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, October 25, 2010

Gagagaga

Like the popular television show, Glee, many of us are "goo-goo for Gaga." Recently, writers, thinkers, poets and critics have been interested in Lady Gaga and what she represents in American culture.

Please read the following essay by the poet Joyelle McSweeney about Lady Gaga's "blasphemy." 

In your comment for this week, address McSweeney's definition of blasphemy in relation to Lady Gaga in teh context of how we've been discussing poetry. Is poetry blasphemous? Are the poems we discussed and/or wrote in class blasphemous? If so, what makes them that way?

Also, considering how we've been discussing poetry, please discuss whether McSweeney's essay is itself "poetic" or "blasphemous."
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Monday, October 18, 2010

"lighght"

For this week I would like you all to read the article by following the link below:

"You Call That Poetry?"

The article discusses poet Aram Saroyan's infamous poem, "lighght."

After reading the article, I would like you to post a comment discussing whether or not you think "lighght" is a poem? In your response, consider our conversation this past week in class. Ask yourself what are the criteria for something to be called "a poem?"  Why do you think this poem caused so much controversy? Was the uproar the poem caused appropriate?
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Monday, October 11, 2010

Contemporary Poetry?

Hello all,

My name is Steve.  I'll be teaching your Creative Writing and Popular Culture class for the next two weeks.  We're going to be talking about poetry. For next class, I'd like you to follow the following three links and listen to the following sound clips.  These are three contemporary poets (that is, poets alive and writing today) performing poems they've written:

Lisa Jarnot, "Moo is Om Backwards"

Rod Smith, "Ted's Head"

Alice Notley, "Woman With Antlers"

After listening, decide which one of these poets most challenges your understanding of what poetry is or should be. Then, post a comment and tell me why.

See you next Monday!
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Monday, October 4, 2010

"Epic" versus "Awesome"

What are your thoughts and impressions, having read The Golden Compass, upon watching this trailer? Has any transformation occurred in the translation from book to film?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oj61Q5KPues

Please don't watch it until you've finished reading the novel.
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