Undergraduate Courses

This liberal studies course introduces students to representative works in the African-American Literary and Cultural Tradition with a view to interrogating the close relationship between black writing and vernacular sources. We begin with a focus on the slave narrative, then consider the symbolic acts of religion, speech, and music, followed by a reading of canonical works from the early twentieth century up to the contemporary era. Not only will our overview cover major figures, texts, and concerns during successive historical moments, our readings direct attention to the search for freedom, wholeness, and self-identity in America.

This course surveys African American literature and culture. We will explore canonical works within the field and specifically examine the ways in which Black writers depict the afterlives of slavery in their literary work. By looking at each course text as a window into Black life, the works of Solomon Northup, James Weldon Johnson, Zora Neale Hurston, Ernest Gaines, and Jesmyn Ward will be analyzed from an angle that considers literary work as archival products. The course will rely on Toni Morrison’s discussion of the literary imagination to consider the ways that narrative fiction can reflect historical events. By engaging with the assigned texts, students will come to understand how Black writers take agency in narrating their own stories and experiences in ways that represent their lives authentically.

This course examines the global dimensions of Asian American Literature. We will explore how narratives address race, identity, multiculturalism, and cosmopolitanism. Through analysis of selected novels, and travel literature, we will delve into the interplay between individual and collective identities within the Asian American experiences. Throughout the course, critical analysis will be applied through lenses such as race theory, multiculturalism, and cosmopolitan perspectives, addressing questions of representation, authenticity, and identity politics. By engaging with the selected texts, students will gain insight into the diverse voices and experiences within Asian American literature while exploring broader themes of race, identity, multiculturalism, and cosmopolitanism in today's society.

This course satisfies the requirement for coursework in Asian American Literary and Cultural Studies, Transnational Literary and Cultural Studies, a Literary Genre (Fiction), and also fulfills the Alterity requirement.

The following are the prescribed texts:
Tropic of Orange: Karen Tei Yamashita
Native Speaker: Chang-rae, Lee
The Namesake: Jhumpa Lahari
Donald Duck: Frank Chin
Video Night in Kathmandu: Pico Iyer.
Disgraced: Ayad Akhtar (optional)

The great struggle of America in the 19th century was over slavery and race in our society. Who is and is not a "real" American? In this course, we'll read work published before the Civil War, including Moby Dick, The Scarlet Letter, and Edgar Allan Poe. Our goal is to reach a better understanding of the complex, ongoing struggle for equality as expressed by some of the most significant writers of the 19th century. We will learn about the history of the United States in the 1830s, 1840s and 1850s, which was not a period of peace and tranquility, but marked by slave insurrections, economic changes, and instability. This course satisfied the requirement in genre.

This course introduces cross-cultural literary traditions, looking at historical rationales and interconnections among communities as well as vital differences.

This course meets distribution requirements for Diversity.

American Novels will explore the term “American” and the idea of what it means for a work to be an “American novel.” We will study the current events taking place in the timeline of the fictions when the novels were written. We will discuss the timelessness of the work and how the 20th and 21st century shaped the novel.

Texts may include these novels and others:
Dune by Frank Herbert
A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

This course situates representative novels within the larger conversational framework of the body -- in motion, scarred, marked, vanished, dismembered, and remembered. Relying upon recent scholarship surrounding the body as a trope for a traumatic history involving slavery, colonization, and Jim Crow as well as a site for the remembrance of a lost, fragmented heritage, we will discuss representative novels in terms of their insights into various moments in the Black experience. Our readings will also permit us to consider gendered and queered bodies in relation to written, documented, or 'official' history. African-American Literature, History, and Culture imagines America in general and the South in particular as spaces where the black body enters, but seldom leaves, at least intact. We will examine nuances of meaning associated with this reality through texts by authors whose works chronicle the search for freedom, wholeness, and selfhood in a New World setting.

This course examines the enduring legacies of plantation economies and cultures in shaping modern global society. We will explore how the plantation system—characterized by forced labor, colonial exploitation, and racialized hierarchies—continues to influence contemporary life through fiction, film, music, and foodways. By tracing connections between past and present, we will investigate how we live with the afterlives of the plantation. We will consider early plantation logics with Toni Morrison and Frederick Douglass, reckon with speculative presents with Octavia Butler, and trace the shadow of the plantation with Jesmyn Ward and Queen Sugar.

The Graphic Narrative Workshop is composed of eight art studio majors and eight creative writing majors. They work together in collaborative teams to make original comics. We will be reading Making Comics (Scott McCloud), Words for Pictures (Bendis) and a selection of comics chosen by the students.

This course is designed for upper-level undergraduate students interested in understanding and constructing fiction, specifically the short story, whether you have been scribbling away in isolation for years or are new to creative writing. Our goals for the course are to develop a solid writing practice, to explore basic craft concepts and apply them to our own work, to experiment with different approaches to fiction, and to familiarize ourselves with a supportive workshop process. Classwork will include reading and discussing published stories and craft essays, writing exercises, the completion and revision of a full draft of a short story, and participating in workshop.

This is an introductory workshop course exploring the craft of fiction via the lens of worldbuilding. Worldbuilding is defined as the creative process of constructing an imaginary world or universe. While it is often considered most applicable to fantastical or speculative writing, it in fact serves as an essential element to any piece of fiction, given that every fiction writer—realist or speculative—must actively determine the details of the lives and worlds in which their characters exist. In this class, we will explore six distinct units: “Character as World,” “Worlds of Privilege and Power,” “Setting-Rich Worlds,” “Psychological Worlds,” “Strangely Familiar Worlds,” and “Strangely Strange Worlds.” We will discuss how craft techniques such as character, plot, setting, point of view, and diction help us world build, and we will discuss, in turn, how worldbuilding helps us enhance those craft elements. Our reading will include wide-ranging and diverse writers of realist and speculative fiction, as well as craft texts that illuminate the units and craft techniques under discussion. We will write and workshop two longer pieces of fiction, one of which will be revised at the end of the semester, as well as engage in regular generative exercises building up to these longer pieces. We will also discuss and build our own class document of fiction craft terms and writing tips to guide us as we read and analyze published work and the work of our class

This course is designed for upper-level undergraduate students interested in understanding and constructing fiction, specifically the short story. Students will:
• Develop a consistent writing practice,
• Explore basic craft concepts,
• Apply them to the composition of short stories,
• Experiment with different approaches to fiction, and
• Participate in a supportive workshop environment.
Classwork will include reading and discussing published stories and craft texts, writing exercises, the completion and revision of a full draft of a short story, and engage in a robust workshop process that includes pre- and post-conferences and written critiques.

This class is a rigorous but nurturing fiction workshop in which you will prioritize learning to read like a writer. You will write a short story and run it through a workshop that values helpful feedback over praise. You'll revise your story, resubmit at the end of the term, and leave this class as a significantly stronger reader and writer.

This class is a rigorous but nurturing fiction workshop in which you will prioritize learning to read like a writer. You will write a short story and run it through a workshop that values helpful feedback over praise. You'll revise your story, resubmit at the end of the term, and leave this class as a significantly stronger reader and writer.

This course introduces students to the fundamentals of fiction writing, with an emphasis on reading and writing short stories. In the first half of the course, students will critically study a diverse selection of short fiction from the nineteenth through the twenty-first century, focusing on essential elements such as character, setting, plot, dialogue, and form. By examining works from a wide array of authors, students will learn to identify and analyze key aspects of fiction—tone, narration, theme, and structure. In the latter half of the course, students will workshop their own short stories. Each student will submit one original short story (10 pages) for peer critique and receive feedback for revision. The goal of the workshop is to foster a supportive community of writers who actively engage with one another’s work and help each other grow as stronger and more confident writer.

This course will ask you to relax your preconceptions about what poetry should look, feel, and sound like. With this open and curious eye, you'll work toward building the discipline and technical skills necessary to produce effective work. We'll enjoy a variety of class formats designed to help you hone your skills and ability to contribute to poetic forums. Course readings will consist of several full-length poetry collections by contemporary authors and some craft essays along the way. The ultimate goal of this course is to produce multiple poems (circling of our theme of poetic obsessions) which, after workshop and revision, should be of publishable quality. You'll leave this class a stronger reader and writer.

When most people think of poetry, they think of a nature poem. But as ecopoet Juliana Spahr writes, “even when [the nature poet] got the birds and the plants and the animals right, they tended to show the beautiful bird but not so often the bulldozer off to the side that was destroying the bird’s habitat.” This course offers students the opportunity to consider both the bird and the bulldozer. In this class, students will write and workshop poems, read contemporary poetry collections such as Craig Santos Perez's "Habitat Threshold" and Natalie Diaz's "Postcolonial Love Poem," and will discuss the long history of nature poetry with a focus on contemporary ecopoetics. Though the course will focus on ecopoetry, the poetic concepts learned here can be applied to any kind of writing (we'll study form, the line, image, etc.); students already versed in writing poetry and those with little or no experience will both benefit. Likewise, students of literature are encouraged to join as the course offers as much benefit to students' literary skills as to their writing.

In this class, we will observe craft trends in contemporary poetry in service of the student writing their own work. We look to historical poetry, craft readings, and some theory so that the student leaves the class with an understanding of poetry. The idea is that each student finds their own artistic voice in the class. Come and enjoy the class no matter what level your understanding of poetry currently is!

In the wide range of fictional forms, this course is focused on one genre only: what is often vaguely described as “literary fiction.” The course will clarify what fiction as art truly is. Beyond issues of craft and technique, it will develop the nascent literary artist’s deep sense of the sources and nature of the creative process. This will be done by an examination of the aesthetic philosophy voiced in From Where You Dream, and by the subsequent creation of literary work for the workshop. Please note that a permission code is needed for this course, instructions for which will be found on the registration page.

In this class we will discuss and engage in the writing of original short stories based on strong character development.

Because this is an advanced class, we'll brush up on the basics and then move beyond them to explore some of the subtleties of the craft. By reading, discussing, and responding in writing to works of a diverse group of published writers, we will learn to recognize literary uses of language and fictional techniques that we might then employ in our own writing. We will ask ourselves: What risks do published writers take and how we you learn from them? What risks might we take in your own fiction? How can we make our own fiction as dramatic, intense, and engaging as possible? Our goal is the creation of a community of writers who can learn from and help each other. Courage, honesty, and dedication are expected. In this class, you will compose four story starters (based on prompts I give you) and then write a complete short story using one of them. You’ll revise this short story three times over the course of the semester and participate in both small group and whole class critiques of your sto

This course hopes to introduce the student to a variety of means to a very specific end: the crafting of a poem that is not only a clear expression of your imagination, but that is capable of becoming an imaginative vehicle for its reader. This pursuit will be carried out within the context of weekly guided and independent readings of a wide selection of contemporary poetry. Students will concentrate especially on writing for an audience, creating concrete and evocative imagery, and exploring a variety of different strategies for the drafting and revising of their poems.



This course hopes to introduce the student to a variety of means to a very specific end: the crafting of a poem that is not only a clear expression of your imagination, but that is capable of becoming an imaginative vehicle for its reader. This pursuit will be carried out within the context of weekly guided and independent readings of a wide selection of contemporary poetry. Students will concentrate especially on writing for an audience, creating concrete and evocative imagery, and exploring a variety of different strategies for the drafting and revising of their poems.



Linus Pauling said, “The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas,” and the same is true for poems. Our classroom will be your garden. It’ll be your laboratory. Our classroom will be the little convenience store on the truck route that never closes as well as the high-volume, deep-discount retail poetry outlet that ships more units than anyone else in the tri-state area. We’ll study craft poems from Enheduanna and Nine Inch Nails to Jelly Roll Morton and Franny Choi, plus you’ll present your own work, have frequent conferences with me, keep a digital journal of “bits” that you’ll turn into “kits” (more on that later), work with a series of rotating partners, and finish up in December with a publishable portfolio. We’ll teach, care for, and learn from one another unceasingly. We'll hit the gym! This may be the busiest class you’ve ever taken.

This class will be a rigorous, nurturing, introductory fiction workshop for aspiring fiction writers and critics. As the title suggests, this course aims to promote an intense and rewarding engagement with the craft of fiction. Your focus will be on generating and revising student work, familiarizing yourself with the fundamental building blocks of fiction writing, and producing quality stories for publication. This course will culminate in a single round of workshops, during which you'll draft and submit one complete short story (which you'll later revise and resubmit at the end of the term). So long as you put forth the dedication of an earnest apprentice, you should expect to walk away from this class a more sophisticated reader and a dramatically better writer. It will also ensure that you’re well prepared to excel in future, more advanced creative writing classes. This course is structured as a safe environment for apprentice authors to experiment and fail. Here, you'll learn how to embrace the positive, liberating value of the kind of failure that's crucial to an artist's apprenticeship. Your primary goal should be to write a short story that reads as if you’ve read one before.

This course will focus on representations of the natural world – that is, the nonhuman beings that surround us – in poetry, but will also expand on the definition of ecopoetics to include art and other genres. Consider nonhumans to be rivers, trees, turtles, rocks, dragons, ghosts, and that rock you swear talks sometimes. Our discussions will be grounded in ecocriticism and animal studies. This focus will enable students to build a strong foundation of critical thinking skills and knowledge to consider the rhetoric of the natural world, with application of acquired knowledge and skills in a range of contexts, including writing our own ecopoetry, workshopping, and potential outings outside the classroom. Satisfies Poetry Genre and Diversity requirements.

Through the reading of 20th and 21st century American poetry, supported by international poetry in translation and craft essays, this course will explore the many shapes a poem can take. Focusing on aspects such as the line, the image, syntax and diction, narrative and lyric, students will learn not only how to create a composition that is both intimate and intense, but also how their own work fits into a much larger tradition. Students will be expected to complete the readings with rigor and to workshop their own poems regularly.

Rhetoric introduces students to key concepts and frameworks useful for analysis of texts, events, and communication. Students will apply rhetorical frames to various “texts,” e.g., Lloyd Bitzer's theory of rhetorical situation highlighting the role of audience, purpose, and occasion. This course emphasizes a variety of rhetorics including the Western rhetorical tradition, feminist rhetorics, and global Black rhetorics. We will consider how rhetoric shapes and continues to shape history, cultures, identities, and discourses.

Rhetoric introduces students to key concepts and frameworks useful for analysis of texts, events, and communication. Students will apply rhetorical frames to various “texts,” e.g., Lloyd Bitzer's theory of rhetorical situation highlighting the role of audience, purpose, and occasion. This course emphasizes a variety of rhetorics including the Western rhetorical tradition, feminist rhetorics, and global Black rhetorics. We will consider how rhetoric shapes and continues to shape history, cultures, identities, and discourses.

This is an introductory course in the craft of creative nonfiction, a slippery genre that includes a miscellany of forms concerned with the presentation—and interrogation—of truth, fact, experience, and memory itself. Situated within this genre are essays of all kinds; works of reportage; works that tell life stories; works of cultural, literary, and political criticism; and more. We will read and discuss published works, placing contemporary writers in dialogue with those past, and will read craft essays and hold active class discussions to develop a robust vocabulary with which to describe and analyze the works we read. Students will also write their own pieces of creative nonfiction, at least one of which will be workshopped (read, critiqued, and discussed) by the class, then significantly revised by the end of the term.

This course will focus on the creation, editing, and (hopefully) publication of memoir-based creative nonfiction. Each week, one student will submit their work. The class will then read and discuss the piece with the goal of helping the author turn it more into what they want it to be. We will also read work by other successful memoirists, such as Roxane Gay, Samantha Irby, and Ben Ann Fennelly.

This course serves as an introduction to creative nonfiction (CNF). We will look at different types of CNF including: the personal essay, the lyric & braided essay, travel & nature essays, & longform reporting. The course will also contain a workshop component in which students will share their creative work for feedback and critique.

In this course, we will focus on the narrative techniques employed in writing creative nonfiction. We will explore the use of scenes, characterization, tone, dialogue and form to create a cohesive narrative that encapsulates a thoroughly conscious subjective truth. Over the course of the semester, we will study works of creative nonfiction from contemporary writers such as Natasha Trethewey, Carmen Maria Machado, and David Foster Wallace. We will then employ all we have learnt in our own creative works. Pieces generated will be workshopped in class.

Today, writers don't just inscribe words on paper. Students in this course will compose written, visual, and/or auditory texts, using a variety of technologies, all in the context of Bolter and Grusin's suggestion (in Remediation) that different media are always informing each other. Students will be expected to create texts (1) for the page (2) the screen, and (3) the network. Each text will also be edited in accord with its medium. In addition, at least one of these texts will be re-purposed for another medium. Students will conclude the course by creating a digital portfolio. Texts include Palmquist, Designing Writing; the McGraw-Hill Handbook; and Kimball, The Web Portfolio Guide.

 WEPO is one of three Editing, Writing, Media (EWM) core courses. This section takes a journalistic and adaptive graphic design approach that invites students to consider and problematize principles of composing across different mediums, modalities, and spaces. We will focus on: (1) composing rhetorically and designing with purpose; (2) writing for different mediums—print (physical), digital (screen), and networks (online), considering their affordances, constraints, and rhetorical situations; (3) read texts to gain an understanding of writing, remixing, and ideas of prescriptivism/descriptivism; and (4) explore the relationships across and between genres, modalities, and materiality. Students will write journalistic-style articles, “publish” for print, and engage with industry standard software (e.g. Adobe Creative Cloud); students leave the course with the necessary skills to compose for these genres, modes, mediums, etc. and for specific audiences. Students end the course by curating a digital portfolio that highlights their artifacts.

This course asks students to consider their identities as writers while encouraging them to think critically about social and personal implications of writing online and in print.

ENC 3416 (WEPO) is one of three core courses for Editing, Writing, Media (EWM), and as such, it helps provide a foundation for the major. This course acknowledges the complexity of composition today as it extends beyond writing for print by introducing students to the principles of composing and editing across different media environments, paying special attention to how your process will be affected when working in different contexts, with different materials and genres, for different audiences. This course aims to help students: 1) understand principles of composition across the many forms in which it occurs; 2) compose for three different spaces—print (physical), digital (screen), and network (online) using different technologies and design strategies; 3) appropriately revise and edit the texts created in each space, learning how to transform them where necessary; and 4) understand the relationships that exist across and between texts, technologies, and materials. To accomplish these goals, we'll engage with multiple kinds of texts: we’ll read some, write some, talk about some, and create remediated forms of some. Throughout the course, we will spend time reflecting on the differences and similarities we experience when composing across various genres, and we will interrogate what happens to ourselves as writers/thinkers/creators as we engage in this work. Note: There is no official textbook for this course; instead, texts/readings will be provided via Canvas.

Dive into the heart of contemporary Writing Center scholarship with a special focus on social justice, equity, and access. This course offers a unique opportunity to engage with critical issues that shape today’s educational landscape. Throughout, we will explore acts of reading, writing, and composing: the people who do it, how they do it, and how to help others do it. Students are trained to tutor in the Reading-Writing Center and/or Digital Studio and actively work in those spaces. Completion of the course allows students to apply for openings in the RWC/DS staff. In addition, students can expect to hone essential skills in interpersonal, and cross-cultural communication while gaining a deeper understanding of research methodologies in the humanities and social sciences.

In this course, we explore forms of nonfiction: journalism, personal essays, and investigative writing. We will read widely in the genre and discuss writing strategies. The goal is to produce a draft of an essay, 10-12 pages long, and a revision of this essay, both of which will be workshopped by the class. The subject of the essay is up to you. The Golden Rule of this class? We don't make stuff up. The real world is far stranger than fiction.

In this course, I will encourage you to follow your interests and ideas to write essays with insight, clarity, and narrative style. Once we create a vantage point and narrative stance, we can identify the form and structure that best support your writing and your writing-related aspirations. Through writing portfolio assignments and readings, we will write toward a better understanding of the personal essay form. We will read the essays of journalists, scholars, poets, fiction writers, and editors. After we read these selections, we will discuss craft, content, and style elements. We will consider how the personal essay supports journalism, scholarly writing, and creative forms. During our workshop sessions, we will ask one another questions about the work presented. You will also ask questions in your written responses.

Advanced Article & Essay Workshop (ENC 4311) is a course on the craft and art of creative nonfiction writing, only available for students who have satisfactorily completed Article & Essay Technique (ENC 3310). This course assumes you have a serious interest in writing, reading, and discussing creative nonfiction. Our concerns are mainly practical and craft-based: where you as author wish to go with a particular draft, and how we, as readers and writers engaged in a common cause, might help you get there.

This internship offers up to three credits for working with the Southeast Review, Florida State University's nationally renowned literary journal. Interns will spend time managing and drafting posts for social media as part of a collaborative, peer-reviewed, and workshopped process. They will also work with section editors to review and evaluate journal submissions, in addition to learning the day-to-day operations of running a literary publication.

The Editing Internship is designated as a Formative Experience course; as such, it enables students to gain practical work experience in professional fields and career paths of interest. Students define their specific learning objectives in their internship contracts, based on the type of organization with which they are interning, the nature of the work, and how the internship relates to broader career interests and goals. Internships enable students to take the skills and knowledge acquired in classroom settings and apply and expand them in professional settings. The course is restricted to English majors, and core courses must be completed before enrolling.
Links to the application to register, internship contract, and more information are available here: https://linktr.ee/FSUEditing

When was the last time your mind was changed? Have you ever been moved to believe, think, or live differently by a piece of art, a speech, a post, or a conversation? Shirley Wilson Logan says that "rhetoric is what we do with our literacy." In other words, rhetoric is how we use language to share our knowledge, our beliefs, and our selves with each other.

In this class, we will ask big, curious questions about language and communication practices. We will disrupt the myth that the history of rhetoric has a “single story.” Instead, we will learn about various histories and theories, situating Western Greek rhetoric as one of many theories of rhetoric, including feminist rhetorics, Global Black and African American rhetorics, activist rhetorics, visual rhetorics, embodied rhetorics, queer rhetorics, and more.

This course introduces students to key concepts in the study of multiple rhetorics over the course of time and across the world: to frameworks useful for the analysis of texts, events, communication, and other phenomena; and to the principles of rhetoric in the contexts of many media, modes, and cultures.

This course is for upper-level undergraduate students interested in writing creative nonfiction. Creative nonfiction exists on a spectrum that stretches between researched, journalistic articles on the one hand, and lyrical personal essays on the other. The genre is "nonfiction," and as such, it tries to be true, with the recognition that truth is sometimes various, not always objective, and exists within a contract established between the writer and the reader. At the same time, the genre is "creative," and uses many of the techniques of fiction, such as scenes, dialogue, characters, setting, sensory detail, narrative, point of view, conflict, etc. The genre has a vast history, and we can learn from great writers if we learn to read as writers. In this course, we will explore and practice a wide range of styles within the genre of creative nonfiction. The core tenet of the course is this: writing is an ongoing process as well as expression, and so it requires time, revision, and artful attention to craft.

This is an introductory course in the craft of creative nonfiction, a slippery genre that includes a miscellany of forms concerned with the presentation—and interrogation—of truth, fact, experience, and memory itself. The genre is nonfiction, and so it tries to be true—with the recognition that truth is various and not always objective, and that it exists within a contract established between the writer and the reader. At the same time, the genre is creative in that it uses many of the techniques of fiction, such as scenes, dialogue, characters, setting, sensory detail, narrative, plot, story, point of view, conflict, rising tension, climax, denouement, anecdote, etc; and it is literary in that it is concerned with the artistry of language and some complexity of reflection on the human condition. We will read and discuss published works, placing contemporary writers in dialogue with those past, and will read craft essays and hold active class discussions to develop a robust vocabulary with which to describe and analyze the works we read. Students will also write their own pieces of creative nonfiction, at least one of which will be workshopped (read, critiqued, and discussed) by the class, then significantly revised by the end of the term.

Writing and Editing in Print and Online (WEPO) is a course that challenges students to consider the intentionality and implications innate to all stages of writing, production, and/or communication. Through both print and digital media, students will be analyzing the work of writers and theorists while constructing their own philosophies on the production and transmission of ideas.

This course will help you to take your editing skills to the next level, explicitly focusing on the work of improving another's writing. It seeks to develop the skills of synthesizing another's ideas and data, structuring and clarifying his or her argument, and ordering coherently any multi-part exposition. It is primarily practical in orientation, covering proofreading, grammar, spelling, fact checking, and line-editing. It is quite a demanding course, both in study time and in emotional resilience, as it requires everyone to honestly confront and work to correct their own weaknesses in English language knowledge.

Generally speaking, ENC 4218 introduces you to the principles of visual rhetoric, especially as it is enacted across diverse media, shaped by multiple genres, and designed to achieve different goals with different audiences. You learn to analyze the rhetorical function of imagery, use images to respond to and organize arguments, and create images that operate rhetorically. In our particular class this semester, we will extend that work toward the spatial, investigating genres, sites, and problems where the visual and the spatial intersect. Taking our cues from rhetorical ecologists, political geographers, and visual and spatial theorists, we'll consider the socio-spatial dialectics of monuments, memorials, archives, urban planning maps, and other situated performances around human rights. We'll look closely at visual arguments made in and about defined spaces of both conflict and celebration, reading them not only for stated and hidden agendas, but also for imaginative possibilities of how those spaces could be read into the future.

Generally speaking, ENC 4218 introduces you to the principles of visual rhetoric, especially as it is enacted across diverse media, shaped by multiple genres, and designed to achieve different goals with different audiences. You learn to analyze the rhetorical function of imagery, use images to respond to and organize arguments, and create images that operate rhetorically. In our particular class this semester, we will extend that work toward the spatial, investigating genres, sites, and problems where the visual and the spatial intersect. Taking our cues from rhetorical ecologists, political geographers, and visual and spatial theorists, we'll consider the socio-spatial dialectics of monuments, memorials, archives, urban planning maps, and other situated performances around human rights. We'll look closely at visual arguments made in and about defined spaces of both conflict and celebration, reading them not only for stated and hidden agendas, but also for imaginative possibilities of how those spaces could be read into the future.

This course begins with the assumption that visual language is one of many available modes of discourse that neither displaces nor functions in isolation from other modalities. By studying visual rhetoric in various contexts, we will explore how rhetorical frameworks are applicable to some discussions and insufficient for others when studying the visual. Visual messages are present in print as well as in digital form, in film and television as well as on pages and signs, and in layout and design as well as in illustrations and photographs. Visual rhetoric is equally relevant in the Rembrandt exhibit at the MET as it is on the t-shirts of the patrons who visit each day.

This course will be divided into three modules beginning with defining key terms questions central to visual rhetoric: (e.g., How do we “read” or “make meaning of” visuals? How trustworthy are images? What kinds of argument can visuals make?) The second module will look at social implications of visual culture as they relate to power, surveillance, and various gazes. The third module looks at various sites of visual rhetoric that will give the class a chance to explore earlier theories in an array of meaningful contexts. Each module will include readings and smaller assignments that enact principles from the section.

Students will work on a larger multimodal essay or mini-documentary video throughout the semester that will be accompanied by a critical reflection as the culminating project.

This course covers the craft and art of creative nonfiction writing. Course content is mainly practical and craft-based, and explores where authors wish to go with a particular draft, and how readers and writers engaged in a common cause might help the author get there.

This class strives to help you to improve your non-fiction writing and editing skills across a wide range of writing situations. Some of the best ways to get better at writing are practicing writing yourself, especially writing targeting improvement in particular writing skills, and reading and critically analyzing the writing of others. You will do a lot of both writing and editing in this class, and we share our efforts in a supremely supportive environment. Thinking about writing, noticing what is good and not-so-good about a particular piece of writing (whether your own or from someone else), and brainstorming writing options are all important to the ultimate goal of writing better. This class will help you to get better at putting your writing ideas into practice.

This class strives to help you to improve your non-fiction writing and editing skills across a wide range of writing situations. Some of the best ways to get better at writing are practicing writing yourself, especially writing targeting improvement in particular writing skills, and reading and critically analyzing the writing of others. You will do a lot of both writing and editing in this class, and we share our efforts in a supremely supportive environment. Thinking about writing, noticing what is good and not-so-good about a particular piece of writing (whether your own or from someone else), and brainstorming writing options are all important to the ultimate goal of writing better. This class will help you to get better at putting your writing ideas into practice.

This course prepares you for a career in English Studies; it will ground you in what it means to be an English major. You will hone your critical thinking skills and get exposed to the historical areas and current practices of the discipline. The goal is to be besotted again with the pleasures of reading, writing, editing, and using language effectively. Plus, we will review global literatures, including short stories by African writers.

This course prepares you for a career in English Studies; it will ground you in what it means to be an English major. You will hone your critical thinking skills and get exposed to the historical areas and current practices of the discipline. The goal is to be besotted again with the pleasures of reading, writing, editing, and using language effectively. Plus, we will review global literatures, including short stories by African writers.

Reading and writing as the joy of wondering

This course helps students think about what it means to be an English major and the different types of work and learning that happen within the discipline. Students will develop skills used in different areas of the English discipline and in the humanities more broadly. This class will be divided into three major units, representing one of each of the undergraduate tracks: 1-Creative Writing; 2-Editing, Writing, and Media; and 3-Literature, Media, and Culture

Are you interested in learning more about the English Major? As an introductory course, this class will act as a guide that will introduce you to English studies and the opportunities the field can provide. The course reviews the history of the discipline in ways that are meaningful and accessible, and we will talk about current practices and areas of inquiry for the field, including broadening the concept of writing to include other forms of writing and media that you may not have previously considered. The course will also help you to acquire skills that will be useful for you in other courses such as: annotation, analysis, drafting, workshop and peer review, and revision. You will also develop vocabulary for specialization in the major throughout our discussions and readings in this course. Ultimately, the class intends to prepare you to be an English major, showing how English studies can be used both in college and a variety of career fields, and to explore the rewarding depth to be found in writing and analysis.

We will use the primary text, The Color Purple by Alice Walker, as a vehicle to explore various theories and approaches to reading and analyzing literature. We will write both on the text and beyond the text. With the completion of this course, you will be better prepared for the variety of assignments found in future higher level English courses.

This course will present a survey of graphic novels, including manga and manhwa, as well as influential American, British, and African graphic novels. We will examine issues related to how graphic novels are generically defined and received, as well as how the art form has influenced cinema and cinematic adaptation. Authors involved will include Will Eisner, Frank Miller, Alan Moore, Marguerite Abouet, Yoshiyuki Sadamoto, Katsuhiro Otomo, and Chugong.

Relevant questions will address the differences (if any) between graphic novels and comic books, and how text and visual art can work together to create unique forms of storytelling.

Theory, with a capital T, refers to a broad range of intellectual approaches in literary and cultural studies, from structuralism and feminism to psychoanalysis, poststructuralism, and deconstruction. Some of these schools of thought complement each other, while others are mutually exclusive, and many are known for their complexity. Rather than exploring all of Theory’s challenging -isms and key figures, we’ll focus on a select group of compelling texts and ideas. This will help us trace important questions about literature, culture, and critical practices. Along the way, we’ll outline key concepts that will expand how you interpret literary, social, and cultural texts.

Since its conception, the cinema and its filmmakers have constantly drawn from literary sources to create narratives in the new medium. In this course, we will study classic and contemporary theories of film adaptation, borrowing as well as breaking from the concept of fidelity to create a space to explore how film engages with literature, and how literary stories are deformed and reformed through the medium of film. We will examine a variety of text-to-film adaptations and explore their wider adaptation “networks." Subsequently, we will also consider how some literature was influenced by film, or adapted itself by “seeing cinematically,” before the cinema even fully evolved. Films (and their relevant source texts) for study may include: adaptation, Alice in Wonderland, Blade Runner/2049, The Birds, The Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Killers, Nosferatu, Rashomon, Romeo + Juliet, Rope, Suspiria, etc.

In recent years, the documentary has regained stature among film genres, especially amid a global reckoning with the inequities that have allowed abuses of power and hierarchies to disenfranchise for centuries those who are deemed “other” because of national, ethnic, and racial caste, gender identity, sexuality, socioeconomic status, and other cultural markers. This semester, we will contemplate the following question: How has this genre gone from the bedrock of cinema in the late nineteenth century to a niche genre with the rise of Hollywood studio-driven, commercial entertainment of escapism in the succeeding one to a more democratized agent for truth telling, technological innovation, and social change in the past three decades? At the beginning of cinema in the 1890s, all films were documentaries, and the contemporaneous conventions of “real”-ness became the foundational aesthetics of commercial cinema. This course, a companion for ENG 3110 (Film Genres) and others, charts the evolution of the form’s convention as it continues to redefine the construction of “real”-ness, explore the nature of truth in a post-fact society, and interrogate the politics of representation and the sociological impact of the moving image. Given the historical representations of nationality, race, gender expression, sexualities, socioeconomic status, and other protected areas of identity, some of the required viewing includes images that may be disturbing while offering us occasion to study and learn from the artform’s evolution in documenting them. (This course may satisfy Liberal Studies Humanities and Cultural Practices requirements, the EWM requirement, and an LMC elective.)

In this course, we will approach Hollywood Cinema through the study of Sci-Fi films that subvert audience expectations via groundbreaking narrative construction, unsettling genre, innovative point of view, and various cinematic techniques. This includes film marketing vs. audience reception. Our examination will span mid-century Hollywood to the present day, from The Day the Earth Stood Still (Robert Wise) to Everything Everywhere All At Once (Daniel Kwan), with a focus on modern film. Films of study may include: 2001: A Space Odyssey, Children of Men, Under the Skin, They Live, Wall-E, Videodrome, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Ex Machina.

This course tasks students to use rhetorical theory to engage, interpret, and create media texts. The underlying theme of this course, and the practice that will centralize our discussion this semester, is the ‘remix.’ The terminology of remix can be found across various contexts, but we will focus on the ‘remix’ as it exists within pop culture including literature, music, film, and television. We will spend the first few weeks of the course understanding the history and meanings of the concept of ‘remix.’ Then, we will develop our own collective theory of ‘remix’ by creating our definition, identifying its parameters, and articulating the function of a ‘remix.’ Along with theorizing ‘remixes,’ students will be tasked to analyze remixes selected by the instructor and of their own choosing. For example, we may begin with the artform of ‘the REE-MIX!” in hip-hop and identify key characteristics and functions of original songs versus their updated (and often up-tempo) versions. Or we may consider how adaptations of stories into films and other media alters the meanings and audiences of these texts (e.g., The Little Mermaid, The Color Purple, The Lion King). As a final project, students will have an opportunity to create their own remix of a primary text using whatever genre and/or media of their choosing. The purpose of this course is to consider the rhetorical purpose and functions of remixes, while also practicing the art of composing creative and ethical adaptations of original works.

We will examine the significance, affordances, and limits of media, new media, and media theory in contemporary culture. The course defines media broadly to include oral, print, theatrical, photographic, cinematic, and digital cultural forms and practices. We will consider these forms historically and contextually, and explore different theoretical perspectives on the role of media in shaping our cultural values.

Shapeshifters, monsters, hybrids, grotesques, and werewolves elicit fascination not just in today’s popular culture but in remote literary periods as well. This seminar explores metamorphosis, or radical transformation, in a variety of imaginative discourses. A favorite literary topic in classical antiquity, metamorphosis was moralized by medieval and early modern intellectuals, and its legacy surfaces in post-Enlightenment discourses of psychology and evolution. Our approach is broadly historical and comparative: it considers how notions of change are themselves transformed over time and across cultures. Working with literary texts in an interdisciplinary framework, we will treat metamorphosis as a cultural, artistic, and philosophical issue. Course materials pursue metamorphosis across English and European literary traditions (all foreign language materials will be read in translation), from the first century C.E. to the twenty-first, but we will dwell most extensively on the formative ancient, medieval, and early modern periods. Authors to be studied in depth include Ovid, Apuleius, Marie de France, Shakespeare, Franz Kafka, and Italo Calvino. No prior experience with these materials is expected, but seminar participants must be willing to read, analyze, and actively discuss an array of challenging texts of diverse genres and historical periods.

With the award of the Nobel prize for Literature in 2016, Bob Dylan has been increasingly referred to as poet and songwriter, often in that order. The literary award was not without controversy for any number of reasons, of course, but even before the Nobel award Dylan was often spoken of as a poet, his language and imagery often discussed in poetic terms. Mostly Dylan would resist, deny or deflect such literary connections, but the Nobel committee singled out his work "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.” The course begins with attempts to establish what constitutes this “new poetic expression” and to define some key terms in the process, not the least of which are what makes this work “new” and what we mean by the term “literature.” The basic pedagogy, then, is to treat song lyrics as poetic statements in themselves, separate from the music, and then to reunite the resulting analysis with performances in an attempt to establish how the union creates an entity greater than the sum of its parts. We will focus on Dylan and other musicians whose lyrics might be deemed not only poetic but poetry, and we will look at those poets who most influenced Dylan, the Beats who performed their poems to musical accompaniment, mostly jazz, particularly Ginsberg, Kerouac and McClure.

This course serves as an entry point into the world of English literature, the art of creative writing and the practice of critical analysis. Focusing on poetry, short fiction, and personal essays, students will develop their unique voice through writing exercises and close readings.

Participants will engage with diverse texts, exploring narrative techniques and thematic elements while crafting their own original works. Critical response assignments will enhance analytical skills, encouraging thoughtful engagement with literature.

What is an English major? What do we do? As an undergraduate asking myself these questions not too long ago, I’ll never forget what author and Professor Masha Raskolnikov told our class at Cornell University: “The English major teaches you how to live.” So, through this major, we will explore and consider not just how we live (not like, laundry, that is confusing), but what it means to live. Expect to learn how to read, write, and think like an English major!

This course helps students think about what it means to be an English major and the different types of work and learning that happen within the discipline. Students will develop skills used in different areas of the English discipline and in the humanities more broadly. This class will be divided into three major units, representing one of each of the undergraduate tracks: 1-Creative Writing; 2-Editing, Writing, and Media; and 3-Literature, Media, and Culture.

This course serves as an introduction to the graphic novel and the study of literature within the global context. We will investigate the practice of close reading and analysis by reading a wide variety of graphic novels that all take the medium in unique directions, ranging from Pulp Fiction to Manga to the Gothic. Additionally, students will learn how to give thoughtful responses to a text based on its cultural, political, and economic contexts. Throughout the semester, we will read graphic novels that wrestle with a plethora of different issues and anxieties from the varying perspectives of writers and illustrators who have vastly different lived experiences and identities, all of whom bring new ideas to meanings behind a text and its images.

This course delves into the intersection of queerness and the horror genre, examining how films from the early 20th century to the present have intertwined LGBTQ+ themes with horror. Through the analysis of key films, theories, and literature, students will explore how queerness is represented, coded, or subverted within the genre, and how horror has been used as a space to challenge, express, or critique societal norms around sex, gender, and sexuality. The course will emphasize the ways in which horror reflects broader cultural anxieties about queer identities and subjectivities while also offering opportunities for empowerment and resistance. Fulfills LMC requirement Understanding Genres.

This course delves into the intersection of queerness and the horror genre, examining how films from the early 20th century to the present have intertwined LGBTQ+ themes with horror. Through the analysis of key films, theories, and literature, students will explore how queerness is represented, coded, or subverted within the genre, and how horror has been used as a space to challenge, express, or critique societal norms around sex, gender, and sexuality. The course will emphasize the ways in which horror reflects broader cultural anxieties about queer identities and subjectivities while also offering opportunities for empowerment and resistance. Fulfills LMC requirement Understanding Genres.

This course draws on writer and director Paul Schrader’s concept of “Transcendental Style” (e.g., films that express phenomena “beyond normal sense experience”) and applies that framework to a survey of genres, including character drama, horror, neo-noir, and Schrader’s own “man in a room” sub-genre. This course will focus on the relationship between film and other visual and “plastic” arts, as well as cross-genre comparisons of cinematic visuality.

This course draws on writer and director Paul Schrader’s concept of “Transcendental Style” (e.g., films that express phenomena “beyond normal sense experience”) and applies that framework to a survey of genres, including character drama, horror, neo-noir, and Schrader’s own “man in a room” sub-genre. This course will focus on the relationship between film and other visual and “plastic” arts, as well as cross-genre comparisons of cinematic visuality.

Every book has a story beyond the words it tells. From texts scrapped away in an effort to censor older works to the notes scribbled on the sides that peak into the readers world. Each of these books was created by multiple hands that each leave their own mark upon the manuscript. This course will begin with the first types of writing: papyrus and clay tablets, stop to consider the middle ages and the laborious process of creating manuscripts, move on to rag paper, and the life cycles it could have.

This course is an introduction to the history of the development of different text technologies across time and space. Humans across the globe and across history have used technologies to create, organize, circulate, and preserve ideas. FSU English’s interdisciplinary program surveys the variety of forms this effort has taken, including (but certainly not limited to): scrolls, graffiti, manuscript, print, illustration, phonograph, photograph, film, tattoos, and digital multimedia. In our class, we will explore the social, cultural, and material conditions of text technologies, and how they shaped— and continue to shape—how people use (or decide not to use) them across the globe. We will also practice how to be ethical historians who critically examine narratives and biases towards the cultures whose text technologies we study.

In this section of Rhetorical Theory and Practice, we will focus on contemporary rhetorical issues surrounding composing in the digital age. Students will produce texts in a variety of media and genres that reflect the ever-changing literacy practices of writers and reading publics (including but not limited to the use of generative AI), the development of new media through digital editing and publication, and how composers construct and negotiate various and contested identities. While this course includes academic reading and discussion of key concepts, the primary content of the class is the production of rhetorically informed digital texts. Students will complete four projects: a multimedia essay, a podcast, a digital video, and a remix project.

This course for the EWM track investigates concepts of textuality, which refers to how "texts" make meaning by being understood in context. We will test out key scholarly ideas by discussing some vibrant films as case studies. Our reading includes scholarship on textuality as well as on film. As we explore different ideas about what counts as a "text" and where the meaning of a text resides, we will assess debates about the relationship between the text and vital contexts. These contexts include the socio-historical context, audience reception, and the "paratext," which refers to associated material surrounding the text but that is separate from the text itself. In addition to scholarly debates about how to define "text" and "textuality," we will study concepts of paratextuality, intertextuality, adaptation, interactive textuality, and remediation. We will consider, for example, films that have been adapted from literature and how to unpack the meanings of different kinds of texts. We will ponder what contexts can influence our reading of these texts, ranging from associated material like a film trailer to fan reactions to larger discourses like the cultural expectations of different mediums and genres. Assignments include frequent Canvas discussion posts, two shorter essays, and the longer final essay. In a final project involving both theory and practice, students will get the chance to produce their own multimedia text and to analyze how their own work engages issues of textuality.

A reading-intensive study of writings by and about "wild," transgressive, "savage," exotic and/or unruly women from Shakespeare through Morrison and beyond. Please note this course is HARD COPY ONLY. No e-books, no kindles.

This class is designed to increase your enjoyment and understanding of Shakespeare’s work through a close reading of the texts in relation to performance of the plays, their social and historical settings, and the development of the plays as dramatic performances, on stage and on film. We will cover only a few of Shakespeare’s 43 extant plays and three books of poetry, but we will examine the broad spectrum across which Shakespeare wrote: sonnets, comedy, romance, history, and tragedy. In taking this approach, we will necessarily also examine William Shakespeare, the man, and the cultural milieu of the Early Modern Period in which he wrote. Performance is key to understanding Shakespeare, so we will watch films of staged performances and also “movies”, and consider the differences between these performance genres. This course fulfills the general lit requirement for one-course pre-1800. It also satisfies the requirement for coursework in the following areas of concentration: Medieval and Early Modern British Literacy and Cultural Studies, American Literary and Cultural Studies (through 1600); History of Text Technologies; or a Literary Genre (Drama).

This course is designed to introduce students to some of the major works of William Shakespeare, exploring both the artistry and cultural significance of his texts. Through close reading and analysis of Shakespeare’s early modern verse and prose, students will gain a better understanding of the language and literary forms of his writing. In addition to this, by watching modern renditions of plays, whether on stage or on screen, we will try to understand the relationship between a textual interpretation and performance. Concomitantly, we will explore how the medium of adaptation reshapes the meaning, tone and cultural relevance of his works. This is a discussion based class, so students will be expected to engage actively with each weekly reading and contribute to discussions.

This class satisfies the requirement for coursework in Pre-1800 distribution.

This course explores the period between roughly 1350 and 1650 as the beginning of modernity. The Renaissance, or early modernity, is a period marked by five major cultural revolutions: the rediscovery of Classical culture, the invention of the printing press, the discovery of the New World, the reformation, and the birth of modern science. All of these revolutions take place as human beings start thinking of themselves and their relationship to nature and to the divine in radical new ways. The way we think of humanity and its role in the universe, the ways in which we conceive science and religion were in many ways modeled in this period. The course will be looking at some of the most interesting transnational examples of poetry and prose of the time. We will work with fictional and non-fictional works written originally in Latin and English, French and Spanish, Italian and German. In authors as diverse and influential as Thomas More, Christine de Pizan, William Shakespeare, Miguel de Cervantes, Machiavelli, Erasmus, Michel de Montaigne, Margaret Cavendish, Pico della Mirandola and others, we will find new notions of mankind and its role and place in the world, of science as a secular and anti-dogmatic endeavor, and of religion as an moral and spiritual enterprise. This course meets requirements for Diversity and Pre-1800.

This course will examine Shakespeare’s relationship to the transformative media of early modern England down to today on stage, in print, and in digital formats. What makes Shakespeare so appealing through the centuries and in different media formats? How has it continued to appeal to evolving media structures? We will look Shakespeare’s’ relationship to printers, publishers, actors, playing companies, theatrical infrastructure, and the bodies of performers. Who “is” Shakespeare? What meanings did his plays have in his own time, and what relevance do they continue to hold for us today? Active class participation is required. No background in Renaissance literature necessary, though prior experience with Shakespeare is a plus. ENL5227 fulfills the general lit requirement for one-course pre-1800. It also satisfies the requirement for coursework in the following areas of concentration: Medieval and Early Modern British Literacy and Cultural Studies, American Literary and Cultural Studies (through 1600); History of Text Technologies; or a Literary Genre (Drama).

Yes!!! There were novels written and read long before the works of Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters appeared! This course will introduce you to a variety of eighteenth-century novels that preceded later, perhaps more familiar works like Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre. In addition to the novels themselves, you will also learn about the material and cultural contexts in which they were produced. What literary historians call the “rise of the novel,” for instance, coincided with the rise of colonialism and capitalism as dominant global forces; this resulted in novels that mirrored and produced the culture from which they emerged. In other words, the eighteenth-century narratives we will read both reflected and shaped the entangled histories of the English-language novel, the rise of Britain’s colonial empire, the peak of the Atlantic slave trade, and the revolutionary social reform movements of the same period.

This course meets the Genre and Pre1800 Requirements

This course surveys an eclectic mix of British fiction from 1900 to the present. Likely authors include novels Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Ford, Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth Bowen, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Bernardine Evaristo. We will address innovations in narrative form and genre from modernism to the present, question representations of British identity at home and abroad, examine issues of race and sexuality, and consider the novel's broader relation to histories of imperialism, war, global migration, and Britain’s changing status as a world power. This course meets the LMC genre requirement.

This introductory course focuses on the fundamentals of Western literature. We will study a range of authors and multiple genres, including novels, nonfiction essays, short stories, and poetry. In this class, we’ll think about how a literary canon is made and contested, and ask ourselves questions like “What separates regular books from Literature with a capital L?” Along the way we will build a “toolkit” of critical approaches and formal devices that help us to effectively read and think about complex texts. The Victorian period will provide some especially helpful case studies, since it was one of the first points in history where enough people could read that everyone, from the super-wealthy to the very poor, had their own taste in books and the types of stories they wanted to read. We’ll be reading a range of genres this semester, including sensationalist mysteries popular with the working-class and the more “refined” realist novels of the middle and upper classes. As we go, we’ll think about what it means for a text to be considered canonical “Literature,” and how defining that term helps us to think about probing questions in the nineteenth century and in our own time.

This course introduces students to such narrative elements as point of view, characterization, setting, theme, and symbolism in the works of longer prose fiction and provides an introduction to the basic interpretive skills necessary to conduct literary analysis. Our texts will be a range of short stories from the 20th century to present.

Wendell Berry, nature poet par excellence, defines nature writing as any work that “considers nature as subject matter and inspiration.” By that definition, nature writing has existed for eons, at least as far back as the Epic of Aqhat, a fourteenth century BCE Canaanite myth-poem that takes as its orientational schema the changing of the seasons. With this rich and storied history in mind, this course will introduce students to some of the major canonical figures and movements in rural poetry. Procedurally, students will be exposed to an eclectic cast of poets from both the Eastern and Western traditions, spanning antiquity to the present. Beginning with the tranquil idylls of Theocritus and ending with the tortured anti-pastorals of Tommy Pico—supplemented along the way by critical and craft readings from relevant scholars in the field—we will investigate the extent to which poetic depictions of rural life and nature have changed over time, paying particular attention to the outside forces (whether material, political, or cultural) that have necessitated said changes. In doing so, students will hopefully become conversant in the major thematic tendencies and tensions of nature poetry, while also making a baseline acquaintance with the vital concepts, techniques, and lexicon of poetry writing more generally.

We will be reading and analyzing poetry. We will look closely and critically at forms, themes, techniques, and devices in poems originating across different geographical locations and historical periods. We will engage in close reading, explication, and learn about forms, poetic genres, terms, prosody, rhythms, and meter.

This course covers poetry, fiction, drama from WWI to the present. For beginning students. Our texts will be pulled from recent literary magazines.

How have family structures evolved over the last few decades? How are family dynamics influenced by social, political, and economic forces? What “counts” as a family? In this course, we’ll be exploring these questions (and others) through an examination of depictions of the family in contemporary American literature, with a focus on the novel and the short story. Classwork will include close reading, discussions, written assignments, and presentations.

This course introduces students to the critical reading of short stories dating from the nineteenth through the twenty-first century. By examining works from a diverse selection of authors, students will practice identifying tone, narration, form, theme, characterization, and other formal aspects of short fiction. Additionally, students will learn to formulate their own interpretation of the works read by developing their close reading and critical thinking skills.

This course will survey various forms of literature that might be described as “short stories” in the hopes to challenge the genre constraints. The beginning of the class will look at early predecessors of the short story: the fable; the anecdote; the folk tale, etc. Later parts of the course will look at short stories emerging as a distinct literary genre in the nineteenth century, and on into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

In terms of historical methodology, we would also like to ask particular questions: How do social contexts shape literary products? These questions will require us to consider issues of intertextuality, influence, national and world literatures, trans-culturalism, hegemony, and historiography.

The 20th Century was a period of drastic change: war, socio-cultural and political upheaval. The plays in this course reflect this evolution, which spans Realism, Naturalism, Theatre of the Absurd, and Experimental genres. The playwrights include Sophie Treadwell, Lillian Hellman, Thornton Wilder, Eve Ensler, Bertolt Brecht, Samuel Beckett, Lorraine Hansberry, Howard Pinter, Tom Stoppard, Tony Kushner, August Wilson, Anna Deavere Smith (and more). This course emphasizes textual analysis, film adaptations, and discussions on thematic exigences that exist today.

This class will focus modern and contemporary plays and other forms of dramatic writing. We will read them as literary works with thematic and cultural content, but also perform short scenes, since theatre is an embodied art. American poet Ezra Pound reminds us that, "Theater is not words on a page but people moving about on stage using words." Moreover, in our contemporary world that embodiment is not restricted to theaters. We will spend most of our time reading plays as literary texts, but also performing and even writing short scenes. We will also move into the electronic era, with the hybrid genre of performance art and social media sites that feature performance.

LIT 3124 II aims to survey literature from the 19th through the late 20th century. Although we will try, in this course, to fulfill that grand goal by spotlighting the significant literary developments, authors, and texts of the period across the English-speaking world, our focus will be on modern African literature. Erroneously, to many in English studies, particularly English majors educated in Western history and literary tradition, or to whom African literature begins and ends with Chinua Achebe, African literature does not have a “literary history.” But because of the profound historical, experiential, and cultural intertwining of Africa, Europe, and the Americas, perhaps “literary history” cannot be deemed thorough outside of a recognition of nineteenth through twentieth African literary history, specifically, as well as the social and historical forces that shaped the modern African culture workers’ productions of oral literature (including epics, myths, songs, folktales, proverbs), poetry, essays, drama, and fiction. We will sample and closely read works in these genres, with everybody’s favorite, Things Fall Apart, serving as the subject of our main paper for the class.

This course is an exploration of the weird and wonderful world of Science Fiction. By examining a variety of films, television, short stories, and novels students will develop an understanding of the genre and its history. Beyond becoming acquainted with 20th and 21st-century Science Fiction, students will develop close reading and critical thinking skills as they engage with works from a diverse catalog of creators.

We will read poetry and lyric essays that show women across different geographical locations and historical periods. We will examine how socio-political roles of women are reflected in poetic and lyric forms to communicate relationships to power. Additionally, we will engage with theories on the same topic.

In writings throughout history and literature, nature has typically been personified as a woman. Yet nature—like woman, like humanity itself—is multitudinous. Writers have alternately described it as powerful, dangerous, idealized, Edenic, submissive, a landscape to be exploited and plundered, a landscape on the verge of collapse, and an unknowable entity with its own agentive force. Speculative fiction as a genre affords a unique interrogation of these complex, shifting forms of nature and how nature reflects our own complex, shifting human nature back at us. In this course, we will read women writers throughout time whose speculative eco-fiction examines society, gender, sexuality, identity, race, class, utopia, climate change, and more. We’ll start with Margaret Cavendish’s convention-defying utopian text published in 1666, The Blazing World, followed by Mary Shelley’s groundbreaking science fiction novel Frankenstein. Next, we’ll turn to the contemporary landscape with Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, K-Ming Chang’s Bestiary, Samanta Schweblin’s Fever Dream, short stories by Louise Erdrich, and speculative eco-inspired music and film. This course satisfies the diversity requirement.

What makes a text a “LGBTQ play?” This course aims to develop an answer through the exploration of plays within the genre, from early modern England to the present day American south. With an eye to the interplay between LGBTQ plays and history, we will pick apart the ways plays with LGBTQ themes interact with the “atmospheres” they land in: theirs, ours, and the atmospheres in between. We will also study relevant LGBTQ history, theory, and criticism to develop our understandings where the genre has been and where it is headed.
This course fulfills the diversity and genre requirements.

The Gothic novel is said to have been born in the 18th century and rumored to have died in the next; but, in fact, its forms and faculties have been animated and reanimated many times, awakened to respond to the anxiety, fear, outrage, and uncertainty of shifting cultural, social, and political conditions. This course is focused on the intersection between historical representations of deviance and atrocity and the historically-specific (re)emergent trends of Gothic themes, motifs, and modes of analysis. We will read U.S. American literature in transnational and global contexts, from the colonial era to the contemporary moment of the “new gothic,” to explore how gothic conventions have shaped the representation of atrocity and its aftermaths, imbuing landscapes, bodyscapes, memoryscapes, and other sites of memory with historical significance and collective meaning.

This course focuses on the writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (1977-). It introduces students to the life and work of a multiple-award-winning Nigerian and African writer often dubbed Chinua Achebe’s literary daughter. Since taking the literary world by storm, as we say, with her debut novel Purple Hibiscus (2003), Adichie has emerged as one of the most recognized names and sought-after speakers, humanists, and public intellectuals in recent history. From her TED Talk “The Danger of a Single Story” now viewed by millions, her riveting novel Americanah, and her feminist manifesto Dear Ijeawale to her sampling by Beyonce, her provocative remarks about gender, and more recently her meditation Notes on Grief, penned upon the death of her father, the Adichie canon has grown exponentially. Her work has been translated into dozens of languages. And in addition to invited, public conversations with world leaders, she has received honorary doctorates from prestigious institutions around the world. In this course, we will read Adichie’s works: her novels, a selection of her short stories and essays, supplementing them with scholarship on her oeuvre and in-class viewing of some of her public intellectual activity. Aside from the course’s goals of deepening students’ appreciation of African literature and Adichie’s standing as a major writer, it is also my hope that the course will strengthen students’ research, analytical, and public speaking skills.

In this course we will study some of the most influential approaches to plumbing the intersections of law and literature, with a focus on U.S. fiction from the late-nineteenth and early twentieth century. Explaining law’s circulation with other disciplines, sociologist Pierre Bourdieu wrote, “it would not be excessive to say that [law] creates the social world, but only if we remember that it is this world which first creates the law” (“The Force of Law” 839). To put flesh on Bourdieu’s notion of the circularity between discourses of law, literature, and the social world by using fiction and the tools of the literary critic to investigate disciplinary modes of meaning-making in order to access (and assess) sources, alternatives, critiques, precursors, and inheritors of law--official or otherwise. Topics of focus include: legal interpretation, personhood, liability and loss, legal mythologies and the “folk tales” of justice, the carceral imagination, and other issues related to discourse and power.

Virginia Woolf famously wrote, “On or about December 1910, human character changed.” This course will focus on the various literary forms, innovations, and interdisciplinary experiments of transnational modernism—some of the very developments Woolf had in mind. A central part of our work will involve questioning the term “Modernism”: How well does it define and interpret the complex, often unorthodox and cosmopolitan writings and art forms we'll study? We'll explore how modernist authors and artists engaged with new ideas in philosophy, psychology, technology, and social changes, including shifts in gender, race, class, and identity. While much of our time will be spent with major modernist figures, we’ll also examine key movements like Futurism, Dadaism, and the Harlem Renaissance, along with lesser-known works, rebels, and avant-gardists.

This course introduces students to key terminology, concepts, and methodologies for the study of complex literature. Students are guided in the practice of close reading and analysis by considering a selection of diverse texts and their use of literary elements such as plot, character, setting, genre, style, figurative language, argument, and the like. Students will also examine how the meanings of a text relate to its various contexts of authorship, publication, adaptation, reception, and scholarship. The course provides a groundwork in literary types for non-majors and is also strongly recommended as a preparation for upper-level (3000- or 4000-level)coursework in the field.

This introductory course focuses on the fundamentals of Western literature. We will study multiple genres, including novels, short stories, and poetry. The course will examine a range of authors including those writing during the drastic political, and socio-cultural shifts that occurred from the turn of the 19th century to the end of the 20th century.

This course examines authors that reflect these contexts: Joseph Conrad, WH Auden, Samuel Beckett, Joyce Carol Oates, Anthony Burgess, Alice Walker, Ralph Ellison, Sylvia Plath, Patricia Highsmith, Don DeLillo, Jean Rhys, Bret Easton Ellis, Virginia Woolf, Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, Gloria Anzaldua, Chuck Palahniuk, and more.

Since its origins in the eighteenth century, the Gothic has undergone many dramatic shifts. So, by examining the Contemporary Gothic in novels and short fiction, this class interrogates how we and why we are still so fascinated by the Gothic -- what cultural and societal forces prompted the evolution of this genre? What aspects of the genre have been maintained and why? Why, after centuries of evolution, is the heart of the story often the same? The course's readings will focus on global texts from the 1950s to the present with selected excerpts from nineteenth-century Gothic texts. Additionally, a significant portion of this course centers on adaptation and how familiar Gothic tales are adapted to fit a contemporary setting and perspective. This opportunity to analyze texts alongside their source material will allow students an opportunity to investigate why our culture still values these narratives and how we continue to see them referenced in our current time. By the end of the course, students will have gained a deeper understanding of how the Gothic has developed in contemporary culture and will be able to analyze and interpret modern adaptations of these stories. Additionally, we will be able to speculate how we might see the Gothic evolving even further in our current cultural landscape and how classic Gothic stories are just as relevant as ever.

In this course, we will survey a broad range of literature from WWII to our present moment. We will read one novel, along with a diverse assortment of short stories, drama, and poetry, thinking through the different ways writers approach these genres, and sometimes break down genre conventions, and to what effect these decisions are made.

What is the relationship between aesthetics and politics? What constitutes a self, and how is selfhood and identity explored in contemporary literature? What distinguishes the literature of our present moment from the literature of the past? What is the function of literature in an individual’s life and, beyond that, in a larger context, what is the function of literature in relation to a community, even a national identity or identities? These are only a few of the questions this course hopes to consider. To deepen and complicate our discussions of the primary readings, we will also read some works of literary criticism, literary theory, and interviews to better understand the ways in which authors think about and approach their own works.

This literature course delves into the rich tapestry of female perspectives in the short story, as characters and as authors. Our focus will be on women that defy societal norms and expectations—“bad” women—revealing how their narratives illuminate the complexities of feminine through history.

We will read a range of works from Virginia Woolf’s cry for creative and financial freedom in A Room of One’s Own to Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s novella Herland about an all-female utopia—to more contemporary works like Dantiel W. Moniz’s exploration of desire, ambition, race, and familial obligation in Milk Blood Heat, and Carmen Maria Machado’s haunting story “The Husband Stitch” which is a blend of horror and folklore that investigates the sacrifices women make within patriarchal structures.

We will investigate the art of storytelling through the lens of defiant women, celebrating their complexity. Throughout the course, we will engage in critical discussions about the implications of “bad” behavior in women and the power dynamics at play in their narratives. Through close reading and discussion, we’ll come to deeper understanding of the richness of female perspectives. We’ll uncover how each author uses perspective to not only highlight individual struggles but also to comment on broader societal issues.

This course introduces students to the critical reading of short stories dating from the nineteenth through the twenty-first century. This course teaches students to identify tone, narration, form, theme, characterization, and other formal aspects of short fiction. Students are encouraged to formulate their own interpretation of the works read, based on their developing ability to recognize the decisions each author has made in constructing the text.

This course introduces English majors to noteworthy authors, formative texts, and key imaginative traditions and literary movements of British literature before 1800. Students will gain familiarity with the historical development of early English writing from the beginnings of the English language in Anglo-Saxon heroic epic; through the later medieval flourishing of courtly romance and satire; to the dazzling formal innovations of Renaissance lyric, epic, and drama; and concluding with the explosion of literary output during the eighteenth century that emerged from the entangled strands of global commerce, colonialism, and ideologies of “improvement.” Students will encounter major canonical authors of these periods, learn how those authors came to be canonized, and read lesser-known works outside the canon. You will learn to identify and analyze a variety of genres that are crucial to English literary tradition, and you will discover how authors imaginatively respond to their predecessors. The creative forms and major themes of each era will be contextualized within the social and cultural history that shaped them. Meets LMC Core Requirement

This course introduces English majors to noteworthy authors, formative texts, and key imaginative traditions and literary movements of British literature before 1800. Students will gain familiarity with the historical development of early English writing from the beginnings of the English language in Anglo-Saxon heroic epic; through the later medieval flourishing of courtly romance and satire; to the dazzling formal innovations of Renaissance lyric, epic, and drama; and concluding with the explosion of literary output during the eighteenth century that emerged from the entangled strands of global commerce, colonialism, and ideologies of “improvement.” Students will encounter major canonical authors of these periods, learn how those authors came to be canonized, and read lesser-known works outside the canon. You will learn to identify and analyze a variety of genres that are crucial to English literary tradition, and you will discover how authors imaginatively respond to their predecessors. The creative forms and major themes of each era will be contextualized within the social and cultural history that shaped them.
Meets LMC Core Requirement

This course is a survey of literature written in English from 1800 to the present, covering major literary periods and movements across centuries, continents, genres, and cultural contexts. Our readings will center on different manifestations of what Thomas Hardy called “the ache of modernism,” or what Karl Marx described as “all that is solid melts into air”: in other words, we will trace how literature wrestles with the many transformations of modernity, and how literary representations of human experience register profound geopolitical, social, scientific, technological, philosophical, and ecological changes. You will learn to draw on historical and cultural contexts alongside aesthetic questions of form and style as you interpret literary works. You will also explore how the literary history we encounter speaks to our present, and how the cultural moment in which we find ourselves today fits in the longer arc of modernity.

This course will trace the relationship between speculative fiction and environmental thought, focusing on fiction and film since WWII, and starting from the central premise that speculation and ecology are tightly entwined. We will take up different fantasies and fears about environmental futures, some fictional, some not. We will explore how speculative fiction imagines the more-than-human entities, experiences, and systems that motivate ecological thought. We will investigate the leverage speculative fiction offers onto the intersection of social, technological, and environmental issues which is at the heart of environmental justice. We will consider the force that different ideas about “nature” and “the natural” exert on the social. And we will contemplate how speculative fiction might help us to imagine better worlds in the context of contemporary ecological crisis. Students can expect to read broadly as well as deeply, to reflect on their own values and assumptions, and to engage both critically and creatively with the core science fictional and ecological practice of speculation. Key authors to include Frank Herbert, Ursula K. Le Guin, Octavia Butler, Margaret Atwood, Jeff VanderMeer, and N.K. Jemisin.

This course explores the historical, cultural, and critical genealogies of science fiction.

This course meets distribution requirements for Genre.

In this section of Women in Literature, we will explore the complex portrayals of female friendships in 20th- and 21st-century poetry, prose, and media by women creators. Our texts will prompt us to explore how issues of class, race, gender, sexual identity, and dis/ability contribute to the formation—or dissolution—of women’s friendships; we’ll also consider how these friendships may evolve—or devolve—across time, especially in relation to life events like getting older, marriage, motherhood, or platonic feelings becoming romantic.

Course texts may include My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante, Passing by Nella Larsen, Truth & Beauty by Ann Patchett, Sula by Toni Morrison, and “Envelopes of Air” by Ada Limón and Natalie Diaz. We will supplement our discussions of these long-form course texts with the occasional episode of television (think Broad City, Pen15, and Insecure) as well as feminist theory by the likes of Audre Lorde, Gloria Anzaldúa, Cherríe Moraga, and the Combahee River Collective.

This course meets the diversity requirement for the Literature, Media, and Culture major.

This course studies literary and historical texts -- nineteenth-century essays, fiction, nonfiction, and poetry -- as well as current scholarship, in order to understand historical medical debates, how they changed over time, and how they shaped contemporary medicine. This course builds skills in critical reading and writing, cultural practice, and ethics. We’ll examine illness as metaphor; the art and science of medicine; the rise of medical realism, objectivity and authority; the roles of the physician, nurse, and patient; the meaning of patient privacy and consent; medical professionalism and alternative medicine; food adulteration, nutrition; disability rights; prosthetics and the integrity of the body; pain, anesthetics, and drug use; and the “good death" -- as well as topics in epidemiology, sanitary reform, epidemics, and personal vs. public health. We will focus on literary analysis (for example, how does this text use metaphor?); historical and cultural analysis (how does the meaning of disease change over time?); and ethical analysis (to whom is the author responsible? how do we balance the right to knowledge with the right to privacy? what is the role of the patient’s narrative?). Students will complete critical and historical research for one analytic and one personal (creative) essay response to the debates we study. This course fulfills the Ethics and Humanities/Cultural Practice requirements in the Liberal Studies Curriculum and the “W” (State-Mandated Writing) credit. It will also help students prepare for the Critical Analysis and Reasoning Skill section of the MCAT.

A reading-intensive “journey” in feminist literature from the seventeenth to the early twentieth century with particular focus on the theme of mobility versus entrapment and the work of Virginia Woolf. This course meets the diversity requirement. Please note: this course is HARD COPY ONLY. No e-books, no kindle.