Week 13: Celebrity: Performance as Self

Andre the Giant publicity shot

Donald Trump

This week I am asking you to read a short graphic biography of the wrestler/entertainer Andre the Giant by Box Brown. It is interesting to see how Brown tells the story in words and pictures. It is not told in a particularly bravura style that one sees in many graphic novels that aspire to certain greatness of effect. It is a more vernacular and rough cast; more wrestling in style and tone. It is at times coarse, not ulike the book's subject,  a personality who is in the most literal senese, larger than life.
I hope to discuss other celebrity phenomena like Kim Kardashian who has mastered private life as a mode of performance in a fluid and mobile mediascape. We will read an essay in class on politics as entertainment and discuss it. We will consider the representation of Donald Trump as a political meme. What elements of performance, entertainment and celebrity are evident in the current climate of political discourse? What are the objects of this discourse, what are the subjects?  What are the effects?

Week 11: Auteurship

This week we continue our consideration of the voice of the author by reading Asterios Polyp by David Mazzuchelli (or one of the other selected graphic novels you may choose as an alternative). After you read the graphic novel, write a blog post that describes the "voice" of the author as it is made evident in specific and concrete examples from the work you read. Make sure those examples reflect both the written and visual modes of the work. In class this week we will extend this discussion from multi-modal narratives like graphic novels to some specific films asociated with filmakers we might consider "auteurs." 

Week 10: Voice in Contemporary Literature

The reading assignment for this week is to read the novella (long short story) by Karen Russell entitled Sleep Donation. Having read her short story, "Vampires in the Lemon Grove," in-class you should be prepared to describe her "voice" as a contemporary writer. In writing your blog post consider what do we mean when we talk about a writer's voice? What are some of the elements we might describe? What do we mean by "tone" as a general term and how might we describe the "tone" Karen Russell has in her fiction? What is the relationship between an author's tone and an author's voice?

Here is a link to a helpful short article on an author's tone.

Here is a link to a very short article on an author's voice and how an author's voice is distinct from the voices of an author's characters.

Week 8: Reading Virtual Realities

This week we will complete a writing assignment on worldbuilding before we begin reading our final novel of the semester. Using the list of questions from Junot Diaz listed in last week's blog entry and used in our in-class reading, read and comment on one of the the worldbuilding responses posted by members of our class last week. In writing your comment, use just one of the questions.

Then, using the list of questions again, write a response to one of the questions in relation to either Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao or to Edwidge Danticat's Dewbreaker (if you read more of Dewbreaker than what we read in class). Post your response on your blog.

We will be reading in class again this week so please bring your laptop or tablet.

Junot Diaz on Why to Read Authors Who Don't Look Like You

Week7: Building Worlds of Your Own

The Writing assignment for this week is to represent a world that you know. Provide us what we need to know to envision your world as you know it. Be specific and concrete in what you represent. You only have to create the world, you don't have to people it with characters or create any plot, events or action. 

We will be reading in-class and responding there as well so please bring your laptop or tablet.

You Love Pizza Rat but You Don't Own Pizza Rat--article

In Class: In relation to worldbuilding, we will undertake to examine the following questions (feel free to think about them before coming to class):
(From the syllabus of Junot Diaz for his course in world-building for the Writing program at M.I.T.)
What are the primary features of this world--spatial, cultural, biological, fantastic, cosmological? 
What is the world’s ethos (the guiding beliefs or ideals that characterize the world)? 
What are the precise strategies that are used by its creator to convey the world to us and us to the world? 
How are our characters connected to the world? 
And how are we the viewer or reader or player connected to the world?”
A Map of the Literary World

Week6: Reading in Present Tense

Junot Diaz 

This week we will be reading one of the most notable novels of the 21st century, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz. The focus will be on reading this week. There is no writing assignment due this week, all your time should be spent on reading as much of novel as you can before coming to class. Consult the course resource page. 

Salon Interview with Junot Diaz

Week Two: Texts

Last week we talked about the Act of Reading with a focus on the nature of the reader. This week we will discuss texts, the nature of what we read. Next week we will look at authors and issues in authorship.

Writing Assignment for Week Two: 

During last week's class you were asked to respond to several questions designed to elicit some representation of how you construct your identity. You were asked to write a paragraph about your defining characteristics, and a paragraph about your lineage (defined as whatever you see as the continuing line of humans of which you are a part, with some humans preceding you and some coming after you but all along the line linked by a common attribute which is prominent in the construction of your personal sense of self).  You were asked to write a paragraph that discussed what you were standing on, that is the personalities, ideas, ideals or ideologies perhaps that constitutes the ground on which you stand as a person. And finally I asked you to consider and write about how these strong traits of your identity form your assumptions. What prejudices come with these traits that effect and filter what you perceive through your point of view? 

If you write all four of these paragraphs you will have a statement that begins to describe your position in the mediascape. That position does not need to be fixed, but some identity traits may be very powerful in shaping your experience of the world. Such traits as gender, class, ethnicity, religion and nationality can often be very strong in determining how we tell our own stories and how we read the stories of others. There may easily be other factors that are equally important to your identity and experience.

Homework:
You are asked to write an account, inspired by the approach that Gilbert Seldes takes to Chaplin and the genre of slapstick comedy, about an artist (author) or work that you find particularly interesting and important to you. You are especially encouraged to write about an art form or genre that many people might disparage or ignore or fail to see as important. Make your argument for why you think this work should be considered and appreciated for the qualities that you see in it. Make your references as specific as you can. Use description to describe the work and some of its contexts. Please post your account on your blog by next week's class. Try to read some of the accounts written by others in the class. You can follow the links to their blogs on the lists of blogs for this semester on the course blog.