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Spring 2017 CALENDAR ENGL 301:The Psychological Novel Naked I/Eyes & Psychedelic Mirrors Day to Day Calendar of Assignments {updated regularly}

PHOTOGRAPHY AS LITERATURE LITERATURE AS PHOTOGRAPHY Thursday, January 19, 2017 First day of class. What will we see? What won't we see? Our Spring 2017 literary/ visual arts festival will focus on the metaphor of "Naked I/Eyes" as we explore the deliciously and outrageously damaged psyches, minds, and art of women and men in some of the tastiest, most exotic and eye-opening literature, film, art, photography, and poetry this side of the planet. But we have to be careful! Eyes wide open, so to speak: these naked mirrors (and psychedelic mirrors), concealing nothing, revealing all, are not without their tricks, not without their surprises, and the fractured souls they flaunt before our eyes will test our intellect, imagination, and, most deeply, our emotions. The various works we encounter this term will teach us to rethink, rewrite, and reimagine what it is we call to mind when we picture the contours of the human mind--in the process, we will learn again just how instrumental the seductive mirror of literature can be in exposing the riches of these psychic universes. What is in store for us today, day one? In a bit of a surprise for a literature class, photography. Yes, photography.  That most ubiquitous of media, now, that most common mode of communication via Instagram, Snapchat, etc, photography emerges more and more as the dominant mode of storytelling (and, perhaps, the most intimate medium where manifestations of the psyche -- desire, self-doubt, self-creation -- unravel and cascade in full display of known and unknowable audiences); what exactly is a "friend of a friend"--the mind reels when one considers how our photographic broadcasts via social media spread, virus-like, through the universe: more on this here*). In class we will consider the photography of Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Man Ray--with his collaborator Meret Oppenheim, Francesca Woodman, and Diane Arbus; we will examine their photographic plates and search for hidden, ciphered parables of the psyche, tales of the mind unleashed through the alchemy, the magic of photographic expression. Manuel Alvarez Bravo Manuel Álvarez Bravo Parábola Optica/Optical Parable 1931 Medium Gelatin silver print Dimensions 9 1/2 x 7 3/16" (24.1 x 18.2 cm) Credit The Photography Council Fund Object number749.1998 Copyright© 2017 Estate of Manuel Alvarez Bravo / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris Man Ray--with Meret Oppenheim Man Ray (Emmanuel Radnitzky) Philadelphia, Penn., USA, 1890 - Paris, France, 1976 (with Meret Oppenheim) Erotique voilée (Veiled Erotic) Date:  1933 / Posthumous print, 1982 Technique:  Gelatin silver print on paper Dimensions:  Image: 37,5 x 26,6 cm / Support: 40,4 x 30,5 cm Category:  Photography Entry date:  1988 Observations:  Entry date: 1988 (from the redistribution of the Museo Español de Arte Contemporáneo [MEAC] collection) Register number:  AS07542 Donation of Lucien Treillard, 1983 Francesca Woodman Francesca Woodman Untitled, 1975–80 MEDIUM Photograph, gelatin silver print on paper on ink on paper DIMENSIONS Image: 109 x 109 mm frame: 458 x 402 x 20 mm COLLECTION Tate Modern UK / National Galleries of Scotland ACQUISITION Acquired jointly with the National Galleries of Scotland through The d'Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008 REFERENCE AR00347 Additional Montage of Woodman's work--click opposite Diane Arbus DIANE ARBUS (1923-1971) Female impersonator holding long gloves, Hempstead, L.I. Artist:Diane Arbus (American, New York 1923–1971 New York) Date:1959 Medium:Gelatin silver print Dimensions:Image: 9 3/4 × 5 7/8 in. (24.8 × 14.9 cm) Sheet: 14 × 11 in. (35.6 × 27.9 cm) Classification:Photographs Credit Line:Purchase, Joyce F. Menschel Gift, 2015 Accession Number:2015.136 Opposite: Self-Portrait, Pregnant, N.Y.C., 1945 gelatin silver print, printed later by Neil Selkirk stamped 'A Diane Arbus photograph', signed, titled, dated, numbered '12/75' in ink by Doon Arbus, Administrator and Estate copyright credit reproduction limitation stamps (on the verso) sheet: 10 x 8in. (25.4 x 20.3cm.) framed: 22 3 ⁄ 4 x 18 3 ⁄ 4 x 1in. (57.785 x 47.625 x 2.54 cm.) Presented in white maple frame with 8-ply museum overmat, behind plexiglas and wired for installation. LITERATURE Diane Arbus Revelations, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art/Random House, 2003, p. 15

Tuesday, January 24, 2017 Homework 1: Download, print out and bring to class your NAKEDeyes Info sheet!  Give yourself time to do it thoughtfully--and while you can cheat and paste in a picture for your self-portrait, it will be much better to draw it yourself (whether or not you can draw!) Homework 2: You walk into class having read and finished YOUNG VALIANT by LA-based playwright Oliver Mayer. A semi-serious, semi-comic mock epic (basically Sophocles's OEDIPUS) re-written for Studio City/East LA, Mayer's play is a genuine literary masterpiece.  Played small on the stage with three characters, Dad, Mama, Boy, the play touches on elements of the psyche that are both primal and basic: love, food, desire, shelter, asylum, and space.

Thursday, January 26, 2017 Read JOY OF THE DESOLATE or BLADE TO THE HEAT for class today (your choice!  you are welcome, of course, to read both as both will be the focus of class discussion today).

Tuesday, January 31, 2017 You walk into our palace of musical distractions, Music 120, having read/screened/devoured Patricia Allmer's THIS IS MAGRITTE.  Having parsed psychology through playwriting last week, we move onto the terrain of oil painting and the surreal imaginative improvisations and studies that are the world of Belgian painter Rene Magritte.  Playful, disruptive, hilarious, sexy, and unpredictable, Magritte's canvases aim to disrupt what we traditionally understand as sign, symbol, perspective, and meaning.  Try to read the entire book before class today--no worries, it won't dent your brain and should be relatively painless.  We may have an in-class exercise to start the class so don't be late and come prepared.

Thursday, February 2, 2017 NOTE: Class today is in Music 113. Today is the first day of our collaboration with Professor Eric Smigel's Mega MUSIC 351 PSYCHEDELIC ROCK OF THE 1960s class so we will meet in Smith Recital Hall--get there a little early so you can't claim "I could not find it."!!!!!  For this class we will continue our musings on Magritte, but we will fuse these with Doc Smigel's assignment which entails carefully listening to: Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit" and Moby Grape's “Omaha” and reading this short piece by Hunter S. Thomson

Tuesday, February 7, 2017 We return to our home, Music 120, for our next class meeting; before you enter our room you have read Erin C. Garcia's PHOTOGRAPHY AS FICTION up to plate/picture number 49.  Over the weekend or on Monday, you will xerox a page from the book including both the image and Garcia's writing. On the back of that xeroxed sheet, either typed or handwritten, I would like you to attempt an independent counter-reading of the same image.

Thursday, February 9, 2017 Finish your reading of García's Photography as Fiction--as an exercise in photography and writing, I want you to go out and take a photograph that is INSPIRED by ONE of the photographs/fictions you encounter in García's book.  Print out a copy of the photograph that inspired you and of your own photograph. When you walk into the room, pick up a piece of tape and tape your masterwork to the wall as we are going to transform our classroom into a gallery for the class.

Tuesday, February 14, 2017 IN CLASS SCREENING: BLACK MIRROR's THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF YOU! What happens at the nexus of technology and subjectivity. What happens when the machine makes your very psyche naked? Is your smartphone, with all its amazing recording superpowers a prosthetic that extends the range of your humanity or is it, instead, some sort of encarcerating robot, some species of dominating artificial intelligence to which we now bow down. In class we will screen THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF YOU, written by Jesse Armstrong and directed by Brian Welsh, part of the BLACK MIRROR series.

Thursday, February 16, 2017 What happens if that most elevated category of the psyche, the existential, becomes a technology-contaminated domain; free will and self-determination are meaningless in a world where Yelp-style rating determine worth and human value.  But that is the premise of BLACK MIRROR's NOSEDIVE episode, written by Rashida Jones and Michael Schur (from a story by series creator and showrunner, Charlie Brooker) and directed by Joe Wright. In class, we will screen the film and have a brief discussion after the screening.

Tuesday, February 21, 2017 Read the first three quarters, the first 73 pages or so, of Leonhard Emmerling's illustrated review of Jean-Michel Basquiat.  I would like you to read it twice--the first time carefully glossing Emmerling's analysis; the second time, ignoring Emmerling altogether and focusing on the specific images themselves (you may want to perform this second reading/screening in reverse). Walk into class with a xerox of your favorite print from the book--we will tape these to the wall so that the ghost of Basquiat can relax in our midst among friends!  The Xeroxed print will be how we take roll so don't forget!

Thursday, February 23, 2017 NOTE: Class today is in Music 113. Finish reading Emmerling's study for our class with Eric Smigel's mob of music students!  Here are your listening assignments--please complete these BEFORE you walk in the door, maybe AS you are reading/screening Basquiat! Listening Homework: Lyric/Information Sheets Listening Homework: Songs Strawberry Alarm Clock, “Incense and Peppermints” Spirit, “Mechanical World” Iron Butterfly, “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” Reading: From ROLLING STONE MAGAZINE: Tom Donahue's "A Rotting Corpse Stinking Up the Airways..."

Tuesday, February 28, 2017 We are weeks into the semester and we finally arrive at a proper "Psychological Novel" with John Steinbeck's classic OF MICE AND MEN. Please read up to page 64 in the Penguin paperback I assigned for the class. If you are one of those unfortunate billions forced to read this novel in High School, get ready for something you might not have anticipated.   Most folks are not ready for Steinbeck's nuanced meditation on friendship, mental illness, poverty, and love when they are more clearly focused on sneaking smokes behind the gymnasium. The novel, almost a cliché go-to for legions of pimply post-adolescents, emerges as something different when read in the light of our university years.  In terms of our class, allow our recent experiences with Basquiat, Black Mirror, and more to color your reading of this major work from Steinbeck's oeurvre of American classics.

Thursday, March 2, 2017 You walk into the room having finished Steinbeck's OF MICE AND MEN.  As you read, consider the thematic foci of our class so far--does the novel have Naked Eyes? Naked I's? How, too, does Steinbeck's fiction traverse the realm of the psyche, of the psychological? In class you will receive and we will go over your ESSAY ASSIGNMENT for the semester.

Tuesday, March 7, 2017 PAPER ASSIGNMENT NOW LIVE! It will be the longest reading event of the semester, but you manage to pull it off--you walk into our Music 120 having read Herman Melville's BILLY BUDD, SAILOR.  Give yourself plenty of time to complete the reading as Melville's delicious 19nth century prose was authored for a world without internet distractions, television, and happy hours!  In class, we will have a wide-ranging discussion of what you view to be the point of the novel.  Be sure to come to class with at least two passages written out that you view to be essential to a reading/interpretation of the novel.

Thursday, March 9, 2017 Class is cancelled today--your Professor is off to the Ohio State University to deliver a lecture on Alfonso Cuarón's CHILDREN OF MEN.   Curious? You can check out the details by clicking the image below. We will make up this missed class with an after-hours class outing later in the semester!

Tuesday, March 14, 2017 Male Psychology this; Male Psychology that--enough! Now we turn to the decidedly female contours of a remarkably lucid, sensitive, and gift mind--that of Lidia Yuknavich, author of CHRONOLOGY OF WATER. You have a lot of reading over the weekend so you are grateful that class was cancelled last Thursday, right!?  How much to read? I bet you won't be able to put it down! Read to page 219 for class on Tuesday, today.

Thursday, March 16, 2017 Finish reading Lidia Yuknavich THE CHRONOLOGY OF WATER before walking into our house of music. In preparation for our MUSEUM DAY class, find a photograph, painting, object, article of clothing, artifact, anything really, that speaks to you in the way that water speaks to Lidia Yuknavich--that is bring in something representative of who you are, what shaped you, what moves you.  We will turn the classroom into a museum of personal artifacts, a circle of things; we, in the center, will talk about Yuknavitch's book and the significant artifacts we bring to share.  Do take care to bring something you are comfortable sharing.

Extra Optional Class Outing! March 17, 7:30 pm; March 18, 7:30pm; & March 19, 2pm. Students may earn 30 extra-credit points applicable to any assignment by attending one of three performances by the SDSU University Dance Company, which will present original choreographic works based on the song “Hey Jude” by The Beatles. The performances will take place on campus at the Dance Studio Theatre (ENS-200) at 7:30 p.m. on March 17, 7:30 p.m. on March 18, and 2:00 p.m. on March 19. SDSU students may purchase tickets for $10. Take a selfie of yourself at the event with your ticket in the image and post it to facebook, tumblr or instagram with the hashtag #nakedpsychedelicmirrors

Tuesday, March 21, 2017 Gilbert Hernandez, one of the more prolific American literary/graphics stars of the 20th and 21st century is the focus for our seminar this week-read to page 122 in the HUMAN DIASTROPHISM collection (you are welcome to read the short stories contained in the rest of the book, but the main novel contained in this anthology runs from pages 7-122). Human Diastrophism (or Blood of Palomar, as it was called when it appeared serially in LOVE AND ROCKETS, a comic series from Fantagraphics Books) is, on the surface, the story of a serial killer haunting a small Central American town. But the backbone of the story is a portrait of the artist as a young man, as Humberto, tutored by Heraclio, a music teacher, and Luba, an awesome godlike force of female power and sexuality wrestle for his soul.

Thursday, March 23, 2017 Class postponed in order for you to attend one of the HEY JUDE Dance Performances!

Your Snapchat Assignment!!!

Tuesday, March 28, 2017 | Spring Break

Thursday, March 30, 2017 | Spring Break

Tuesday, April 4, 2017 You walk into our classroom--the only seminar room on campus that comes with a live soundtrack!--and you are rested and raring to go having had your Spring Break. Before you enter the classroom, you've already read up to page 164, the end of chapter 17, in JG Ballard's CRASH, and this mad, Shanghai-born Brit has your mind reeling.  In preparation for today's class, you have handwritten out on a sheet of paper, a passage (4 to 6 sentences tops), that you find to be the most provocative from your 164 pages of reading.  Be sure to come to class with this passage written out and turn it in to the front before you sit down and before class begins. Please put this passage into an envelope and draw what you view to be key symbols from your reading of the novel on the outside--also, make sure your name is on this envelope--DO NOT ANALYZE the passage, just write it out in clear handwriting. Print if your cursive is hieroglyphics-like!

Thursday, April 6, 2017 JG Ballard's CRASH is finished! done! finito! You walk into our big room with Professor Smigel, Music 113, having completed CRASH as we join with Smigel's psychedelic tripping hipsters for our last joint class of the semester (note: we still have one more meeting with them, however, the rave/concert on Thursday, April 27). Pictured: Jorge Luis Borges and JG Ballard

Tuesday, April 11, 2017 Michael Almereyda's experimental meditation on the psychological consequences of experiments (and pain, and cruelty, and more) is on tap today as we begin our screening of THE EXPERIMENTER.   After class today, be sure to read the piece in FILM COMMENT by David Thomson in anticipation of our discussion for Thursday! Remember, your papers / essays / imagination challenges are due at the beginning of class Thursday.

Thursday, April 13, 2017 Today we complete our screening and discussion of of Almereyda's THE EXPERIMENTER--there has been basically no reading this week in order to give you time to focus on your hedonistic essay.

Tuesday, April 18, 2017 Having seared our minds with the mad, cataclysmic rantings of JG Ballard, we move this week to the (on the surface) more sedate scribblings of Walter Benjamin (pronounced Valter Ben-ya-meen) and The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Read the book for today's discussion. Type out a passage you found to be most influential on the way you think critically and bring it into class. Also, bring to class a xeroxed reproduction of a work of art (from our class texts or not) that, in your view best embodies a Benjaminian perspective.

Thursday, April 20, 2017 Guest Lecture! Associate Professor Ryan Schneider, who started his career at SDSU as an Assistant Professor, and now hails from the English Department and American Studies universes at Purdue University. Hedonic Thrills: Theory of Mind and the Pleasure of Exhibition Schneider's lecture will consist of a basic introduction to Theory of Mind/Cognitive Studies--focusing on how we can use its terms and concepts to get at some of ways texts bring us pleasure.  I'd then shift from texts to images and look (no pun intended) at how Theory of Mind and Cognitive Studies might also be of use in understanding the links between visual exhibitions and pleasure.

Tuesday, April 25, 2017 What a treat--today we walk into the room having devoured (with our eyes) the remarkable work of Chris Ware and his ACME NOVELTY LIBRARY. What to read!?  By and large, you decide--for sure I want you to read all the stories you can that focus on Rocket Sam, Big Tex, and Rusty Brown, but I also want you to get lost in all the random and hidden minutiae in the book.  Ware is a 21st century James Joyce who can draw--fusing the logic and cunning of cinema with graphic narrative, Ware's micro-tragedies time and again tell variations of existential tales of loneliness and miscommunication. Don't come to class without your book! Also, here is an interview with Ware from The Paris Review that shows his formation was between Literature and Fine Art. click to enlarge

Thursday, April 27, 2017 CLASS RAVE/Acid Test/Concert! Featuring the music of LOS HOLLYWOOD!!!! LIVE!!!!!!!

Tuesday, May 2, 2017 Comprehensive Review for the Final Exam

Thursday, May 4, 2017 Final Exam at 11am in MUSIC 120!

* Really curious about this? Check out Molly Langmuir's profile of Amalia Ulman here.

©William A. Nericcio, 2017 | memo@sdsu.edu Director, MALAS; Professor, English y CompLit