Week Fourteen: Long Form Television

In our final conversation for the semester we will talk about long form television and the movement away from broadcast models of content delivery toward more distributed and individualized models. Students should come prepared to discuss their favorite long form television series and the effects of these changes in serialization on content and audience, especially binge watching. In class we will consider some early long form television like The Prisoner and more recent and historical variations like Dr. Who. We will consider what we behold and the inventory of the effects it has on us. 

This is our last full-class meeting for the semester and I will try to summarize some of what we have covered during this semester with an attempt at a final overview. Be sure to fill out the online course evaluation and as well as to get an appointment time for our grade review next week.

Week Thirteen: Remix Culture

Remix Culture Diagram by Ryan Shaw

This week we will have a guest lecturer, Dr. Danielle Rich, who will talk about Remix Culture. I am asking each of you to come with an example of remix culture mounted on your blog. We will also complete the online course evaluations and prepare for the appointments during the final week. We will discuss in the group the criteria for the final grade. In class movie: Pitch Perfect.

Week Eleven: Literature and Gaming

Sceen shot from Heavy Rain

This week we are considering gaming narrative and whether or not the narrative experience of gaming might be considered a literary experience and thus whether games might be/become literature.

Your assignment this week is to read, You,  a new novel by the game designer, Austin Grossman. The events of the novel unfold over a background of a history of electronic games. The protagonist undertakes a quest that has him playing through games from the earliest computer games to games resembling those of the present generation. We will discuss the novel in class.

Also in class we will consider any games you think might be offer a literary experience. Here are some additional resources for our discussion. 

Play Everybody Dies by Jim Munroe

Play Shade by Andrew Plotkin

Game Studies an Online Journal

"Perspectives of Computer Game Philology"

Week Ten: Twenty-First Century Literature

Todd James Pierce

This week we will be considering three short stories. We will be reading two stories before class, one by Pierce called Colombine: The Musical and one chosen by Pierce to be read by our class called The Beauty Treatment by Stacey Richter from her collection My Date With Satan. In class we will read and discuss together another story by Pierce called Newsworld.  Copies of these stories are currently available on the course resource page.

Todd James Pierce is a novelist and short story writer known especially for his 2006 collection, Newsworld. He is a graduate of the MFA program and the University of California at Irvine and the Ph.D. program at Florida State University. He creative writing at California Polytechnic State University. He is currently working on a lengthy work of non-fiction recounting the history of the men and women who built the new generation of American theme parks in the 1950s. We will discuss some of this work in the second half of our class. Pierce will be talking about this history as well as showing rare footage of animators and park designers from this period in his on-campus talk Wednesday evening in the Academic Center Auditorium.

Next week the featured work is the novel You by the novelist and game designer Austin Grossman. The novel unfolds in a retrospective history of electronic gaming. 

Week Five: Genre Blending

Still of John Wayne from The Searchers

This week's featured work and required reading is the novel Girl in Landscape by Jonathan Lethem. In this novel Lethem blends some of the tropes of science fiction with the atmosphere of a John Wayne western and the angst of a coming of age story. Please read the book before coming to class.

As a required movie I have suggested Moonrise Kingdom a story of coming of age and first love by the director Wes Anderson. The book itself is influenced by The Searchers, a 1956 John Ford movie considered one of the greatest westerns of all time and a penetrating study of American racism. Another film that makes a interesting accompaniment to the novel is the recent remake of True Grit. The novel, True Grit, by Charles Portis is also an interesting precursor to this week's reading.

In class we will review the radio play assignment.

Writing Assignment: For this week's blog posting please write a 350-500 word review of the novel focusing not on whether you liked the book or not, or whether you thought it was good or bad, but rather on a description of the experience of reading the book and what you think are the most defining aspects of the novel.

Next week is faculty professional day, we will meet again on Oct. 1 when we will discuss Allen Ginsburg's Howl.

Week Four: Pulp Fiction

Pulp Art by H.J. Ward

This week we are considering the case of pulp fiction and the general sorting of stories into categories and cultural events into genre. There are a number of books available to read on the course resources page and another list of works on the course syllabus. We will discuss the idea of genre as defined by metadata. We will begin our discussion of the medium of radio and look at its history as a model against we can observe some of the patterns of media. Pick any book from the list you would like to read. 

The writing assignment for this week is to take any scene from the novel you have read for this week and turn it into a radio play using primarily dialogue and sound effects to represent the theme. Record the radio play and post it as an audio file. 

Instead of a required movie to watch this week I am asking you to listen to some Radio programs. They will be listed under the radio subhead on the course resource page. Try to listen to at least 3 hours of radio from the 1930s and 1940s.

Book cover expouses ostensibly anti-gay sentiment while attempting to appeal to gay market segment.

Cover art by Paul Rader

Week Three: Blurring the Lines Between High and Low

Gilbert Seldes was one of the first writers to celebrate a new range of arts and media that were energizing American culture in the 20th century. He called his essay Seven Lively Arts. This week we will look at several of them including Jazz, Slapstick and the Comics. 

The Reading Assignment for this week requires you to check-out and read a book of comic strip reprints from the library. I am requesting you try one of the comic artists listed on the this week's schedule on the course syllabus. 

In addition I am asking your to watch one of the silent movies available on the course resource page or one from the silent movies available on Netflix. 

For this week's writing assignment, please write a blog post of some 350 words that discusses the question of how the act reading changes when the text is comprised of both words and pictures. Please give specific examples to support your observations.

Week Two: Love. Wealth and the American Dream

Illustrations from Graphic Novel adaption of
The Great Gatsby by NIcki Greenberg

This week we are reading F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby.  During the first week we looked at L. Frank Baum's attempt to reinvent the epic story for children. We considered the invocation of Oz and the Emerald City in the the post-apocalyptic tale of The Hunger Games. In his classic novel Fitzgerald takes on the fairy story of the American Dream and the myth of the self-made man. Against the background of 1920s wealth and excess we have a novel in which the plot and its invention take second place to the consciousness and sensitivity of the narrator and assumed author. One of the pleasures of this text is to assemble the perspective of the narrator on the events he recounts and, by extension, the narrator's take on the attitudes and values of his times.

Another aspect to consider is the role technology plays in the novel. What relatively new technologies and technology environments play important roles in the text?

What about the assumed relationships between men and women in the novel. What is the picture of romance that is presented in the novel?

In our turn, we have mythologized Fitzgerald's time and his circles, a nostalgia that is on display and critiqued in Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris which is one of this week's recommended films.  I am asking you to watch Whit Stillman's The Last Days of Disco as this week's required film. How much changes, how much appears to stay the same between the eras as portrayed in The Great Gatsby and The Last Days of Discso.

The assignment for this week is to read the novel, then write a 350 - 500 wd. blog post on why one might consider The Great Gatsby a literary work.

Check out these web comic strips about The Great Gatsby by Kate Beaton:

http://www.harkavagrant.com/?id=259

Week Seven: Lolita Response

This week we are working on our extended responses to Lolita. Be prepared this week to post a draft of your response before coming to class. In class we will read, critique and revise these responses. You response should be between 500-750 words long and should feature a discussion about a selected quotation from the book that you think reflects an important thread you see running through the work.

This week's reading assignment is to read the text of Allen Ginsberg's Howl. We will discuss this poem and the Beat movement in class. 

Next week we will reading Marshall McLuhan's The Medium is the Massage. Read the book and the writing assignment for next week is to compose your own page to be added to the book that expresses an observation you have about contemporary media.

Remember the midterm is approaching and all your blog posts for the first half of the semester should be posted on your blog by then.

Week Six: Lolita

Nabobov with butterfly

This week we are reading Vladimir Nabokov's novel Lolita, one of the most controversial and most highly regarded novels of the 20th century. In this novel the author suceeds in subverting pretty much every attitude and value the reader brings to the text. Please read as much of the novel as you can before class. If you have already read Lolita read another of Nabokov's novels. Focus on choosing a passage from anywhere in the novel to discuss. Everyone in the class is expected to read and write about this novel.

The assignment for this week is to read the novel which we will discuss in class. You may begin to post your response to the novel on your blog if you wish but we will begin writing these responses in class.

In writing about the novel I am suggesting you select any passage from the novel and discuss the way the passage reflects themes, approaches, ideas or especially values developed in the novel as a whole. 

Week Four: Adaptation, Novel to Film

This week we will talk about the screenplay, screenplay form and this week's assignment which is to take any scene from the The Great Gatsby and adapt it for the screen in the form of a screenplay. Below is a graphic that shows the basic outline of screenplay form. There are a number of sites on the internet that will show you a similiar template.

If you want to try screenplay software, you can go to the celtx site and download the free version of their scriptwriting and production software.
https://www.celtx.com/desktop.html

 This software will allow you to save your screenplay as a text file or a PDF which you can link to your blog. Please publish your screenplay to your blog before class. I look forward to reading your screenplays.

Week Two: Miss Peregrine's Home for Unusual Children

The reading for this week is the recent novel designed for young adults entitled, Miss Peregrine's Home for Unusual Children. The author, Ransom Riggs, attended Pine View High School in Sarasota County and the early parts of the novel unfold in the landscape of South Sarasota County. Besides the local landscape, the novel has another interest especially relevant to Ringling students and that is the way in which the novel has been written in response to found photographs which are, in turn, incorporated as illustrations in the book. Please read the book before coming to class and we will discuss various comparisons to this work and the Wizard of Oz and the fairy story in general, including such trans-media narratives as the Harry Potter books.

Writing Assignment: Write your own short story from one of the sets of pictures you will find on the course resource page. The sets of photographs have been especially selected for this purpose. There are several sets to choose from, select just one set to create your story. You do not have to use all the pictures in the set, use as many as you feel like. For convenience they have been mounted in the form of a pdf document but you do not have to use them in the order in which they appear. The captions on the photos are there only to identify their source, you should ignore them in writing your story unless you specifically want to use them.

Required Movie: Watch the Hunger Games dir. Gary Ross. We will discuss this movie and the boom in young adult transmedia narrative in class.