SIMULATING/ED ESSAY #1 or
Your Fall 2017 English 525
Imagination Challenge

So many students fret and stress
over writing assignments--but they
should not. I mean, after all,
this is an "English" class
and writing essays is as "English
class" as you can get. It would
be like freaking out if you walked
into your Chemistry lab and fainting
at the sight of a beaker, screaming
at the appearance of a test-tube.

Still, I get it.

But we can do things another way. We
do not have to be encarcerated by
tradition nor policed by conventions.

We can, for this class, with our
dazzling Simulated/ing talents, write
pieces that organically represent our
encounters with complex writers, artists,
photographers, and directors in ways
that actually bring us pleasure.

I was going to consult the Oxford
English Dictionary on hedonism* but
the good old Wikipedia had a clearer
explication of the term:

*free! with your registration to SDSU--check out
hedonic, the root term for hedonism here.



So your main goal with this essay will be to
select a subject-area and objects (at least two
drawn from our required list of texts--film, book,
art, photography, television... ANY texts) that
give you pleasure to explore, that delight
your mind, that satisfy your unapologetic
curiosity.

Ok--so here are some prompts you are free to
use, adapt, warp, re-invent, reshape, mangle,
deconstruct, destruct, etc.  Though, between
you and me, I hope you use the last prompt
as that one has the most value!

Good luck!
PROMPTS

1.One of the first propositions floated
in our seminar focused on the idea of a
Baudrillard-inflected notion of the Simulacra--
our eye was glued to processes of pretending,
copying, aping, mimicking with a specific focus
on storytelling from the United States and the
Americas. Do a little more reading from Baudrillard's
oeuvre* and write an essay that uses at least two
primary, required texts/film/etc from our reading
to say something unique simulation in a post-1960
American context.
*This one is curious: America, trans. Chris Turner, London: Verso, 1988; 1989. (English)

2. Redefine the concept of the "Simulated/ing
Americans" using your own focus/vision/insight as
you explode (replace?!) the term even as you
explore any two works we have or will encounter
this semester? Do feel free to focus
on works we have not gotten to yet in class.

3. Is there a sexual dimension in works appearing
after 1960 in the Americas? Explore our authors/directors
evolving notions of sexuality as they unfold of
in any two or three works we have read/watched/
experienced this semester.

4. Can a Painting talk to a Novel? A photograph
speak to a short story or essay? Compose an
essay that contrasts/compares a text this semester
that was written with one that is composed of
pictures--for instance, Clowes vs. Vonnegut; Peck
with Fuentes. Ultimately your essay is a meditation
on the semantic and the semiotic conceived
simultaneously.  The thematic focus? That is
up to you.

5.Environmental Decay--one of the keynotes struck
again and again in the works we have and will
survey this term concerns our American environment:
I mean this both strictly in that many of our
authors concern themselves with pollution and
pathology, but also metaphorically since most of
them are also directly concerned with what
we might call the "pollution of the American soul."
Write an essay with a focus on the environment using
any two artifacts we've examined or will examine
this term.

6.Literature and Existentialism--bring yourself
up to speed by selecting/reading a key work from
the existentialist tradition: by Wittgenstein,
Nietzsche, Camus, or Sartre. Use that philosophical
text and fuse it somehow with a work we have
read in class this term.

7. Erotic dimensions of the American Psyche--is the erotic
necessarily neurotic? Are neurotics erotic? Consider
the relationship between the erotic and the
psychological in any two works from the semester.

8. Literary Criticism/Film Criticism. Locate
scholarly articles on any two the artists/writers we
have experienced this semester. Try to find articles
that you are decidedly at odds with or that come up
short in ways you find annoying. Write an essay that
directly challenges the findings of these two scholars;
make sure to incorporate your own thesis in your essay.

9. Write a missing chapter in Tex[t]-Mex--one that
either focuses on Latinx or Latina/o phenomena/texts
that I left out of the book or that expands beyond
the Latina/o dimension onto works by other American
ethnic bodies. Try to ape/bend/reshape the manner
of the book as much as you wish to create your own
voice, but do include illustrations.

10. What are "permutations of race" in an American
Literary context--how does race/racism/ethnicity
factor in any two works we have or will encounter
this semester?

11.* Invent your own thesis focused on any works you
choose from our class plus any one work you want
to add in from another class or from your own
reading/screening/museum-going. Written proposal due
to me via email or in-class, typed, delivered
to me by Tuesday, October 31, 2017--if you hand-deliver,
be sure write your email on your submission so I can
get back to your right away.
*highly recommended for English and Comparative Literature majors and graduate students!
Go have fun! I mean it!