Undergraduate Courses

To some readers, the Black body in fiction registers primarily as a symbol of oppression or resilience. This course aims to complicate that reading. It offers students a sustained encounter with the particular and often unglamorous embodied conditions that African American writers have represented across two centuries, and it asks what changes when we read those conditions not as metaphor but as the text's primary subject. We will trace this literary history across five key movements: 1) the slave narrative, in which writers like Harriet Jacobs documented the enslaved body itself as evidentiary archive; 2) the conjure tradition, exemplified by Charles Chesnutt, theorizing healing outside biomedical authority; 3) the modernist and postwar novel, in which writers like Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin represent the psychiatric institution and addiction as instruments of racial surveillance and control; 4) the feminist and post-civil rights novel, where Toni Morrison, Gayl Jones, and Toni Cade Bambara reckon with the reproductive body under duress; and 5) the speculative tradition, in which writers like Octavia Butler imagine non-biomedical, non-ableist definitions of wellness altogether. This approach connects our literary analysis directly to health humanities, Black disability studies, and Black feminist health science, positioning literature not as commentary on health but as a mode of health knowledge production in its own right. Our goal, ultimately, is to gain a complex appreciation of how this literary tradition has thought, and continues to think, about the body, well beyond the register of trauma alone.

This course fulfills the State-Mandated Writing (W) credit and Exploring the Human Experience credit.

This course examines selected works of major American writers, where we will be looking at the works of the "uncanny femme." We will navigate a survey of prominent female American writers throughout major genres and historical contexts, authors who require us to subvert the liminal stratums above, below, behind, and right in front of the male gaze. Authors of interest--who aim to make the familiar deeply unfamiliar--include Shirley Jackson, Flannery O'Connor, Octavia Butler, and Min Jin Lee.
This course fulfills the State-Mandated Writing (W) credit.

This course examines selected works of major American writers, and we will be specifically looking at the textual evolution from Native American oral tradition to the literary powerhouses constituting the genre of the "Indigenous Gothic." The course's foundation lies in the understanding of Indigenous folklore, where we will read the mythology of major Native Tribes, including tales from the Seminole Tribe of Florida, the Cherokee Nation, the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, and more. In addition to folklore, the “Indigenous Gothic” requires us to explore pinnacle texts of early American Romanticism, British Colonialism, and Modernism, thus emphasizing the popular treatment of Native American portrayals through authors such as Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, Lydia Marie Child, Robert Montgomery Bird, and Toni Morrison. Prominent Native American authors of interest also include Louise Erdrich, Tommy Orange, and Stephen Graham Jones. We seek to understand the ever-evolving notions of the "American Gothic" as it relates to the country's nuanced, horrific, and tragic relationship with Native national identity, American Indian removal, and inter-generational trauma.
This course fulfills State-Mandated Writing credit (W) credit.

This course examines Asian American literature within a broad global framework. "Asian American" is a fluid, contested category spanning South, East, and Southeast Asian lineages. Asian American emerges through migration, labor, and exclusion and assimilation, categories that shift as the historical conditions organizing them change. We track how the texts move across borders, narrating how capitalist expansion, labor migration, and geopolitical realignment reshape diaspora and belonging, and how writers respond to (and sometimes resist) the modernity that produced their displacement. We will borrow from transnationalism, cosmopolitanism, and multiculturalism as tools and examine what each one obscures. We interrogate who gets to represent a community, who's accused of appropriating it, and what authentic voice even means when the category itself was never stable, and how individual stories get read. At the end of the semester, students will be able to trace how the Asian American texts engage with and sometimes challenge modernity while also questioning and reshaping it.

This is a period course that studies the origins and evolution of the American novel in its 19th century iterations, including the seduction novel, the gothic, the philosophical romance, the plantation romance, and early historical realism and naturalism. The course is designed to privilege reading the novels themselves and to allow topics of discussion to emerge from that shared experience. At the same time, we will trace prominent formal elements and thematic concerns, situated in rich historical context and guided by theory and criticism.
This course meets the "Understanding Genre" requirement for majors.

This is a period course that studies the origins and evolution of the American novel in its 19th century iterations, including the seduction novel, the gothic, the philosophical romance, the plantation romance, and early historical realism and naturalism. The course is designed to privilege reading the novels themselves and to allow topics of discussion to emerge from that shared experience. At the same time, we will trace prominent formal elements and thematic concerns, situated in rich historical context and guided by theory and criticism.
This course meets the "Understanding Genre" requirement for majors.

American Novels will explore the term "American" and the idea of what it means for a work to be an "American novel." We will study the current events taking place in the timeline of the fictions when the novels were written. The course is discussion based and usually covers five novels per semester. Texts in the past have included, and future semesters may include these novels and others: Dune, A Visit from the Goon Squad, Middlesex, The Secret History, The Underground Railroad, Catcher in the Rye, Demon Copperhead, The Handmaid's Tale.

How does Florida represent its early history and culture through museums, parks, monuments, and other public spaces? What kind of stories does the City of Tallahassee tell about itself? How does the literary tradition of Florida open up or reveal perspectives on Florida's past that cultures of commemoration and public education fail to consider? This course will tackle questions such as these by surveying the early literature of Florida and then putting our reading into conversation with public memory places in and around Tallahassee. That means you will be making a few site visits in town and analyzing the material rhetorics of history and place. The goal is to understand major issues foundational to Florida's identity. We will look at Florida literature itself as a form of cultural memory that shapes both the history and imagination of the state; conversely, we will approach sites of public memory as narrative forms which tell stories about Florida at the intersection of fact and fancy, history and politics.

No American can escape our history, but Southern writers have an acute awareness of how the past continues to warp the present. We will explore a variety of texts from and about the South, with special attention to how Southern writers confront race and gender to illuminate how the United States continues to struggle with the past. 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.

For the English Major, this course satisfies the 4000-level course requirement and the "Understanding Genres" requirement.

This course investigates how contemporary African American and Diasporic fiction engages with the "archive"-- both as a physical repository of historical records and as a conceptual space of power, erasure, and authority. In the wake of transatlantic slavery, Jim Crow, and systemic displacement, the institutional archive is frequently marked by radical silences, structural violence, and the outright absence of Black subjectivities.
Over fifteen weeks, we will interrogate how Black writers utilize literature as an alternative archival record. We will examine how these authors employ memory, folklore, speculative genealogy, and oral history to reconstruct histories that have been omitted, stolen, or redacted. Through critical readings and close textual analysis, students will explore how fiction functions not merely as entertainment, but as a site of historical reclamation, counter-history, and archival justice.

This course satisfies the Upper-Division Writing requirement, and the Exploring the Human Experience requirement.

The Graphic Narrative Workshop is composed of eight art-studio majors and eight creative writing majors. (Creative Writing majors receive credit for a 4000-level CRW course.) They work together in collaborative teams to make original comics. They present and discuss their original comics. We will be reading Making Comics (Scott McCloud), Words for Pictures (Bendis) and a selection of comics chosen by the students.

According to Stephen King, to write fiction is "to shovel shit from a sitting position." In this class, we'll do a whole lot of shoveling. Our craft-oriented discussions will examine contemporary short stories, novel chapters, craft essays, and film excerpts. Our in-class exercises will investigate voice, character, dialogue, setting, and other building blocks. Our technique-driven workshops will explore the work of you and your peers. Together, we'll practice all stages of the writing process and do so boldly.

This course treats science fiction and fantasy as what they are: fiction. Good speculative writing demands the same craft any serious fiction demands--point of view, tension, characterization, image, scene, voice--plus a particular discipline: building imagined worlds that are fully realized yet inseparable from the stories their characters live through. A speculative premise that overshadows its characters is a gimmick. A character-driven story that could exist without its speculative world hasn't earned that world. The best speculative fiction makes both impossible to separate, and learning how writers achieve that integration is the central work of this course.
Students will read published science fiction and fantasy as writers, studying how stories work, the craft decisions that make them succeed or fail. They will choose science fiction or fantasy as their focus, write original speculative fiction, and develop an inventory of techniques they can employ deliberately. Through structured workshop, they will learn to give feedback that engages the specific craft of a piece: its structure, its tensions, how its speculative elements function within the story. Revision is central; students will re-envision their work, not merely correct it. The course also introduces the publishing landscape for speculative short fiction, including how submissions work and what a writer's next steps might look like.
All experience levels are welcome. The only prerequisites are a willingness to try and an openness to growth. You will leave with revised work, a working craft vocabulary, and the awareness to keep developing long after the semester ends.

Every story is made up of choices, including the ones a writer may not realize they are making. Why does this story need this particular narrator? Why start here instead of somewhere else? Why slow down for one moment and skip over another? Why does the dialogue feel alive here and falls flat there? These are some of the questions we will engage with in this course. Through intentional craft reading, discussion, writing exercises, and workshops, we will study the techniques writers use to build their stories. We will read published fiction with a writer's curiosity, taking stories apart to understand how they were built, and borrowing, testing, and transforming what we noticed in our own work. You will experiment with these techniques in your own writing, share work with your peers, and practice giving and receiving detailed/useful feedback. The goal is to leave you with a set of possibilities for your fiction and a more conscious sense of the choices available to you when a story is not yet doing what you want it to do.

This course is a generative, workshop-based exercise in the elements of fiction: point of view, conflict, characterization, tone, and image.

This course is for aspiring poets and critics. The course studies the elements of poetry with some practice in writing poetry.

What can a poem do? In this course, we will explore the fundamentals of writing poems, challenge our conceptions of poetry, and embrace experimentation. We will read, write, and discuss poetry in a low-stakes, creative environment, cultivating our personal interests and surprising ourselves with lyric possibility. Activities will include generative and reflective writing, workshops, revision, and conversations about poems and craft readings. We'll emphasize contemporary lyric poetry, poetic voice, and the defying of traditional conventions. Together, we'll explore the sheer range of what a poem can be, and who you can be as a poet. Bring your questions, curiosities, and obsessions. Writers of all experience are welcome.

How can a few carefully chosen words change the way we feel, imagine, and understand the world around us? In our course, we'll explore how poets transform language into shared experiences that surprise, delight, and move us. Through close reading, thoughtful conversation, creative experimentation, and generative workshops, we'll learn to notice the choices poets make on the page so we can approach language with a sense of play. We'll try things out, take creative risks, and pursue the ideas that spark our curiosity. Together, we'll discover that there isn't one path to writing a poem. Instead, we'll find our own ways of making meaning on the page.

This course will provide students the opportunity to write poetry extensively but also to read books by celebrated poets including Louise Glück, Terrance Hayes, A.R. Ammons, and Alice Fulton. We will read books of poems by these poets, and others, then discuss what we find therein together. The workshops in this course, in addition to shorter assignments and creative prompts, will be a great opportunity for students to question, strengthen, and extend their writing and writing practice. The course will culminate in the completion of a portfolio of original work.

Poets have been learning from each other for centuries. In Poetic Technique, you will learn from the poets who came before you. Be open to influence as you read the weekly packet of poems. Each week you will learn how to write a certain kind of poem: monologue, self-portrait, ekphrastic, experimental, sestina and more. After you've read and studied the poems up for the week, write a poem of your own. Post your poem to Canvas and reply to poems by your peers. By the end of the course, you will have written 10 new poems using a variety of techniques.

This course enables practice in fiction. Students are expected to work toward submission and publication of manuscripts. We will be workshopping two full length stories by each student during the semester. May be repeated to a maximum of nine credit hours.
This course fulfills the requirement for Scholarship in Practice.

Fiction Workshop (CRW 4120) is a course on the craft and art of fiction writing, only available for students who have satisfactorily completed Fiction Technique (CRW 3110). This course assumes you have a serious interest in writing, reading, and discussing fiction. 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 course will primarily follow the workshop model, and therefore student writing, and the discussion of same, will be our main focus. To that end, over 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).
This course fulfills the requirement for Scholarship in Practice.

This course hopes to introduce the student to a variety of means to a very specific end: the crafting of a poem that is not only a clear expression of your imagination, but that is capable of becoming an imaginative vehicle for its reader. This pursuit will be carried out within the context of weekly guided and independent readings of a wide selection of contemporary poetry. Students will concentrate especially on writing for an audience, creating concrete and evocative imagery, and exploring a variety of different strategies for the drafting and revising of their poems.
This course fulfills the requirement for Scholarship in Practice.

TThis course hopes to introduce the student to a variety of means to a very specific end: the crafting of a poem that is not only a clear expression of your imagination, but that is capable of becoming an imaginative vehicle for its reader. This pursuit will be carried out within the context of weekly guided and independent readings of a wide selection of contemporary poetry. Students will concentrate especially on writing for an audience, creating concrete and evocative imagery, and exploring a variety of different strategies for the drafting and revising of their poems.
This course fulfills the requirement for Scholarship in Practice.

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. We'll study craft poems from Enheduanna and Nine Inch Nails to Jelly Roll Morton and Franny Choi, plus you'll present your own work, have one-on-one conferences with your instructor, keep a digital journal of ‚"bits" that you'll turn into ‚"kits" (more on that later), work closely with others in this class, and, if you put the hours in, finish up in April with a publishable portfolio. We'll teach, care for, and learn from one another unceasingly. We'll hit the gym! This may be the busiest class you've ever taken.
This course fulfills the requirement for Scholarship in Practice.

This course introduces students to key concepts in the study of rhetoric: to frameworks useful for the analysis of texts, events, communication, and other phenomena; and to the principles of rhetoric in the contexts of many media and cultures.

ENC 3021 is one of three core courses for the Editing, Writing, and Media (EWM) track, and as such, the course works to provide a foundation for the major. Studying the history of rhetoric provides students with foundational rhetorical principles and building blocks, crucial for writers, editors, and evolving scholars. This course introduces students to key concepts in the study
of rhetoric; to frameworks useful for the analysis of texts, events, communication, and other phenomena; and to the principles of rhetoric in contexts across media and cultures.

We will trace Western rhetoric as it has evolved and changed throughout its 2500-year history. Although this course offers a survey of significant Western rhetorical theories and practices from ancient Greece to contemporary culture, it also emphasizes the evolution of rhetorical knowledges and meaning making processes. We will engage with rhetoricians and rhetorical texts in order to develop our understanding of language, power, and knowledge.

This course introduces students to key concepts in the study of rhetoric: to frameworks useful for the analysis of texts, events, communication, and other phenomena; and to the principles of rhetoric in the contexts of many media and cultures.

This course explores the craft, ethics, and research obsessions of creative nonfiction, a genre that ranges from rigorously reported fact to lyric, associative personal essay, with much of its most compelling work landing in between. By examining prose craft as a set of tools for rendering something true about lived experience—time, place, grief, memory, culture, politics, identity, intersectionality, violence, the grotesque, and body horror—students will learn how contemporary essayists shape truth on the page while feeding their “weird” research interests. First, we will read published essays alongside craft essays, analyzing the decisions that shape a piece—where the voice lives, who gets to narrate and at what cost, how time is arranged, how a sentence moves, the cost of rendering real people onto the page, and how a structure contributes to meaning. Then we will write weekly journal entries and drafts, feeding our essays our weird research—the 2 a.m. rabbit holes, archival detours, and obscure obsessions that turn personal story into something stranger and more nuanced than memory alone can manage. Nothing is off-limits for topics, but we will think hard about what we owe the people who appear in and are impacted by our work. Students will workshop original essays, developing a critical vocabulary for discussing craft while cultivating rigorous, generous critique practices. By the end of the semester, students will have completed two polished essays and a writer’s portfolio.
This course fulfills the Upper-Division Writing requirement.

This course examines dystopian science fiction films as imagined worlds shaped by surveillance and systems of social control. Science fiction is a broad genre, and from the 1980s until the contemporary era, it has seen a common theme of what it means to live in a world where human behaviour is tracked, regulated, and managed, whether it is early cinematic visions of controlled industrial societies or contemporary films concerned with digital monitoring and predictive technologies. Through close analysis of key films such as, but not limited to, Blade Runner (1982), Brazil (1985), The Truman Show (1998), The Matrix (1999), and Ready Player One (2018), alongside various theoretical approaches from theorists such as Foucault and Deleuze, students will consider how dystopian science fiction represents the relationship between technology, power, and everyday life.

Together we will explore how dystopian films imagine societies organized around observation and control-- whether through centralized state authority, corporate power, or more subtle forms of self-surveillance. The leading questions of the course will focus on asking how the assigned films depict authoritarian societies structured by technology, including artificial intelligence, data systems, and automated governance, and how dystopian science fiction both questions and reinforces technological forms of social control. Taking a historical approach, the course will move from mid- to late-twentieth-century films to contemporary works to trace the evolving conventions and boundaries of dystopian science fiction as a genre.

"The problem is, first, to know when you are not writing well and, then, to be able to fix it." -- Toni Morrison
This course introduces students to the art and practice of creative nonfiction: a genre that blends storytelling techniques with lived experience, research, and reflection. Together, we'll read essays, memoir excerpts, profiles, and experimental forms by a diverse range of contemporary and classic writers such as Toni Morrison, Joan Didion, Roxane Gay, Beth Ann Fennelly, and Melissa Febos.
Throughout the semester, students will keep a personal journal using it as both a private space for reflection and a place to practice ethnographic note-taking: documenting daily life, observing cultural and personal moments, and gathering details that can later be transformed into essays.
Emphasis will be placed on writing as a process as we workshop original pieces: generating, experimenting, critiquing, and rewriting to strengthen drafting skills. Students will explore forms such as the personal essay, braided essay, and cultural critique, while also learning strategies for research and reflection. Through in-class workshops, students will learn to provide and receive critical and creative constructive criticism.
By the end of the semester, students will have produced a portfolio of original nonfiction pieces, grown more confident in their writing voice, and developed the tools to see their lived experience as material for meaningful art.
This course fulfills the Upper-Division Writing requirement.

We will look at lyric prose 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. We will talk about their variety of synthesized frames: political, social, cultural, historical, psychological. Pick and choose your instruments.
This course fulfills the Upper-Division Writing requirement.

"The problem is, first, to know when you are not writing well and, then, to be able to fix it." -- Toni Morrison
This course introduces students to the art and practice of creative nonfiction: a genre that blends storytelling techniques with lived experience, research, and reflection. Together, we'll read essays, memoir excerpts, profiles, and experimental forms by a diverse range of contemporary and classic writers such as Toni Morrison, Joan Didion, Roxane Gay, Beth Ann Fennelly, and Melissa Febos.
Throughout the semester, students will keep a personal journal using it as both a private space for reflection and a place to practice ethnographic note-taking: documenting daily life, observing cultural and personal moments, and gathering details that can later be transformed into essays.
Emphasis will be placed on writing as a process as we workshop original pieces: generating, experimenting, critiquing, and rewriting to strengthen drafting skills. Students will explore forms such as the personal essay, braided essay, and cultural critique, while also learning strategies for research and reflection. Through in-class workshops, students will learn to provide and receive critical and creative constructive criticism.
By the end of the semester, students will have produced a portfolio of original nonfiction pieces, grown more confident in their writing voice, and developed the tools to see their lived experience as material for meaningful art.
This course fulfills the Upper-Division Writing requirement.

In this course, we will be studying various approaches to how to write creative nonfiction, as theorized by authors such as Lee Gutkind, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Mary Karr. Twice a semester, students will be required to write and submit a pieces of creative, narrative nonfiction of their own, to be workshopped by the class. AI writing will not be allowed in this course--we are here to learn how to examine and improve our own writing in a supportive, learning-centered environment.
This course fulfills the Upper-Division Writing Requirement.

In this course, we will be studying various approaches to how to write creative nonfiction, as theorized by authors such as Lee Gutkind, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Mary Karr. Twice a semester, students will be required to write and submit a pieces of creative, narrative nonfiction of their own, to be workshopped by the class. AI writing will not be allowed in this course--we are here to learn how to examine and improve our own writing in a supportive, learning-centered environment.
This course fulfills the Upper-Division Writing Requirement.

This course will introduce students to studying William Shakespeare at the college level, including some of his major works and recent adaptations. We will examine and analyze Shakespeare’s sonnets as well as plays such as Macbeth, Hamlet, Othello, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Romeo and Juliet. One of the course’s overarching questions will be, Why do these 400-year-old plays still have appeal for actors and audiences? Students will be introduced to the historical Shakespeare, critical views of his work over the centuries, and the literary and historical contexts of his works. A research project will allow students to examine a play of their choice and study its themes.
This course fulfills the State-Mandated Writing (W) requirement.

This course will introduce students to studying William Shakespeare at the college level, including some of his major works and recent adaptations. We will examine and analyze Shakespeare’s sonnets as well as plays such as Macbeth, Hamlet, Othello, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Romeo and Juliet. One of the course’s overarching questions will be, Why do these 400-year-old plays still have appeal for actors and audiences? Students will be introduced to the historical Shakespeare, critical views of his work over the centuries, and the literary and historical contexts of his works. A research project will allow students to examine a play of their choice and study its themes.
This course fulfills the State-Mandated Writing (W) requirement.

This class introduces students to scriptwriting texts and techniques. Through the study of exemplary models of scriptwriting, students will become familiar with the conventions, genres, and strategies of the Television Pilot. Save the Cat Writes for TV by Jamie Nash will be the foundation alongside analyzing successful pilots (Fleabag, Beef, 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. Scripts will contain a single narrative over the series arc. By the end of the course, students will complete a polished draft of a TV pilot & a series bible.
This course fulfills the Upper Division Writing requirement.

The course explores the art, craft, and cultural consciousness of 21st-century screenwriting, focusing 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 fulfills the Upper-Division Writing requirement.

This class introduces students to scriptwriting texts and techniques. Through the study of exemplary models of scriptwriting, students will become familiar with the conventions, genres, and strategies of the Television Pilot. Save the Cat Writes for TV by Jamie Nash will be the foundation alongside analyzing successful pilots (Fleabag, Beef, 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. Scripts will contain a single narrative over the series arc. By the end of the course, students will complete a polished draft of a TV pilot & a series bible.
This course fulfills the Upper Division Writing requirement.

This course focuses on the principles of composing, especially across different composing spaces. Students create works in several different media, including (1) in print, (2) on the screen, and (3) for the network, while also learning how to edit the works deployed in each medium appropriately. In addition, students repurpose at least one of these works for another medium. Students conclude the course by creating a digital portfolio.
This course fulfills the EWM major's core requirement and the Upper-Division Writing requirement.

This course is one of three core courses for Editing, Writing, Media (EWM), and as such it helps provide a foundation for the major. This course treats writing as a social and rhetorical act--not just what a text says, but who it's written for, where it will circulate, and what it's meant to do once it gets there. We'll explore the principles of composing and editing across different media environments, paying close attention to how a text's audience and purpose shift as it moves from print to screen to network, and what that means for the choices we make as writers and editors. Students will: 1) understand principles of composition and rhetoric across composing spaces; 2) compose for three spaces--print (physical), digital (screen), and network (online)--using different technologies and design strategies; 3) revise and edit texts appropriately as they move between spaces; and 4) understand how a text's audience, context, and purpose shape--and are shaped by--the space it circulates in. Much of this work is grounded in real audiences: projects are built to actually reach and work on the people they're written for, often in partnership with local organizations. Work culminates in a digital portfolio showcasing your texts and your evolving thinking about composing across spaces. No official textbook; readings via Canvas.
This course fulfills the EWM major's core requirement and the Upper-Division Writing requirement.

ENG 3416 (WEPO) is one of three core courses for Editing, Writing, Media (EWM), and it helps provide a foundation for the major. As part of this foundation, this course introduces you to the principles of composing and editing across different media environments, paying special attention to how each new composing environment has its own audience, context, and purpose to consider along with affordances and constraints. We will also focus on how your composing process changes and the challenges that you face as you compose across spaces.
Overall, this course attempts to help you: (1) Understand principles of composing and rhetoric, especially the ways they function across different composing spaces; (2) Compose for three spaces‚ – print, screen, and network; (3) Edit and revise appropriately the texts created in each space; (4) Understand the ways technologies build upon their predecessors as well as inform the composing and circulation of texts.
To accomplish these goals, we'll engage with multiple kinds of texts: we'll read some, write some, talk about some, and create remediated forms of some. As there are multiple career paths for an EWM major, this course is designed specifically to introduce you to professional contexts you may encounter after leaving Florida State.
This course fulfills the EWM major's core requirement and the Upper-Division Writing requirement.

This course is one of three core courses for Editing, Writing, Media (EWM), and as such it helps provide a foundation for the major. This course treats writing as a social and rhetorical act--not just what a text says, but who it's written for, where it will circulate, and what it's meant to do once it gets there. We'll explore the principles of composing and editing across different media environments, paying close attention to how a text's audience and purpose shift as it moves from print to screen to network, and what that means for the choices we make as writers and editors. Students will: 1) understand principles of composition and rhetoric across composing spaces; 2) compose for three spaces--print (physical), digital (screen), and network (online)--using different technologies and design strategies; 3) revise and edit texts appropriately as they move between spaces; and 4) understand how a text's audience, context, and purpose shape--and are shaped by--the space it circulates in. Much of this work is grounded in real audiences: projects are built to actually reach and work on the people they're written for, often in partnership with local organizations. Work culminates in a digital portfolio showcasing your texts and your evolving thinking about composing across spaces. No official textbook; readings via Canvas.
This course fulfills the EWM major's core requirement and the Upper-Division Writing requirement.

The teaching of writing is the teaching of thinking.
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 we help others do it. Throughout the semester, we will explore tutoring practices for working with writers in a one-on-one setting in the context of an R1 university.
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 undergraduate internship opportunities with the FSU Reading-Writing Center and Digital Studio. Interning with the RWC-DS satisfies the EWM internship requirement, but all programs and majors are welcome to take the course.

Issues in EWM invites students to put podcasting's storytelling power in service of civic listening. Each student selects a contemporary social issue that matters to them personally, then researches its competing arguments and interviews two people who hold genuinely opposing positions on it, one broadly for and one broadly against. Across the semester, students learn to write an interview script: crafting open-ended questions, sequencing them for narrative and emotional arc, and adapting in real time to what a source actually says rather than what the writer expected to hear. Students then shape their recorded interviews into a fully produced podcast episode, gaining hands-on experience with field recording, editing, sound design, and audio narrative writing alongside sustained written work, including issue pitches, interview scripts, a full episode script, and a reflective analysis of how the finished piece represents both sides of a contested issue fairly and without editorializing. Because the course requires students to seriously engage perspectives unlike their own, interview across genuine disagreement, and represent that difference without caricature or dismissal, it satisfies the Alterity requirement for majors. Because it requires substantial scripted, revised, and workshopped writing at an advanced level, culminating in a polished, publication-ready episode script, it also satisfies the Upper-Division Writing Requirement. No prior podcasting or audio production experience is assumed or required. Primary evaluation rests on two components, weighted equally: the written interview and episode scripts, and the final produced podcast episode, each assessed for craft, fairness of representation, and technical execution.

Issues in EWM invites students to put podcasting's storytelling power in service of civic listening. Each student selects a contemporary social issue that matters to them personally, then researches its competing arguments and interviews two people who hold genuinely opposing positions on it, one broadly for and one broadly against. Across the semester, students learn to write an interview script: crafting open-ended questions, sequencing them for narrative and emotional arc, and adapting in real time to what a source actually says rather than what the writer expected to hear. Students then shape their recorded interviews into a fully produced podcast episode, gaining hands-on experience with field recording, editing, sound design, and audio narrative writing alongside sustained written work, including issue pitches, interview scripts, a full episode script, and a reflective analysis of how the finished piece represents both sides of a contested issue fairly and without editorializing. Because the course requires students to seriously engage perspectives unlike their own, interview across genuine disagreement, and represent that difference without caricature or dismissal, it satisfies the Alterity requirement for majors. Because it requires substantial scripted, revised, and workshopped writing at an advanced level, culminating in a polished, publication-ready episode script, it also satisfies the Upper-Division Writing Requirement. No prior podcasting or audio production experience is assumed or required. Primary evaluation rests on two components, weighted equally: the written interview and episode scripts, and the final produced podcast episode, each assessed for craft, fairness of representation, and technical execution.

Visual rhetoric surrounds us in everything from museum exhibits to social media feeds, from corporate branding to street art, from Instagram to the architecture and design of campus buildings. This course begins with the premise that visual rhetoric represents a distinct yet interconnected mode of discourse that deserves thoughtful attention. Rather than treating the visual as supplemental to written or oral rhetoric, we will investigate how visual rhetoric operates according to its own principles while simultaneously engaging with other modalities. Students will analyze visual texts across various disciplines and contexts, undertaking projects such as investigative photo essays, visual identity representations, the rhetoric of space/design, and visualization of public memory.

Visual rhetoric surrounds us in everything from museum exhibits to social media feeds, from corporate branding to street art, from Instagram to the architecture and design of campus buildings. This course begins with the premise that visual rhetoric represents a distinct yet interconnected mode of discourse that deserves thoughtful attention. Rather than treating the visual as supplemental to written or oral rhetoric, we will investigate how visual rhetoric operates according to its own principles while simultaneously engaging with other modalities. Students will analyze visual texts across various disciplines and contexts, undertaking projects such as investigative photo essays, visual identity representations, the rhetoric of space/design, and visualization of public memory.

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. As we continue to develop your narrative nonfiction, we can think about an image-based craft approach as one of our filters. You all will submit and study photographs, either from the public archive or your personal collections, and we will consider the story, structure, and implied details within the image. Susan Sontag describes photography as a grammar of seeing. Toni Morrison describes a process of picture to meaning to text. We will use their framing to consider what essays can show and tell the reader and the writer. 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 craft, content, and style elements. We will consider how the personal essay supports journalism, scholarly writing, and creative forms. During our workshop sessions, we will ask one another questions about the work presented. You will also ask questions in your written responses.
This course fulfills the Scholarship in Practice requirement.

In this course, we explore forms of nonfiction: journalism, personal essays, and investigative writing. We will read widely in the genre and discuss writing strategies. The goal is to produce a draft of an essay, 10-12 pages long, and a revision of this essay, both of which will be workshopped by the class. ENC 4311 satisfies the 4000-level writing workshop requirement for the Creative Writing major as well as the advanced elective requirement for the Editing, Writing, and Media (EWM) major.

This course engages with ‚"design" from a rhetorical perspective. Course readings will introduce theoretical and practical perspectives that problematize static conceptions of design and emphasize a rhetorical approach to producing and designing texts and/as technologies. Throughout the course, we will compose, revise, and design texts while practicing the rhetorical principles of localization, usability, accessibility, and human-centered design. This course offers students the opportunity to develop tools for producing and circulating a diversity of texts that address a wide range of audiences and contexts, with an emphasis on rhetorical considerations in design.
**This course does not include a copyediting component or focus on copyediting.

The internship course enables students to earn academic credit while gaining practical experience relevant to their major and career interests. Students enrolling in this section secure their own internships and may explore a wide variety of opportunities in different organizations and career paths. The course is permission-restricted; to register, please apply here: https://goo.gl/forms/NQmxJ2oSMp349hC53
More information about the internship course is available at https://english.fsu.edu/programs/editing-writing-and-media/editing-internship.
In addition, the following linked information session presentation covers topics including prerequisites and registration process, ENC 4942 policies and requirements, the internship search (timeline, application materials, resources, interviews), and preparing for your internship: https://drive.google.com/file/d/13mG8QEkV_UjXGrRiBKK4opYJZdROk_xH/view?usp=sharing.

Fulfills FE requirement, graduation requirement for EWM, advanced English elective for CW and LMC. Course is S/U. ENC 4942 is a variable credit hour course and may be taken for a maximum of 6 credit hours total.

English has traveled, crossed borders, absorbed other languages, and carried with it the pressures of migration and colonial history, and has, through the years, been remolded by speakers, communities, and writers across the world. For this course, students will be introduced to English Studies by asking what happens when we approach ‚"English" as a global field rather than a single national tradition. With a focus on contemporary world literature, we will practice the kinds of reading and writing that define literary study: close reading, annotation, analysis, drafting, workshop-based feedback, revision, and argument. We will look closely at choices involving form, voice, structure, image, and language, while also considering the histories and cultural contexts that surround a text. Our course will move between interpretation and research towards teaching students how to develop an observation into an arguable claim and how to place their own ideas alongside scholarship and other secondary sources. By the end of the semester, students should have a clearer sense of what literary scholars do and of the questions, methods, and habits of attention they will carry into upper-level English courses.

This course serves as a foundational gateway for students entering the English major. This course exposes students to the pleasure of reading, writing and using language effectively. Familiarizing students with different acts of reading, writing, studying, and learning that are involved in the English major, it demonstrates how English Studies can be central to both college study and career choices. Not limited to developing technical and mechanical skills of reading and writing in English, the course encourages students to consider and how English encompasses multiple areas, including literature, language, media, theory, film, and digital technologies. Students investigate how these areas engage, reflect, and shape human experiences. Through the analysis of the various genres and texts – such as poetry, prose, digital media posts, and film – students will not only enhance their critical, interpretive, and analytical skills but also consider questions of ethics, life, and civic responsibilities. The course encourages students to engage with various texts; enhance critical thinking; and participate in close-reading and analysis of various texts and genres. Ultimately, this course invites students to understand how the use of English language connects them with the world they live in.

This course serves as a foundational gateway for students entering the English major. This course exposes students to the pleasure of reading, writing and using language effectively. Familiarizing students with different acts of reading, writing, studying, and learning that are involved in the English major, it demonstrates how English Studies can be central to both college study and career choices. Not limited to developing technical and mechanical skills of reading and writing in English, the course encourages students to consider and how English encompasses multiple areas, including literature, language, media, theory, film, and digital technologies. Students investigate how these areas engage, reflect, and shape human experiences. Through the analysis of the various genres and texts – such as poetry, prose, digital media posts, and film – students will not only enhance their critical, interpretive, and analytical skills but also consider questions of ethics, life, and civic responsibilities. The course encourages students to engage with various texts; enhance critical thinking; and participate in close-reading and analysis of various texts and genres. Ultimately, this course invites students to understand how the use of English language connects them with the world they live in.

What does it mean to study English? In our course, we will explore the wonder of words through our own experiences with language, poetry, and creative nonfiction. We will read surprising and thought-provoking works, discover new ways to approach and play with words on a page, and develop our skills as writers, readers, and thinkers. Along the way, we will learn what English majors actually do: ask questions that spark curiosity, find our own meanings in texts, develop exciting ideas, and share those ideas with others. Most of all, we will uncover how much there is to notice, question, and savor in the words around us.

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 in general, from linguistics and literature to rhetoric and creative writing, among others, while also engaging in specific compositional and hermeneutic activities. The design of this course aims to both prepare students who plan to major in English and develop the knowledge and understanding of those currently majoring in English. Students will learn about a range of issues and values across the aforementioned fields and their relevance to English as a discipline. Specifically, students will read a variety of texts and topics while being introduced to a range of interpretive strategies. Students can expect to compose in various modes, responding to rhetorical, academic, and creative writing genres. Finally, they will engage in discussion and collaboration activities to gain a clearer understanding of what it means to study English.

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 in general, from linguistics and literature to rhetoric and creative writing, among others, while also engaging in specific compositional and hermeneutic activities. The design of this course aims to both prepare students who plan to major in English and develop the knowledge and understanding of those currently majoring in English. Students will learn about a range of issues and values across the aforementioned fields and their relevance to English as a discipline. Specifically, students will read a variety of texts and topics while being introduced to a range of interpretive strategies. Students can expect to compose in various modes, responding to rhetorical, academic, and creative writing genres. Finally, they will engage in discussion and collaboration activities to gain a clearer understanding of what it means to study English.

While there are many, much older places and times in which one might start in the broad study of "theory," this course will operate as a survey of largely 20th and 21st century texts that make up the so-called "canon" of theory, beginning with Russian Formalism and New Criticism, on to Phenomenology, Structuralism and Post-Structuralism, Psychoanalysis, Marxism and Critical Theory, Gender Studies and Queer Theory, Ethnic Studies, Post-Colonial and Decolonial Studies, Ecocriticism and other theories of Posthumanism. The course is organized around a (free online through FSU) anthology, fiction, as well as supplemental essays and film.
This course meets core requirements for the Major.

While there are many, much older places and times in which one might start in the broad study of "theory," this course will operate as a survey of largely 20th and 21st century texts that make up the so-called "canon" of theory, beginning with Russian Formalism and New Criticism, on to Phenomenology, Structuralism and Post-Structuralism, Psychoanalysis, Marxism and Critical Theory, Gender Studies and Queer Theory, Ethnic Studies, Post-Colonial and Decolonial Studies, Ecocriticism and other theories of Posthumanism. The course is organized around a (free online through FSU) anthology, fiction, as well as supplemental essays and film.

This course eets core requirements for the Major.

In this course, students study classic and contemporary theories of film adaptation.

In this course, we 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 and question how cinema engages with literature, and how literary texts are deformed and reformed through the medium of film. We will examine a variety of text-to-film adaptations and explore their wider adaptation ‚"networks" in conjunction with intertextuality, audience reception and cultural memory over time. This class will discuss how a breadth of storytelling modes, including animation, theatrical productions such as plays and musicals, parodies, and oral traditions from mythology compare with their film counterparts.

This course examines the interconnected ways that literature and film construct ideas of both the American South and the natural environment. Beginning with the premise that neither "the South" nor "nature" are fixed or self-evident categories, students will consider how cultural texts shape our understanding of place, landscape, wilderness, regional identity, and human relationships with the more-than-human world. The course explores how different genres and media represent relationships among environment, culture, race, class, labor, history, and power.

Course materials move across a range of Southern landscapes, including plantations, farms, swamps, forests, mountains, coastlines, small towns, cities, and industrial spaces, and consider how histories of slavery, segregation, migration, extraction, and environmental change remain embedded within them. Films such as Gone with the Wind, Daughters of the Dust, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and Sinners will be studied alongside literary works and relevant theoretical readings drawn from Southern studies, ecocriticism, environmental humanities, critical race studies, Gothic studies, and cultural studies. Through these interdisciplinary pairings, students will examine how literature and film participate in constructing‚--and continually reconstructing--what we understand as nature and the South.

This course investigates femininity as performance in Hollywood cinema. Across genres and eras, the American screen has given us unforgettable stars, glamorous divas, melodramatic heroines, monstrous mothers, scheming villains, and camp icons. What makes these performances so powerful? And why do certain feminine figures inspire both devotion and anxiety? Drawing on theories of gender performativity, stardom, melodrama, and camp, we will analyze how actresses craft persona through voice, gesture, costume, and affect‚ – and how the industry shapes, commodifies, and sometimes punishes feminine charisma. We will consider the diva as spectacle, the villainess as transgression, and the queen as a figure of excess and authority. The course will move from classical Hollywood star vehicles to contemporary films that interrogate fame, ambition, aging, and power. Along the way, we will ask how race, sexuality, gender identity, and class complicate dominant models of femininity, and why certain performances resonate so deeply within queer fan cultures. Through close viewing and critical analysis, students will examine Hollywood not simply as storytelling, but as a laboratory for staging gender itself.

Fulfills LMC requirement for Understanding Genres. Counts towards Film Studies minor.

This course investigates femininity as performance in Hollywood cinema. Across genres and eras, the American screen has given us unforgettable stars, glamorous divas, melodramatic heroines, monstrous mothers, scheming villains, and camp icons. What makes these performances so powerful? And why do certain feminine figures inspire both devotion and anxiety? Drawing on theories of gender performativity, stardom, melodrama, and camp, we will analyze how actresses craft persona through voice, gesture, costume, and affect‚ – and how the industry shapes, commodifies, and sometimes punishes feminine charisma. We will consider the diva as spectacle, the villainess as transgression, and the queen as a figure of excess and authority. The course will move from classical Hollywood star vehicles to contemporary films that interrogate fame, ambition, aging, and power. Along the way, we will ask how race, sexuality, gender identity, and class complicate dominant models of femininity, and why certain performances resonate so deeply within queer fan cultures. Through close viewing and critical analysis, students will examine Hollywood not simply as storytelling, but as a laboratory for staging gender itself.

Fulfills LMC requirement for Understanding Genres. Counts towards Film Studies minor.

When it comes to medieval texts, the words upon them are only half the story, the rest lies within the scribbles of bored scribes, faint text long scraped away, and beautiful illuminations. This course introduces the history of the different technologies humans have used to record and communicate information in various contexts. Students investigate how technologies have shaped the way we produce, transmit, receive, and understand texts. Within this course we will be zooming into the history, creation, and secrets of these texts within the Middle Ages. We will touch upon palimpsest, illuminations, maps, and other such works as well as delve into the writing itself and what it tells us about the text it belongs too. This course will work with the textbook Introduction to Manuscript Studies and include a visit to Special Collections. ENG 3803 is a core course requirement for EWM.

When it comes to medieval texts, the words upon them are only half the story, the rest lies within the scribbles of bored scribes, faint text long scraped away, and beautiful illuminations. This course introduces the history of the different technologies humans have used to record and communicate information in various contexts. Students investigate how technologies have shaped the way we produce, transmit, receive, and understand texts. Within this course we will be zooming into the history, creation, and secrets of these texts within the Middle Ages. We will touch upon palimpsest, illuminations, maps, and other such works as well as delve into the writing itself and what it tells us about the text it belongs too. This course will work with the textbook Introduction to Manuscript Studies and include a visit to Special Collections. ENG 3803 is a core course requirement for EWM.

This special cross-listed section is for students participating in the International Programs Spring Break program in Florence, Italy: "Text and Image: A Cultural History." More information about the program is available here: https://international.fsu.edu/program/florence/spring-break/fl53.
We'll study the history of text technologies and illustrated texts on main campus and then spend our spring break in Florence for in-depth, hand-on experiential learning around the city.
Open to English majors and minors. ENG 3803 is a core course requirement for EWM. ENG 3804 meets the genre requirement.

This course explores 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 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.

In 2014, Tyler Trewhella started a movement on Tumblr. They named it "cripple punk" and described it like this: "Cripple punk rejects the 'good cripple' mythos. Cripple punk is here for the bitter cripple, the uninspirational cripple, the smoking cripple, the drinking cripple, the addict cripple, the cripple who hasn't tried everything. [...] Cripple punk does not pander to the able bodied." For this course, we will read cripple punk authors and disabled authors as a theme to explore editing, writing and publishing.

This seminar functions as a senior capstone course for the various majors within the English degree program at FSU. Topics vary. If you have previously taken "What Is a Text?" in the past, please do not register for this section of ENG 4934.
This course investigates concepts of ‚"textuality" which refers to how "texts" make meaning by being understood in context. We will test out key scholarly ideas by discussing some vibrant films as case studies. Our reading includes scholarship on textuality and on film. As we explore ideas about what counts as a "text" and where the meaning of a text resides, we will assess debates about the relationship between the text and vital contexts. These contexts include audience reception and the "paratext," defined as associated material surrounding the text but separate from the text itself. In addition to scholarly debates about how to define "text" and "textuality" we will study concepts of paratexts, intertexts, adaptation, interactive texts, and remixes. We will consider films that have been adapted from literature and how to unpack the meanings of various kinds of texts. We will ponder what contexts can influence our reading of these texts, ranging from associated material like a film trailer to fan reactions or genre expectations. Assignments include frequent Canvas discussion posts, a shorter essay, and the longer final essay. Students also do a multimedia project and analyze how their own work engages textual studies.
This course meets the English Capstone requirement; Upper-Division Writing requirement; and Scholarship in Practice.

Bob Dylan occupies an unusual place in American literary and cultural history. He is simultaneously a songwriter, poet, recording artist, performer, filmmaker, screen presence, cultural icon, and literary author. His work crosses boundaries that are often treated as fundamental: between poetry and popular song, literature and music, text and performance, author and persona, history and myth, and the written word and audiovisual media. This senior seminar examines Dylan's work across more than six decades, from the early acoustic recordings and the emergence of the folk persona through the electric period, the experimental films and performances of the 1960s and 1970s, the religious and political controversies surrounding his work, and his later writing, recording, touring, and visual culture. Particular attention will be given to the question of what happens when we read songs as poems and performances as texts. The course will combine close reading, literary criticism, music analysis, film analysis, archival and historical research, and research into Dylan scholarship. Students will consider Dylan alongside poets, writers, filmmakers, musicians, and theorists who illuminate his work, including Allen Ginsberg, Arthur Rimbaud, Woody Guthrie, the Beat writers, the American folk tradition, blues and African American musical traditions, and traditions of popular and experimental cinema. The seminar is designed as a genuine senior capstone. Students will not simply study Dylan; they will develop the ability to formulate an original scholarly question, locate and evaluate secondary scholarship, conduct independent research, present an argument orally, and transform that presentation into a sustained research paper.
This course fulfills the Capstone requirement for the English Major, Upper-Division Writing, and Scholarship in Practice.

This course invites students to read, analyze, write about, and reconstruct cross-cultural spectacles and human rights events. Organized around a series of case studies and guest speakers, the course asks students to take a critical rhetorical approach to exploring a variety of modes and forms--including hypertext essays, trauma narratives, testimonials, archives, memorials, a graphic novel, and film-- gaining insight into how individuals, groups, and nations enact their human-rights interests from both local and global points of view. Together, we will ask and answer the following questions: How can we interpret cross-cultural spectacles and human rights events when they occur in such a wide range of modalities (e.g., written, oral, visual, gestural, spatial, multimodal)? How can we be, do, or live differently after witnessing these spectacles--especially if they relate to cultures and crises that are not our own? How can we think critically about human rights discourse while we are also participating with this discourse in the real world? Finally, what kinds of rhetorical performances, practices, and frameworks become possible--both realistically and imaginatively--as a result of our study? Students will present their original work during a mini-conference at the semester's end. This course meets the alterity requirement for English majors and the State-Mandated Writing (w) requirement.

The nineteenth and twentieth centuries were turbulent ones in Britain, and in many ways they were the centuries that laid the foundation for the world we experience today. The British Empire was gradually expanding to encompass 25% of the total landmass on the planet, and the Industrial revolution and later World Wars changed the ways British people lived and read. This semester, our goal is twofold: to study what British people were reading and writing in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and to understand how they read. Part of this will involve reading novels, short stories, and poetry in pairings that cross class divisions. By pairing together critically-acclaimed authors like Charlotte Bronte with popular ‚"hack" authors like James Malcom Rymer, for example, we'll see the how British Literature was shaping all layers of society. We'll also think about the impact of newspapers, circulating libraries, and later Penguin classes altered how British literature was read, and what it meant. To the Victorians, for example, a novel might look less like a modern book, and more like a year's worth of magazines that published a couple of chapters each issue. Reading might look less like quiet introspection, and more like communal gatherings to hear books read aloud to people who otherwise couldn't afford them. As we move from the early nineteenth century into the twentieth, we'll collectively articulate how British literature molded ongoing debates in their culture and shaped their national identity.
This course fulfills the State-Mandated Writing (W) requirement.

Yes!!! There were novels written and read long before the works of Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters appeared! This course will introduce you to a variety of eighteenth-century novels that preceded later, perhaps more familiar works like Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre. Among the novels covered are: Aphra Behn's Oroonoko; or, the Royal Slave; Elizabeth Haywood's Fantomina; Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders; and the anonymously published A Woman of Colour. In addition to the novels themselves, you will also learn about the material and cultural contexts in which they were produced. What literary historians call the "rise of the novel" for instance, coincided with tremendous cultural, economic, and technological changes; this resulted in novels that mirrored and produced the culture from which they emerged.

This course meets the Genre and Pre1800 Requirements

Shakespeare was part of a thriving community of writers in a new media environment: commercial live secular entertainment, dependent on privately-owned theatres with paid admission and a very rapid turnover of new plays, which created high demand for new scripts. This course most important rivals and collaborators were Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, Thomas Middleton, and "Anonymous". This course will focus on some of the most famous and influential plays from these writers.

This course will introduce students to Geoffrey Chaucer's most famous work, The Canterbury Tales. An experimental frame-narrative including many medieval genres (knightly romance, bawdy bar-worthy tales, sermons, autobiographies, saints' lives, confessions, and revenge narratives in both poetry and prose) told by diverse range of storytellers, this unfinished piece serves as a compelling window into fourteenth-century medieval life. Written entirely in Middle English, The Canterbury Tales is also inextricably bound up in the history and politics of medieval language, national identity, and fluctuating royal power. This course will consider Chaucer as part of both a 14th-century flourishing of poetry in Middle English (as opposed to the more prestigious French or scholarly Latin) and provide a more global perspective, as Chaucer was heavily inspired by continental and especially Italian writers such as Petrarch, Dante, and Boccacio. We will be engaging the Middle English text directly, spending quite a bit of time honing our pronunciation and translation skills. We will also read primary source documents that provide important insight into the history of Chaucer's England and the cultural movements that impacted his work.

We will explore Chaucer's perspectives on authorship and readership; social dilemmas and class conflicts; and racial, religious, and gender differences (including medieval traditions of antifeminism and antisemitism). Students can expect to write two shorter papers, a translation of a passage of Middle English, and a final research paper, as well as giving a presentation that explores and elucidates an important aspect of 14th-century medieval English culture.

TThis course addresses how colonialism and postcolonialism are shaped and mediated through images and the gaze. In 1969, Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino coined the phrase "Third Cinema” to mark the emergence of a new aesthetic in filmmaking. Their manifesto "Towards a Third Cinema” reimagines film with a new aesthetic using the techniques of the European avant-garde, documentary, Soviet experimentation, and the narrative forms of Hollywood. This course starts by considering some of the products of what became a movement in cinema, asking questions about the relationships between aesthetic form, narrative content, and politics. It then goes on to reflect on the legacy of "Third Cinema” in subsequent filmmaking. Film selections may include but are not limited to canonical works like Solanas’ The Hour of the Furnaces, Ousmane Sembene's Black Girl, and Gilles Pontecorvo's The Battle of Algiers among others.
This course fulfills requirements for Diversity and Genre in LMC.

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 and will include selections from the Western canon. Written analysis of literary works will be required. Students will be provided with opportunities to practice critical interpretation of different types of texts such as literature, music, and film.

This course is an approved CoreFSU course and fulfills the State-Mandated Writing (W) requirement.

In this course, students will read John Steinbeck's East of Eden across the full semester as the class's central text, using sustained engagement with a single long novel to build close-reading, discussion, and analytical skills. To ensure a broad range of literary genres, historical eras, and cultural contexts, the novel will be supplemented with one representative work each in short fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. Students will write analyses of literary works and will have opportunities to practice critical interpretation. The course will help students identify a variety of literary movements, historical eras and/or cultural contexts as well as demonstrate critical thinking and analytical skills.
This course is an approved CoreFSU course and fulfills the State-Mandated Writing (W) requirement.

Metamorphosis is an abrupt change, a massive alteration in form. Portals are thresholds and gateways to new worlds. Literature, as an art form, is in a constant state of evolution-– what literature transformed the world? From Sappho and Homer to Shakespeare and Dante, this course will navigate literary evolution from Babylon and Ancient Greece to Britain and beyond. This course will boost critical thinking and analytical skills. This course offers an overview of literary histories and groundbreaking works. The readings will include selections from the Western canon, and written analysis of literary works will be required.
All levels of experience are welcome.
This course fulfills the State-Mandated Writing (W) credit.

This course will explore how works of fiction from the Western canon and beyond engage with personal and communal memory and examine how narrative fiction itself contributes to processes of collective memory production. As memory scholar Astrid Erll writes, "Fictions, both novelistic and filmic, possess the potential to generate and mold images of the past which will often be retained by entire generations" (389). In this course, we will delve into fiction as both a "memory-making medium" (Erll 389) and a vehicle for representing how communities contend with and make meaning of the past, and as a result, the present. With a central focus on literature from the twentieth century to the present, we will consider how memory contributes to shaping individual and collective identity and exposes the ongoing resonances of the past in the present.

In attending to the various manifestations of memory in a selection of literary works, we will explore an array of distinct narrative forms, styles, and movements, and identify and analyze features of fiction such as plot, point of view, theme, symbolism, and character. Students in the course will have numerous opportunities to practice critical interpretation and written analysis of works of fiction. This course fulfills the State-Mandated Writing (W) credit.

This course introduces students to the makings of fiction. Its interest buries itself in the machines that make fiction. Through close readings across forms, periods, and traditions--from fairy tales and war narratives to digital and mockumentary fiction--we will explore the inner workings of stories while unknotting the hems of literary elements. Our close readings will be thematically tied to two of literature's oldest and most persistent forces: desire and violence. We will examine narrative techniques and their functions in structuring stories. In considering this, we will pay attention to stories' generation of dread, horror, repulsion, pleasure, fear, and other emotional experiences. Readings will draw from the Western literary canon alongside contemporary fiction, inviting students to see the ways writers across centuries and forms have adapted recurring narrative techniques to construct experiences for readers. Through close analysis and regular writing, students will develop the interpretive and argumentative skills central to literary studies. Our goal here really is to learn what a story means, the how, the subtle ways stories make their gestures.
This course fulfills the State-Mandated Writing (W) credit.

This course introduces students to the makings of fiction. Its interest buries itself in the machines that make fiction. Through close readings across forms, periods, and traditions--from fairy tales and war narratives to digital and mockumentary fiction--we will explore the inner workings of stories while unknotting the hems of literary elements. Our close readings will be thematically tied to two of literature's oldest and most persistent forces: desire and violence. We will examine narrative techniques and their functions in structuring stories. In considering this, we will pay attention to stories' generation of dread, horror, repulsion, pleasure, fear, and other emotional experiences. Readings will draw from the Western literary canon alongside contemporary fiction, inviting students to see the ways writers across centuries and forms have adapted recurring narrative techniques to construct experiences for readers. Through close analysis and regular writing, students will develop the interpretive and argumentative skills central to literary studies. Our goal here really is to learn what a story means, the how, the subtle ways stories make their gestures.
This course fulfills the State-Mandated Writing (W) credit.

This course introduces students to the foundational literary genre of the short story with a focus on stories that incorporate themes of travel and adventure. Reading has long been a way to go places we may not be able to go in our daily lives, whether that is within our own country, outside its borders, or to other planets, galaxies, and dimensions. The journey has been a common structure since ancient humans began sharing stories to inform and entertain. 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. We will read stories from a variety of genres and time periods and respond to them through both writing and discussion.
This course is an approved CoreFSU course and fulfills the requirements for State-Mandated Writing (W) and Exploring the Human Experience.

Robert Frost once said that "poet is a praise word." This course will nurture those that aspire to write poetry and study it rigorously. Through creative prompts and workshops but also through research that hinges on the critical inspection of canonical poets from a variety of eras, this class aims to give students a newfound understanding of poetry that will feed their scholarly interests, personal growth, and, above all, their skill with language.
This course fulfills the State-Mandated Writing (W) requirement.

This course traces Irish dramatic art created as a reaction to British Colonialism and the Irish Revolution, from the late 19th Century and the 'Easter Rising', through the guerrilla wars with the British in the 20th century ‘The Troubles’, to the present day. Irish stories have always been rich in studying the human condition under the tremendous strain of violence and political upheaval, and yet they remain, as they always have, filled with a sense of humor and that uniquely Irish combination of irony and fatalism. We'll read and discuss plays by Irish writers from Oscar Wilde to Lady Augusta Gregory and W.B. Yeats, to Marina Carr and Martin McDonough. Weekly activities include table-readings, participating in group assignments, and developing skills in critical analysis through classroom discussions, films, and lectures.

LIT3112, History of English Literature I, traces the development of English literature from the Old English poem The Battle of Maldon to Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal. Across this broad historical and literary period, students encounter some of the most influential writers and works in the English canon, including Julian of Norwich, Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe, John Donne, and many others. Through close reading and historical contextualization, the course examines changing literary forms, genres, styles, and ideas, while considering how literature responds to religious, political, philosophical, and social transformations. The course offers a foundational survey of English literary history.
This is a required course for LMC majors.

LIT3112, History of English Literature I, traces the development of English literature from the Old English poem The Battle of Maldon to Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal. Across this broad historical and literary period, students encounter some of the most influential writers and works in the English canon, including Julian of Norwich, Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe, John Donne, and many others. Through close reading and historical contextualization, the course examines changing literary forms, genres, styles, and ideas, while considering how literature responds to religious, political, philosophical, and social transformations. The course offers a foundational survey of English literary history.
This is a required course for LMC majors.

This course surveys literature in English from the 19th century through the present. Special emphasis is given to close reading skills and to texts' engagement with the historical movements of their time.

This is a required course for LMC majors.

This course is a reading-intensive exploration of some of the major figures in the Anglo-American literary canon from the mid-19th century through the early 2000s. Special attention will be paid to women authors.
This is a required course for LMC majors.

For many, the "Caribbean" conjures images of turquoise waters and swaying palm trees, seen from the deck of a cruise ship or the balcony of an all-inclusive resort hotel room. In this class, we will broaden our understanding of the Caribbean by examining literary fiction by writers from the island and coastal nations that make up the circum-Caribbean. Works studied will be in English, whether originally published in English or translated from one of the many languages that contributes to the Caribbean's linguistic richness. Novels include works by Jean Rhys, Erna Brodber, Edgar Mittelholzer, Julia Alvarez, Edwidge Danticat, and Ingrid Persaud. To more fully appreciate these texts, we will use concepts from Caribbean and Diaspora studies to examine questions such as: How has Caribbean literary culture been shaped by intersections between the "New World" of the Americas and the "Old Worlds" of Europe, Africa, and India? What makes a text or author "Caribbean"? What do these texts teach us about the relationship between history, geography, and cultural identity? About tensions between the local and the global, including questions about Caribbean identities outside the Caribbean region?

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?
This course fulfills the requirements for FSU: Exploring the Human Experience; English LMC: Understanding Genres.

This course explores the historical, cultural, and critical genealogies of the science fiction genre. Discussions will be informed by context and critique but will follow a craft-based approach.
This course meets the requirements for Exploring the Human Experience.

When Ursula K. Le Guin began publishing fiction in the 1960s, critics still viewed science fiction and fantasy as "lesser" genres, inferior both aesthetically and philosophically to "serious" literary fiction. By the time of her passing in 2018, both of those genres had come to be viewed as culturally, artistically, and politically significant. Le Guin's role in that transformation was far from incidental: she was a central figure in the "New Wave" that transformed the field of science fiction in the 1960s, made lasting and provocative interventions into the norms of fantasy, and made a career of crafting narratives that probed and expanded the limits of the contemporaneous imagination regardless of the genres in which she wrote. This course offers a sustained exploration of her work across speculative genres, surveying selections from her Earthsea (fantasy) and Hainish (science fiction) cycles as well as standalone work such as The Lathe of Heaven (utopia) and Always Coming Home (post-apocalyptic). Alongside this, we'll read genre criticism (including Le Guin's own contributions to science fiction and fantasy studies), some speculative fiction by Le Guin's interlocutors and literary descendants, and theoretical selections that address the range of concerns that motivated and move through Le Guin's fiction--gender and sexuality; race, ethnicity, and coloniality; science, technology, and environment; politics, economics, and power.
This course fulfills the requirements for FSU: Exploring the Human Experience; English LMC: Understanding Genres.

This course seeks to find an illusive figure in literature: the female detective. Who was she? How old was she? How did she get into detective work? Oftentimes when scholars look at the genre of detective fiction, they see the male writers and their masculine heroes trooping across a foggy London or English manor house. However, women were writing detective fiction for just as long, and the so-called "lady detectives" they wrote did just as much work to play with and expand the genre of crime fiction. This semester, we'll trace the path of women detectives from the mid-nineteenth century into the twentieth, and think about how these fictional sleuths and the women who wrote them used the genre to balance tenuously between the social expectations of their time period and writing a new, active kind of feminine hero. Along the way, we'll see how the female detective took many forms, from the femme fatale who disarms male suspects with her beauty, to the practical career woman who lives for her job, to the shrewd old woman who sees more than she lets on. These case studies from Susan Hopley, to Loveday Brooke, to Miss Marple will help us use detective stories to think about women's agency and narrative across a range of historical periods.
This course meets the requirements for Exploring the Human Experience and fulfills the State-Mandated Writing (W) credit.

This course is a reading-intensive exploration of voyage narratives and tropes of mobility in works by major female authors of the Anglo-American tradition. Authors at the center of the course include, but are not limited to, Charlotte Bronte, Emily Dickinson, Virginia Woolf, Nella Larsen and Toni Morrison.
This course meets the requirements for Exploring the Human Experience and fulfills the State-Mandated Writing (W) credit.

This course explores how contemporary Black women writers navigate the complex geographies of identity, displacement, and belonging. Focusing on the foundational tropes of migration, exile, and home, students will analyze how spatial mobility intersects with race, gender, sexuality, and historical memory. Through close readings of seminal texts, we will examine how the physical journeys of the Diaspora-- whether forced, voluntary, or ancestral--shape the internal landscapes of female protagonists as they reclaim agency and redefine the concept of "home."
Over the semester, we will investigate the tensions between regional and national borders, the psychological weight of generational trauma, and the spiritual geographies that connect the American South, the Caribbean, and West Africa. Students will engage with critical frameworks surrounding postcolonialism, Black feminist geography, and transnationalism to unpack how these authors challenge traditional literary canons and construct alternative spaces for healing, resistance, and self-discovery.
This course meets the requirements for Exploring the Human Experience and fulfills the State-Mandated Writing (W) credit.

Since its emergence in the 1990s, ecocriticism has undergone a remarkable transformation. What began as a relatively focused inquiry into nature writing has grown into a vibrant field encompassing postcolonial ecologies, urban ecologies, environmental justice, waste studies, animal and plant studies, energy humanities, blue humanities, climate fiction, among other areas of inquiry. Arguably, in just a few decades, ecocriticism has moved from the margins of literary studies to one of its most intellectually dynamic and urgent domains.
This course surveys three key recent fields in ecocritical studies: the more-than-human world (animal studies and plant studies), energy humanities (with particular attention to petrofiction), and climate fiction. Across these movements, we will ask: How does literature challenge the assumption of human exceptionalism? How do narratives render visible the infrastructures of extraction and energy that shape nature and culture alike? And how does climate fiction reshape narrative form, temporality, and scale in order to imagine life on a changing planet?
Our readings will include contemporary novels, short stories, and theoretical texts. The novels may include Open Throat (2023) by Henry Hoke, Oil on Water (2010) by Helon Habila, and Our Shared Storm: A Novel of Five Climate Futures (2022) by Andrew Dana Hudson. For theoretical grounding, we will read selections from Donna Haraway, Imre Szeman, and Amitav Ghosh, among others.

The gothic novel is said to have been born in the 18th century and rumored to have died in the next, when in fact, its forms and faculties have been animated and reanimated many times, awakened to respond to the anxiety 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 novels, from the colonial era to the contemporary “new gothic.” We will explore how the conventions of gothic literature have shaped the representation of atrocity and its aftermaths, imbuing landscapes, bodyscapes, memoryscapes, and other sites of memory with historical significance and collective meaning.
This course fulfills the "Understanding Genre" requirement for majors.

Leasing its title "Mythic Black Fiction" from Jane Campbell's book of the same name, this course contemplates John B. Vickery's observation that "The history of literature everywhere attests to the closeness and complexity of the relation between literature and myth," a relationship evident in "their shared traits of narrative, character, image and theme." Antebellum and postbellum African American literature discloses earlier black writers' mythic consciousness. It is twentieth- through twenty-first-century African American novelists, however, that have taken that sensibility to new heights. They have inverted history, disintegrated time, re-lived an aborted slave insurrection, supplicated a trickster god of the crossroad, pitted an infernal, Eugenicist spirit against an ageless shape-shifter/Earth mother, borrowed the schematic of Dante's hell, and featured a navel-less woman, flying Africans, and a child born with a caul, among other (im)probables. But is there really another reason black writers are so strongly drawn to myth? The answer is yes, according to Jacqueline de Weever: "The experiences of black people in the New World, into which they have been forcibly thrust against their will, cannot be [fully] told or treated in realistic or naturalistic traditions in which much of American literature has been cast--the pain of the results of three centuries of oppression is too great to be faced and confronted in a realistic mode. Such an experience demands another mode for which mythic narrative is more appropriate." We will engage with the mythopoesis, the mythmaking imperative, in six, representative African American novels.

The gothic novel is said to have been born in the 18th century and rumored to have died in the next, when in fact, its forms and faculties have been animated and reanimated many times, awakened to respond to the anxiety 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 novels, from the colonial era to the contemporary “new gothic.” We will explore how the conventions of gothic literature have shaped the representation of atrocity and its aftermaths, imbuing landscapes, bodyscapes, memoryscapes, and other sites of memory with historical significance and collective meaning.
This course fulfills the "Understanding Genre" requirement for majors.

For many an English major and for the Law School admissions committees that annually evaluate their graduate applications, the discipline, our field, is one of the most logical paths to studies in Law. The affinities of literature and law have not only drawn the attention of scholars. They have also captured the imagination of storytellers, in this case African fiction writers, for generations. For instance, in African literature's most widely read novel, Chinua Achebe's classic Things Fall Apart (1958), the interlinked subjects of law's varieties and contexts, its makers, enforcements, and purposes, the degrees of crime, the drama of litigation, the appellate and carceral systems, citizens' reactions to drastic changes to their jurisprudence, the question of justice and/or its miscarriages in both precolonial and imperial-era Umuofia/Igboland, are major but often under-interrogated preoccupations of that work, especially in high schools. In this interdisciplinary course--the undergraduate version of an anticipated graduate seminar next fall on African literature and law--we will explore representative, law-topicalizing and law-stylizing texts by female and male African writers from different parts of the continent: Achebe's Things Fall Apart and No Longer at Ease (1960), Ngugi wa Thiong’o's Weep Not, Child (1964), Flora Nwapa's Efuru (1966), Lewis Nkosi's Mating Birds (1986), and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Dream Count (2025). It is my hope, the course's goal, that, whether or not they continue to law school, the students that take this course will be disciplinarily more grounded, intellectually deepened, critically sharpened, and overall bettered by it. Word!

This course offers students a chance to read (really read) the poetry of Emily Dickinson, one of the greatest, strangest, most inspiring writers in the English language. Against the conventional image of the sad, alienated spinster, the Dickinson you will encounter in this class is positively ecstatic and wonderfully defiant--her own person on her own terms. In addition to exploring Dickinson's major themes and orientations to writing, our focus will be on Dickinson's embodied, experimental relationship to textuality and language, genre and poetic form. Students will be exposed to recent scholarly practices in Dickinson Studies with particular attention to manuscript criticism and material poetics, using digital archives to look at her original productions. But we'll also learn about Dickinson's fascinating biography and consider contemporary engagements with her life and work in popular culture.

"On or about December 1910 human character changed," wrote Virginia Woolf. This course focuses on the literary forms, innovations, and interdisciplinary experiments of transnational modernism--the developments Woolf had in mind when she made her famous claim. Much of our work will involve interrogating the slipperiness of the term "Modernism": how well does it define, characterize, and interpret the complex, unorthodox, and often cosmopolitan writing, art, and culture we will examine? How do modernist authors and artists engage new ideas from modern philosophy, psychology, and the non-literary arts; transformations in technology and social institutions; migration and popular culture; shifting understandings of politics and society, including gender, race, ethnicity, disability, and class; and the new forms of identity, subjectivity, and agency that emerge from these changes? While we will spend most of the term reading modernist giants, we will also consider essential movements and avant-gardes (the Futurists, Dadaists, Surrealists, the Frankfurt School, the Harlem Renaissance, and emergent global networks of modernism), key modernist precursors, and the recovery and reassessment of lesser-known or forgotten works and innovators.