- Spring 2021
Syllabus Description:
Schedule of Readings:
All stories and essays not included in the books ordered for the class are available on the Canvas site for the course, in the form of pdf files, or available online at the links given in the schedule below. Any title listed below that is not one of the seven books I ordered or that does not have a link attached can be found on the “Files” page of the Canvas site, where the pdf files are listed alphabetically under the author’s last name (for example, Poul Anderson’s story “The Martian Crown Jewels” is listed under the file name “Anderson.martiancrownjewels.pdf”).
Week 1. Defining pastiche
March 29: Introduction to the course
March 31: Fredric Jameson, “Postmodernism and Consumer Culture” (especially pages 111-118)
mostlysherlock, “Over a Cup of Coffee” (Sherlock coffee shop AU): available online at https://archiveofourown.org/works/26118418
Poul Anderson, “The Martian Crown Jewels”
Don Webb, “Casting Call”
Suggested only: John Barth, “The Literature of Exhaustion”
Week 2.
April 5: Henry Jenkins, Textual Poachers, chapter 2, “How Texts Become Real” (especially pages 50-75) and chapter 5, “Scribbling in the Margins: Fan Readers/Fan Writers” (especially pages 152-177)
David Corbett, “The Murderer’s Paradox”
Paula Volsky, “The Giant Rat of Sumatra”
April 7: Francesca Coppa, “Introduction: Five Things That Fanfiction Is, and One Thing It Isn’t”
Jonathan Lethem, “The Ecstasy of Influence”
Naomi Novik, “Commonplaces”
Suggested only: Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, “Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading”
Week 3. Sherlock Holmes
April 12: Catherine Belsey, “Sherlock Holmes”
From Arthur Conan Doyle, Complete Stories:
“A Study in Scarlet,” part 1
“The Sign of Four,” chapter 1
“A Scandal in Bohemia”
“A Case of Identity”
“The Man with the Twisted Lip”
“The Specked Band”
April 14: “The Yellow Face”
“The Final Problem”
“Charles Augustus Milverton"
“The Sussex Vampire” (on pdf)
Week 4. Holmes pastiche
April 19: From The Game Is Afoot, ed. Marvin Kaye:
August Derleth, “The Adventure of the Circular Room”
Vincent Starrett, “The Adventure of the Unique Hamlet”
Manly Wade Wellman, “But Our Hero Was Not Dead”
On pdf:
Laurie King, “Mrs. Hudson’s Case”
S.J. Rozan, “Men with the Twisted Lips”
Phillip Purser-Hallard, “The Second Mask”
Adrian Tchaikovsky, “The Final Conjuration”
Suggested only: Anne Jamison, excerpts from Fic, “The Sherlock Holmes Material: A Study in Fanfic”
April 21: From The Game Is Afoot, ed. Marvin Kaye:
Poul Anderson, “In the Island of Uffa”
Jacques Barzun, “How Holmes Came to Play the Violin”
Arthur Chapman, “The Unmasking of Sherlock Holmes”
John Sutherland, “The Struldbrugg Reaction”
Anthony Boucher, “The Adventure of the Bogle-Wolf”
Ruth Berman, “Sherlock Holmes in Oz”
Craig Shaw Gardner, “The Sinister Cheesecake”
Darrell Schweitzer, “The Adventure of the Death-Fetch”
Suggested only: Roberta Rogov, “Our American Cousins”
Suggested only: Excerpt from Jamyang Norbu, The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes: The Adventures of the Great Detective in Tibet
Suggested only: Gary Phillips, “Martin X” (pdf)
Week 5.
April 26: Sherry Thomas, A Study in Scarlet Women
Suggested only: Rachel Blau DuPlessis, chapter 1, “Endings and Contradictions,” from Writing Beyond the Ending
April 28: Thomas, A Study in Scarlet Women
Suggested only: Susan Glaspell, “A Jury of Her Peers”
First papers due, Friday, April 30, by email to tfoster@uw.edu
Week 6. Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos
May 3: “The Call of Cthulhu”
“The Shadow Over Innsmouth”
“The Shadow Out of Time” (pdf)
Suggested only: Eugene Thacker, “Preface: Clouds of Unknowing,” from Horror of Philosophy Vol. 1
May 5: “The Whisperer in the Darkness”
“The Colour Out of Space”
Suggested only: “The Unnameable” (pdf)
Week 7. Lovecraft pastiche
May 10: Neil Gaiman, “A Study in Emerald”
Robert Bloch, “The Shambler from the Stars”
Fritz Leiber, “To Arkham and the Stars”
Dani Atkinson, “The Holes Between”
Caitlyn Kiernan, “The Transition of Elizabeth Haskings”
Melanie Tem, “Dahlias”
Suggested only: Charles Stross, “A Colder War”
Suggested only: T.E.D. Klein, “Black Man with a Horn”
Suggested only: Kim Newman, “Big Fish”
May 12: Veronica Schanoes, “Variations on Lovecraftian Themes”
Silvia Moreno-Garcia, “Legacy of Salt”
Victor Lavalle, “Up From Slavery”
Suggested only: Don Webb, “Unsung Heroes”
Week 8.
May 17: Matt Ruff, Lovecraft Country
May 19: Ruff, Lovecraft Country
Week 9.
May 24: Victor Lavalle, The Ballad of Black Tom
Suggested only: Andre M. Carrington, "Dreaming in Color: Racial Revisions in Fan Fiction"
May 26: Ruthanna Emrys, Winter Tide
Suggested only: Ruthanna Emrys, “The Litany of Earth”
Week 10.
May 31: No class, Memorial Day
June 2: Emrys, Winter Tide
Final papers due, Wednesday, June 9, by email to tfoster@uw.edu