Department of English

A Cultural History of American Women in Comics: In Print & Online

Margaret Galvan

Despite a long history of female creators, readers, and nuanced characters, women’s participation in American comics has frequently been overlooked. Contemporary scholars have focused on recovering these forgotten women.
In this class we will explore why women’s contributions have not been visible in comics histories. We will start by reading how comics have been variously defined. Reading these definitions alongside this understudied
tradition of women’s comics, we will ask: is there something about the definitions that exclude women in comics? We will read comics by women in addition to reading comics for and about women, since female fandom
and characters have also been minimized. We will read a variety of forms, both print and digital, and consider how we might wield this digital space to right the balance.

Course assignments will include digital reflections on a shared course website, a short formal essay, and a research project that includes an annotated bibliography, proposal, Wikipedia edits, and formal paper.

Times: T 5-6, R 6

Cross-listed with AFA 3930/sec. 03D8

African American Literature I

Debra King

Description: African American writers from 1746 to the present have written in all genres, leaving none unchanged by the appropriation. It is a literature that not only intertextualizes elements of the vernacular tradition
(spirituals, folktales and the blues) and its own immediate past, but is a regenerative force of conscious construction and literary beauty within the history of American literature. The goal of this course is to
investigate the transformational power of black imagination and artistic genius. Students will gain an understanding of and appreciation for the creative dexterity and conventions of this literature. The period
covered begins with Lucy Terry’s 1746 “Bars Fight” and ends with the Harlem Renaissance. Although chronology is obscured by a focus on genre, readings are arranged so that students can trace the development of various
genres and various styles, themes, images, and structures across time and within individual author’s works. In this way, the course emphasizes the creative process, intertextuality, and literary history.

Format: Class sessions include lectures but are discussion based primarily. The three-hour block of class time, Mondays, represents three class sessions. Participation in discussion is an important part of your grade.
You should listen carefully to others, ask questions of me and other students, and share your ideas. I expect all students to create an environment that encourages the participation of everyone. If you feel uncomfortable
with discussion-based classes or feel you cannot contribute successfully, you should drop this course immediately.

Required Texts and materials:

• Norton Anthology of African American Literature 3rd Edition, Vol. 1
• Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
• Pack of 3×5 index cards

Times: M 3-5

Cross-listed with AFA 3930/sec. 03EB

African American Literature 2

Mark A. Reid

This course extends the definition of African American literature to include visual narratives by well-known artists as well as writers whose works have been overlooked for various reasons. Readings and film screenings
will cover such playwrights as Amiri Baraka, Lorraine Hansberry, Lynn Nottage, Adrienne Kennedy, novelists as James Baldwin, Paule Marshall, James McBride, Toni Morrison, John A. Williams, poets as Bob Kaufman,
Audre Lorde, Pat Parker, and filmmakers as Spike Lee and Marlon Riggs.

Lectures and class discussions will explore how artists, using black vernacular and various other literary and visual strategies, dramatize contemporary social and psychological conflicts that occur when individuals
and groups resist societal pressures to conform to hegemonic beliefs about race, sexuality, and gender. (To describe a hegemonic belief formation is not to say that a majority supports this belief system about race,
sexuality, and gender, but to say that there appears to be no other alternative to this singular racialized-sexualized-gendered vision of society.)

I. REQUIRED TEXTS

• James Baldwin. Giovanni’s Room (New York: Random House, 1956) WEEK 6
• Wesley Brown, Push Comes to Shove (Concord, MA: Concord Free Press, 2009) WEEK 8
• Lorraine Hansberry. A Raisin in the Sun (New York: Signet, 1959) WEEK 2
• LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka). Dutchman and The Slave (New York: William Morrow, 1964) WEEK 3
• Paule Marshall. Brown Girl, Brownstones (New York: The Feminist Press, 1959) WEEK 5
• James McBride. The Color of Water (New York: Riverhead Books, 1996) WEEK 12
• Lynn Nottage. Crumbs From the Table of Joy and Other Plays (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2004) WEEK 4
• John A. Williams. Clifford’s Blues (Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 1998) WEEKS 10-11
• Shay Youngblood. Black Girl in Paris (New York: Riverhead Books, 2001) WEEK 7

II. COURSE REQUIREMENTS:

1) Pop Quizzes on weekly readings as well as film(s) screened in the previous class [20 points]

(1pt – 3pts each)

2) Individual 5-minute oral presentation and 5 min Q&A. Instructor assigns each student their oral presentation of a required reading (5 minutes) Due Weeks 3–11 [20 points]

The grade on the presentation is based on the following criteria:

1. The importance of the material presented to the class. Students must make brief references to primary scenes in a particular literary work (or film) to illustrate important issues and support their argument.
2. The clarity of the written and oral work. Here, “clarity” refers to smooth oral delivery, correct use of descriptive terminology and grammar.
3. The student’s ability to pose important questions to the class at the end of their oral presentation. Students must introduce the argument/thesis of their oral presentation based on their assigned section.

3) Students are responsible for a typed 1-page outline of their 5-minute discussion.

The outline is due on the day when the student presents her/his 5-minute discussion.

4) MIDTERM EXAM 60MINS TUESDAY, 17 OCTOBER [20 points]

5) FINAL EXAM 120MINS TUESDAY, 05 DECEMBER [40 points]

Times: T 9-11

Hidden Histories: U.S. Historical Fiction and Race

Alyssa Hunziker

Nobel Prize winning author Toni Morrison contends: “if we understand a good deal more about history, we automatically understand a great deal more about contemporary life.” From James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the
Mohicans (1826) to Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind (1936), colonialist narratives have been deeply embedded in U.S. literary traditions. However, recent historical novels by African American, Asian American,
and American Indian authors like Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Julie Otsuka, uncover lesser-told U.S. histories across the lines of race and gender. These novels disrupt nationalist historical
narratives and reveal a broader geographical and geopolitical scope than their predecessors. Our course asks: How can historical fiction highlight otherwise neglected or repressed histories? Can fiction address
comparative histories across racial and ethnic lines? Following Morrison, these texts reframe our understanding of history and race so that we might better understand our present.

Considering these narrative strategies, this course surveys historical fiction that engages multiple sites of colonial and racial subjugation. In additional to literary texts, we will view two films and a videogame
to discuss historical fiction and race broadly across multiple forms of media. We will also use archival research to include photographs, historical records, and educational records from each historical period.
Secondary readings will provide students with historical and theoretical background knowledge to approach texts that write across African American, American Indian, and Asian American contexts.

Times: M W F 6

Cross-listed with AFA 4931/sec. 2442

The Black Subject in Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture

Delia Steverson

In the nineteenth century, the debate surrounding the status of African American personhood foregrounded a point of contention amongst citizens in an America newly emancipated from the reigns of Britain. Prior to the
Civil War, questions about enslaved subjectivity emerged that had not been asked before. The growing tension between citizens of the North and citizens of the South, and between proponents and opponents of slavery,
foregrounded key debates in an America that sought to establish its citizens as fit or unfit for civic engagement. This course will investigate the complex and fluid definitions of black personhood in the nineteenth
century. Some of the questions this course will address are: How were blackness and black subjectivity defined in the nineteenth-century? What were the key debates surrounding black citizenship? How did black authors
themselves use different mediums—including autobiography, fiction, poetry, sermons, essays—to construct black subjectivity? How were both black and nonblack writers portraying the racial tensions of the century?
We will form our discussions around issues of race during slavery, the Reconstruction, and post-Reconstruction, ending with W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington’s debates concerning racial uplift and progress
for African Americans. Possible authors include Phillis Wheatley, Olaudah Equiano, Harriet Jacobs, Herman Melville, Kate Chopin, James Weldon Johnson, Frederick Douglass, and Victor Séjour, amongst others.

Additionally, this course will be largely focused on crafting literary criticism tailored to the style of The Explicator journal. Throughout the semester, students will read Explicator articles,
and in turn, write three essays in the hopes of submitting one for possible publication in the journal.

Times: T 2-3, R 3

Studies in 20th-Century American Literature: “So Satisfying a World”: The Artist in American Culture

Rebecca McNulty

In Walden Two, B. F. Skinner writes, “We will never produce so satisfying a world that there will be no place for art.” This course will attempt to answer the question of who and what is
an artist in American culture. We will examine the American artist through the standard lenses of music, art, drama, and literature, while paying particular attention to female artists, artists in the LGBT+ community,
and artists of color. We will also expand our exploration to consider artists in politics, film, technology, war, and other times of disaster. Course readings will both consider and displace traditional notions
of the American canon by reachingfrom F. Scott Fitzgerald and Maya Angelou to Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues and Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton. We will compare textual artists
with the creators of these works, all while working to narrow the definition of the American artist and workingto postulate theories on the nature and implications of her work.

This course will also include theoretical explorations of what the artist means to 20th-century American culture. Students will work in pairs to produce weekly presentations based on the work of Ernst Bloch, Michel
Foucault, John Barth, Judith Butler, Frederic Jameson, Slavoj Žižek, and others. Through these presentations, we will examine those theories of our contemporary moment that were unavailable in the first half of
the century, when the period of literary Modernism seriously began to explore the character of the artist. Over the course of the semester, we will attempt to track the artist through her Modernist roots–and into
her new position in contemporary American culture.

Course requirements will include but are not limited to: participation, a group presentation, short response papers, and more ambitious midterm and final paper assignments.

Times: T 5-6, R 6

Contemporary Latin/x Fictions

Tace Hedrick

From the late 1960s through the 1970s, a Chicana/o and U.S. Latino/a renaissance of the arts flowered, especially in the West, Southwest and on the East Coast, but the writings were relatively unknown outside of college
ethnic literature courses. Then along came the so-called Latino explosion of the ‘90s, and the market value of certain U.S. Latina and Chicana authors and artists began to increase. A select few Chicano and Latina
writers have been drawn into the mainstream of United States publishing: writers like Sandra Cisneros, Cristina García, and Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez are, if not household names, at least better-known than their predecessors.

In this course, we will be reading twenty-first century U.S. Latina and Chicana authors (2000-2017), both bestsellers as well as less well-known writers; we will investigate popular Latina/Chicana genres as well as
queer Latin/x literature, Latina detective and “street” novels. With all these novels, we will also be doing some reading in critical and theoretical Latino/a and Chicana/o Studies; in doing so, we will examine
the ways assumptions—esthetic, social, political, and market-driven—about U.S. Latina/o/x groups and their ethnicity, race, sexuality and gender have changed (and in some ways remained the same) since the turn of
the century.

Times: W 9-11

Cross-listed with AFA 4931/sec. 03EH

Black Women Writers

Debra King

Description:    This course examines the subject positions of African American women within the social and political context of the United States, focusing foremost
on contemporary representations of the captive female and the body.  As an inquiry generated by feminist issues in literary scholarship, it explores the following questions.  If some of contemporary feminist
praxis and epistemology are grounded in notions of “freedom,” “individuality,” and the freedom of the body to “labor,” deeply implicated in the rise of modern capitalism, then what gaps must be brought to light
in order for this discourse to achieve a broader articulation?  Where are the points of conversion and foreclosure between Womanism and Feminism?  What cultural configurations are (and might be) derived
from a widened point-of-view regarding both the culture-work and the cultural apprenticeship of Black women today?  What spaces do the bodies of Black women occupy in the symbolic contract?  To what degree
do the texts under survey articulate a Black feminist / womanist perspective?  In what ways do they fall short?

Format:  The readings and teaching methods of this course are eclectic in pursuit of a variety of texts and experiences.  The class sessions include lectures, discussions, and student
reports.  We will focus on six novels.  As investigators and scholars, our inquiries will play in the spaces between practice and theory in order to address the commonalties, disruptions, gaps, absences,
and silences that exist among the primary texts.

Required Texts and Materials:  (asterisked texts are available as eBooks)

You will need a pack of 3×5 cards for this class

1. * Sanchez, Sonia. Morning Haiku (ISBN: 978-0-8070-6910-3)
2. *Williams, Sherley Anne. Dessa Rose (ISBN: 0-68-05113-8)
3. *Bambara, Toni Cade. The Salt Eaters. (ISBN: 978-0-679-74076-6)
4. *Jones, Gayl. Eva’s Man (ISBN: 0-8070-6319-3)
5. Naylor, Gloria. Linden Hills (ISBN:  0-1400-8829-6)
6. *Butler, Octavia. Kindred (ISBN: 978-0-8070-8369-7)
7. Shawl, Nisi. 2016. Everfair: A Novel (Hardcover ISBN 978-0-7653-3805-1; e-book ISBN 978-1- 4668-3784-3). Novel for extra credit assignment only.

Times: M 9-11

Imaginative Writing: The Short Story

David Leavitt

What is a short story? No genre has so consistently eluded definition. Stories can range from eighty pages (Thomas Mann’s “Death in Venice”) to a single sentence (Amy Hempel’s “Housewife”). The purpose of this workshop
will be to explore the parameters of this seductive and evasive form, from the standpoint both of the practitioner and the reader.

The class will be built around the idea that writers learn by reading. Therefore you may find the reading load heavier than is typical for a fiction workshop. Each week you will be asked to read a selection of stories
by an established writer, and to arrive in class prepared to discuss them cogently. This conversation will take up roughly a third of our allotted time; the other two-thirds will be devoted to discussion of your
own work and occasional in-class exercises.

The requirement of the class, in terms of writing, is that you complete two stories, the first by midterm and the second by term’s end. (The second may be an outgrowth of the first.) It goes without saying that attendance
is mandatory, and that failure to show up (along with failure to do the reading) will have an adverse effect on your final grade. Grading will be based on your informed participation in the seminar, the critical
acuity you show when judging other students’ writing, and your willingness to work hard.

The reading many include stories by Anton Chekhov, John Cheever, Flannery O’Connor, Grace Paley, Amy Hempel, Mary Robison, and Denis Johnson.

Times: T 6-8

Imaginative Writing: Poetry

Ange Mlinko

This is an intermediate poetry workshop in which we will read poems that range across time and place—including translations from Arabic, Greek, Latin, Russian—and write a few of our own, hoping to reimagine our own
language and culture as something fleeting and alien.

Times: T 5-6, R 6

Advanced Seminar in Fiction Writing

Charles Sterchi

This class will focus on narrative strategies in the short story. Students will write two very short stories during the semester, and submit a revision of one of these. In addition, students will write two-three one-page
responses to prompts at the start of the term. Each week will feature two–three readings of contemporary short stories that demonstrate the best of what we will be aiming for.

Times: T 9-11

Advanced Argumentative Writing

Shannon Butts

This course explores how writing materials, tools, and technologies shape arguments. From composing an email or making a meme to circulating protest videos or logging onto Facebook live, writing happens across page,
screen, and ;interface. As writing technologies continue to evolve, we need to understand how the materials of production orient experiences and alter perceptions, triggering responses both digitally and physically.
Our course will examine the emerging tools and technologies of writing that compose across physical and digital spaces.

All of the assignments for this class will use a project-based learning model: students will analyze, propose, design, and make texts using emerging writing technologies such as Augmented Reality, 3D printing, and digital
mapping. Accounting for materials, tools, and technologies, we will reframe acts of ‘writing’ and examine how new writing forms create new kinds of arguments and new methods for composing information.

Times: M W F 5

History of Film II

Robert Ray

This part of the film history sequence covers the years 1930-1965.  Topics include:

Part I:

1. The consolidation of the Hollywood Studio System, derived from the model of Frederick Taylor’s industrial management and Henry Ford’s mass production. (Readings: Taylor, Ford, Schatz’s The Genius of the System)
   (Films: 42nd Street, Grand Hotel, The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca)
2. The rise of Hitler, the issue of documentary, and the emigration of filmmakers and actors to Hollywood. (Readings: Stern’s Hitler) (Films: M, Triumph of the Will)
3. Jean Renoir (Readings: interviews with Renoir) (Films: A Day in the Country, Le Crime de Monsieur Lange, The Rules of the Game)

Part II:

1. Film noir and Sartre’s existentialism. (Readings: Vernet on film noir, Sartre’s “Existentialism Is a Humanism”)  (Films: It’s a Wonderful Life, In a Lonely Place, The Narrow Margin)
2. Italian Neorealism. (Readings: Zavattini’s manifestos, Cahiers du Cinéma essays on Rossellini and Neorealism)  (Films: Rome, Open City; Paisà, The Bicycle Thieves)
3. The French New Wave. (Readings: Cahiers du Cinéma essays by Truffaut, Godard, et.  al.; interviews with Truffaut and Godard) (Films: Breathless, Les Mistons, Shoot the Piano Player, Masculine-Feminine)

Assignments: 1. Brief daily quizzes on readings and screenings (20%).  2. Class participation (20%). 3. Two essay exams based on questions distributed in advance (60%).  Attendance required:
after two unexcused absences, further absences will reduce your course grade.

Note: ENG 3122 is a film history course that involves regular, and often lengthy, readings detailing the historical contexts of the movies we will watch.  If such readings
and the quiz and participation requirements do not suit your interest or habits, you should not take this particular course.

Note to Journalism Students: Many Journalism students, especially those in Telecommunications, take English Department film courses.  In the past few years, some of these students have disliked
and ignored ENG 3122’s requirements; the result has often been failing grades.  While I have seen many fine Journalism students in this course, the numbers of the discontented and failing have recently increased.
Like any university course, taking ENG 3122 involves a commitment.  Look over the syllabus (when it appears over the summer) to see if you want to make this particular commitment.

Times: T 7, R 7-8, M 9-11

History of Film III

Maureen Turim

Concentrating on the post-new wave and new Hollywood cinema, this course will examine the international history of film from 1970 to the present. The goal is to awaken an understanding of the historical use of film
form by exploring changes that have taken place in film industries and technologies. Each week we will view a film, examine its form of expression (looking closely at editing, set design, acting styles, dialogue,
and narration). We will examine digital technologies, special effects, and 3D. We will also look at aesthetics that shun spectacular filmic action in favor of a more minimal approach. This will lead to our discussion
of the film’s place in film history, as well as social history. We will look at issues of industry and audience, considering representations of gender, race and political change. Students will learn how to see films
with a greater depth of visual understanding. Films to be screened include genres of Hollywood filmmaking, Independents, European, and Japanese films. We will look at directors whose talent shaped the development
of cinema; we will also examine the role of actors and actresses, screenwriters, designers and producers in shaping the history of film.

Active Participation in class and on CANVAS is required, as is close reading of history texts assigned.

Times: T 4, R 4-5, M E1-E3

Psychoanalytic Approaches to Literature

Peter Rudnytsky

This course has three aims: to introduce students to major schools of psychoanalytic thought, to use these theories to read classic literary works, and to see how literature can deepen our understanding of psychoanalysis.
The psychoanalytic readings will be drawn from Freud, Klein, Winnicott, Lacan, Kohut, and Bowlby, among others, while the literary texts include Oedipus Rex, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Othello,
Poe’s “The Purloined Letter,” Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and Nin’s Winter of Artifice.  Course requirements are a midterm, final, and one
five-page paper, plus weekly journal entries.  Regular attendance and active participation in class discussions are expected.

Times: M 10-E1

Paranoid ‘70s Cinema

Richard Burt

Course Description: Did you know that the C.I.A. spied on French intellectuals and liked Michel Foucault the best because he seemed the least subversive? Did you know that the first ethnic studies programs at UC. Santa
Cruz and other universities were funded by the C.I.A. as counter intel programs? (Keep them talking about identity and diversity and they’ll vote for whatever neoliberal candidate we put in front of them even if
the minority is more racist than the white one, or the woman more of a hawk than the man.) People usually deny such knowledge when given it. Our government doesn’t do that, they say, even though they know the CIA
has overthrown many foreign governments and lied to Congress? The kool-aid these people drink every day is powerful. It has lasting side-effects such as delusional fantasies of one’s own importance to the salvation
of the about to be ended world as well as major brain damage (strokes are five times more likely to occur among heavy drinkers). Are you one of these people too? If you can answer “No,” or if you are unsure and
want to go through a through detoxification program in order to be able to say “No” for certain, then you may want to take this class. People usually think it’s a bad thing to be paranoid. Being paranoid. Now that
is delusional. Or so they think. What if it turns out that paranoia is not the problem? What if thinking paranoia is the problem IS the problem?! What if you should always be vigilant, be as paranoid as you possibly
can? Why you can never stop? because totalization and historical periodization turn out to be impossible allegorical and historical projects? So. Reverse it. Act as if you were born paranoid. Sound good? If so,
you might want to read Richard Hofstader’s Paranoid Style, Fredric Jameson on the political thriller, and films made in the 70s and well as films made before and after the ’70s, including:

• Three Days of the Condor
• The Parallax View
• Clockwork Orange
• Bonnie and Clyde
• All the President’s men
• Klute
• The Tenant
• Performance
• Far from the Madding Crowd
• The Exorcist
• The Little Girl Who Lived Down the Lane
• A New Leaf
• A Place in the Sun
• The Heartbreak Kid
• Shooter
• Straw Dogs
• Mean Streets
• Jaws
• Texas Chainsaw Masscare
• Days of Heaven
• Badlands
• The Thin Red Line
• The Wild Bunch
• Heaven’s Gate
• Rainer Werner Fassbinder The Merchant of Four Seasons
• Aquirre, Wrath of God
• Brian de Palma, Dressed to Kill
• Taxi Driver
• Chinatown
• Enemy of the State
• That Obscure Object of Desire
• The Duelists
• Apocalypse Now
• Planet of the Apes
• The Tenant
• Last House on the Left
• Texas Chainsaw Massacre
• Taxi Driver
• Badlands
• Gimme Shelter
• Marathon Man
• Frenzy (1972)
• Dog Day Afternoon
• Persona
• Carrie
• Discreet Charm of the Bourgoisie
• Deep Throat
• Don’t Look Now

Requirements: TOTAL ATTENDANCE; no computers or iphones in class (the text will be available on the screen in the front of the classroom); co-lead class discussion twice, once on a Tuesday and once on a Thursday;
two discussion questions; and three or more “BIG WORDS” for each class; student formulated quizzes each class; three 700 word papers; and a willingness to reflect, think, respond, by paying very, VERY, VERY
close formal attention to texts and films.  All assigned work for the course must be completed, turned in on time, and be of passing quality to pass the course.  http://users.clas.ufl.edu/burt/paranoid70scinema/

Please read the Class Policies page now.

Times: T 2-3, R 3, T E1-E3

Cross-listed with ENG 4133 JST 4936/sec. 1036 (class) and JST 4905/sec. 174A (screening)

Vampire Cinema

Dragan Kujundzic

Vampires, werewolves, ghosts and apparitions from Bram Stoker, to Francis Ford Coppola and Anne Rice. The course will address issues of vampire and vEmpire (the imperial politics behind vampirism), vampirism and psychoanalysis,
vampirism and modernism, vampirism and cinema, queer, gay and lesbian vampires, vampires of East and Central Europe, vampirism and anti-Semitism, vampirism and religion, vampirism and nationalism, etc.

:

The course will discuss the figure of the vampire in cinema and literature (Bram Stoker’s Dracula will be read or screened and analyzed, among others; particular attention will be given to the novel
as a proto-cinematic medium), as well as the rendering of the vampire in cinema (from Murnau’s Nosferatu, to Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Roman Polanski’s The Fearless Vampire Slayers Buffy the Vampire Slayer,
and Twilight among others). The course will introduce students to the classics of vampire cinema as well as to the contemporary production in the genre of vampire films, television series, etc.

:

There will be a collective work (30% of the grade), one final paper (50%) (the final paper may be multiple choice test in the classroom or take home, TBA), and participation and attendance will count for 20% of the
grade. The UF Honors Code and the UF Health Policies will be observed. Attendance and screenings are obligatory. Three class periods allowed without explanation, more than three absences require
official written excuse (such as ORIGINAL medical excuse) submitted at the end of the semester with the final paper, in order not to count against the grade. The syllabus is provisional and may change during the course of the semester, based on the students’ needs.Students will be informed in due time via the course listserve of any changes.

Times: T 7, R 7-8, W 9-11

Cross-listed with FRT 3520/sec. 14GE

French Cinema Noir

Sylvie Blum

“In one sense the French invented film noir, and they did so because local conditions predisposed them to view Hollywood in certain ways” (James Naremore). The class will be entirely devoted to the study of French film
noir, a term that usually applies to American cinema. We will examine its sources in film history, film criticism and literature and visit its formal aspects. They will be some overlap with other genres, and when
necessary other national cinemas.

Times: M W F 6, W 9-11

Cross-listed with CHT 3391/sec. 13B3

Chinese Film and Media

Ying Xiao

As China reopened to the world and becomes the newly emerged superpower in the recent few decades, Chinese films and other aspects of screen media have not only attracted worldwide scholarly attentions and artistic
interests, but also they have been embraced by a wide range of popular tastes internationally. This course will examine Chinese cinema in juxtaposition with popular culture and other forms of media such as television,
music, journalism in a broad sociopolitical and historical context. While focusing specifically on film productions, cultural consumptions, and media representations in the contemporary era of mainland China, we
will place these discourses within a general framework of national tradition and identity and track their evolutions from the beginning of the twentieth-century to the present day. We will look at these distinct
yet interrelated phenomena from a comparative and cross-cultural perspective, by emphasizing the heterogeneous and hybrid nature of Chinese culture and media. An interdisciplinary approach (with the assistance of
a wide diversity of readings and multimedia tools) will be incorporated into our discussions that are especially concerned with the concepts and configurations of urban modernity, youth subculture, popular literature
and music, the interactions between Shanghai and Hollywood, and the narratives of food, sports, and fashion on screen and across other media.

Times: T 7, R 7-8, W 9-11

Film & Video Production

Cristina Ruiz-Poveda

This course combines film theory and hands-on experience to introduce students to the process of video production. We will learn how to use this audiovisual medium to express ideas. Students will learn the full production
process by writing, pitching, directing, shooting, sound recording, and editing their own videos. Students will also share their work with the class and receive feedback from the group on each stage of the process.

There will be screenings and discussions of short films that will help students understand how other film and video makers expressively use the different elements of their medium. In-class participation and constructive
criticism will constitute an important part of the grade. There will be a public screening of the final projects at the end of the semester.

PLEASE NOTE: You must have completed at least one of the following UF courses before you can take this course: ENG 3115, ENG 3121, or ENG 3122. ENG 3125 might be a prerequisite, too. Space in production courses is limited.
Thus I asking prospective students to apply for the class to determine who are most qualified and most in need of the course at this time. If you are interested in taking the course, please email me at cruizpoveda@ufl.edu and put
ENG 4136 in the subject line.

Times: T 5-6, R 6, R 9-11

Queer Theory & Media

Margaret Galvan 

We will learn about queer theory as it grew out of lesbian and gay studies and activism in the 1980s and as it continues through the present moment in its intersections with trans theory. Alongside theoretical texts,
we will read contemporaneous queer media, including comics, zines, and other print media. Together, these materials will allow us to understand both the theories and activist movements. Moreover, we will ask not
only how the visual materials speak to the textual works, but also what queer theories they assert through their visual interfaces.

Course assignments will include digital reflections on a shared course website, a short formal essay, and a research project.

Times: T 8-9, R 9

Independent Study

Faculty Member of Choice

An Independent Study course may be taken for 1 to 3 credit hours, but will only count toward the fulfillment of the 10-course requirement for the English major if a student registers for 3 credit hours.

This course is for advanced students who desire to supplement the regular courses by independent reading or research under the guidance of a member of the faculty. The student must find a faculty member who is willing
to supervise the semester-long study, and together, the two create a project. The student must meet with the professor at designated times, agreed upon in advance, and complete all assignments in a timely manner.

Times: TBD

Undergraduate Research in English

Undergraduate Coordinator

TBD

Times: TBD

Honors Seminar: Migration & Mobility in Caribbean Literature

Leah Rosenberg

From the environment and politics to literature and music, nearly every aspect of the Caribbean has been shaped by migration and mobility. It is a region where nearly everyone has origins elsewhere, with the exception
of indigenous populations. Since the abolition of slavery, the region has been profoundly shaped by large-scale outmigration. Some Caribbean countries now have more citizens living abroad than at home. The restriction
of movement in some ways has been no less influential. Laws restricted the enslaved and indentured to plantations; in the present-day policy policies, poverty, trafficking, and military practices restrict many thousands
of people.

In this course we examine the impact of migration and mobility on Caribbean citizens and countries and the relationship between migration and the formation of Caribbean literature. We will place Caribbean literature
in its historical contexts and examine historical sources Caribbean writers have used to represent and rewrite colonial accounts of the middle passage; the inmigration of indentured Asian workers to the Caribbean
following emancipation; the large-scale migration from the Caribbean to Latin America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; the migration of West Indians to England after WWII that transformed the
U.K., and finally many migrations of our current moment of globalization.

This course will introduce students to research methods for identifying primary historical documents and employing them in literary analysis. It will also introduce students to Digital Humanities tools and collaboration.

The course was designed in collaboration with Professor Evelyn O’Callaghan at the University of the West Indies (UWI), in Barbados, and students at UF and at UWI will collaborate through digital projects and teleconferencing.

Times: T 7, R 7-8

Honors Seminar: The World of Langston Hughes & Critical Race Theory

Mark A. Reid

This course employs an interdisciplinary approach that requires students to familiarize themselves with Langston Hughes’ literary and sociopolitical writings, and apply critical race theory, which scholars as Frank
B. Wilderson III, Jared Sexton, Saidiya Hartman, Calvin Warren, and essayists like Ta-Nehisi Coates and James Baldwin employ, that signal a burgeoning Afro-Pessimism and or postNegritude moment where the postracial
fantasy of neoliberal gestures have evaporated with the departure of President Barack Hussein Obama.

Discussion topics include the Harlem Renaissance, African American literature, the blues tradition in poetry and life, and the international sociopolitical climate of our quotidian life. In discussing the literary work
and political life of Langston Hughes, the seminar participants will critically assess how Hughes fared as an American writer and social critic and how critical race theory might reveal or deny the persistence of
anti-black violence in words and deeds. How does Hughes’ writings symbolically expose and fervently articulate a “Black Lives Matter” awareness and endgame.

1. COURSE REQUIREMENTS:

A. Reaction Papers 20 points

Due WEEKS 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, [12, 13]

Students are responsible for all weekly assigned readings and must submit a one to two-page single-space typed critical reaction paper on the weekly readings and film screenings for weeks two through thirteen. Each
of the ten weekly reaction papers is due during the class meeting that the reading is listed. *Students that have an oral presentation during a class meeting do not submit a reaction paper for that particular class meeting.
(2pts for each reaction paper for 10 submissions during weeks 2-11).

B. Two Oral Presentations (10pts each) & Two 1-page Outlines (10pts each) 40 points

Each student delivers two fifteen-minute oral presentations that explore the literary and sociopolitical aspects of this period in African American creativity. Each 15-minute oral presentation must critically discuss
a particular area of the Langston Hughes’ activist thoughts through his poems, essays, short stories and plays. The presentations should include a brief description of the particular critical methodology used, as
Afro-Pessimism, feminism, psychoanalysis, post-structuralism and Black Atlantic cultural studies, or a combination thereof that is employed to organize the presentation. The instructor will assign the two presentation
dates.

C. 10-page Conference Paper & annotated bibliography 40 points  Due Week 12

Presentations on Week 12 Wednesday 15 and Week 14  Wednesday 29 November

Students deliver a typed 10-page conference paper that reflects the various social and literary movements that occurred during the 1920s through the early 1930s. The conference paper should respond to a particular area
of the African American literature (20pts). Again, students must explain the critical method employed and describe how this critical approach assisted them in writing the essay (l0pts). Essays must
be accompanied by a typed, two-page, single-space annotated bibliography (10pts).

Times: W 6-8

Internship

Undergraduate Coordinator

The English Department at the University of Florida offers three* credit hours of internship to its majors who provide the following to the Undergraduate Coordinator for approval:

• An offer to hire (from the employer) which states that the student will be working at least 12 hours per week for the entire semester (Fall, Spring, or Summer C), or 24 hours per week for a Summer A or B term. Said
  document should be produced on the company letterhead and should outline the job duties for the internship position.
• A personal statement (submitted along with the offer of hire) about why the student wants to take the internship and how it relates to the student’s future plans.

Once the Undergraduate Coordinator has approved the internship requested by the student, the department will register the student for the internship credits.

Upon completion of the internship:

• The supervisor of the student must submit a job performance evaluation to the Undergraduate Coordinator by Wednesday of finals week so that a grade of Satisfactory or Unsatisfactory may be submitted to the Registrar.
  The evaluation may be faxed, mailed, or hand delivered.
• The student must submit a personal evaluation of the work experience provided by the internship by the same day as above.

*For two credit hours, the student would need to work 8 hours per week in a Fall, Spring, or Summer C semester; and 16 hours per week for Summer A or B.

*For one credit hour, the student would need to work 4 hours per week in a Fall, Spring, or Summer C semester; and 8 hours per week for Summer A or B.

Please note the following limitations on the English Internship:

• A student may register for the English Department Internship for three credits ONLY ONCE; no more than three hours worth of internship credit may be counted toward coursework in the major.
• Because no English Department course carrying fewer than 3 credit hours counts towards the major, your internship will not count as part of your major coursework if you register for fewer than 3 credits.

Times: TBD

Honors Thesis Project

Faculty Members (2) of Choice

Students must have have completed at least one semester of ENG 4936, Honors Seminar. Open to English Honors students.

The student must select two faculty members: one to direct the reading, research, and writing of a thesis on a topic of the student’s and director’s chosing, and another as the second reader. An abstract (100 to 200
words) must be delivered to the CLAS Academic Advising Center on Fletcher Road at least 10 days before graduation.

Times: TBD

Victorian Literature

Abra Gibson

This course will examine Victorian literature that explores the era’s legal and educational systems. The texts include fictionalized depictions of real court cases, journals, letters, and other writings on actual crimes,
or they may depict fictional crimes that point toward flaws in the Victorian legal system. We will read with an eye toward the texts’ engagement with laws around marriage, and will also take up questions around
education, gender, and class.

The historical court cases that we will explore in depth are the divorce suit of Caroline Norton and the murder trial of Constance Kent, but we will discuss other notable crimes. We will also discuss the representations
of other prominent crimes of the era in media and fiction. We will learn to apply critical literary analysis to the way the texts represent crime across gender and class, and may also take up questions of gender,
nationalism, or race. We will analyze the documents and events in their broader historical context of industrialism and urbanization. We will also briefly discuss the rise of spiritualism in the mid to late century.

Course texts include writing by Thomas De Quincey, Caroline Norton, George Meredith, Elizabeth Braddon, Robert Browning, Wilkie Collins, Christina Rossetti, and Oscar Wilde. Assignments include 2 papers, a panel discussion,
and a collaborative project.

Times: M W F 4

Shakespeare: Comedies & Histories

Peter Rudnytsky

The course will consist of a close reading of selected comedies by Shakespeare, probably including Two Gentlemen of Verona, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, As You Like It, Twelfth Night,
and All Well That Ends Well, and his second tetralogy of history plays, Richard II, 1 & 2 Henry IV, and Henry V.  The approach will be primarily psychoanalytic
and feminist and emphasis will be given to developing students’ skills of critical thinking and literary analysis.  Course requirements are a midterm, final, and one five-page paper.  Regular attendance
and active participation in class discussions are also expected.

Times: T 10-E1

Shakespeare: Learning by Doing

Sidney Homan

The assumption in all my theatre courses is that the text of a play is not just what is written on the page but that text in performance, delivered by actors before an audience. This means the play’s text also includes
gestures, movement, blocking (the stage picture), and sub-text (what the character is saying inwardly, beneath the lines delivered onstage, as well as the “history” for that character invented by the actor). In
the theatre, we would further supplement this text with lighting, sound, set, costumes, props, and make-up. To be sure, one can approach a play in a thousand ways—as literature, as a repository for the thinking
of an age, as the springboard for political or cultural issues. But, since I work both on campus and in the theatre as an actor and director, and since the theatre itself is a unique medium with its own aesthetic
principles, I approach the plays, with my students, and as a fellow “student,” as something meant to be performed by an actor and ratified by an audience. In the class each student will have a scene partner with
whom he or she stages several scenes each semester. Once performed, the class and I, as co-directors, “work” that scene with the two actors, trying out options, rehearsing it. The emphasis, therefore, is on learning
by doing, and I judge student work by intent, what goes into the performance—not by finesse. If there is finesse, that is considered a bonus. Each actor also writes a short paper assessing his or her experience
during rehearsal for a scene. Performances and the scene papers count equally.

In ENL 4333 we “study” Shakespeare by staging scenes from his plays, considering his plays as actors and directors, charged with building a character, enacting that character through delivery, gesture, stage movement,
subtext.

We will look at Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Twelfth Night, Much Ado about Nothing, The Taming of the Shrew, Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, The Merchant of Venice,
and also Tom’s Stoppard’s reworking of Hamlet in his Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.

Students are graded equally on their scene work and a short paper in which they assess their rehearsal experience with the scene, from the perspective of both the character and their decisions as an actor.

Sidney Homan is Professor of English at the University of Florida, the author of some thirteen books on Shakespeare and the modern playwrights. He also works as an actor and director in professional and university theatres.

Times: 2-3, R 3

Being and Blackness

Mandisa Haarhoff

This interdisciplinary course explores Blackness in the African Diaspora through a reading of Critical Race Theory and American and South African Literature. Students will examine how race functions as orientation or
condition, inflects citizenship, and questions suggested theories of undoing race. The course illuminates the paradox of freedom, inclusion, and racialization. Due to the legacy of colonial occupation and apartheid,
democratic South Africa inherited a highly racialized and stratified society, akin to the afterlife of slavery and the Jim Crow era in the U.S. Starting with Sylvia Wynter’s question of what it means to be Human,
the course includes readings by Achille Mbembe, Steve Biko, Desmond Tutu, Zakes Mda, Claudia Rankine, Paul Beatty, and Bessie Head. In the wake of a new South Africa and a contemporary America, what does it mean
to be black and how do black writers engage blackness as a matter of non/being?

Times: T 2, R 3

Forms of Narrative

Mary Roca

Rarely, if ever, do we experience narrative unmediated by form. From oral traditions to published texts to transmedia narratives, howstories are told impacts the way we understand them. This course will
investigate how form affects narrative practices and, by extension, reading and/or viewing experiences—particularly as technology expands not only modes of storytelling, but also definitions of narrative. Across
the semester, we will explore how paratext—elements outside of the main narrative of a text—influences our understanding of narrative; how adaptation, especially across media, requires narrative transformation in
order to fit new forms; and how digitization and e-books have altered narrative practices—as well as the conceptualization, access, and preservation of narrative media. The course will build to examining transmedia
storytelling, which tells a cohesive narrative across multiple platforms and technologies. We will consider such questions as: how do we identify or define narratives? How are narrative practices shaped, and perhaps
limited, by the mode of storytelling? How does technology alter those practices?

Throughout the semester, we will make use of UF Special Collections in addition to engaging with a wide variety of narrative media (literature, visual culture, film, etc.). Through these explorations, we will examine
how form and context can impact our interpretation of materials, while reflecting on our own practices of narrative and storytelling. Assignments will include a short analysis paper (3–4 pages), a longer term

Times: T 8-9, R 9

Modern Drama: Learning by Doing

Sidney Homan

The assumption in all my theatre courses is that the text of a play is not just what is written on the page but that text in performance, delivered by actors before an audience. This means the play’s text also includes
gestures, movement, blocking (the stage picture), and sub-text (what the character is saying inwardly, beneath the lines delivered onstage, as well as the “history” for that character invented by the actor). In
the theatre, we would further supplement this text with lighting, sound, set, costumes, props, and make-up. To be sure, one can approach a play in a thousand ways—as literature, as a repository for the thinking
of an age, as the springboard for political or cultural issues. But, since I work both on campus and in the theatre as an actor and director, and since the theatre itself is a unique medium with its own aesthetic
principles, I approach the plays, with my students, and as a fellow “student,” as something meant to be performed by an actor and ratified by an audience. In the class each student will have a scene partner with
whom he or she stages several scenes each semester. Once performed, the class and I, as co-directors, “work” that scene with the two actors, trying out options, rehearsing it. The emphasis, therefore, is on learning
by doing, and I judge student work by intent, what goes into the performance—not by finesse. If there is finesse, that is considered a bonus. Each actor also writes a short paper assessing his or her experience
during rehearsal for a scene. Performances and the scene papers count equally.

In this course, we will thus consider Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, Embers, All That Fall, Play, Eh Joe, Not I, and Come and Go;
Harold Pinter’s The Lover, Old Times, Betrayal, and No Man’s Land, Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead; and a variety of short comic sketches
by Steve Martin, Elaine May, Christopher Durang, and others in the collection Laugh Lines (edited by Eric Lane and Nina Shengold).

A word of comfort: whether you have acted before or not, experience in the theatre is not a factor in the class. We use acting as a way of studying the text. Have no fears on this issue!

Author of some thirteen books on Shakespeare and the modern playwrights, Sidney Homan is an actor and director in commercial and university theatres.

If you have any questions or comments, please e-mail Professor Homan at shakes@ufl.edu.

Times: T 4, R 4-5

Cross-listed with CLT 3930/sec. 1B93

How Does Your Garden Grow?

Judith Page & Victoria Pagán

Drawing on the literature of the Roman and British Empires and the considerable number of gardens on the campus of the University of Florida, this course inquires into the nature and experience of the garden. Students
will study interdisciplinary approaches to gardens through an analysis of juxtaposed works of literature from the classical Roman period (1st century BCE–1st century CE) and 19th- and 20th-century England, as well
as the physical grounds on the campus of the University of Florida.

Times: T 2-3, R 3

Cross-listed with AFA 3930/sec. 244H

Disability, Narratives, and the Black Body

Delia Steverson

This course is designed to help students critically engage reading notions of the black body in African American literature by exploring the construction of the black body historically and culturally. This course takes
an interdisciplinary approach to examine notions of race and disability in African American literature and culture. By first acquiring an understanding of the definition(s) of disability, we will then examine intersecting
identities including race, class, gender, sexuality, and nationality in order to uncover how disability shapes black embodiment. This course will uncover how historically the construction of blackness runs parallel
with the construction of disability. The course will be broken down chronologically into four units to explore the intersections of race and disability in not only African American literature, but also the lived
experiences of black people in America since its inception, with a specific focus on slavery, the freak show, and incarceration. Possible authors include William and Ellen Craft, Moses Roper, Frances Watkins Harper,
Richard Wright, Arna Bontemps, Ernest Gaines, Israel Campbell, Audre Lorde, and Adrienne Kennedy, amongst others. Students will write two critical responses, along with a longer research paper on a topic of their
choice.

Times: T 4, R 4-5

Cross-listed with EUS 3930/sec. 12CB

Degenerative Europe: Politics and Modern Art in 20th-Century Literature and Culture

Rafael Hernandez

This course surveys European literature and culture from the late-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, tracing the parallel developments of degeneration theory, modern art and literature, and fascist political formations.
As much as literary modernism and numerous post-impressionist movements in art defined the early twentieth century, this period was also haunted by the specters of fascism, war, and the rhetoric of degeneracy. This
course thus challenges students to contemplate the relationship between the artist and the political establishments and social institutions with which artists are so often in conflict. Our readings will range across
various European nations, including England, Ireland, Spain, France, Germany, and Norway, among others. Alongside literature, we will examine the development of fascism throughout the early twentieth century and
the ways fascist states mobilized culture for the benefit of the nation. To this end, we will study not only art and literature in opposition to authoritarianism, but also art that justified and served totalitarian
regimes. We thus hope to address fundamental questions about the role—and the possibility—of art in the age of fascism.

This course maintains a literary focus while also asking students to participate in new forms of historical, political, and aesthetic critique. For instance, we will explore paintings displayed in the now infamous 1937
Munich Degenerate Art Exhibition. For necessary art historical context, the class will visit the Harn Museum of Art at the University of Florida to survey some of the museum’s holdings in modern European paintings,
including French impressionist Claude Monet’s Champ d’avoine and the work of Russian expatriate Raphael Soyer. The Harn’s collection includes paintings representative of major early-twentieth
century artistic movements, including impressionism, post-impressionism, and social realism and will serve as an engaging resource for students. We will read drama and fiction by authors like Henrik Ibsen, Oscar
Wilde, Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Thomas Mann, and Carmen Laforet. In addition, we will screen films by such directors as Leni Riefenstahl, Guillermo del Toro, and Quentin Tarantino.

Times: T 8-9, R 9

Climate Fiction

Terry Harpold

As we move into an era of greater climate instability, climate science will shape how we imagine the collective futures of humans and other living creatures of the Earth. In this course we will investigate a vital contribution
of the humanities to our understanding of the significance of climate change. We will read a wide range of climate-related texts, mostly from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and mostly in the emerging genre
of climate fiction: stories that are grounded in realities of global climate crisis, mass extinction, climate-induced migration, and economic collapse: a world in which former habits of mind and body
are incompatible with situations on the ground, in the air, and under the water. The diverse authors whose works we will study show that creating new habits is difficult and perilous; it is easier to find fear,
cynicism, and despair — none of which responses, it is clear, is up to the challenges of the real futures that approach us.

Much of what we will read is, implicitly and explicitly, an indictment of the blind hubris, cruel appetite, and reckless improvidence that have pushed us all toward terrible ends. This course proposes that the literary
imagination of climate, haunted by the losses and negations of crisis, may also point in the direction of a new ethic of climate that embraces critical reflection, shared responsibility, and hopeful
resolve.

Graded writing requirements for this course include a flash fiction exercise, a take-home midterm exam, and a take-home final exam.

Times: M W F 4

Philosophy & Literature in the Age of Enlightenment

Roger Maioli

The eighteenth century is sometimes described as the age when philosophy was made popular. Major thinkers like Voltaire and Diderot endeavored to introduce to the common reader the growing store of knowledge made available
by the Enlightenment. In doing so, they avoided the use of Latin as the standard philosophical language as well as traditional expository genres such as the philosophical treatise; instead, they resorted to more
accessible genres including short essays, encyclopedia entries, drama, and above all prose fiction. Voltaire, in particular, is responsible for consolidating the most characteristic Enlightenment genre: the philosophical
tale, of which Candide is the maximum example. In this course we will consider the opportunities and problems inherent in using prose fiction as a vehicle for philosophical ideas. We will read
Voltaire alongside other Enlightenment figures, including Fontenelle, Samuel Johnson, and Elizabeth Inchbald, and close by looking at a slightly later narrative which dramatizes the Enlightenment’s ambitions and
dangers: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. All readings will be done in English.

Times: T 4, R 4-5

TBD

Apollo Amoko

TBD

Times: T 9-111

TBD

Apollo Amoko

TBD

Times: R 9-11

Empire & Gender: The US Experience

Malini Schueller

In the last two decades the study of US literature and culture has been transformed through an emphasis on the transnational circuits of empire. This course takes imperialism as central to the construction of the United
States’ national imaginary and raises a number of questions about the intersection of empire and gender: How is the language of empire gendered? How does gender structure metaphors such as the frontier? How are
representations of colonized spaces and racial others invested with discourses of gender? How does the captivity narrative persist in the narrative of contemporary imperialism? How do imperialism and war rhetoric
build up masculinity? We will focus on specific sites of U.S. imperialism such as Hawai’i, the Philippines, Vietnam and Iraq.

We will engage with works in a variety of genres including novels, creative non-fiction, drama, and popular films. We will also read works by major postcolonial theorists such as Said, Young, N’gugi, and Mbembe as well
as theorists of gender and sexuality such as Susan Bordo, Ann McClintock, and Ann Laura Stoler. The course should be of interest to students of American literature and culture as well as to those broadly interested
in questions of imperialism and gender.

Possible texts might include Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, Susanna Rowson’s Slaves in Algiers, Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, Mary Helen Fee’s A Woman’s Impression of the Philippines,
Bulosan’s America is in the Heart, Le Ly Hayslip’s When Heaven and Earth Changed Places, Cosmatos’ Rambo First Blood, Part II, and Cameron Crowe’s Aloha.

Times: W 9-11

Children’s Literature

Anastasia Ulanowicz

This course will provide an introduction to major works of American children’s literature written from 1868 to 2000. As we examine these texts, we will consider how and why (or even whether) they might be read specifically
as children’s books – and how, moreover, their study might prompt us to evaluate the American literary canon in its various historical permutations. Additionally, we will question the ways in which these texts represent
race, class, gender, and – perhaps most significantly – national identity. Of particular interest will be the question of how these texts use the figure of the child to support (or contest) notions of nationhood
and citizenship.

Times: T 7, R 7-8

Literature for the Adolescent

Kenneth Kidd

This course examines literature primarily for but also about adolescents, across a range of genres and with attention to the political and social history of adolescence as a concept and a lived experience. We’ll concentrate
on what’s now called “young adult” literature from the 1960s forward, but we will read and discuss that material in light of earlier narrative traditions. The modern adolescent is of course intimately connected
to material culture in particular ways. We will concentrate on contemporary literature in the hopes of assessing what’s happening in young adult publishing and media culture. The course will be conducted as a seminar
and participation is crucial. We will read one YA book per week, plus some criticism and theory. Requirements include weekly response papers, regular participation, and 2 essays to be negotiated later.

Possible Texts (titles subject to change):

• Laurie Halse Anderson, Speak
• M.T. Anderson, Feed
• Robert Cormier, I Am the Cheese
• Maureen Daly, Seventeenth Summer
• Virginia Hamilton, Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush
• Pete Hautman, Godless
• S.E. Hinton, The Outsiders
• Nalo Hopkinson, The Chaos
• Jandy Nelson, I’ll Give You the Sun
• Patrick Ness, The Knife of Never Letting Go
• Meg Rosoff, How I Live Now
• Andrew Smith, Grasshopper Jungle
• Mariko and Jill Tamaki, Skim
• Gene Luen Yang, American Born Chinese

Times: T 7, R 7-8

Creative Non-Fiction

Michael Hofmann

A course on writing about people and places. The reading-list might have been drawn from nature writing or science or biography, but I have come down in favour of history: from Tacitus and John Aubrey (if available),
to Ryszard Kapuscinski and Andrzej Stasiuk. We will read the late cult-author W.G. Sebald, Joseph Roth, Peter Handke, Bruce Chatwin, and others. Spoken contributions will be encouraged. Participants will do much
writing of and on their own, whether on an array of different projects, or on a single task. Reading and writing, research and style, should all benefit. (I would rather you came wanting to write a book about cuttlefish
than on the first twenty years—or indeed the first six months—of your lives, but the latter may be allowable under certain circumstances; I should like it, however, not to preponderate.)

Times: M 9-11

Feminist Theory

Lauren Pilcher

This course covers a range of diverse feminist theories, primarily since the emergence of second-wave feminism. The latter half of the course will apply feminist theories to the interpretation of literature, film, and
popular culture. The class requires regular attendance, thorough reading of assigned texts, and informed and prepared class participation. Graded course requirements include weekly written responses to the assigned
readings, quizzes, as well as a midterm and a final paper.

Times: M 9-11

Faute de Lecture: Sterne, Derrida, Shakespeare, De Man, Shelley, Shelley, and Blanchot

Richard Burt

Beginning with Laurence Sterne’s citation of Shakespeare’s Yorick in Tristram Shandy and A Sentimental Journey, we will consider the complex relations between literature and philosophy
primarily in relation to ghosts and skulls and ask how reading is haunted by certain kinds of faults and failings, not reading or misreading, especially when a writer publishes anonymously or pseudonymously.
Readings will include the ghost scenes and the graveyard scene in Hamlet, Derrida writing on two of his dead friends and rivals, Jacques Lacan and Paul de Man, and Derrida’s posthumously published
“Last Words,” both drafts and three editions of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Mary Shelley’s two posthumous editions of Percy Bysse Shelley, Lord Byron on the ghost of Old Hamlet in Don Juan, Canto XIII,
Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner, John Milton’s Paradise Lost (books 4, 5, 9, and 10); the films The Trip to Italy and Journey to Italy,
William Wordsworth’s On Epitaphs, John Keats’ “On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Again,” Paul De Man’s “Autobiography as Defacement” and “Excuses (Confessions),” selections
from Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Confessions, and Maurice Blanchot’s “On the Last Word,” “On the Very Last Word,” and “On Friendship.”  We will also examine reburials of Sterne’s skull, Shakespeare’s
missing skull, skulls that have been used as props in Hamlet, and graves, epitaphs, and monuments to these writers.  Requirements: TOTAL ATTENDANCE; no computers or iphones in class (the
text will be available on the screen in the front of the classroom); co-lead class discussion twice, once on a Tuesday and once on a Thursday; two discussion questions; and three or more “BIG WORDS” for each
class; student formulated quizzes each class; three 700 word papers; and a willingness to reflect, think, respond, by paying very, VERY, VERY close formal attention to texts and films. All assigned work for the course must be completed, turned in on time, and be of passing quality to pass the course.  For more information, go to
http://users.clas.ufl.edu/burt/fautedelecture/

Times: T 4, R 4-5