Creative Writing and Popular Culture: September 2010

Course Description

Course Description

Can a highway billboard be counted as literature? Is Bob Dylan a sellout? Who is Lady Gaga? Can Google be used as a poetic constraint? How do internet phenomena like Youtube and Facebook shape our attitudes toward wisdom, knowledge, and information? Are we morally implicated just by watching? Is constructing our own identities a dangerous thing, and is deconstruction possible?

In this course we will try and answer these questions.

We will discuss relatively nascent literary forms, such as children’s literature, graphic novels, genre fiction, fan fiction, and blogging; we will explore the art of adaptation, and talk about the ways in which the narrative techniques used in film and television have shaped our formal understanding of image, character, metaphor, and plot; we will question the mythologizing power of nostalgia and ask whether speculative fiction (science fiction and fantasy) can offer us a better understanding of our own world.

Come prepared to both read and write generously. This course will be graded on enthusiasm, regular attendance, and a final portfolio of polished work.

Required Reading List:

Alan Moore, From Hell

Philip Pullman, The Golden Compass

Additional reading materials will be provided in photocopy form.

Monday, September 27, 2010

Genre

This week, instead of writing a comment on my link, I'd like each of you to post a link to a video, site or page which you think engages with the idea of genre in a creative way.

Here's mine:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfout_rgPSA

Monday, September 20, 2010

500 Years of Women's Portraits

Take a look at this short clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUDIoN-_Hxs

& perhaps think back to our first in-class exercise where we tried to place poetic extracts in chronological order of composition. If these portraits were scrambled in the same way, would we have an equally difficult time locating the 'modern', and defining it against the 'old-fashioned' or the simply 'old'? Remember that each of these pieces is modern to its own time. I'm interested what you think about the idea of historical 'trajectory' or 'narrative' - can you trace a narrative here?

Next week we'll be talking about 'the audience' versus 'the consumer', so it might be a good idea to think about those ideas too.

It's great to see some of you responding to your fellow students' postings.

Monday, September 13, 2010

"Experts" and Authority

Take a look at this link:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-march-18-2010/conservative-libertarian

We're talking about information versus wisdom next week in class. What are your thoughts about this clip, specifically with respect to those two ideas?