New Syllabi This Spring: “Video Game Culture” and “Magic and Literature”

As I get ready to head out to MLA, I thought I’d post my two new syllabi for this semester, HONORS 2953: Video Game Culture and ENGLISH 3000: Magic and Literature.��(My Cultural Preservation course hasn’t changed all that much, but you can see the new website here.)

This syllabus I just wrote winds up spending two weeks on Frozen. How did that happen?

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) January 9, 2015

That���s on the syllabus too! RT @kjhealy: @gerrycanavan I blame the decline of the West.

— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) January 9, 2015

Here’s the meat of both, the week-by-week schedules, as well as the “What Is English 3000?” explanation for those who don’t know the history behind this course…

#1 ENGLISH 3000

WHAT IS ENGLISH 3000?

ENGLISH 3000 is a new course, emerging out of the English���s department recent redesign of its curriculum, which is intended to serve as a gateway to 4000-level study in the discipline (as well as in the humanities more generally). The previous major had tended to silo different historical periods, forms, genres, and methodological approaches each within their own courses, constructing an intellectually diverse curriculum primarily through the juxtaposition of the various course requirements. In contrast, the new major loosens those requirements and chooses instead to put the different perspectives together within a single course, in an effort to promote shared conversations and collective interests across the English major while also allowing students more freedom to define a course of study that truly matters to them. This, of course, is ENGLISH 3000, which was taught for the first time in Fall 2014.

The plan is for the ENGLISH 3000 sections to gather together a variety of literary forms (poetry, drama, prose fiction, film, and so on) from a variety of historical periods (ours runs from Shakespeare to Harry Potter) and explore them through a variety of critical perspectives and interpretive lenses (we study feminism, Marxism, postcoloniality, queer theory, genre theory, New Criticism, structuralism, disability studies, and reader response). Our conversations will thus become richer and denser as we go, as we build a shared vocabulary for our critical interventions. In the process, we will also be able to explore a number of the multiple writing styles and publishing venues that are available to literary-minded thinkers today: creative writing and academic writing, of course, but also journalistic writing, popular criticism, the personal blog, fan criticism, and even fan fiction. I hope you will find these examples inspirational as you think about the possibilities for your own writing in the future.

Professors teaching ENGLISH 3000 each choose some wide-ranging but ultimately unifying theme to structure their courses; while we might have studied literature and medicine, or literature and science, or literature and the law, the theme I have selected for our section of this course this semester is ���magic and literature.��� This theme is present in some way or another through every literary text we will encounter, from the vaunted heights of the literary canon to culturally suspect and supposedly frivolous works of genre fiction (again: Shakespeare to Harry Potter).

Although ENGLISH 3000 shares some similarities with our sophomore-level courses, including its consideration of multiple authors and historical periods and the use of a ���theme��� as an organizing principle, ENGLISH 3000 should not be thought of as an introductory or remedial course, nor as a free-form general-interest survey; rather, it is an opportunity for you to meet together as emerging literary scholars to figure out what you think defines (and what should define) literary study in the twenty-first century. The conversations we begin here will, I hope, ripple across all the courses you take in the English department at Marquette.

GENERAL COURSE PLAN

WEEKS 1-2: INTRODUCTIONS AND CONTROVERSIES: POETRY

���������������������� Concepts: New Criticism, Structuralism

WEEK 3-5: DRAMA: THE TEMPEST

���������������������� Concept: Postcoloniality

WEEK 6-8: NOVEL: ONE HUNDRED YEAR OF SOLITUDE

���������������������� Concept: Marxism, Genre, Allegory, Utopia

WEEK 9: THE SHORT STORY: ���THE YELLOW WALL-PAPER��� AND ���THE PROBLEM OF SUSAN���

���������������������� Concept: Feminism

WEEK 10-11: FILM: FROZEN

���������������������� Concept: Cultural Studies, Queer Theory, Disability Studies, Reader Response

WEEK 12-16: YOUNG-ADULT LITERATURE: HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX

Day-by-Day Schedule

M
January 12
FIRST DAY OF CLASS


W
January 14
W.H. Auden, ���So An Age Ended������ [D2L]

Arthur Rimbaud, ���After the Flood��� [D2L]







M
January 19
MARTIN LUTHER KING DAY���NO CLASS


W
January 21
New Criticism

How To Interpret Literature: ���New Criticism���

Robert Frost, ���Mending Wall��� [D2L]







M
January 26
Structuralism

How to Interpret Literature, ���Structuralism���

Dan Harmon, ���Story Circle 101��� [online]

J.R.R. Tolkien, ���On Fairy-Stories��� [D2L]

in-class discussion: The Lord of the Rings (film and book)


W
January 28
William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act I







M
February 2
The Tempest, Acts II-III


W
February 4
The Tempest, Acts IV-V







M
February 9
Postcoloniality

How to Interpret Literature, ���Postcolonial and Race Studies���

Heather MacDonald, ���The Humanities Have Forgotten Their Humanity��� [online]

Natalia Cecire, ���Humanities Scholarship Is Incredibly Relevant, and That Makes People Sad��� [online]


W
February 11
Postcolonial Commentary on The Tempest

George Lamming, ���A Monster, A Child, A Slave���

Barbara Fuchs, ���Conquering Islands: Contextualizing The Tempest���







M
February 16
Gabriel Garc��a M��rquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Chapters 1-5


W
February 18
Gabriel Garc��a M��rquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Chapters 6-10







M
February 23
Gabriel Garc��a M��rquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Chapters 11-15

FIRST PAPER DUE


W
February 25
Gabriel Garc��a M��rquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Chapters 16-20

Gabriel Garc��a M��rquez, ���The Solitude of Latin America���







M
March 2
Marxism

How to Interpret Literature, ���Marxism���

Gregory Lawrence, ���Marx in Macondo��� [D2L]


W
March 4
Tools and Methods: Genre, Allegory, and Utopia

Fredric Jameson, ���Radical Fantasy��� [D2L]

Ursula K. Le Guin, ���The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas��� [D2L]







M
March 9
SPRING BREAK���NO CLASS


W
March 11
SPRING BREAK���NO CLASS







M
March 16
Feminism

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, ���The Yellow Wall-Paper��� [D2L]

How to Interpret Literature, ���Feminism���


W
March 18
The Chronicles of Narnia

C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle (excerpt) [D2L]

Neil Gaiman, ���The Problem of Susan��� [D2L]

SECOND PAPER DUE







M
March 23
Cultural Studies

How to Interpret Literature, ���Historicism and Cultural Studies���

David Forgacs, ���Disney Animation and the Business of Childhood��� [D2L]

Lili Loofbourow, ���Just Another Princess Movie��� [online]


W
March 25
Queer Studies

Frozen

How to Interpret Literature, ���Queer Studies���

Google Search: ���queer reading of Frozen��� [Google]







M
March 30
Disability Studies

Frozen continued

How to Interpret Literature, ���Disability Studies���

Su Holmes, ���Cold and Hungry: Discourses of Anorexic Femininity in Frozen��� [online]

ZebraGal, ���Let It Go���Autism Version��� [YouTube]


W
April1
Readers and Fandoms

Frozen continued

How to Interpret Literature, ���Reader Response���

Henry Jenkins, ���Transmedia Storytelling 101��� [online]







M
April 6
EASTER HOLIDAY���NO CLASS


W
April 8
J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter 1-4 review and discussion







M
April 13
J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix


W
April 15
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix







M
April 20
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix


W
April 22
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix







M
April 27
IN-CLASS WORKSHOP DAY FOR GROUP PRESENTATIONS


W
April 29
GROUP PRESENTATIONS







F
May 8
FINAL PAPER DUE VIA D2L DIGITAL DROPBOX BY 3 PM

 

 

#2��VIDEO GAME CULTURE

DATE
KEYWORD
TEXTS


Tuesday, January 13
START
FIRST DAY OF CLASS


Tuesday, January 20
PLAY
Game: The Stanley Parable

Corey Mohler, Existential Comics: ���Candyland and the Nature of the Absurd���


Tuesday, January 27
RULES
Alexander Galloway, Gaming: ���Gamic Action, Four Moments���


Tuesday, February 3
ART
Roger Ebert, ���Doom,��� ���Critics vs. Games on Doom,��� ���Why Did The Chicken Cross the Genders,��� ���Video Games Can Never Be Art���

Ian Bogost, ���Art���


Tuesday, February 10
CRITIQUE
Game: Braid

Patrick Jagoda, ���Fabulously Procedural: Braid, Historical Processing, and the Videogame Sensorium���


Tuesday, February 17
COGNITION
Stephen Johnson, Everything Bad Is Good for You (excerpt)

Jane McGonigal, Reality Is Broken (excerpt)

Short: ���Play���


Tuesday, February 24
HABIT
Game: Tetris

Ian Bogost, ���Habituation���

Chris Higgins, ���Playing to Lose���

Sam Anderson, ���Just One More Game������


Tuesday, March 3
OBSESSION
Film: The King of Kong


Tuesday, March 10
PAUSE
SPRING BREAK���NO CLASS


Tuesday, March 17
VIOLENCE
Game: Portal

Short: ���Duty Calls���

Alexander Galloway, Gaming: ���Origins of the First Person Shooter��� and ���Social Realism���


Tuesday, March 24
MASCULINITY
Stephen Kline, Nick Dyer-Witheford, and Greig de Peuter, ���Designing Militarized Masculinity: Violence, Gender, and the Bias of Game Experience���

Todd VanDerWerff, ���#GamerGate: Here’s why everybody in the video game world is fighting���


Tuesday, March 31
MASTERY
Game: FreeCiv

Alexander Galloway, Gaming: ���Allegories of Control���

Trevor Owens, ���Sid Meier���s Colonization: Is It Offensive Enough?���

u/Lycerius, ���I’ve Been Playing the Same Game of Civilization II for Almost 10 Years. This Is the Result.���


Tuesday, April 7
IDEOLOGY
Game: SimCity

Ava Kofman, ���Les Simerables���

Mike Sterry, ���The Totalitarian Buddhist Who Beat Sim City���


Tuesday, April 14
FREEMIUM
Game: Candy Crush

Ramin Shokrizade, ���The Top F2P Monetization Tricks���

June Thomas, ���Sugar Coma���

Julia Lepetit and Andrew Bridgman, ���The Most Realistic Game Ever���

Ian Bogost, ���Rage Against the Machines��� and Cow Clicker


Tuesday, April 21
GAMIFICATION
Lifehacker, ���Gamify Your Life: A Guide to Incentivizing Everything���

Michelle Greenwald, ���Gamification in Everything���

Dan Schawbel, ���How Gamification Is Going To Change The Workplace���

Ian Bogost, ���Why Gamification Is Bullshit���

Short: ���Sight���


Tuesday, April 28
COUNTERGAMING
Games: molleindustria.org

Alexander Galloway, Gaming: ���Countergaming���

 

Classes start after my red-eye from Vancouver Sunday night…