SPRING 2014

William A. Nericcio | memo@sdsu.edu
Director, MALAS; Professor, English y CompLit

earest human and transhuman citizens of English 220, Spring 2014 @ SDSU, on this humble page you will find the various laws of our 21st century literary/cultural studies estate--the little gates, cages, locks, and handcuffs as well as the meager statutes, ordinances, edicts, and principles that allow our experimental collective to prosper!

Let me underscore that you have absolute intellectual freedom in our technosexually advanced seminar, BUT to receive these delicious rights you must also succumb to the reasonable responsibilities outlined in this, our class passport. After all, we want to have a blast, be the best literature/film studies class on the West Coast, even! But to do that, we need some peace and quiet--a safe asylum within which to forge our imaginative cyborg-laced imagination, to amp our lucid hallucinations. So, then, when you walk into Peterson Gym 153, also known as the 'lair of the transhuman', these are some of the ground rules:

DIRECTIVE 1.119 Alpha-B-ninerREAD_READ_READ:

When you enter this room for class you will have finished the reading that appears on the day-to-day class calendar! Coming to a university literature/film/cultural studies class without doing the reading is like a gardener trying to raise roses without getting her/his hands filthy with shit, a surgeon trying to operate without a scalpel, a fireman without an ax, a streetwalker without, er, well, I better stop there.  Do the readings.  Do them twice if you can MAKE the time! I know, you are saying to yourself, "they don't make me read in my other classes" or some other sort of nonsense..... well here, you must! Please think twice about joining us if you have not finished the readings--the quality of our class depends upon your dedicated work and your relentless and independent curiosity. Without your periodic intellectual donations, the class is likely to evolve into a boring, even painful waste of time. 

DIRECTIVE 1.2389 Beta-Tango67_MAC_PCkaputALPHA:

Your laptop will be asleep IN YOUR BAGS during class--or, better yet, resting in your dorm room or apartment. Have you noticed how anytime a student uses a laptop in an auditorium there is a "cone of distraction" alongside and behind the student using a computer? This is usually due to said student surfing the web via wi-fi perusing erotic delights or god knows what. I was recently at a cool (ok, it was slightly boring, I confess) lecture by a noted  writer--as I tried to listen to her, in front of me, a diverted student, there, no doubt for extra-credit, was perusing sites like these (nsfw or school). So, laptops are GREAT for entering your notes AFTER class, but they will not be allowed in our lecture hall.  If you have an issue with this, schedule a meeting with me during office hours the first week of class. Don't end up like this former student from another Engl 220 I taught back in the day:

DIRECTIVE 1.311893 Zed-BogieViperCell:
Your beloved magnificent iphone, your cherished droid, your fetishized galaxy, or even your primordial pager will be off, off, OFF; if for some reason you are expecting an emergency call, set it on VIBRATE (for privacy, pleasure, or both!) and sit in the back near an exit after letting me know in advance that you are expecting an emergency phonecall. Cellphones KILL collective spaces of learning with their ill-timed, annoying clattering rings, bongs, squeaks, chirps, and themes. Yes, the trauma of that delayed text, yes, the horror of that missed hook-up call, will no doubt doom you to years and years on an psychoanalyst's couch, but we, the rest of us, will gain some silence, a kind of sanctuary without which ideas wither on the vine. 

Law 1.499556 Charlie-Delta_Thief:

PLAGIARISM is for cads, thieves, and idiots who desire an "F" for the class. Plagiarism comes from the Latin word, "plagiarius" which means kidnapper, plunderer, or (get this!) thief--not a GOOD thing. In the university, plagiarism refers to the art and crime of presenting other people's work under your own signature, cutting and pasting copied crap from wikipedia--definitely a BAD thing. While your professor is forbidden by CSU/SDSU code from tattooing the word LOSER on the foreheads of guilty students, he can promise that felonious students will be remanded to the state-authorized SDSU executioners.  Read THIS as well--SDSU is SERIOUS about this shit, so don't take any chances!  Rely on your own mind and your own precious imagination!

WRITING AND EXAMINATIONS 

You will be asked to write TWO Analytical Imagination Challenges, 3-5 page essays, during the course of the term. Please note that you will never be compelled to write about something you absolutely loathe. Please see me or your amazing GTA during office hours as brainstormings essay topics is totally cool. There will be an Imagination Challenge In-Class Festival (aka, the FINAL EXAM) on the last regularly scheduled day of class: Thursday, May 8, 2014. Your final is absolutely comprehensive; it assumes you have read all the books and screened all the movies that are part of our required work. If you do the work, the final is a breeze--even "fun" if you can believe it. If you slack off, you will find the Imagination Challenge In-Class  Festival as enjoyable as a being a zombie's lunch (or a robot's victim!).

VIRTUAL CONTRIBUTIONS

One social media site for this class, Facebook-based, is located here. If you are a member of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg’s mad experiment, then you are expected to post class-related links, images, videos, articles, etc at least ONCE a month or 5 total for the whole semester. If you have not bought into Zuckerberg’s mad experiment and stay away from facebook like the plague,  you have a second choice--you can directly submit a posting to the Robotic Erotic Electric Tumblr site.  I, too,  will be posting course-related materials to our Facebook and Tumblr sites from time to time—feel free to follow the page and make suggestions for additions/deletions. If both Facebook and Tumblr remain alien to your consciousness, you can send your suggested links/images/videos to me via email to memo@sdsu.edu; however, I don’t promise that I will post ALL of your forwarded materials. I will try, however, to see that some of them make their way to the fabulous internets.  

QUIZZES, ATTENDANCE, and CINETREKS...

There will also be a couple of in-class Panic-Inducing Challenges otherwise known as check that you did the reading carefully and on time quizzes. You can expect these miserable quizzes from time to time, the number of quizzes depending on how many of you are nostalgic for high school. In other words, if everyone acts like a talented university student, we will enjoy FEW if any quizzes during our semester. 

Coming to class for each seminar session is NOT optional--the whole point of this class is to work together, the idea being that we creatively and magicly convert our former-basketball-court-somewhat-high-tech classroom into a chaotic, unpredictable, and exciting intellectual laboratory. Missing class, you miss as well the whole point of the adventure. So please bypass no more than three classes during the semester--you are responsible for any work/notes you miss when you are absent and can PRESUME that what you missed that day was important! Miss MORE than three classes during the term and your grade will decay in an ugly way. EXAMPLES: your hard-earned A- will morph into a B-; your "gentleman's C" will appear on the webportal as a "D." Ditching this class too often will be as fun as a case of flesh-eating virus.  Also note from time to time we will NOT meet in the classroom—I am cancelling some classroom time in order to compensate for the 2 or so “cinetreks” you will be making this semester: more on these “cinetreks” or “out of body” experiences to follow. 

GRADING INFORMATION 

• 33% Quizzes, In-class "Panic-Inducing Challenges", In-class participation, attendance, cinetreks, etc.
• 33% "Analytical Imagination Challenges" aka your two essays
• 33% Final Examination Festival 
• 1% Chutzpah, ganas, will, and drive

OFFICE HOURS

Why 'office hours'? I expect you to visit me in office hours at least once during the semester. Additionally, you are encouraged and welcome to visit your GTAs. At SDSU, it's easy to fall through the cracks, to feel that you are nothing but a number or some warm pile of sentient flesh filling a seat. In order to underscore that the person teaching you is somewhat human, please make a point to take the time to introduce yourself in person. My office hours will be on Tuesdays before class from 9:40 to 10:40 and Thurs from to 12:30 to around 1:30 or so in Arts and Letters 273. If these hours are inconvenient, do not hesitate to call me at 619.594.1524 either to schedule an appointment or discuss your questions via telephone. My email address is: memo@sdsu.edu.