AML
4242,
Section 6805
Studies
in
Twentieth-Century American Literature and Culture:
The Literature
and Film of
September 11
Professor
Phillip Wegner
Tuesday
8-9 (3-4:55 p.m.); Thursday 9 (4:05-4:55
p.m.)
Turlington
2336
Office Hours: Wednesday, 10:30
a.m.-12:30 p.m., Thursday, 2-3 p.m.;
and by appointment
Phone:
392-6650. ex. 261 (office); 392-0777 (dept.)
http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/pwegner/home.htm
This
course will
explore some of the attempts in recent literature and film to come to
grips
with the cataclysmic events of September 11, 2001 and its aftermath. Our discussion will begin with an
examination of a number of works released in the years leading up to
what many
now view as this major turning point in both U.S. and world history. These works both attempt to make sense
of the post-Cold War landscape of the 1990s, and seem to foreshadow in
an
uncanny fashion the events of 9/11.
They will also raise significant questions about how we think
about the
nature of historical change itself.
We will then turn our attention to readings and viewings that
try to map
the new social, political, and cultural landscape that seemed so
quickly to set
into place.
Texts
Don
DeLillo, Underworld
Salman
Rushdie, Fury:
A Novel
William
Gibson, Pattern
Recognition
Art
Spiegelman, In
The Shadow of No Towers
Susan
Willis, Portents of the Real
Jonathan
Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
These
texts are all
available at Goerings Book Store Campus Location (1717 NW 1st Avenue,
next door
to Bageland; 377-3703). As we will
be doing a good deal of close reading during the course of the
semester, I ask
that you get copies with the same pagination as these editions. There will also be a number of required
film viewings. Finally, some
additional readings, primarily short essays, may be made available
during the
course of the semester.
Requirements,
Grading, and Related Matters
1) First, a brief but important general
reminder: This is not an
introductory level literature course, and all enrolled students should
have
previously completed some literature courses on the lower- and/or,
preferably, the upper-division
levels. There will be a good deal
of reading, and you may find some of it difficult.
You will be expected to keep up with all the readings and
screenings, and you will be asked to demonstrate, in both your oral and
written
contributions to the class, proficiency in the kinds of critical and
analytical
skills expected of advanced literary studies majors.
These minimally would entail some experience in reading
literary fictions critically, an ability to ascertain the thematic and
formal
textures of the work, a familiarity with some of the technical devices
deployed
by writers (point-of-view, metaphor, irony, and so forth), some broad
sense of
modern literary history, and a willingness to think about the intimate
connections
between these works and the historical contexts in which they unfold. If you have any questions about whether
this course is right for you, or want suggestions on how you might
brush up on
some of the basics, please come and speak with me soon.
2) At one point in the film Fight Club, which we will be viewing later
this semester,
the narrator notes that he has becomes addicted to support groups
because "when
people think you're dying they really listen to you instead of
just waiting for
their turn to talk." Our primary
endeavor in this course is to help you become, as a reader of
literature and
film, this kind of listener. This
means that we will attempt to grasp as fully as possible through our
shared
discussions precisely what kind of vision is offered by both the
content and
form of these texts. What we are
not going to do is spend time in either our class discussions or our
written
work debating the merits of the vision presented, declaring our
agreement or disagreement,
expressing how it affected us, or constructing alternative views. A real education involves encounters
with ideas and points of view that may not be your own and that may
cause some
discomfort. Only through such
encounters can we both better understand ourselves and grow.
3) Three formal papers of varying
the length, the first and shortest being 6-8 pages, all double-spaced,
with
one-inch margins, a reasonable 12-point or smaller font, and a
consistent
bibliographic format. A successful
paper will fulfill all of the previous requirements, and demonstrate at
once
your grasp of and engagement with the concrete specifics of the reading
material, their relationship to the various historical and cultural
issues we
discuss in class, and our classroom discussions more generally. Approximately two weeks before each
paper is due, I will provide you with a series of questions that will
help
focus your discussion, and you will be required to develop each of your
papers
in response to them.
I
may from time to time also make available to you additional related
readings
that address the larger issues we will be discussing in class, or
provide other
background information. You are
welcome to use these in developing your paper discussion.
However, you must provide a
bibliography of any additional readings and come and talk to me in
advance
about the use of any other materials in completing your papers (and
please
review the note on academic honesty found below).
Papers
are due on the dates noted; late papers will receive lowered grades
unless
other arrangements have been made in advance with me.
4) Readings and screenings should be
completed before the first class meeting in which they are to
be
discussed. The length and
difficulty of each reading varies, and to keep on pace you must be
reading continuously
throughout the semester: in short, this means as the semester
progresses you
will be reading well ahead of our discussions.
Moreover,
I do expect lively participation on everyone's part in the discussion
of these
works. Depending on your activities
in class, occasional short quizzes or other brief in class writing
assignments
may become necessary.
5) I will also ask each of you to turn in
every week a reading log, tracking your progress in the course readings. I will also be asking you from time to
time to respond to specific questions or to do short research exercises. Your first job in your reading logs
will be to keep track of the movement of the narrative as it unfolds
through
each chapter. What is the plot in
each of the chapters? What happens
and to whom? Who are the
characters, what are they doing, and how are they presented to us? Your second task will be to briefly
comment upon the work's particular representations, especially
in terms of the
issues at the center of our discussion.
I don't want you to evaluate the work ("this is
stupid" is not an
acceptable observation), but rather to offer your thoughts on the
author's
reasons for presenting things in the way they do. Finally,
these logs are a great place for you to note down
any specific questions you have about the work, difficult places, or
passages
or scenes that might be worthy and relevant for further discussion in
class. These logs will prove
invaluable to me in tracking the issues of interest to you in the
readings, and
for you as reminders of what you have read as you get ahead of the
class
discussion.
6) As everything above should suggest,
attendance and participation in class discussion are an indispensable
part of
the work we are going to do here.
To this end, you will sign a class attendance roster circulated
at the
beginning of each meeting. You
will be allowed three unexcused absences, totaling no more than four
class
hours, throughout the semester.
Any additional non-emergency, non-medical absence not cleared in
advance by me will result in a lowering of the final course grade. To state the matter simply and
directly, if you miss an excessive number of classes, you will have
been
considered not to have completed the requirements of the
course, and
hence will not receive a passing grade. Moreover,
regular late arrivals (or early departures) will
be counted as absences.
7) No final or midterm
examinations.
8) Grades will be based on the
conscientious completion of all of the above requirements. Failure to fulfill any of the above
requirements--including attendance or reading logs--will
impact directly on your
final grade. If you have any
concerns or questions about your work for this class, please come and
speak with
me.
9) Finally, communication is crucial to
everything we are going to do in the next four months.
Thus, if you are unsure about any of
the course requirements, or run into any kind of difficulty, academic
or
otherwise, as the semester progresses, please come and speak with me as
soon as
you can. I will try to be as
accommodating as possible, but I cannot help you if you do not let me
know what
is going on. Also if you have any
general questions, or just feel like continuing the discussion begun in
class,
I encourage you to drop by during my scheduled office hours, or to make
an
appointment to see me.
A
Brief Note on Academic Honesty
Plagiarism
in any
form--including but not limited to directly quoting,
paraphrasing, or
summarizing from external sources without proper citations, as well as
presenting
as your own work papers written by someone else (for example a paper
written by
a friend; a purchased or retyped paper; or one taken from a file,
electronic or
otherwise)--is a direct violation of the university Academic
Honesty Code. You are required to review
this code
and the Academic Honesty Guidelines, especially the discussion of
plagiarism,
found in the Undergraduate Catalogue.
Plagiarism or any other form of academic dishonesty will result
in an
automatic failure of the assignment, a mandatory rewriting of the
assignment,
and a lowering by two letter grades of your final course grade
(a B
would become a D); a second attempt will result in an automatic failure
of the
course and a filing of a report in your academic file.
If you have any questions, or even the slightest doubt, about what constitutes
plagiarism or
academic dishonesty, I beseech you to come and speak with me before
you turn in the
paper.
Tentative
Schedule
PART
I:
Foreshadowings
August 30-September 15
The
Cold War, Beginnings
and...endings(?)
Don
DeLillo, Underworld (1997)
Underworld Paper due September 20
September
20-September 29
Allegory,
Wish, and Popular Film
Independence
Day,
d. Roland Emmerich (1996)
Fight
Club,
d. David Fincher (1999)
October
4-October
13
The
Belle Époque
Salman
Rushdie, Fury
(2001)
PART II: Aftermath
October
18-November10
Mapping
the New
World Order
Terminator
3,
d. Jonathan Mostow (2003)
Phone
Booth,
d. Joel Schumacher (2003)
William
Gibson, Pattern Recognition
(2003)
No Class October 27
Film and Allegory Paper due
November
1
November 15-December 6
Encounters with the Sublime
Art
Spiegelman, In
the Shadow of No Towers (2004)
Susan
Willis, Portents of the Real
(2005)
Jonathan
Safran Foer, Extremely
Loud & Incredibly Close
(2005)
No
class November
24 (Thanksgiving)