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.

Week Fifteen: Final Evaluation Conference

You should have signed up by now for your Individual Review appointment. If you didn't, email me for a time slot. Please complete all your blog posts. Please fill out the on-line course evaluation before coming to your conference meeting. I look forward to talking to each of you on Monday April 30, 8:30 to 11:30. Remember you only have to come for your appointment time.

Week Fourteen: Commenting and Social Media

Please finish your post for last week in which you curated someone or something that has significance for you or your work. This week I would like you to mediate a topic of social activism you are interested in.  You should include links to sites that give us background or explain the topic you are interested in and you should include sites that show us how to get involved. In addition I would like you to look at comment on someone else's post for last week. 

In class we will consider aspects of activism and other conditions of social media My friend and colleague Dr. Iva Petkova will be a visiting lecturer and we will have time to converse about the issues she raises during the class.  

For those who have signed up to have your final review this week, please have all your blogs posted by Sunday. If you haven't filled out the online course evaluation, please do so.

Week Thirteen: Curate Yourself

What should be read, watch or listened to in this course? This week I am asking you to curate the course yourselves. Choose something you think would be important for us to consider and that falls within the parameters of a course in Literature and Media Studies. Include links and pictures to the original material if possible. Together with the link, include a discussion of why you think the material you have chosen is important for us to read or view. Why is this work important to you? Why should more people come to know this work?

Here are some links to the work by and articles about the artist, Molly Crabapple.  At age 33, I think she represents an inspiring balance between art and activism, using her art to humanize issues that she feels need to be brought to wider attention and understanding. 

We are going to read this story in class today.

Meet Molly Crabapple. Smithsonian Article about her. This is a general overview of Molly Crabapple and her work as an activist artist. The article praises her engagement and interviews her about her work.

A Short Interview with Molly Crabapple about her memoir.

Molly Crabapple Explains How You Can Be an Artist and an Activist

Molly Crabapple Art-Journalism:

What Life is Like Inside the City of Aleppo

Portraits of Syrian Refugees

Excerpt from Drawing Blood

Special Prostitution Courts and the Myth of Rescuing Sex Workers

On Photoshop, Feminism, and Truth

Conversation with Art Spiegelman

Molly Crabapple Draws Guantanamo's Camp X-Ray

Above are links to texts about and by Molly Crabapple. 

Week Eleven: Long Form Television

This week we are experiencing and discussing work made in recent long form television. In class last week, we discussed the ways in which we can talk about a media event in terms of media dependent topics, those effects of the event that seem dependent on the media in which the event is executed, and media independent topics, those effects of the event that are common to most media experiences. In the case of our discussion of the graphic novel we considered questions that arose about the work that were inquiries related to it's performance as a graphic novel as well as questions that were not dependent on the medium in which it was expressed.

Common effects might include themes, reading character, empathy, worldbuilding, the sorts of topics we might discuss in conversing or writing about books, movies, comics, plays, etc. Specific media dependent effects in long form television might include, for example,  discussion about how specific formal aspects of long form television shape the audience experience, what effects flow from the practice of binge watching, what changes occur when events are streamed instead of broadcast. There are many effects that can be discussed, when you write your blog post for this week, feel free to observe your own media effect. When writing your thoughts about this , it is usually best to stick to one observation and consider its full consequences instead of trying to briefly cover a number of possible effects.

Assignment for this Week: From the list below, watch as much as you can of a particular title in streaming television. Choose one that you have not watched before. I have listed works from Netflix, Amazon Video and some web series that you can watch on various platforms and often for free. Several of the web series are actually short form and not long- form TV but they do invite binge watching. A number of genres are represented including comedies, superheroes, and animation.  Just choose one series to view and to discuss on your blog and in class next time. Write on your blog about one of the media dependent effects that you observed in your experience of binge watching. Please pick something to watch that you have not watched before. 

My suggestion is to watch The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel or Good Girls Revolt on Amazon Prime video which gives you a long for television series  that fits in with a number of other works we have considered this semester.  If you are looking for a very light quirky comedy try the Detectorists, one of my favorite series from England. If you must have a hit of Studio Ghibli, try Ronja the Robber's Daughter.

If you have to stay on Netflix, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is one of my favorite adaptions of a genre novel.  Godless is an interesting take on the western. There are several very interesting takes on teen life including Riverdale, 13 Reasons Why, and Everything Sucks. 

If you don't have access to a streaming service I have put some links to some online series you can access.

NetFlix

Babylon Berlin
The End of the F***ing World
Godless
Altered Carbon
Atypical
Stranger Things
American Vandal
Sense8
Jessica Jones
Master of None
Daredevil
A Series of Unfortunate Events
Riverdale
Travelers
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
Jane the Virgin
13 Reasons Why
Everything Sucks!
Black Mirror
Sherlock
Orange is the New Black
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell

Here is a link to the common used secret codes to get Netflix genres you might like.

Amazon Video

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
The Man in the High Castle
Mozart in the Jungle
Mr. Robot
Transparent
The Americans
Good Girls Revolt
Lark Rise to Candleford
Catastrophe
Detectorists
Flight of the Conchords
Ronja the Robber's Daughter

Hulu

The Handmaid's Tale
Fargo
Difficult People
Dead Like Me
Broad City
The I.T. Crowd
Spaced
Twin Peaks

Web Series

Neurotica
Bagdad, Florida
City Girl
Eighty-Sixed
Junior
Let Me Die a Nun
195 Lewis
Whole Day Down
Break-ups
Ted and Gracie
Very Mary Kate
Wainy Days
My Gimpy Life
Waco Valley
Husbands
F to 7th
H+ The Digital Series
Neil's Puppet Dreams
The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl
The Guild



Joss Whedon talks about how binging tv isn't necessarily a good thing.

Week Nine: Voice and The Auteur Theory

Poster for Persona by Ingmar Bergman

Sometimes we think of cultural workers as having a distinctive "voice" in their work. Themes, locations, subjects, motifs, style, lighting, viewpoints, word choices, topics, accent, are just some of the elements that can make up the unique voice of an individual artist. Filmmakers with distinctive voices are often called "auteurs."  This week you are to watch three movies by a particular director and to write a response discussing how the three works you chose exhibit common themes or other elements that are attributes assigned to the personality of the director as an author of the works. In other words, describe the author's voice in these films.

(Or, alternatively, you could argue they are not an auteur or that the term "auteur" should not be applied in the critical discussion of film.)

I am asking you to choose three films by any one director on the following list.

Francois Truffaut	Federico Fellini
Ingmar Bergman	Michelangelo Antonioni
Robert Altman	Akira Kurosawa
Satyajit Ray	Maya Deren
Jane Campion	Stan Brakhage
Peter Greenaway	Andrei Tarkovsky
Sally Potter	Mira Nair
Paul Thomas Anderson	Sofia Coppola
Jean-Luc Godard	Tom Tykwer
Krzysztof Kieslowski	Wes Anderson
Jacques Tati	Mike Leigh

Link that helps to explain an author's tone.

Link that helps to explain an author's voice.

Check the Course Resources Page for a few resources for this assignment.

Week Eight: Adaptation

Fiction Writer and Activist for North Korean Refugees Krys Lee

We have discussed how texts are textiles with threads of context and subtext that we see as patterns of all sorts. It is these patterns that we work to perceive and relate to one another when we read. This week's assignment emphasizes seeing those textual patterns through a specific and applied point of view.

Reading/Writing Assignment: Before coming to class please read one of the screenplays linked to the course resource page. You will find a number of them available to read somewhat down the page. Writing from the position of one of the major collaborators in the work--the Director, the Set Designer, the Director of Photography, the Costume Designer, an Actor of one of the parts--write a statement (memoradum) of 250-350 words that would explain the main elements of how you would approach the script when executing your role in its hypothetical production.  Choose a screenplay to read that is for a movie you have never seen. Please wait to see the movie until after you have written your blog post. 

Adapting a Literary Text to a Film

Link to Interview with Krys Lee

Week Six: Writing and Reading from Diverse Positions

Photo by Jessie Cohen and Ramsey Matthews

Reading Assignment: This week's featured novel is Marriage of  a Thousand Lies by Sri Lankan-American author S J Sindu.  It can be purchased through the bookstore, through Amazon either in hard copy or electronic copy. There is also an audible version.  This book is the first novel by Sindu and has received significant notice and acclaim as a important new work in queer literature and Asian-American literature in general. For anyone interested, Sindu will be teaching a course in the Fall in Asian and Asian-American literature at Ringling. She currently teaches in the Creative Writing major and in the Liberal Arts Program. 

In an interview on The Rumpus, Sindu discusses in detail the issues of the novel in relation to Tamil culture and the literary world in general. She also makes some useful recommendations for other books to read that explore LGBT issues in a South-Asian context. Follow this link. 

In the interview Sindu recounts:

" I wanted to explore the things that weren’t really being explored in South Asian American fiction. A lot of South Asians I knew were considering or were in straight marriages—even marriages of convenience. There was a lot of pressure for me to get an arranged marriage and conform. But it never actually occurred to me to do it. There was absolutely no way I wanted to enter into an arranged marriage or a marriage of convenience, so I was also fascinated by the kind of person who would make that decision. As I was writing it, this novel was the anti-me story. Lucky is very different from me as a person, which is why it was an interesting story for me to write. But I also knew that when the novel was published, people would just assume that I was Lucky, that this is my story. Part of this is because people assume that you write what you know, and the assumption is especially enforced for women/non-binary writers, queer writers, and writers of color. This brings up a lot of issues of privilege and power. There’s an assumption of white cisgender heterosexual maleness as the default, so any deviation from that and people question whether you’re just writing a thinly veiled memoir."

In Class: we will be watching the movie, Circumstance (2011) directed by Maryam Keshavarz. The film, like the book, deals with the conflicts between generations in traditional societies, especially in respect to LGBT relationships and identities. After the movie,  Sindu will join us for conversation and a session of questions and answers about her novel and writing in general.

Writing Assignment: Before or after class please post your response to the experience of reading the book. You may want to wait until you see the movie and have a chance to talk with Sindu before you make your post, but please write your post before Wednesday so I can include it in my mid-term evaluation of your blog.

Week Five: Privilege as a Position

Reading Assignment:  This week we are reading a fairly short novel from the early years of this millenium, Cosmopolis by Don DeLillo, first published in 2003. Be prepared for a certain challenge because the author is asking you to read a story that does not have an easily relatable central character with whom you are not asked to bond emotionally but to observe over the course of a day. Whether you like the character or the book is really not the point here, but rather what you make of it as an experience and how articulate you can be about the experience when communicating with others. Abandon the continuum of like/dislike, observe the observer.  Remember this text is not an attempt at recreating in some way "real" life. It is a story, intentionally and rather substantially, contrived. Can we discuss it without judgement or reference to our prejudices? 

Writing Assignment:  I have curated this class to bring certain works to your attention. I have chosen this work to open up questions of privilege. When you write your response you might talk about whether or not the work addresses issues of privilege,  does it do so effectively or tangentially? What does it appear to say about issues of privilege. 

In Class: In class we will watch the movie 2012 version of the book which was directed by David Cronenberg and stars Robert Pattinson.  Our discussion is a joint investigation, I haven't taught the book before, and like you, have read it once.

Week Four: Reading from a Position

Reading Assignment: This week I am asking you to read as much as you can of Jill Lepore's book, The Secret History of Wonder Woman.  She is an historian and a writer and discusses many of the contexts in which the orginal texts of Wonder Woman are embedded. In addition, to understand the character of Wonder Woman, you can read any of the comics I have put on the course resource page including some of the orginal versions of the character, of the character during the 1970s revival of the character and some from recent versions of the character.

Link to Interview with Gail Simone who recently wrote the character.

Writing Assignment: This week's writing assignment will start in-class. Using any of the information you gathered from reading The Secret History of Wonder Woman or from reading any of the Wonder Woman stories consider how you would design a Wonder Woman Theme Park World. What aspects of the character would you represent? What story would you tell? From what postition would you tell the story? How would visitors interact with the world and what aspects of the Wonder Woman story, both the historical background and the fictional character, would be highlighted? We will begin this assignment in this week's class, and you can choose to finish it for this week's post or simply respond to the book in the usual way. 

Week Three: Reading Mythology

This week we are reading True Grit by Charles Portis and considering the idea of a what a "western" might be. What are the assumptions that frequently accompany works in the genre of the western? 

In addition to looking at the way the mediascape can be divided into genres, we will also consider the deep cultural assumptions that go to shaping positions in the mediaverse like "national identity," and how these assumptions can become mythology, the often unquestioned expectations that frame our cultural experiences.  In thinking about True Grit, consider the values embedded in the work and how they are represented in this book. We will also consider how the presentation of values in this work might rise to the level of mythology.

Writing Assignment: Write a blog post describing how this novel and its film versions reflect or comment on American mythology. What assumptions about the nature of humans, about society and morality are embodied in this novel and the film versions. After you read the novel, please watch one/or both film versions of True Grit, the 2010 version directed by the Coen Brothers starring Jeff Bridges and the 1969 version directed by Henry Hathaway and starring John Wayne if you can. 

Costume Exhibit for the 2010 Movie of True Grit directed by the Coen Brothers

Myths of the Western Genre



Link to Edison recording of Mary from 1878.

Week Two: Austenworld Case Study of a Storyverse

Illustration from Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Writing Assignment from First Class: For the first post on your blog for this course, please write a Prologue for yourself, much like the Wife of Bath has a prologue to the Tale we read of hers in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. In your prologue give us a sense of where you are coming from as a reader. What do we need to know about you in order to best understand what you say and perception that you have. What are the assumptions that govern your sense of the world and how it works?  Try to give us 250-350 words on this prologue to you.

Reading Assignment: For our next class we are reading and viewing some texts that are part of the Jane Austen storyverse. The central text we will consider is Pride and Prejudice, the novel written by Jane Austen.  There are a number of remix variants that you might consider reading instead including Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, soon to be released as a motion picture.  Because it is public domain Pride and Prejudice can be downloaded online for free from several sites. There are free versions of the text for kindles and nooks, and several audiobook versions, including free ones available. Consult the course resource page for links to texts for this week. 

Audiobooks: Listening to audiobook versions of readings for this class is perfectly acceptable and can be a good way to "read" the texts because you can do some other things while listening to the story being read to you. This is also a good way to deal with required texts if you have a history of difficulty with reading. You can download software that will read any pdf version of a text to you on your laptop. Some students do this for in-class reading as well, using headphones and their laptop. If your native language is something other than English, you are welcome to read the works, like this week's choice, that will be translated into your first language, if you choose.

Featured Film: The featured movie for the next class is Austenland (2013) directed by Jarusha Hess and produced by Stephanie Meyer, the author of the Twilight series. The most complete visual version of the orginal text is probably The Pride and Prejudice Mini-series (1995)starring Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle. The is the favorite of many Janeites including the central character in Austenland. I am also suggesting Pride and Prejudice: A Latter-day Comedy (2003) dir. Andrew Black as an interesting movie varient with a production background that has influenced Austenland, and expecially Bride and Prejudice (2004) dir. Gurinder Chadha in which the story is turned into a Bollywood musical to excellent effect. The most recent big budget movie version of  Pride and Prejudice (2005) directed by Joe Wright is worth investigating especially to see this 18th century story take on a more 19th century reading and adaptation. Please watch at least one Jane Austen influenced film before the next class.

Here is a link to a page of Jane Austen Films organized chronologically.

Please read or listen to a version of Pride and Prejudice and bring your laptop or tablet to class. 

Next Week: We will be discussing genre and literature and reading a Great American Novel, True Grit by Charles Portis.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies  fan art 

Week One: Your Position in the Mediascape

In Monday's first class in Literature and Media Studies we will discuss the oral tradition and the practice of the storyteller. We will also consider the patterns of paradigm shift in the media environment by reading and discussing one of the important early examples of English LIterature.

Before coming to class I am asking you to read The Wife of Bath's Prologue and The Wife of Bath's Tale from the Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. Chaucer's story is written in what we now call "Middle English" which is a version of the English spoken during the Middle Ages (from roughly 1150-1470. It differs from contemporary English enough to be difficult to read without an expert knowledge of the dialect.  You can try the original here, 
http://www.librarius.com/canttran/wftltrfs.htm
where you will find both the prologue and tale in Middle English.
Here is a link to probably the best way to read the text, which is an interlinear translation which means each line of the orginal text is followed by a modern translation. Here is a link to that version of the the text,
https://sites.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/teachslf/wbt-par.htm#PROLOGUE

If you must, you can read the summary of the Prologue and Tale here, at the Cliff's Notes site, where there is a good condensed background on the Canterbury Tales and Chaucer as well as a plain language summary of the works.

You can have the prologue and tale read to you on youtube. Here is a link to those pages: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Du1ryviObsU for the tale and the prologue is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bj7VmvkgCBs  There are several possible audio versions to choose from. 

In class we will review the basic policies of the class and the attendance and grading policies. Attendance will be taken each week and reported electronically.

Students can expect to read something and write something each week in the form of weekly assignments. Please bring your laptop or tablet to every class. Many weeks you can expect to read and write in-class.

All the writing done for this class must be mounted on a blog the student maintains for the semester. Blogger is the preferred choice as a blogging environment but you can use others if you insist. Please leave the privacy settings off and remember anyone can read comments you make in your blog. Please start a new blog for this course and don't use an old blog you have already created as to avoid possible confusion. Once you have created a blog please email me the url for your blog, indicating that you are in the Literature and Media Studies class.

Please read the Chaucer selection before you come to class on Monday morning I will see you then.


We wiwork on understanding positions in the mediascape and methods of defining our own lineage and outlooks. We are what we behold as much as we are what we eat. We will begin the class with a discussion of High and Low and a review of the course syllabus.

Seven Lively Arts by Gilbert Seldes

Next class we will be reading Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice or alternatively another work from the Austen storyverse. After reading the novel or the alternative, students will write a blog post discussing why the work does or does not have relevance to relationships today.

Remember next week is the Martin Luther King holiday and there will be no class. You will have two weeks, then to read Pride and Prejudice.

Week Twelve: Games as a Medium

Reading Assignment: Read Tetris: The Games People Play, a graphic narrative by Box Brown. 

This week we will discuss the book for this week and the subject of gaming as a specific medium, how we are to consider works/events in this medium and what are media specific criteria that are involved in the experience of gaming. Be prepared to discuss titles you consider important works in this medium and why they are important. 

Writing Assignment: Write a post that discusses some of the merits of one of your favorite games and why it might be considered "literature."

Week Seven: Influence

This week we are looking at a case study of adaptation and influence.  Please read a selection of the writings of Stefan Zweig, several examples of which you will find on the course resource page. You can try the selection Wes Anderson himself curated for publication in England, The Society of the Crossed Keys. In that collection is the novella (long, long short story) "Twenty-four Hours in the Life of a Woman," which, if you read just one text for this week, read this one.

There is a novel and some short stories available to read as well. Read a selection and then watch Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel. After you have read and watched the texts, write a blog post that discusses how Zweig's writing may have influenced Anderson's movie.  Be as specific and concrete as possible. We will discuss the issues of influence in relation to these two artists in class.

You can begin by considering what common elements you find in both texts. You should consider the range of possible elements, characters, plot ideas, story form and structure, themes, moods, mythologies, philosophies, etc., etc. 

Which of these common elements do you think constitute direct "borrowings" that Wes Anderson makes from Stefan Zweig? Are some of these elements just "accidentally" in common, for example are the specific elements you are considering present in the work of Wes Anderson before Grand Budapest Hotel and thus a coincidence of tastes or outlook as opposed to direct influence? Questions of influence can be tricky even when authors admit or even celebrate them as Wes Anderson does with Stefan Zweig.

Writing Assignment for Last Week: Using the questionaire by Junot Diaz, apply one of the worldbuilding questions to whatever you read for last week's discussion of diverse postitions. Write your response in answer to the question you chose.

Week Six: Reading from Diverse Positions

This week we are reading a series of linked short stories that all together form a novel entitled The Dewbreaker, by the Haitian-American writer Edwidge Danticat. If you haven't time to read the entire novel you should at least try to finish about half of it. There are a number of convenient stopping places and you should read as much of it as you can, We will be discussing the novel in class with the intention of using the text to help us discuss the diverse position of texts and readers. There is no required film this week. 

As an alternative text to read for this week you might consider The Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, a pulitzer prize winning novel by the Dominican-American novelist Junot Diaz.

If you are interested in reading short stories that are written from a different position than is typical in American fiction try these stories which you can read by following the link to their title:

Hitting Budapest  by NoViolet Bulawayo
Whites by Julie Otsuka
Gold Boy, Emerald Girl by YiYun Li

One of the very important exports of Haitian culture has been its popular music. You can go to the Haitian Music Icons page which curates a short set of youtube music videos highlighting classic performances from Haitian popular music tradition. Many of these performances are developments of Compas (in Kreole, "Konpas") a variation of the merengue that is to Haiti what the Tango is to Argentina. Among my favorites on the music icons page are performances by Nemours Jean Baptiste, one of the "creators" of 20th century Compas; the orchestre Tropicana de Haiti; the Tabou Combo; John Gesner Henry (Coupe Cloue); Sweet Mickey, Michel Martelly who just stepped down as president of the country; and T-Vice. The last two are substantially influenced by their involvement with the Haitian community in Florida.

Writing Assignment: We are carrying over the writing assignment from last week and I have asked you to write your blog post for last week's stories using one of typical questions that are asked by readers who come from feminist critical positions. These questions might include the following:

Are there any female characters in the work that you identify with?
How are relationships between men and women (or characters assuming male/female roles) portrayed in the story? 
What are the power relationships between men and women in the text?
How are male and female roles defined?
What constitutes masculiniity and femininity in the world of the story?
Do characters take on traits from opposite genders in the story? How so? Does this change others reactions to them?
What does the work reveal about the ooperations (economically, politically, socially, or psychologically) of patriarchy?
What does the work express or imply about the possiblities of sisterhood as a mode of resisting patriarchy?
What does the work say about the history of women in literature or the arts or about women's creativity?

Use any one of these questions and apply it to one of the stories we read for last week to write this week's response.  

In Class: We will undertake to examine the following questions in relation to this week's reading:

(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?”

In Re: to our recent discussion of Wonder Woman: You can follow the adventures of a muslim female superhero here, beginning with this episode of the web comic Quahera.

Week Five: Reading from a Critical Position

Pussy Riot by Igor Mukhin

Established positions are like towers from which one can overlook the mediascape. As a case study, we will read several short stories and see a couple of film clips and discuss them from the point of view of a specific critical position.

Reading Assignment: Before class, read at least four of the short stories selected for this week. Several are listed and linked below. These links will also appear on the course resource page.

"Lust" (1984) by Susan Minot 

"Even the Queen" by Connie Willis

"Planet of the Amazon Women" by David Moles

"The Yellow Wallpaper" (1892)  by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

"Story of an Hour" (1894) by Kate Chopin

"A Good Man is Hard to Find" (1953) by Flannery O'Connor

"Where Are You Going; Where Have You Been" (1966) by Joyce Carol Oates 

"Girl" by Jamaica Kincaid


Writing Assignment for last week's reading: Please write about a female hero, a heroine,  that you have designed. What are her most important qualities and characteristics? How does she manifest her power? What about her would you like women to emulate?  How would you represent the positive aspects of her character? 

Link to Feminist Frequency videos and backgrounds on Tropes vs. Women in popular culture and video games. Excellent critical work by Anita Sarkeesian.

"More than anything, I feel that this meta-discourse, talking about the talk, is part of how it feels to be a 'woman in music' (or a 'woman in anything.' for that matter--politics, business, comedy, power). There is the music itself, and then there is the ongoing dialogue about how it feels. The two seem to be intertwined and also inescapable. To this day, because I know no other way of being or feeling, I don't know what it's like to be a woman in a bank--I have nothing else to compare it to. But I will say that I doubt in the history of rock journalism and writing any man has been asked, "Why are you in an all-male band?"
--Carrie Brownstein from Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl

An important source in third wave feminism and its impact on the contemporary feminist practice of groups like Pussy Riot is the Riot Grrrl communities of the 1990s and their successors. Many of the significant firgures in these communities are still active. One aspect of the work of these activist artists is they way they move across various media, seemingly fearlessly but at least with considerable tenaciousness and not infrequently with considerable effect. Here are some links:

Don't Need You The Herstory of Riot Grrl
Excerpt from Grrl (2013) documentary
Bikini Kill "Suck My Left One" and "Rebel Girl" (1992)
Bikini Kill Washington DC 1992

Molly Crabapple with "Shell Gane" her Tryptych

Pussy Hat Project Link