SoD Syllabus 2023-24
Term 1
Week 1. Introduction
C21 US writing and culture
Week 2. Neoliberalism
watch: “Fuck You, Buddy” from The Trap (2007), dir. Adam Curtis
Read:
1. Mark Fisher, selections from Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? (Zero Books, 2009).
2. Ivor Southwood, selections from Non-Stop Inertia (Zero Books, 2011). Read pages 1-30.
3. Dale Beran, “4chan: The Skeleton Key to the Rise of Trump”
4. Philip Mirowski, "A Short Course in Neoliberal Economic Doctrine"
Week 3. Ways of looking at Time and Cultures of Solidarity
1. Gerard Duménil and Dominique Lévy, from The Crisis of Neoliberalism (Harvard UP, 2011): 7-32, 45-48.
2. Michael Denning, selections from The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century, 3-21.
Week 4. Graphic Narratives
1. Scott McCloud, selection from Understanding Comics
2. Emil Ferris, My Favorite Thing is MonstersLink opens in a new window (2017)
optional
1. The Bite That Changed My LifeLink opens in a new window
2.THE EMIL FERRIS INTERVIEW: MONSTERS, ART AND STORIES.part 1Link opens in a new window
Week 5. Microaggressions
1. Claudia Rankine, Citizen, An American LyricLink opens in a new window (Graywolf, 2014), parts I-V, pages 5-79.
library ebook hereLink opens in a new window
2. microagressionLink opens in a new window - wikipedia
3. Sofia Samatar, “Skin Feeling"
4. Jason Reynolds (2022), Oxygen MaskLink opens in a new window
5. #blacklivesmatter videos,Black Lives Matter please watch (30 mins total)
Week 6. Reading Week
Week 7. Apocalypse I
1. Rumaan Alam, Leave the World BehindLink opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window (2020)
library ebook hereLink opens in a new window
2. Atlanta, "The Big Payback"
Week 8. Apocalypse II
1. Annaleee Newitz, Scatter, Adapt and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction (2013)
2. The Collapse
Week 9. The New Table-Top Role-Playing Games: Queer Horror
1. watch Avery Alder: The Woman, the Career, and the GamesLink opens in a new window (Ropeconn 2022)
2. Avery Alder, Monsterhearts 2 (2018)
3. Gehenna Valley's actual gameplay of Monsterhearts 2.
Week 10. Last Girl?
1. Carol Clover, "Her body, himself: Gender in the slasher film"
2. Barbarian
Term 2
Week 1. Essay Writing
writing packet download hereLink opens in a new window
Week 2. Narrating Trauma
1. Alexandra Juhasz, Theodore Kerr, We Are Having This Conversation Now: The Times of AIDS Cultural ProductionLink opens in a new window (2022)
e-book download from library hereLink opens in a new window
2. Ben Auden Roswell, Together We Write Private Cathedrals
Week 3. Learning how to make Comics Even if you don't know how to draw
1. Lynda Barry, Making ComicsLink opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window (2019) pages 1-80; 89-90; 94-102; 112-113; 140-142 (key!); AND ten other pages of your choice
2. Lynda Barry, in class we'll watch Drawing with Lynda Barry
Week 4. Mass Prison Industrial Complex videos
Watch
1. "Mass Incarceration, Visualized”; "Jim Crow Juvenile Justice”; "Slavery in Effect: A History Design Studio Briefling”
2. "Alliance for Safety and Justice”; "Rethinking Incarceration”; Angela Davis interview
3. Read:
a) Angela Davis et al, pages from Abolition.Feminism.Now
b) Ruth Gilmore Wilson, pages from Abolition Geography
c) Pages from Stay Woke: A Peoples Guide to Making All Black Lives Matter
Week 5. Prison Narratives
1.Martin Luther King, Jr. "Martin Luther King at Zion Hill"
2. Martin Luther King, Jr., "MLK speaks to his daughter about Racism: Fun Town"
3. How a Sit-In Movement Started by Black Students Changed Activism ForeverLink opens in a new window
4. Read all of (including the acknowledgement at the end)
Colson Whitehead, The Nickel BoysLink opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window (2020)
Week 6. Reading Week
Week 7. Digital Life
1. Charles Duhigg, “How Companies Learn Your Secrets”
2. Kai-Fu Lee and Chen Qiufan, AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future WeekLink opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window
read chapters 1, 2, 4, 8, 10
library e-book hereLink opens in a new window
3. Nick Couldry, The Costs of Connection
Week 8. To Decolonize?
1. Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang, "Decolonization is not a Metaphor" (2012)
2. Tapji Garba and Sara-Maria Sorentino, "Slavery is a Metaphor: A Critical Commentary on Eve Tuck and K Wayne Yang's 'Decolonization is not a Metaphor" (2022)
3. Stephen Shapiro, "Decolonizing the Zombie: I Walked with a Zombie's Critique of Centrist Liberalism" (2022).
4. Mahmood Mamdani, "Introduction" from Neither Settler nor Native The Making and Unmaking of Permanent Minorities
Optional
Taiaiake Alfred, "The Psychic Landscape of Contemporary Colonialism"
Taiaiake Alfred, "From Red Power to Resurgence"
Week 9. Who is a Superhero?
I am Virgo