Department of English

The Forms of Narrative: Narrating the Ineffable

Cristina Ruiz-Poveda

Storytelling is such an inherent part of human experience that we often overlook how narratives, even those which may be foundational to our world views, are articulated. This course serves as an introduction to narrative
forms, as well as a critical exploration of the potential of narratology—the theory of narrative—to analyze stories of ineffable experiences. How do narratives convey elusive existential and spiritual
concepts? Are there shared formal and procedural traits of such narratives?

In this class, we will learn the foundations of narratology, so as critically analyze how different narrative media (literature, visual culture, film, etc.) represent intense but seemingly incommunicable human experiences.
These stories will serve as as a vehicle to explore the limits of storytelling and to analyze narrative strategies at those limits. Students will also experiment with different forms of narrative through creative
activities. Please note: this is not a course in religion or religious art history. This course offers theoretical tools to analytically understand narratives about profound existential concerns
and transcendental experiences.

Times: M T W R F 5

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!

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

Times: M T W R F 2

The Campus Novel

Berit Brink

In this course, we will read American culture through the lens of the “campus novel.” As a place of power and privilege as well as a place of real and hypothetical revolution “from below,” universities are uniquely
located at the intersection of diverging ideas and ideologies. Many of these ideas do not just affect the campus environment, but also are emblematic of issues at stake in American society as a whole, for example
multiculturalism and systemic racism, political polarization, and the changing status of the individual in American society. Since these issues affect both the collegiate environment as well as American society
at large, we will ask to what extent universities can and should play a role in addressing them, and also, more generally, what is the function of the 21st-century university. To help us answer these questions we
will be reading several “campus novels” spanning the 20th century, including This Side of Paradise (F. Scott Fitzgerald), The Human Stain (Philip Roth), The Secret History (Donna
Tartt) and The White Boy Shuffle (Paul Beatty).

Times: M T W R F 5

American Victorianism

Sabrina Gilchrist

“Europe and America are united by telegraph. Glory to God in the highest. On earth peace and good-will toward men.”

This message, relayed between Queen Victoria and President Buchanan on August 17, 1858, illustrates key aspects of Victorian America: political alliances between England and the United States, joint efforts in technological
advances, global communication and economies, and common religious/moral influences. With, quite literally, an open line of communication, ideas of social and domestic reform spread more rapidly between the nations.
Because of this exchange, similar questions and concerns were developing on both sides of the Atlantic: race relations, women’s rights, national identity, and a push to modernize. Moreover, the onslaught of change
and information, both social and scientific, prompted a desire to control/restrain in the individual body as well as establish and maintain tradition in the larger society.

It is in this space – one that simultaneously seeks progress and the preservation of the past – that we will situate this course. And, in the spirit of the telegraph that opened communication between both countries,
“American Victorianism” will trace both the influences of Victorian England on America and American influences on England during the 19th century. Texts we will read address a wide range of themes, including architecture,
fashion, technology, performance/entertainment, etiquette, religion, class, race, social justice, and more.

Times: M T W R F 3

Advanced Exposition: Digital Rhetoric as Scholarship

Aaron Beveridge

This is a course in expository writing and digital rhetoric. In exposition, discourse is used to define, classify, compare and contrast, analyze, identify, or illustrate information. To practice expository writing,
students will produce both print and digital writing to explore various types of *scholarship* that use digital media. The print essay for the course will focus on identifying, defining, and analyzing *scholarship*
for a particular discipline or field of study. The digital writing for the course will produce a collaborative archive, with each student creating a new Tumblr account and using it to compare, contrast, and classify
forms of digital rhetoric. The final project for the course will be a digital project that engages with and illustrates a particular form of digital scholarship.

Times: M T W R F 4

The Theory and Practice of Modern Criticism

Rául Sánchez

We will carefully study a handful of key essays in 20^th– and 21^st-century literary and cultural theory. I will make all (or nearly all) reading materials available through Canvas or the library’s
course reserves.

You will write two papers: one at midterm (30% of final grade) and another at the end of the term (40% of final grade).

You will write two questions about each assigned essay, submitting these the day before we discuss the essay in class (20% of final grade). I will use the questions to plan our discussion.

Here is a tentative list of reading assignments. It is subject to change:

• José Enrique Rodó, “Ariel” (1900)
• S. Eliot, “Tradition and the Individual Talent” (1919)
• Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility” (1936)
• Kenneth Burke, “Literature as Equipment for Living” (1938)
• Roberto Fernández Retamar, “Caliban: Notes Toward a Discussion of Culture in Our America” (1971)
• Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” (1975)
• Elaine Showalter, “Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness” (1981)
• Gloria Anzaldúa, “Speaking in Tongues: A Letter to Third World Women Writers” (1981)
• bell hooks, “The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators” (1992)
• Coco Fusco, “Who’s Doin’ the Twist? Notes Toward a Politics of Appropriation” (1995)
• José David Saldívar, “Cultural Theory in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands” (1997)
• Franco Moretti, “Conjectures on World Literature” (2000)
• Eduardo Mendieta and Guillermo Gómez-Peña, “A Latino Philosopher Interviews a Chicano Performance Artist” (2001)

Times: M T W R F 3

Covert Plots: Secrecy and Espionage in Twentieth-Century British Literature

Rafael Hernandez

The twentieth century was an era of heightened international tensions, global warfare, and the rise of the modern totalitarian state. As such, British literature came to embody elements of a reconnaissance culture,
both in what authors chose to represent and how they chose to do so. Looming threats of domestic terrorism, global warfare, anti-colonial resistance, cold war tensions, and
the rise of post-war surveillance culture inspired authors throughout the twentieth century to use espionage and secrecy as literary tactics to comprehend the changing landscapes of the British Empire. Likewise,
authoritarian politics beginning at the turn of the century forced stigmatized authors (be they queer, Jewish, Irish, etc.) to adopt covert plots as ways of navigating physical and literary spaces.

This course surveys some of Britain’s most influential fiction from the twentieth century, focusing on key developments in literary secrecy and espionage. This course also considers what Cedric Watts calls covert plots,
elements of a work of fiction concealed from readership. Possible texts for this course include Rudyard Kipling’s Kim, Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent, H. G. Wells’s The War in the Air,
Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, John Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps, Ian Fleming’s From Russia With Love,
E. M. Forster’s Maurice, and Brian Friel’s Translations.

Times: M T W R F 2