ENGL 556 A: Cultural Studies

Schedule of readings:

Assigned readings should be completed before the scheduled date.  Most assigned readings not included in the books ordered for the class are available as pdf files on the “Files” page of the Canvas site for the class (see the left margin of the Canvas front page for the “Files” link).  Alternately, some short works are available online, at the links in the schedule of readings below.  Suggested readings are not required but are instead provided as extra reading on topics that will be touched on in lecture; I will usually refer to those readings in class, but I will not assume that students have read the suggested works. 

Week 1.

January 3: Introductions and definitions

Begin Fredric Jameson, “Postmodernism, Or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism” (pages 1-25; pdf)

Donald Barthelme, “The Indian Uprising” (pdf)

Marianne Moore, “Silence,” available online at https://poets.org/poem/silence-2

June Jordan, “Poem from Taped Testimony in the Tradition of Bernard Goetz” (pdf)

January 5: Finish Jameson (especially pages 25-38, parts 3 and 4; pdf)

Donna Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto” (pages149-155, 161-169, 173-181; pdf)

Philip Brian Harper, Philip Brian Harper, “Introduction: The Postmodern, The Marginal, and the Minor,” from Framing the Margins (pdf)

Brian McHale, sections 1 and 2 from “What Was Postmodernism?,” available online at https://electronicbookreview.com/essay/what-was-postmodernism/

Linda Hutcheon, “Legacy of the Postmodern” (pdf)

Suggested only: Jeffrey Nealon, “Post-Postmodernism,” from Post-Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Just-In-Time Capitalism (pages 1-8, 12-15; pdf)

Week 2. Metafictions

January 10: From John Barth, Lost in the Funhouse: “Lost in the Funhouse” (pages 72-97); “Title” (pages 105-113); and “Life-Story” (page 116-129)

John Barth, “The Literature of Exhaustion” (pdf)  

Begin David Foster Wallace, “Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way,” from The Girl with Curious Hair

Suggested only: John Barth, “The Literature of Replenishment” (pdf)

January 12: Finish David Foster Wallace, “Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way,” from The Girl with Curious Hair

David Foster Wallace, Pages 185-193, “The End of the End of the Line,” from Wallace’s “E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction,” available online at https://jsomers.net/DFW_TV.pdf

Week 3.

January 17: No class; Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday

January 19: Joanna Russ, The Female Man

Jean-Francois Lyotard, excerpt from The Postmodern Condition (pdf)

Suggested only: Brian McHale, “Towards a Poetics of Cyberpunk,” from Constructing Postmodernism (pdf)

Suggested only: Tom Moylan, “The Literary Utopia,” from Demand the Impossible: Science Fiction and the Utopian Imagination (pdf)

Week 4.

January 24: Russ, The Female Man

Suggested only: Jane Flax, “The End of Innocence” (pdf)

Suggested only: Frances Bartkowski, “Introduction,” from Feminist Utopias (pdf)

January 26: Ishmael Reed, Mumbo Jumbo

Suggested only: Henry Louis Gates, Jr., “On ‘The Blackness of Blackness’: Ishmael Reed and a Critique of the Sign,” from The Signifying Monkey (pdf)

Week 5.

January 31: Reed, Mumbo Jumbo

Suggested only: Madhu Dubey, “Introduction,” from Signs and Cities (pdf)

Monday, January 31: First reflection papers due (for students choosing assignment option one only)

February 2: Cultural commodification and social logics of postmodernism

George Saunders, pages 3-44 and 65-87, from CivilWarLand in Bad Decline

Suggested only: Jean Baudrillard, excerpts from The Ecstasy of Communication and Simulations (pdf)

Suggested only: David Harvey, “Time-Space Compression and the Postmodern Condition,” from The Condition of Postmodernity (pdf)

Week 6:

February 7: Selected short stories

Kathy Acker, “Hello, I’m Erica Jong” (pdf)

Gerald Vizenor, “Almost Browne” and “Feral Lasers” (pdf)

Guillermo Gomez-Pena, “The New World Border” (pdf)

Larissa Lai, “Rachel” (pdf)

Charles Yu, “Adult Contemporary” (pdf)

Suggested only: Gerald Vizenor, “Postindian Narratives” (pdf)

February 9: Cyberpunk science fiction

C.L. Moore, “No Woman Born” (pdf)

James M. Tiptree, Jr. (Alice Sheldon), “The Girl Who Was Plugged In” (pdf)

William Gibson, “Burning Chrome” (pdf)

Suggested only: Pat Cadigan, “Pretty Boy Crossover” (pdf)

Suggested only: Bruce Sterling, “Preface” to Mirrorshades (pdf)

Suggested only: N. Katherine Hayles, “Toward Embodied Virtuality,” from How We Became Posthuman (pdf)      

Week 7.

February 14: Bruce Sterling, “Maneki Neko” (pdf)

Benjamin Rosenbaum, “The Guy Who Worked for Money,” available online at https://www.shareable.net/the-guy-who-worked-for-money/

Greg Egan, “Learning to Be Me” (pdf)

Eugie Foster, Whatever Skin You Wear” (pdf)

Octavia Butler, “Amnesty” (pdf)

Suggested only: Charles Yu, “Standard Loneliness Package” (pdf)

Suggested only: Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, “Postmodernization, or The Informatization of Production,” from Empire (pdf)

February 16: Rewritings, pastiche, and fan fictions

Nisi Shawl, Everfair

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, “Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading” (pdf)

Suggested only: Darko Suvin, chapters 1 and 4, from Metamorphoses of Science Fiction (pdf)

Suggested only: Ann and Jeff Vandermeer, “What Is Steampunk?” (pdf)

Week 8:

February 21: No class; President’s Day holiday

February 23: Shawl, Everfair

Suggested only: Paul Gilroy, “The Black Atlantic as a Counterculture of Modernity,” pages 1-19, 29-40 (pdf)

Suggested only: Linda Hutcheon, “Telling Stories: History and Fiction” (pdf)

Friday, February 25: Second reflection papers due (for students choosing assignment option one only)

Week 9.

February 28: Victor LaValle, The Ballad of Black Tom

Victor Lavalle, “Up From Slavery”

Henry Jenkins, Textual Poachers, chapter 5, “Scribbling in the Margins: Fan Readers/Fan Writers,” pages 162-177 (“Ten Ways to Rewrite a Television Show”; pdf)

Suggested only: Andre M. Carrington, “Dreaming in Color: Racial Revisions in Fan Fiction” (pdf)

Suggested only: Veronica Schanoes, “Variations on Lovecraftian Themes” (pdf)

March 2: Literary origins of fan fiction: Holmes and Lovecraft pastiche

mostlysherlock, “Over a Cup of Coffee” (Sherlock coffee shop AU): available online at https://archiveofourown.org/works/26118418

Naomi Novik, “Commonplaces” (pdf)

David Corbett, “The Murderer’s Paradox” (pdf)

Caitlin Kiernan, “The Transition of Elizabeth Haskings” (pdf)

Neil Gaiman, “A Study in Emerald” (pdf)

Henry Jenkins, Textual Poachers, chapter 2, “How Texts Become Real,” pages 50-54 and 60-66 (“Sitting Too Close”; pdf)

Suggested only: Arthur Conan Doyle, “Charles Augustus Milverton” (pdf)

Week 10.

March 7: Francesca Coppa, ed., The Fanfiction Reader (selections):

“Introduction: Five Things That Fanfiction Is, and One Thing It Isn’t” (pages 1-17)

“The Communication Officer’s Tale” (pages 18-46)

“The Stormtrooper’s Tale” (pages 245-257)

“The Wizard’s Tales” (pages 135-141), “Scars” (pages 158-168), and “Once Upon a Time” (pages 169-172)

“The Dwarf’s Tale” (pages 93-100)

Suggested only: Rachel Blau DuPlessis, chapter 1, “Endings and Contradictions,” from Writing Beyond the Ending (pdf)

March 9: Coppa, ed., The Fanfiction Reader (selections):

“The Detective’s Tale” (pages 193-204)

“The Billionaire Superhero’s Tale” (pages 223-244)

“The Slayer’s Tale” (pages 57-69)

Suggested only: “The FBI Agent’s Tale” (pages 47-56)

Suggested only: Jonathan Lethem, “The Ecstasy of Influence” (pdf)

Final essays due, by Friday, March 18