English 220.06 @ SDSU Fall 2018 An Epic General Education Experiment: ROBOTIC EROTIC ELECTRIC | Professor William A. Nericcio

Robotic Erotic Electric or "I"/Eye Robot

English 220.06 Fall 2018,  Professor William Nericcio

Tuesdays and Thursday @11am in GMCS 333

Our utterly experimental and improvisational Fall 2018 section of "Introduction to Literature" (Engl 220.3—schedule # 21066) will be a veritable wonderland filled with bizarre, alluring fictional bodies. From the remarkable and haunting nightmares of Ira Levin's THE STEPFORD WIVES to the irreverent and haunting hallucinations of Franz Kafka (and Kafka's life as revisioned by underground comic book icon Robert Crumb), from the dark, sensual nightmare of a 21st century Siggy Freud in the mad prose of Lidia Yuknavitch, to the (slightly demented) exotic borderlands in the writings of yours truly in Tex[t]-Mex, our catalogue of textual and screened delights has enough controversy, outrage, and mystery to keep us busy for a lifetime. But as we have only 15 weeks to introduce ourselves to the range of artifacts that pass as literature at the dawn of the 21st Century, so things will zip along at an amphetamine-laced pace!

   
Make no mistake about it: this is NOT a survey of long, white-haired, sedate, upper-crust, high literature folks--we will be as obsessed with film, photography, and the internet, as we will the trappings of traditional literature. More an introduction to Cultural Studies than a long-in-the-tooth worship festival of the old classics (sorry Shakespeare, get-out th'way Milton, adios Edmund Spenser), our multi-media exercise in fictional fetishism will try to set itself apart with vivacious books, paintings, and film filled with tortured, robotic, broken imaginations. We will be strive to be eccentric (ex-centric, outside the circle) as we explore the world of alternative subjectivities, "televisual" constructions (think Facebook) where individuals make and remake themselves on a daily basis.  Robotic Erotic Electric will drive our curiousity as we try to understand why our species creates versions of itself that it then re-markets (to itself) in various media: books, film, photography, the web, etc. It turns out that the seductive fantasies, grotesque nightmares, and alluring hallucinations that our creative writers, directors, photographers, artists, philosophers make (shamans of fiction, all) form a key part of what we call our psyche: the psychology or soul that passes for the person you tell people you are. The class is open to all majors and minors and presumes no prior love or experience with literature and cultural studies.

 

 

LOGISTICS? Hit the link!

https://sunspot.sdsu.edu/schedule/sectiondetails?scheduleNumber=21340&period=20184&admin_unit=R

 

Section Details:

Course	ENGL-220
Course Title	INTRODUCTION TO LITERATUR
Section	06
Schedule #	21340
Units	3.0
Session	FALL CAMPUS
Seats	204/300
Meetings	Lecture 1100-1215 TTH GMCS-333 W. NERICCIO
Full Title	Introduction to Literature
Description	Inquiry into basic nature of literature. What prompts humankind to creation of imaginative literature? What purposes does literature serve in cultural life of humanity? What are its social, philosophical, spiritual, and esthetic values? Some consideration may be given to techniques and major critical theories, but focus will be on practical criticism for nonspecialists. Specific works studied will be representative of several genres, cultures, and periods of literature.
Prerequisite	A grade of C (2.0) or better in English 100, Africana Studies 120, American Indian Studies 120, or Chicana and Chicano Studies 111B or Linguistics 100B or Rhetoric and Writing Studies 105B. Proof of completion of prerequisite required: Copy of transcript.
Footnotes	S Proof of prerequisite required.