Spring 2010

Spring10 AML2600 01
Introduction to African American Literature  
M. L. Montgomery, WMS 433, mmontgomery@fsu.edu

This course surveys the African American Literary Tradition, introducing students to a range of representative works, from the slave narrative to contemporary fiction. Throughout our investigation we will interrogate the close, symbiotic relationship between aspects of the vernacular and written texts. Works by established figures such as Frederick Douglass, David Walker, Charles W. Chesnutt, W. E. B. DuBois, Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, and Gloria Naylor will figure into our discussion along with writing by emerging literary artists such as Harryette Mullen and Caryl Phillips. In addition to offering an overview of key figures, texts, and concerns during successive periods, our study will allow a space to examine nuances of meaning associated with the quest for freedom in a peculiarly American Promised Land.

Learning Objectives:

  1. To become familiar with representative authors, text, techniques, and socio-historic concerns during successive moments in African American Literary history;
  2. to improve critical/analytical and research skills in preparation for further English study;
  3. to understand the myriad of social, historic, political, and cultural contexts out of which Black expressive culture evolves;
  4. to understand the close relationship between Black oral and literate forms; and
  5. to acquire an expanded conceptualization of what constitutes an American Literature.

Required Texts:

Course Requirements and Grade Distribution:

Spring10 AML3041 
American Authors Since 1875   
Timothy Parrish, WMS 221, tparrish@fsu.edu

Since the American Revolution, Americans have generally wanted to claim the power of individual self-invention over history (think of Franklin, Douglass, or Lincoln). Often what happens, though, in classic American literature (and history) is a story of either the destruction of the hero (think Faulkner's Quentin, Illinois' Lincoln) or the self-willed expulsion of the hero from the community (think Huckleberry Finn). In this course, the protagonists are generally at odds with society in some crucial and irreconcilable way. Yet, the characters still seek to transform or triumph over a culture that denies their quest. As always in American literature, there is the search for self and its realization or annihilation in acts of violence and redemption. Here?s the list: James Portrait of a Lady, Faulkner Light in August, Wright 8 Men, Ellison Invisible Man, Nabokov Lolita, Kerouac On the Road, Rechy City of Night, Vonnegut Slaughterhouse Five, McCarthy No Country, O'Connor Wise Blood, D. Johnson Jesus' Son

Spring10 AML3311 01
Honors Major Figures in American Literature  
Ned Stuckey-French, WMS 325, nstuckey-french@fsu.edu

In this course, we will read nine works of literature that have been described as "major." These nine books are linked not only by reputation, but also by subject matter. They all deal with slavery and its effects in America.

Here are some of the questions we'll ask: What do these authors have to tell us about race and about America? How do they use literary conventions to explore their themes? What are their formal accomplishments? Why did these authors focus on slavery and the African-American question? In what ways do they agree and disagree with each other? How do they frame the issue of race in America? How are we as a nation still haunted by slavery?

Texts:

Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (Norton) 1845
Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (Harvard) 1861
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin (Norton) 1852
Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Norton) 1885
Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery (Norton) 1901
W. E. B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk (Norton) 1903
Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (Harper) 1937
Richard Wright, Black Boy (American Hunger) (Harper) 1945
Toni Morrison, Beloved (Plume) 1987

Spring10 AML4111 
The Nineteenth Century American Novel  
Leigh Edwards, WMS 439, ledwards@fsu.edu

Examining key novels from the nineteenth century, this course explores how writers tried to use literary fiction to envision "America" and "Americanness" for a young nation in a time of rapid social change. We will discuss developments in the novel during the period, including the influence of the sentimental novel, the realist novel, and the Gothic novel. We will also discuss vital moments in literary history, such as: antebellum "American Renaissance" efforts to establish a national literature, later sectionalist works that debated the very possibility of nation leading up to the Civil War, and postbellum realist novels that grappled with changing definitions of America and its citizens during a period of social upheaval. Authors studied include Hawthorne, Melville, Twain, Chopin, Chesnutt, and Poe.

Spring10 AML4261 01 and 02
Southern Literature  
Diane Roberts, WMS 434, dkroberts@fsu.edu

Race-obsessed, history-obsessed, sex-obsessed, gothic, grotesque, just plain weird--Southern literature since Edgar Allen Poe has gotten quite a reputation. Is it deserved? Is the South "Uncle Sam's other province"? In this course, we will read widely in the literature produced in the Southern states to try and ascertain what makes the South different from the rest of the country. The format is lecture, with essay exams, short papers and discussion groups.

Spring10 CRW4120 03
Fiction Workshop  
Virgil Suarez WMS 452, vsuarez@fsu.edu

This course will focus (intensely so) on the writing and critique/reading of short fiction, be it short-short or the short story. Stories happen between 1-25 pages. In order to work on novel chapters or novellas, you must first get my approval. I am defining short fiction as a story with characters and plot. Something HAPPENS to SOMEONE! I like character driven short stories. Mainstream stories the kind you find in literary journals and magazines. Avoid genre (i.e., Sci-Fi, Gothic, Mystery, Thriller, Horror, etc..) not because I don=t like it but because I don=t know much about it and could not begin to be of service to you and your work.

Spring10 CRW4320 02
Poetry Workshop  
David Kirby WMS 420, dkirby@fsu.edu

This is an advanced course for those who are well underway in their poetic careers; the assumption is that you will have taken our undergraduate Poetic Technique class. You will be submitting a new poem or part of a poem to me each week; you'll write either 12 poems or 400 lines total. Every other week, you'll be asked to bring multiple copies so the whole class can workshop your poem. We'll also be engaged in other practices that make up the poet's daily life, notably reading and discussing a variety of contemporary poems. We'll be working mainly with three very different poetic voices that can be heard in these books: Michael Blumenthal's And, Matthew Dickman's All-American Poem, and Amy Gertsler's Dearest Creature. These will be required reading for everyone.

Spring10 ENC4311 01
Advanced Article and Essay Workshop  
Deborah Coxwell-Teague 644-3164, WMS 222E, dteague@fsu.edu

In this section of Advanced Article and Essay Workshop students will write four original compositions taken through a series of drafts. They will write a combination of both articles and essays (for a total of 22-25 polished pages), and will also compose an electronic portfolio to showcase their work and reflect upon it.

Class time will be spent writing about and discussing assigned readings which will include a variety of published articles and essays, workshopping drafts of compositions, and designing electronic portfolios.

The teacher will hold one-on-one conferences with each student four times over the course of the semester to discuss writing in progress.

Spring10 ENC4311 03
Advanced Article and Essay Workshop  
Ned Stuckey-French, WMS 325, nstuckey-french@fsu.edu

This is a course in the writing of creative nonfiction. Because creative nonfiction is a large and unwieldy genre, we will focus within it on the personal essay and because our time in class is short, we will focus on writing fairly short essays. We will begin to explore the range and flexibility of this form in discussions of our own work and that of published essayists. Everyone in the class will also be part of a small group, which will be responsible for leading workshop for one of four weeks and for selecting copy for inclusion in a little magazine, which they will turn in the last week of class.

Students will also use published work by important American essayists as models for their work and will be expected to read two to three essays each week and respond to them on a Blackboard discussion forum.

Texts:

Kitchen & Jones, eds., In Short: A Collection of Brief Creative Nonfiction (Norton)
Kitchen & Jones, eds., In Brief: Short Takes on the Personal (Norton)
Oates & Atwan, eds., Best Am Essays of the Century (Houghton Mifflin)

Spring10 ENC4932 02
Visual Rhetoric Course Description  
Michael Neal, WMS 223c, michael.neal@fsu.edu

This course begins with the assumption that visual language is one of many available means of persuasion that neither displaces nor functions in isolation from other modes of communication. By studying visual rhetoric in the context of contemporary, popular culture, we will explore how rhetorical frameworks to explore oral and written communication relate to examining visuals. We will also look at newer rhetorical scholarship that specifically addresses the visual. This course will address questions such as: How do people read, make meaning from, and compose visual texts? What are the relationships between and among visual, oral, written, and digital rhetorics? What language is best situated for articulating principles of visual rhetoric? How are electronic/digital texts influencing the circulation of visual texts? Students in this course will read, critique, analyze, and produce a number of multi-modal texts during the semester. This course does not require any previous experience or expertise with digital technologies, though a willingness to explore and experiment with readily available digital technologies is critical.

Spring10 ENG3014 
Critical Issues in Literary Study  
Robin Goodman, WMS 324, rgoodman@fsu.edu

This course introduces students to some of the key components in contemporary critical theory. It gives students a chance to consider some of the difficult vocabulary, the conceptual issues, concerns, debates, and the framing of arguments, positions, and traditions that compose literary and cultural scholarship today.

Spring10 ENG3014 04
Critical Issues in Literary Studies: Gothic ConTexts  
Candace Ward, WMS 113, candace.ward@fsu.edu

Course Objectives: This course is intended to introduce you to various schools of theory that inform current literary studies, and enable you to use the work of theorists in your own readings of literary and cultural texts. Meeting these objectives involves the following:

How well you meet these objectives will be measured by your performance in class discussions and on quizzes, papers, and exams.

Teaching Philosophy
For my part, I see this course as an invaluable step in your development as a student and scholar. In choosing to major (or minor) in English, you have indicated an attraction to the field. For many the choice has grown out of a love of reading. If this is your case, you might find it difficult to read your favorite works objectively in order to apply the kinds of analytic tools offered by critical theory. However, rest assured that reading works we love (and those we hate!) through a theoretical lens can be a rewarding experience?doing so not only opens up the texts to new meanings, it also provides the language to articulate and support your insights in ways that other scholars and readers appreciate. I have tried to provide a pragmatic focus to this course. Each theoretical ?unit? presents opportunities to apply theories and concepts and to discuss the relationship between theory, theoretical writing/thinking, and culture(s)—past and present. In addition to works of theory, I have selected a number of literary texts related to "The Gothic." These readings, from early eighteenth-century examples to contemporary instances of post-colonial gothic, are provocative and invite multiple theoretical readings. To help organize your responses to the assigned texts, we will engage in various exercises designed to hone your writing skills, like constructing strong thesis statements and developing rhetorical strategies that will be useful not only in this class, but in other courses as well. In other words, we'll be engaging in praxis (the first vocabulary word for the course): "practice informed by theory and also ... theory informed by practice" (Williams, Keywords, "Theory").

Required Texts

Spring10 ENG4341 
Milton  
Elizabeth Spiller, WMS 323, espiller@fsu.edu

This course will provide an intensive introduction to the writings of John Milton. Our primary attention will be to his major literary works, Paradise Lost and Samson Agonistes. We will also read a number of Milton's important political and religious writings, along with selections from several contemporary authors (Thomas Hobbes, Margaret Cavendish, and Rene Descartes). We will think about the larger context within which these works were first written and produced as well as the contexts in which we now read them. Primary attention, though, will be to the aesthetic quality of these works. As readers, we will try understand how Milton?s writing is the product of a particular moment in English history and culture, while also enhancing our sense of the richness of the literary tradition we acquire from and through Milton.

Spring10 ENG4932 03
Senior Seminar: What is (a) TEXT?  
Elaine Treharne,  WMS 447, etreharne@fsu.edu

This seminar aims to introduce students to the complexities of the concept of TEXT in its broadest sense, focusing principally on written, visual, oral, and symbolic texts from the earliest times to the present day. Initially, we shall engage in a close examination of the uses and multiple meanings of the word 'text' from its etymological roots to the present-day, where it is employed in an extraordinary range of referents from 'textuality', 'textology', 'textualist', and 'hypertext' to 'texting', 'textura' and 'intertextuality'. After unpacking this word's polyvalency and its multiple collocations, we shall move to the investigation of how meaning is formed by TEXT in its various physical and historical contexts. Among the major themes that we shall analyse are textual mouvance or variance (how texts change over time at the hands of successive users, whether annotators, readers, performers, editors, translators, or copyists); how paratextual features, such as framing, medium, advertisements, or illustration, typography, codicology and layout both affect and effect our interpretation; and the ways in which meaning can be said to derive from combinations of textual production, reception, and ideological or performative interactions.

TEXT partly involves the construction of the world's meaning through the 'reading' of things in it; but the problem is that these things themselves are constructed too. Reading?or interpretation?is not simply (or indeed, necessarily) the deciphering of a coded message; it is an interaction with various materials (paper, ink, light, color, sound, bodies) employing various tools (computers, cameras, pens, voice recorders) through which perceived reality begins to 'speak' to us. This course aims to give students a deepened understanding of how this transformation occurs. Throughout the course, we shall be focusing on critical debates about text and textuality (debates notably promoted in post-structuralism and affective stylistics) to begin to understand the complexity and subtlety of the messages we encounter on a daily basis.

There is currently no published course-book for this seminar. Students will be provided with an online pack of prepared materials; indeed, many of the texts are available electronically, and our interaction with these digitised materials and electronic texts will form part of our investigation about TEXT. Students will also be encouraged to bring their own examples of texts to class.

Students will be asked to produce and present short reviews of textual and theoretical material; they will also produce a final research project, which will reflect on the issues involved in deciphering (a) TEXT with a critical commentary on textuality that utilises at least two distinct media or technologies. By the end of the course all students will be able to differentiate TEXT from 'text' and 'textuality', recognizing the semantic field of TEXT as multivalent, multi-media, and multi-faceted.

Spring10 ENG4932 01
Hemingway in the 21st Century  
John Fenstermaker, WMS 435, jfenstermaker@fsu.edu

We will read and discuss Ernest Hemingway's fiction, focusing upon the author as artist and thinker. Critics have claimed much for Hemingway's cultural importance. Rena Sanderson observes that when "he arrived at young manhood, there was a struggle . . . between men and women over personal and sexual freedom, economic independence, and political power . . . [affecting] his thinking and writing about women. . . . [A]nyone who wants to understand the confused history of gender relations in twentieth-century America would do well to read him closely." Despite such critical (and biographical) discourse, we know that we have "no direct access' to the person Hemingway--only to his texts. Those words constitute the material of our study.

Regarding Hemingway's words for their revolutionary stylistic simplicity, Roger Rosenblatt, on the occasion of Hemingway's 100th birthday in 1999, remarked provocatively: "But the key to all was [as Hemingway had said] one true sentence, and going on from there, true sentence after true sentence, until what one produced was the truth, and that, oddly, was pure fiction. . . . What he did with truth-telling was to show how complicated the simplicity of it was. In so doing, he changed the rules of writing. He repeated words and phrases over and over, until he perfected a style as plain as the nose on your face, and just as indispensable." We will read selected stories and four novels.

Spring10 ENG4934 
Senior Seminar: Shakespeare's Sonnets   
Anne Coldiron WMS 431, acoldiron@fsu.edu

In this course, we'll conduct a sustained, intensive investigation of Shakespeare's sonnets from a variety of critical perspectives. The seminar format requires our full and consistent engagement with the daily work. By studying the textual history of the Sonnets (1609), we will challenge the idea of a fixed, transhistorical text; by investigating the poems in terms of Renaissance poetic theories and practices, we'll challenge the idea of Shakespeare, or any single author, as "inventor of the human." By studying the legal & economic language of the poems, we'll connect them to their historical contexts. By reading what later authors have done with the poems, we'll trace certain patterns, or dead-ends, of reception. Throughout, we'll read steadily in the extensive critical tradition that has developed around these 154 amazing poems. Requirements will include thorough reading, attentive presence, the preparation of explications de texte and discussion-topic essays, a seminar presentation, research paper, & final exam.

Spring10 ENG4934 02
Senior Seminar: Victoria Telecom  
Paul Fyfe, WMS 427, pfyfe@fsu.edu

Victorian literature is telecommunication. "Tele-culture" according to Nicholas Royle, emerged in the nineteenth century with "forms of communication from a distance through new and often invisible channels, including the railway, telegraphy, photography, the telephone and gramophone" (Telepathy and Literature, 1990). This course takes telecommunication as both material context and metaphor to investigate some important transformations in Victorian culture. We will read from novels, short stories, periodicals, poetry and occasional verse by writers familiar and unfamiliar: Dickens and Rossetti on the railway; anonymous writers of telegraphic romances; Mark Twain on the telephone; sundry poets on the trans-Atlantic cable; George Eliot and Marie Corelli on spiritualism; Jules Verne, Henry James, and Rudyard Kipling on trans-national communications. Students will undertake telecommunications projects of their own through collaborative work online. Sustained engagement with critical perspectives will prepare students for a final research paper.

Spring10 ENG4934 04
Senior Seminar: Experiments in Reading  
Timothy Parrish, WMS 221, tparrish@fsu.edu

Beginning with Don Quixote, modern literature has been about the relationship between formal innovation and self-invention. Don Quixote embarks on his quest as a reader. His adventure involves the transformation of self that occurs when a reader encounters the text. Ordinarily, we may think of reading as a form of escape but Quixote tells us that reading is a way of engaging with—and transforming—the world we know. Don Quixote reads books and becomes so convinced of their reality that when he leaves the world of the book he tries to make reality into the book he reads. He tells us that we are each a fiction in the making and cannot say quite where reality ends and fiction begins. Each of the writers we will be reading responds in some essential way to Quixote's wisdom. Authors we will be reading should include: Bulgakov (The Master and Margarita), Bolano By Night in Chile, Borges Collected Fictions, Cervantes Don Quixote, selections Cortazar Blow Up and Other Stories, Diderot Jacques the Fatalist, Hrabal I Served the King of England. Kundera The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Nabokov Pale Fire, Pirandello Six Characters in Search of an Author, Saramago Blindness. P.S. Reading is supposed to be fun and about you, the reader. Such is our aim in this class.

Spring10 ENG4934 03
SENIOR SEMINAR: The Reel Middle Ages: Medieval Literature and Film  
David Johnson, WMS 111, djohnson@fsu.edu

This course will examine a body of medieval texts in their literary and cultural contexts, and then analyze their reception and re-interpretation through the contemporary medium of film. How do filmmakers adapt these literary artefacts for the screen, what choices do they make in doing so, and what gets lost in the translation? Among the films that we'll be watching—paired to the medieval texts upon which they draw—will be Zemeckis' Beowulf, 13th Warrior, Stealing Heaven, King Arthur, Excalibur, Robin and Marian and Robin Hood (the Patrick Bergen/Uma Thurman version). Because this is a seminar, students are expected to engage in active participation. It will also be a reading-intensive course, and will culminate in a capstone research project requiring the analysis of both primary and secondary sources. Grades will be determined on the basis of reading quizzes, a midterm exam, writing assignments which will count as part of the participation grade, and a multi-step research project (including an abstract, an annotated bibliography, and a final paper of 10-15 pages).

Required texts:

Spring10 ENG4938 
Honors Seminar:  The Middle Ages and Its Representations 
Nancy Bradley Warren, WMS 216, nwarren@fsu.edu

This course jointly considers medieval texts and cultural phenomena in their own historical moments and later representations of those texts and phenomena. We will investigate what sorts of literary, historical, and political questions get negotiated through engagements with the Middle Ages. We will ponder why particular characters, tropes, and themes recur so persistently in texts of various genres. Students will be expected to participate actively and to read both extensively and intensively. Students will conduct research using primary and secondary sources and in doing so will employ a wide range of critical texts and theoretical approaches. Grades will be determined on the basis of unannounced reading quizzes, a midterm exam, at-home and in-class writing assignments that will count as part of the participation grade, and a multi-step research project (including an abstract, an annotated bibliography, and a final paper of 10-15 pages).

Spring10 ENL3334 
Introduction to Shakespeare  
Bruce Boehrer WMS 112A, bboehrer@fsu.edu

An introductory study of Shakespeare's works within the context of his life and historical situation. The course will deal with representative plays in all Shakespearean genres, drawn from throughout the playwright's career.

Spring10 ENL4122 01
Nineteenth-Century British Novel  
Meegan Kennedy, WMS413, meegan.kennedy@fsu.edu

The nineteenth century is sometimes considered the golden age of the novel. Reading domestic or historical fiction, romance or realism, silver fork novels or Newgate novels, sensation novels or condition of England novels, New Woman novels or scientific romances - nineteenth-century readers experienced a roller coaster of novel genres equal only in pace and variety to the rapid changes transforming British society. While we can't fit in all the genres I mention above, we will tackle six great (good as well as big) novels, in an effort to understand something of the pleasures and compulsions of nineteenth-century novel readers and writers. Authors include Austen, Scott, Dickens, Gaskell, Eliot, and Doyle.

Spring10 ENL4218 01
English Romance  
David Johnson, WMS 111, djohnson@fsu.edu

The legend of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table is one of the most enduring (and endearing) complexes of narrative material in western culture, and it has had a powerful hold on the popular imagination for centuries. In this class, we will read some of the earliest versions of the Arthurian Legend—The Matter of Britain—in the English language to develop an understanding of historical and cultural contexts for medieval literature in general. In addition to the Arthurian texts, we will consider works from the so-called Matter of England, as well, including a number of popular metrical romances that were aimed at a decidedly popular audience. Finally, we will turn our attention to another, popular English tradition: the late Medieval/Early Modern corpus of that quintessentially English folk hero, Robin Hood. In addition to exploring these texts for a number of themes (chivalry, courtly love, etc), we will also consider their contemporary reception in the form of film adaptation. No previous knowledge of medieval literature or language is required, but a willingness to grapple with selected texts in their original Middle English will be a plus.

Required Texts:

Spring10 ENL4220 01
Renaissance Poetry and Prose  
David Gants, WMS 316, dgants@fsu.edu

This course will cover the poetry and prose of Britain from the end of the War of the Roses to the beginnings of the English Civil War. We will organize our readings around three different manifestations of Love: 1) Love of God, or the varieties of religious experiences found in literature from this time; 2) Romantic Love, or the various ways in which writers have represented the relations between men and women; and 3) Love of Community, or the literature celebrating tribal, civic, national, and political identities.

Spring10 ENL4240 01
British Romantic Literature   
Eric Walker, WMS 438,  ewalker@fsu.edu

Intensive readings in poems by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, William Blake, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and John Keats. Fulfills literature track requirement for 3 hours post-1800 British literature or creative writing track requirement for 3 hours pre-1900 British literature. Text: The Romantics and Their Contemporaries, ed. Susan Wolfson and Peter Manning, Volume 2A of The Longman Anthology of British Literature, 4th edition.

Spring10 ENL4251 01
Victorian British Literature  
Meegan Kennedy, WMS413, meegan.kennedy@fsu.edu

This course explores the literature of Queen Victoria's reign, an era very close to our own in its interests and anxieties, and a period against which much of twentieth-century art and literature reacted. Students will read poetry, essays, fiction, and drama in this survey of some of the major figures of the time. The course also examines the explosion of print culture; the vexed divide between high and low culture; the literary negotiation of issues like voting rights, women's role in society, and the growing British empire; and how Victorians became increasingly interested in the relationship between word and image. Authors include Browning (both), Tennyson, Gaskell, Dickens, George Eliot, Kipling, Rossetti, Arnold, Wilde.

Spring10 ENL4333 
Advanced Shakespeare: Shakespeare the Poet  
Anne Coldiron, WMS 431, acoldiron@fsu.edu

At the heart of this course is a sustained investigation of Shakespeare's Sonnets (1609) from a variety of critical perspectives. We'll also consider Shakespeare's epyllia, as well as poems embedded in the plays that are audibly marked for the audience's attention. That is, alongside the usual 154 sonnets, we'll read The Rape of Lucrece, Venus and Adonis, The Phoenix and the Turtle, incantatory couplets in AWEW, more sonnets in R&J, etc.. (The plays, of course, are also poetry, but we won't treat the plays here. No plays. Don't sign up if you want plays.) Requirements: thorough reading of primary and secondary materials, attentive presence, & graded work, which may include quizzes, weekly explications de texte and discussion-topic essays, web projects, a presentation with annotated bibliography that grows by stages into a term paper; midterm and final exams.

Spring10 ENL4333 02
Advanced Shakespeare  
James O'Rourke, WMS441, jorourke@fsu.edu

We will read the following plays: The Taming of the Shrew, The Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night, Troilus and Cressida, Hamlet and King Lear. Our focus will be on how the plays operated in their original performance contexts, leading to such questions as: How did women in Shakespeare?s audience react to The Taming of the Shrew? Did the men in Shakespeare?s audience really take boys for women in Twelfth Night? Why did Shakespeare introduce a heroic black character into the all-white environment of the Globe theater, and then destroy him? Through such questions, we will explore how Shakespeare?s plays reflected and challenged the cultural conventions of his time, and how his questions resonate for us today.

Spring10 Lit4554  
Feminist Theory  
Linda Saladin-Adams WMS 429, lsaladin@fsu.edu

This course will focus on the construction of gender identity. Though the course will be informed by contemporary feminist theory, we will begin the debate from the Victorian period moving to the present. Our applications will include literature, film, the Internet, and culture more generally. Our readings will draw from such critical fields including philosophy, psychoanalysis, and post-colonialism, among others. Students will write a series of responses to the readings, a term paper, and participate in class discussions. Prior experience with ENG 3014 or the equivalent is encouraged, though not required.

Spring10 LIT4885  
Major Women Writers: Identity Construction from Victorians to the Present   
Linda Saladin-Adams, WMS 429, lsaladin@fsu.edu

This course focuses on identity construction from the Victorians to the present. We will read and discuss such novelists as Austen, Morrison, Woolf, Byatt, as well as exposure to media and technology and some relevant theoretical readings. Students will write a series of responses to the readings, a term paper, and participate in class discussions.