Fall 2011 @ SDSU... a new version of engl 220, intro to lit: eyegiene!

SAN DIEGO STATE UNIVERSITY

English 220: An Introduction to Literature....or
Eyegiene
Permutations of Subjectivity in the Televisual Age of Sex and Race
Professor William Nericcio
Monday/Wednesdays @ 11am +
one breakout 'lab' class with a GTA once a week...


First it was the Movies--the wonders of the silver screen; then came Television, the infamous boob-tube that invaded every home in America and turned us all into a nation of brain-addled, screen-sucking zombies. Next? Computers and the Internet, with their insidiously addictive delights--memes that last a day or two but yank on the collective unconscious like heroin or worse. Last? Smartphones, tweets, and Facebook.

So it is that we find ourselves in the Fall of 2011 (the twelve of us left reading books), besieged by screen fantasies, digitized fetishes, and more. Enter EYEGIENE. Think of Eyegiene as an introduction to literature after the conquest of Screen Media Culture. Eyegiene is the title of a new book I am finishing on American visual culture and a methodology for reading 21st century literature in whatever form: books, films, photography, art, street art, graffiti, paintings, etc ; and from whatever genre: fiction, memoir, self-portraiture, short story, poetry, essay, etc.

Eyegiene is supposed to sound like hygiene, you know: "hygiene n. conditions or practices conducive to maintaining health and preventing disease, esp. through cleanliness; ORIGIN late 16th cent.: via French from modern Latin hygieina, from Greek (art) of health." Less an "art of health," Eyegiene is a means to survival--a way of reading the world (and literature), that accounts for the side-effects of living through our sensual, distacting, and addictive screen cultures of the early 21st century.

Planned works include: graphic narrative (ACME NOVELTY WAREHOUSE by Chris Ware and BREAKDOWNS: PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG %@&*! by Art Spiegelman); essays (BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE by Sigmund Freud); novels (FIGHT CLUB by Chuck Palahniuk); film, photography, and more. The class is open to all majors and presumes no expertise. Junior and senior undergraduate majors in English and Comparative Literature interested in taking the course for upper-division credit should contact Professor Nericcio: bnericci@mail.sdsu.edu