Week Six: Howl, and the Generational Strategy to Cultural Work

Bob Dylan and Allen Ginsberg at the grave of Jack Kerouac 1975 by Ken Regan

The featured work we are reading this week is the long poem, Howl by Allen Ginsberg. A version of the text is available online at this link:

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15308

The link includes not only the print version of the poem but an audio recording of Allen Ginsberg reading the work. We will be considering this poem, the significance of what we came to call the "Beat" writers and the strategy of addressing a generational audience. Please read/listen to the poem before coming to class.

Required Film: Please watch Kill Your Darlings (2014) dir. John Krokidas starring Daniel Radcliffe as Allen Ginsburg. 

We will have had two weeks since last we met so it is expected that you will have completed reading Siddhartha and posted your discussion about the experience of reading a particular passage, scene or segment of the work and your understanding of it. Feel free to express your personal connection to the portion of the text you are discussing.


Writing Assignment: Write an extended comment about a work or set of works you think embody the perspective of your generation. You might discuss what you are defining as the characteristics of your generation and how that is expressed in cultural works you respond to. Discuss a few specific works that in your opinion give "voice" to the outlooks and attitudes shared by your generation. Discuss how the specific work you've chosen is an exemplar of the characteristic(s) you've illuminated. Post your comment on Canvas in the a queue for the fourth assignment.

Week Five: Reading As Mind Expansion

This week we are reading Siddhartha by Herman Hesse. This is a short novel whose reading is intended to inform the actual practice of our lives. Not all books are designed to do this, but many texts are surrounded by a rhetoric of application that goes beyond entertainment--the idea that a text should be useful and an aid to the increase of our understanding of the world and the people in it.

During our discussion of the work in class, we will explore the nature of meaning in the work, how "meaning" is created by the narrative, and how that meaning might be applied. We must also consider how texts contradict themselves and offer a variety of doorways into multiple constructions of meaning. Please read the book before coming to class. If you have read it before, try reading it again and see if your idea of the book and its application to your life has changed since the first time you read it.

Writing Assignment #2:  This week please post your second writing in Canvas. Your writing should consider an extended passage or scene from either True Grit or Pride and Prejudice and the four levels of discourse the passage incites. Start with a restatement of text and then a description of what the text seems to be doing. Move on to an interpretation of the passage and finally discuss how this interpretation is affected by the elements of  mediation that contextualize the text. The target length for this exercise is about 500 words. 

No Class Next Week: Next week there will be no classes on Tuesday because of faculty professional day. There will be a writing assignment as well as an assignment to read "Howl" by Allen Ginsburg. We will discuss the poem in more detail in class in our next class meeting on Sept. 30.

Week Two: Transmedia Culture--The Hunger Games

Still from amateur Propo for The Hunger Games

This week I am asking you to read whatever volume of The Hunger Games that you haven't read yet. In what ways is The Hunger Games like The Wizard of Oz? What elements are similiar? Are the themes alike? Why is this the case? How is the Hunger Games a transmedia text? How has the Hunger Games become spreadable media?

Jennifer Lawrence read Mockingjay

We will discuss these issues and begin writing your written response to the first two texts in the course during this week's class. Please watch at least one of the Hunger Games movies before this week's class discussion. 

On the set of Mockingjay

Remember to check the course resource page and please remember to bring your laptop or tablet to class. We will be writing in class this week.

Week One: Wizard of Oz

Illustration by W.W. Denslow 1900

Welcome to Literature and Media Studies, the required course in literature at Ringling.  I will go over the syllabus with you when we meet on Tuesday morning in room 208 of the Academic Center. 

Before our first class please 

read The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. There are several free versions of this text online but I have placed a version with the original illustrations on the course resource page. You can access the course resource page using this link or the link in the course links box in the upper right of this page. The username and password required to access the course resources are your Ringling username and password. 

If you have read the The Wonderful Wizard of Oz recently, read another of L. Frank Baum's Oz books. These are available on the course resource page to download and read electronically or on an e-reader. The pdf versions of these books have been scanned with original illustrations which is an important aspect of reading these books.

After you have read an Oz book please read one of the selected short stories on the course resource page by contemporary authors who revisit the concept of Oz. It would be also good, if you get the chance, to see the 1939 Movie, The Wizard of Oz or the 1985 movie, Return to Oz especially if you have never seen them before. Please do not watch the movie and think this substitutes for reading the book. 

So here is your check list for what you need to do before class on Tuesday:

1. Read The Wizard of Oz, or one of its sequels. Read the book, just watching the movie of the Wizard of Oz is fine but does not meet the assignment.
2. Read one of the short stories revisiting Oz.
3. Try to watch the required movie for this week, The Wizard of Oz.
4. Bring your laptop or Ipad to class on Tuesday morning.

You can email me any questions. I will see you on Tuesday morning. If you want to read ahead our next book will be Suzanne Collin's Mockingjay, the third book in the Hunger Games Trilogy.