SOUL

594.1524
 

Class introduction; Tattoo etymology; the story of Psyche; psychology versus literature.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Class cancelled owing to silly scheduling conflict.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Read Richard Appignanesi and Oscar Zarate's Freud for Beginners book twice: the first time 'normally'; the second time, ONLY 'read' or screen Zarate's images.
 
 
 
 
 

Today we will screen Frederick Wiseman's outstanding, innovative, disturbing and trendsetting documentary film, Titicut Follies. Time permitting, expect an in-class writing assignment that asks you to connect some aspect of Zarate and Appignanesi's collaborative project to that of Wiseman's.
 
 
 

Begin reading Women on the Road, a collection of short stories by the noted Baja California writer Rosina Conde. Read the first 80 pages including the prologue by Professor Gustavo Segade and the introduction by Professor Sergio Elizondo. Today you will receive you Imagination Adventure short essay assignment. Your essay is due Thursday, July 26, 2001 at the beginning of class, but you are welcome to take a little more time and slide it under the door of my office AH 4117 by 12NOON, FRIDAY, JULY 27, 2001.

An all-around fantastic event today as we screen Luis Buñuel's classic Viridiana. As you watch Buñuel's outrageous frames dance across the screen consider the difference between the way he paints a woman's psyche as opposed to the way Conde achieves the same. NOTE: CLASS WILL RUN ABOUT 15 MINUTES LONG TODAY TO SQUEEZE IN THE ENTIRE FILM!!!

It's a Neo-British Invasion with all-around Nietzsche-monger Peter Atterton who guides us through. philosophy, literature, and the meaning of life in Leo Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Ilych" that appears in your Kreutzer Sonata volume. Atterton is a lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at SDSU and a visiting associate professor of philosophy at USD.. He arrived on the Mayflower from England in 1995 with a Ph.D in philosophyfrom the University of Essex. He has published in the field of ethics, evolution, and continental philosophy intellectual."

For today's seminar, finish reading Conde's collection of short stories. In class we will have a discussion of Conde, Buñuel and Tolstoy. How are they similar? How are they different? And perhaps more importantly, how does each artist approach the task of artistically rendering the tattooed psyche. IMAGINATION CHALLENGE DUE TODAY IN CLASS OR UNDER MY OFFICE DOOR BY 12 NOON TOMORROW. AH 4117

Tattooed EYES! begins our week as we enter the singular eyes of tortured artists. First up for today, read up to page 99 in Pascal Bonafoux's Van Gogh: The Passionate Eye. As you read attend to the marriage of art and anxiety, aesthetics and madness as they meld in this striking European artists's oeuvre.

We take a break from Van Gogh to take in the outrageous film-making of Fritz Lang with M. While Lang and his fantastic star, Peter Lorre, succeed in capturing the visual dynamics of madness, we are still left with a decidedly different portrait than that given to us by Frederick Wiseman.

Finish reading the book on Van Gogh as we conclude our discussion of this fabled painter and lunatic. NOTE: We will have an in-class writing assignment today!! Come to class with an enlarged xerox of what you view to be the most provocative, complex, or meaningful image produced by Van Gogh and collected in the Bonafoux volume

Today we will begin to screen Billy Wilder's lucid meditation on celebrity and madness, Sunset Boulevard.

We complete our screening and discussion of Sunset Boulevard.

We move from the relatively familiar confines of Hollywood to the no less urban but far more eerie backstreets of Mexico City and a striking tale by Carlos Fuentes called Aura. 

From Vincent Van Gogh, Fritz Lang. Europe, Hollywood and Mexico City, we move to Humberto and the fictional community of Palomar in Central America--different regions but similar challenges facing our visually adept and psychically tattoed illustrator. Read the first 57 pages of Los Angeles artist and writer Gilbert Hernandez. Today you will receive your second writing assignment due on Thursday August 16 in class or on Friday August 17 at noon, ah 4117.

Today we will complete our reading of Hernandez's magnificent and magnificently disturbing novel.

Today you walk into our forbidden classroom, AH 4176 having ALREADY read Junichiro Tanizaki's Naomi up to page 153.  As you read consider how cultural artifacts from the West figure in this "Japanese" relationship. Also, is there an "economics" of masochistic desire working its way through this text?

Today, we will begin to screen Peter Greenaway's lush, lurid, erotic, tri-cultural, polymorphously perverse and textually illicit masterpiece, The Pillow Book--NOTE THAT WE WILL SCREEN THIS FILM IN AH 4176 AS THE MASTER SCREENING ROOM IS CLOSED OWING TO CONSTRUCTION. Sorry.

We will complete Greenaway's Film and use the time left to us to discuss Tanizaki and Greenaway's work.

You might want to finish reading Tanizaki's book before coming to class so that you are free from reading tonight or tomorrow when you will be up all night writing your 2nd paper!.

Finish Tanizaki's novel.
Today your second writing assignment is due--but you may if you wish, turn it in tomorrow Friday August 17 at noon, under my office door at AH 4117.

Read Oliver Mayer's play, BLADE TO THE HEAT for class discussion today.  Note Mayer's fascination capturing the erotic dynamics of a confused psyche trapped/living between two worlds.

Read Donna Masini's novel About Yvonne to page 190--heavy set of reading so MAKE quality time for the experience.

Finish reading Masini's erotic tale of obsession. In class, we will continue our discussion AND review for our final tomorrow.

FINAL!