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| Tuesday, August
28, 2018 |
Thursday, August 30, 2018 | |
WEEK |
 It is the first day of class--we enter the Robot Hive, aka GMCS 333 filled with anxiety, visions of Androids whipping us, Robots chasing us, Cyborgs seducing us running through our heads and torturing our imagination. In class, we will screen the "Be Right Back" BLACK MIRROR short feature directed by Owen Harris and written by Charlie Brooker. In class, we will carefully assess what's at stake in this moving mini-film and lay out the ground rules for the rest of the semester. Our course is entitled Robotic Erotic Electric--but what the hell does that mean? Did a robot make that up--some unholy algorithm in a twisted neurotic server holed up in Cupertino, California or in a secret Google testing facility? To say or 'know' what a robot IS, we have to believe we know what it's antithesis is, "the human"... but are they really antithetical or is something else going on here.  |
 You thought you got off easy on Tuesday with no reading--but you know better than that! Your robotic erotic overloads are intent that you use your optical circuits for something other than spying Tindr hookups or Instagram updates! Today you walk into class having completed THE YELLOW WALLPAPER written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman--be sure to bring the book to class with you in case we have a surprise in-class writing assignment. Unline other classes at SDSU, you actually have to buy books and do the readings BEFORE you walk into our hive of electronic delights. Believe it or not, THE YELLOW WALLPAPER is a Robotic story of sorts--not because it is science fiction (it is not) but because of the way human, pre-digital programming leads to certain impenetrable walls between men and women--and, in this psychological tale, women and women.  |
Week Two |
Tuesday, September 4, 2018 |
Thursday, September 6, 2018 |
 |
 Kafkaesque--a term known to folks far and wide, (and not even limited to literature-loving folks either). But where does it come from? And who is Kafka? If your name becomes an adjective, then you are one hell of a memorable artist/human being/madman--ask the Marquis de Sade (sadistic) and Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (masochistic) if you don't believe me! For the purposes of our class, Kafka will emerge like some sort of human robot--a man, to be sure, but a man (and an artist) paralyzed or disordered in his mind (his harddrive?) by some bad programming and wiring. For today, walk into class having read the first half of Kafka's METAMORPHOSIS. Even if you have read it before, it is as if you have never read it as this is one of the best translations I have ever run across (by Susan Bernofsky) --and the added treat of David "The Fly" Cronenberg is no waste of time either; read it also!  |
Literature teaches us many things we
don't know--among which, oddly enough, is how to read
Literature itself. In a sense, each book comes with a
key to its own understanding, and the magic thing about
reading is that that very same key that, say, Franz
Kafka handed you reading METAMORPHOSIS, which you have
finished for today (by the way!), can be used to open
secrets hidden in other books and, get this, movies. And
it works both ways! Movies can give us keys to
re-examining literature that books cannot even dream
of--it makes sense in a way: cinema is a medium that
evolved at the intersection of dreams and technology.
The same cognitive architecture that drives your magic
dreams as you sleep are the components that return you
time and time and again to the silver screen, the
movies, television, and your smartphone.  In class we will apply the lens of Craig Gillespie, director, and Nancy Oliver, writer, to Franz Kafka, by screening the first hour of LARS AND THE REAL GIRL--Ryan Gosling fans take note! Gillespie's and Oliver's masterpiece will, perhaps, give us insight into Kafka's deliciously twisted fable while, Kafka's bug-infested tale will likely infect our reading of Lars and his particular set of troubles. #roboticeroticelectric, the term that drives our investigations this semester reveals to us that the "machine" is more than just a metaphor when applied to humans and our social interactions. It may well be that the various neurotic and psychological breakdowns we know and experience and hear about make us more robotic than we care to imagine. |
Week Three |
Tuesday, September 11, 2018 |
Thursday, September 13 |
 |
 Week 3 already, how time flies when under the whip of our wicked Android overlords! Today we walk into class having read most of David Mairowitz's and R. Crumb's graphic narrative biography of Franz Kafka, entitled KAFKA. Crumb is an infamous comic book legend--one of the grand semiotic wizards of the Underground comics movement in America since the 60s. Mairowitz is a sensitive writer, who moves, with Crumb, to resituate Kafka, underscoring how his Jewish background served as the coding for his special way of seeing the world. In class, we will finish screening LARS AND THE REAL GIRL, and with the time left to us, begin to piece together the enchanting threads that bring Kafka, Crumb, Mairowitz, Oliver, and Gillespie, (and, yes, even Gilman!) together as part of a grand robot conspiracy. Freud might be lurking in there as well!  |
 Walk into the room having finished Mairowitz's & Crumb's KAFKA. Also, bring a printout of what you view to be the most important passage / paragraph from Kafka's novella METAMORPHOSIS. Be sure to bring both your Kafka books to class with you today -- the Mairowitz & Crumb bio-comic, KAFKA; and Kafka's epic fable METAMORPHOSIS. Odds are we may have an in-class writing assignment today. HOWEVER, the treat of the day is a guest lecture by one of your amazing TAs, Daniel Warren who will treat us to a lecture / presentation / discussion entitled "Broken Arrows: When the Trauma of Love Becomes the Love of Trauma." Using a background in physics and recent survey of neuroscientist Dr. Robert Sapolosky’s breathtaking tome BEHAVE, Daniel will map out access points, through Kafka’s METAMORPHOSIS, into the dark side of America today, providing evidence that might raise gross questions about who, or what, really benefits when we are taught artificial behaviors via artificial means (i.e. when every product lives a life, and every life is a product.)  |
Week 4 |
Tuesday, September 18, 2018 |
Thursday, September 20 |
  |
 Where Craig Gillespie and Nancy Oliver posited a protagonist, Lars, who purchased a female partner/proxy, Ira Levin, writing in the 1970s, instead imagines a related, but different terrain in his infamous short novel THE STEPFORD WIVES. With STEPFORD, we begin to expand our notion of the Robot--adding to our previous, existentially- focused probings, with an elevated sensitivity to gender, politics, history, and more.  Enter
our groovy Robot Hive having read to the top of page
91. As you read, relax and allow yourself to enjoy
this succinct thriller--Levin is a master of the
suspense narrative and STEPFORD is, perhaps, his
masterwork. But also attend to all the
side-references, allusions, and motifs--why are
mentions of the American military industrial complex
here and there, and why the side jabs at corporate
America andDisney, etc. This is a deceptively simple
novel: on the surface, a meditation on misogyny,
anti-feminist 70s blowback. But keep your eyes
open, Levin's micro opus also emerges as a sensitive
and dialectically sophisticated meditation on issues
of replication, reproduction, and the simulacra. |
 Walk into the Robot Hive (GMCS 333) having
finished Levin's short, thriller of a novel. In class,
we will continue and complete our discussion of Levin's
short word, more a novella than a novel, and be treated
to a guest lecture by Stewart
Parker, TA for the Electric Sheep.His lecture will incorporate ideas inspired by Levin's STEPFORD but also be focused on a Rod Serling-penned episode of THE TWILIGHT ZONE, called "The After Hours," directed by Douglas Heyes and starring Anne Francis (as Marsha White) and Elizabeth Allen (as a saleswoman). Together, we will take a journey back in time, to an era of television that was steeped in American Nuclear Family values, as civil boundaries were rarely pushed and the looming Cold War kept subversion against cultural norms at bay. Luckily, Americans had Rod Sterling and his crowning creative achievement, THE TWILIGHT ZONE. Through a close viewing of the episode entitled "The After Hours", we will familiarize ourselves with some of the tricks Sterling used to undermine the concept of homogenization, capitalism and class structure under the idealism of America in the 1950s and 60s.  |
| Week 5 |
Tuesday, September
25, 2018 |
Thursday, September 27 |
 |
Week
Five
opens with a book you think you know but you do not
know at all--DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP.
You think you may know it as it was the novel Ridley
Scott used to create BLADERUNNER (and, now,
BLADERUNNER 2049 starring Lars, aka Ryan Gosling). But no, DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP is no BLADERUNNER. In some ways it is a much more ambitious project. Yes, robots ("Andys") are front and center, so the book is perfect for our class. But it is also up to much more--or, better put, author Philip K. Dick is up to much much more in this fast-moving science fiction classic. Or is it?! Science Fiction? or something else altogether!? Walk into the Robot Hive, GMCS 333 having carefully read the first 100 pages of the novel. As a writing assignment (and your attendance) type out onto a sheet of paper two quotes / passages from the reading that you find particularly peculiar, curious, provocative, meaningful, perplexing, or enchanting. You must type these out onto a sheet of paper and bring them to class.  |
 Walk into our garden classroom having read to page 172 (or the end of chapter 15 depending on the edition you are using) in Dick's DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP. Not required but recommended? There's a nice review piece on Dick's novel here. And, a Robert Crumb penned graphic piece on Dick's spirituality here.  |
| Week 6 |
Tuesday, October 2, 2018 | Thursday, October 4, 2018 |
 |
 We take a break from our ELECTRIC SHEEP focus to host an in-class concert / discussion / event / happening with the SATANIC PUPPETEER ORCHESTRA! For today, carefully read the STUDY GUIDE ON SATANIC PUPPETEER ORCHESTRA (aka SPO) you received in class. You will help defray the costs of the text and concert by writing up a paragraph on what you expect to happen today in class along with a $5 bill (NO CHANGE!!!!).  Place these in an envelope decorated with symbols you believe sum up the SPO experience--the money is a lab fee to provide an honorarium for our visiting artist and crew.  Note: this is how we are taking attendance so be sure to do the assignment in advance.  Friends are welcome to today's class so bring a pal along! It should be something else!  |
 Walk into the Robot Hive having read to the end of DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP. We are very likely to have a quiz today--do not forget to bring your book to class!  Care to meet a robotic Philip K. Dick? Go here. Or click this ersatz PK Dick here:  |
| Week 7 |
Tuesday, October 9, 2018 | Thursday, October 11, 2018 |
  |
 Can an animated character exist with the same range / logic / dynamic as a robot? as a mannequin? Do animated puppets work on our psyche in the same way that plotted, manufactured human facsimiles do?  That's the premise today as we plunge into the mad world of Warner Brother Cartoons. Walk into class having read 1] the Introduction to Tex[t]-Mex, "Backstory: A Decidedly Odd Tale of What Happened When Hollywood Killed Vaudeville, Postcards Boomed, and the United States Invaded Mexico;" also read 2] "Seductive Hallucination Gallery One: An Interstice, Being the First of Several Summary Interruptions of the Drearily Semantic in Favor of the Deliciously Semiotic, a Frontera of Sorts;" and lastly, 3], read the chapter on Speedy Gonzales! Here are the three short, animated Warner Brothers' features, Here Today, Gone Tamale, Cannery Woe, and Tobasco Road, we will screen in class today--feel free to pre-screen them as you read the chapter:  |
 OK, before you do a reading from TEXTMEX, I want you to first read this graphic biography of Frida Kahlo. Click here. Next, I want you to carefully study some or all of the Frida Kahlo paintings you find here. These three are most important: one, two, and three. Last!? Read the Frida Kahlo/Gilbert Hernandez chapter of Tex[t]-Mex, "XicanOsmosis: Frida Kahlo and Mexico in the Eyes of Gilbert Hernandez." Frida was anything but a robot, but she was disabled in a way that made her into the painter she was. However she was both wildly erotic and electric -- able to cause a stir in galleries and cocktail parties from Mexico City to New York City.  |
| WEEK
8 |
Tuesday, October 16, 2018 | Thursday,
October 18, 2018 |
 |
 Stunned, disturbed, moved, affected by the first 159 pages of Haruki Murakami's AFTER DARK, you enter the ROBOT HIVE (GMCS 333) in search of relief, discovery, something -- something to order your experiences of this singularly compelling and curious piece of fiction. Before you start reading, do yourself a favor and watch this trailer for a film by French cinema guru Jean Luc Godard called ALPHAVILLE--you may even want to read this review of the film and watch the movie (fixed link) if you dare (not REQUIRED!). Be sure to take notes as you read, marking key passages for you to share in class. Enter the room able to complete the following sentence: "With After Dark, we find a novel composed by a singular author deeply invested in _________ his reader."  |
 You are in our seminar room and you have finished the novel, AFTER DARK, by Haruki Murakami. As you read, think about they way Murakami's narrator weaves elements of this story. Authors use narrators to shape your reaction to a story. How is this novel like DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP? Or unlike METAMORPHOSIS? Be prepared to respond to questions like these in class discussion and bring questions of your own as we play our first game of YOU'RE THE PROFESSOR...  Today, in class, you will receive your IMAGINATION CHALLENGE Essay Prompts! They are due Friday, November 16 @ 12 noon--instructions to follow! |
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 Link to Your Imagination Challenge Prompts |
Link to Your Imagination Challenge Prompts |
| WEEK 9 |
Tuesday, October 23, 2018 | Thursday, October 25, 2018 |
 |
 Can it be that we will read the MOTHER OF ALL SCIENCE FICTION books just in time for Halloween? Yes! We will. Enter the class having read to page 88 in your special edition of FRANKENSTEIN or THE MODERN PROMETHEUS by the one and only Mary Shelley. We are back onto the terrain of 'Electric Sheep in a way, as Victor Frankenstein's "wretch" is an organic being brought into being by electricity. But there the resemblances end. Fans of ALLUSION will dig the Milton/PARADISE LOST motif that Shelley weaves into her novel. You are in for a treat!  |
 Enter the robot hive, GMCS 333, having read from page 92 to page 142 in your special illustrated edition of FRANKENSTEIN.   In class we
will continue our discussion, but we will also commence
our screening of EX MACHINA--a lurid imagining of the
near future by Alex Garland |
| Week 10 |
Tuesday, October 30, 2018 | Thursday, November 1, 2018 |
 |
 Over the weekend, freaked out by EX-MACHINA, you have returned to your reading of FRANKENSTEIN -- enter the CYBORGhive having read pages145 to 190. Our discussion will be brief as we also conclude our screening of Alex Garland's EX MACHINA in class.  |
Enter the room having finished Shelley's FRANKENSTEIN. In-Class assignment likely. Come to class with a passage typed out from the first part of the book and and a passage typed out from somewhere closer to the end. Make sure the two passages relate to each other in a way you are ready to explain! Make sure you write your name BIG along with your group name on the outside of the paper. Await instructions when you come into the room! We have a treat today as TA Jake Maguire takes the floor for the first part of the class with a closing lecture focused on archetypes of creation stories from ancient cultures, ravaged bodies, life-giving gods, new historical approaches to literature, and more more more.  |
| Week 11 |
Tuesday, November 6, 2018 | Thursday, November 8, 2018 |
 |
 With GHOST WORLD and ART SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL made into major motion pictures, cartoonist Dan Clowes is on the top of the hill when it comes to popular and influential practitioners of the bizarre art form, the medium, called comic books. And we are in store for a treat with DEATH RAY, his novelized compendium of short stories focused on the one and only Andy, a kind of anti-hero. Enter our RobotHIVE having read the entire book--don't freak out! It's a comic book! If you have the time, read it at least twice: the first time, reading word and image; the second time studying only the images as if it were a silent movie. If Robert Crumb warped our minds restoring Kafka to Kafka with his artfully wrought comic renditions, Clowes does that and more with his sometimes subtle, sometimes paradoxical storytelling focused on power, technology, and more. On the surface, we are back to science fiction, but in another sense we are on to something more. Come to class with two xeroxed pieces of paper. Two distinct panels from two different parts of the book where you see something related going on!  |
 Are you ready for some Latinx cyberpunk desmadres! Some crazy-ass science fiction? "A mosaic of sex, drugs, rock 'n'roll?" Then get ready for our last novel, the unique narrative ramblings of Ernest Hogan and his HIGH AZTECH! Want into our android-filled chamber having read the first 77 pages of Hogan's novel. Are we in a world of Old World Aztecs? A future of High Tech? High Aztecs? What is Hogan up to and does it have anything to do with the mascot of our school? Seriously, what is Hogan up to mixing metaphors and cultures? If you did not read it a couple of weeks ago, refamiliarize yourself with the XICANOSMOSIS chapter of TEXTMEX.  |
| Week 12 |
Tuesday, November 13, 2018 | Thursday, November 15, 2018 |
 |
 Enter our classroom having read to the end of Part Two, Anti-Thesis of Ernest Hogan's HIGH AZTECH--read to the end of page 185.  |
 What an amazing day as you get to ONE: Finish your last novel of the semester, HIGH AZTECH -- walk into the room having read the Part Three: Synthesis today! But the real treat today is that we get to hang out with the author of HIGH AZTECH as we get to enjoy his reading, lecture, and Q&A during our class period--thanks to MALAS and SDSU PRESS for sponsoring this class hangout with the author.  |
 Papers Due! |
 Friday, November 16, 2018 |
Friday, November 16, 2018 |
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| Week 13 |
Tuesday, November 20, 2018 | Thursday, November 22, 2018 |
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 No class! Enjoy your break! |
 No class! Enjoy your break! |
| Tuesday, November 27, 2018 | Thursday, November 29, 2018 | |
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Screening and Discussion --Black Mirror!!! THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF YOU  |
Mark
Dery Wendelmoot Lecture! A Living Author VISIT!!! Wow!  |
| Tuesday, December 4, 2018 | Thursday, December 6, 2018 | |
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BASQUIAT Read to page 73 in Leonhard Emmerling's BASQUIAT book. When I say "read" I am actually asking you to read/screen the book twice! The first time, concentrate on Emmerling's commentary; in particular, look for places in the book where you are at odds or disagree with his interpretation. The second time through, "read" only the pictures. Try to get into Basquiat's mind through his wild canvases. What does Basquiat have to robots, you might ask? That's a good question. Think about that as you peruse this beautiful collection of illustrated "memoirs" hallucinations and fantasies. |
BASQUIAT Class begins with a brief review of the final on Tuesday, December 11, 2018--I would not miss our class today as I am likely to divulge a hint about the contents of the final. Enter the room having finished Emmerling's study of Basquiat. Xerox the Basquiat painting that you think you understand the best, please ensure that this image is in color--you will be turning this in at the end of the class for attendance in the four bags provided. Also, we will be enjoying our last episode of YOU'RE THE PROFESSOR, so be ready to volunteer to come up and do a reading of your favorite Basquiat work.  |
| Tuesday, December 11, 2018 |
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Final Exam IN-CLASS today--say goodbye to your
Cyborg Overlords
for good today! |
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Robotic, Erotic, Electric: I/Eye Robot memogr@phics designcasa
Dr. William A. Nericcio, Fall 2018 @ SDSU
The Robots Are Watching Us!
