Undergraduate Courses

What is English? Florida State University’s English department offers three different specialized routes that answer this question: Literature, Media, and Culture (LMC), Creative Writing (CW), and Editing, Writing, and Media (EWM). The title “Introduction to English Studies” implies a broad scope. The course will cover various disciplines and their methods generally while also engaging in specific composition and hermeneutic activities. The design of this course aims to both prepare students who plan to major in English while also develop the knowledge and understanding of those currently majoring in English in relation to the nature of what it means to study English. Specifically, students will read a variety of texts, topics, while being introduced to numerous strategies of interpretation. They will also compose across rhetorical and creative genres. Finally, they will engage in discussion to better gain an overview and insight to the kind of language and meaning making work those seeking a degree in English do.

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.

Why was so much groundbreaking US literature published between 1850 and 1855? That’s the question we will try to answer in this course. Over seventy years ago, F. O. Matthiessen coined the term the “American Renaissance” to describe the inventive outpouring of national literature in this half-decade—classics such as Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1850), Melville’s Moby-Dick (1851), Thoreau’s Walden (1854), and Whitman’s Leaves of Grass (1855). While scholars have long since criticized and revised Matthiessen’s exclusively white, male club of “renaissance” writers, it remains a curious fact that many of the most historically significant texts in today’s expanded canon were also published during the same time frame—among them, Sojourner Truth’s “I Am a Woman’s Rights” (1851), William Wells Brown’s Clotel (1853), John Rollin Ridge’s The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta (1854), and Fanny Fern’s Ruth Hall (1854). In a survey of “major figures” from 1850 to 1855, we will work to understand this literary revolution by looking at the historical, political, and social context of every text we read.

This course examines Asian American literature within a broad and dynamic global framework. We treat Asian as a fluid and contested category—encompassing South, East, and Southeast Asian lineages—and understand Asian American as a formation shaped by migration, labor, exclusion, and assimilation. We explore transcultural narratives that illuminate questions of identity in an increasingly interconnected and cosmopolitan world. Situating the texts within the currents of global modernity, we consider how rapid technological change, capitalist expansion, and shifting geopolitical relations reshape experiences of diaspora and belonging. Drawing on transnationalism, globalization, cosmopolitanism, diaspora studies, and multiculturalism, the course investigates representation, appropriation, appreciation, authenticity, and the interplay between individual and collective identities. Students will develop a shared critical vocabulary and nuanced insight into the diverse voices that define Asian American literature as both a national and transnational phenomenon, revealing how these works engage – and often challenge – the very idea of modernity itself.

In this course we will examine 19th century American writing as an Atlantic phenomenon. American novelists were inspired and influenced by British authors, but also rejected many of those writers’ forms and conventions as they struggled with slavery, the central issue of the pre-1861 period, and the question of who is an authentic American. We’ll explore E.A. Poe, Charlotte Bronte, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry James, among others. Students will be expected to read and comprehend at a very high level (this is an advanced course and will be taught as such) and produce sophisticated, erudite, clear, and intellectually-rigorous work. Meets the 4000+ and genre requirements.

Southern literature is full of dead people who won’t stay dead, haunted houses, haunted minds, curses, andghosts both real and imagined. Is slavery America’s Original Sin? Are we imprisoned in our own history? In this course, we’ll explore why. Students will be expected to read and comprehend at a very high level (this is an advanced course and will be taught as such) and produce sophisticated, erudite, clear, and intellectually-rigorous writing. Authors to be studied include Edgar Allan Poe, William Faulkner, Angelina Grimké, Ralph Ellison, Randall Kenan and others. Meets te requirements for 4000+ and genre courses.

"Southern literature is full of dead people who won’t stay dead, haunted houses, haunted minds, curses, and ghosts both real and imagined. Is slavery America’s Original Sin? Are we imprisoned in our own history? In this course, we’ll explore these questions. Students will be expected to read and comprehend at a very high level (this is an advanced course and will be taught as such) and produce sophisticated, erudite, clear, and intellectually-rigorous writing. Authors to be studied include Edgar Allan Poe, William Faulkner, Angelina Grimké, Ralph Ellison, Randall Kenan and others. Fulfills the 4000-level requirement and the genre requirement. "

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 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, which meets the Human Experience requirement, begins in the apocryphal 1960s, when the fight for civil rights inspired young African Americans Muhammad Ali, James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Nikki Giovanni, and others to redefine their generation with mantras like “I’m so pretty!,” “Say it loud! I’m Black and I’m proud,” “R-E-S-P-E-C-T,” and “Even my errors are correct.” They shed their “New Negro”/Harlem Renaissance forebears’ respectability politics and culled an unapologetically Black aesthetic, defying European beauty standards that had haunted them since the chattel era. We will study the debates between Nation of Islam and Southern Baptist leaders Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. and the outpouring of multigenre art from the Black Arts Movement’s independent theater, fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and spoken word albums; industry-saving Blaxploitation films; dance and fashion troupes’ embrace of Afros, daishikis, bold prints, and African diasporic techniques; visual artists’ evolution from surrealist abstraction/graffiti to “post-Black”; and musical innovations from the Motown sound to Philadelphia soul, from acid jazz and psychedelic rock to funk, disco, and integrated pop, culminating with the (d)evolution of hip-hop, which has dominated American life for the past 50 years. We will investigate three central questions: How do African Americans invoke and/or revoke stereotypical characterizations of Blackness (Mammy, Uncle Tom, Buck, Jezebel, Sambo, Pickaninny) that persist? To what end are contemporary representations of beauty shaped by America’s painful chattel past? Finally, we will be able to answer, with greater confidence and complexity, what makes Blackness beautiful—“way back then” and now?

Everyone has a war story to tell. Each of our war stories is just as important, creative, and unique as any other war story. This course is an introduction to what exactly constitutes a war story (hint: just about anything can be viewed as a war story!). We will also hold workshops in which fledgling writers work with other serious and supportive writers to explore the best and most effective ways to tell his/her/their war story. The course begins with two seminar-style classes in which we investigate the writing process and the editing process. For the rest of the semester, each session begins with a fifteen-minute mini-lesson covering a specific aspect of creative writing. The core of each session will be the peer workshop, in which we foster a healthy, supportive, and rigorous conversation about each war story. We will discuss each submission for thirty minutes. Course readings will include excerpts, short fiction, interviews, and essays by military veterans and civilian war correspondents, as well as narratives of those affected by war.

This course explores the emotional architecture of fiction; it examines how feelings function as the driving force behind narratives. We will discover how stories are shaped by nonlinguistic effects—feelings, tempers, and ambiances. This means that we are digging into fiction beyond its conventional elements like dialogue and plotting. We will trace ten distinct emotions across a variety of global fiction and explore how forms and affects intertwine to create meaning. In addition to reading, we will also write stories that reflect these emotional dynamics.

Tuesdays will be dedicated to the discussions and analysis of texts and theories. Thursdays will shift focus to a workshop-style format where students will present and critique their stories, allowing for collaborative exploration of how the emotion and narrative techniques studied manifest in their own writings. Through this balance of theory, analysis, and creative practice, students will gain a nuanced understanding of the emotional dimensions of fiction and how to weave them into their own work.

Key Topics:


• Emotions and Storytelling: The conscious creation of feelings in stories. 
 
• Language Choices: The impacts of rhythm and word choices on affective tone.

• Plot: How narrative perspective shapes emotional experiences.
• Conflict: The tension between affect and rationality in fiction.

We will spend the majority of the semester learning how to read like a writer, with a focus on speculative/scifi/fantasy short stories. These unrealities will be our lens for examining the techniques authors employee to write the truth using lies, i.e. fiction.

Writing is a mix of magic and craft. Our goal will be to improve our craft skills so that the magic of the story can shine through.

In the final weeks, we will focus on producing, workshopping, and revising your work.

This course is designed for upper-level undergraduate students interested in understanding and constructing fiction. Our goals for the course are to develop a consistent and strong writing practice, explore prose craft and apply them to the composition of fiction, experiment with different approaches to creative writing, and participate in a supportive and community-based 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.

Regarding the lyric poem, Nick Mount tells us that “the lyric tries the impossible, it tries to temporarily stop time.” In this class, students will have the opportunity not only to study elements of poetic technique but also to write poetry regularly and receive feedback on their writing. We will close read, discuss, and draw inspiration from a wide variety of contemporary poets whose work may inform our own. Aided by generative prompts and weekly workshops, each student will create a portfolio of original work. Together, we will develop our critical acumen while investigating what—for ourselves and for other poets—makes a poem sing, tick, or, maybe, stop time.

Our aim in this class is to discover our voice. There are no rules in poetry, and this is why we must learn them. We'll read poetry from around the world. We'll talk about poetry from around the world. We'll trace the history of poetry. Most importantly, we'll write poetry.

I think about all the poetry I’ve ever read since middle school: Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Frost, Basho, Allan Ginsberg, Emily Dickinson, John Keats, Maya Angelou, and of course, William Shakespeare. While these inescapable, noteworthy poets have inspired us to be on the track we are now, it’s imperative to study living poets not only as a means of reflecting on the important issues of today (climate change, war, politics, identity, mental health), but as a means of finding our own voices during our time we are able to spend writing. This course introduces you to a number of diverse, notable, award-winning poets still writing, publishing, and speaking today. While “Letters to a Young Poet” by Rilke serves as our important encouragement from the past, we will focus on the voices and art of today.

What can a poem do? In this course, we will challenge our conceptions of lyric poetry, embrace experimentation, and aim for a more precise and developed voice. We will read, write, and have conversations in a low-stakes, creative environment, cultivating our personal interests and surprising ourselves with lyric possibility. Activities will include generative writing, revision, discussion of poems and craft essays, workshops, and a dip into the world of literary magazines and journals. Together, we’ll explore the sheer range of what a lyric poem can be, and who you can be as a poet. Bring your questions, curiosities, and obsessions. Writers of all experience are welcome.

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.

Fiction Workshop (CRW 4120) is a course on the craft and art of fiction writing, only available for those students who have already satisfactorily completed Fiction Technique (CRW 3110). This course assumes you have a serious interest in fiction writing, as well as in discussing the writing of fiction with others likewise engaged. 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. In class we will examine how various craft points are at work in a number of published stories, and very often these texts will serve as templates for imitation and inspiration. However, this class will primarily follow the workshop model, and therefore student work, and the discussion of same, will be our main focus. To that end, over the course of the semester students will be required to produce and share a flash fiction piece of between 500-750 words, as well as two short stories (8-15 pages each).

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.This will be a bits-and-kits based course in which you’ll keep a daily journal of verbal “bits”you’ll move around until they become “kits” you’ll make into poems. You’ll map your poetic genealogy in our classroom, work with partners, lead discussions. We’ll teach, care for, and learn from one another unceasingly. Hit the gym! This may be the busiest class you’ve ever taken as well as one of the most fun. It always is. Make sure you take CRW 3311 (Poetic Technique) first, though -- that's where you'll learn the basics.

In this course, we will move beyond parsing the important, intricate details of prosody you’ve ideally encountered in CRW 3311 (and possibly other sections of CRW 4320) and write into and against modes and schools of thought that dominate contemporary poetics, particularly our intense moment of hypervisibility and hyperviolence. We will focus not only on refining the single “perfect poem” but also curating a series of poems whose speakers’ voices we can modulate to interrogate personal and cultural history and memory with greater veracity. We will attend to the ways that the performance of race, gender, and nationality contemporize and transform the ancient elegy and other modes of writing. To achieve this ambitious feat, rather than reading several books, we will spend the better part of the semester studying these modes and schools vis-à-vis representative writers over successive fortnights before reading two new collections, chosen by students in the first week, as exemplary models of our aim of producing a small poetry collection.

This course will focus (intensely so) on the writing and critique/reading of YOUR poetry. We will have readings, presentations, and discussions of poetic forms and issues relating to the writing of contemporary poetry as it relates to your developing work and the techniques that will matter most to your poems.

ENC 3021 stands as one of the three courses for the Editing, Writing, and Media (EWM) major. As a foundation for the major, this course is designed to expose and bridge students to various rhetorical principles, theories, and frameworks and be acquainted with relevant issues and contexts across the field of rhetoric. These theoretical ideologies and frameworks aim students to strengthen epistemic ground in their discipline. We are confident that this course will have significant support to evolving writers, scholars, and editors with its heuristic applications. To start with, we will scale up the evolution of rhetoric by familiarizing to its root from the Western rhetorical traditions. We will begin with Greek and Roman rhetorics but will not limit to historical canonical rhetoricians. To some extent in a sequential order we proceed to prominent scholars of present rhetorical theories and frameworks whose contributions reinforced the production and analysis of texts, situations, and communication.

ENC3021 is one of three core courses for the Editing, Writing, and Media (EWM) track and works to provide a foundation for the major. In this course, explore the history and evolution of rhetorical practices, examining how they shape communication, power, and social structures across cultures and media. Throughout the course, we’ll engage with an array of rhetorics with diverse origins and methodological approaches. From foundational texts in the Western rhetorical canon, to visual and digital rhetorics, to those emerging from feminist, Black, Indigenous, and other marginalized perspectives, we will explore how rhetorics shape and are shaped by the sociopolitical contexts from which they emerge. Throughout, we’ll consider what rhetoric can do––how it can be a tool for (or against) social change. By the end of the course, students will have the tools to think about rhetoric not just as a way of persuasion, but as a powerful means for shaping identity, challenging power structures, and shaping our social worlds.

This course is designed for upper-level undergraduate students interesting understanding and constructing creative nonfiction (personal essays, memoir, literary reportage, cultural criticism, etc.). Some of you may have been scribbling away in isolation for years, others may be new to the form or even to creative writing altogether. Whatever your experience level—welcome!

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 types of creative nonfiction, and to familiarize ourselves with a supportive workshop process. Classwork will include reading and discussing published essays, writing exercises, the completion and revision of a full draft of a short piece of creative nonfiction, and participating in workshop.

This course introduces students to the study and practice of creative nonfiction, a genre that exists on a spectrum between researched, journalistic articles and lyrical, reflective personal essays. Creative nonfiction is "nonfiction" in its commitment to truth and accuracy, and "creative" in its use of literary techniques borrowed from fiction—scene, dialogue, character, imagery, structure, and voice.



We will explore multiple forms within the genre, with particular focus on the personal essay, flash nonfiction, and braided/segmented essays. Through reading published work, discussing craft techniques, completing generative writing exercises, and workshopping drafts, you will develop your ability to tell true stories with artistry and intention.



The course balances craft study with practice. We'll examine how successful CNF writers make choices about structure, voice, research, metaphor, and form, then apply those techniques in your own writing. Toward the end of the semester, you'll have the opportunity to explore an additional subgenre of your choosing.



No prior experience with creative nonfiction is required. Whether you're new to the genre or have been writing CNF for years, this course emphasizes growth, experimentation, and discovery. You'll be supported in taking creative risks, trying new approaches, and finding your voice as a nonfiction writer.



By the end of this course, you will have produced polished essays in multiple forms and developed a stronger understanding of what creative nonfiction can do and be. Expect to read actively, write regularly, revise substantially, and engage generously with your peers' work.

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.

ENC 3310 Article and Essay Technique: Creative Non-Fiction Workshop is an introductory course in the craft of creative nonfiction, a genre that employs prose craft techniques to present truth, fact, experience, and memory. In this course, we will focus on the voice and hearts of our creative works: what stories are worth telling? What speaks to us and why? We will think about writing as an art separate from us and yet part of us. We will learn to read like writers, with an eye for detail and nuance. We'll address questions of memory, perspective, and the elusive concept of objectivity while reading writers both living and long dead. Students will develop a clear understanding of point of view, ethics, pacing, temporal arrangement, voice, and structuring. Because creative nonfiction encompasses a wide range of forms, including memoir, personal essay, lyrical essay, literary journalism, profiles, science writing, nature writing, travel writing, biography, cultural criticism, queer criticism, and more, expect to engage with multiple modes of nonfiction by writers whose identities, histories, and perspectives may align with or differ from your own. No topics are off limits—including, but not limited to: sexuality, gender, queerness, the body, violence, race, religion, etc. Please be advised that some material may be triggering. We will also study works that reflect on the craft of nonfiction, and you will produce your own pieces of creative nonfiction no less than fifteen pages and no more than twenty to be workshopped in class.

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.

Article and Essay Technique introduces students to the study and writing of nonfiction prose in a variety of modes. This section is a discussion and workshop-based composition course that establishes a collaborative writing community and exposes students to the sub-genre of Creative Nonfiction (CNF), as informed by CNF craft and Writing & Healing research. As such, this course places an emphasis on studying the fundamentals of effective and transformative storytelling as they pertain to our lived experiences surrounding grief, loss, and survival by first engaging with and honoring the experiences of others. Readings and writing assignments include “traditional” forms such as memoir, personal essays, articles. However, we will also have the opportunity to engage in multimodal and/or hybrid storytelling through photo/video essays, music/music videos, art pieces, poems, podcasts, etc.

Required reading: Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, Two or Three Things I Know For Sure by Dorothy Allison, The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, and Writing as a Way of Healing: How Telling Our Stories Transforms Our Lives by Louise DeSalvo.
 

Our class will emphasize the lyric essay through which you can tell your story in your own voice however you see fit. We will read lots of lyric narratives from around the world. They will have a variety of synthesized frames: political, social, cultural, historical, psychological. Pick and choose.

This course introduces students to the fundamentals of television pilot writing, focusing on structure, character, and industry conventions. Using Save the Cat! Writes for TV by Jamie Nash as a foundation and analyzing successful pilots (Fleabag, Fargo, Abbott Elementary), students will learn key storytelling beats and unwritten rules of TV writing. Through workshops and writing exercises, they will develop their own pilot scripts, refining their technical and aesthetic awareness. By the end of the course, students will complete a polished draft of a TV pilot.

The course explores the art, craft, and cultural consciousness of writing for the screen in the 21st century, with a focus on the TV pilot and the short film. By examining the craft and techniques of scriptwriting, students will learn how historically marginalized, underrepresented, and global voices — encompassing race, gender, sexuality, and disability — are telling new stories, impacting the way content is consumed, and evolving the craft of scriptwriting. First, we will read several scripts from various cultural backgrounds, analyzing the politics of authorship and production, as well as how the current digital media landscape is shaping narrative structure, pacing, and audience engagement. Then, we will engage in scriptwriting exercises to stimulate creativity, as we discuss craft and technique and explore how contemporary writers are redefining character, plot, theme, and genre. We will then conduct a workshop for each of our stories. By the end of the semester, students will have completed either a TV pilot script or a short film script.

This course will take students through the whole soup-to-nuts of story development, pitch, outline, and three-stage synopsis to completion of the first iteration of a feature-length screenplay in Final Draft. We’ll start with Robert McKee’s classic method blunderbuss Story, and read the authors he cites, Aristotle and Stanislavsky - and through the latter, Dickens - and screen some essential films embodying important movements in the form, from Méliès through the revolutionary 70s, to the strange and exciting moment we are in.

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 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 and Canva Pro); 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 explores acts of reading, writing, conversing, and composing within the theories and practices of contemporary writing center studies: the people who do it, how they do it, and how to help others do it. Throughout the semester, we will explore tutoring practices for working with interdisciplinary writers in a one-on-one setting. The class consists of a four-week practicum, during which students are trained to tutor in FSU’s Reading-Writing Center and/or Digital Studio (RWC-DS) under the mentorship of a graduate consultant. Completion of the course allows students to apply for openings in the RWC/DS staff.

Issues in EWM: Language, Culture, and the Written Word explores how language shapes identity and influences media discourse. From news headlines to viral tweets, we’ll analyze how language is framed, whose voices are amplified, and whose are marginalized. Through a mix of academic writing, media analysis, and narrative projects, you’ll experiment with different ways of writing to connect with audiences, challenge language hierarchies, and rethink cultural boundaries. We’ll also consider how people blend and adapt languages in everyday communication, and how media both reinforces and resists these shifts. Whether you speak one or many, this course offers new ways to think about language and develop writing practices that reflect the diverse, complex ways people communicate today.

In this course, you will gain essential skills to write effectively for sports. From the Super Bowl to the Olympics and from Serena Williams to Caitlin Clark, you will enhance your storytelling techniques that will enable your readers to visualize the game-winning touchdown or the gravity-defying flip in gymnastics. This course will encourage you to bring your subjects to life in a way that is meaningful, creative, and expressive. Who are athletes on and off the field? What led to their triumph or defeat? How did they overcome adversity? These are some of the guiding questions that will compel you to dig deep and write engaging content. Other aspects of the course include analyzing sports artifacts and discussing the impact of the media (print, television, radio, and Internet) in shaping public perception about athletes. Writing assignments may include a feature article, sports narrative, press release, and sports column. Whether your knowledge of sports is limited or extensive, this course sets a foundation to write effectively for sports.

This course will help you take your editing skills to the next level, explicitly focusing on 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. We consider carefully authorial goals and audience needs and how these should influence the editing process. The course aims to prepare students for the elementary practice of textual production between draft stage and final publication.

This course is primarily “workshop” in orientation—we do a lot of work in class, and we often check our work in class, too. Regular course attendance, then, is vital to learning and success.

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 elements of craft, content, and style. We will consider how the personal essay supports journalism, scholarly writing, and creative forms. During our workshop sessions, we will ask questions of one another about the work that is presented. You will also ask questions in your written responses to one another. Your semester creative portfolio will include two personal essays, and a final project of new or revised work.

This course offers students the opportunity to develop tools for producing, designing, and circulating a diversity of texts that address a wide range of audiences and contexts.

Note: This course does not include a copyediting component.

This internship offers up to three credits for working with the Southeast Review, Florida State University’s nationally renowned literary journal. As an intern, you will spend time managing and drafting posts for social media as part of a collaborative, peer-reviewed, and workshopped process. You 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.

Although we will start in Egypt and with African rhetoric, we will trace many different rhetorics across the world throughout distinct eras to emphasize the differences in rhetorical knowledge and meaning making processes. During this process, we will consider knowledges, histories, and identities as subjective and ever-changing. We will also consider how visual methods of delivery factor into and evolve meaning making processes. Although you may not have had experience with visual rhetoric in previous courses, this class will encourage you to expand your understanding and appreciation of rhetoric to include visual modes of delivery, interpretation, and understanding. Further, we will frequently (re)define rhetoric and its intersections with concepts like epistemology, truth, belief, identity, and social interaction.

"Although we will start in Egypt and with African rhetoric, we will trace many different rhetorics across the world throughout distinct eras to emphasize the differences in rhetorical knowledge and meaning making processes. During this process, we will consider knowledges, histories, and identities as subjective and ever-changing. We will also consider how visual methods of delivery factor into and evolve meaning making processes. Although you may not have had experience with visual rhetoric in previous courses, this class will encourage you to expand your understanding and appreciation of rhetoric to include visual modes of delivery, interpretation, and understanding. Further, we will frequently (re)define rhetoric and its intersections with concepts like epistemology, truth, belief, identity, and social interaction. "

This course invites us to critically engage with composing across genres and media. While other writing courses might focus primarily on academic texts, we’ll play with genre and consider audiences beyond the academy. To this end, we’ll observe how other people and communities compose media, how that media circulates, and what impact that media has on culture. Then, we’ll practice being composers, creating new compositions in both digital and print genres and honing our design and communication skills across media.

ENC 3416 (WEPO) is one of three core courses for EWM and provides a foundation for the major. As part of this foundation, the course introduces 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, and for different audiences. Our course will pay particular attention to understanding and leveraging our existing and developing literacies. We will explore how to do so in order to navigate media environments and composing for our personal, social, and professional goals.

This class strives to help you to improve your writing and editing skills across a wide range of writing situations. Writing and editing are distinct, though related, skills. Some of the best ways to get better at writing are reading and critically analyzing the writing of others and practicing writing yourself, especially writing targeting improvement in particular writing skills. 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 considering ways to make writing better are all important to the ultimate goal of writing better. However, excessive self-consciousness during the writing process itself often makes for an uncomfortable writing experience and poor writing outcomes. Developing more confidence in your editing abilities makes writing less pressured. This class will help you to get better at putting your writing ideas into practice.

This course prepares students for the type of work and learning that happens within an English major. Over the course of the semester, we will examine the history of English studies, key conversations and topics within the field, and the career choices related to a degree in English. Among the skills we will develop are annotation, argumentation, drafting and revision, and specialized vocabulary, all of which are applicable across a range of disciplines but are particularly helpful in the study of English. This course will cultivate the critical thinking and close reading skills essential for English majors and will equip students for reading and analyzing complex literature.

This course introduces students to the English major. It reviews the history of the discipline in ways that are accessible and meaningful to students and talks about current practices and areas of inquiry, including broadening of categories of interest to other forms of writing and media. It also helps students acquire skills that will be useful to them in their other courses, guiding students through annotation, analysis, drafting, workshopping, and revision through topical and text-based thesis development and argumentation. Students will additionally develop vocabulary for specialization in the major throughout the process. This class is intended to prepare students to be English majors, to show 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 textual analysis and writing.

We will use the primary text The Color Purple (1982), 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 completion of this course, students will be better prepared for the variety of assignments found in higher level English courses.

This course helps students to think about what it means to be an English major. It reviews the history of the discipline in ways that are accessible and meaningful to students and talks about current practices and areas of inquiry, including broadening of categories of interest to other forms of writing and media. It also helps students acquire skills that will be useful to them in their other courses. It will guide students through annotation and analysis, drafting, workshopping, and revision, introduce concepts of thesis and argumentation, and give students vocabulary for specialization. This class is intended to prepare students to be English majors, to show how English studies can be used both in college and in their career choices and to expose them as well to the sheer pleasure of reading and writing.

"This course introduces issues and debates that inform contemporary literary studies. We will read a collection of theoretical and critical writings that have challenged established ideas and reoriented conventional thinking. We will use Mary Shelley’s story of a “hideous phantasm of a man” as a testing ground for thinking about literary theory. Shelley’s Frankenstein has inspired a proliferation of creative works (films, comic books, novels), and also a broad array of theoretical approaches. We’ll read iconic works of critical theory (likely including those of Claudia Rankine, Immanuel Kant, Mary Wollstonecraft, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Michel Foucault, and Judith Butler) to explore how these thinkers’ ideas can enrich our understanding of Mary Shelley’s novel and its adaptations. Grades will be based on short assignments (including discussion board posts and open-notebook quizzes), short papers, a final “closer look” paper, and a Frankenstein roundtable. "

This course explores the unique challenges and artistic choices involved in adapting war stories from their original literary forms (novels, short stories, articles) into complex and intriguing cinematic experiences. We will analyze a diverse range of films based on war literature, examining how directors, screenwriters, and cinematographers translate themes of conflict, trauma, and the human condition from the page to the screen.

Some films you can expect to dive into: All Quiet on the Western Front, Saving Private Ryan, Apocalypse Now!, Full Metal Jacket, Jarhead, Blackhawk Down, and American Sniper.

Course Objectives:

- Students will develop a critical understanding of the key elements of cinematic adaptation, including fidelity, adaptation, appropriation, interpretation, and transformation.

- Students will analyze how film adaptations of war stories address issues of historical accuracy, ethical representation, and the impact of violence on individuals and societies.

- Students will gain a deeper appreciation for the literary and cinematic artistry involved in portraying war on screen.

- Students will develop critical writing and analytical skills through in-depth film analyses and comparative essays.

"This course 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 the cinema engages with literature, and how literary stories are deformed and reformed through the medium of film. In addition, the class will learn to compare and contrast major novels with their famous film counterparts, understanding the legacies, controversies, and techniques that went into formulating these media powerhouses of popular culture. More specifically, this course will dive into the theme of novels/fairy tales/short stories and their animated film counterparts. We ask ourselves in this class about the role of film adaptation through animation and the visual arts, especially when combined with original scores and illustrators. In addition to this, we will explore the role of media as it is marketed as being either “kid safe” or “adult friendly”, expanding upon and investigating the boundaries that animated film adaptations present towards a modern populus. "

In recent years, the documentary, film's oldest genre, has regained stature as directors have used it to tackle difficult social topics. 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, disabilities, sexualities, various socioeconomic statuses, 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.)

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 examines how cinema constructs, challenges, and reimagines masculine identities through the so-called “guy movie”—e.g., movies that are about guys, and often (although, not always) have a largely male audience. This class uses the “guy movie” to broadly encompass films of multiple genres and styles (Western, war movie, character drama) that we will survey over the course of the semester. We’ll analyze these films through lenses such as film studies, feminist and queer theory, and critical masculinity studies. Class discussion and critical readings will focus on understanding how films both reflect and shape cultural understanding of masculinity, while examining possibilities for new imaginaries of masculine expression.

This course examines how cinema constructs, challenges, and reimagines masculine identities through the so-called “guy movie”—e.g., movies that are about guys, and often (although, not always) have a largely male audience. This class uses the “guy movie” to broadly encompass films of multiple genres and styles (Western, war movie, character drama) that we will survey over the course of the semester. We’ll analyze these films through lenses such as film studies, feminist and queer theory, and critical masculinity studies. Class discussion and critical readings will focus on understanding how films both reflect and shape cultural understanding of masculinity, while examining possibilities for new imaginaries of masculine expression.

This course focuses on the history of textual creation and communication from beginnings to the present. Cave painting, tattoo, graffiti, scroll, handmade books, machine-made books, photography, film and TV, digital media, AI: each of these technologies emerged from specific cultural conditions. We will investigate how some of these technologies emerge and how they shape culture in turn. How does a particular technology influence what types of texts are created, read, and kept? How might a meaning of a text change if it is remediated through a different technology? How might we define categories like “book,” “technology,” and “reading”? In coming to understand how various cultural contexts shaped, and were shaped by, tools of communication, we will develop a greater understanding of our own culture’s relationship with text technologies. This course will give you a foundation on which to evaluate the tools you use to communicate and to recognize how given tools negotiate permanence, ephemerality, materiality, functionality, and intentionality.

This is a core course for EWM and meets the genre requirement for LMC.

This course focuses on the history of textual creation and communication from beginnings to the present. Cave painting, tattoo, graffiti, scroll, handmade books, machine-made books, photography, film and TV, digital media, AI: each of these technologies emerged from specific cultural conditions. We will investigate how some of these technologies emerge and how they shape culture in turn. How does a particular technology influence what types of texts are created, read, and kept? How might a meaning of a text change if it is remediated through a different technology? How might we define categories like “book,” “technology,” and “reading”? In coming to understand how various cultural contexts shaped, and were shaped by, tools of communication, we will develop a greater understanding of our own culture’s relationship with text technologies. This course will give you a foundation on which to evaluate the tools you use to communicate and to recognize how given tools negotiate permanence, ephemerality, materiality, functionality, and intentionality.

This is a core course for EWM and meets the genre requirement for LMC.

This course considers how students, as writers, editors, and media analysts, can strategically address complex social and political problems in their local and campus communities. The course explores how communication technologies—from the printing press to digital platforms—have historically constructed the public sphere, determining who is included and how discourse is managed. The class trains students to use advanced editing, writing, and media strategies to intervene strategically in and shape public discourse. Students simultaneously examine how social issues reshape communication practices. Students will investigate how media ecologies frame public debates. Through in-depth case studies, students will analyze how publics are mobilized, how rhetorical strategies advocate for human rights, and how power impacts access to text production. A core element of the course is learning to conduct stakeholder analyses and evaluate the infrastructures that support texts’ circulation. The course culminates in a final action-oriented project where students craft a network of texts aimed at moving people to act on an issue in their local community or on campus.

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 considering the meaning of ‘remix,’ interrogating the word as a point of rhetorical inquiry. Then, we will develop our own collective theory of ‘remix’ which then may inform future analyses of others’ remixes. 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.

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 considering the meaning of ‘remix,’ interrogating the word as a point of rhetorical inquiry. Then, we will develop our own collective theory of ‘remix’ which then may inform future analyses of others’ remixes. 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.

This course investigates the nature of textuality—the production and circulation of texts across various modalities—and positions students’ expertise in analyzing, editing, and composing texts as an essential leadership skill for driving systemic change within organizations and communities. The study of textuality, a cornerstone of the humanities and rhetorical theory, holds that our world is full of complex texts to be interpreted and strategically engaged. True to the Latin root texere ("to weave"), this course understands all social structures—from corporate branding and institutional policy to media narratives and political discourse—as texts that can be interpreted, critiqued, and strategically rewritten. Developing these skillsets translates directly to our leadership capacity: the ability to envision, align, and inspire collective action. Like writing itself, leadership is an adaptive craft—recursive, integrative, and deeply human—demanding technical expertise alongside humility and collaboration. Students will apply participatory-action models of inquiry, rhetorical analysis, and composition to address systemic issues and build lasting change. The major assignment will be a professional portfolio that includes a multimedia text for public or organizational change, an academic essay synthesizing theory and strategy, and a reflective narrative on your profession path and vision of leadership. This course ensures students are prepared to lead change not only in the careers they enter but also the communities they care about.

This course will explore how books have been bound, branded, and marketed to consumers from the early eighteenth century to today. From thinking about publishers’ early strategies of using attractive bookbindings to entice potential purchasers to more recent examples of how publishers are turning to social media influencers to reach new audiences, this course will encourage students to think about how literature exists within a complex consumer culture. Along with historical case studies—such as the eighteen-century publisher John Newbery who invented the practice of selling children’s books alongside literary-themed toys—we will consider more recent examples from the literary marketplace—such as cover design trends in “chick lit,” romance novels, and texts that are marketed anew after being adapted into movies or TV shows. The class will feature visits to Special Collections to see historical examples as well as guest visits from those in the publishing industry today. The assignments throughout the course offer students options for creativity as well as more traditional research. Ultimately, this seminar is designed to help you understand how current trends in the publishing industry are linked to much earlier historical developments.

This seminar-style course will rely on active student discussion. For the final assignment, students will have the option to produce either a robust research essay or their own comprehensive, research-based marketing plan for a literary work.

This course focuses on the 1920s “New Negro” movement or Harlem Renaissance, a moment of vibrant cultural and intellectual activity by African American and other African Diaspora reformers, poets, novelists, playwrights, actors, painters, and musicians. The Harlem Renaissance, alongside the black experience that in part informed it, is crucial to our fullest understanding of not just (American) modernity per se, but also European and Anglo-American modernism. We will stress the works of some of the period’s prominent thinkers and artists: W.E.B. Du Bois, James Weldon Johnson, Alain Locke, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, George Schuyler, Claude McKay, Wallace Thurman, Nella Larsen, and Jean Toomer. A number of critical expositions would help us frame our exploration of the focal novels: one, Alain Locke’s, which announces and celebrates the presence of the “New Negro”; two, by Jesse Matz, who introduces us to the modern novel; three, Nathan Irvin Huggins’s, which judges the movement a “failure”; and four, a rebuttal by Houston A. Baker, Jr., who rejects Huggins’s conclusion and insists on the movement’s successes. No matter one’s views on the era, or how literary historians parse its contexts, debates, interracial exchanges, accomplishments, legacy, and heyday—1920-1929, 1920-1935, or 1925-1960—what remains true is that the Harlem Renaissance, the first Black Arts movement, produced some of the most well-known black intellectual and creative figures to-date. Our goal is to gain a complex appreciation of this movement and its place, especially relative to the Jazz Age, to American modernist historiography, concerns and aesthetics.

This course will help students understand the field of English Studies from its conception until now. As a class, we will explore different subfields of English studies such as creative writing, rhetoric and composition, literature, film, and cultural studies. Students should expect to finish the course with a better understanding of their professional options as English majors as well as more clarity on their areas of interest within the field.

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 filmed adaptations, and we will consider the differences between what the author wrote and these alternate performance genres.

We will be exploring texts and textuality in part by creating a lot of texts ourselves. It useful and interesting to consider “textuality,” or characteristics we identify as important to our understanding that something is a text. By experiencing texts both intimately and at a distance, we hope to gain a fuller understanding of what a text can be. We will look at mediated communication very broadly, since the question posed by our course title seems to imply that we should be able to figure out what “not-a-text” is, too. This is primarily an experiential class, and trying to answer the question that is the title of our class is one of the main goals of our class activities.

A study of literature by and about women who wander, transgress, explore, act out, or simply won’t stay in their “place.” From a seventeenth century, cross-dressing “Roaring Girl,” to Nella Larsen’s restless Helga Crane and white-passing Clare Kendry, to Toni Morrison’s unforgettable Sula Peace, and beyond. . . these women and their stories are bound to inspire stimulating discussion.

This course satisfies the diversity requirement.

This course will survey various works of William Shakespeare, including plays and films. We will analyze the philosophical, political, and aesthetic aspects of these works, asking how Shakespeare utilized literary devices, and try to understand why certain writers and critics have revered Shakespeare for so many centuries. Assigned works include: The Tempest, Midsummer Night’s Dream, Macbeth, King Lear, Hamlet, Othello, Titus Andronicus.

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, hegemony, and historiography. What is literary criticism? How do we determine literary merit? Why do people see Shakespeare as great?

What the novel is to us moderns, the romance was to medieval readers: the most accommodating and widely registered forum of fictional expression. The corpus of medieval English romance includes finely wrought masterpieces as well as pulp fiction; it embraces the sublime as well as the absurd, and most everything in between. In this course we will become acquainted with the imaginative and stylistic range of the romance genre in medieval England, with a focus on those stories and traditions that have most resonated over time. A first substantial segment of the course will be devoted to the "matter of Britain", i.e., the resilient romance tradition of King Arthur and his knights, which to a large extent defines our modern apprehension of the Middle Ages. We will then consider the "matter of England," which follows the adventures of homegrown knightly heroes as imbued by folktale patterns. Finally, we will explore diverse thought-worlds and locales in romances that afford a glimpse of faerie land and other sites of cultural difference and exchange. No prior experience with Middle English language or literature is expected, but a willingness to engage with texts in the original language, with the help of translation aids, is important.

This course meets the pre-1800 requirement.

This class will focus on early modern popular texts, or “bestsellers”: the particular viral texts as well as broader genres that were most widely read and circulated in early modern English culture, 1550-1660. We’ll find out what people were reading, what genres and forms were most common and widespread, and how readers interacted with their texts.

Our class deliberately dodges the “literary canon” in favor of the popular literature that people of diverse backgrounds enjoyed in this time period. This does, of course, include at least some texts that became canonical, but it also includes much more: Broadside ballads, almanacs, popular pamphlets, jest books, sermons and bibles, household and husbandry manuals, cookbooks, plays, local and international news. Renaissance readers read widely. Our objectives include reading these texts closely, becoming familiar with the contexts in which our “bestsellers” were produced and consumed, considering varying definitions of popularity and the formation of the literary canon at the exclusion of “popular” and “genre” literature, and developing a nuanced view of early modern readerships and literacies.

This course fulfills the genre requirement and the pre-1800 requirement for LMC (but may not count toward both simultaneously).

This class will focus on early modern popular texts, or “bestsellers”: the particular viral texts as well as broader genres that were most widely read and circulated in early modern English culture, 1550-1660. We’ll find out what people were reading, what genres and forms were most common and widespread, and how readers interacted with their texts.

Our class deliberately dodges the “literary canon” in favor of the popular literature that people of diverse backgrounds enjoyed in this time period. This does, of course, include at least some texts that became canonical, but it also includes much more: Broadside ballads, almanacs, popular pamphlets, jest books, sermons and bibles, household and husbandry manuals, cookbooks, plays, local and international news. Renaissance readers read widely. Our objectives include reading these texts closely, becoming familiar with the contexts in which our “bestsellers” were produced and consumed, considering varying definitions of popularity and the formation of the literary canon at the exclusion of “popular” and “genre” literature, and developing a nuanced view of early modern readerships and literacies.

This course fulfills the genre requirement and the pre-1800 requirement for LMC (but may not count toward both simultaneously).

This course offers an introduction to the diverse and dynamic field of literary studies, with attention to both Anglo-American and global traditions. We will broaden our understanding of what counts as a “literary” text by including films, video games, visual art, and non-fiction alongside more traditional genres. Through close reading and critical analyses, we will consider how texts across genres, cultures, and historical moments reflect and shape human experience. Whether you are a seasoned reader, or new to literary studies, this course will provide a foundation for appreciating and interpreting literature in its many forms.

This course offers an introduction to the diverse and dynamic field of literary studies, with attention to both Anglo-American and global traditions. We will broaden our understanding of what counts as a “literary” text by including films, video games, visual art, and non-fiction alongside more traditional genres. Through close reading and critical analyses, we will consider how texts across genres, cultures, and historical moments reflect and shape human experience. Whether you are a seasoned reader, or new to literary studies, this course will provide a foundation for appreciating and interpreting literature in its many forms.

In this course, students will be assigned readings representative of a broad range of literary genres and cultures. These readings will cover a variety of literary movements and historical eras. The readings will include, but are not limited to, selections from the Western canon. Written analysis of literary works will be required. Students will be provided with opportunities to practice critical interpretation.

This introductory course focuses on the fundamentals of Western literature. We will study multiple genres, such as excerpts from novels, short stories, and poetry. The course will examine a wide range of authors including Herman Melville, Miguel de Cervantes, James Baldwin, Octavia E. Butler, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Frost, Ernest Hemingway, Frantz Kafka, Toni Morrison, Edgar Allan Poe, Ezra Pound and more.

This course introduces students to such narrative elements as point of view, characterization, setting, and symbolism in prose fiction and provides an introduction to the basic approaches of literary analysis. Most of our texts will be American short stories and novels from the 20th century.

As an introductory course for aspiring fiction writers, this class explores the fundamentals of fiction writing—setting, plot, perspective, structure, and more. But it also asks: are these elements merely matters of craft, or are they inherently political? Alongside studying Western classics by writers such as Anton Chekhov, James Joyce, and Alice Munro, we will practice what feminist scholars and writers Judith Fetterley and Adrienne Rich call "resisting" and "revisioning." What happens when we situate the seemingly neutral choices of craft in a world where every choice carries real consequences? How can we read and reread the classics differently? Ultimately, this course is designed not only to teach the basics of storytelling but also to encourage writers to consider how their tools might respond to real-world concerns.

Stories can be sentimental. Hence, this course reads stories as a form charged with feelings and meanings. We will turn inward and study how stories evoke and manipulate emotional responses through narrative forms because significant to our approach is affect theory.

We will study ten emotions across a variety of global fiction. With the necessary readings, we will:

• explore how narrative forms and feelings create meanings.

• uncover how emotions are structured and disrupted within storytelling.

• unpack how authors manipulate feelings of discomfort, longing, or joy to challenge assumptions or reinforce ideologies.

Students will be tasked with writing stories that reflect these feelings. Tuesdays will be devoted to exploring the feelings in stories. Thursdays are shaped after a workshop-style format, where students will present and critique their stories, allowing for collaborative exploration of how the emotion and narrative techniques studied manifest in their own writing. Through this practice, students' understanding of literature will develop, and they will be stimulated to analyze the emotional landscapes of stories and their wider social implications.

This course introduces students to the foundational literary genre of the short story. This course is an introduction to the history and variety of the short story as a form, including selections from the Western Canon, and teaches students to understand, analyze and think critically about the formal aspects of the short story (including point of view, narration, tone, characterization, and theme) that are essential to all literary study.

“Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?” So goes a line from Mary Oliver’s poem “Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches.” In this course, students will have the chance to study poetry and its elements—things like musicality, imagery, meter, metaphor, and form. Through our close and critical inspection of celebrated poets from a variety of eras, from Shakespeare all the way up to Yusef Komunyakaa and those writing in 2026, this course will create a solid foundation for students interested in thoroughly analyzing, understanding, and enjoying the art of poetry.

This course begins from the premise that science fiction, as a genre of “cognitive estrangement,” in Darko Suvin’s famous definition, holds a distinctive capacity to address, interrogate, and reimagine ecological crises. We will explore how speculative narratives challenge the boundaries between human and nonhuman, culture and nature, technology and ecology, while offering visions of possible ecofutures and alternative modes of living. Focusing primarily on American science fiction from the 1960s to the present, we will examine key works in dialogue with the rise of modern environmental movements and ecological thought. Through novels, short stories, and critical readings, we will ask: How does science fiction represent the interconnectedness of life systems? How do imagined worlds grapple with climate change, species extinction, resource scarcity, and planetary ethics? Can speculative storytelling expand our ecological imagination beyond apocalypse and survivalism toward visions of collective flourishing?

James Hilton warns, “There will be no safety by arms, no help from authority, no answer in science. It will rage till every flower of culture is trampled, and all human things are levelled in a vast chaos” (Lost Horizon, 189). Hilton’s cautionary vision embodies the anxieties that animate much twentieth- and twenty-first-century science fiction. This course examines how speculative writers imagine worlds and confront the limits of rationality and control. Our readings foreground technological hubris, apocalyptic transformation, and the fragility of culture. We will approach science fiction not as a lesser form, but as a dynamic genre that interrogates the state, the prospects, and the very nature of the human condition. We will trace the genre’s dialogue with the historical present—from the Industrial Revolution through the information age—examining how rapid social and technological change shapes narrative possibilities.

"“The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.” ~Joy Harjo Our course explores the rich tradition of female poets who address food in their writing. Rather than distinguish the poets by epochs or forms, they represent a smorgasbord of social, cultural, political, and aesthetic perspectives. Together, these women exemplify how they employ food as a metaphor to explore themes such as memory, family, cultural identity, place, love, desire, oppression, sexuality, death, and celebration. Specifically, we will feast on a buffet of works by Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath, Lucille Clifton, Naomi Shihab Nye, Patricia Smith, Joy Harjo, Rita Dove, Audre Lorde, Joyce Carol Oats, Sharon Olds, Sandra Cisneros, Tracy K. Smith, Bernadette Mayer, and many more. Our course will examine food as a poetic device to write about the archetypal, sensuous, and physical nature of a woman’s appetite. Pull up a chair to the table as we evaluate how meals are similar to poetry in that both are shared experiences that bring people together."

From the haunted women of Gothic fiction to the defiant heroines of contemporary novels, how have women been depicted in American literature, and what do these depictions reveal about the relationship between culture, power, and lived experience? This course explores how literature has constructed, reflected, and challenged societal ideals of femininity and womanhood through the use, among other things, of gendered metaphors (e.g. “motherland,” “virgin wilderness”), feminine archetypes like the femme fatale, the tragic mulatto, and the feminine grotesque; and allegorical cultural symbols (e.g. Statue of Liberty, Columbia, Lady Justice). In addition to studying works by authors such as Kate Chopin, Zora Neale Hurston, Flannery O’Connor, Toni Morrison, Claudia Rankine, and Jesmyn Ward, coursework includes analysis papers, an annotated bibliography, and regular participation. Meets Diversity requirement.

From the haunted women of Gothic fiction to the defiant heroines of contemporary novels, how have women been depicted in American literature, and what do these depictions reveal about the relationship between culture, power, and lived experience? This course explores how literature has constructed, reflected, and challenged societal ideals of femininity and womanhood through the use, among other things, of gendered metaphors (e.g. “motherland,” “virgin wilderness”), feminine archetypes like the femme fatale, the tragic mulatto, and the feminine grotesque; and allegorical cultural symbols (e.g. Statue of Liberty, Columbia, Lady Justice). In addition to studying works by authors such as Kate Chopin, Zora Neale Hurston, Flannery O’Connor, Toni Morrison, Claudia Rankine, and Jesmyn Ward, coursework includes analysis papers, an annotated bibliography, and regular participation. Meets Diversity requirement.

From the haunted women of Gothic fiction to the defiant heroines of contemporary novels, how have women been depicted in American literature, and what do these depictions reveal about the relationship between culture, power, and lived experience? This course explores how literature has constructed, reflected, and challenged societal ideals of femininity and womanhood through the use, among other things, of gendered metaphors (e.g. “motherland,” “virgin wilderness”), feminine archetypes like the femme fatale, the tragic mulatto, and the feminine grotesque; and allegorical cultural symbols (e.g. Statue of Liberty, Columbia, Lady Justice). In addition to studying works by authors such as Kate Chopin, Zora Neale Hurston, Flannery O’Connor, Toni Morrison, Claudia Rankine, and Jesmyn Ward, coursework includes analysis papers, an annotated bibliography, and regular participation. Meets diversity requirement.

From the haunted women of Gothic fiction to the defiant heroines of contemporary novels, how have women been depicted in American literature, and what do these depictions reveal about the relationship between culture, power, and lived experience? This course explores how literature has constructed, reflected, and challenged societal ideals of femininity and womanhood through the use, among other things, of gendered metaphors (e.g. “motherland,” “virgin wilderness”), feminine archetypes like the femme fatale, the tragic mulatto, and the feminine grotesque; and allegorical cultural symbols (e.g. Statue of Liberty, Columbia, Lady Justice). In addition to studying works by authors such as Kate Chopin, Zora Neale Hurston, Flannery O’Connor, Toni Morrison, Claudia Rankine, and Jesmyn Ward, coursework includes analysis papers, an annotated bibliography, and regular participation. Meets diversity requirement.

This course explores how graphic novels are a medium for engaging with urgent sociopolitical, cultural, historical, and environmental issues. In addition to the aesthetics, we will examine the themes and the development of the genre of the Graphic Novel from popular culture to high-literary genre. Students are invited to analyze the visual narratives combined with the texts, imagery, and design to deepen their understanding of human resilience, the complexities of history, and ecological crisis. To this end this course will look at a wide variety of graphic novels from memoirs such as Persepolis and It's Lonely at the Centre of the Earth, to journalistic endeavors, to superhero comics and Japanese Manga. Drawing insights from historical inquiry, environmental studies, and through literary analysis, this course critically examines how graphic novels interrogate traditional narratives, amplify marginalized voices, make the public aware, and inspire action.

Courses in Literature and Medicine often study how literary texts address questions in medical ethics and public health. In Literature and Medicine: Diseases and Debates, students will read a selection of brief essays, fiction, poetry, and other texts from the 19th century alongside critical and historical work from today’s medical landscape, in order to understand the roots of contemporary medical debates and how they have changed over time. These controversies helped shape the landscape of medical ethics. We will compare, for example, how questions around anesthesia, patient privacy, or contagion play out “then and now.” This course builds skills in critical reading and writing, cultural practice, and ethics. 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.

This course will help students understand the field of English Studies from its conception until now. As a class, we will explore different subfields of English studies such as creative writing, rhetoric and composition, literature, film, and cultural studies. Students should expect to finish the course with a better understanding of their professional options as English majors as well as more clarity on their areas of interest within the field.

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 in U.S. American literature from the colonial era to the contemporary moment of the “new gothic.” We will 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. Coursework includes analysis papers, an oral presentation, and regular participation in class discussions.

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 in U.S. American literature from the colonial era to the contemporary moment of the “new gothic.” We will 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. Coursework includes analysis papers, an oral presentation, and regular participation in class discussions.

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 in U.S. American literature from the colonial era to the contemporary moment of the “new gothic.” We will 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. Coursework includes analysis papers, an oral presentation, and regular participation in class discussions.

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 in U.S. American literature from the colonial era to the contemporary moment of the “new gothic.” We will 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. Coursework includes analysis papers, an oral presentation, and regular participation in class discussions.

As a genre, “the novel” may not be indigenous to Africa. But since its arrival there decades and decades ago, the form has not only found existing fertile ground on which to sprout. It has also taken deep, wide, and aggressive roots, presently constituting the continent’s most practiced, recognized, and influential literary genre. While staying elementally true to its European origins, it has also been forced to morph, to assume new shapes and speak in multiple accents: ethnic, national and regional African languages, as well as the colonial inheritances of English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese. Telling their stories, read worldwide, and crafting some of the literary world’s astonishing prose fiction in the past hundred years, African writers have won many of the most prestigious literary awards. To some readers unfamiliar with the breadth and depth of African fiction, the African novel begins with the Nigerian author Chinua Achebe and his classic Things Fall Apart and ends with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie of TED Talk fame. This course aims to help change that misperception, that narrative. My goal is to offer students a broad yet rich overview of the history and diversity of the novel in Africa. We will illustrate the following “types”: “magical realism,” the diary novel, the colonial encounter novel, the epistolary novel, the bildungsroman, speculative (African-futurism, not Afrofuturism) novel, and the queer/coming-out novel.

In this course, students will be assigned readings representative of a broad range of literary genres and cultures. These readings will cover a variety of literary movements and historical eras. The readings will include, but are not limited to, selections from the Western canon. Written analysis of literary works will be required. Students will be provided with opportunities to practice critical interpretation.

This introductory course focuses on the fundamentals of Western literature. We will study multiple genres, such as novels, short stories, and poetry. The course will examine a wide range of authors including, Miguel de Cervantes, Phillis Wheatley, Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, Philip K. Dick, Helen Fielding, Edgar Allan Poe, Shirley Jackson, James Baldwin, Franz Kafka, Lord Byron, Emily Dickenson and more.

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. In this course, students will be assigned readings representative of a broad range of literary genres and cultures. These readings will cover a variety of literary movements and historical eras. The readings will include, but are not limited to, selections from the Western canon. Written analysis of literary works may be required. Students will be provided with opportunities to practice critical interpretation. The course provides 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 course introduces English majors to the most noteworthy authors, formative texts, and key imaginative traditions 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 literary experiments of the eighteenth century as an age of progress and exploration. Students will encounter the major canonical authors of these periods (the Beowulf-poet, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Swift) as well as marginalized voic~es--especially female--and, toward the end of the period, transatlantic perspectives. 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 thematic investments of each era will be contextualized within the social and cultural history that shaped them. Fills an LMC Gateway/core requirement.
Required Text (available at FSU Bookstore). Exact edition required. The Broadview Anthology of British Literature: Concise Edition, Volume A, 3rd edition, ed. Joseph Black et al. ISBN 978-1-55481-312-4.

This course will focus on representations of the natural world – that is, the nonhuman beings that surrounds us – across a variety of genres, such as poetry, nonfiction, and fiction, including bestiaries, fables, emblems, and scientific treatises. We will examine a range of media, and our discussions will be grounded in critical readings of 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 potential for application of acquired knowledge and skills in a range of contexts, including potential outings outside the classroom.