ENGL 696: Learning Theory through Pop Culture

This class will seek to explain and exemplify various theoretical approaches to literature and culture by way of popular entertainment. Following the lead of Slavoj Žižek, who published the essay collection, Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Lacan but Were Afraid to Ask Hitchcock, the class will function as a thorough and rigorous analysis of some of the most perplexing and pervasive issues in and ideological contradictions of our contemporary postmodern world, examined through the lens of pop culture. The course will also clarify some of the major theories currently influencing cultural criticism today, even as we implement the tools of cultural critique throughout the semester. Each theoretical approach will be paired with an example in pop culture: Narratology through the X-Files; Psychoanalysis through Buffy, the Vampire Slayer; Postmodernism through Bladerunner, the Matrix, and Brazil; and a final wrap-up of all the theories through Fight Club (along with some Marxism).

       
 
 
 
Our books will be available at Von's Books:
Class Web Site

 
   
Primers:
 
 

Slavoj Žižek, Looking Awry

Dino Franco Felluga, Critical Theory: The Key Concepts

 
   

 
 
All other readings and the films will be made available through a Dropbox folder
Jump to Date:
 
   
 
       


NARRATOLOGY
August 25, 2016

DAY ONE:

The End is in the Beginning

VIEWING

Star Trek, "Cause and Effect"

READING

Peter Brooks, Reading for the Plot (23-29, 37, 48-61)

"story and discourse" (CT 292)

"hermeneutic and proairetic codes" (CT 130)

"narrative and narratology" (CT 183)

"culture" (CT 65)

"Introduction: An Archaeology of the Western Subject" (CT x)

Terms applied to the analysis of film (eg. POV shot, etc.)

Barthes Module on Plot

Barthes Module on the Five Codes

Brooks Module on Plot

Brooks Module on Narrative Desire

Primer on Star Trek: The Next Generation

September 1, 2016

DAY TWO:

Beyond the Leisure Principle

VIEWING

X-Files, "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose"

READING

Peter Brooks, Reading for the Plot (94-112)

"desire" (CT 71)

"death drive" (CT 70)

"Clyde Bruckman's" Primer

September 8, 2016

DAY THREE:

I Want to Believe the Truth is Out There

VIEWING

X-Files, "Jose Chung's From Outer Space"

READING

Peter Brooks, Reading for the Plot, Chapter 10

"transference" (CT 315)

Freud Module on Transference and Trauma

Brooks Module on Transference

Definition of "frame narrative"

"Jose Chung's" Primer

September 15, 2016

DAY FOUR:

L'age été

VIEWING

Chris Marker, La jetée

READING

Constance Penley, The Future of an Illusion

Garrett Stewart, Between Film and Screen

OPTIONAL

The Script of Chris Marker's La Jetée

     
NARRATOLOGY

 

PSYCHOANALYSIS
September 22, 2016

DAY FIVE:

Trauma and Narrative

VIEWING

Buffy, "Restless"

READING

Sigmund Freud, "An Outline of Psycho-Analysis"

Sigmund Freud, "The Uncanny"

Sigmund Freud, "Fetishism"

"the uncanny" (CT 316)

"fetishism" (CT 106)

"psychoanalysis" (CT 242)

"psychosexual development" (CT 244)

"the unconscious" (CT 318)

"repression" (CT 266)

"neurosis" (CT 192)

"Restless" Primer

September 29, 2016

DAY SIX:

Lacan 101

VIEWING
Buffy, "Hush"
READING

Slavoj Žižek, Looking Awry, Parts I and II

"the Real" (CT 264)

"homosocial desire" (CT 139)

"epistemology of the closet" (CT 101)

"between the two deaths" (CT 30)

Lacan Module on Psychosexual Development

Lacan Module on the Structure of the Psyche

Lacan Module on Desire

"Hush" Primer

October 6, 2016

DAY SEVEN:

The Gift of Death

VIEWING

Buffy, "The Body"

READING

Slavoj Žižek, Looking Awry, Part III

Jacques Lacan, "The Mirror Stage"

Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror

"the Gaze" (CT 110)

"the abject" (CT 3)

Kristeva Module on Psychosexual Development

"Body" Primer

October 20, 2016  

DAY EIGHT:

Feminist Lacan

VIEWING

Buffy, "Once More, With Feeling"

READING

Laura Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema"

Kaja Silverman, "Suture"
and The Acoustic Mirror

Judith Butler, "Performative Acts
and Gender Construction"

"gender and sex" (CT 112)

"suture" (CT 304)

"performativity" (CT 213)

"nature" (CT 189)

"agency" (CT 13)

"Once More, with Feeling" Primer

TBA

DAY NINE:

Discussion of class projects

 
PSYCHOANALYSIS

 

POSTMODERNISM
October 27, 2016: PROSPECTUS IS DUE TODAY

DAY TEN:

I, Cyborg

VIEWING:
Ridley Scott, Bladerunner
READING:

Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism

Slavoj Žižek, Tarrying with the Negative

"postmodernism" (CT 226)

"postmodernity" (CT 233)

"ideology" (CT 146)

"pastiche" (CT 211)

"late capitalism" (CT 161)

"cyborg" (CT 69)

OPTIONAL:

Script of the Hollywood release of Bladerunner (including images)

The Bladerunner FAQ page: a helpful compendium of information

November 10, 2016

DAY ELEVEN:

Like, Really

VIEWING:
Andy and Larry Wachowski, The Matrix
READING:

Jean Baudrillard, "The Precession of Simulacra"

"simulacra" (CT 282)

Baudrillard Module on Postmodernity

Dino Felluga, “The Matrix: Paradigm of Post-Modernism or Intellectual Poseur? (Part I)”

Andrew Gordon, “The Matrix: Paradigm of Post-Modernism or Intellectual Poseur? (Part II)”

November 17, 2016

DAY TWELVE:

The Laughter in the Prison Cell

VIEWING:

Terry Gilliam, Brazil

READING:

Linda Hutcheon, A Poetics of Postmodernism

Susan Sontag, "Notes on Camp"

Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish 3-8, 200-209, 213-217, 223-304

Michel Foucault, "The Subject and Power" 218-224

"parody" (CT 207)

"kitsch" (CT 158)

"camp" (CT 36)

"subject and subjectivity" (CT 297)

"repressive hypothesis" (CT 268)

"discipline" (CT 83)

"discourse" (CT 84)

"power" (CT 237)

"bio-politics and bio-power" (CT 32)

"panoptic, panopticon, and carceral" (CT 204)

OPTIONAL:
Modernity and mise-en-scene in Brazil
     
POSTMODERNISM

 

MARXISM and REVIEW
December 1, 2016

DAY THIRTEEN :

I Don't Know Jack

VIEWING

David Fincher, Fight Club

READING

Karl Marx, Capital, Volume 1

"Marxism" (CT 171)

"capital and capitalism" (CT 37)

"class" (CT 42)

"commodification" (CT 50)

"commodity" (CT 51)

"commodity fetishism" (CT 51)

Marx Module on the Economic Stages of Development

OPTIONAL

Marx & Engels Internet Archive

Encyclopedia of Marxism

December 8, 2016

DAY FOURTEEN :

Hey, You!

VIEWING
David Fincher, Fight Club
READING

Louis Althusser, "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses" 242-243, 244-246

"Ideological State Apparatuses"

     
MARXISM and REVIEW

FINIS

Last Revised: July 29, 2016