Week Fourteen: Curate the Lockdown

The movie still above is from The Wild Women of Wongo, (1958) not a great movie but fabulous for capturing a representation of Florida as an exotic paradise in the late 1950s.  Visible in the picture above is the use of The Coral Castle, a well-known tourist attraction just South of Miami and still in operation. The Castle was the work of a single artisan and is a masterpiece of outsider art well worth visiting after the lockdown is over.  You can get a virtual taste of it in this movie.  Be prepared for massive stereotype of gender roles that are interestingly subverted by the representations of Female Domination as an erotic element that are especially an element in the film's final reel.  You can stream this on Amazon as well as other services.  If you stream it on Shout Factory (you can get a 30 day free trial as a Prime Video channel) you can view it with commentary from The Film Crew, a short-lived successor to the original MST 3000. They still make bad movies but they don't make them with as much purity of intent as this movie has. Best with riffing commentary. ?You could watch with friends and make jokes via twitter.

Here is a link to a small collection of COVID street art.

Here is a link to Annarasumanara a great Korean Manhwa on Webtoons

Here is a link to free Studio Ghibli backgrounds for Zoom conferencing

For the last assignment of the semester I am asking you provide a list of media with which to survive the COVID-19 lockdown.  This can be streaming titles you think are great but that we might have missed,  songs we shouldn't miss, books or comics we might read...any media that can be consumed at home and that we might get through subscription or (even better) for free.

Post your curated collection of lockdown media on the discussion section of the Canvas site for this course.  Please avoid the popular or obvious choices, we can get that direction elsewhere, durate for us works/events we might not consider or that are unusual but great.  We are looking for you to lead us to a lost or hidden treasure.  

During the last class discussion we will discuss the act of curation and what elements go into selecting and curating works of media.

Next Monday is the last day to submit work.  Please reply to my final grade email and the questions I am asking before Tuesday, May 5, the last day of the semester.  In your email please indicate what class you are in because I will be receiving emails from all of my classes and it will help me keep things straight.

Here is a quiz you can take to find out what kind of sushi you are:

https://www.buzzfeed.com/fadhilahafra/what-kind-of-sushi-are-you-7lv9xdqmwn?origin=web-hf

In case you are wondering, I am Spicy Tuna Roll.

Week Fourteen: McLuhan and Media Future

This week we are considering the ideas of Marshall Mcluhan and we will be reading The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects, an anthology of quotes from McLuhan in the form of a contemporary illuminated manuscript.  McLuhan was a great popularizer of media studies and a number of his ideas still have current application and interest. After you read The Medium is the Massage, I would like you to create your own illuminated page that embodies one of your own observations about media. Save it as a .png or .gif (if it has motion). After you create your page, please either post the page on Google docs or send it to me via email, 

dsteilin@c.ringling.edu

There are a number of works by McLuhan on the course resource page, make sure you are reading the correct text, the full title is The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects.

Here is a link to a slideshow of extra pages made by this class to add to McLuhan's work.

During class this week, I will give a short talk on McLuhan's ideas and their importance in the history of media theory. We also will discuss the final grade process.

Reading the Multimodal Narrative

Reading Assignment: This week we are reading a work in words and pictures. The featured work is My Favorite Thing is Monstersby Emil Ferris. If, by some chance, you have already read My Favorite Thing is Monsters, then you can read Asterios Polyp a graphic novel by David Mazzuchelli. Both these novels are an exemplars of graphic narrative, weaving word and image in a well-coordinated approach to telling a story that is meant for adults. The writing, the illustration, the graphic design, the visual development are all extremely well-executed while not overshadowing the experience of the story. These works have layers and density like most works of a literary nature and unfold most over multiple readings.


Writing Assignment: Please post a response on whatever you read for this week to the discussion topic for this week on Canvas. Discuss what aspects of the narrative embody the author's "voice" as they are expressed in the medium of the graphic narrative, the story that is told in both words and pictures, and that we, in the United States, call "comics." How is this unique quality of "voice" expressed both in words and pictures.

If you are interested, here is a link to the definitive Comics Journal interview with Emil Ferris which gives background and insight into her and her work.

Another Interesting Interview with her in Paste Magazine.

A link to The Bite that Changed My Life, a short autobiographical comic about the artist contracting West Nile Virus and becoming paralyzed.

Game Narrative and Literature

Reading and Writing Assignment

This week I am asking you to read a short story published in 2015, Fresh Prince of Gamma World by Austin Grossman,  Grossman is an author and a game designer.  

Like many short stories, this narrative implies much but doesn't explain very much it doesn't absolutely have to.  That is the writing economy of a short story. 

After reading the story and thinking about it, I want you to post a response to the discussion section of this course's canvas page. I will set up a discussion area on which to post your response.

In your response I would like you to address directly the following questions, that is, I would like you to write a specific answer to each of these questions:

1. What is your reaction to the text you just read?
2. What connections did you make with the story? Discuss what elements of the story with which you were able to connect?
3. What changes would you make to adapt this story into another medium? What medium would you choose; what changes would you make?
4. Gaming is, at the very least in part, a narrative medium.  What do you think is the relationship between the gaming and the concept of literature?

You can wait until after the class zoom-in at 3:30, Monday afternoon, Eastern U.S, time to post your written part of the discussion.  I expect your answers to each question to be reasonably developed, that is a substantial paragraph in length answering each question.  We will discuss these questions during our class Zoom-in which I expect to last an hour to 90 minutes.  I will send you a link to the Zoom-in to your email, or you can access the meeting through your canvas page for this course.  There is now a section for Zoom near the top of the menu on the left side of the canvas course area that will take you directly to the zoom meeting.

Just FYI in case you have tons of free time, here is a link to one of the classic theoretical works about humans and gaming.  At some point anyone in gaming, CA, VR or Visual Studies should read this work:

Text of Homo Ludens by Johan Huizinga

If you want to read a novel that is very influenced by game structure and in this case, the elements of table top gaming, try reading Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson.  It is an excellent fantasy novel the author will let you read for free starting here:

https://www.brandonsanderson.com/warbreaker-prologue/


Syllabus Revision For the Rest of the Semester

We have just four classes left in the semester and because I have just come on and we have to adapt the class to online participation, I am making the following changes:

I have scheduled four zoom sessions starting at 3:30 Eastern US time and going for an hour to 90 minutes.  Please be there if you can.

Grades for this course will be based on participation in four assignments, one a week for the next four weeks.  These assignments are meant to explore the key goals of the Literature and Media Studies area which are to give you several experiences of reading text and creating some opportunities for you to engage in a conversation with and about the texts you read.

Here are the final four assignments:

April 13: Game Narrative and Literature--Read Fresh Prince of Gamma World and answer the specific questions for the story on the Course Blog.  Zoom discussion of the short story and Gaming narrative in general. Post your written discussion on the Canvas discussion section. 

April 20: Reading Multimodal Narrative--Read  My Favorite Thing is Monsters. Post your written response on the Canvas discussion section. Zoom discussion about this work and Graphic Novels.

April 27: The Medium is the Message--Read The Medium is the Massage. Email me a .png of a page you make to add to the book that includes an contemporary insight into media.  Discussion about Media theory during Zoom session.

May 4: Media Curation--Choose a streaming series you think is overlooked and exceptional in quality, well worth watching during social distancing.  Write a statement about its qualities on the Disscussion section of Canvas. Include where it can be streamed.  Just major streaming services please--Hulu, Netflix, Amazon, Britbox or Disney Plus for example, although free streaming services like Shout! can be included.  You will also have to respond to the final grade questionnaire and return it by email. Please avoid discussion or curation of widely viewed material.  The idea is to curate work beyond the popular.

Final Grades:  The last four projects will not be graded individually but must be completed to show your continued participation in the class.  An absence will be given for each incomplete assignment.  Students who have not completed their required presentation must still give via recorded presence.  This can be done by video or narrated powerpoint.  Your presentation must be submitted before the final week of class and must be mounted on google docs or similar available platform and link sent to the instructor so it can be included on the Course Blog.

Because of the complications fusing the different parts of the semester together to determine the final grade, final grades will be issued via conference.  I will send out a questionnaire to all students in the class to survey their total participation.  As part of that questionnaire students will be asked to indicate what the think is the appropriate grade to receive in the class, on the scale of A to F including pluses and minuses.  You will then be asked why you think that is the appropriate grade and to explain that in writing.  This is similar to the evaluation process most employer's do in evaluation employee performance.  Generally, students and employees are very accurate in their self-evaluations.  I will engage in further discussions with any student with whose self-evaluation I am not in agreement. This method will allow for the student to incorporate their performance in the class for the entire semester.

This semester, any student has the right to ask their final grade to be on a pass/no credit basis.  You have to petition the school registrar to do this.  Your adviser can help you.  I cannot grant you pass/no credit status. The advantage to this is that your performance in the class will not effect your grade point average one way or the other. Your performance will still have to meet the criteria for passing the course and you will still conduct a self-evaluation but only to determine your pass/no credit status.

Any questions please contact me by email or bring it up during our Zoom discussion.  I look forward to talking to you in virtual person on Monday.