Spring 2010 Course Descriptions

The course descriptions and reading lists for my Spring 2010 classes are online now at Sample Reality. It's videogame studies and a graduate class on pedagogy this time around. Excellent classes, both of them are. Fun and challenging.

Reading List for ENGL 459: Disaster Fiction (Fall 2009)

Here’s the official reading list for ENGL 459 on Disaster Fiction, along with a quick breakdown of the class’s organization:

Part I: The Disaster Novel

• Lucifer’s Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle

Part II: The Postmodern Disaster Novel

• White Noise by Don DeLillo

Part III: Apocalyptic Journeys

• Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
• The Road by Cormac McCarthy

Part IV: The Disaster of History

• Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz

You can find a more visual display of the reading list as well.

Reading List for ENGL 493: Graphic Novels (Fall 2009)

Here is the reading list for my Fall 2009 course on graphic novels. There are so many compelling graphic novels worthy of inclusion that I had to make some tough choices: Neil Gaiman didn’t make it on, nor did Kyle Baker, Jessica Abel, Charles Burns, Rutu Modan, and a host of other possibilities. But what I’ve got is some great stuff, spanning genres, styles, and mood.

• Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art by Scott McCloud
• Batman: The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller
• Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
• Maus : A Survivor’s Tale : My Father Bleeds History/Here My Troubles Began by Art Spiegelman
• Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware
• American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang
• The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
• Uzumaki, Volume 1 by Junji Ito
• In My Darkest Hour by Wilfred Santiago
• Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel

And here’s a more appropriately visual presentation of the same required texts, complete with pricing information.

Fall 2009 Course Descriptions

ENGL 459 (Disaster Fiction)

This class explores what the influential critic and novelist Susan Sontag called "the imagination of disaster." Sontag was speaking of Hollywood cinema of the fifties and sixties, arguing that end-of-the-world films of this era simultaneously aestheticize destruction and address a perversely utopian impulse for moral simplification. But what about disasters in contemporary fiction? While natural and unnatural disasters have provided Hollywood with predictable script material for decades, less familiar are the meditations on disasters that serious novelists have taken up in literary fiction. In this class we will consider how novelists imagine disaster. From uncontrollable natural disasters to planned nuclear annihilation, from swift destruction unleashed by human avarice to the slow death of a dying world, we will examine the ways fiction reaffirms, questions, or rewrites the modalities of disaster. Along the way we will consider the social, historical, and political contexts of disaster fiction, exploring what it means to "think the unthinkable" in different times and places. Among the writers we will study are Margaret Atwood, Don DeLillo, Ursula Le Guin, Cormac McCarthy, W.E.B. DuBois, and many others.

ENGL 493 (The Graphic Novel)

This course considers the storytelling potential of graphic novels, an often neglected form of artistic and narrative expression with a long and rich history. Boldly combining images and text, graphic novels of recent years have explored divisive issues often considered the domain of "serious" literature: immigration, racism, war and terrorism, sexual abuse, and much more. Informed by literary theory and visual culture studies, we will analyze both mainstream and indie graphic novels. In particular, we will be especially attentive to the unique visual grammar of the medium, exploring graphic novels that challenge the conventions of genre, narrative, and high and low culture. While our focus will be on American graphic novelists, we will touch upon artistic traditions from across the globe. Graphic novelists studied may include Kyle Baker, Alison Bechdel, Alan Moore, Wilfred Santiago, Marjane Satrapi, Art Spiegelman, and Gene Luen Yang.

Reading Lists for Spring 2009

I've had my course descriptions for Spring 2009 posted for a while, but here finally are the reading lists.

Reading List for HNRS 353: Technology in the Contemporary World

• Gaming: Essays On Algorithmic Culture by Alexander Galloway
  

Reading List for ENGL 660: American Postmodernism

• The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
• The Female Man by Joanna Russ
• The Lathe Of Heaven by Ursula Le Guin
• Beloved by Toni Morrison
• Mao II by Don DeLillo
• House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
• The People of Paper by Salvador Plascencia
• Tropic of Orange by Karen Tei Yamashita
• In the Shadow of No Towers by Art Spiegelman
• Shooting War by Anthony Lappe and Dan Goldman
  

Spring 2009 Course Descriptions

HNRS 353:004 (Videogames in Critical Contexts)

In this Honors Seminar we will study the history and cultural impact of videogames from a number of critical perspectives. As products of a complicated network of social, economic, and technological forces, videogames are dense cultural texts, deeply layered with multiple meanings. Whether we consider early arcade games like Pac-Man or the latest blockbusters for next-gen consoles, we find that videogames reveal much about our cultural values, hopes and anxieties, and assumptions about the world. We will examine a range of genres (interaction fiction, first person shooters, simulations, role playing games, and so on) as we strive to understand both the narrative and formal aspects of videogames. At the same time we will map connections between videogames and their broader social contexts -- how games are designed, who plays them and where, and in what ways videogames can be more than entertainment.

ENGL 660:002 (American Postmodernism)

Experimental form, a breakdown between high and low culture, a distrust and subversion of authority, and hyperbolic self-referentiality are just a few of the hallmarks of postmodernism, a notoriously slippery concept that is the focus of this graduate seminar. But what else is postmodernism? Is it a literary movement? A moment in history? An economic condition? A state of mind? We may not arrive at a definitive answer to these questions, but the novels and theoretical texts we will encounter in this seminar suggest that postmodernism is marked by a fundamental shift in our relationship to technology, mass media, and pop culture. We will study a few “classics” of postmodernism, but we will concentrate our attention on the more recent texts of “late postmodernism,” novels, graphic novels, and films that seem to have at once exhausted the limits of postmodernism and gestured toward even greater innovative storytelling forms.

Syllabi and Course Blogs for Fall 2008

The syllabi and course blogs for my Fall 2008 classes are now live:

• ENGL 343 (Textual Media)
• ENGL 414 (English Honors Seminar on American Postmodernism)
  

Reading Lists for Fall 2008

My course descriptions for Fall 2008 have been up for a while, but here are the specific reading lists for both classes:

Reading List for ENGL 343 - Textual Media

• Electronic Literature: New Horizons for the Literary by N. Katherine Hayles
  
• Afternoon: A Story by Michael Joyce
• Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art by Scott McCloud

Reading List for ENGL 414:003 - American Postmodernism

• House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski
  
• White Noise: Text and Criticism by Don DeLillo, ed. Mark Osteen
  
• Dream Jungle by Jessica Hagedorn
  
• The People of Paper by Salvador Plascencia
  
• The Female Man by Joanna Russ
  
• Shooting War by Anthony Lappe and Dan Goldman
• Postmodernism and the Contemporary Novel: A Reader, ed. Bran Nicol

Fall 2008 Course Descriptions

ENGL 343 - Textual Media

ENGL 343 is devoted to the critical study of texts produced and consumed in a digital environment. Hypertexts, blogs, digital stories, interactive fiction, and videogames are just a few examples of the kinds of textual media we will encounter in this class. These new media works are often innovative, evocative, and sometimes, simply puzzling. They often challenge commonly held assumptions about reading, writing, and narrative, and they raise intriguing questions about the cultural production of meaning. As we explore the relationship between new media and so-called old media -- literature, film, television, art, and advertising -- we will also consider the creative and political implications of digital media.

ENGL 414: American Postmodernism

Experimental form, a breakdown between high and low culture, and hyperbolic self- referentiality are just a few of the hallmarks of postmodernism, a notoriously slippery concept that is the focus of this Honors Seminar. But what else is postmodernism? Is it a literary movement? A moment in history? An economic condition? A state of mind? We may not arrive at a definitive answer to these questions, but the novels and theoretical texts we will encounter in this seminar suggest that postmodernism is marked by a fundamental shift in our relationship to technology, mass media, and pop culture. We will closely study novels, graphic novels, and films that revel in, critique, or even resist these elements of postmodernism, including works by Don DeLillo, Jessica Hagedorn, Toni Morrison, and Mark Z. Danielewski.

Spring 2008 Course Descriptions

HNRS 353: Videogames in Critical Contexts

In this course we will study the history and cultural impact of videogames from a critical perspective. As products of a complicated network of social, economic, and technological forces, videogames are dense cultural texts, deeply layered with multiple meanings. Whether we consider early arcade games like Pac-Man or the latest blockbusters for next-gen consoles, we find that videogames reveal much about our cultural values, hopes and anxieties, and assumptions about the world. We will examine a range of genres (interaction fiction, first person shooters, simulations, RPGs, and so on) as we strive to understand both the narrative and formal aspects of videogames. At the same time we will map connections between videogames and their broader social contexts—how games are designed, who plays them and where, and in what ways videogames can be more than entertainment.

ENGL 610: Teaching The Reading Of Literature

How do we as teachers read literature? How do our students read literature? What is the difference between the two? And how can we teach our students the process of interpretation—of transforming a naïve reading of a literary work into a critical reading? This course addresses these questions by considering theoretical approaches to the teaching of literature as well as practical techniques and tools that teachers and students alike can use. Among these strategies we will emphasize the role of writing as a means to deepen students’ understanding of what they read. ENGL 610 is designed for current teachers, those considering careers in teaching, and anyone drawn to the experience of reading and analyzing literature. Most of our course readings are relevant to high school and college English classrooms, but many ideas we consider may be adapted for the teaching of younger readers.