ENGL-525
01 21371 LIT OF THE US 1960-PRESNT
3.0 Lecture 1230-1345 TTH
EBA-254
Issues of simulation (and stimulation, of
a sort) will be our primary concern in our
Fall 2017 rambling tour of American
literature, graphic narrative, art, and
cinema after 1960. For some reason, and on
more than one occasion, literary/artistic
titans with an American background, or an
"American" lineage, have authored dynamic
and provocative works focused on issues of
simulation and dissimulation, miming,
aping, copying, mirroring, etc. These
narratives of mimesis
are also at once mimetic narratives,
echoing /shadowing / mirroring prior
narratives. For
instance, you don't have to be Jorge Luis
Borges (see "The Circular Ruins" and
"Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius") to
understand that literary history is a
grand symphony of eternal mimicry and
mocking--that
Melville's Moby Dick, is, in some
ways, a rewriting of the Old Testament
(the Old Testament, itself, being but a
treasure trove of revised Assyrian
mythologies--and god knows who they
lifted their tales from). In this review of largely 20th
and 21st century American literary
classics and curiosities, we will focus on
all sorts of mimetic acts. From the satire
of American
corporate culture that fuels Kurt
Vonnegut's mirrored/mirroring nightmares
in BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS; to Chuck
Palahniuk's twisted visions of sexuality
and self in CHOKE; to James Baldwin's
prescient existential musings in
GIOVANNI'S ROOM; to Oliver Mayer's Latinx
oedipal nightmares in THE HURT BUSINESS;
to Ira Levin's prescient sci-fi musings in
STEPFORD WIVES, to name a few, our tour of
the United States of Simulation will
always already be intriguing and
provocative. Always already, with or
without knowing it, we will lurk in, at,
on, and with the
uncanny valley.
Is our seminar a
literature class focused on mass culture?
Or is it a mass cultural studies class
dabbling in literature. In the end, that
will be up to you and your own parallel
researches as your contributions to the
class are essential to our success.
Because of the particular training of your
professor/ringleader, our readings during
the course of the semester will
foreground popular debates presently
roiling the corridors of academe--so that
race, gender, sexuality, and politics
(identity and otherwise) will drive many
of our discussions. That said, the floor
will be open to other approaches/other
“texts,” and students in our class should
feel empowered to share books, films,
essays, and the like that embody the best
of cultural and interdisciplinary studies.
REQUIRED
BOOKS
LINKS PROVIDED HERE
FOR
CONVENIENCE--SHOP
AROUND FOR THE BEST
PRICES
Tuesday,
August 29 Day One! It's my first time
back teaching an upper-division
500-level English and Comparative
Literature major (and graduate
student) course since the summer of
2013--yikes! The reason for that is
that I usually teach
lower-division English 220s and
run a Cultural Studies MA program
for SDSU called MALAS
(do please consider applying
seniors!). I am very excited to be
working again with English
majors and we will spend the bulk of
our time exploring the premise of
the class: Simulated/ing
Americans. In
preparation for our discussion,
taste a tiny piece of Frenchie Jean
Baudrillard's meditations on
simulations, the simulacra, and
more, here!
Totally optional (but you are crazy
to avoid it) is this memorable
parable by Argentina's finest, Jorge
Luis Borges, "The
Circular Ruins." NOTE:
Today only, I will be bringing
in bargain copies of Tex[t]-Mex,
$20, (UTPRESS) and The Hurt
Business,
$16, (SDSU PRESS) in case you
are looking to save some cash!
Opposite? The haunting
photography of American original
Francesca Woodman
Thursday, August 31 It is already the second day
of class and already your cruel
English Professor is dreaming up
ways to make you suffer--you enter
our classroom EBA 254 having read
Oliver Mayer's JOY OF THE DESOLATE,
collected in THE HURT BUSINESS. Also
read any and all of the support
materials (interviews, pictures,
etc) located in and around JOY OF
THE DESOLATE that you care to
stomach/imbibe. Our class is focused
on simulation and JOY OF THE
DESOLATE is a moving, erotic,
musical meditation on what it means
to subject yourself to personal and
geographic metamorphosis. On the
surface this is a play about a
Native American in the Ivy Leagues
but in its heart rests another
story, another vision, about the
consequences of existential (and
ethnic) transmogrification.
Tuesday,
September 5 It is a fine sunny Tuesday, I
think!, in San Diego, and we enter
our suave, newly-redecorated
classroom having read BLADE TO THE
HEAT--the play Madonna bought off
Oliver Mayer for over $100,000 with
the intention of it being her
directorial debut with
Daddy-of-Lourdes starring as Pedro
Quinn. That never happened but
the play was still a hit in LA at
the Mark Taper Forum; the Public
Theater, NYC; and in Mexico City as
well. BLADE TO THE HEAT features
Pedro Quinn, a half-Irish,
half-Mexican boxer coming into his
own sexually in the hot lights of
the ring. A unique play with a heart
of gold (and blood and soul), BLADE
TO THE HEAT rewrote the history of
Latina/o theatre when it debuted and
promises, like Luis Valdez's ZOOT
SUIT, to have a lasting impact on US
West Coast theater.
Thursday,
September 7
You walk into
our classroom having read YOUNG
VALIANT, as oedipal a piece of
playwriting that has issued from an
author's pen since Sophocles was
trodding the boards with his actors
in ancient Greece. As you
read the play, make careful notes
concerning the major themes of the
play-- additionally, consider (for
those of your with advanced studies
in theatre) the difference between
East Coast and West Coast American
theatre. Simulation. Emulation.
Coming-of Age: In YOUNG
VALIANT, our chief protagonist, BOY,
is coming to consciousness
sexually--how does he echo /
contrast with Pedro Quinn and DC
from JOY OF THE DESOLATE?
Tuesday,
September 12
We
have thrilled to the twisted,
insightful world view of BLADE TO
THE
HEAT, YOUNG VALIANT, & JOY OF
THE DESOLATE. Now we turn to more
contemporary American fiction,
filled with reflections,
simulations,
and more! Read
to page 62 in Clowes GHOST WORLD, a
moving existential meditation on
love, memory,
nostalgia, friendship, and
America--as you read, take the time
to be as
attentive to the words as you are
with the images. You may want
to do the reading twice--the first
time reading word and
image together, the 2nd time
"reading/scanning" the pictures
only.
Thursday,
September 14
Finish
GHOST WORLD
for today's discussion. Can ghosts
be a form of a simulation?
Conceptually, can you establish a
relationship between the two?
Think about this as you ponder the
sad, groovy movements of Clowes
contemporary drama.
Tuesday,
September 19
It
is the fourth week of classes and
thoroughly inundated with ideas and
images of virtual Americans we turn
to a fantasy novella from the early
70s that took the American
fascination with the ersatz human,
with the
fabricated subject to new
heights--Ira Levin's THE STEPFORD
WIVES.
Enter our groovy refabricated
chamber having read to the top of
page
91. As you read, enjoy this brief
work--Levin is a master of suspense
narrative and 'Stepford is, perhaps,
his masterwork. But also
attend to all the side-references
and allusions--to the American
military industrial complex, to
corporate America, to Disney, etc.
This
is a deceptively simple novel: on
the surface, a meditation on
misogyny, anti-feminist 70s
blowback, and more. But it is
also a
sensitive and dialectically
sophisticated meditation on issues
of
replication, reproduction, and the
simulacra.
Thursday,
September 21
Walk
into class having finished your
reading of THE STEPFORD WIVES by Ira
Levin (opposite)--in class, we will
continue our discussion, but it is
also likely that we will have our
first in-class writing challenge (an
opportunity for me to get a taste of
your writing mind and for you to
get a sense of how I grade!). What
does Levin add to our understanding
of American Literature since
1960--are there elements of 20th
century
narrative that anticipate pieces of
our 21st century puzzle? Lastly,
let us consider genre: is this a
piece of science fiction? Does it
matter? How do discussions of genre
add to our contemplation of
American Literature? Or do they at
all?
Tuesday,
September 26
Zoooooooom.
We are moving so fast, barreling
through so many American texts, that
we hardly have the time to pause and
reflect on it all. And it
continues, this week is our Kurt
Vonnegut Week as we imbibe the
literary cocktail that spews from
arguably our most talented American
diagnostician, the 20th century's
contribution to a global literary
dream team that includes William
Hogarth, Jonathan Swift, Voltaire,
and
others. Read to page 204 in
BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS for
today--and, of
course, pay as much attention to the
words as you do the (deceptively)
simple images. As you read
consider the interplay between word
and image--the conventional view is
that words "caption" images, but is
it possible that the logic that
obtains in BREAKFAST is different?
That
the childish doodlings of Vonnegut
(our narrator?) camouflage something
deeper? Something more complex?
Thursday,
September 28
Exhausted, exhilirated, and aroused
(intellectually), you trundle into
our gorgeous seminar room having
finished Vonnegut's opus. Is this
the
great American novel? A memoir by a
brain-addled artist? A confession?
All of the above?! Certainly no
other author (save Levin?) skewers
the
multifarious foibles of the United
States of America better than
Vonnegut. But amidst all the laughs,
we ask ourselves some basic
questions: Is BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS
a comedy? a tragedy? an
autobiography? Is it an experiment
that ends in the looking glass or a
burnished, well-crafted farce meant
to open our eyes to the inanities
of a nation with self-esteem
problems?
Tuesday,
October 3 We
leave the
schizo-cultural skewing of
Vietnam-era America and move south
to the
Americas and the visual musings of
Mexico's Frida Kahlo. Read the
first 50 or so pages of Andrea
Kettenmann's FRIDA KAHLO book. Also
take
the time to read Gilbert Hernandez's
comic biography of FRIDA--the
most curious biography of Frida to
exist as it represents one artist rendering
the art of another. While many
biographers (Hayden Herrera, for
example, who provided some of the
backstory for Hernandez's graphic
novel portrait) focus on the tragedy
and pain associated with Frida's
life, we will move in an alternative
direction, focusing on Frida's
paintings as a kind of ciphered
auto-biography, a sort of coded
memoir
(and confession, and possibly?
a rejoinder to the automatons we
encountered in Levin's novel). If
you want to and have the time and
interest, also
read the Frida Kahlo/Gilbert
Hernandez chapter from TEX[T]-MEX
which we
will be moving to on Thursday.
Thursday,
October 5
It's Thursday and you enter class
having finished Kettenmann's survey
of Kahlo's art and life AND having
read the chapter on Kahlo and
Gilbert Hernandez in TEX[T]-MEX as
well as the introduction to the
book. In class, we will continue to
do close readings of Kahlo's
portraits, but we will also begin to
ask questions about how Kahlo's
works add to our conception of
Simulated Americans. Are Kahlo's
works a simulacra
of sorts. Can a painter's canvas be
a kind of proxied existential
snapshot? As you read TEX[T]-MEX,
look for places to engage with the
critical commentary. What exactly is
the goal of the chapter? How does it
link to but also advance the ideas
planted in the book's introduction?
Tuesday,
October 10
From
the
wilds of the Frida-Kahloian psyche, a
rambunctious, sensual simulacra
filled with images and ideas of
nation, women, body, politics, and
more, we move this week to the
visionary prose of American original
James Baldwin. For today's
class, read this essay, "Notes
of a Native Son"
by Baldwin. The piece is a new genre
for us, really, that goes by the
name of an "essay." An essay, of
course, is not a story, not a novel,
and not a poem (you can sample
Baldwin's poetry here
but it is not REQUIRED); rather, an
essay is a cogent, non-fiction
piece of prose that tries to make an
argument or reveal something new
to its readers. They can be
persuasive, seductive, or
combative--and no two essays are
really alike.
James Baldwin is recognized as one of
our greatest 20th century
American essayists--and yet, as you
will see with this piece,
storytelling is very much still part
of the "game" or "cipher" or
"puzzle" that goes by the name of
ESSAY. As you read, note how Baldwin moves
in the essay--are there signature
Baldwinian tactics that we can add to
our own essays, that we can
incorporate into our rhetorical
strategies?
What he means,
is, of course, important, but I am
more interested in you getting a
feel for how he writes: are there
things he achieves as a writer that
you admire? that you might like to
emulate in your own writing?
In class we will screen the first half
of I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO, a
documentary film and hit cultural
studies artifact by director Raoul
Peck.
Thursday,
October 12
Re-read the introduction to TEXTMEX
for today's class. In seminar, we
will complete our screening of Raoul
Peck's I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO. Our
discussion item for today will be
the most common and aggressively
distributed "simulacra" or
"reflections" on the planet:
STEREOTYPES. What does Baldwin teach
us about the logic of
stereotypes? What are the
psychological consequences for
individuals
who end up being the target of
stereotypes? In TEXTMEX, I write
that
stereotypes are the "bloodstains of
cultures in conflict." Consider the
deeper meaning of that
metaphor. What does blood,
skin, and
culture have to do with the
description of stereotypes as
motivated
reflections, run amok, as
manipulative simulacra, scattered
like zombies across the Americas.
While Raoul Peck (and Samuel
Jackson) introduced us to a concept
of
James Baldwin, nothing will make his
soul come to life in our
imagination like his own writing. We
turn today to GIOVANNI'S
ROOM--walk into our chamber of
simulacra having read the first 100
pages or so of the novel. Certainly
the revelations Peck treated us to
will influence our reading of the
novel but so too will our
ongoing/evolving discussions in
seminar. Come into class having
typed
out two passages from different
sections of the book that moved you,
caught your eye, etc. Bring out
these two typed out passages to
class
for an in-class exercise.
Thursday,
October 19
Walk into our classroom having
finished GIOVANNI'S ROOM by James
Baldwin. We have arrived at a point
in the semester that we can begin
to draw some preliminary conclusions
concerning the characteristics of
literature from the Americas after
1960--while Baldwin augments our
consideration of race, he also, and
simultaneously, immerses us into an
American (by way of Paris) cauldron
of sexuality and yearning. On the
surface, in GIOVANNI'S ROOM we enter
the crisis of an intelligent
African American ex-pat, but much
more is at stake in this novel, this
act of art by one of the 20th
century's most gifted seers.
Tuesday,
October 24
No reading this week as you are
working hard on your essays that
are
due Monday, November 6, 2017! So
for today, we will be screening
one or two episodes
of Issa Rae's INSECURE. Depending
on the way our discussion goes, we
will enter a world that is
decidedly Black, but also, and
curiously,
post-Baldwinian. Our radical
jumpcut in time from the 1950s to
2016-17 finds an America in
metamorphosis and de-evolution.
Rae's
genius is to transform heady race
and class issues into comedy.
Comedy
is a key genre, a key disruptive
element, and something our class
has
left to the margins. That,
too, may figure into our
discussion
today.
Thursday,
October 26
No class today as your intrepid
Professor is off to the wilds of
Maryland for one of his Mextasy
pop-up exhibitions.
As you suffer,
sweat, curse me, and crave precious
sleep, I will attempt to treat the
bewildered students
and citizens of Maryland Textmextian
tales and
Mextasy balderdash. Curious?
Check out the info here or hit
the poster just below:
Tuesday,
October 31
Carlos
Fuentes's AURA is on tap for us as
we celebrate Halloween--all students
who come to class in full costume
will get extra-credit worth up to 25
points added to your lowest quiz
grade! More to follow... Keep
reading ...
It is Halloween day and
all of us come to class dressed up
to immerse ourselves in Carlos
Fuentes's seductive (and outrageous)
novella, AURA--as with THE
STEPFORD WIVES from Ira Levin and I
AM NOT YOUR NEGRO by Raoul Peck, we
find ourselves in the hands of a
meticulous narrative craftsperson:
every detail counts, every
description is filled with salient,
compelling meaning contributing to
the project as a whole. On the
surface (and in its opening
passages) AURA is a trifle--the
story of an
overtrained historian on the lookout
for some extra cash in Mexico
city, but it quickly evolves. One
part Stephen King (think THE
SHINING)
, one part Franz Kafka
(METAMORPHOSIS), one part Joseph
Conrad (THE
HEART OF DARKNESS), and one part
Charlotte Perkins Gilman (THE YELLOW
WALLPAPER), AURA turns out to be on
simulation in the Americas, with
deep subterranean chasms and primal
caves of human consciousness--a
ghost story and nightmare that
forces us to rethink the meanings of
the
American dream and dreaming in the
Americas.
Thursday,
November 2
The
main course, today? Finish reading
AURA! You walk into class and it is
the day of days in Mexico (and for
Mexicans in the United States!), Dia
de los Muertos, which is not
Halloween. Actually in the clash
(and
mesh) of Halloween and Dia de los
Muertos we find an intriguing part
of
our meditation on simulation (and
conflict) in the Americas, the
contiguous bodies of the United
States and Mexico sit side by
side--in
the words of former Mexican
president Porfirio Diaz, "Poor
Mexico, so
far from god, so close to the United
States." As you prepare for
today's class, enjoy your reading,
AURA is like a good episode of NIGHT
GALLERY or BLACK MIRROR--it has a
wickedly intriguing premise and
killer conclusion. But it also
has depth and heft, the
ontological and philosophical
question of ruins, the past
(France's
adventure IN Mexico), historiography
(not the same as history), and
legacy, being some of its most
profound achievements.
Monday,
November 6, 2017
Imagination
Challenge Due Today--under the
door of my office AL 273
Tuesday,
November 7
We will spend this week, for the
most part, screening Orson Welles's
amazing meditation on the US/MEXICO
borderlands, TOUCH OF EVIL. Where
with AURA we were deeply positioned
in the heart of Mexico, (ancient
Mexico, "French" Mexico, and
Modern-day Mexico), with TOUCH OF
EVIL we are both within the United
States and within Mexico--the movie
evolves as a deep and outrageous
(and unpredictable) meditation on la frontera, la
mestizaje, y mucho mas more.
For your reading
today, work your way through the
first 20 pages or so of the TOUCH OF
EVIL chapter in TEXTMEX, pages 39 to
the middle of page 57. But also,
to get ahead and take advantage of
the limited reading this week, go
head and begin reading Susan
Daitch's PAPER CONSPIRACIES--the
longest
book we will read this semester.
Read pages 7 to 82. In order to make
your reading more meaningful and
fun, be sure to read up on one of
the
pioneer of early cinema, Georges
Méliès, here,
and on the Dreyfus Affair, here.
Even
more on Méliès here,
via Brian Selznick's THE INVENTION
OF HUGO CABRET page.
An homage to Méliès filmwork
by THE SMASHING PUMPKINS
Thursday,
November 9
In class today we will complete our
screening of TOUCH OF EVIL, Orson
Welles masterpiece comeback film,
his greatest cinematic effort since
CITIZEN KANE. Certainly TOUCH OF
EVIL ponders what we could call the
dance between good and evil--the
title alone tells us that! But it is
also a work that wonders about good
and evil AT THE BORDER, ON THE
BORDER, and most importantly IN
the border--a ridiculous barrel of
stereotypes, it ends up actually
forcing us to rethink what it is we
imagine "Mexicans" and "Mexico" to
be. We will try to capture that in
our brief discussion / lecture after
the film.
For your reading, come into class
having finished my essay on TOUCH OF
EVIL, pages 57 to 80 (if you want to
skip over the difficult paragraphs
dealing with film theorist Stephen
Heath, feel free to leap past
them!). Additionally, please
continue reading Susan Daitch's
PAPER CONSPIRACIES pages 82-146.
Tuesday,
November 14
Our
first main day focused on Susan
Daitch's PAPER CONSPIRACIES.
Come
into class having read pages 147 to
271--as you read, think about the
categories of knowledge,
understanding, and storytelling
being fused
together in this singnificant recent
American novel: world cinema,
anti-semitism, mob-rule, etc. Is
there anything parallel going on in
world events today with the material
focus of Daitch's novel. Is it,
true to the name of our class, a
#mirrortext?
Your
old Prof was one of the first
denizens in the Ivory Tower to
write
about Daitch's fiction, in
particular, her early work LC--the
curious
and obsessed can see that work here.
Thursday,
November 16
It
is a terrific day in the
Simulating/ed Americans land as
author Susan
Daitch joins us for our final
discussion of PAPER CONSPIRACIES!
Walk
into class having finished her novel
and then prepare to ask amazing
questions of Daitch--(come to class
with three questions you want to
ask the author based on her novel or
her writing). Type these questions
carefully and print them out with
you and bring to class. We will not
accept handwritten questions--if you
don't read this assignment, you
can at least turn in a black page of
paper with your name on it to
prove attendance!
Have the time? Read this
interview
with Daitch by my retired colleague
and friend Larry McCaffery. It is
of particular interest for those of
you, like me, curious about the
nexus of word and image in Daitch's
fictions!
Tuesday,
November 21 THANKSGIVING BREAK--Get your
air travel tickets now!
Thursday,
November 23 THANKSGIVING BREAK!
Tuesday,
November 28
Welcome
back to reality--or is it
"reality"????
Are
you still in a post-Thanksgiving,
Turkey-induced coma!? Well reading
Myriam Gurba's MEAN will snap you
out of your delirium and bring you
to
attention with some moving,
evocative, and challenging ideas and
writing! One part memoir, one part
reverie, one part snapshot of the
unconscious, Gurba's MEAN asks us to
dive headlong into a very
contemporary intellectual
consciousness, one that shares much
with Issa
Rae (INSECURE)--but also with James
Baldwin and Kurt Vonnegut!
Come to class having read to page
130.
Thursday,
November 30
Stop
the presses and lock the doors,
Myriam Gurba is coming to hang out
with
our class today--details to follow,
but be sure to finish the book for
today!
Tuesday,
December 5
Screening the first half of Ex Machina--no reading! Enjoy the break! In-class writing exercise possible.
Thursday,
December 7
Screening the second half of Ex Machina--no reading! Enjoy the
break! Time permitting, we will also have a brief review for the
Final Exam that takes place ONE WEEK from today!
Tuesday,
December 12
No
class! Take the extra time to
prepare for the final, in-class, on
Thursday.
Thursday,
December 14
Today is your comprehensive final
exam in our regular classroom at the
regular time, 12:30pm. Best of
luck--I know you are going to do
great! We will meet for a
post-class
party on the Eureka patio directly
following class at 2pm.
Thursday,
December 21
Your official final exam date and time
is schedule for today, December 21,
2017 from 10:30am to 12:30pm--but lucky for you, you
have already taken the exam!
I will, however, be available to you
in my office, AL 273, if you want
to drop by pick up your graded final
exam and to learn your final grade
for the class.
'
Fall 2017 PASSPORT
ENGL 525: Simulated/ing Americans
A Description of How Your Work Will
Be Evaluated
This section of your electric
syllabus documents how your work will be evaluated
this Fall 2017 Semester. Here you will find all
the little gates, cages, all locks, all the meager
statutes, ordinances, edicts, and formulas that
allow our American Literature-obsessed literary
collective to thrive. Let me underscore that you
have absolute intellectual freedom
in ourseminar,
BUT to
receive these awesome rights, you must also follow
the reasonable responsibilities outlined on this
page. After all, we want to have a great time, be
the best literature/film studies class on the
West Coast even (take that USC! Eat my dust Stanford!)
But to do that, we need room for intellectual
play--a safe asylum within which to forge ourliterature-filled
wanderlust.
PASSPORT RULE 1
BOOKS_BOOKS_BOOKS
BUY THE
BOOKS AND READ THEM--DON'T COME TO SEMINAR WITHOUT
YOUR BOOK! Though we
very much adore living in the 21st century, we
will use ANALOG, printed books in this
class. Please do not come up and ask me if
you can use a kindle or your laptop or your
smartphone--see rules 3 and 4 below.
PASSPORT RULE 2
READ_READ_READ!
When you enter this room for class you
will have completed the
reading that appears on the
day-to-day class calendar! Please note the
word "finished" (not "started," not "skimmed," not
"glanced," and most decidedly NOT "but I read the
Cliffs/Sparks Notes!) 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 prostitute without, er,
well, I better stop there.
Do
the readings. Do them twice if you
can MAKE the time!
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. PASSPORT RULE 3 PUT
THE MONSTERS TO SLEEP!
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--attending the lecture, 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.
PASSPORT RULE 4 PARALYZE
THE SMARTPHONE!
Your beloved magnificent iPhone, your
cherished Galaxy, your fetishized Pixel, or even your
primordial pager will be off, off, OFF during
class meetings; 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 before class 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, yes, the loss of the buzz of
that random Tinder swipe 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. We
are NOT joking about this unthinkable edict! Don't end up like this former student from
another Engl 525 I taught back in the day:
click
to enlarge
PASSPORT RULE 5 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,
aka 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!
Major Course Requirements GRADING
INFORMATION
50% Attendance, Quizzes, In-class
"Panic-Inducing Challenges", In-class
participation, In-class writing, cineTREKS, Facebook, Tumblr,
and Instagram postings, Office Hour visits, etc.
25% Your Major Essay
25% Final Examination
ESSAY
You
will be asked to write ONE 8-10 page essay (also
know as THE IMAGINATION CHALLENGE) during the course
of the term. Please note that you will never be
compelled to write about something you absolutely
hate. Though I will provide you with a list of
prompts, please feel free to see me at any time over
the course of the semester during office hours to
pitch/brainstorm essay ideas.
FINAL EXAMINATION
There
will be an Imagination Challenge
In-Class Festival (aka, the FINAL EXAM) on the
last regularly scheduled day of class: Thursday,
December 14 2017 at 12:30pm. 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
being the waiter for the Here Comes HoneyBoo-Boo clan!
During
the semester, you can expect several In-class
Panic-Inducing Challenges otherwise known as CHECK-YOU-DID-THE-READING 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 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!
If
you 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.
Our main social media site for this class,
Facebook-based, is located here.
If you are a member of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg’s
mad hallucinatory experiment in digitized,
self-mirroring, 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
simulated americans tumblr page--anonymous
submissions are allowed here for those of your who
don't want Edward Snowden peering in your digital
window! You can
also contribute to our own instagram
hashtag, which goes by the catchy, if
difficult to type, #simulatedamericans.
If Facebook, Tumblr, and Instagram remain alien to
your consciousness, you can send your suggested
links/images/videos to me via email to
memo@sdsu.edu; I don’t promise that I will post ALL
of your forwarded materials but I will try, however,
to see that some of them make their way to the
fabulous internets.
OFFICE HOURS
Why visit me during 'office hours'? Why
not? If only to experience the
madness of my working studio space! You are
warmly invited to visit me in office hours at least
once during the semester if you can. At SDSU, it's
easy to fall through the cracks, to feel that you
are nothing but a Red ID# or some warm pile of
sentient flesh filling a seat. In order to convince
you that the
Professor teaching you is occasionally human,
please make a point during the semester to take the
time to introduce yourself in person. My office
hours will be on Tuesday afternoons from 2pm to 4pm
in AL 273 (if I am not there, look for me in the SDSU Press
office, AL 283). If these hours are inconvenient, do
not hesitate to email me for an appointment either
at memo@sdsu.edu
or bnericci@mail.sdsu.edu
You can also call me at 619.594.1524
either to schedule an appointment or discuss your
questions via telephone, but keep in mind I don't
check my answering machine very often!
Professor Nericcio awaiting students in office
hours, AL 273