Course Descriptions

81313 ENC 5720 Problems in Contemporary Composition R 1800-2045 James Beasley

ENC 5720, Problems in Contemporary Composition, is one of the courses in the Composition and Rhetoric concentration within the M.A. In English. This course introduces students to scenarios they will likely face as beginning teachers of composition, including designing effective writing courses and assignments. This course will also introduce students to current debates within the field of composition, including anti-racist writing assessment and labor issues regarding contingent faculty. Students completing this course will be better prepared to solve both practical and theoretical problems involved in the study and teaching of writing. 

83602 LIT 5934 Literatures of the Atlantic MW 1330-1445 Chris Gabbard

Satisfies British and early requirements

This course explores the literary and cultural imaginations of the Atlantic world during 1660-1838, focusing on Britain and its colonies in the Caribbean, and west Africa. It considers the period’s literatures in the contexts of the Enlightenment and slave trade as well as those of religion, science, sensibility, empire, emerging capitalism, African diaspora, Atlantic Creole culture, and New World settlement. The course pays particular attention to the ways writers, poets, and playwrights adapted literary forms, theories, and sources to their varied aesthetic and political objectives.

Readings include Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing; Aphra Behn, Oroonoko; Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative; Mary Prince, The History of Mary Prince; Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre; Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea.

Students will be expected to read secondary material and to incorporate and synthesize it into written and oral argumentation. Course work entails (1) reading responses, (2) participation, (3) presentation to full class of a scholarly article with follow-up Q&A, (4) research paper of significant length citing an appropriate number of secondary sources, and (5) a presentation of the research paper to the class with follow-up Q&A.

51485 CRW 2201 Intro Creative Nonfiction ONLINE Jennie Ziegler

What is nonfiction? It is described, by its title alone, by what it is not. It is not fiction. And that is the only clue we have of this sprawling genre filled with voices from the culinary world, the travel world, the world of loss and laughter and…car manuals? In this six-week nonfiction class we will read not only read luminary essayists but also draft weekly flash essays and responses. Prepare to flex your writing muscles in this class. We will be writing constantly and questioning closely this genre that defies definition. Abandon all expectations, all ye who enter here.  

50390 CRW 2600 Intro to Screenwriting ONLINE 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.

51423 ENC 2210 Technical Writing BCOH: Writing for Healthcare MTWR 1050-1230 Chris Gabbard

Students will assemble an APA-informed research project paper on a medical- or health-related topic of their own choosing. Former students often mention these papers later in their application letters when applying for a nursing program or for medical school or graduate schools in health-related fields. Students will also read parts of Dr. Marty Makary’s Blind Spots: When Medicine Gets It Wrong, and What It Means for Our Health, and Dr. Atul Gawande's Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End, two of the best books about medicine and related health fields published in the last 15 years.

Students will learn how to (1) navigate the Carpenter Library’s health and medical databases such as CINAHL Plus and PubMed, (2) incorporate data from research studies into a paper, (3) summarize a research study, (4) synthesize the results of several research studies, (5) analyze the quality of the studies they synthesized based on their type, methodology, and limitations, (6) produce a References page according to APA Style specifications, and (7), overall, write a scientific paper in accordance with the protocols of written standard English.

50147 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 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.

50439 FIL 4828 Movements in International Film MW 0900-1230 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 experiences 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 influenced 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 study historical context to understand the politics of film.  Students will be expected to write reflections on all of the films and engage in short creative projects designed to promote comprehension. 

51426 LIT 2000 Intro to Literature ONLINE Will Pewitt

Dystopias, aliens, time travelers, and other implausible premises make it unsurprising that Science Fiction is often derided as a genre for people who cannot handle reality; to its critics, Sci-Fi is for people who lack “common sense” because their heads are in the clouds—or, in the stars. Yet such derision has also been leveled against physicists of string theory (whose equations rely on dimensions beyond our perceptions) or philosophers of ontology (whose work challenges conventional conceptions of “reality”). However, in this course we will investigate how Science Fiction interrogates our customary beliefs in order to give us “uncommon sense.”

Sci-Fi invites us into the mysteries of the most mind-blowing disciplines—from aesthetics to metaphysics. Over the semester students will read, watch, and discuss myriad texts that cover issues that perplex society’s most ardent intellectuals. For this course, students will need to bring a curiosity about the universe and your place within it in order to better understand, analyze, and write about such extraordinary issues. Nonetheless, those issues will come packaged as stories about alien invasions and artificial intelligence. By reading, discussing, and writing about life’s outstanding questions students may come to see that reality is for people who cannot handle Science Fiction.

50960 LIT 4934 Seminar in Literature MW 1240-1610 Clark Lunberry

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 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 to ourselves, silently or aloud, as a form of dramatic literature? How is such language, as language, to be handled and engaged, seen and imagined prior to its performed appearance (and disappearance)—the words, as words, given the illusion of life? 

In this class, we will look at four plays by Shakespeare with each play 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, 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 film? What's lost in the 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 fleeting 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)?

50295 THE 2000 Theater Appreciation ONLINE Maureen McCluskey

This course is for students interested in understanding and appreciating one of the oldest art forms in the world. In order to learn more about theatrical production, plays, musicals, acting, and design, students will study theater terminology, history, research, and complete creative projects. 

14464 CRW 3211 Creative Nonfiction Workshop TR 0925-1040 Jennie Ziegler

Fans of adventure, intrigue, and the great outdoors will love this Creative Nonfiction workshop coming Spring 2025 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.   

14465 CRW 3310 Poetry Workshop MW 1330-1445 Frederick Dale

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 “final poems” five times during the semester (two poems at a time, for an aggregate of ten or so “final poems” for the semester). We will concentrate our readings on three poets: Hala Alyan (The Moon that Turns you Back), Nicky Beer (Real Phonies and Genuine Fakes), and Rachel Mann (Eleanor Among the Saints). In addition to the poems and critiques, each student will write a formal, academic essay (minimum of five pages) that focuses on two poems from one of the three assigned poets.

15229 CRW 3610 Screenwriting Workshop Online 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 the semester’s end.

14472 CRW 3930 Short Form Creative Writing TR 1800-1915 Mark Ari

We are all beginners. Each of us, however long we’ve been writing, is striving to get better at it. That’s part of what it is to be a writer. 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 in our lives that compels is to respond in the remarkable way language affords.  This course focuses on brief works to explore student interests and open new possibilities.  Students will learn to tap the reliable resources of their imaginations to experiment with a variety of approaches to fiction, creative nonfiction, prose poetry, and/or hybrid forms.  Risk-taking is encouraged.  Laughter is relished. 

13139 ENC 3202 Professional Communications Business TR1630-1745 Michael (Dean) Rice

This course interlocks with your surrounding business curriculum. It’s designed to help you practice fluency in the language of business—by immersion, reading workplace documents. In discussing these documents, evaluating them, and responding in kind, you become more businesslike in your writing. But beyond that, you practice the virtues of all professional communication—accountability, truthfulness, and attentiveness. All responsible members of professional communities—chemists, economists, nurses, architects, students, teachers—use certain kinds of language to help illuminate and solve problems. So, by the end of the term, if we’re doing this wholeheartedly, we should be more insightful participants in professional and public life—in short, better citizens.
The course has four modules. Within each one, we read several professional texts related to your fields; these pieces form the basis for each module’s project. In general, we are learning to “reverse engineer” the practices common to professional documents. For an outline of each module, its project, and its points—see Modules in Canvas.
Each writing assignment will be assessed with UNF rubrics available to you.

13140 ENC 3202 Professional Communications Business TR1505-1620 Michael (Dean) Rice

This course interlocks with your surrounding business curriculum. It’s designed to help you practice fluency in the language of business—by immersion, reading workplace documents. In discussing these documents, evaluating them, and responding in kind, you become more businesslike in your writing. But beyond that, you practice the virtues of all professional communication—accountability, truthfulness, and attentiveness. All responsible members of professional communities—chemists, economists, nurses, architects, students, teachers—use certain kinds of language to help illuminate and solve problems. So, by the end of the term, if we’re doing this wholeheartedly, we should be more insightful participants in professional and public life—in short, better citizens.
The course has four modules. Within each one, we read several professional texts related to your fields; these pieces form the basis for each module’s project. In general, we are learning to “reverse engineer” the practices common to professional documents. For an outline of each module, its project, and its points—see Modules in Canvas.
Each writing assignment will be assessed with UNF rubrics available to you. 

15233 ENG 3613 Disability and Care, w/optional CBL* TR 0925-1040 Chris Gabbard

Care is not just a good feeling but also a difficult, stressful action. As care ethicist Eva Feder Kittay writes: “care is a costly morality.” Across multiple literary genres, caregiver and disabled characters work through issues of engrossment, embodiment, dependence, ableism, abandonment, and ethical choice. Examining a diverse range of texts including Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Octavia E. Butler’s Dawn, William Shakespeare’s King Lear, we observe that certain themes recure: the relation of love to care and the way care, labor, and power interact. Along with literary texts, we will examine the writing of care ethicists such as Kittay and attend to forms of expression generated by extraordinary bodies and minds. Course assignments: daily reading quizzes and questions, a midterm and final, and an end-of-semester PowerPoint presentation.

*ENG3613 contains an optional Community Based Learning (CBL) component involving students volunteering at one of Jacksonville’s two exceptional student centers, Mt. Herman or Alden Road, or at the Developmental Learning Center in Murray Hill. Students undertake 16 hours of CBL volunteering over the course of the semester, usually for two hours per week for eight weeks. Those who complete the volunteering can count on Prof. Gabbard to write glowing letters of recommendations for graduate school, internships, scholarships, 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! The volunteer work also looks great on a resume! However, ENG3613 students are not required to take part.

14481 ENG 4013 Approaches 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.

12706 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.

15266, 15267 IDS 1932 Mythmaking MW 0900-1015 Will Pewitt

How do the stories we hear as children influence us individually, culturally, politically? How are our concepts of terms like Love, Time, Nature, Heroism, or Power defined by the tales we are told—and the ways we retell them? How do the myths of our societies recur, and in what senses do our lives reflect (or repel) their values? In this Interdisciplinary Studies course for Honors students, we will examine how certain mythological commonalities evolve from antiquity to modernity and how we shape (and are shaped by) old myths to suit new situations, whether in children’s fables or pop culture films.

We will survey not only a number of fantastical stories from several global cultures but also an interdisciplinary array of perspectives through which to read, discuss, and interpret how these narratives have meaning for their times, places, and peoples. In many ways oral stories like myths, legends, and folk tales—though they tend to be denigrated as narratives we “outgrow” often reveal a great deal to us and about us since their authors are not one single individual but are rather an entire culture. In the course we will investigate such narratives across various cultures and investigate them using a variety of disciplinary methods. In doing so, students will engage in hands-on activities, games, and discussions that allow us to see how disparate fields and different stories help us understand the human experience.

13510 LIT 2000: Introduction of Literature, “Writing the Body” TR 1050-1205 Clark Lunberry

“That is why as a writer I have never felt that medicine interfered with me but rather that it was my very food and drink, the very thing which made it possible for me to write.” —Dr. William Carlos Williams

 “Never generalize. Never theorize. Pay attention to the particulars. Focus on the concrete.” —Dr. Anton Chekhov 

What is it that a good doctor and a good writer have in common? The most obvious answer is that both must pay close attention to the world around them … “to focus on the concrete.” They must see lucidly and intelligently, with care and compassion, in order to describe (and to diagnose) the unique facts and features of the place, the person (the patient) before them. Two of modernism’s greatest writers were — not coincidentally — also doctors: the Russian Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) and the New Jersey-based American William Carlos Williams (1883-1963).

In this class, we will read a selection of short stories (Chekhov & Williams) and poetry (Williams) by these two remarkable doctors/writers, seeking to understand more fully the ways in which their being doctors impacted their being writers, and how the one vocation may have fed and fueled the other. All of our materials will be the starting-off point for class discussions, your own creative projects and presentations, and your own extended essays. 

15218 LIT 4042 Dramatic Lit: Tragic Pleasure/ Tragic Women "Trigger Warnings & Unsafe Spaces" TR 1340-1455 Clark Lunberry

“The change of fortune should be not from bad to good, but, reversely, from good to bad… Hence, they are in error who censure Euripides just because he follows this principle in his plays, many of which end unhappily. It is, we have to say, the right ending.” —Aristotle’s Poetics

There is a long and glorious tradition of playwrights creating brutal and distressing work that is deliberately intended to shock, provoke and “hurt” those witnessing it. Audiences seem to eat it up, seek it out. But one might reasonably wonder why? What is the enduring appeal of such troubling and tragic material, of its terrors and tribulations? Are we—like voyeurs at the scene of a car crash—merely titillated on some base level to tease at the taboos, poke at the horror? Or is it somehow instructional to stare at the sadness of others, their sufferings acted out before us, thus allowing larger lessons to be learned, burned “in the memory,” as Nietzsche noted? For, as Aristotle insisted, such tragedies might still, through “pity and fear,” offer an audience, cathartically, a “true tragic pleasure.” But what kind of “pleasure” could this truly be? In this course, with the burning issue of “trigger warnings” and “safe spaces” in mind, our focus will be upon the many triggering stories and unsafe spaces created in Euripides and Seneca’s ancient theatrical depictions of Medea (seen in the photo) and Phaedra (the two women forming our classical background), and then on to more modern productions, among them Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters, August Strindberg’s Miss Julie, Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children, Jean Genet’s The Maids, Samuel Beckett Happy Days, Sarah Kane Phaedra’s Love, Will Eno The Flu Season, and Sarah Ruhl’s Dead Man’s Cell Phone.

13884 LIT 4243 Major Authors: Frost MW 1030-1145 ONLINE Jason Mauro

This course will be an introduction to Robert Frost’s work, and to poetry more generally through his work. For such simple sounding work, Robert Frost’s poetry has been championed and appropriated by a truly startling array of interpretive communities.  Ezra Pound sought to align him with American Expatriates in Europe; regionalists wished to see him as the darling bard of New England, and an extension of the Georgian poetic tradition.  Lionel Trilling characterized him as the darkest of modern poets; economic conservatives of the 30’s and 40’s saw him as a champion of “laissez-faire” individualism.  Pragmatists see him as a disciple of William James; post-structuralists as enabling the dismantling of the subject.  This class will examine both the work that has generated such various, often contradictory critical responses, and some of responses themselves.  My wish is to regard this class as a workshop in considering this most widely known, but perhaps least comprehended poet.

12936 LIT 4650 CL: Madness and Modernism, “Out of My Mind” TR 1505-1620 Clark Lunberry

 “The capacity for self-reflection is given to man alone –  that is why he has, so to speak, the privilege of madness.” —Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, German philosopher (1770–1831)

  It may seem crazy but for some time now a rich and powerful body of literature and art has been building around the topic of madness, insanity, the loss of mind. In fact, crazy or not, stories and images of and about madness have, again and again, proven to be a source of fascination in much modern and contemporary writing and art. Something about the derangements of mind would appear to have promised many writers and artists access to worlds otherwise unseen, unfelt, unimagined—an opportunity to escape the sanely familiar and to investigate forbidden zones of thought and emotion outside the bounds of conventional imagination, rational formulation.

But what is really found in these often-terrifying spaces of alienation and despair, darkness and danger, and what is gained through their fictional representation and examination? Why would one want to go there at all? What’s to be learned? What’s to be feared?

Our readings will move from, among others, Nikolai Gogol’s Diary of a Madman, selected poems by Emily Dickinson and Charles Baudelaire, Anton Chekhov’s Ward No. 6, Luigi Pirandello’s Henry IV, Vladimir Nabokov’s “Symbols and Signs,” Eugene Ionesco’s play Rhinoceros, Antonin Artaud’s letters, and W. J. T. Mitchell recent book Mental Traveler: A Father, a Son, and a Journey through Schizophrenia. Looking also at images of madness in the visual arts (painting, photography, and film), and using Sander L. Gilman’s remarkable book Seeing the Insane, we will always keep our eyes fixed onto the present, the mad world around us, and the shifting boundaries determining our own sense of self, our own always vulnerable self-confinements.

13886 LIT 4934 Writing Creatively and Critically in the Archives TR 1630-1745 Laura Heffernan

This seminar will focus on creative and critical approaches to writing about, with, against, and around archival documents and objects. Part of the seminar will cover the basics of archival research and discovery: What are archives and special collections? How do archivists process collections so that researchers can access them? How do archivists think and write critically about their own methods? We will also consider how creative writers have used archival materials to create new forms, fill gaps in the historical record, or write against official documents. Readings may include A.S. Byatt’s Possession, Carolyn Steedman’s Dust, M. NourbeSe Philip’s Zong!, and Sadiya Hartman’s Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments. Students will have a choice of various forms of archival writing for a final project, including grant application-style proposals to revalue or transform existing collections; critical essays on archival theory and practice; or creative engagements with specific local or national archival collections. 

15501 AML 6507 Unscarred Texts / Florida Lit W 18:10-20:45 Keith Cartwright

This seminar will take up the notion of American Exceptionalism, considered in relation to recent Florida legislation affecting the classroom, and read primarily through texts that represent Florida. Florida literature offers a great window into discussion of the idea of American exceptionalism, and we draw deeply upon the state's folklore (fables, fairy tales, legends) to frame discussion through a popular (and highly international) lens of vision. We will also inevitably end up engaging notions of Florida exceptionalism, "Florida Man," for example. Readings will be framed by fables that ask us to consider the longer assignments in relation to another, perhaps wilder dimension. Several featured texts are historical novels opening up a sweep of time.

The course draws its title from a West African (Wolof) tale about a woman who refuses to marry a man with a scar. In her search for flawlessness, she ends up with a perfect demon. We will look to how Edgar Alan Poe used this tale as a base for presenting ideas of American perfection during the Seminole wars—via a perfect cyborg-hero assembled flawless part by part. Having launched this 20th and 21st-century literature seminar in the 19th century, we'll move to read more recent Florida writers and representations of Florida, including work on Florida from international writers, as well as material from the Gulf Coast of Alabama, Mississippi, and parts of Louisiana (for having been "West Florida" not too long ago). From modern and contemporary writers who have lived in Jacksonville (James Weldon Johnson, Zora Neale Hurston, Jessica Q Stark) to writers and/or material from Choctaw Nation, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, Senegal, Nigeria, Morocco, Vietnam, Spain, England, and maybe-Saturn, this seminar will discuss a rich mix of story and lyric, space and time, as we engage ideas of exceptionalism, flawlessness, perfect grammar, political correctness, and technologies of progress and perfection.

The seminar aims to combine conceptual rigor with respect for students' time and energy. We will move with care, bit by bit, text by text, reading/writing for the reassuring scars in texts and doing our best to keep the demonic at bay.

15500 CRW 6925: Advanced Genre Fiction T 1800-2045 Michael Wiley

This creative writing workshop in genre fiction will focus on the full process of writing genre fiction from “reading as writers” to writing, revising, and editing stories to guiding our stories toward publication. Each class member will write, workshop, and prepare for submission at least one substantial story in any of the major genres. As part of the course, we will discuss distinctions between genre and literary fiction as well as crossover (upmarket or general) fiction. We will also consider the differences between conventionality and the manipulation of conventions and the effects of each. We will consider genre-specific stylistics. And we will identify potential markets for our stories and address questions about how these markets might or might not shape our writing. Periodically, New York Times bestselling, Amazon bestselling, Emmy Award-winning, and top genre writers will join us (in person or by Zoom) to discuss craft and publishing.

14480 LIT6246 The Absurdity of Laurence Sterne M 1810-2045 Chris Gabbard

Sterne’s Tristram Shandy was the first anti-novel, parodying the realist novel that at the time (1760s) 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 said: “Nothing odd will do long. Tristram Shandy did not last.” But Johnson was wrong. Today, this novel is considered a classic of world literature along with Don Quixote, Candide, Ulysses, and One Hundred Years of Solitude. Students will produce reader response questions, research and present the content of scholarly articles, moderate class discussions, and write a modest research paper. This course satisfies early, British, and author requirements.

AML 2020: American Literature II (asynchronous) – M W 1200-1315 – Dr. Betsy Nies

This course surveys major American literature from the US Civil War to the present. Prepare to read short stories, poetry, autobiography, and articles about literary movements to gain an understanding of the major shifts in literary and historical thinking.

As an asynchronous course, you will be listening to online lectures, participating in online discussions, annotating texts in a collective format, and taking short quizzes. Only take the course in this format—online, asynchronous—if you are self-motivated and prepared to keep yourself on track throughout the semester.

AML 3154 87424 American Poetry: “Barely There | Minimalism and Poetry” – T R 1050-1205 – Clark Lunberry

 “To see the Summer Sky / Is Poetry, though never in a book it lie— / True Poems flee—”

—Emily Dickinson (Poem #1472)

             This course will focus upon various instances of (mostly) American poetry in which the language on the page is deliberately limited, often suspiciously spare, or even, at times, barely there. The words presented, as if uncertain of themselves, will nonetheless frequently—through their very isolation—call even greater attention to their point, placement, and purpose, with the accompanying whiteness of the surrounding page suddenly more forcefully seen in its seeming silence. What’s to be said, so simply? What remains, of what remains? And how many words, really, are needed to speak of that which—like Emily Dickinson’s “Summer Sky”—can’t be spoken, and of which “True Poems flee—"?

Among the “minimalist” poets to be read are Emily Dickinson, William Carlos Williams, Richard Wright, Robert Creeley, Robert Lax, Aram Saroyan, Larry Eigner, Rae Armantrout, Mary Ruefle (and assorted others). We will, in addition, read a selection of classic Japanese haiku, seen as poetic precursors in their spareness and precision of word and image. And finally, we will spend time reading/looking at the work of several contemporary visual poets (Marton Koppany; Jaap Blonk), as well as instances of language’s use in modern and contemporary visual art, from Glen Ligon and Ed Ruscha to Barbara Kruger and Jenny Holtzer...

CRW 2100 84694 (GW) Intro to Fiction Writing – T R 1340-1455 – 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 2201 86093 Introduction to Writing Creative Nonfiction – T R 1505-1620 – Mark Ari

Creative Nonfiction is the fastest growing genre in creative writing programs across the country. It is as old as writing itself, as fresh as each new idea, and wholly liberating. Tell a story, meditate on a notion or thing, and discover the mind at play or your senses at full-tilt. No subject is off limits in this fact-based but radically subjective pursuit of… you tell me.

What is creative writing in general and creative nonfiction in particular? What is a successful work of creative nonfiction? What are its elements? What leads us to determine some elements are necessary while others are less so? How do you recognize success in work you read or write? How do you compose work that is more successful? This course addresses those issues, and you should keep them in mind as the semester progresses. Even if you are simply exploring creative writing, testing the water to see if this is a place you’d like to swim, then you are exploring yourself. And if you are already a writer, this is a class devoted to helping you become yourself. In either case, it’s an endeavor worth breaking your brains over. This class is suitable for students with interests across the disciplines, from poetry to biology, from art to mathematics—no subject is off limits. Experimentation is encouraged. Laughter is relished.

CRW 2600 86588, 86589 (GW) Intro to Screenwriting – Online – Stephan Boka

Intro to Screenwriting covers formatting, story structure, theme, character arc, and more. Students will pitch movie ideas, write a treatment, outline, and learn scene construction for a feature film. Students will also participate in screenwriting workshops to further develop their work and apply lessons to the development of the work of their peers.

CRW 3110 84795 (GW) Fiction Workshop – W 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 contemporary writers: Premee Mohamed, Diane Williams, and Victoria Lancelotta. 

CRW 3310 86094 (GW) Poetry Workshop – T R 1050-1205 – Fred Dale

Course Description: You 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 “final poems” five times during the semester (two poems at a time, for an aggregate of ten or so “final poems” for the semester). We will concentrate our readings on three poets: Taylor Byas (I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times), Emily Lee Luan (Return), and Maureen N. McLane (What You Want) —each at the top of their perspective poetic games. In addition to the poems and critiques, each student will write an essay (minimum of five pages) that focuses on two poems from one of the three assigned poets.

CRW 6925 87854 Creative Writing Workshop: Experiments in Style and Practice – M 1800-2045 – Mark Ari

Tapping Raymond Queneau’s masterpiece, Exercises in Style, for our take-off point, we’ll explore as many ways to tell a story as we can handle. Students will invent new ones or cannibalize the tried and true for those parts out of which they may construct a Franken-style of their own. Students will learn to tap the bountiful resources of their electric imaginations.to breathe life into works they shape. Then we will explore the practice of taking these works into the world. Prompts will be issued, constraints applied, modes of publication and performance employed.

DIG 3176: Intro to the Digital Humanities (DL) – Online – Laura Heffernan

This course will offer students an introduction to the Digital Humanities in theory and practice. Students will explore UNF-based as well as national and international digital projects. They will meet historians, librarians, archivists, data scientists and critics of data science. They will learn the basics of HTML coding, data visualization, content analysis, and digital mapping. Most importantly, students will have the time and support to explore local and regional materials and to expand their skills and interests with an eye to starting their own digital project.

ENC 2443 87432 (GW) Writing Topics in Literature – M W 1330-1445 – Joe Flowers

Writing Technoculture and the Post-Human

In this class, we will read modern and classic literature in an attempt to analyze the effects of technology on culture and vice versa.  Specifically, we will look at the individual and social ramifications of the relationship between humans and technology.  Is this relationship positive or negative, neutral or biased?  How can technology be at once artificial and natural—endemic to a human nature it constantly modifies?  We will traverse the literature of technology from ancient Greece to the industrial revolution and into science-fiction, attempting to discern whether we've become post-human.

ENC 2451 86095 (GW) Caregiving & Healthcare (Writing for Health Care) – M W 1030-1145 –Chris Gabbard 

Description 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.

ENC 3202 85434 Professional Communication for Business – T R 1800-1915 – Ash Faulkner

*Note: ENC 3202 is restricted to majors within UNF's Coggin College of Business. 
This course, ENC 3202 Professional Communication for Business, interlocks with the rest of your major’s curriculum. It’s designed to help us practice fluency in professional communication—by immersion, reading workplace documents. In discussing these documents, evaluating them, and responding in kind, we are practicing the virtues of professionalism—accountability, truthfulness, and attentiveness. All citizens of professional communities—chemists, economists, nurses, engineers—use certain kinds of language to help illuminate and solve problems. So by the end of the term, if we’re doing this right, we should be more insightful participants in professional and public life—in short, better citizens.

The course has four modules. Within each one, we read several professional texts related to your fields; these pieces form the basis for each module’s final project. In general, we are learning to “reverse engineer” the practices common to professional documents. Each writing assignment will be assessed with UNF rubrics available to you.

This course satisfies general education writing outcomes. Students completing the UNF General Education Program will be able to produce writing that clearly addresses audiences and purposes; identify and use relevant and reliable source materials; and compose documents that adhere to generally accepted standards of English usage and stylistic standards of discipline-specific writing tasks.

More specifically, a successful graduate of ENC 3202 (with a “B” or above) can:

1. Locate, read, and reflect on publications in their field;
2. Develop rubrics of professional writing to self-assess based on workplace standards;
3. Produce and present professional texts that marshal and design compelling evidence to give practical and useful information to professional audiences in the appropriate style and tone;
4. Participate actively within their professional community.

ENG 4013 86599 Approaches to Literary Interpretation – T R 1050-1205 – 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.

ENL 2012 87443 British Literature I – T R 1050-1205 – Chris Gabbard

Description: We will read and discuss a variety of strange and intriguing works. We will read translations of Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Prologue” and “The Miller’s Tale” from The Canterbury Tales. We will study William Shakespeare’s tragedy King Lear (1606) in the original. After that, we will visit the metaphysical poets John Donne and Andrew Marvel, then the neoclassical poets, authors, and dramatists Anne Finch, Aphra Behn, Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, Thomas Gray, William Cowper, Phillis Wheatley, and Robert Burns.

ENL 3132 86601 History of the Later British Novel: The Rise of the Novel and Social Media – T R 1050-1205 – Laura Heffernan

What is a novel? When were novels first invented, and how did they distinguish themselves from earlier literary forms such as the courtly drama, the tragedy, the romance? Finally, what can the history of novels tell us about the rise of social media? This undergraduate seminar will test the idea that some of the most important functions the novel performed in the past are carried on today not by novels, but by social media practices and platforms.  With the help of major theorists of novelistic form, we will consider the status update, the snap, and the tweet as the latest iterations in a three-century experiment in representing the everyday lives of regular people. This course will include weekly lectures that are lively chats about novel history, theory, and social media. We will read four novels together, covering three centuries of novel history: Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, Anthony Trollope’s The Warden, and Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse. In addition, students will read theorists of the novel, particularly those who write about how the history of the novel relates to the history of capitalism, nationalism, gender, and the changing textures of everyday life.

ENL 4230 86602 Literature of the Black Atlantic – M W 1330-1445 – Chris Gabbard

Description: We will consider Paul Gilroy’s concept of the “black Atlantic,” which drew inspiration from the natural currents of the Atlantic Ocean as a means by which to understand the hybrid cultures that formed when mass populations of black Africans were transported across oceans. We will read Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing, the work of various African-born authors writing in English, and Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, for reasons that will become obvious.

FIL 2000 84598, 85849 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 3363 85683 Documentary Production – M W 1630-1915 – 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 (from any major, beginner and advanced alike) 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 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. 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 2023,  The Doc Show 2022, or  The Doc Show 2021, or AfterImage Vimeo Page

FIL 3801 85631 Film Terms – M W 1030-1145 – 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 4361 85633 The Documentary Podcast – M W 1500-1615 – 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 87636 Film Noir: Black is the Darkest Color – M W 1200-1445 – Tim Donovan

Are you attracted to mystery, intrigue, lust, greed, crime, disillusionment, cynicism, tragedy and trauma? The dire world of film noir is your home.  

This course will study the dark, beautiful style and tragic narratives of American film noir and neo-noir. We will study noir's roots in German expressionism, Italian neo-realism, and Depression-Era gangster movies that brought forth some of Hollywood’s greatest films of the 1940s and 1950s. In the course, we will also study the pre-and post-World War II social and cultural milieu that influences the sensibility of noir and neo-noir. The films range in mood from Welles’s sinister Touch of Evil (1958) to the Coen’s absurd The Big Lebowski (1998). 

IDS1932 86199 Writing About Film – M W 1030-1145 – Jeffrey Smith

This interdisciplinary course, which can be taken in place of the required ENC 1143 credit prepares students to observe, identify, and employ elements of film terminology, form, and theory for crafting film reviews and analytical writings for publication. Specifically, students will develop critical thinking and writing skills and will learn strategies for collaborative teamwork. What makes this course unique amongst other writing courses is the actual film component. Films from various genres will be screened in class, and students will discuss how each film communicates a social or cultural message.

IDS 1932 87655 (FYE) Workplace Writing – M W 1630-1745 – Ash Faulkner

*Note: Any student taking IDS 1932 Workplace Writing in Fall 2024 must take it in conjunction with its counterpart, a dedicated in-person section of EDG 2000 Career Planning and Professional Success (CRN 84590). These two courses are complementary, with related assignments and activities.

IDS 1932 Workplace Writing is 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.

LIT 2000 85369 Intro to Lit: Reading Russia | Short Stories | Storm Clouds – T R 1215-130 – Clark Lunberry

Nobody wrote short stories the way the Russians wrote short stories; there must have been something in the water, or the vodka, or in the chilled air, the long cold winters of Moscow, or St. Petersburg, or out on the desolate Russian Steppe. Whatever it was, wherever it was—with such writers as Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov, and (the Russian-American) Vladimir Nabokov—there is an intensity and an integrity to the created stories in which the stakes always feel high, the pressure building, as if something is about to explode, or implode, or fizzle into a poignant and revealing sadness, or joy; within so many of these stories, we are positioned there on the page to find and feel a moment’s quiet revelation, or a sudden awareness aching into an exchange between friends, family, strangers, into that fragile space where lives are lived, days endured, and where the storm clouds of history are always forming.

LIT2120 87662 World Literature II – M W 900-1015 – Jeffrey Smith

This course surveys major global literatures from the 18th century through the present.

LIT 3213 84519 Critical Reading/Writing I – T R 1630-1745 – Alex 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.).

LIT 3213 84798 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 3333 85491 Young Adult Literature – M W 1330-1445 – Dr. Betsy Nies

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 or paranormal romance matter now? How do these genres speak to particular adolescent anxieties and desires? How does their rise in popularity reflect our political, social, and economic climate and the position of teens in our culture? Work will include reading both YA novels and critical secondary literature, writing responses, offering one presentation, and research and presenting a final creative piece (a YA chapter or short story) with research on how your particular story addresses a gap in what is on the market now. Attendance and participation are required to pass the course.

LIT 4650 87664 Comperative Literature: “Reading Dreams | The Art and Literature of Dreaming” – T R 1505-1620 – Clark Lunberry

This new, interdisciplinary course will focus upon the art and literature of dreams, and the large role that dreams have played in the emergence and development of Modernism. As a seeming escape, or alternative, to a wideawake and rational engagement with the world, what have dreams offered so many different writers and artists in their often-irrational presentation of life, their unconscious revelation of reality?

In this course—its title and content linked to my recent visual poetry installation, Reading Dreams, in the UNF English Dept. Commons—we will look at and discuss extended sections of Sigmund Freud’s monumental The Interpretation of Dreams (the source material of that installation).

We will, in conjunction, look at how dreams have been engaged in the modern theater, from August Strindberg’s A Dream Play to Adrienne Kennedy’s Funnyhouse of a Negro. We will also listen to sound art by the British artist Delia Derbyshire (The Dreams); see how film has worked with the material of dreams, by such filmmakers as Darren Aronofsky (Requiem for a Dream) and Akira Kurosawa (Dreams); and look at instances in the visual arts, from Surrealism to the present, where the content of dreams has often informed an artist’s orientation.

Students, along with their short formal essays, will be urged to keep dream journals, while also being asked to undertake creative ways of thinking about dreams, with our many studied materials used as a frame and focus intended to guide our intuition and understanding.

LIT 4934 86619 Inventing Death – T R 1340-1455 – Online – Jason Mauro

We begin with and form this class around Ernest Becker’s landmark book, The Denial of Death.  The claim he makes is difficult in every possible way: in response to our mortality (the fact to which we are both horrifyingly sensitive and yet profoundly numb) we create the culture(s) we have—our most ordinary behaviors and most common beliefs are defenses against the recognition of mortality.  This class is dedicated to exploring the implications, the applications and the extent of that claim.  In order to do so we will be reading through material that is intellectually and psychologically difficult.  Our discussions will be devoted to how our texts critique what we regard as normalcy and will therefore likely tread on some of our most reflexive or cherished assumptions and beliefs.  I would wish for this gathering a supportive, encouraging and sensitive environment within which this critique can emerge.

LIT 4934 87665 Seminar: Creative Criticism – T R 1630-1745 – Jennifer Lieberman

We dedicate ourselves to the study of literature because we appreciate the power and value of beautifully crafted language. Yet, much writing by literary scholars is dry, dense, and jargon-laden. This class examines a style of literary criticism which also has a style of its own—the school of creative criticism.

This class will read creatively crafted criticism, and it will aspire to produce the same. We will write short responses that assess the works we study as a class, but the majority of our efforts will strive towards student-produced works of creative criticism. As such, students in this course will participate in regular writing workshops. By the end of the semester, we each will have developed our own creative project that either examines a work of literature or that uses a work of literature to examine something else in the world: the writer’s own life, a historical moment, the concept of history itself? The choice is yours.

LIT 6246 87666 Major Author: William Blake – R 1800-2045 – Michael Wiley                         

This course will focus on William Blake, the poet, engraver, artist, mystic, political theorist, visionary, Londoner, and madman. Blake’s writing and pictorial art exploded the mental, physical, and ideological shackles that contained and constrained readers at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries. As we will see, his work still tests – and breaks through – the limits of readers in the twenty-first century. Graded work will include a midterm essay, a final essay, and an oral presentation. This course may satisfy either a pre- or a post-1800 graduate program requirement.

THE 2000 87667 Theater Appreciation – Online – Maureen McCluskey

In this course, students will explore dramatic structure, techniques, and various organizational elements. The course provides an introduction to theatre as a collaborative art form through the critical analysis of its historical context, production, theory, and connections to theatrical literature. 

THE 2000 87670 Theater Appreciation – T R 1340-1455 – Ron Destro

In this course, students will explore dramatic structure, techniques, and various organizational elements. The course provides an introduction to theatre as a collaborative art form through the critical analysis of its historical context, production, theory, and connections to theatrical literature.     

TPP 2100 87671 Acting I – T R 1505-1620 – 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.  

TPP 3990 87672 Experimental: Theatre - Directing and Performance – F 900-1145 – Maureen McCluskey

This course focuses on the practice and disciplines of directing and performance. Students will develop visual sophistication and a broader understanding of how collaborative elements combine in production. Techniques and approach focus on viewpoints inspired by Tina Landau and Ann Bogart

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)?