Week Two: Heart of Darkness

This week we will be reading and discussing Heart of Darkness. In some interesting ways, Heart of Darkness is very much like the Wizard of Oz a comparison we might develop in class discussion. We will be considering how observing the binaries in any work can be an effective tool for opening up a work for deeper reading, especially for revealing the ideology of a work. This is especially effective when considering a text like Heart of Darkness which explores many conflicts within the characters and their experience. Don't forget to ask the important first question when considering a narrative work which is "Who is telling the story and what do we know about them." That is a very interesting question in this work.

This is a novella so it is short enough to try to finish before coming to class. It is also available as an audio book. Check the course resource page for relevant materials. You can post on your blog before or after class, or both, about your experience with the text. If you have not send me the URL of your personal blog please do so as soon as possible.

Next week we will be reading the common text for all Literature and Media Studies classes this year, The Magicians by Lev Grossman. You need to acquire your own copy of this text. This an excellent work of fantasy writing that makes specific reference to some of the great works in the genre especially The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis and of course The Lord of the Rings. But much of the novel takes place in a college that is not unlike art school with all its pitfalls and personal challenges. Many students have liked reading this novel and I think it is a great read for a holiday weekend.

Here is a link to a professional blog post on Heart of Darkness. It is illustrative of the perfect length for a blog post, confines itself nicely to a single major point and explores that point reasonably, giving the reader other places to go, linking them to more possibilities. 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2007/dec/05/theunjustprejudiceagainstc

Harry Potter and Participatory Culture

Harry Potter fan art from holytaco.com

We will finish our regular class meetings with a discussion of the increasing importance of participatory culture and the advent of online communities. As a point of departure we will look at the trans-media narrative of Harry Potter and consider its various extensions into fan narrative. As a reading assignment for this week try to read any fan ficiton from the Harry Potter universe. Also try to read some of the blog kept by Henry Jenkins one of the most important living critics of media and an important theorist about the growth of participatory culture. For example, read his recent post on Samba Schools and participatory culture. His blog his available at the following link:

http://www.henryjenkins.org/

Next week I will be meeting you indivdiually for your final evaluation conferences. Please remember to post on your blog any responses to works you have read this semester and, very importantly, for your final blog entry revise a previous post to represent your writing for this semester in one selected document. Be sure to complete the online course evaluation.

Media and the Body

Art show poster from the Savannah College of Art and Design

This week we are discussing issues around the interaction between media and the body. The reading for this week is Oryx and Crake,  a novel by Margaret Atwood.  In this novel a post-human future is considered and described as well as the transition to that future.  In the 21st century a post-human future seems not only inevitable but even imaginable as a near term reality. Perhaps a post-human evolution is the only way we can adapt to the large changes humans are making in the environment. Please bring your notebook computers to this week's class as we attempt a few in-class research and response projects to look at current aspects of the body and its relation to media. We will look at some of the ways the body has become a medium.

The writing assignment for this week will be to post an image that you think summarizes some aspect of the relationship between media and the body. Write a post of approx. 350 words describing and/or commenting on the relationship you have observed.

Media History, Media Production, Media Culture

To alter Wittgenstein, we 21st century humans live in media like a fish lives in water.  Media is environment, and like all environment it is dynamic, changing and evolving. The study of the history of media generally and the history of invidual media suggests certain patterns to the evolution of media. Today we will consider the circumstance of the American Cinema, its history, technology, production, fan culture, auteurs, social history, etc. In short, the complex intersections on which indivdual works are situated. We will talk about how to describe works in terms of this situation. We will consider the idea that the study of media is the study of a series of cultural events and how media itself frames our perception of those events. We will be led to describe the optic of media and examine the terms and frameworks of our description.

This week's reading was Nathanael West's Day of the Locusts. We will take some time in this week's class to discuss the novel and the myths and realities of Hollywood, the film industry and the medium of the movies with an eye to considering what the study of movies and of individual films can tell us about the study of media in general.

For additional reading one can read an early example of American cultural criticism, Gilbert Seldes Seven Lively Arts.