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ENGLISH DEPARTMENT

FALL 2018 COURSE UNDERGRADUATE COURSES

ENGL 132B – Shakespeare’s Great Characters and Their Worlds CRN# 7331 M/W/F 11:00-11:50 AM Joel Davis

This course explores questions fundamental to the human condition in the West from the perspectives of some of Shakespeare’s great characters, in the process opening up the Elizabethan world to inquiry. Some questions we may pursue include: What is love and how far may we go in pursuit of it? To what extent should we obey unjust authority? To what extent are evil means justified in the pursuit of the good? Who gets to decide what the good is, and how? One one hand, these are universal big questions, but on the other, different cultures and different parts of a given culture often respond to these questions in conflicting ways.

ENGL 141 - About: Film CRN# 7065 M/W/F 8:00-8:50 AM Nicole Denner

In this course, we will develop skills in critical and analytical thinking with film as our object. With that goal, we will focus our attention on identifying, synthesizing, and analyzing elements of a film’s story, , and basic cinematic techniques, in order to think through how not only the obvious story, but also how stylistic choices affect the way you might interpret possible meanings of and nuanced responses to particular films. Additionally, we will approach how certain elements - historical, cultural, ideological, artistic, technological and/or commercial influences – open up additional or alternative interpretations. We will begin with the basics of film language/terminology. We will discuss the mechanics of and practice writing in various formats, but there will be a particular focus on the critical/analytical . While much of this class concerns itself with film studies, it is a writing intensive course. Students should be prepared to devote time outside of class to film viewings and essay writing.

ENGL 141 – Writing About: Food and Drink CRN# 7067 T/R 1:00-2:15 PM Nancy Barber

J.R.R. Tolkien once said, “If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.” This course will be a celebration of at least food, if not cheer and song, and will focus on the variety of ways that professionals write about food and drink. We will read exemplary essays as models for good writing, and you will get a chance to try out a number of modes of food and/or drink writing yourself: restaurant review, , researched analysis, and immersion quest.

ENGL 141 – Writing About: Research CRN# 7068 M/W 2:30-3:45 PM Michael Barnes

ENGL 141 is a one-unit/four credit WE (writing enhanced) course devoted to improving your overall writing skills; this emphasis on writing will include generating ideas, textual analysis, critical thinking, awareness, and revision.

The subject matter of this course concentrates on describing, critiquing, and advocating change in a specific institutional or social . Traditional research is guided by the principle of objective disinterest. In , action research welcomes the researcher's passionate association with a topic. In this class, we will pursue subjects that are relevant to your lives and interests. For example, students following this research paradigm have tested local water bodies for pollution, rebranded/marketed Daytona Beach as a tourist destination, and gathered examples of the rhetorical strategies mediums employ in readings. To facilitate your critical understanding and descriptive/ethnographic writing ability, we will explore the tropes (persuasive strategies) that create authenticity and audience appeal in a variety of social and institutional contexts. These contexts will be situated within meaningful historical environments that will provide you with the critical lens necessary to advocate for change convincingly. Your work will be compiled into a portfolio and submitted at the end of the semester. The portfolio, consisting of your best work (e.g. eight short papers chosen from a total of ten), and a final ethnographic project are required.

ENGL 142A – in the World: Fairy Tales and CRN# 7137 M/W/F 10:00-10:50 AM Michele Randall

The Classic Fairy Tales, edited by Maria Tatar (Norton), 2nd Edition 2017 ISBN-10: 0393602974 ISBN-13: 978-0393602975

“There must be possible a which, leaving sociology and case histories to the scientists, can arrive at the truth about the human condition, here and now, with all the bright magic of the .” Ralph Ellison

Fairy Tales and Fables have been around for generations and are a global phenomenon, still popular in modern writing, television, and film. This course will explore the world of fairy tales and fables by looking at some of the original stories and variations. We will read, discuss, analyze, and write about the context, cultural adaptations, and modernization of older stories. Assignments will respond to the stories and critical essays. Be prepared to have thoughtful conversations, substantive analysis, critical thought, & reflection. Attributes: Writing Enhanced (W), Creative Arts (A), & Gender Studies (GS).

ENGL 142A – Literature in the World: Native American Literature CRN# 7250 T/R 4:00-5:15 PM Grady Ballenger

In this writing-enhanced course, you will develop skills of persuasive writing by focusing on literature and films by and about Native Americans. Among the works to be studied are Alice Marriott’s The Ten Grandmothers, a collection of stories about the Kiowa nation on the Great Plains from the 1840s to the 1940s; Sherman Alexie’s The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, a story collection about the contemporary Spokane/Coeur d’Alene Tribe; and Louise Erdrich’s 2012 National Book Award-winning , The Roundhouse, a detective story about justice on a modern Ojibwe reservation in North Dakota. Films include Robert Flaherty’s early documentary about an Inuit hunter, Nanook of the North (1922) and Zacharias Kunuk’s breathtaking Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner, 2000), a contemporary telling of an Inuk oral from long before European contact. We’ll also consider two films by Chris Eyre—a feature film, Smoke Signals (adapted from Sherman Alexie’s stories), and “Trail of Tears,” a documentary about the Cherokee Nation in the We Shall Remain series. Finally, Reel Injun, Neil Diamond’s 2010 documentary about Hollywood’s portrayal of American Indians will give us an overview of the ways that tribal cultures have been appropriated, stereotyped, and merchandized in film. As an “A” course, ENGL 142A has an aesthetic focus on understanding Native American creative voices in literature and film. Through that creative work, we will also encounter the destructive forces that American Indians have endured: theirs is a long history of dehumanization, cultural insult and appropriation, broken treaties, and even genocide, from first European contact up to today’s poverty, high rates of alcoholism and suicide, and environmental devastation (the construction of oil pipelines and nuclear waste sites) on or near tribal lands. Against these destructive forces, through creative and expressive arts, Native Americans have found a powerful voice of resistance and celebration.

ENGL 142A – Literature in the World: Western Movie: Law, Love, and the Limits of the American Frontier CRN# 7251 M/W/F 9:00-9:50 AM Nicole Denner

In this course we examine the Western movie . Despite claims of its demise occurring over and over again throughout its history, the genre keeps being reborn and reformed. The Western’s rise parallels the rise of popular media: from dime-store to cinema itself. The Western is one of the first movie , a Hollywood staple, and a first to be recognized as true art in the eyes of the world despite its pop culture status. The Western obsessively concerns itself with the viability of the American project- the hopes, conflicts, and failures of an American ideal. With their overt concern with masculinity, justice, and the margins of society, Western movies complicate conceptions of politics, gender, and race. This class will evaluate how those conceptions have evolved from the early Western to the modern allusions, remakes, and representations of today’s frontier. This is a writing intensive course; students should be prepared to devote time outside of class to film viewings and essay writing.

ENGL 142A: Literature in the World: Austen and Adaptation CRN# 7252 T/H 2:30-3:45 PM Lori Snook

Jane Austen is one of the great novelists of the English tradition. Two hundred years after their first appearances, her works still are read and enjoyed, and her works inspire others to create their own stories in conversation with hers. In this class we will read four of her six novels (Northanger Abbey, Pride and Prejudice, Emma, and Persuasion); we also will read adaptations like Bridget Jones' and watch adaptations like film and TV versions of the books, The Lizzie Bennet , Clueless, and Emma Approved. Students will write several short essays and two longer essays, and create their own story in conversation with Austen.

ENGL 142A: Literature in the World: The Power of CRN# 7574 M/W/F 1:30-2:20 PM Michele Randall

“Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood” (T. S. Eiliot).

Using poems about love, loss, war, growing up, growing apart, & our place in the world, in the anthology Staying Alive: Real Poems for Unreal Times as a starting point, students will study the intellectual and emotional connections available through poetry and how it is already used and can be used in so many ways: classrooms, waiting rooms, public spaces, political protests, and advertising (and more). The course will require active reading, class discussions, creative attempts, and research to explore ideas of how poetry works, the value and use of poetry, and the power of poetry. ENGL 206 – Technical Writing CRN# 7374 T/R 11:30-12:45 PM Michael Barnes

ENGL 206 is a one-unit/four credit WE (writing enhanced) course that focuses on the genre of technical writing and associated writing practices: heuristics/invention, modeling, style, revision, and audience analysis.

Technical writing is often characterized as a dull subject (e.g. artlessly explaining a tedious process). Yet, we all acknowledge that the world would be better with a better user manual. In this course, you will be introduced to the practical tradition of technical writing (i.e., user manual validation, memo , logos) and to the aesthetically informed approach supported by companies like Apple, one that foregrounds a minimalist and user-friendly approach to documentation. To contextualize the application of technical writing principles and standards, the course incorporates two pedagogical scenarios; the first is personal and the second professional. You begin the course by crafting a blueprint for your life that explains how you will survive in a difficult environment (urban or rustic), with what tools and which methods, and conclude the course making a startup business template based upon your blueprint/survival priorities. By contextualizing course content and integrating personal philosophy, I hope to create the framework for an engaging class; as such, your active participation (in debates, brainstorming, collaboration) is expected and part of your grade. As part of the course, you will serve as the editorial review board for an online journal devoted to undergraduate research. The drafts and final papers for these two projects and eight additional short papers should be kept in a portfolio and at the end of the term. We are using a portfolio system because it allows for multiple submissions of papers, and technical writing is arguably the professional art of revision.

ENGL 209 – Write for Your Life CRN# 7072 M/W/F 11:00-11:50 AM Megan O’Neill

This course introduces you to writing for the real world by studying three or four kinds of writing typically encountered over the course of our lives. Projects include composing and revising a personal memoir, analyzing and imitating a significant piece of political discourse, and writing expected in your intended profession/career. Expect reading, writing, discussion, revision, contemplation, and revelation. Writing enhanced class.

ENGL 241A - Reading Narrative CRN# 4511 M/W 4:00-5:15 PM Chris Jimenez

Using hardboiled detective fiction as our main object of inquiry, this class introduces students to literary approaches to questions, concepts, and perspectives that inform the study of narrative. We will explore the development of the detective fiction genre, tracing the hardboiled detective's unstable connection to violence, masculinity, sexuality, race, and city-space. In so doing, we will practice close, attentive, critical reading as well as different interpretive approaches to narrative texts—which will, in this course, include the examination of fiction, television, graphic novels, film, and video games. You will be introduced to critical terms, conventions, and discourses appropriate to the study of narrative and detective in particular. This course is Writing Enhanced, designed to help students improve their writing skills and capacity for critical thinking.

ENGL 242A – Reading Lyric CRN# 4512 M/W 12:00-1:15 PM Mary Pollock

Lyric poetry means “song-like” in sound and sense, but the word has a long history and a rich meaning: there are many kinds of lyrics, and the lyric is present in almost every art. In this course, we will study different kinds of lyric and lyricism—mostly in poetry. Work for the course emphasizes reading and short papers. Textbooks include a general anthology (Poems, Ed. Elizabeth Renker), a book about the formal features of poetry (An Exaltation of Forms, Ed. Finch and Varnes), and a collection by the new poet Tyehimba Jess.

Goals for the course include (1) developing an approach to poetry which combines close and accurate reading, personal interpretation, and technical analysis, (2) refining skills for writing short analytical arguments, (3) discovering personal tastes in poetry, and (3), if you write poetry, supporting your own creative work. This course meets a requirement for the English major or minor and the A designation for General Education.

ENGL 256 – Survey of British Literature 1 CRN# 7339 M/W/F 1:30-2:20 PM Joel Davis

This course is designed to introduce you to ten centuries of the development of British literary culture, from its beginnings in the eighth century to the eighteenth century. It’s a smorgasbord of great stuff: Beowulf, Fairy Stories, Chaucer’s witty , Heroic and Courtly Love stories and Poetry, and the most finely wrought in the English language, among other works. If you study well, you will also take away a narrative of the development of British literature amid some of the political, social, and economic forces that have shaped our civilization. Reading, lecture, discussion, and critical writing are the primary means for learning in this course. Expect 30-50 pages of reading per week, but also expect to spend 9-12 hours per week doing the reading and responding to study questions: our challenge is to imagine belief systems, societies, and worlds very different from our own in language very different from our own.

ENGL 300 – Text – Criticism-Theory CRN#7330 M/W 4:00-5:15 PM Joel Davis

What distinguishes the disciplines of literary and writing studies from other disciplines? This course aims to help you find reference-points so that you can situate the study of literature and writing among other academic disciplines. It introduces several major theories and practices of reading developed in the disciplines of English, and it aims to help you understand the stakes involved in choosing one approach to interpretation rather than another.

ENGL 325 – Grammar and CRN# 6767 M/W 12:00-1:15 PM Megan O’Neill

This course will challenge, aggravate, and delight you as you take on the puzzles represented by English grammar and usage. We don’t diagram sentences in this course—instead, we study the language of real life, learn the grammatical rules and where we can break them for effect, and adapt our choices of structure and to suit our needs. Grammar is not just a set of rules. In this class, you learn why. Expect reading, writing, exams, discussion, revision, frustration, and laughter. Writing enhanced course.

ENGL 341V1 JS – Dante’s Commedia CRN# 7297 M/W 2:30-3:45 PM Tom Farrell

Dante Alighieri's poem, written in 1306-20, remains one of the greatest creations of the human imagination. In its ability to be simultaneously literal and allegorical, personal and universal, subjective and disinterested, the remains unparalleled. After consideration of basic background materials, this Junior seminar will read carefully through the three cantiche of the Commedia, with particular attention to the various ethical systems invoked and the nature of the spiritual insight claimed. Everyone is welcome, but students in Religious Studies, Philosophy, Political Science, History, and any branch of Literary Studies will be well prepared for this course.

ENGL 342V2 JS – Literature and Medicine CRN# 7298 T/R 1:00-2:15 PM Grady Ballenger

This Junior Seminar explores some significant intersections between literature and medicine. We will explore uses of creative and imaginative language by those seeking to treat illness as well as those enduring that illness. Titles on our reading list have been recommended by physicians, many of them Stetson alumni: short stories by famous physician- Anton Chekhov and William Carlos Williams; patient stories by Leo Tolstoy and Nobel Laureate Alice Munro; and collections of essays by surgeons Pauline Chen (Final Exam) and Atul Gawande (Better). We’ll consider the contrast between medical practice as depicted in Samuel Shem’s satirical novel, The House of God, with the “slow medicine” Victoria Sweet describes in God’s Hotel. We’ll also look at autobiographical writing by physicians who became patients, notably Oliver Sacks and Paul Kalanithi (When Breath Becomes Air), and we’ll consider poems on illness by Raymond Carver, Sharon Olds, Jane Kenyon, Donald Hall, Lucille Clifton, John Updike, among others. We’ll watch Red Beard, a film by cinema master Akira Kurosawa; this is the story of a proud young intern who is challenged to grow into his calling as what we would today call a community doctor. Finally, we’ll consider global health and medicine across cultural divides through reading Tracy Kidder’s Mountains Beyond Mountains, a portrait of Florida-reared Harvard-trained physician Paul Farmer and his work with multi-drug resistant TB in Haiti and other challenged places across the globe.

Students will write frequently, including entries for a reader’s journal, two three-page papers with a critical “position” to be presented to the class, and a shorter personal writing project (individually designed in consultation with the instructor.) This seminar meets the goals of JS by “working within a discipline but incorporating perspectives outside that discipline” to increase “abilities in critical analysis, coherent reasoning, and effective expression." It also address the Values focus on Wellness by giving students “both theoretical and practical knowledge to achieve and maintain healthy living” while also encouraging them “to think reflectively about their own understandings of health and wellness.”

While it’s a powerful topic for exploring literature, writing, and “the expressive arts,” literature and medicine can also be valuable to a wide range of majors beyond English, and especially for students interested in becoming health care providers or considering careers in public health or the health care industry. Health professional school admissions deans, in particular, endorse deep reading of works like these as a preparation for the interpretive challenges and decision-making that physicians and other healthcare givers must handle, daily and in a split-second. Stetson’s pre-health advisor Jim Perlotto, M.D., will regularly join our seminar discussions and offer insight from his career as a physician and a medical educator. ENGL 356 – US Literature Since 1900s CRN# 4517 M/W 2:30-3:45 PM Grady Ballenger

In Fall 2018, our reading list will focus on roughly a century of US fiction, specifically novels and short stories that can stand as “touchstones” for understanding US literature and culture. Novels or story collections from this “American Century” will likely include Kate Chopin’s The Awakening (1899), Ernest Hemingway’s In Our Time (1925), Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925), Tillie Olson’s Yonnondio (1936; 1974), Paul Beatty’s The Sellout (2015), and Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad (2011). Among short stories possibly to be considered are Zora Neale Hurston’s “How it Feels to be Colored Me,” James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues,” Eudora Welty’s “I Know Where that Voice is Coming From,” Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral,” Sherman Alexie’s “Happy Trails,” John Cheever’s “The Swimmer,” and selected stories by Lydia Davis. For each major work, you will have a responsibility for bringing an assigned critical perspective--literary or cultural--to our discussion. In addition to expectations for discussion, the course will require a midterm and a final exam, occasional short writing in and out of class, and a final researched essay (roughly 15 pages). (A final reading list for this course will be distributed in May.)

ENGL 465 Author Studies: Stoppard, Hare, Churchill CRN# 5401 T/R 11:30-12:45 PM Lori Snook

This author-studies course focuses on three contemporary British playwrights: Tom Stoppard, David Hare, and Caryl Churchill. Each has been writing for over forty years; each has been referred to at some time or another as the 'greatest' living British playwright. Stoppard began as an intellectual game-player and developed heart, whose plays on everything from chaos theory to rock and roll have received mainstream subsidized theatre and West End productions, from the absurdist comedy Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead to 2015's The Hard Problem. David Hare, who began in 1970s agitprop, has written everything from mainstream realist (Skylight) to verbatim political theatre (Stuff Happens) and adaptations of and fiction for the stage (2014's Beyond the Beautiful Forever). Caryl Churchill, like Hare, began in 1970s leftist and feminist theatre and has experimented with form and since then, from the early feminist work Vinegar Tom to 2016's short experimental piece Escaped Alone. Together as a class we'll investigate how to define a playwright's essential works and voice; we'll talk about the intersections of history and drama; we'll also discuss how material concerns of production can affect a 's form. Each student will write several short papers on the plays we read together and will write a researched seminar project focusing on one and their work; also, each student will design and present a plan for a 5-play theatre season with the plays, author(s), and focus of their choosing.

ENGL 472 Gender Seminar: Virginia Woolf and the Victorians CRN# 7522 T/R 2:30-3:45 PM Mary Pollock

Virginia Woolf, one of the central figures of literary modernism, women’s literature, and the twentieth century, is best known for To the Lighthouse, a stream-of consciousness novel, and A Room of One’s Own, a feminist polemic which focuses on creative restrictions for women artists. However, Woolf was also a brilliant literary critic who wrote for “the common reader” with clarity, wit, and --some of which was directed at her Victorian predecessors. She had a love-hate relationship with her literary parents and grandparents. Why do we consider Woolf’s literary forerunners stuffy? Partly because she convinced her early twentieth-century readers that they were! We will read some of this author’s best known works of fiction and non-fiction , glance backwards at some authors from whom she learned her craft, and consider the intellectual community which shaped and sustained her work—and which she shaped in return.

This course is a seminar: many of our discussions will be student-led, and students will research, write, and present to the class a major research project about some aspect of Virginia Woolf or her literary circle, centered in the London neighborhood of “Bloomsbury.” The course meets a requirement for the English major or minor, and for the Gender Studies minor.

ENGL 499 – Senior Project CRN# 6478 T/R 10:00-11:15 AM Chris Jimenez

Provides a review of and further grounding in the methods, materials, and critical approaches appropriate for advanced literary research, culminating in a substantial written project. Students will pursue in-depth study of a literary topic, discuss typical problems in their writing and research, and participate in groups to read and discuss work in progress. It includes both written and oral presentation of projects. Seniors with advanced standing are encouraged to take the course in the fall. (Prerequisite: three units from ENGL 220, ENGL 240A, ENGL 241A, ENGL 242A, and ENGL 243A, plus EH 381, and one course numbered 400 or above)

FALL 2018 COURSE DESCRIPTIONS COURSES

ENCW 111A – Intro Writing Literary Nonfiction CRN# 7255 T/R 4:00-5:15 PM Nancy Barber

This course will give you an introduction to literary nonfiction, also known as . Defining “literary nonfiction” is a bit of a quagmire, but to start with, let’s say that it’s based in truth and has a strong voice and style. It’s mostly prose, and more often than not, it has a first-person narrator. Possibilities for creative nonfiction include the city essays, travel writing, critiques, rants, reviews, literary journalism, lyric essays, and memoir.” We’ll study these, but as you’re reading about (and in) the various subgenres, you’ll notice a lot of overlap. Literary nonfiction rarely fits neatly into just one category. That only makes it more fun. The objective of the class is to read, write, analyze, critique, and workshop literary nonfiction in order to hone your knowledge and skills in the genre.

ENCW 312A/412 – Fiction Workshop/Advanced Fiction Workshop CRN# 4744/5144 W 6:00-9:00 PM Teresa Carmody

In this workshop, students will generate and re-vision new writing through a series of experiments. In discussions of work by published authors and classroom peers, students will develop their skills in such fiction techniques as , plot, setting, point of view, and style. Attention will be given to language at the level of the line, and to the relationship between form and content. Reading and writing-intensive course. Instructor permission required (please email Teresa at [email protected]).

ENCW 313A/413 – Poetry Workshop/Advanced Poetry Workshop CRN# 4527/4582 T 6:00-9:00 PM Terri Witek

An intensive workshop in poetic method. Each student will construct a portfolio of poems (8 poems for 313 students, 10 poems for 413 students) that experiment with various strategies of poetic making. We will read and examine books of contemporary poetry for examples, attend readings, and offer each other in-class poetic challenges.

No prerequisite for ENCW 313 Permission of instructor required [email protected]

ENCW 320A – Writers Read CRN# 6660 M/W 12:00-1:15 PM Andy Dehnart

Our mission: read, read, and read more. Our goal: to become better writers. We'll read creative writing by exceptional writers spanning multiple genres and formats. We'll also read things you love and want to share with the class. Discussions will be vigorous and passionate, as we try to determine what works and what doesn't, and why we love some pieces and loathe others. At the end of the semester, we'll write and workshop to see just how much we've grown as writers by absorbing what we've read.

THE FOLLOWING ISN’T AN ENGL COURSE

GEND 290 Special Topics: “Classics of Environmentalism and Ecofeminism.” CRN# 7517 T/R 10-11:15 Mary Pollock

If a crocodile almost ate you for lunch, would you become an ecofeminist? Exactly that happened to the Australian philosopher Valerie Plumwood, author of and the Mastery of Nature.

In this introduction to environmental literature and ecofeminism, we will study the connections between ecofeminism and environmentalism by reading nonfiction prose (including Plumwood’s book), novels, poetry, memoir, and reportage. Although the reading list is global, including works from the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia, the issues are sadly similar—pollution, deforestation, water insecurity, species extinction, and climate change. But these works also voice solutions and hope.

Emphasis is on reading, discussion, and short papers. This course counts as a requirement for the Gender Studies minor, for the Environmental Studies major or minor, or as a general elective.