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.