynchronous online (e.g., no Zoom meeting) class will begin by identifying the research and communication skills necessary to write a successful grant. Over the course of the semester, students will compose and submit grants for funding, gaining invaluable professional experience and potentially leaving an actual impression on their community in the process.

FIL 4828 50687 Movements in International Film MW 9-12:30 Jillian Smith (Summer A)

In this class, you are exposing yourself to the beautifully strange and profound experience of international cinema, where you are transported not only to different worlds, but also to different senses of time, space, and being.  We will watch some of the most watched films in the history of international cinema by focusing on national movements that have been recognized for their influence on the development of cinema worldwide—American Romantic Realism, German Expressionism, Soviet Montage, French New Wave, and more.  In the process we will learn film vocabulary, film style, film technique, and some film theory. We will also learn historical context for certain films and movements in order to get a sense of the politics of film.  Students will be expected to read essays, write reflections on all of the films, and engage in short creative projects designed to promote comprehension.

LIT 4930 51364 “In My Mind’s Eye” | Plays onto Page onto Stage onto Screen TR 12:40-4:10 Clark Lunberry (Summer A)

Plays begin as words on a page, as writing to be read.  Directors must study what the playwright has written, and actors must memorize their lines before going on the stage.  However, once the play begins, the written words generally give way, or are replaced by, the performance and enactment of that writing.  Together, we are all then supposed to forget the written text from which a play begins, as the words are performed before us, embodied on the stage.  But what about when we read a play silently to ourselves as a form of dramatic literature?  How is the language, as language, to be handled and engaged, seen prior to its performed disappearance? 

In this Summer Session class, we will be looking at the works of various dramatists with their plays investigated and discussed as both written and filmed texts.  Approaching theater in this “corrupted,” unstaged manner, various questions will be asked: in reading a scene from a play (instead of viewing it in a theater), how are the dramatic actions imagined and seen?  As envisioned in the “mind’s eye,” might the very act of reading drama be understood to empower the reader, by empowering the imagination, turning those reading the play into the play’s director, producer, stage manager, costume designer (as well as the single spectator sitting alone in the audience)? Also, what happens to "live" theater when it's filmed and turned into a movie?  What's lost in the filmed process?  What's gained by the camera's framing of events, the film's freezing of ephemeral action?  In this class, we will explore the unique qualities of theater, alongside the unique qualities of film.   What happens when these two forms come together (or collide)?

CRW 5935 51342 MW 6:10-9:40 Advanced Creative Writing Workshop Mark Ari (Summer A)

This workshop explores fiction and creative nonfiction—though we may stretch and explode the boundaries of genre. We will consider various approaches to prewriting, revising, editing, and publication to identify and apply methods that best reflect your own artistic character. We will explore techniques to help you tap the reliable resources of your imagination to create a portfolio of 25-30 pages, though the page count is flexible depending on the nature of the work.

*Creative Writing Concentration requirement.

ENC 5235 51356 Grant Writing DL Jennifer Lieberman (Summer B)

Do you know of a community service organization that needs funding? Do you hope to start one of your own? Do you want to fund your own research one day? Grant writing is an important skill that could serve students in myriad professions—including students who want to help nonprofit organizations, students who want to fund their own research, and students who want to give back to their college and their community. This asynchronous online (e.g., no Zoom meeting) class will begin by identifying the research and communication skills necessary to write a successful grant. Over the course of the semester, students will compose and submit grants for funding, gaining invaluable professional experience and potentially leaving an actual impression on their community in the process.

*Concentration in Composition and Rhetoric or elective requirement.

ENL 6502 51483 The Ridiculousness of Tristram Shandy (Studies in Early British Literature) TR 6:10-8:45 Chris Gabbard (Summer A)

 The critic Christopher Ricks captures author Laurence Sterne's playfulness when he describes Tristram Shandy as “the greatest shaggy dog story in the language.” (A “shaggy dog story” is a long, rambling story or joke, typically one that is amusing only because it is absurdly inconsequential or pointless.) Tristram Shandy was the first anti-novel, parodying the realist novel that at the time was establishing itself as the premiere literary genre. Many of Sterne’s contemporaries considered his book obscene, preposterous and infuriating, the opposite of what a novel should be. Samuel Johnson expressed the critical consensus when, in 1776, he boomed: “Nothing odd will do long. Tristram Shandy did not last.” But Johnson was wrong: Tristram Shandy did last. In the 1980s, magical realists such as Salman Rushdie rediscovered Sterne. Today, we look back and see that this novel is a central text of eighteenth-century British literature and one of the classics of world literature along with Don Quixote, Candide, Ulysses, and One Hundred Years of Solitude.

Note about class time: Ordinarily, this course is supposed to run till 9:40 p.m. However, we will end class at 8:45 p.m. To make up for the missing two hours, we will engage in asynchronous online discussion.

Assignments: In addition to students reading Sterne’s quirky novel, they will (1) produce an abstract of a scholarly article and present it to the class, (2) lead at least one class discussion of a section of the novel, (3) participate in online and in-class discussions, and (4) compose a research paper.

*Early/pre-1800, British, and major author requirements.

LIT 6246 50895 Major Authors: Zora Neale Hurston DL Tru Leverette Hall (Summer B)

“How can anyone deny themselves the pleasure of my company?” Only Zora Neale Hurston could pose such a question. A rebel, iconoclast, anthropologist, Voodoo initiate, and writer, Hurston grew up in the first all-black town in America, Eatonville, Florida, and this beginning informed all of her work. In addition to being a fiction writer and play-write, Hurston was a trained anthropologist, and her ethnographic work informs her literary writing. In this class, we will explore the written “contact zones” between Hurston the scientist and Hurston the creative genius. We will explore the ways Hurston used her fieldwork as source material for her fiction. And we will begin with the assumption that, by using herself as a participant in her fieldwork, Hurston broke the barriers between scientific objectivity and imaginative subjectivity. 

*Major authors, American, late/post-1860 requirements.

AML 2010-12203 American Literature I TR 1:40-2:55 Jason Mauro

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?

AML 3102-11821 American Fiction MW 10:30-11:45 Bart Welling

Is it possible to create a better “storyscape” in and for the United States than the one we have inherited from past generations? Many of our greatest writers have thought so, and I hope they’re right. In this class we will put the published fictional narratives of a diverse range of authors in dialogue with the master narratives that we all inhabit as surely as we live in brick-and-mortar buildings: America as promised land, the American dream (or nightmare), the United States as melting pot, and more. Our goal will be to understand how the authors we are studying make visible the often hidden larger cultural narratives of Americanness, how they critique these narratives, and how their critiques can guide our efforts to reclaim and restore a bitterly contested—but also, frequently, a sublimely beautiful—world of stories and storied landscapes that we call home.

AML 3621-11595 Black American Literature: Writing Race and Citizenship TR 9:25-10:50 Tru Leverette Hall

In the early 1900s, WEB Du Bois wrote of double consciousness, the reality that black Americans are divided in terms of racial and national identity. In the mid 20th Century, James Baldwin extended this understanding, recognizing that race is a central, though purposely ignored, component of American identity and that blackness must often be erased for one to be deemed an American citizen. Many contemporary authors continue to grapple with the idea of double consciousness and with the metaphorical and literal assaults upon black bodies. They have carried forward Baldwin’s assertions about the exclusive nature of American citizenship and have attested to the violent responses black bodies encounter.

Beginning with Du Bois and Baldwin, we will explore these ideas and then consider how the larger Federal Writers Project attempted to work through questions of citizenship and the place of race (and racialized people) in the national imagination. We will utilize the Viola Muse Digital Edition (VDME); scholarship on the Federal Writers Project; and contemporaneous literature by authors such as Zora Neale Hurston to investigate questions of race and nationhood. We will consider how black bodies are both necessary for and excluded from definitions of American citizenship, how cultural memory and ancestry illuminate black selfhood, how double consciousness functions contemporarily, and how Afrofuturism might offer useful insights for the future of the U.S.

This course aims to help students navigate questions of American identity and citizenship, race and place, southern history, and the role of documentary and literary writing in forming national narratives, relevant questions for understanding America’s past as well as its present.

Students interested in producing larger digital projects will be invited to take simultaneously either Digital Editing and Digital Archives (for those interested in working with archival documents in a digital context) or Introduction to Geographic Information Systems (for those interested in geospatial analysis and digital mapping).

CRW 2300-11597 Introduction to Poetry Writing MW 1:30-2:45 Jessica Stark

This course will push you onto a journey to learn how to engage with one of the most distilled and radical forms of art in history: poetry. In order to do so, we will read both widely and closely. We’ll read a diverse range of poems from different historical periods, written in a wide range of forms and styles. As we explore, we will ask many questions such as: why is poetry important? What does it do? What does poetry teach us about language, our surroundings, and/or ourselves? What’s the use in the frustration that so many of us experience when faced with poetry? Can such feelings become pleasurable? We’ll respond to poems, analyze them, listen to them and write about them; there will be opportunities to play with translating, editing, and visually presenting them, as well as with writing and performing them. We will familiarize ourselves with critical, literary terminology (e.g. voice, pastoral, metaphor) in order to enrich our understanding of poetry and practice interpretive, analytic writing in the process. Good writing (of any kind) always starts with good reading, so we will also be reading poems, interviews, and short essays, looking for techniques to mimic in our own work whenever possible. And, since the best of poetry and writing is that which sticks in our memory, stays in our body, and lives with us until the moment when we most need it, we will each memorize and recite one poem at the end of the term. At the end of our journey, you’ll find that poetry, though often demanding, can offer complex emotional, imaginative, and intellectual pleasure as well as a means for expanding perspective on the world in which we live and share.

CRW 2400-13353 Introduction to Playwriting MWF 11-11:50 Shannon Brandt

In this course, students will read, view, and write plays. As a cohort, we will check in with (and challenge) a multitude of playwrights (a wide range of authors and timelines will be visited) and unpack their use of language and the format in which they deliver their message. Then we will craft original work including monologues, scenes, and our cumulation - the one-act.

CRW 2600 Introduction to Screenwriting DL Stephan Boka (two sections: 10616, 10787)

This course examines the basic formal elements of screenplays, including characterization, dialogue, scene structure, plot construction, genre conventions, and formatting requirements. Students will critically analyze screenplays by the great auteurs of the twentieth century. The students' major project will be to write short motion picture or television screenplays of their own.

CRW 3110-12727 Fiction Workshop TR 3:05-4:20 Mark Ari

Each of us, however long we’ve been writing, is wherever we are and hoping to get better. We are always, every one of us, beginners. In this workshop, we indulge our impulses toward storytelling and fabrication. Maybe we do so in the service of some greater truth. Maybe we do it because we can build worlds and that’s an exciting thing to do. Maybe we do it because there is something about life that compels us to respond in the remarkable way we call “fiction.” I don’t know. You’ll have to tell me. And while we’re talking about it, we’ll tackle technical concerns and seek methods by which the reliable resources of imagination can be tapped in the service of the art we make with words and sentences. We read and write fiction. We talk and write about the fiction written by others. We bite nails and open veins and tend to the work at hand.

CRW 3610-11353 Screenwriting Workshop F 9-11:45 Stephan Boka

Screenwriting Workshop will breakdown the script writing process into a scene by scene, page by page, line by line analysis. Students are expected to write, read, and critique scripts on a weekly basis in an effort to produce a feature length screenplay by semester’s end.

CRW 3741-13356 UnReading | UnWriting [Making Poems] TR 9:25-10:20 Clark Lunberry

This creative writing course will focus on creation-through-destruction and the often-literal obliteration of language-based materials in the making of something visually, conceptually, poetically new out of the subsequent debris field. The poems/objects made (with an emphasis on the material making of the thing itself) will be visual in nature but with language, in some distressed manner, as the source material, the substance of our signifying. Using language that has been found/located, rather than self-created/self-composed, we will apply various strategies of creation and de-creation in our effort to make language speak!

We will, in addition to the making of visual poems, be reading and seeing what others have done, what others have thought about doing, with sustained engagements onto theoretical, historical readings throughout the semester, and with more formal analytical/reflective essays written by students in response to all work done in the class.

CRW 4122-13359 Advanced Fiction Workshop T 6-8:45 Mark Ari

This course builds on CRW3110 and provides emerging writers the opportunity to hone their individual voices and experiment with different aesthetical strategies. During the semester, you will consider various approaches to prewriting, revising, editing, and publication to identify and apply methods that best reflect your own artistic character. We will explore techniques to help you tap the reliable resources of your imagination to create, revise, and edit original fiction. Experimentation is encouraged. Laughter is relished.

CRW 4320-13357 Advanced Poetry Workshop TR 1:40-2:55 Fred Dale

The objective of this workshop is to produce twenty to thirty pages of poetry—enough material to flesh out a rough version of a chapbook. The goal is lofty, but so what? The dreaded (and perhaps imaginary) “writer’s block” won’t stand a chance with us. We will workshop original poems and produce critiques of both our own texts, as well as the poems of the poets in our workshop groups. You will turn in a portfolio at least three times during the semester. This will include the drafts and revisions of your poems and your responses to them. We will concentrate our readings on at least two poets and their Chapbooks: Emily Carlson (Why Misread a Cloud) and Dujie Tahat (Salat).

CRW 4616-13358 Advanced Screenwriting Workshop F 12-2:45 Stephan Boka

Advanced Screenwriting Workshop will mimic a television writers’ room by having students create original characters and original stories. The class will work together to write a full season of television by breaking story lines, writing, workshopping and rewriting full episodes in effort to have a greater understanding of long story form.

ENC 3212-12212 Copyediting MW 1:30-2:45 Timothy Donovan

This course will focus on technical editing, particularly the technique of professional copyediting. Consequently, a student who completes this course will review the basics of grammar and usage and an introduction to sentence styling and document preparation. Most importantly, students will learn the technical jargon, signs, and markup specific to technical copyediting. The course’s outcome will prepare students to do technical editing in various professional situations. 

ENC 3310-11475 Writing Prose DL James Beasley

We will examine three of the most widely-held writing rules in American institutions in the 21st century: that every paper must have a thesis statement, every paper must be free from grammar error, and every paper may only examine one topic. In short, ENC 3310 is truly an intermediate writing course. By intermediate, I mean that it serves as a pause, a time to examine the writing you have already done, but also a time to anticipate and identify the writing you would like yet to do. We will examine the difference between the effect your writing has had, and the affect you would like it to have.

ENG 3613-10888 Disability Culture & Representation (w/optional CBTL*), a.k.a. Bodyminds of Difference TR 10:50-12:05 Chris Gabbard

This cultural diversity (CD) course decenters doctors and centers people whose bodyminds differ from the norm: those living with autism and other forms of neurodiversity, mobility impairments, mental health issues, sensory deficits such as blindness, spasticity, and so forth. If your body, mind, senses, and/or nervous system aren’t typical, this class is for you! If you want to learn more about what disabled people have to say, this class is for you! The course operates under the assumption that disability generates valuable knowledge concerning the complex relationship between society and the person differing from the norm. We will read poetry, memoirs, essays, and fiction, and we will view a movie, a TV episode, and several videos.

Interdisciplinary Disability Studies (IDDS) minor: ENG3613 is one of the two required courses for UNF’s new Interdisciplinary Disability Studies minor. This 15-credit-hour minor can be accomplished by completing five of seven possible courses, ENG3613 being one of them. Students in ENG3613 do not need to be affiliated with the IDDS minor. For more info, contact Prof. Gabbard.

*CBTL: ENG3613 contains an optional Community Based Transformational Learning (CBTL) component involving students volunteering at one of Jacksonville’s two exceptional student centers, Mt. Herman or Alden Road, or at the DLC Nurse & Learn in Murray Hill. Students completing 16 hours of CBTL volunteering over the course of the semester can count on Prof. Gabbard to write glowing letters of recommendations for graduate school, internships, grants, and/or employment. He will write as many letters of recommendation as the student needs, for as long as the student needs them. That’s a guarantee!

ENC 4403-13365 Grant Writing DL Jennie Ziegler

Do you know of a community service organization that needs funding? Do you hope to start one of your own? Do you want to fund your own research one day? Grant writing is an important skill that could serve students in a myriad of professions—including students who want to help nonprofit organizations, students who want to fund their own research, and students who want to give back to their college and their community. We will begin by identifying the research and communication skills necessary to write a successful grant. Over the course of the semester, students will compose and submit grants for funding, gaining invaluable professional experience and potentially leaving an actual impression on their community in the process.

ENC 4415-13364 Rhetoric and the Digital Humanities TR 4:30-5:45 James Beasley

Students will be introduced to archival research methods and will examine official documents and letters. Students in this community-based research course will then be introduced to digital curation software and will examine digital catalogs of the segregated experience of the Lincolnville community of St. Augustine, Florida. Using discourse analysis tools and curation software, students in this course will begin to examine the social circulation of this community and to track the rhetorical strategies, decision making practices and persuasive strategies in the historic Lincolnville community. Students completing this course will enable the museum to preserve this experience for future researchers and for the future of this historic community.

ENG 4013-11357 Literary Interpretation TR 9:25-10:40 Jason Mauro

Literary theory investigates the strategies and assumptions that govern our reading, and yet reading this very sentence may not seem governed by any strategy or assumptions at all.  Reading, to most of us, usually seems to be a simple conveyance of information and meaning.  This course will explore how odd that seeming simplicity is.  We will encounter an array of perspectives that will reveal how deeply weird reading always is, and always has been.  The arrangement will be topical, rather than historical, focusing on nexuses of weirdness rather than a chronological arrangement—we will look at the complexities of seemingly obvious concepts such as an “author,” a “narrative,” and a “reader.”  We will look at how our bodies, our feelings, our histories have already provided some of the strategies and assumptions that govern what and how we read.  And we will explore the inexorable nature of reading, a gesture that is not limited to literary texts but includes the most basic acts of perception. 

ENG 4013-12738 Literary Interpretation MW 6-7:15 Alexander Menocal

ENG 4013 introduces students to an array of critical terms and interpretative approaches that should help students improve their abilities to read critically.  ENG 4013 will build on the foundational knowledge that students acquired in such courses as LIT 3213 and LIT 3214. In particular, the class will explore the critical questions and reading strategies that Andrew Bennett and Nicholas Royle model in their An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory (5th edition).

ENL 2022-10889 British Literature II DL Laura Heffernan

This distance learning course will cover literature of the nineteenth- and early twentieth- centuries, including William Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads, Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations, and the poetry of World War I, as well as historical documents and essays (Edmund Burke, Mary Wollstonecraft, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Wilkie Collins). We will keep our eyes on major historical events (the revolutions in France and Haiti, the 1838 People’s Charter, the Indian Rebellion and 1858 Government of India Act, World War I) and also try to imagine the changing texture of everyday life (the rise of industrialism, the feel of urban living, the emergence of women as voting citizens). Above all, we will ask: how did the literature of these eras represent life?

ENL 3333-13366 Shakespeare MW 9-10:15 William Pewitt

The worlds of William Shakespeare are populated by ghosts and gravediggers, fairies and fools, drunks and duchesses. To read the Bard of Stratford is not to simply hear one perspective claiming to hold some timeless or universal wisdom, but to be in the presence of a plurality of perspectives—each of them being taken seriously while also being played upon. Whether in Tragedy, History, or Comedy (the three genres his dramatic works were divvied into by his colleagues when compiling the First Folio) Shakespeare evinces what scholar Harold Bloom would later claim: that his characters “are not larger than life; they are life’s largeness.” As much as Shakespeare’s status as a canonical writer (not to mention his early modern English) may make it seem there is always a singular message hidden in what this playwright is “trying to say,” our goal in this course is—quite differently—to appreciate the nuance and complexity of what his characters do say. As such, we will read his works and interpreters, watch films and stage productions, discuss theories and write essays that do not aim to reduce his plays (and their problems) but rather aim to see how his poetic drama invites us to experience the realistic or fantastic, sage or grave, sentimental or cynical ways that Shakespeare’s narratives are, as Dr. Jonson once put it, “rammed with life.”

FIL 3006-10934 Analyzing Films TR 10:50-1:30 Nicholas deVilliers

This course introduces students to key terms for interpreting film, including important concepts and trends in the field of cinema studies. Students will learn how to watch films with a critical eye, how to discuss cinematic form and meaning, and how to write coherent and persuasive essays analyzing film. This course provides an important foundation for more specialized courses in the film studies minor and IDS major, but will benefit anyone who wants to better understand how movies affect us, and how to put that experience into words.

FIL 3826-11751 Movements in American Film MW 9-11:45 Timothy Donovan

In 1929, 85 million Americans went to the movies every week. Even today, with a much smaller figure of 20 million a week, we all understand that movies are a large part of our collective lives. We reward movie stars with enormous wealth, and we allow our styles and desires to be deeply influenced by Hollywood. Hollywood is an international industry, part of our Gross Domestic Product, bringing in billions of dollars annually. To understand American film is obviously to begin understanding it in the context of culture and history. In this class, we will look at the history of American film with attention to the surrounding society and culture. We will also look closely at films creating a vocabulary that allows us to engage film aesthetically and cinematically. By the end of the course, we will be able to discuss film by narrative style, genre, history, and culture, as we move from Griffith, Chaplin, and Wilder onward to contemporary cinema.

FIL 4300-13369 Documentary Movements and Media MW 12-2:45 Jillian Smith

This class aims to communicate the vital spirit of documentary by studying its history and its future, its movements and its media.  In documentary, there are no rules.  No rules on topic—from the Vietnam War to people who live in the subway tunnels of New York.  No rules on creator—from famous directors like Martin Scorsese to 80,000 people who shot footage across the world on the same day to submit to Life in a Day.  No rules on form—from first-person exposés (Michael Moore’s Sicko about the exploitative business of health care) to first person-experiments (Morgan Spurlock’s eating only McDonald’s food for 30 days in Super Size Me), from the visual poems of City Symphonies (wordless montages of cities popular in the 1930s) to the exuberant energy of rockumentaries (Woodstock, Metallica: Some Kind of Monster).  The one common thread is that documentary uses actual life for its raw material.  From this small requirement we witness the endlessly expanding form of documentary.  Written assignments and small creative assignments are designed to increase intellectual and affective understanding of documentary’s past and its possibilities.

FIL 4379-13371 Advanced Documentary Production MW 4:30-5:45 Jillian Smith

The art of documentary is twofold: (1) recognizing and capturing the stories that circulate around us every day in the real world and (2) shaping them into creative form. In this course we will lay the foundation for this art by understanding and practicing documentary style and technique. Practicing a range of documentary styles and narratives will open students to the creative possibilities of documentary film, and thorough technical competency will enable them to be realized.

Students are expected to have taken Documentary Production in a fall semester, or otherwise have permission from Dr. Smith. (If this course appeals to you plan on taking the two-course sequence through fall and spring in the future—meeting days and times will remain the same). The semester will begin with exercises in montage and audio film shorts, and will include advanced instruction in color, audio, and other editing techniques. The remainder of the semester will be spent executing group-produced documentaries for public screening at the end of the semester. No prerequisites. Get on the waitlist because seats often open. Any questions, contact Dr. Jillian Smith: jlsmith@unf.edu. See the work of AfterImage Documentary here.

FIL 4882-13370 Gender, Sexuality, and Cinema TR 3:05-5:45 Nicholas deVilliers

Feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey argued that there was a sexual division of labor in Classical Hollywood cinema with “Woman as Image, Man as Bearer of the Look.” Women were objectified by the “male gaze” in cinema, which catered to the visual pleasure of male audience members. The documentary The Celluloid Closet makes an equally broad claim that “Hollywood taught straight people what to think of gay people, and gay people what to think of themselves.” Feminist critics since Mulvey have gone on to consider the problem of female spectatorship and questioned the social construction of gender (masculinity as well as femininity), and LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) film historians have since asked what possibilities there are for queer and transgender identification and desire in cinema. This course provides an opportunity for discussion of these and related issues regarding “the politics of representation” in an atmosphere of free and open inquiry. The principle analytical tools will be drawn from the diverse interdisciplinary fields of cinema and media studies, cultural studies, gender studies, gay and lesbian studies, and queer theory.

LIT 2120-12234 World Literature II MWF 12-12:50 Sara Menendez

This course will read World Literature from the 1500s to the present, from a perspective attuned to examining how cultural traditions, the human search for truth, fear as a motivator in society, and the desire for freedom are discussed/examined by various writers all around the world. We will closely read poems, novels, and graphic novels whose writers hail from West Africa, Iran, Colombia, Britain, the Caribbean, and the United States.

LIT3213- 10611 Critical Reading and Writing I TR 9:25-10:40 Chris Gabbard

So, you’ve decided to major in English? Then you’ve come to the right place. In this class we are going to discover the fundamentals of being an English major. These fundamentals will include how to read a text for its theme and how to pick out the subtle, narratological elements that help a reader identify that theme. In other words, we are going to go over the basic skills of reading, analyzing, and interpreting.

Literary interpretation, by the way, is an art not limited to literature. Rather, it is a foundation for sophisticated critical thinking within history, philosophy, culture, politics, law, media, the arts, and even the sciences. To practice the art of interpretation, we will read, write, discuss, and create. More than anything, our art requires gaining a working knowledge of basic literary tools (i.e., character, point of view, motif, leitmotif, etc.). CRW I focuses intensively on learning to use literary tools well. The follow-up course, Critical Reading and Writing II, concentrates on using these tools to craft essay-length written interpretations. 

LIT 3213-10367 Critical Reading and Writing I  DL Betsy Nies

Students will read five short stories and explore the world of literary vocabulary. The course provides ample opportunity to get feedback from and or engage with peers, and consistent targeted feedback from the professor regarding content and editing skills. The gateway course to the major, this course will help you master the elements of literary analysis.

LIT 3214-10789 Critical Reading and Writing II TR 6-7:15 Alexander Menocal

Students will build on the critical reading skills they acquired in LIT 3213.  We will apply the tools of literary analysis learned in LIT 3213 in close readings of several texts--three short stories and one novel. We will identify significant patterns in these texts, analyze the relationships between these patterns, and formulate interpretations of these relationships. Students will continue to practice these analytic skills in several writing assignments. Discussion posts will provide students opportunities to develop their close reading skills and to practice constructing effective paragraphs that integrate evidence. Students will produce three essays in which they will demonstrate several abilities: to read a text closely, to propose an interpretation that is based on textual patterns, to formulate an analytic thesis, and to construct an evidence-based essay that develops the thesis.

LIT 3331-13387 Children's Literature MW 9-10:15 Jennie Ziegler

This course examines the concept of the child alongside the history (and future) of children’s literature, beginning with fairy tales, folklore, and myths, which are some of humanity’s first (and most retold) stories. As we explore the history of “childhood” in the West, from the Middle Ages forward, we’ll investigate the concept of storytelling to and about children. What do we mean when we describe literature that belongs to “children”? While certainly not an exhaustive course, we will begin with essential questions as we read about and alongside children’s stories. How do issues of culture, history, and social context open avenues for interpreting a tale? How might children’s authors address issues of race, gender, class, ability, or orientation? What strategies can we use to read children’s literature? Part investigation, part reading advocacy, this course will begin the conversation of narratives belonging to the world of imagination, of truth, and of how we begin to interrupt the world in critical—and ultimately crucial—ways. The class will include a pedagogical text, a fairy tale anthology reader, handouts, and picture books.

LIT 4243-13386 Major Authors and the Arts of Survival TR 9:25-10:40 Bart Welling

Is it time to panic yet? These days, any science-accepting, democracy-loving person of conscience who pays attention to the steadily accelerating drumbeat of terrible news from around the globe has got to be asking herself or himself the same kinds of questions, starting with What can I do? What can one person without much money or political clout do to deal with global warming, the extinction crisis, resurgent white supremacy, the rise of “illiberal democracy,” and a host of other problems that threaten to metastasize into full-blown emergencies? With these questions in mind, I say that now is not the time for an old-fashioned Major Authors class; it’s time to try something new that addresses more directly these pressing concerns. This class will attend to these and other related questions by exploring what it will mean to practice the emergency humanities. We will study how we might transform the humanities, and in turn how the humanities might transform the world, if we were to rethink our disciplines and repurpose our tools of cultural analysis with the goal of helping as many people, nonhuman beings, and cultural heritages as possible prepare for and survive the upheavals of the so-called Anthropocene, the Age of Humans. If you would like to help figure out what the emergency humanities might be and put them into practice here at UNF and in the larger Jacksonville community, then I invite you to enroll in this class.

The authors we’ll be discussing have fascinating things to say about the survival of human civilization and the biosphere; they are committed to helping our culture avoid committing ecocide and collective suicide (which are things a lot of people seem hell-bent on pushing right now, even if they claim to be on the side of “progress”). One crucial lesson of the stories we will study is that survival doesn’t have to be a grim, brutal slog through the cannibal wasteland, a desperate attempt to hold on to every fragment of the world we’re losing; survival can be a matter of cooperation (between people and other beings as well as between humans), of liberating acts of letting go, of positive cultural transformation, of ecological renewal, and of grace. Maybe this really is the end of the world as we know it—and maybe, if we’re smart about how we manage the transitions, that could be a good thing.

LIT 4650-11202 Being Bored | The Art of Ennui (Comparative Literature) TR 12:15 -1:30 Clark Lunberry

Boredom was discovered, or first diagnosed, in the 19th century (or so), and this ailment continues to afflict and entertain us to this day. We have, of course, a love-hate relationship with boredom…or it (like a virus) has a relationship with us. We just can't seem to shake it, to find a cure for this curiously modern condition of being bored. Ever since its infectious spread, many have found boredom irresistibly interesting, as it grows rhizomatically hither and yon. One might wonder if boredom—or the more expansive (and fancy) French term ennui—is a fundamental fact of being modern, a diagnosable symptom of our tiresome and tedious age: boredom, being bored, being bored with being…boring ourselves to death.

In this class, our focus will be upon a variety of materials, from modern & contemporary fiction, theater, poetry, painting and performance, where boredom is often at the chilled heart of the matter presented, setting in motion events that threaten at any moment to collapse beneath their own exhausting weight. How has such boredom, such dis/ease, been represented in literature and the arts? Why did it arise and how has it endured as a representable theme and affliction? And finally, perhaps paradoxically, how can boredom—and what Siegfried Kracauer calls “radical boredom”—be such a rich, revealing and, yes, fascinating focus for writers, artists and readers alike?

LIT 4934-13389 Seminar: What is an Author? TR 1:40-2:55 Michael Wiley

This Senior Seminar will ask, What Is an Author? What is authorial representation? What are originality, imagination, authority, authenticity, genius, and personal voice? What is authenticity? When did these ideas and values emerge, and how do they function (or fail to) in a changing world?

We will consider what texts by writers such as Sophocles, William Shakespeare, William Wordsworth, Edgar Allan Poe, Heiner Müller, George Orwell, Joan Didion, and others tell us about our ideas of literary production. The work we read will cover a large geographical expanse (from Greece to Northern Europe to the United States) and an equally large historical expanse (from about 500 BCE to the present moment). Graded work will include a midterm essay, a final essay, and a class presentation.

THE 4935-13627 Musical Theatre TR 10:50-12:05 Maureen McCluskey

Musical Theatre 1 introduces the student to the basic principles of musical theatre. This course explores the relationships between the performer, director, script, and song.

Watch a video trailer for the course here.

***Students wanting to take both Musical Theatre and Acting III will need to email the Department of English at englishdept@unf.edu for an override.

THE 4935-13653 Acting III F 9-11:45 Maureen McCluskey

This course is intended for advanced actors. Students will explore scene work, voiceover work, and body work using various methods. This course sharpens a student’s skill as an ensemble performer while also allowing for creativity and exploration. Emphasis is placed on integration of methods and improvisation with use of modern texts and characters. Additionally, this course will highlight several business tools and strategies for performers.

Watch a video trailer for the course here.

***Students wanting to take both Acting III and Musical Theatre will need to email the Department of English at englishdept@unf.edu for an override.