CURRENT GROUPS
Cultural Theory Reading Group
Led by Professors Dr. Robin Goodman and Dr. Barry Faulk
rgoodman@fsu.edu; bfaulk@fsu.edu
Available for credit: 1 credit
The Cultural Theory Reading Group, made up of interested faculty and graduate students, meets once every two weeks for an hour and a half to discuss contemporary theoretical texts. Readings are selected each semester based on interests/fields of group members. Graduate students from any discipline are invited to enroll in this S/U course. Requirements for credit include leading one discussion and keeping up with selected readings.
Literature Professionalization Group
Led by Pete Kunze
Pkunze@fsu.edu
Not available for credit
The Literature Professionalization Group seeks to prepare students for the professional side of their careers by discussing issues they will face as teachers and department members. Group members meet monthly to offer strategies for teaching literature (including instruction and assessment), exchange syllabi, workshop conference abstracts and presentations, identify and understand recent critical trends and vocabulary, and discuss recent articles on the state of the profession. Initiated and administered by students, the LPG mentors new students in acclimating to the expectations of graduate school as well as supporting students who are writing theses/dissertations or preparing to enter the job market.
American Literature Reading Group
Faculty Sponsor: Dr. Robert Battistini
rbattistini@fsu.edu
Student Leaders: Caitlin Newcomer - cen09e@my.fsu.edu, Aimee Wilson - aawilson@fsu.edu
Available for credit: 1 credit
The American Literature Reading Group meets monthly during the fall and spring semesters to discuss recent or significant scholarly work. Composed of graduate students and faculty interested in American literature and culture from any period, the group seeks to stay abreast of critical research and trends in the field.
The Renaissance Colloquium
Faculty Sponsor: Dr. Elizabeth Spiller
espiller@fsu.edu
Student Leader: Meg Brown
mjb08e(at)fsu.edu
Available for credit: 1 credit
The Renaissance Colloquium is a group of faculty and graduate students who meet once a month to workshop papers and share scholarship. The group typically reads two short works (a conference length paper or part of a longer work) per meeting. It is open to all graduate students and faculty interested in scholarship regarding the broadly defined "Renaissance" period, including those working outside the English department.
PAST GROUPS
Reading and Re-reading Bergson
Led by Dr. S. E. Gontarski
sgontarski@fsu.edu
Available for credit: 1-2 credits
This weekly seminar is modeled after the sort of student-led seminars regularly held in the sciences to deal with particular contemporary issues. It will concentrate on the close reading and re-reading of two of Bergson's major works, Matter and Memory and Creative Evolution in order to confront principle issues in Bergson studies in the aftermath of Gilles Deleuze's Bergsonism. Collateral readings in other contemporary critics of Bergson will also feature in seminar discussions. Students taking the course for credit will write a detailed critique of one of Bergson's other books. Such a paper should be written as if it were a chapter in an anthology entitled, Understanding Bergson, which it may well become.
The following book grew out of the Henri Bergson Reading group:
Understanding Bergson, Understanding Modernism. Eds. S. E. Gontarski, Laci Mattison, Paul Ardoin. Continuum, 2012.
http://www.continuumbooks.com/books/detail.aspx?BookId=168540&SubjectId=997&Subject2Id=988
Finnegans Wake Reading Group
Led by Dr. S.E. Gontarski
Sgontarski@fsu.edu
Available for credit: 1-2 credits
The combined Finnegans Wake seminar, tutorial, and reading group will be reconstituted one more time this fall semester for its 14th consecutive (academic) year; that is, we have now completed (with some interruptions) 13 years of a projected 14-year seminar. The fall 2009 installment will thus be the Wake's finale, or a Wake for the Wake. As was the case these past 13 years, a mixed group of undergraduates, graduates, faculty, obsessive-compulsives, and Joyce incurables will meet weekly to read aloud this narrative sound poem and discuss that portion of the text. This fall's re-incarnation of the group will meet Wednesdays from 12-1:30 (more or less) and feature theoretical and source readings and include public performances.
For obvious reasons we have not historically begun each semester at the beginning (if that's the word) of the text. In fact, one couldn't begin at the beginning even if one wished since the novel has no beginning; its opening pages follow the final pages of the novel, nor has it an end since the final words of the novel precede the opening words. We conclude then (suspect as conclusions may be) that it matters little where one jumps into the process of textuality and constructed meaning so long as one overcomes inertia and jumps. Next fall we begin our leap with the final chapter that, in its turn, or turn and turn about, anticipates the opening of the novel. We are thus in the Prequel of sorts to the Wake. Our end is the thus the perfect place to launch a new beginning.
The seminar/tutorial is available this fall for 1 or 2 credits, but preferably for 1. This finale will continue the feature of close reading of 2-3 pages of FW per week, but since we are in the final chapter of the final book, the moment of ricorso, the (cracked) mirror to the text as a whole, a compacted if not impacted anthology of all its stories, we will focus much more on theories of the Wake in this final installment. Students taking the course for credit will need as usual to attend every weekly session, participate by taking regular turns at reading the text aloud, participate in the public performances, and present a seminar paper at one of those weekly meetings, this time on a major secondary or theoretical document.
Recording of the group reading excerpts from Finnegans Wake.
The following essays have grown out of the Finnegans Wake Reading group:
Andrew McFeaters, "Museyrooms and Moebius Effects: A Ruim of History in Finnegans Wake," Hypermedia Joyce Studies 12.1 (February 2012), available on line at: http://hjs.ff.cuni.cz/main/essays.php?essay=mcfeaters
Nicholas Morris, "'Say yeh and wah say': Paronomastic Kenoma and the Idiotic Tetragrammaton in Finnegans Wake III.3," Hypermedia Joyce Studies 8.2 (July 2007), available on line at: http://hjs.ff.cuni.cz/archives/v8_2/main/essays.php?essay=morris
Andrew E. Baumann, "'The River Ever Runs, And Anna Calls': A Joyce-Deleuzian Billet Deux,'" Hypermedia Joyce Studies 5.2 (2005), available on line at:
http://hjs.ff.cuni.cz/archives/v3/baumann.html