PASSPORT
A Description of How Your Work Will Be Evaluated
ENGL 220: #roboticeroticelectric
Dr. William A. Nericcio | memo@sdsu.edu
Director, MALAS; Professor, English y CompLit

Professor Nericcio awaiting students in office hours, AL 273

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 afternoon, after class, from 1pm to 3 in AL 273 (you are welcome to walk back with me after class from the Robot Hive, GMCS 333 to AL 273; also, if you arrive and 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

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 "I read the Cliffs/Sparks Notes online!)

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 her/his ax, a prostitute 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!

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.

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 301 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 singular mind and imagination!

Major Course Requirements

GRADING INFORMATION

• 40%  Attendance, Quizzes, In-class "Panic-Inducing Challenges", In-class participation, In-class writing, cineTREKS, Facebook and Tumblr postings, Office Hour visits, etc.
• 30%  Your Imagination Challenge (aka, the Essay)
• 30%  Final Examination
  

QUIZZES, ATTENDANCE, and cineTREKS^©...

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," etc. etc. Ditching this class too often will be as fun as a case of flesh-eating virus. 

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.

Also to be expected? cineTREKS™!

What are cineTREKS™? These are extra-curricular activities--some on campus, others in the greater San Diego area that are related to our adventures in class.  Do you receive any second chances in this class on the off chance you miss a quiz, blow an assignment, or generally screwup altogether? Luckily, your eccentric Professor is a recovering Catholic, and believes in the wonders of absolution--from time to time we will have out-of-class cineTREK^© assignments, aka EXTRA-CREDIT OPPORTUNITIES; these can be used to atone for an extra-absence, a missed quiz, or some other class-impacting catastrophe you may experience during the term.

DIGITAL/VIRTUAL CONTRIBUTIONS

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 #roboticeroticelectric 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, #mirrortext. 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 materials but I will try, however, to see that some of them make their way to the fabulous internets.  DO NOT CONFUSE YOUR EXTRA-CREDIT, cineTREKS™ with these FIVE postings!  What you are expected to share via social media are things you run across that relate to our class experiences--you do not HAVE TO WRITE a long essay with your postings... a couple of pointed, pithy, well-crafted sentences will do, enough to give me and your classmates a sense of a connection to ideas developed during the semester in our class.

ESSAY

You will be asked to write ONE 5-8 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 a final In-class Imagination Challenge (aka, the FINAL EXAM) on the last regularly scheduled day of class: Tuesday, December 11 at 11am in GMCS 333.  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 final In-Class Imagination Challenge as enjoyable as being the waiter for the Here Comes Honey Boo-Boo clan!