 Overview
Schedule
Assignments
Student Writing
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*Download a PDF of the Course Syllabus HERE
Note: The texts assigned will be available in one of three possible forms: texts you have purchased; online texts, which are linked from this syllabus; and E-Reserve, which is located in our WebCT portal.
Unit I: IMMERSION
What is it? Have I had it? Do I want it? Where can I get it?
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OED Immerse 1 b. transf. To plunge into, to bury, imbed, involve, or include in other things.
Immersion 1.a. Dipping or plunging into water or other liquid, and transf. into other things; 2. transf. and fig.
a. Absorption in some condition, action, interest, etc.; 3. Astron. The disappearance of a celestial body behind another or in its shadow, as in an occultation or eclipse: opp. to emersion; |
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January 24:
Alan Liu, "Imagining the New Media Encounter" from Blackwell Companion to Digital Literary Studies (2008) [E-Reserve]; Adalaide Morris, "New Media Poetics: As We May Think/Write" from New Media Poetics: Contexts, Technotexts, and Theories 2006)[E-Reserve]; Mark B. N. Hansen, Part II: The Affect Body” (Chapters 4 & 5)from New Philosophy for New Media (2004) (E-Reserve); Caroline A. Jones, "The Mediated Sensorium," from Sensorium: Embodied Experience, Technology, and Contemporary Art (2006)
Please read the above texts prior to our first class meeting to familiarize yourself with this most recent of interdisciplinary sub-fields in English studies, New Media Studies. Come to class prepared to point to moments of particular interest to you and to ask at least one question. It will help us to become familiar with one another as a group to have artifacts to discuss right away and to do so in as specific a manner as possible.
January 29: Bladerunner: The Final Cut (Dir. Ridley Scott);Jean Francois Lyotard, from The Differend [E-Reserve]; Jean Baudrillard, "Simulacra and Simulations" [E-Reserve];
Slavoj Žižek, from Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture [E-Reserve] Jerry Aline Flieger, "Review: The Listening Eye"
January 31: flOw ; Jenova Chen, Flow in Games (criticism and theory TBA)
February 5: Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age; or, A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer (1995)
February 7: Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age; or, A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer (1995)
February 12: Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age; or, A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer (1995)
Presentation: ____________________________
UNIT II: MANIPULATION and ART(fulness)
Is Immersion the Product of Manipulation, of art or artfullness? Does Manipulation Make Something More or Less Real? What Does Being Real Have to Do With It?
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OED Art 2. a. Human skill as an agent, human workmanship. Opposed to nature.  b. Artifice, artificial expedient. 3.b. gen. Scholarship, learning; Artful 3. Skilful in adapting means to ends, so as to secure the accomplishment of a purpose, adroit; passing gradually into: Skilful in taking an unfair advantage; using stratagem, wily; cunning, crafty, deceitful. Manipulation 4. The action or an act of managing or directing a person, etc., esp. in a skilful manner; the exercise of subtle, underhand, or devious influence or control over a person, organization, etc.; interference, tampering. |
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February 14: Longinus, On the Sublime (1 AD)
February 19: Denis Diderot, from Paradox of the Actor (1757-1758) [E-Reserve]; Michael Fried, "The Primacy of Absorption" from Absorption and Theatricality: Painting and Beholder in the Age of Diderot (1980)[E-Reserve]
February 21: Oscar Wilde, “The Decay of Lying” (1891) [E-Reserve]; Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1936)[E-Reserve]
Presentation: ____________________________
February 26: Shakespeare, sonnet 138, 199; A Midsummer Night’s Dream (c. 1595-1596)
February 28: Shakespeare, sonnet 138 (1599), 199 (1609); A Midsummer Night’s Dream (c. 1595-1596)
Presentation: ____________________________
Formal Essay 1 DUE: Compose an essay of no more than three pages on one or more texts that we have studied in Units I and II: open topic. Due via electronic submission through our WebCT portal under "Essay Submissions" by 11:55pm
UNIT III: SUBLIME
Is Sublimity Immersive, or . . .?
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OED Sublime 1. Set or raised aloft, high up. arch.
c. Of flight; only in fig. context with implication of senses; d. Anat. Of muscles: Lying near the surface, superficial. Also applied to the branch of anatomy treating of superficial muscles.
4. Of ideas, truths, subjects, etc.: Belonging to the highest regions of thought, reality, or human activity. Also occas. said of the thinker.
6. Of language, style, or a writer: Expressing lofty ideas in a grand and elevated manner.
7. Of things in nature and art: Affecting the mind with a sense of overwhelming grandeur or irresistible power; calculated to inspire awe, deep reverence, or lofty emotion, by reason of its beauty, vastness, or grandeur.
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March 4: Edmund Burke, from The Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Feelings of the Sublime and the Beautiful (1757) [E-Reserve]; Immanuel Kant, from The Critique of Judgment (1790) [E-Reserve]; Jean-Francois Lyotard, “Answering the Question: What is Postmodernism?” (from The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge 1979/1984)[E-Reserve]
March 6: J. M. W. Turner, Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps (1812); Sunrise, with a Boat Between Headlands (1835-40); Slavers Throwing the Dead and Dying Overboard, Typhoon Coming On (1840); Rain, Steam, and Speed: The Great Western Railway (1844); Snow Storm — Steam-Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth Making Signals in Shallow Water, and Going by the Lead. The Author was in this Storm on the Night the Ariel left Harwich (1842); Rain, Steam, and Speed — the Great Western Railway (1844)
March 11: NO Class -- Read: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798/1816)[E-Reserve]
March 13: NO Class -- Post a meditation on Coleridge's poem to our class listserv (1-page mininum). Include a thesis, a piece of textual evidence, and a close reading of your evidence as a means to support your claim. Please respond to at least one of your classmates' posts via "Mail" on WebCT. Due via electronic submission through our two of our WebCT portals:"Essay Submissions" (my private copy)AND "Mail" (so that you can see one another's work). Due by 2pm.
March 18: Spring Break
March 20: Spring Break
March 25: Informal presentations of, and responses to, meditations on Colerdige.
Formal Essay 2 DUE: Compose an essay of no more than three pages on one or more texts that we have studied in Unit III: open topic. Due via electronic submission through our WebCT portal under "Essay Submissions" by 11:55pm
Read ahead: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Sonnet to the River Otter”; “Frost at Midnight ”; “This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison”; Coleridge, selections from Biographia Literaria [E-Reserve]
UNIT IV: IMAGINATION
What Are the Possibilities of Imagination? What Are the Limits? Is imagination immersive?
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OED Imagination 1. The action of imagining, or forming a mental concept of what is not actually present to the senses (cf. sense 3); the result of this process, a mental image or idea (often with implication that the conception does not correspond to the reality of things, hence freq.
vain (false, etc.) imagination
).
2. The mental consideration of actions or events not yet in existence.
a. Scheming or devising; a device, contrivance, plan, scheme, plot; a fanciful project. 3. That faculty of the mind by which are formed images or concepts of external objects not present to the senses, and of their relations (to each other or to the subject); hence frequently including memory. 4. The power which the mind has of forming concepts beyond those derived from external objects.
a. The operation of fantastic thought; fancy.
b. The creative faculty of the mind in its highest aspect; the power of framing new and striking intellectual conceptions; poetic genius.
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March 27: Guest Lecture: Professor David L. Clark (McMaster University)
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Sonnet to the River Otter”; “Frost at Midnight ”; “This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison”; Coleridge, selections from Biographia Literaria [E-Reserve]
April 1: William Wordsworth, “Old Man Travelling”; "Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey"; “Preface” to Lyrical Ballads; “The Leech-Gatherer; or, Resolution and Independence ”; John Keats, “Ode to a Nightingale” [All E-Reserve]; William Gibson, "Agrippa (A Book of the Dead)"; The Transcriptions Project, The Agrippa Files
April 3:
John Constable, The White Horse (1819); The Haywain (1821) and Detail from The Haywain; Cloud Study (1822); Seascape Study with Rain Clouds (near Brighton ?) (1824-5); The Leaping Horse (1824-1825) and Detail from The Leaping Horse
Presentation: ____________________________
UNIT V: EROS
Is Immersion a Form of Love? What Are the Terms of Ecstasy? Can I Control My Immersion? Can I Be Immersed and Seduce? Must I be Immersed to be Seduced?
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OED Erotic 1 A. adj. Of or pertaining to the passion of love; concerned with or treating of love; amatory.
Love 1. a. That disposition or state of feeling with regard to a person which (arising from recognition of attractive qualities, from instincts of natural relationship, or from sympathy) manifests itself in solicitude for the welfare of the object, and usually also in delight in his or her presence and desire for his or her approval; warm affection, attachment. Const. of, for, to, towards. Passion
I. Senses relating to physical suffering and pain.
II. Senses relating to emotional or mental states.6. a. any strong, controlling, or overpowering emotion, as desire, hate, fear, etc.; an intense feeling or impulse. |
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April 8: Gianlorenzo Bernini, The Ecstasy of St. Teresa (1647-1652); Georges Bataille, from Eroticism: Death and Sensuality and Visions of Excess [E-Reserve]
April 10: John Keats, “The Eve of St. Agnes”; William Wordsworth, “A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal”; Keats, selections of the Letters [E-Reserve]
Presentation: ____________________________
April 15: Plato, Phaedrus (370 BC)
April 17: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Christabel” [E-Reserve]
Formal Essay 3 DUE: Compose an essay of no more than three pages on one or more texts that we have studied in Units IV and V: open topic. Due via electronic submission through our WebCT portal under "Essay Submissions" by 11:55pm
UNIT VI: DREAM
What Are Dreams? Do Dreams Immerse Me? What About My Interpretation of Them?
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OED Dream 1. Joy, pleasure, gladness, mirth, rejoicing. 2. The sound of a musical instrument; music, minstrelsy, melody; noise, sound. 1. a. A train of thoughts, images, or fancies passing through the mind during sleep; a vision during sleep; the state in which this occurs. 2. fig. A vision of the fancy voluntarily or consciously indulged in when awake (esp. as being unreal or idle); a visionary anticipation, reverie, castle-in-the-air; c. An ideal or aspiration; spec. a national aspiration or ambition; a way of life considered to be ideal by a particular nation or group of people.
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April 22: Neil Gaiman, The Sandman Vol. 5: A Game of You; Sigmund Freud, from The Interpretation of Dreams (1900) [E-Reserve]; Jacques Lacan, “The Mirror Stage” [E-Reserve]
April 24: Neil Gaiman, The Sandman Vol. 5: A Game of You
Presentation: ____________________________
April 29: Dancer in the Dark, Director Lars von Trier
Presentation: ____________________________
May 9: Final Research Paper DUE: 10-20 pages with appended Annotated Bibliography. Due via electronic submission through our WebCT portal under "Essay Submissions" by 11:55pm
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Office & Office Hours
 Independence 175B
T 12:30-1:45pm and by appointment
Course Location & Time
Fogarty Hall 120
T/R 2 - 3:15pm
Required Texts
Editor Caroline A. Jones, Sensorium: Embodied Experience, Technology, and Contemporary Art (MIT Press 2006)
ISBN: 0262101173
DVD: Bladerunner: The Final Cut, Dir. Ridley Scott. Starring Harrison Ford, Sean Young (2007).
Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age; or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer (Spectra 2000)
ISBN: 0553380966
William Shakespeare / Editor Peter Holland, A Midsummer Night's Dream (Oxford UP 1998)
ISBN: 0192834207
Neil Gaiman / Introduction Samuel R. Delaney, The Sandman, Vol. 5: A Game of You (Vertigo 1993)
ISBN: 1563890895
Plato / Translator Robin Waterfield, Phaedrus (Oxford 2002)
ISBN: 0192802771
John Sunderland, John Constable. (Phaidon 1993)
ISBN: 9780714827544
William Gaunt, Turner (Phaidon 1994)
ISBN: 9780714832333
Charles Avery, Bernini: Genius of the Baroque (Thames & Hudson 2006)
ISBN: 0500286337
DVD: Dancer in the Dark. Dir. Lars Von Trier. Starring Björk, Catherine Deneuve. 2000.
Diana Hacker. A Writer’s Reference. 5th Sprl edition. Bedford/St. Martin's P, 2003.
ISBN: 0312412622
Course Requirements
Participation (20%)
Formal Presentation (10%)
3 Short Essays (30%)
Seminar Paper (40%)
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