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States of Damage syllabus for 2019/20

Stephen Shapiro, (s dot shapiro at warwick dot ac dot uk)

If it says, reading is on the forum: find it here:
https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/currentstudents/undergraduate/modules/fulllist/special/statesofdamage/forum/

Term 1

Week 1

Introduction: C21 US writing and culture

Week 2

1. Mark Fisher, selections from Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? (Zero Books, 2009) [available on forum].
2. Ivor Southwood, selections from Non-Stop Inertia (Zero Books, 2011) [available on forum]. Read pages 1-30.
3. Dale Beran, “4chan: The Skeleton Key to the Rise of Trump” [available on forum].
4. (optional) Dale Beran, "Why does 8chan exist at all?" [on forum]
“Fuck You, Buddy” from The Trap (2007), dir. Adam Curtis (in-class viewing)

Week 3

1. Gerard Duménil and Dominique Lévy, from The Crisis of Neoliberalism (Harvard UP, 2011): 7-32 (read only the pages in the pdf) [handout on forum]
2. Michael Denning, selections from The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century (Verso 2nd edition, 2011): 3-50 [handout on forum]
3. Philip Mirowski, "11 Tenets of Neoliberalism", [available on forum]
4. Please listen to Charlie Parker's “Relaxin’ at Camarillo” (1947) and Dizzy Gillespie, "Salt Peanuts" (1945)

Week 4

1. #blacklivesmatter videos [seen in class]
2. Read short article “Hair Relaxer Facts - What is A Hair Relaxer?” (Teen Vogue) [on forum]
3. Claudia Rankine, Citizen, An American Lyric (Graywolf, 2014), parts I-V, pages 5-79
4. Sofia Samatar, "Skin Feeling" [on forum]
5. Race Traitor (Noel Ignatiev) "Abolish the White Race-By Any Means Necessary" and "Immigrants and Whites" [on forum]
6. (optional, but highly recommended), Brent Staples, "How Italians Became ‘White’ (Vicious bigotry, reluctant acceptance: an American story), New York Times, October 12, 2019. [on forum]

Week 5

1. Scott McCloud, selection from Understanding Comics [on forum]
2. Emil Ferris, My Favorite Thing is Monsters (Vol. 1 only) (Fantagraphics, 2016)

Week 6: Reading week

Week 7

1. Nora Krug, Heimat: A German Family Album (Penguin, 2019)
2. "Nazis Killed Her Father. Then She Fell in Love with One" (NYTimes, June 19, 2019) [on forum]

Week 8

Michael Chabon, Moonglow, (2017)
"The Nazi Science That Fed the Apollo 11 Moon Landing" (on forum)
"Forced Labor for the “Final Victory: Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp, 1943-1945" (on forum)

Week 9

1. Charles Duhigg, “How Companies Learn Your Secrets" [on forum].
2. Nick Couldry, "The Capitalisation of Life without Limit" from The Costs of Connection [on forum]
3. Antoinette Rouvroy, “The end(s) of critique: data-behaviourism vs. due-process” [on forum].
4. Safiya Umoja Noble, Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism (selection) [on forum]

Week 10

[all reading on the forum]
1. 5 easy tricks to make your essay better.
2. How to reverse outline your essay.
3. Dos and Don'ts for Sod Essays.
4. "A Brief Guide to the Elements of the Academic Essay," Gordon Harvey
5. A Brief Guide to Writing the English Paper, Harvard Writing Center
6. The Craft of Research (selection).
7. "A Guide to Writing a Senior Thesis in History & Literature" (Harvard) [on forum].
8. Books on Essay Writing.
9. Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein, They Say/I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing (Norton, 2006; rev. ed. 2014). Please purchase.

Term 2

Week 1

content note: some of these videos contain images of social and racist violence that can be disturbing to see.

"Mass Incarceration, Visualized"; "Jim Crow Justice"; "Slavery in Effect"; "Allliance for Safety and Justice"; "Rethinking Incarceration"; "Michelle Alexander in conversation" (in-class viewing)

Week 2

Colson Whitehead, The Nickel Boys, (2019)
please listen (before reading) on forum:
Martin Luther King, Jr. "Martin Luther King at Zion Hill"
Martin Luther King, Jr., "MLK speaks to his daughter about Racism _Fun Town"
link for these is here:

Week 3

Rachel Kushner, The Mars Room (Bloomsbury 2017)

Week 4

Attica Locke, Black Water Rising (2010).

Week 5

Raj Patel and Jason Moore, A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet (2018)

Week 6: Reading week

Week 7

1. Richard Powers, The Overstory (2019)
2. Peter Wohlleben, The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate, (selections) [on forum]
3. Earth First! (1997) Direct Action Manual on tree sits [on forum]

Week 8

L.A. Kaufmann, How to Read a Protest: The Art of Organising and Resistance (2018) [selections on forum].
Occupy Wall Street Videos (in-class viewing)

Week 9

Hernan Diaz, In the Distance (2019)

Week 10

1. Warrior (Jonathan Tropper and Justin Lin)
2. Beth Lew-Williams: The Chinese Must Go: Violence, Exclusion, and the Making of the Alien in American, (selections) [on forum]

Next year, the assessments for this module are changing. Depending on which year you're in, you'll follow a particular assessment pattern:
2nd years:
  • A bibliographic and citation exercise (20%)
  • 2 X 3000-word essays (80%)
3rd years/Finalists:
  • A group video essay (20%)
  • 2 X 4000-word essays (80%)

If you have any questions in the meantime, please contact the Stephen Shapiro (s.shapiro@warwick.ac.uk).