English Department Home  >>  Undergraduate Studies  >>  Course Descriptions Summer B 2007

Summer B 2007

SummerB07 AML 3682 02
American Multi-Ethnic Literature  
Staff  

Introduction to cross-cultural literary traditions, looking at historical rationales and interconnections among communities as well as vital differences.

SummerB07 AML2600 
Introduction to African-American Literature  
Jerrilyn McGregory 644 3161, WMS 458, jmcgregory@english.fsu.edu

A survey of the canonical works of African Americans, typically including Douglass, Chesnutt, Hurston, Wright, Ellison, Baldwin, Morrison, and Walker.

SummerB07 AML3311 01
Major Figures in American Literature  
Staff  

Examination of selected works of major American writers.

SummerB07 AML4121 01
The 20th-Century American Novel  
Douglas Fowler 644-2092, WMS 409, dfowler@english.fsu.edu

This course introduces students to the American novel, including such authors as Kate Chopin, Henry James, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Faulkner, Stein, Wright, Ellison, Pynchon, Updike, Morrison, and DeLillo.

SummerB07 CRW3110 
Fiction Technique  
Staff  

Analysis of and exercises in the elements of fiction: point of view, conflict, characterization, tone, and image.

SummerB07 CRW3311 
Poetic Technique  
Staff  

For aspiring poets and critics. Study of the elements of poetry, some practice in writing poetry.

SummerB07 CRW4120 01
Advanced Fiction Workshop  
Elizabeth Stuckey-French 645 3323, WMS 325, estuckey-french@english.fsu.edu

Prerequisite: Permission of instructor. Practice in short story, novella, or novel. Students will be expected to work toward submission and publication of manuscripts. May be repeated for a total of twenty-four (24) hours credit.

SummerB07 CRW4320 01
Advanced Poetry Workshop  
James Kimbrell 644 0887, WMS 309, jkimbrell@english.fsu.edu

Prerequisite: Permission of instructor. For poets who approach excellence and aspire toward publication. May be repeated for a total of twenty-four (24) hours credit.

SummerB07 ENC3310 All
Article and Essay Workshop  
Staff  

Writing of nonfiction prose. Papers totaling 8,000 words. Five private conferences. For students above the freshman level. May be repeated to a maximum of six (6) semester hours.

SummerB07 ENC4311 01
Advanced Article and Essay Workshop  
Kristie Fleckenstein 644 3530, WMS 447, kfleckenstein@english.fsu.edu

Prerequisite: Permission of instructor. Writer-editor relationship between student and instructor. For writers who aspire toward publication.

SummerB07 ENC4311 02
Advanced Article and Essay Workshop  
Ned Stuckey-French 644-2638, WMS 419, nstuckey-french@english.fsu.edu

Our emphasis in this course will be on the essay (as opposed to the article). Creative nonfiction is a large, shaggy, often undefined beast that ranges along a spectrum that stretches from articles based on research all the way to lyrical essays that approach prose poems. The personal essay sits at the center of that spectrum and often incorporates research, dramatized scenes and personal reflection.

The personal essay is a genre in which we might search for who we are and what we think, but it transcends a journal or diary entry in that it is meant to communicate with a reader about a subject larger than one's self. Essayists investigate all sorts of subjects (e.g., natural history, personal history, politics, philosophy, etc.) and employ various techniques (e.g., exposition, narration, dialogue, etc.). Our goals will be to begin to learn to read and write as essayists. We will read published essays as models, employ exercises to get started, try our hand a several subgenres of the form, and revise at least one piece with an eye to publication.

SummerB07 ENG3014 01
Critical Issues in Literary Studies  
Daniel Vitkus 645 0100, WMS 220, dvitkus@fsu.edu

This course offers an intensive introduction to the most important concepts and critical issues in literary studies today. We will be discussing not just literature, but literary theory and critical methodology. Our consideration of literary theory will raise exciting, foundational questions about texts, meaning, culture, and subjectivity. Students will learn about the most important schools of contemporary literary theory and then apply these theories as we analyze texts like Shakespeare?s King Lear, Burroughs? Tarzan, and short stories by Alice Munro. Course Objectives: 1) to master basic terms and concepts that define the field of literary studies 2) to explore the cultural and ideological issues raised by literary theory and its practice 3) to develop skills in textual interpretation 4) to develop skills in writing and critical thinking.

SummerB07 ENG4934 
Senior Seminar: Marriage and Poetry  
Eric Walker 644 4869, WMS 438, ewalker@english.fsu.edu

The senior seminar is a smaller-enrollment (capped at 20) "capstone" course required of all literature majors; "capstone" means that the course should be taken near the end of your degree work (if you are finishing your English major in summer 07 or Fall 07, now is a good time for the seminar; if you are still going to be working on your major in Spring 08, you should wait and take the seminar in fall or spring). It is a special topic course; the topic for this section is "Marriage and Poetry." It frames these two terms as a puzzle, not as a predetermined cause for celebration or lament. The course is designed to test and hone your skills in analyzing and writing about the border terrritory between social action (marriage) and representational form (poetry). Texts will include Stephanie Coontz, Marriage: A History; Adam Phillips, Monogamy; Ted Hughes, Birthday Letters; Claudia Emerson, Late Wife; and the 200+ poems archived in the category "marriage and companionship" on the Poetry Foundation webpage: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/ Several shorter papers and one longer term essay.

SummerB07 ENL3210 
Medieval Literature in Translation  
Nancy Warren 644 5077, WMS 405D, nwarren@english.fsu.edu

In this course, we will examine constructions of heroes and villains in a variety of medieval literary works of different genres (epic, dramatic, romance, religious, comic). We will explore how the categories of ?hero? and villain? are shaped by generic expectations, by gender, and by other ideological forces. We will consider how heroes and villains make meaning in different medieval cultures, interrogating the social desires and anxieties that they manifest. Our study of literature will attend closely to historical, political, and cultural environments.

SummerB07 ENL3334 01
Introduction to Shakespeare  
Bruce Boehrer 644-3029, WMS 112A, bboehrer@english.fsu.edu

This course will offer an introductory survey of Shakespeare's dramatic work, with reading drawn from all the major dramatic genres. The scholarly approach will be broadly historicist, aimed at situating Shakespeare's works within their contemporary intellectual, social, and political context.

SummerB07 ENL4230 
Restoration and Eighteenth-Century British Literature  
Candace Ward 644-1833, WMS 113, cward@english.fsu.edu

Course Objectives This course?which is taught as a linked summer course, with approximately 25 undergraduate and 10 graduate students enrolled?is intended to introduce you to representative works and figures of the literary period from 1660 to 1800. Alongside poetry, prose, and drama, we will examine non-literary texts as well, texts that, like the literature, reflected and produced the cultures of eighteenth-century Britain. In addition to examining historical, political, economic, and gender-related issues of the period, we will explore some of the critical approaches to eighteenth-century studies, and discuss how the study of eighteenth-century texts is relevant to other areas of literary studies and to our lives outside the classroom. Throughout the semester, you will be called on to discuss these texts and write about them in formal and informal papers and on exams. In order to successfully fulfill the requirements, you must demonstrate not only a familiarity with the texts and contexts (i.e., background information provided in lectures, class discussions, and independent research), but also an ability to communicate your ideas using the critical and analytical techniques that characterize literary and cultural studies.

SummerB07 ENL4230 
Studies in Restoration & 18th c. British Literature  
Candace Ward 644-1833, WMS 113, cward@english.fsu.edu

This course serves as an introduction to the literary period from 1660 to 1800. Alongside poetry, prose, and drama, we will examine non-literary texts as well. In addition to examining historical, political, economic, and gender-related issues of the period, we will explore some of the critical approaches to eighteenth-century studies, and discuss how the study of eighteenth-century texts is relevant to other areas of literary studies and to our lives outside the classroom. In order to explore the major cultural phenomena of the period--e.g., the culture of sensibility, the rise of British imperialism, discourses of slavery and abolition, the evolution of institutionalized philanthropy, the rhetoric of revolution--we will examine authors like Dryden, Behn, Defoe, Equiano, Spence, and Wollstonecraft.

SummerB07 ENL4251 
Victorian British Literature  
John Fenstermaker 644 1352, WMS 223B, jfenstermaker@english.fsu.edu

Major Victorian writers focused upon the social, moral, cultural, and political conditions of the time. Among many pressing issues, nineteenth-century British writers, thinkers, and apologists addressed two great questions: the "Condition of England" question (focusing upon the exploitation of the working classes by new and powerful capitalists who controlled the mines, the mills and the factories) and the "Woman Question." The latter subject, touching all aspects of the lives, particularly of middle-class women, grew ever larger as the century progressed.

Taken as a whole, Victorian writing is full of seemingly realistic depiction of the entire social spectrum--the dispossessed, the urban and rual laborers, the nouveau riche middle classes, the landed gentry, the clergy, the aristocracy. Were these portraits accurate? What actually were the conditions in Britain in the period 1832-1901? In a time of inordinate self-scrutiny, what forces may have been at work to prohibit or undermine realistic depiction of actual life? In addition, what choices made consciously and freely by the artists themselves may have distorted the presentation of issues? We shall investigate such questions to more fully understand this Age and both the collective and individual consciousness(es) that dominated its art and thought. Texts will include Thomas Carlyle, Past and Present, Charles Dickens, A Christman Carol, Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre, Alfred Tennyson, Selected Poetry, and Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D?Urbervilles.

SummerB07 ENL4273 01
Modern British Literature  
S. E. Gontarski 644-6038, WMS 430, sgontarski@english.fsu.edu

British poetry, fiction, and essays since 1900. Typically includes Hardy, Conrad, Joyce, Yeats, Lawrence, Woolf, Auden, and Lessing.

SummerB07 LIT2020 All
Introduction to the Short Story  
Staff  

This course is an introduction to the art of the short story that focuses on such issues as tone, narration, form, and theme in representative short stories.

SummerB07 LIT2081 All
Contemporary Literature  
Staff  

Poetry, fiction, drama from WWII to the present. For beginning students.

SummerB07 LIT2230 
Introduction to Global Literature  
Staff  

Introduction to English-language literature from countries that were former British colonies in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean.

SummerB07 LIT3383 
Women in Literature  
Staff  

An examination of the representation of women in literature.