Times and locations of class meetings are subject to change. Consult the UF Schedule of Courses for official class times and locations and an explanation of the class period abbreviations.
Summer 2025
Upper Division (3000–4000) Courses
Note: Course numbers listed in the table are linked to course descriptions below.
Summer A
| Course # | Section | Class # | Time(s) | Room | Course title | Instructor |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AML 4453 | 5AL2 | 18250 | M T W R F 5 | ONLINE | Beyond Mainstream Publishing in American Literature | Libby |
| ENC 3361 | 6EN1 | 18254 | M T W R F 2 | TBA | Environmental Nonfiction | Chakraborty |
Summer B
| Course # | Section | Class # | Time(s) | Room | Course title | Instructor |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LIT 3003 | 6LT2 | 18257 | M T W R F 3 | ONLINE | Post-Classical Cinema | Knudsen |
| LIT 4333 | 5LT1 | 18259 | M T W R F 6 | TUR 2334 | Lit for Adolescent | Martinez |
Course Descriptions
Summer A
AML 4453
Beyond Mainstream Publishing in American Literature
Karen Libby
This class will explore trends in American literary expression beyond mainstream publishing. While Great American novels, poetry, and nonfiction are frequently discussed and celebrated within literary education, American writers have long been circulating ideas, theories, and narratives in more grassroots forms. Self-publishing, publishing through community organizations, and independent press publishing allow for more autonomy in story-sharing. Due to limitations in printing volume, texts from these sources often do not survive as long or receive as much attention as materials published by large companies—however, some materials do transition from their grassroots origins to more mainstream venues. Particularly in the 20th and 21st centuries, spurred on by an increase in collective social movements and widespread access to the internet, publishing outside of mainstream methods has grown into a considerable force.
We will look at varied forms of American literature, broadly defined, to show how cultures, subcultures, and countercultures thrive in autonomous literary spaces. We will discuss the limitations and benefits of different spheres of publishing. Ultimately, the class centers on exploring how literature is defined in American culture, the implications of those different definitions, and the ways in which communities and individuals have created autonomous modes of publication. To navigate these ideas, we will read many different forms of literary creation, including books published by small presses, independent magazines and newspapers, underground comics, documentaries, music, online-exclusive self-published books, and micro-texts such as pamphlets, flyers, and zines. Our texts will largely come from communities including women, LGBTQ+ individuals and people of color. As we read, we will discuss what happens when some of these pieces transition from their grassroots origins to more mainstream or corporate venues.
Assignments will include literary analysis essays, academic research, and one creative project following the formal constraints of a medium discussed in class.
ENC 3361
Environmental Nonfiction
Sayantika Chakraborty
In this course, students will receive instruction in and practice different approaches to writing and analyzing nonfiction works that address environmental changes and challenges both in North America and globally. We will survey a variety of compositional forms and techniques related to this genre, all the while examining how consumption, waste, reproduction, and migration make women uniquely vulnerable to ecological disasters.
In addition to relying on in-class discussions (the course will strongly emphasize active participation), this course may require students to write two short response papers/Canvas discussion posts and a final essay.
Summer B
LIT 3003
Post-Classical Cinema
Matthew Knudsen
Narrative is always mediated by form. From oral traditions to published texts to transmedia narratives, how stories are told impacts the way we understand them. This course will investigate how form affects narrative practices and, by extension, viewing experiences, within a cinematic context. The course will begin with an overview of cinematic storytelling’s affiliation with Aristotelian structure, three act frameworks, and the difference between story and plot. We will trace the evolution of cinematic narrative practice, taking into special account the introduction of cross-cutting, parallel editing, and intellectual montage. We will focus on cinematic epochs and movements which prioritized narrative formalism, to the ultimate benefit of the artform’s storytelling efficacy. As we move through film history, tracing the evolution toward more ambitious narrative exercises, we will introduce further topics of emphasis: Formalism, Narratology, Patterns of Development, Range of Story vs. Range of Knowledge, etc. Once we have established fundamentals with regard to the cinematic narrative, we will introduce the possibility of “postclassical narrative practice,” that is to say a storytelling approach that embraces the nonlinear or structurally Avant Garde. We will reckon with the so-called “puzzle films,” “mind-game experiments,” and “complex narratives” that have become not only widely accepted by 21st Century audiences but even enthusiastically embraced, particularly in the realm of science fiction, “multiversal” franchise expansion, and narratives reckoning with subjectivity and temporal experimentation.
ENL 3132
Lit for Adolescent
Lillian Martinez
Iconotexts, or works combining complementary words and images, saturate our contemporary moment; illustrated novels, comics, graphic novels, and manga from across the world continue to flood the American market. The “comics boom” at the beginning of the mid-twentieth century especially attracted young adult readers. This audience found themselves well represented in various protagonists who work to articulate the murky sense of being a “young adult”: no longer a child and not yet an adult. Adolescence occupies this in-between, and iconotexts, as dually verbal and visual, are especially well-suited to navigate this difficult territory.
This course will focus on major themes and trends in American “young adult” (or “YA”) iconotexts. We will closely read the image of the adolescent in novels, illustrated editions, comics, manga, and related paratexts directed towards teenage audiences. We will delve into quotidian and familiar experiences, while also addressing why we often find stories about teens intertwined with magical institutions, the supernatural, and epic myth. We will consider the yet very real social commentaries on national identity, race, class, gender, sexuality, disability, and consumerism implicit in these texts. What culturally-constructed notions of adolescence shape the characters within these texts? What new ways of imagining and understanding adolescence does the language of iconotexts provide us?