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English 380--Readership and Mass Market Literature
English 380.01 Readership and Mass Market Literature Instructor: Benediktsson Office: Wheatley 6-110 Time: TTh, 9:30-10:45 Office Hours TTh 11:00-12:15 Location: Engl 380-01. CUBISM TO COMIC BOOKS: MASS MEDIA READERSHIP
What conclusions can we draw about readership in the age of Mass Culture from reading pulp novels, comic books, aesthetic theories and avant-garde poetry? One way to look at the years immediately following the New Deal is to describe them as the true beginnings of the American age of Mass Culture—although mass-produced culture existed much earlier, it was during this period that culture itself became industrialized, when those who received art became “consumers” and art itself a “product” to be purchased, absorbed and discarded. This class will consider all of it: from Picasso to the Katzenjammer kids, from the poetic theories of Gertrude Stein to the transformational politics of the Superman comic books, from Marcel Duchamp to the noir novels of Kenneth Fearing and Dashiell Hammett. Uniting our quest will be a simple question, one based both in aesthetics and history: how did consumers read? Our objective will be nothing less than a unified theory of the mass culture reader. Required Books:
Procedures and Expectations This is not a knowledge-based lecture class—and its success or failure for you depends heavily on your participation and engagement with the material. As such, I do expect regular and prompt attendance, and anyone who is habitually late for class will be marked absent. Therefore, you should not expect to pass this course if you miss more than 6 class periods, and you should expect a penalty to your grade if you miss more than 3. However, showing up is not enough. I expect you to arrive in class having not only done the reading for that day, but having taken careful notes on each work, having summarized the piece and jotted down a few possible comments that you might make if called upon. Participation is a critical aspect of the course—because learning to write is partly about learning the process of reading and responding to texts, which is one that requires a little bit of legwork and labor. It is often through careful reading that the best ideas for written projects are discovered—so it’s my hope that this labor will be worth your while. In the meantime, think of it as your weekly homework for the class. All assignments, including weekly responses and the summary assignment must be typed and carefully proofread before being handed in. They must also be turned in at the start of class on the day that they are due. Late assignments will be penalized one full letter grade for each class period that they are late. For instance, if a paper is due on Thursday, Feb. 26th, and is deemed worth a B+--but not turned in until Tuesday, Mar. 3rd, it will be recorded as a C+. Rewrites of the paper later in the semester remain subject to the late assignment penalty.
Course Procedures: This course involves a range of readings, some of which are easy to access, and some of which are not. However, in every case I will be asking you to do challenging things with the texts we are reading, and perhaps to engage in a way of reading that is not yet familiar to you. This is a class which requires some theoretical background, and so we will be reading literary theorists as well as primary texts in order to ground ourselves in the type of criticism that is made possible by considering the questions of “readership” and “reception.” To that end, I will be asking you to produce 3 short research documents, in which you research the provenance of one of our texts, as well as two major research papers. This class will essentially have two phases. In the beginning, we will work together to develop what amounts to a method—that is, a guided research protocol that you will use in a research paper (due Feb. 19th) that will address one of the sources we have read for the class. The final paper, due at the end of the semester, will be based on your own primary source research—that is, you will research and locate a primary source of your own either at our library or the Boston Public Library, and will make use of that source in a scholarly argument of your own devising, using the methodologies that we have developed in class. Course Requirements and Grade Breakdown
Policy on Academic Misconduct Plagiarism—copying someone else’s work and submitting it as your own (e.g., downloading a paper from the internet)—will lead to a grade of F, both on the assignment and in the course. Please see the University’s policy on academic misconduct if you have any questions or concerns about plagiarism. Class Schedule Week 1: Jan. 27: Intro to Course and Methods Jan. 29: Walter Benjamin, "TheWork of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" Week 2: Feb. 3: Gertrude Stein, Tender Buttons, “Objects” and “Food” Feb. 5: Tender Buttons “Rooms.” Week 3: Feb. 10: Walter Benjamin, “On Distraction”, Gertrude Stein, “If I Told Him" Feb. 12: Gertrude Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas Week 4: Feb. 17: The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas Feb. 19: The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas Response # 1 Due Week 5: Feb. 24: Watch Modern Times in class. Feb. 26: Modern Times Week 6: Mar. 3: Modern Times Mar. 5: Gertrude Stein, “Reflection on the Atomic Bomb,” and “Why I like Detective Stories” (link points to both pieces) Week 7: Mar. 10: Mid-Term Exam Review Mar. 12: Mid-Term Examination Mar. 14—22 Spring Vacation Week 8: Mar. 24: The Maltese Falcon (view in class) Paper # 1 Due Mar. 26: The Maltese Falcon (discussion) Week 9: Mar. 31: Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses” Apr. 2: Action Comics issues 1-4 Week 10: Apr. 7: Adorno and Horkheimer, “Enlightenment as Mass Deception” Apr. 9: Action Comics issues 5-8 Week 11: Apr. 14: Action Comics issues 9-12 Apr. 16: Action Comics, issue 13, Superman issue 1 Response # 2 Due Week 12: Apr. 21: Kenneth Fearing, “Reading, Writing and the Rackets” Apr. 23: Kenneth Fearing, poems from Dead Reckoning (web) Week 13: Apr. 28: Kenneth Fearing, The Big Clock Apr. 30: Kenneth Fearing, The Big Clock Week 14: May 5: Research Project Presentations—Group 1 May 7: Research Project Presentations—Group 2 Week 15: May 12: Paper # 2 Due
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