Naked Mirrors, Fractured Souls
An Introduction to Literature [and Film]
Professor William A. Nericcio
CLICK HERE FOR YOUR NAKED INFO SHEET!
 COURSE SCHEDULE OF EVENTS /READINGS |
| Monday September 8 First Class! Introductions! Drawings! Excitement! Surprises! Music! ALSO: > Our class does not meet AS a class until > Monday, September 8, 2008--for those > of you who want to hit the ground running, > read the FREUD FOR BEGINNERS book by > Zarate (illustrator) and Appignanesi (writer); > read it twice.... the first time straight through > devouring words and images; the second time, > "read/screen" the IMAGES only--believe it or > not, sometimes Zarate's images are at odds > with Appignanesi's words! Try to find places > where critic and illustrator are at odds or, at > the very least, mildly in conflict. If you really > want to get ahead, grab your copy of > THE HURT BUSINESS and start in on YOUNG > VALIANT--the sdsu bookstore cut a special > deal to lower the price with sdsu press, so that's > the place to go, I imagine for the best price > on this new volume. > > over and out, > > dr. bill nericcio > sdsu | http://eyegiene.sdsu.edu > http://textmex.blogspot.com > your course myspace page, OPTIONAL, is here: > http://myspace.com/sinemadness 
here's a cool cartoon from Freud's INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS...can you figure it out? Click to make it bigger! |
| Monday September 15 Don't walk into class without having read ALL of FREUD FOR BEGINNERS, your reading for last week AND all of YOUNG VALIANT and JOY OF THE DESOLATE by OLIVER MAYER in THE HURT BUSINESS volume! WRITING ASSIGNMENT: Take two pages of typing paper and tape them together side-by-side. Xerox pages or parts of pages from FREUD FOR BEGINNERS that you think DIRECTLY RELATE to passages from JOY OF THE DESOLATE or YOUNG VALIANT. On your "canvas" paste cut-out, xeroxed images from FREUD FOR BEGINNERS next to quotations from Mayer's plays. On another page, typed, double-spaced and with a cool title, justify the juxtapositions of word and image you have pasted to your analytical "canvas." If you wish, and have photographic and artistic skills, you are invited to incorporate those talents as well; here's what one of my students did back a few years ago... but keep in mind that their assignment was different than yours!!! So DON'T mimic it like a lower primate!  Have fun with this, but be careful to back up your nuanced juxtapositions! |
 Monday September 22Our first film day! Read the introduction and the GILDA chapter from TEX[T]-MEX: Seductive Hallucination of the "Mexican" in America--make the time as well to read the first of the two SEDUCTIVE HALLUCINATION galleries in the volume; reading a work of critical theory is WORLDS AWAY different from reading a play--Mayer's writing and my writing are targeting different audiences; I do think however, as you work your way through Gilda/aka RITA HAYWORTH's follicle-follies, her cinema tragedy, that you may find something that connects the obsessions of that playwright from LA and the film theorist from Laredo. Click here to visit the Tex[t]-Mex Galleryblog for a deal on the University of Texas volume; watch for the slow-loading MIRROR widget on the left side of the blog! In your journal, write out two quotes from the article that make perfect sense to you and you can apply to something you have read or seen so far in the class; also write out one quote that you find perplexing or maddening! If you do a search for RITA HAYWORTH on the blog, you will be showered with visual materials that will delight, madden, and enchant! |
 Monday September 29, 2008UPDATE 1. your artkive has been updated with a trailer and full-length version of Jean-Luc Godard's ALPHAVILLE, a next-wave film noir, existentialist masterpiece that infuses the DNA of murakami's AFTER DARK. see as much of it as you can.... 2. journal assignment: place a mirror in front of you on a desk or wherever it is you write. open your journal and with your favorite pen, begin to write about what you see; write, as well, about how it feels to write about what it is you see. in a sense, what you "see" is you, duh! but what you also will see, if you are patient and take care to turn off the tv, the radio, the cell-phone, the wi, the roommate, etc., what you will also see and write about is the process of self-discovery/invention. how many pages? it does not matter--what matters is that you perform this exercise in writing and self-portraiture with focus. if you wish, take a picture of what you see in the mirror; shrink said image and paste it into your journal. if you have not done so already, begin to customize your naked mirror journal so that you can recognize it in a moment's glance. Walk into class having utterly consumed and given yourself over to Murakami's AFTER DARK! This disturbing surrealistic work is bound to give you some kind of reaction--maybe positive, maybe not! Walk into class ready to discuss Murakami's obsessions! In fact, spend at least an hour or so writing about Murakami's obsessions in your journal after you finish reading. For more on his work, click the kitty below:  |
CLASS IS IN CASA REAL In the Aztec Student Center today! Monday, October 6, 2008 Tomás Riley is down to his old stomping grounds of SoCal from the Bay Area where he now hangs his hat to perform pieces from MAHCIC, your reading for this week; enter the room having carefully read all of MAHCIC. In addition, you are to transcribe a page of his poetry from his collection into your NAKEDmirror®journal--you are to illustrate these pages with annotations that bring his words to another life: add images, printouts of definitions, photos, art. Most credit will go to students that incorporate their own art in lieu of magazine collage paste-ups. |
 Monday October 13Evil! TOUCH OF EVIL--it's one of the coolest, darkest weeks of the semester as we get to plunge our eyes into the most amazing films in the history of American cinema. Orson Welles's 1958 classic starring Marlene Dietrich, Akim Tamaroff, Janet Leigh (opposite, Zounds man!), Charlton Heston, and Welles himself, as Quinlan, a ridiculously fat and oppressed bordertown detective.  The film is set on the border between Mexico and the United States, but, more importantly, on the border between
memory and trauma, as Quinlan, plagued by the demons of nostalgia over
the death of his wife and his alcoholism. The "Mexican" in the film,
Charlton Heston, is a shiny white night, dutiful and diligent--except
when it comes to his newlywed wife who he (uncharacteristically, for a
"Mexican" in Hollywood cinema) runs from like the plague. The
film is a classic criminal fil m
noir with a killer ending; but it is more as well: a naked meditation
on the nature of evil and memory on the border, on the verge, on the
edge of the Americas. To prepare for this screening, be sure to
SLOWLY and CAREFUL LY
read (break out that dictionary) the TOUCH OF EVIL chapter from
TEX[T]-Mex, pp 39-80, written by a certain deranged Professor you know.
Also, please read pieces from either of the Seductive
Hallucination chapters, 31-38, and/or 173-190. Why either/or?
Those two chapters, the "Seductive Hallucination Galleries" are written
like blogs--in fact, they were the pre-cursors to the online blog where Tex[t]-Mex constantly gets revised. Poke around there too if you have time as well. |
 Monday October 20, 2008 Oliver Mayer hits San Diego--walk into class having read BLADE TO THE HEAT and the interview included throughout THE HURT BUSINESS. |
Gustavo Arellano invades SDSU! Watch Out!!! Walk into class having carefully read
his memoir, ORANGE COUNTY: A PERSONAL MEMOIR--a quiz is QUITE likely.
After a stupendous lecture (3o minutes tops!) in the first part
of class, Arellano will do readings from his new work and field
questions from the floor!Man Ray & Dan Clowes's GHOST WORLD
This
is a great Monday as we throw ourselves into the visually enticing and,
at times, disturbing worlds of Man Ray and Dan Clowes. Clowes
world is familiar to us from our experiences with Murakami's AFTER
DARK--even more familiar as Clowes sets his award-winning GHOST WORLD
in the United States. Carefully read GHOST WORLD and react to the
following prompt in your handy-dandy journal: "Dan Clowes's GHOST WORLD
introduces readers to a world of ____________, ___________, and
___________." Fill in the blanks and continue exploring your views in
three to four pages of your journal. 
With
the MAN RAY collection, "read" the book at least twice--read it
forwards the first time through and "screen it" backwards the second
time through. Select one image or a detail of an image and
xerox it. Paste this image into your journal and write two to
three pages that finish this sentence: "Here we see Man Ray explore
______________ with his photography. Where we might expect to
understand __________, what Ray really wants us to think about is
______________." Have FUN with these prompts! If you
really dig GHOST WORLD, you'll enjoy this PBS piece with Clowes.Junot Diaz I
Read the first half of Junot Díaz's remarkable, Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. No writing necessary in your journal unless, maybe, if you are motivated, you transcribe a key passage from the novel into your mirror-book and then do a brief close reading.
Utterly optional. Enjoy
Díaz's cool prose adventure! Remember!
This is the last day to submit a written proposal for your big
scary essay if you are going to come up with your own thesis!Update: By "the first half" I mean for you to enter the room having read up to page 201, the end of the first section! Start reading!
November 17, 2008Marisela Norte is in the house to do readings from Peeping Tom Tom Girl, her rad new collection of poetry with City Works Press out of San Diego! Read the book carefully, and then write a Norte-style poem (2 to 3 pages) about the street you live on in the pages of your journal.
November 24, 2008Paper due! In class we will screen Fight Club and have an in-class writing assignment on the movie directed by David Fincher.
Junot Diaz II
Extremely crucial but fun final assignment of the semester day!
Who has been here?