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Supplemental Course Descriptions

Summer 2012 Upper-Level English Course Descriptions

ENL 3210: Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Literature and Culture
Dr. Mark Bradshaw Busbee
Summer A
TR 11:30 a.m. - 2:55 p.m.
This course is designed to be an overview of the early European vernacular literature we traditionally call British (or English) from its origins to the end of the medieval period. It has four general objectives: first, to improve the clarity and logic of students’ critical writing through oral and written presentations; second, to exercise students’ skills at inter- and intra-textual reading by considering how meaning can reveal itself through close reading and comparitivist techniques; third, to sample masterpieces of this literature from its beginnings in the Anglo-Saxon Period (ca. 450-1066) through the Middle Ages (1066-1500); and fourth, to expose students to the various periods of the language. While the first two goals are directly connected to paper writing, goals three and four require that students demonstrate knowledge of particular works of literature and particularly periods of the language through recognition and analysis. In an effort to meet these objectives, I have planned class meetings comprised of a mix of student presentations, performance and hands-on activities; small group work; class discussion and collaboration; lecture (occasionally, I hope); and in-class writing. (This course counts toward the pre-1800 requirement for graduation.) Required text include:

• Anglo-Saxon Poetry. Translated by S.A.J. Bradley (Everyman, ISBN 97804608785073)
• The Longman Anthology of British Literature. Volume 1A: The Middle Ages, ed. Christopher Baswell and Anne Howland Schotter (Longman, ISBN 9780205655243)
• Troilus and Criseyde by Geoffrey Chaucer (trans. Nevill Coghill, Penguin, ISBN: 9780140442397)

LIT 4930 Special Topics: The Films of the Coen Brothers
Dr. Jim Brock
Summer B
TR 11:30 a.m.-2:55 p.m.
We will explore a selection of films by Ethan and Joel Coen, considering their literary, cultural, and cinematic import.  Films include Blood Simple, Raising Arizona, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and No Country for Old Men.  If nothing else, we will have a deeper appreciation that the Dude abides.

Fall 2012 Upper-Level English Course Descriptions

AML 3220: 19th Century U.S. Literature and Culture
Women’s Fiction
Dr. Harrison
W 11 a.m.-1:45 p.m.
“America,” Hawthorne wrote to his publisher in 1855, “is now wholly given over to a d---d mob of scribbling women, and I should have no chance of success while the public taste is occupied with their trash.” It’s tempting to scoff at and dismiss Hawthorne’s not-so-latent literary misogyny, but submerged beneath his snarkiness is a question that persists in American literature: how do we read and interpret women’s fiction? Or to put it terms that critic Susan Harris popularized: is this fiction any good? As Hawthorne’s comment suggests, 19th Century American women’s fiction has always been viewed as fundamentally different from the masculinist literary tradition exemplified by what we now call the American Renaissance (Emerson, Hawthorne, Thoreau, Melville, Whitman), and that difference has made women’s fiction of the 19th Century a hotly contested corpus of texts. This course will survey a range of fiction by women from the 19th Century and explore a related set of questions these texts raise about authority, gender, class, sexuality, and cultural power. In addition to several short stories by a variety of writers, our texts will include Catharine Sedgwick’s Hope Leslie; Fanny Fern’s Ruth Hall; Harriet Beecher Stowe’s The Minister’s Wooing; Elizabeth Stoddard’s The Morgesons; and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps’s The Silent Partner.

CRW 3311 Poetic Techniques
Prof. Jill Allen
M 5-7:45p.m.
In this class we will seek a deeper and broader understanding of poetic forms, aesthetic considerations, and critical appraisal of poetry. Students will be required to read and to write extensively. Assignments will challenge students to experiment and create with sentences, stanzas, imagery, rhythms, traditional verse forms and free-verse poems. We will also employ self- and peer- critiques, revision strategies, and workshop techniques.

CRW 4320 Advanced Poetry Writing
Dr. Jim Brock
R 11:00 a.m.-1:45 p.m.
In this workshop-based poetry writing course, students will spend the semester creating a professional portfolio, built on intensive processes of revision and deep considerations of style, voice, and form. We will read important contemporary poetry as well as Muriel Rukeyser’s The Life of Poetry and Dean Young’s The Art of Recklessness. We will also consider the place of the poet in the 21st century, so that students will learn their AWPs and mind their P & Ws.

ENG 3014 Intro to Lit & Cultural Stds
Dr. Sutton
W 11a.m.-1:45p.m.
This course is an introduction to English language and literature at Florida Gulf Coast University. The course has been planned so as to provide a foundation for your intellectual development in the English major and minor and the Creative Writing minor. It will prepare you for the analytical rigor and structural dynamics of critical writing and thinking. The course will engage questions concerning the significance of a degree in English and its value for life after college. We will address issues such as what careers are available to you and what role beyond the workforce you will play in your community.

ENG 3112: Literary Approaches to Film
Dr. Karen Tolchin
R 2-4:45
Students will learn how to “read” a film as a literary text. This course will provide students with a basic overview of film genres. Topics will include the basic elements of film production; the hallmarks of major genres such as comedy and film noir; film terminology and major critical approaches; and a brief history of film. Students will gain exposure to seminal films in a variety of genres including film noir, the western, musicals, and science fiction. In this lecture and discussion-based seminar, students will analyze films and test their ideas in the public sphere.#

ENL 3323 Shakespeare Survey (pre-1800)
Dr. Rebecca Totaro
M 2:00-4:45 p.m.
In this entry-level survey of Shakespeare’s works, we will read four or five of Shakespeare’s plays closely, focusing on plot, character, and theme development. We will also place Shakespeare and his works in their fascinating cultural context of Elizabethan and Jacobean London—a place and time where plague outbreaks met advancements in art and literature and new discoveries led Shakespeare to give Hamlet these words: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Because some of Shakespeare’s most interesting and, at the time, most popular plays are those that today are least known, we will be sure to cover one or two these edgier works, including the shocking blood bath that is Titus Andronicus.

LIT 3400 Interdisciplinary Topics in Lit
“Postmodern War and the Legacy of Vietnam”
Dr. Mendible
R 11a.m.-1:45p.m.
All the wrong people remember Vietnam. I think all the people who remember it should forget it, and all the people who forgot it should remember it." -- Michael Herr
America’s first “postmodern war” has been represented, interpreted, and remembered in countless ways over the years, assuming a signifying power that has endured long after the ceasefire agreement in 1973 or the war’s official end in 1975. This course uses government archives, historical documents, films, and memoirs by veterans from both sides of the conflict to examine Vietnam’s role in shaping contemporary attitudes towards war, foreign policies, and American cultural identity.

LIT 4093: Contemporary Literature – The Short Story
Dr. Karen Tolchin
T 2-4:45
LIT 4093 will examine the evolution of the contemporary short story. Considerations of criticism, craft, and the present cultural moment will fuel this discussion-based seminar. Students will be encouraged to read like writers, considering works by Aimee Bender, Amy Hempl, Lorrie Moore, Alice Munro, Brady Udall, and Tobias Wolff, among others. How do these authors seem to redefine the genre in the 21st century? Constructed as a hybrid literature-creative writing seminar, the course will afford students the opportunity to write and workshop works of literary criticism and short fiction. A strong emphasis will be placed on the location and development of the writer’s voice, be it in the service of literary criticism or fiction writing.

LIT 4930 Selected Topics in Literary Studies
“Politics and the Novel: A Comparative Analysis”
Dr. Mendible
T 11a.m.-1:45p.m.
“Politics in a work of literature is like a pistol-shot in the middle of a concert, something loud and vulgar, and yet a thing to which it is not possible to refuse one's attention” Stendhal
What can we learn from the complex and often binding relationship between aesthetic and political aims, between individual creativity and collective political action? This course explores the uneasy relationship between literature and politics, examining contemporary literature and films inspired and informed by political conflicts, struggles, and events in both North and South America. Our comparative approach will consider the relationship between the literary work and its cultural context, its impact on local and international communities, its status and reception, and the major issues represented and confronted within the text. We will analyze multiple perspectives and traditions, noting the distinct ways that different cultures define the relationship between literature and politics and the writer’s role in society.

SPN 3411 Advanced Oral Expression
Dr. Ramos
TR 2-3:15p.m.
This required course for Spanish majors has been designed to improve and strengthen the student's oral skills in the Spanish language while enhance listening comprehension and vocabulary. We will focus on proper diction and pronunciation as well as conversational situations ranging from everyday conversations to more complex, sophisticated oral styles like narration, exposition, description, argumentation etc. The assessment is based mostly on informal & formal oral presentations in Spanish. Although the emphasis of the course is on the oral communication, it will reinforce other language areas such as reading and writing as well as a better understanding of the Hispanic culture. Group projects, oral presentations, daily assignments & preparation, and active participation are required. Students are responsible for reviewing grammatical structures on their own.