Week 1 – Tuesday, August 30
The Question of Postmodernism in music, art, architecture, literature, and film
Week 2 – Tuesday, September 6
The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
“Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logical of Late Capitalism” by Fredric Jameson in the Course Reader (CR)
Week 3 – Tuesday, September 13
The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula Le Guin
Chapter 3 of The Condition of Postmodernity by David Harvey, pages 39-65 (CR)
Week 4 – Tuesday, September 20
The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead
"Postmodern Blackness" by bell hooks (from Postmodern Culture)
Week 5 – Tuesday, September 27
Memento (Dir. Christopher Nolan)
“Individual Spaces and Times in Social Life” in The Condition of Postmodernity by David Harvey, pages 218-225, and also excerpts from Chapter 22: “Fordist Modernism Versus Flexible Postmodernism,” pages 338-342 (CR)
Week 6 – Tuesday, October 4
The Female Man by Joanna Russ
“A Cyborg Manifesto” by Donna Haraway (CR)
Week 7 – Tuesday, October 11
No Class: Monday-Tuesday Switch Day
Begin reading Song of Solomon and work on mid-semester essay
Week 8 – Tuesday, October 18
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
* Mid-semester essay due *
Week 9 – Tuesday, October 25
Film Screening In-Class
"The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” by Walter Benjamin (CR)
Week 10 – Tuesday, November 1
Dream Jungle by Jessica Hagedorn
“Is the Post- in Postmodernism the Post- in Postcolonial?” by Kwame Anthony Appiah
Week 11 – Tuesday, November 8
Hegirascope (1997) and Pax (2003) by Stuart Moulthrop
“Simulacra and Simulations” by Jean Baudrillard (CR)
Machinima
Database culture (Mark Poster on e-reserve, Claritas’s You Are Where You Live)
Week 12 – Tuesday, November 15
White Noise by Don DeLillo
Week 13 – Tuesday, November 22
Donnie Darko (Dir. Richard Kelly)
Week 14 – Tuesday, November 29
Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
Fight Club (Dir. David Fincher)
“Private Satisfactions and Public Disorders: Fight Club, Patriarchy, and the Politics of Masculine Violence” by Henry Giroux, (Course Reader)
Week 15 – Tuesday, December 6
In the Shadow of No Towers by Art Spiegelman
* Final Paper due Tuesday, December 13 *