The Purpose of the Course:
It is the goal of the course to equip students with different theoretical methodologies with which to analyze a multiplicity of texts (ranging from literature and comic books to studio art and animation), the course is designed to be part lecture, part discussion/workshop. Some key questions animating the course will be:
- What do monsters animate in culture?
- What can we gain from comparing the history of monsters in literature to their contemporary counterparts in comics and animation today?
- How does sequential art and animation inform or change our interpretation of monsters?
- How has technology effected the representations of gender and monstrosity?
- In what way do constructions of gender influence ideas of monstrosity in modern society?
- Why do cultures continuously re-animate monsters throughout time?
- How has the modern conception of the cyborg as a collection of “borrowed body parts of fear” animated our thinking about the monster’s purpose in society today?
- What can monsters teach us about ourselves?
The Purpose of the Blog:
To recap from the syllabus, you will be required to post at least 10 times to this blog during the semester.
At least 3 of these posts should be in the form of a response to an assigned reading or class discussion (approximately 150-300 words). These responses should engage critically with the course reading for that day and should demonstrate both a grasp of the material and your own considered response to the same. Simply saying you liked or didn’t like something or providing a straight summary of the readings is not sufficient; you should demonstrate careful, analytical thinking, engaging the readings but also moving beyond them. “Moving beyond them” means thinking of ways to apply the arguments to other topics, even if those topics are outside the scope of the course. Along these lines, feel free to draw on class screenings or materials outside of the course as well, integrating them into your discussions and analyses, but these three posts need to engage the readings at some level. These 3 responses should be posted by 10 p.m. on the evening before class.
Your other 7 posts can take the form of comments on other posts (as long as they’re thoughtful and it’s not oversimplified comments like, “You rock!” or “You suck!”), random musings, links to interesting sites or news items, etc. Important Note: One of these posts may come from the handout you’ll make for the Literary Critique Presentation.
Ideally, this blog will become a communal space for the class, one used to address and ponder course themes and to point your peers to interesting materials. You are, of course, expected to read it regularly and are encouraged to post more frequently if the spirit moves you.
About Commenting
I wanted to quickly say a word about the comments on the blog. While most of the comments that have been posted are useful–meaning they’re comments that expand and continue a dialog with developed ideas–I just want to make sure I define the distinction between useful comments and “That’s cool,” kind of comments.
It is possible to have a surface-level comment such as, “That’s cool,” without it being relegated to those two words. A whole sentence response that acknowledges or agrees or disagrees with a post–without stating why, hence, without developing your idea–is not the kind of comment that will count towards the required total for participation at the end of the semester. It’s not an inherently useful comment that continues the conversation in a real way. If you agree with a post, say why. If you disagree, say why. Even if it’s just a sentence, at least your response will be dynamic, perhaps prompting further conversation, as opposed to static comments that don’t really continue the discussion in any real way.
I just want to make sure that, as long as you (the student) aren’t counting the one-liner comments towards the 7 comment(ish) responses you need to have before the end of the semester, then that’s fine. Because I realize, as with my own comments, not every post is going to warrant the same kind of response.
But if you do want your comments to count in the future, you should know to develop your ideas. If you you say agree with a post–take a moment to pick an example from the blog that resonanted with you, and explain why. This goes for posts you don’t agree with as well.
