Course Descriptions
Official Course Descriptions
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Supplemental Course Descriptions
The following course descriptions only provide information about the focus that an individual professor chooses to take for their course. These descriptions are not a replacement for the official course description. Use the Course Description Search page to find the official course description.
Spring 2010
AML 6930 US Novels of the 20th Century
Dr. Wisdom
TR 5:00-7:45
In 1900 the United States had a population of only 76 million people, no income tax, very restricted suffrage, fewer than 8000 cars and less than 10 miles of concrete roads (America 1900). With its booming economy and growing sense of national destiny, however, America at the beginning of what many have called “The American Century” seemed to be heading toward a limitless horizon. From our privileged vantage point just past the end of the 20th Century, we will examine the works of a select group of U.S. novelists to better understand how we got here from there and the art we created along the way.
ENC 6745 Seminar in Composition Pedagogy
Dr. Tolchin
T 2:00-4:45
The Brazilian philosopher and education activist Paulo Freire campaigned against what he termed “the banking concept of education,” in which an all-powerful teacher deposits knowledge into the as-yet worthless and empty safe deposit box that is the student. He argued for “problem-posing education, as a liberating praxis” geared to rid the classroom of such specious and damaging hierarchies. Ultimately, he argued that we should acknowledge the value of the student’s experiential wisdom as well as the educator’s capacity to learn.
ENC 6745 is a discussion seminar/laboratory designed to give English Masters students access to a multiplicity of approaches to teaching composition, approaches that will leave the banking concept in the ashcan of history. It will strive to prepare students for teaching assistantships in Freshman Composition at FGCU, as well as for careers in English Departments beyond our realm.
ENL 6507 Graduate Chaucer Seminar
Dr. Busbee
T 5-7:45
In this course we will examine Geoffrey Chaucer's major works, The Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseyde—as well as three of his dream visions, The Parliament of Fowls and The Legend of Good Women, and a couple of his short poems. We will have four main objectives: 1) to master reading Middle English poetry aloud (in part, as a way to get closer to the oral nature of medieval poetry), 2) to become adept at the analysis of poetry through close reading, 3) to explore the beauty, insight, range and subtlety of Chaucer’s writing in its medieval context and through the lens of literary criticism. While our weekly readings will focus mainly on Chaucer’s poetry, we will enrich our discussions with investigations into fourteenth-century English literature and culture and one of the cornerstones of pre-modern philosophy, Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy—a text that influenced Chaucer’s work greatly. We will also sample some of Chaucer’s source texts and inspirations, such as selections from Le Roman de la Rose, Virgil’s Aeneid and Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Erotic Poems, and Heroides. Course requirements include oral presentations and recitals, brief response papers, and a conference paper.
The following are required course texts and materials:
Benson, Larry D., Ed. The Riverside Chaucer. 3 ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1987.
Boethius. The Consolation of Philosophy. Trans. Richard Green. New York: Macmillan, 1962.
Access to The Geoffrey Chaucer Website at http://www.courses.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/
LIT 6806 Body, Metaphor, and the Performance of Violence
Dr. Mendible
W 5-7:45
This interdisciplinary seminar examines the relationship between the body’s signifying role and the performance of violence. We will explore the role that violence against the body plays in creative processes, religious practice, State authority, and identity formation. Topics discussed include violence as ritual performance, the “grotesque” body, spectacle and sacrifice, and scapegoat psychology in literature and film. We will examine a variety of fiction and nonfiction texts including works by Foucault, Gilman, Freud, Scarry, Nietzsche, Coetzee, Bakhtin, and Arendt.
