Welcome!
Before you fill out the 2023-2024 course preference form, please consult the Faculty Instructions for Teaching Requests (linked here and available in text below the form). Provided instructions cover Area Group meetings, MWF teaching policy, undergraduate courses (including honors seminars, department seminars, special topics, collaborative research courses, quest courses, and film courses), undergraduate scheduling patterns, graduate courses and scheduling patterns, as well as links for more information.
Instructions and Information for AY 2023-2024 Course Requests
Area Group Meetings
All Area Groups (AG) need to schedule meetings to address course requests BEFORE INDIVIDUAL REQUESTS ARE SUBMITTED. Course requests made without AG input may not be approved. AG leaders are listed below.
American Literature: Malini Schueller
African American Literature: Mark Reid
British Literature: Roger Maioli for Pamela Gilbert
Children’s Literature: John Cech
Creative Writing: David Leavitt/Michael Hofmann
Cirtical Theory/Cultural Studies: Phil Wegner
Film and Media Studies :Trevor Mowchun
Feminisms/Genders/Sexualities: (Volunteer?)
Postcolonial Studies: Apollo Amoko
Writing/Media/Visual Rhetoric: Raul Sanchez
- Please discuss your course preferences with your AG. As your AG plans its undergraduate course offerings for the coming year, consider the offerings as a whole. Do they provide a good distribution of topics, periods, genres, etc? Do you think that undergraduates who take the courses will come away with a good idea of the kinds of subjects that your AG’s model of study addresses?
- Please discuss your AG’s graduate and undergraduate seminar requests for the year. Because of the dramatically reduced size of incoming graduate classes, it is unlikely that faculty members will be able to teach a graduate seminar each year. Your AG will need to think about graduate seminars, honors seminars, department seminars, and the new undergraduate collaborative research seminars (see below) as interchangeable. Each member of an AG should think of requesting one of these types of seminars per year, and the AG as a whole should propose two graduate seminars per academic year.
- Please coordinate your scheduling requests for the coming year with the other members of your AG. Members of one AG submitted four individual requests for the same meeting time in Spring 2023. Running that many courses from the same AG at the same time is counterproductive and risks reducing enrollments. As simultaneous classes multiply, students have a hard time scheduling their classes and we run the risk of lower registrations.
- Try not to repeat courses that you have offered recently. If we repeat offerings too frequently, we are likely to see lower enrollments.
MWF Teaching Policy
All English Department faculty must teach one semester per academic year of undergraduate courses on MWF schedule. No exceptions.
During semesters not assigned to MWF schedules, faculty may not schedule courses as three-hour blocks for undergraduate courses except in these instances:
- Undergraduate courses other than departmental seminars, honors seminars, creative writing workshops, and video production courses may be scheduled for three-hour bocks on Tuesdays or Thursdays during periods 9-11, if those times are available and not already scheduled with other courses and if rooms are available.
- Departmental seminars may be scheduled for three-hour blocks.
- Honors seminars may be schedule for three-hour blocks.
- Creative Writing workshops may be scheduled for three-hour blocks.
- Video Production courses may be scheduled for three-hour blocks.
The Associate Chair / Undergraduate Coordinator, in consultation with the Undergraduate Advisor, will determine a distribution of undergraduate courses that provide parity between semesters in terms of numbers of MWF courses offered.
Undergraduate Courses
You will find a complete list of undergraduate English courses in the Undergraduate Catalog at https://catalog.ufl.edu/UGRD/courses/english/.
Honors Seminars, Department Seminars, Special Topics, and Collaborative Research Courses
You may request an honors seminar (ENG 4936), a department seminar (ENG 4953), or a special topics course (LIT 4930) as part of your undergraduate teaching assignment.
Honors seminars are 15-student classes restricted to English majors who have a 3.5 upper-division GPA, and who are pursuing graduation magna or summa cum laude. The department offers two honors seminars in the fall and two in the spring.
Department seminars are 15-student classes limited to English majors who have completed 9 hours of upper-division English Department coursework. The department offers 1-2 department seminars in each fall/spring semester.
Special topics courses are 35-student classes about subjects that don’t fit under any other course rubric in the undergraduate curriculum. While there is no limit on the number of special topics courses that are offered in fall and spring semesters, instructors are encouraged to use other course rubrics if at all possible since students may only take LIT 4930 up to a total of nine credits.
Starting in AY 2023-2024, we will be offering a few sections of a new course for majors called Topics in Collaborative Research. Along with the undergraduate research course, the honors thesis, the internship course and study abroad, this course will help students meet the Quest 3 requirement for experiential learning. The idea is to immerse students in the research process on a shared topic. We anticipate that each section would be capped at approximately 20 students. The course number has not yet been assigned to the course by the state, but if you are interested in teaching such a course, request it as a LIT 4930, specify that you are proposing a collaborative research class, and describe the topic.
Quest Courses
The College continues to encourage faculty members to teach lower-division Quest courses (with registration caps ranging from 35 to 175). While the College is not imposing quotas for the numbers of seats each department will need to provide, we have been encouraged to provide about 325 seats in the fall, 450 in the spring, and 180 in the summer.
The Fall 2023 Call for UF Quest courses is now available on the UF Quest website.
Here are some key points about the Call:
- Friday, September 30, 2022 is the deadline for all applications.
- Faculty interested in developing new UF Quest courses for Fall 2023 are invited to attend a UF Quest Syllabus Workshopto learn more about the UF Quest program and to ask questions that they may have about their course proposals. They can also contact Dr. Andrew Wolpert directly or the UF Quest 1 and UF Quest 2 directors, if they would like individual feedback on their proposals.
If you are interested in proposing a Quest course, please contact Sid Dobrin and he will direct you to the appropriate resources for doing so.
Undergraduate Course Scheduling Patterns
Fall and Spring classes are 50 minutes, as listed below:
| Period | Time |
| 1 | 7:25 – 8:15am |
| 2 | 8:30 – 9:20am |
| 3 | 9:35 – 10:25am |
| 4 | 10:40 – 11:30am |
| 5 | 11:45am – 12:35pm |
| 6 | 12:50 – 1:40pm |
| 7 | 1:55 – 2:45pm |
| 8 | 3:00 – 3:50pm |
| 9 | 4:05 – 4:55pm |
| 10 | 5:10 – 6:00pm |
| 11 | 6:15 – 7:05pm |
| E1 | 7:20 – 8:10pm |
| E2 | 8:20 – 9:10pm |
| E3 | 9:20 – 10:10pm |
Three-credit courses should be scheduled as follows:
- Monday, Wednesday and Friday (M W F), one period a day, at the same period each day
- Tuesday and Thursday (T R), one period on one day and two periods the other day.
- Tuesday/Thursday Scheduling Patterns:
| T | 1 | T | 4 | T | 7 | T | 10 | |
| R | 1-2 | R | 4-5 | R | 7-8 | R | 10-11 | |
| T | 2-3 | T | 5-6 | T | 8-9 | T | 11-E1 | |
| R | 3 | R | 6 | R | 9 | R | E1 | |
We don’t schedule classes against the scheduling grid because it decreases the likelihood of being assigned a classroom.
Film Course Screenings
Film and Media Studies courses carry 4 credits because students must attend 3-hour screenings each week as well as the 3 hours of class meeting time. As a rule, screenings are scheduled in the 3-hour blocks in periods 9-11 and E1-E3 in order not to conflict with class meeting times in periods 1-8.
Graduate Courses
You will find a complete list of graduate English courses at http://gradcatalog.ufl.edu/content.php?catoid=12&navoid=2636.
You may request a graduate-level Variable Topics course, LIT 6934, but keep in mind most graduate courses are flexible with respect to content and methodology, and it helps when existing course numbers are taught regularly. When in doubt about the course number to choose consult your Area Group leader or the Graduate Coordinator.
If you are interested in running your seminar as a department proseminar, please contact the Graduate Coordinator. Proseminars are seminars with roughly 30% of the course material devoted to issues of professionalization and career planning. (These will be assigned a catalog number soon, but for now, use the course name and number most closely aligned with your specialized topic.)
If you are interested in offering the Writing for Publication course, our new course for ABD students (which will soon have a catalog number assigned), please contact the Graduate Coordinator for information about the course. This course is a professionalization seminar available to those out of coursework, taught for a grade.
Graduate Course Scheduling Patterns
Graduate courses meet in 3-period blocks on one day per week. The blocks are:
Periods 3-5 9:35am-12:35pm
Periods 6-8 12:50pm-3:50pm
Periods 9-11 4:05pm-7:05pm
Periods E1-E3 7:20pm-10:10pm
Graduate Film and Media Studies courses will have 3-hour screenings as well as the 3-hour seminar meeting times. These screenings are generally scheduled for either the 9-11 or E1-E3 time period.
The MFA@FLA Writing series is held on Thursday night at 7pm and, to accommodate students in all seminars, we prefer not to schedule Thursday evening seminars that would conflict with the series.