Course Descriptions

CRW 4924/5935 50866/50846 Advanced Creative Workshop: Novella Writing – M W 1810-2140 – Mark Ari

A novella is a work of fiction that is shorter than most novels, but longer than most short stories. While there is no official definition regarding the number of pages or words necessary for a story to be considered a novella, the typical range defined by many literary awards is 17,000-40,000 words. Some of the greatest works of fiction fit into this category. Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis, Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, and Garcia Marquez’s Chronical of a Death Foretold are classics. Contemporary writers have also embraced the novella form. McGlue by Ottessa Moshfegh, Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill, and Signs Preceding the End of the World, by Yuri Herrera are just a few examples. I’ve prepared a list of novellas that I’d be happy to share with interested students on request.

This class will tackle the novella form and its special considerations. Students will begin writing a novella of their own at the start of the term and will complete a full draft by the last day of class. Those registered for CRW 4924 will accomplish this by writing at least 12 pages (approximately 3000 words) per week. Students registered for CRW 5935 will write 17 pages (approximately 4250 words) per week. Audacity is assumed. A sense of humor is relished. Instructor Mark Ari.

ENC 2451 51374 (GW) Caregiving & Healthcare (Writing Topics: Health) – M W 1240-1610 – Chris Gabbard

Caregivers and healthcare providers perform some of our society’s most valuable service work. Do you want to join their ranks? They also grapple with many of today’s pressing ethical issues. In this course you will explore the challenging questions these professionals face. This is an urgent course for caregivers and those becoming nurses, doctors, physical therapists, hospital administrators, and other types of healthcare professionals.

ENL 2022 51375 British Literature II – Online – 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William Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads, Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations, and the poetry of World War I, as well as historical documents and essays (Edmund Burke, Mary Wollstonecraft, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Wilkie Collins).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?

FIL 2000 50860 Film Appreciation – Online – Tim Donovan

The goal is simple: to understand and talk about what makes films powerful.  Film’s popularity certainly has something to do with the immediate impact it has on us, the intuitive way we apprehend it, the wonderfully word-less relationship we can have with it.  But, because we experience movies as a part of popular culture, we can easily neglect the complexity of their cultural impact, emotional landscape, and intricate construction: an infinite combination of images, sounds, lights, composition, movement, acting, choreography, editing, and script.  In this course, we emphasize the story elements of film: structure, plot, character, and how they interact with the other elements of cinema, which makes the course especially good for screenwriters, English majors, and film majors, but also anyone who like movies.

FIL 4828 50515 Movements in International Film – (Summer A) M W 900-1230 – Jillian Smith

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.

IDS 1932  51422 Osprey 1^st Interdisciplinary Writing Seminar: Workplace Writing – T R 1240-1610 – Ash Faulkner

IDS 1932 Workplace Writing is an interdisciplinary seminar designed for students in their first year at a university. The purpose of the course is to put students in touch with university resources, and to help students identify their own goals and purpose in the pursuits of the university and beyond. The course gives students tools for doing college work that is meaningful for them and constructive for their intellectual community and goals.

The way we do this is by exploring—reading and writing—the kinds of documents that students will encounter in careers of interest to them. These are the specific course objectives: Successful students (with a “B” or above) will…

1. read, evaluate, and cite relevant and reliable sources.
2. develop and present a research question from a chosen field or discipline of interest.
3. create and revise career documents, including a cover letter, conveying measurable impacts evidenced by professional and/or academic work.
4. identify key campus resources for academic, professional, and personal growth.

LIT2000 51376 Introduction to Literature – Online – Jeffrey Smith

This course is designed to offer students a survey of their literary heritage. Students will analyze the major literary modes of fiction, poetry, and drama, and will engage in processing and synthesizing ideas through intensive writing and discussion. They will read texts that vary from classical to contemporary time periods, historical significance, cultural perspectives, and style. Gordon Rule English credit.

LIT 3213 50985 The Art of Critical Reading and Writing I (asynchronous) – Online – Dr. Betsy Nies

This course introduces you to some primary literary terms and provides information and practice in refining your writing and editorial skills. You receive direct feedback from the professor that you then integrate into your writing so that you can move forward in terms of sharpening your analytical and writing techniques. The core of the course involves applying twenty terms to literature, film, television shows, or videos of choice in addition to reading and responding to five short stories in a shared online platform. You will work on shaping a thesis and responding to others.
Because the course is asynchronous, you need to be well motivated to work on your own.

LIT 4934/5934 51511/51512 Senior Seminar “’In My Mind’s Eye’ | Reading Theater into Film” – T R 1240-410 – Clark Lunberry

In this Summer Session class, we will be looking at the works of various playwrights with their plays thought about and discussed as both written and filmed texts. Approaching theater in this “corrupted,” un-staged 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 lonely and 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 when the “real time/real life” dimension of theater is eliminated? But also, 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, alongside the unique qualities of language. What happens when these three forms come together (or collide)?

13464 AFS 3262 African Diaspora TR 0925-1040 Shayne Leverette Hall

The African diaspora refers to communities of people descended from Africans who moved or were removed from Africa to other parts of the world, primarily the Americas, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. This course on the diaspora has a number of aims, primarily to offer an interdisciplinary approach to and understanding of the African diaspora. The class covers a number of key topics: African history and the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, literary and cultural productions of the diaspora, the meanings of race, and the politics of blackness across temporal and spatial planes.

11740 AML 2010 American Literature I MW 1030-1145 (online synchronous) Jason Mauro

This course is designed to be an antidote to the traditional survey syndrome of covering too much material at too little depth.  With this particular version, my wish is to bracket what is called Early American literature by examining the literature of the Puritans of New England between 1620 and roughly 1692, and then leap to an examination of some New England writers of the mid-1800's.  Can we hear any echoes or resonances between these early and later voices?  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? For me, these remain open questions that I look forward to exploring with you. 

11508 AML3102 American Fiction MW 1500-1615 Bart Welling

(coming soon)

11356 AML 3621 Black American Literature TR 1050-1205 Shayne Leverette Hall

This course will explore the thematic arc of sustenance and survival through Black American literature and culture. Beginning with slave narratives, considered to be the first texts within the canon, the course will trace texts to the 21st century and consider the myriad sources through which Black Americans have found sustenance, in the broadest sense of the term, and have survived individually and collectively. It will also involve a community-based learning component, connecting students with community members to record their stories of finding nourishment in the natural world.   

CRW 2000 Intro to Creative Writing Frederick Dale 10737 TR 925-1040; 10743 TR 1340-1455

In this course, students will read works from a variety of literary genres, produce samples of work in each genre, develop productive critiques of one another’s work within a workshop setting, and revise at least one of their samples. This course is for students who want to develop basic skills in more than one genre of creative writing.

(Multiple sections) CRW 2000 Intro to Creative Writing ONLINE Marcus Pactor

In this course, students will read works from a variety of literary genres, produce samples of work in each genre, develop productive critiques of one another’s work within a workshop setting, and revise at least one of their samples. This course is for students who want to develop basic skills in more than one genre of creative writing.

CRW 2100 Intro to Fiction Writing Brendan Steffen 10446 TR 1630-1745; 10495 ONLINE

11357 CRW 2100 Intro to Fiction Writing TR 1505-1620    TBA       

In this course, students will study the basic techniques used by both canonical and contemporary fiction writers to build convincing and compelling worlds, characters, and plots. Students will then work to apply those techniques to their own fiction. They will develop the skills and techniques necessary for both a productive critique of their own and one another's fiction, and for the in-depth work of successful revision.

11358 CRW 2300 Intro to Poetry Writing MWF 1300-1350 Dorsey Olbrich

his workshop allows students to explore together the fundamentals of the craft of poetry. Students will learn the difference between poetry and prose, as well as the ability to identify the attributes that make poetry a unique and expressive art form. Students will learn basic terminology and close reading skills in order to write analyses that demonstrate precision and sensitivity to the nuances of poetic language. Students will read and memorize poems by master poets, whose work will be the focus of our analysis. Learning to explicate great poetry will provide students with skills they can apply to their own poetry, which will be the ultimate focus of this course.

11742 CRW 2300 Intro to Poetry Writing TR 925-1040 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 “steal” 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 our journey, you’ll find that poetry, though often demanding, can offer complex emotional, imaginative, and intellectual pleasure as well as a means for agitating the world in which we live and share.

(Multiple Sections) CRW 2600 Intro to Screenwriting ONLINE Stephan Boka

This course covers the basics of the craft of screenwriting such as formatting, structure, theme, 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.

11990 CRW 3110 Fiction Workshop T 1800-2045 Marcus Pactor

Ready to take your fiction to a place it—and you—have never been? In this course, we will learn to devise and employ new approaches to our writing to radically change and upgrade our fiction. We will also be learning new writing techniques and approaches from three innovative contemporary American writers: David Nutt, Vi Khi Nao, and Brian Evenson.

13403 CRW 3211 Creative Nonfiction Workshop MW 1030-1145 Jennie Ziegler

Fans of adventure, intrigue, and the great outdoors will love this Creative Nonfiction workshop coming Spring 2024 to a classroom near you. We will be reading and workshopping our way through the perils of personal essays, the language of lyric essays, and hypnotizing hybrid forms. Let’s write about science, space, and spectacle! Let’s write about Disney, dreams, and…dinner? Leave expectations at the door: we’ll be crafting new ones.   

13404 CRW 3310 Poetry Workshop TR 1215-1330 Jessica Stark

This intermediate poetry workshop is for students who have some experience writing poetry and are looking to dig deeper into their writing practice. In this poetry workshop, we'll read published poems and poetry books (written by contemporary and historical poets), and we'll use this work to inspire our own creative writing work. We'll write poems, and we'll spend time discussing our poems together, offering each other feedback on our work.

The workshop also integrates in-depth craft discussions and extensive outside reading to deepen students’ understanding of the genre and broaden their knowledge of the evolution of literary forms and techniques. Some experience with a creative workshop is highly recommended, but not required. The culmination of our work will be to prepare to deliver a public reading and to curate a chapbook-length series of original poems.

13412 CRW 3930 Stand-Up / Comedy Writing T 1215-1500 Stephan Boka

The Stand-up Comedy Workshop is a special topics creative writing course that will deconstruct joke writing and have students study their favorite comics and write original jokes in several styles in an effort to build a five minute comedy set for an end of semester performance.

12324 CRW4122 Advanced Fiction Workshop T 1800-2045 Mark Ari

This course builds on CRW 3110 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.

13441 CRW 4616 Advanced Workshop: TV Writers Room R 1215-1500 Stephan Boka

The 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. 

11268 ENC 3310 Writing Prose ONLINE James Beasley

In ENC 3310, 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.

ENC 4260 Applied Technical Writing MW 1500-1615 Kailan Sindelar

Applied Technical Writing is a course designed to provide students with experience in applying the fundamentals of technical writing to a special topic throughout the course. Students will pursue a long-term project in the following stages: learn about the field, learn about specific subject matter, answer a research question related to the subject matter, recommend a product or change based on their research results, create their product or change they recommend, and create or update their portfolio. Throughout the course there will be small discussion posts and class time dedicated to discussing concepts students learn about them.

11997 ENG 4013 Approach to Literary Interpretation TR 1505-1620 Michael Wiley

In this course, we will explore literary concepts, terms, and interpretive approaches that contribute to an understanding of the richness, pleasures, and challenges of fiction, poetry, drama, film, and other work. We will draw heavily from An Introduction to Literature, Criticism, and Theory (6th edition), by Andrew Bennett and Nicholas Royle, and will consider the points they discuss in relation to Walter Mosley’s Devil in a Blue Dress, Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, and Ariel Dorfman’s Death and the Maiden.

13423 ENG 4013 Approach to Literary Interpretation MW 1200-1315 Bart Welling

(coming soon)

10795 ENL 2022 British Literature II TR 1215-1330 Michael Wiley

In this course, we will read, discuss, and write about British literary texts from 1800 until the present, considering the benefits and drawbacks of categorizing literature according to the times and places in which writers produce it. We will consider literary periods separately while also examining the relations between them, and we will look at and question ideas of Britishness. Readings will include poetry, prose fiction, and prose nonfiction, with an emphasis on poetry. I will not assume that all class members have an extensive background interpreting poetry, and we will spend time (as necessary or desired) working on interpretive strategies. We will read selections from William Wordsworth, Mary Shelley, Christina Rossetti, Matthew Arnold, T.S. Eliot, Katherine Mansfield, and other writers who have changed the ways we think, talk, and write.

12329 ENL 3333 Shakespeare TR 925-1040 Russell Turney

This course is designed to introduce the student to major works of Shakespeare, to understand their relation to the genres of tragedy and comedy, to understand their meaning in relation to their historical context as well as their existential import that still has bearing upon our own lives. Fundamentally it is a question of learning how to read Shakespeare’s poetic production with some fluency and understanding. Students in this class will develop the capacity for discriminating judgment based on an aesthetic and historical appreciation of Shakespeare through reading, discussion and informed critical written interpretation of the texts. Through this process the student will also learn to appraise and evaluate the social and personal values of Shakespeare’s cultural moment and their own.

13410 ENL 4210 Studies in Medieval Literature MW 1030-1145 Matthew Coker

Medieval literature brims with accounts of supernatural encounters, from the numinous visitations and otherworld journeys of early myth and legend, to spiritual autobiographies and the “visions” of self-consciously literary poets. In this course, we will examine a selection of such stories in which the human and the supernatural meet, stories which offer us uniquely potent glimpses into parallel and overlapping worlds. Throughout the course, we will interrogate our own definitions of the human and the supernatural, exploring how they map onto and misalign with the demarcations of our premodern texts. Taking as given that these stories are often just as much—and at times more—about the human as they are about the supernatural, we will pay special attention to the ways such accounts authorize, problematize, and, in so doing, catalyzed the social and religious orders of the societies in which they were written. Examining early and late medieval texts from the political peripheries and centers of Europe, we will attempt to scratch the surface of the depth and breadth of medieval literature and give an account of key religious, social, and artistic developments of the period.  

Major texts include: Táin Bó Cúailnge, St. Patrick’s Confessions, St. Brendan’s Voyage, The Mabinogion, Genesis A and B, Beowulf, The Saga of the Volsungs, Marie de France’s Lais, Dante’s Divine Comedy, and Pearl. 

10834 FIL 3006 Analyzing Films TR 1505-1620 Jeffrey Smith

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.

11466 FIL 3826 Movements in American Film MW 900-1145 Timothy Donovan

In 1929, a staggering 85 million Americans watched movies every week. Even today, with a comparatively smaller figure of 20 million a week, movies play a significant role in our lives. We celebrate movie stars who earn immense wealth and allow Hollywood to shape our fashion and aspirations. The film industry is an international business, contributing billions of dollars annually to our Gross Domestic Product (GDP). To comprehend American cinema, we must examine it within the context of culture and history. This course will take a closer look at films, creating a language that enables us to appreciate the various movements within American cinema. By the end of this course, we will be able to analyze films by genre, style, culture, and history, progressing from the early days of cinema with iconic figures like Griffith and Chaplin to contemporary films. 

13443 FIL 3832 Horror Films TR 925-1205 Jeffrey Smith

This course surveys the history of the horror film as a cinematic art form. Students will examine a number of horror films that span from the silent era to the present day and will engage in scholarly discussions of the genre’s aesthetics and cultural appeals.

13442 FIL 4073 American Film in Context: 1970’s MW 1200 1445 Jillian Smith

The 1970s began with President Nixon’s promise to pull American troops from Vietnam, and they ended in Disco.  They were violent years—Attica Prison riots (42 dead); Vietnam War (over 1,200,000); Son of Sam serial killings (6); Kent State student protesters (4); Jonestown mass suicide (917).  Americans could no longer easily assume that their government was honest or that their military action was morally just or that the world was predictable.  The nation underwent a collective disillusionment in the early seventies that progressively characterized popular culture: the violence of protest, the decadence of disco, the anger of punk.  American film experienced a transformation on the level of style, content, and narrative. Filmmakers the likes of Robert Altman and Martin Scorsese revealed a new style of filmmaking that broke distinctly from the smooth, glossy, morally-certain films Hollywood had perfected. Writers, filmmakers, theorists, and popular culture alike seemed to adopt a motto: if it’s broke, break it more.  In this class, we will attempt to understand the impact that motto had on film by approaching 1970s American cinema—primarily of the Hollywood Renaissance era from 1967 to 1975—within its cultural and political context.  NO PREREQUISITES—contact Jillian Smith, jlsmith@unf.edu with questions.

12333 FIL 4379 Adv. Documentary Production MW 1630-1915 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. 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: The Doc Show 2022, or  The Doc Show 2021, or AfterImage Vimeo Page.

13544 & 13545 IDS 1932 (H) Rewriting History F 9-1145 William Pewitt

Interested in a game-based course? Curious about how you'd operate in a revolution? Ever imagined if the US had allowed women to vote earlier, or had encouraged democratic uprisings in the slaveholding Caribbean, or had tried to unite with Indigenous peoples rather than other colonial states? Then consider a class focused on “changing the course of history.” Students will have the chance to devise strategies, pitch proposals, craft alliances, and build civilization in a way that creatively reimagines foundational ideas of democracy, equality, and modernity. In “Rewriting History,” we will meet once a week on Friday mornings to grapple with crises of the “Age of Revolutions” as students go on missions, invest in opportunities, and react to challenges that emerge based on how they would handle this era differently than the original Founders—in this nation and in the wider world. 

13576 IDS 1932 Freedom to Think: Hegemony and The Control of Thought MW 1500-1615 John White

12334 IDS 1932 Writing <em> About </em> Code: Understanding the “Codecrete Jungle” We Live In TR 1505-1620 Dean Rice

“A confusing abundance of metaphors has grown up around software development. David Gries says writing software is a science. Donald Knuth says it's an art. Watts Humphrey says it's a process. P. J. Plauger and Kent Beck say it's like driving a car, although they draw nearly opposite conclusions. Alistair Cockburn says it's a game. Eric Raymond says it's like a bazaar. Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas say it's like gardening. Paul Heckel says it's like filming Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Fred Brooks says that it's like farming, hunting werewolves, or drowning with dinosaurs in a tar pit. Which are the best metaphors?”  

-Steve McConnell, Code Complete 

Code is an often misunderstood and misrepresented actor in our modern society. Indeed, even the experts—programmers responsible for creating some of the most complex software in human history—cannot agree on how to write about code. In this course, each of us, as daily users and consumers of code, will examine how we understand the code that runs our modern world—a world I like to think of as a “Codecrete Jungle.” In doing so, we will address many of the various issues that arise from living in a “Codecrete Jungle,” such as society’s (almost theological) faith in algorithms, the gap between code and human language, the disproportionate negative effects of code on minority groups, and code’s seemingly eminent displacement of humans from the workplace.  

This course requires no previous coding experience, as it is not a class for writing code; rather, it is a class for writing about code. 

13411 LIT 2110 World Literature I MW 900-1015 Matthew Coker

In this course, we will read widely from early global literature, examining influential texts and genres from a vast geographical area and chronological range. We begin our inquiry in ancient Mesopotamia, where the first seeds of civilization and writing were sown, with Enuma Elish and The Epic of Gilgamesh. Afterwards, we explore the literary traditions of Egypt, Israel, Greece, Rome, China, India, and the Arabian Peninsula, including texts from the world’s major religious traditions. We conclude with major narratives from the eastern and western shores of Eurasia and Africa, including Murasaki Shikibu’s Tale of Genji, a performance of the Sundiata epic tradition by Fa-Digi Sisòkò, and Christine de Pizan’s Book of the City of Ladies. We will especially consider how our texts conceptualize the realms of nature, humans, and spirits, considering how these realms are perceived to interact, as well as how our narratives make use of the general identity categories of individual self, collective self (body politic), and other. In so doing, we will begin to account for some of the interactions between self, society, religion, and literature.

10333 LIT 3213 Critical Reading/Writing I ONLINE Betsy Nies

This course introduces critical literary terms to help you analyze texts more effectively. The course offers personalized feedback on your writing to help you tighten your style. You will apply terms to your choice of texts such books, films, songs, video games, etc. Additionally, you will use a shared space to annotate five short stories and build theme/thesis statements in preparation for all of your English courses.

Because this is an asynchronous course, you must be motivated and be proactive in initiating contact with the professor. A series of quizzes will help orient you to concepts that need to be integrated in your writing. Pausing midstep—taking your time, reaching out if you have problems—will help prevent any chance of crashing and burning! If you do find yourself struggling, know that I am an e-mail and a Zoom call away. Falling down once does not mean failure as long as you take steps to pick yourself up. You must be your own cheerleader! Consider carefully whether this course will fit your learning style.

10551 LIT 3213 Critical Reading/Writing I MW 1330-1445 Alexander Menocal

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 it. 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, etc.).

10706 LIT 3214 Critical Reading/Writing II ONLINE Russell Turney

Critical reading, critical thinking and critical writing function dialogically. We read and think and write, and then re-read and re-think and re-write: we read our writing, and write our reading. Our task in LIT3214 is to learn and refine the techniques necessary to read and write critically from a literary perspective. Crucially, LIT3214 builds upon the critical reading emphasis of LIT3213. Thus, by this course’s end, you should not only have refined your critical facility from LIT3213, but also have developed a refined facility for scholarly, critical writing. Practically, in LIT3214 we aim to compose coherent analytical writing that thoughtfully puts literary tools, concepts and jargon to work upon literary texts (primarily, but not exclusively, short fiction). In doing so, we will strive to compose coherent sentences, paragraphs, responses and essays, formed by analytical insights, framed by literary terminology, supported and fleshed with ample and probative evidence, and expressed in polished and clean prose. We revise shorter weekly drafts, and then develop and revise those drafts into three longer papers, including a research component involving work in scholarly literary research databases. Because this section of LIT3214 is an asynchronous online section, you must be able to manage a steady workload and virtual resources without in-person engagement with the instructor or regular required Zoom sessions.

10707 LIT 3214 Critical Reading/Writing II MW 1330-1445 Kailan Sindelar

(coming soon)

13419 LIT 3304 Serious Comics (Literature of Popular American Culture) TR 1340-1455 Jessica Stark

This course explores long-form comics (sometimes referred to as graphic novels) that explore serious, thematic material. Beginning first in building a vocabulary for analyzing comics literature, we will also examine the long, fraught history of comics and US American censorship in reflection of contemporary debates on representation and nationwide book banning. In particular we will explore why comics, a form that is often associated with “childish” literature, so often invites authors depicting serious, traumatic moments of personal and national histories. Assigned texts will include book-length texts that depict (in words and images) the American War in Vietnam, the Holocaust, and the Israel/Palestine conflict.

Together, we will pursue a number of questions, including (but not limited to): in what ways do comics lend themselves to what Art Spiegelman calls “the Faultline between Personal and World History”? In other words, how do comics negotiate the relationship between individual and collective experiences? Between personal memory and public narratives? How do they “work”? How do comics authors portray meaning? And finally, what can these unusual texts reveal about the relationships between history and art?

12342 LIT 3331 Children's Literature MW 900-1015 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 pedagogical reading, a fairy tale anthology reader, and handouts.

13418 LIT 3930 Religion and Literature ONLINE Brandi Denison

This course will explore the borderlands of art and religion. We will explore topics that relate to the religious transformation of the self and society, as well as the relationship of these transformations to mainstream culture. This journey will lead us to think critically about the creation and maintenance of social borderlands of identity, propriety, and the sacred and the profane. We will examine the transformation of religious practices as religious people migrate, transform nature, experience cultural change, as well as imagine the future. 

We will conceive of art broadly to include novels, movies, television, short stories, poems, music, material artifacts, and visual art. We will use our readings and conversations as a window into particular historical moments in U.S. religious history. Throughout the class, we will be examining the following questions: How have religious people used art to create and sustain an identity? In what ways does art create the sacred for communities?  

12341 LIT 4243 Major Authors: Joyce TR 1340-1455 Laura Heffernan

This class will serve as an advanced seminar on the major works of James Joyce. We will begin with Dubliners (1914) and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), then spend more than 2 months reading Ulysses (1922). This class will be of interest to many sorts of people: those interested in Irish literature and politics; those interested in literary modernism and the modernist novel; those who have always wanted to read Ulysses but have been reluctant to do so without company.

11058 LIT 4650 From Zoot Suits to Becky G: Reading Border Cultures (Comparative Literature) TR 1215-1330 Andrea Gaytan Cuesta

Since the first tracing of the U.S. south and Mexican north by the imagination of Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca in the sixteenth century, the border has influenced US Literature and Culture. For more than 400 years, singers, writers, poets, photographers, actors, and filmmakers have created narratives about this geographic area’s diverse cultural, social, linguistic, demographic, and geopolitical dimensions. The goal of this course is to establish an interdisciplinary setting that will allow us to understand the history of the border and its cultural production, addressing theoretical texts about borderlands, hospitality, human rights and social justice. Altogether, we will work to build a conceptual, cultural and critical lexicon that will allow us to reflect and discuss Borderlands, in and outside Academia.

We will include non-fiction and fiction readings of Gloria Anzaldúa, Norma Cantú, Cherrie Moraga, Oscar Martínez, Doris Salcedo, Valeria Luiselli.  Musical analysis from Corridos to Cumbia and several films will allow us to critically unpack the rich history of the border, and its influence in nowadays history and culture. We will close the class with some work on performance and spoken word, developing a creative work to present in the Poetry Festival. 

12343 LIT 4934 Senior Seminar: What is an Author? TR 1050-1205 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? 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).

13421 TPP 2100 Acting I TR 1215-1330 Ron Destro

This is a beginning course in the fundamentals of acting. Students learn a working vocabulary and acquire basic skills of the acting process. Through formal and improvisational techniques for developing vocal, physical, and analytical skills associated with behavior-based acting, students explore the imagination as the actor's primary resource for building a character. Emphasis is on relaxation, trust, and mental agility. Some monologue and/or scene work may be required.

AML 3621 81383 Black American Literature TR 9:25-10:40 Tru Leverette Hall 

This course will explore the thematic arc of sustenance and survival through Black American literature and culture. Beginning with slave narratives, considered to be the first Black American literature, the course will trace texts to the 21^st century and consider the mechanisms and media through which Black Americans have found sustenance, in the broadest sense of the term, and have survived individually and collectively.   

AML 4242 83435 20th Century American Literature MW 10:30-11:45 Bart Welling 

This course will immerse students in modern U.S. literary texts that have actively participated in, and continue to resonate in, the ongoing fight for justice on the part of our nation’s marginalized and oppressed people. In the era of protests sparked by the police murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and so many other Black and brown people, and at a time when a pandemic that disproportionately affects Black people, Indigenous communities, Latinos and Latinas, and members of other non-white groups is laying bare gross inequalities that have shaped life in North America for centuries, our project will necessarily involve talking about race, class, gender, and other human constructs involved in patterns of oppression. However, we will not draw the line at injustices committed against humans; we will also examine writing produced on behalf of abused and endangered plants, animals, and other life-forms. How have authors of color enlisted the support of white readers and used the power of the written word to weaken their adversaries’ positions? How have women used literature to reach—and to effectively target—men? How have poor and otherwise oppressed writers used their texts to achieve a measure of justice in print when they were denied access to political power and to fair legal representation in our so-called justice system? How have people written in defense of nonhuman beings in ways that respect these life-forms’ autonomy and agency? At what point does the act of fighting injustice itself risk becoming unjust? How can we act more justly towards future generations? What might a more just America look like? How should we define justice in the first place? The goal of this class is not to offer definitive answers to these questions, but to explore representations of (in)justice in literature, and the literature of major justice and liberation movements, in a way that will empower students to a) recognize injustice when they see it, b) live more just lives, and c) work to advance just causes in our society.

CRW 2100 80529 Introduction to Fiction Writing TR 10:50-12:05 Michael Wiley

In this course, we will study basic techniques used by fiction writers to build convincing and compelling worlds, characters, and plots. We will apply those techniques to our own fiction. We will develop skills necessary for a productive critique of our own and others’ fiction, and for the in-depth work of successful revision. We will focus especially on mysteries as a type of fiction that helps us understand processes used by writers (ourselves and others) in writing well and in critiquing (our own and others’) writing.

CRW 2300 81957 Introduction to Poetry Writing MWF 9-9:50 Dorsey Olbrich

In Introduction to Poetry, we will learn to bring forth what is inside ourselves and transform it into irreducible art by reading examples of both contemporary and canonical poetry that will serve as models for the various and unique poems we hold in our own memories and experiences. We will learn about the working parts that build our poetry, such as imagery, metaphors and similes, poetic diction, sonic elements like as repetition and rhyme, voice, and style. We will participate in the rich traditions of poetic genres such as the sonnet, the ode, and the ekphrastic. Perhaps most importantly, we will spend time writing both in and out of class, beginning to define our own poetic voices and visions.

CRW 2600 (multiple sections) Introduction to Screenwriting DL Stephan Boka 

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 3110 80651 Fiction Workshop W 6-8:45 Marcus Pactor

Ready to take your fiction to a place it—and you—have never been? In this course, we will learn to devise and employ new approaches to our writing to radically change and upgrade our fiction. We will also be learning new writing techniques and approaches from three innovative contemporary American writers: Garielle Lutz, Vi Khi Nao, and Brian Evenson.

CRW 3113 83442 Crime Fiction: Mysteries and Thrillers TR 4:40-5:45 Michael Wiley

Much genre and literary fiction revolves around a crime or a set of crimes. Whether we write fantasy, dystopian stories, mysteries, or experimental work, (etc.,) we often include a theft, a disappearance, a killing, an abduction, or some other act that breaks the laws or codes of the world we describe. This writing workshop will focus on crime fiction both narrowly and broadly. We will consider such issues as suspenseful plotting, morally ambiguous characters, evocative settings, and writerly styles/voices. Evaluated writing will include two short stories or a chapter from an extended work of fiction, workshop responses, and short responses to published fiction.

CRW 3310 82376 Poetry Workshop MW 10:30-11:45 Jessica Stark

This workshop is for students who have some experience writing poetry and are looking to dig deeper into their writing practice. In this poetry workshop, we'll read published poems and poetry books (written by contemporary and historical poets), and we'll use this work to inspire our own creative writing work. We'll write poems, and we'll spend time discussing our poems together, offering each other feedback on our work. The workshop also integrates in-depth craft discussions and extensive outside reading to deepen students’ understanding of the genre and broaden their knowledge of the evolution of literary forms and techniques. As the course progresses, reading assignments will be tailored on an individual basis, and an increasing amount of time will be spent in discussion of student work.

CRW 3610 83440 Screenwriting Workshop R 12:15-3 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 3742 83441 Integrative Arts Workshop T 6-8:45 Mark Ari

In this workshop, students pursue creative interests in the arts that exist outside or across the traditional boundaries of genre and form. Student will explore and develop writing projects that may include new media, performative and environmental installations, visual arts, video and film, gaming, interactivity, computer graphics, and other, as yet, unpredictable possibilities.  For instance, while the written word remains central to our concerns, a student may combine their writing with video and sound to create a cine-poem or video essay. Projects will combine creative writing with at least one additional form. Students may work singly or, with instructor permission, collaboratively.

CRW 3930 83442 The Talon Review: Literary Magazine (Practicum) MW 1:30-2:45 Jessica Stark  

The Talon Review is a digital, student-run, biannual publication that publishes creative nonfiction, fiction, poetry, art, and video from around the world. Our mission is to showcase groundbreaking work that demonstrates the limitless, transformative potential of contemporary art. Established in 2014, The Talon Review is the only collaborative, student-run literary journal on campus and is a member of the national Community of Literary Magazines & Presses. We are sponsored by the Roberts-Wainright Endowment, a fund created in memory of Amy Wainright by her family, the Roberts, in support of Creative Writing at UNF.

We emulate a small press on a much smaller scale as a college journal. Our goal is to teach foundational skills in publishing across multiple departments such as editing, publicity, event planning, and design/production and allow students to familiarize themselves with both the publishing and media industry through our journal and online magazine.

As staff members, you will read, discuss, and vote on submissions for publication. You are responsible for providing thoughtful commentary on submissions, which determines which submissions will be published in our next issue. In class, you will discuss submissions from all genres that are in the final rounds of consideration, and help us select works that will resonate with our readers. Students will also be involved in the creation and production of promotional materials, commenting on design decisions, selecting artwork, and meeting production deadlines.

Students also have a chance to submit their own work for publication in the journal and work on The Catch, a biannual newsletter accompaniment to The Talon Review, that publishes work exclusively by UNF students.

By the end of the class, students will have a firm grasp on what makes an effective professional literary magazine and will be prepared to apply to editorial roles on The Talon Review. No prior experience in publishing is required to take this course.

CRW 4122 82377 Advanced Fiction Workshop M 6-8:45 Marcus Pactor

This senior capstone course will prepare you to submit your short stories for publication. We will discuss ways to identify publishable writing, how to use the magic of the internet to identify journals that might publish your work, how to write a professional cover letter, and whatever else comes up. We will also and of course workshop your fiction with the aim of sending it off to editors far and wide.  

ENC 3212 83450 Copyediting MW 10:30-11:45 Paige Perez

While most may think of writing as the primary art form of the literary world, copyediting is artful in its own way. Copyediting, as a practice or a profession, is more than the pursuit of “good writing.” It challenges individuals to envision and deliver a polished final product of a work (sometimes before the publishers or the authors themselves may know exactly what that vision entails!) while still respecting the expectations and requirements of all parties involved; this is the work of a copyeditor. 

This course will introduce the primary principles and methods key to the editorial process, including learning how to assess, identify, and revise common grammatical and mechanical errors; how to utilize style manuals and reference books while maintaining an industry-appropriate level of editorial intervention; how to properly communicate with authors and other associated clients; how to handle potential roadblocks in the editorial process, such as content or copyright queries; how to hand mark edit using standard editing marks and symbols as well as digitally edit using platforms like Word’s track changes and Google Docs’s editing/suggestion features; and when and how to recognize and eliminate bias.

ENC 3310 80482 Writing Prose DL James Beasley

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 3930 83451 Florida in Documents MW 3-4:15 James Beasley

What does it mean to be a Floridian? There are as many answers to that question as there are Floridians themselves. As fragmented as the state of Florida may be, we can understand glimpses of its meaning from its fragmented history itself. When we think about fragmented histories, we know we can turn to archival documents for their incompleteness, their temporality, even as they are preserved. This course introduces students to the history of Florida through its primary documents in our own UNF Carpenter Library Special Collections department,. This course will also introduce students to primary document research, and students will utilize curation software to create connections among Florida's fragmented documents as we assemble our fragmentary histories. 

ENC 4403 (multiple sections) Grant Writing DL Jennie Ziegler

From kitty cat cafes to vertical gardening to saving the whales: what change do you wish you could see in the world? Make this class work for you: whether its funding your own research or seeking to make a difference in a selected community, enroll in a course that will train you with the skills to write and request grants. We will begin by identifying specific and interesting projects, then identify the skills necessary to write a successful, well-honed grant. Over the duration of the semester, students will draft, edit, and revise (and potentially submit) grants for funding, gaining invaluable practical knowledge and an option to make an impact on their chosen communities.

ENC 4930 83452 Alligators, Augmented Reality, and the Multimodal Technical Writer TR 4:30-5:45 Kailan Sindelar 

Are you curious about how different modes of composition—written, auditory, visual, etc—can help readers and users understand different kinds of information, especially information that helps them learn about their environment? In this senior seminar, we will analyze and compose various multimodal texts while exploring environmental topics. We will read about how composition and rhetorical studies are a part of environmental action for people working inside and outside of academia. Students will also analyze and compose their own multimedia projects, including an AR experience that requires no coding experience. The creation of this project will require students to research and document local areas on or off campus through notes and images. Students will also create accompanying documentation about their project and topic. This course is designed to provide students with the opportunity to learn and practice new skills, and then to create a portfolio that highlights their composition skills for future potential employers.

ENL 2022 83454 British Literature II TR 1:40-2:55 Michael Wiley                   

In this course, we will read, discuss, and write about British literary texts from 1800 until the present, considering the benefits and drawbacks of categorizing literature according to the times and places in which writers produce it. We will consider literary periods separately while also examining the relations between them, and we will look at and question ideas of Britishness. Readings will include poetry, prose fiction, and prose nonfiction, with an emphasis on poetry. I will not assume that all class members have an extensive background interpreting poetry, and we will spend time (as necessary or desired) working on interpretive strategies. We will read selections from William Wordsworth, Mary Shelley, Christina Rossetti, Matthew Arnold, T.S. Eliot, Katherine Mansfield, Philip Larkin, and other writers who have changed the ways we think, talk, and write.

ENL 3132 83455 The Modern Novel TR 10:50-12:05 Laura Heffernan

What is a novel, and what can novels do that no other genre of writing can? In this class we will consider the forms and functions of book-length narrative fiction of the last century or so. Course readings will include Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent, Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, Samuel Beckett’s Murphy, Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, and Isabel Waidner’s Sterling Carat Gold. Course requirements include short close reading papers and annotations on secondary readings. 

ENL 4230 83456 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.

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), and Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address.

FIL 3363 81737 Documentary Production MW 4:30-7:15 Jillian Smith

The documentary films we make in this class have only one rule: they must use real life as their raw material. Portraits, investigations, poetic montages, compilations, interviews, histories— practicing a range of documentary styles and narratives will open students to the creative possibilities of documentary film while keeping them responsible to the social and natural worlds they capture. This course is a boot camp in independent filmmaking that teaches students—beginner and advanced alike, from any field—a disciplined process of planning, shooting, recording, organizing, scripting, and editing a film. Several small film productions teach students the documentary attitude along with technical competence and increasing documentary skill as we move from Fall through Spring. The Fall and Spring Documentary Production courses are designed as a two-course sequence, with the Spring semester ending in a public screening. Take the Fall course to get to the Spring course. We are a welcoming, supportive, and ambitious community. Any questions, contact Dr. Jillian Smith: jlsmith@unf.edu. See the work of AfterImage Documentary here: http://vimeo.com/afterimagedocumentary/videos

FIL 3801 81669 Film Terms MW 10:30-11:45 Jillian Smith

An understanding of film art begins with a working understanding of film terms and techniques. From mise-en-scène to foley, from elliptical editing to the long take—we will define, comprehend, apply, and create examples of film terms in order get a much deeper understanding of their use and their effects. In addition to learning terminology, students receive an introduction to the short film. All students are welcome to join in this fun, low-pressure, and immersive class, where we use many modalities to learn—written descriptions, group explorations, photography, quick edits, cell phone filmmaking.

FIL 3831 83457 Black Cinema T 12:15-3 Stephan Boka

Black Cinema poses the question, What is a Black movie.  In an effort to answer this question, students will screen movies for a through-line, research the topic to write essays, and participate in discussions both on-line and in-class with the goal of developing their own understanding and idea of what may define Black Cinema.

FIL 4361 81672 The Documentary Podcast (Audio) MW 3-4:15 Jillian Smith

In Documentary Podcasting, students make audio documentaries that aim for a standard worthy of an online presence for public consumption.  Students capture documentary material through audio—interviews, soundscapes, sound effects, environmental immersion, scripted voice-over, archive, diaries, and music—in order to craft complex, creative podcasts.  They learn recording technique and equipment; research skills; narrative and scripted organization; documentary experimentation; interview styles and techniques; and audio editing.

FIL 4839 83458 Contemporary Films: The Auteurs MW 12-2:45 Timothy Donovan

The last thirty or more years have been a period of exceptional filmmaking. This course will analyze contemporary films by excellent American and international auteurs. In doing so, we will focus on their outstanding film styles and cinematic techniques. Paul Thomas Anderson, Wes Anderson, Sophia Coppola, Claire Denis, Terrence Malick, and their influences will be the subject of our study.

FIL 4931 83459 Anime Cinema TR 9:25-12:05 Jeffrey Smith

Anime Cinema explores the history of Japanese animation (anime) and offers a critical analysis of the cultural and aesthetic achievements of prominent anime directors from the 1980s to the present day.

LIT 3213 80654 The Art of Critical Reading and Writing 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. As an asynchronous course, students must be self-motivated and be willing to track feedback from the professor to support revision and editing practices.

LIT 3333 81498 Young Adult Literature DL MW 10:30-11:45 Betsy Nies (this class meets online together at the scheduled times)

Why read young adult literature (YAL)? Why does the field matter?  Does it influence how we think about teens or how they think about themselves? We will explore these questions as we study the field from the mid-nineteenth century to today. The intention is to think critically about how this body of literature has transformed and how it addresses issues of young adult development and identity. For example, one might ask, why does dystopian fiction matter now? How does it speak to particular adolescent anxieties and desires? How does its rise in popularity reflect our political, social, and economic climate and the position of teens in our culture? To promote critical thinking, this course requires academic research (for one presentation and final essay), and provides readings on issues of genre, teen history, and adolescent development.

LIT 4042 83473 “Anti-Theater; or, Theater for Those who Hate Theatre” TR 3:05-4:20 Clark Lunberry

There is, in the theater, a long, glorious (and deserved) tradition of self-loathing, of disgust at the duplicities of dramatic performance. After all, if thought about, there is something rather ridiculous in an actor on a stage pretending to be someone other than him or herself, something silly in the illusion of it all (“Let’s put on a play!” ... Nah, let’s not). One might, faced with such antiquated deceptions, be inclined to say: isn’t it time that we grow up, that we leave the childish make-believe behind, exposing—Oz-like—the “smoke and mirrors” as “smoke and mirrors”? And, besides, if it’s bedtime stories that we want, television and movies long ago proved that they were much better at entertaining us, deceiving us, telling us tall tales by which we can sleep our lives away (rather than live them).

We will therefore approach the theater from this point of view of suspicion, loathing, and disgust, examining any number of modern and contemporary plays in which theater itself (and the theory of theater) is caught in the crosshairs of its own desired destruction. From the “characters in search of an author” in the plays of Luigi Pirandello, the ferocious desire for theater’s obliteration in Antonin Artaud’s essays, the theater-as-brothel in Jean Genet’s The Balcony, Eugene Ionesco’s Bald Soprano “anti-play,” Samuel Beckett’s deliberately deadend play (titled Play), Peter Handke’s Offending the Audience, Will Eno’s sad-sack Thom Pain (“Based on Nothing”), and Sarah Ruhl’s Christ-performing-Christ, in her Passion Play, we will see in all of our material what remains of a form of writing so self-aware that it can barely stand to look itself in the mirror.

LIT 4650 81381 “The Art of Anti-Art | DADA & Neo-Dada” TR 4:30-5:45 Clark Lunberry

“DADA doubts everything. DADA is an armadillo. Everything is DADA, too. Beware of DADA. Anti-dadaism is a disease: self-kleptomania, man's normal condition, is DADA. But the real dadaists are against DADA.”

—Tristan Tzara

DADA is having a birthday! DADA is 106 years old in 2023! This calls for a celebration, a commemoration, for an art that was to-end-all-art. Long live DADA! Long live the art of DADA’s anti-art! The art and literary movement DADA was born in 1916, in a seedy bar (the Cabaret Voltaire), in Zurich, Switzerland. Its anarchic powers, incited in part by the lunacy and horrors of WW I, quickly spread like a contagion across Europe, even leaping the Atlantic and landing forcefully in New York City. Ever since, DADA’s viral energies have never been stopped (nor even contained), as every twenty years or so DADA re-arises, DADA becomes neo-DADA, again and again. And now at the ripe young age of 106, DADA still lives, with its rich and nihilistic forces still feeding restless and hungry imaginations. With DADA’s visual images of violent collage, its poetry of ecstatic fragmentation and calculated non-sense, its theater of chaos and absurdity, this cultural movement clearly tapped into a necessary and enduring modern impulse. And in this interdisciplinary class, we will celebrate DADA’s prose and poetry, its manifestoes, its paintings and performances, as well as its lasting legacy.

LIT 4934 83475 Seminar: Middlemarch Slow-Read TR 1:40-2:55 Laura Heffernan

George Eliot’s Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life is widely regarded as the best novel of the nineteenth century. Featuring several plots that focus on the inhabitants of the fictional town of Middlemarch, Eliot’s novel afford us an opportunity to talk about nearly everything: the inevitability of change, what makes a marriage, how social status works, the function of gossip, the links between morality and politics, the history of gender and family, the purpose of art, and the meaning of life. When the novel was first published in 1871-72, readers encountered it in serial format over the course of eight months. Our reading schedule will approximate this experience: we’ll read the novel intermittently over the course of an entire semester.  Students who are interested in honing their close reading skills, learning how to contextualize literature in its time period, and discussing big questions will enjoy this class. 

THE 3990 83890 Advanced Acting TR 12:15-1:30 Ron Destro

This is an advanced acting class designed to put into practice what students have learned in previous training. The course explores various American and European approaches to performance through monologue and scene work using voice, movement and improvisational techniques developed at places like Juilliard, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. Dramatic texts may include those from Shakespeare, Brecht, Beckett and contemporary theatre.

TPP 2100 83891 Acting I TR 1:40-2:55 Ron Destro

This is a beginning course in the fundamentals of acting. Students learn a working vocabulary and acquire basic skills of the acting process. Through formal and improvisational techniques for developing vocal, physical, and analytical skills associated with behavior-based acting, students explore the imagination as the actor's primary resource for building a character. Emphasis is on relaxation, trust, and mental agility. Some monologue and/or scene work may be required.

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.

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.

***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.

***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.