ENG494/598; FLA494/598; GER 494/598; HUM 494/598: Puzzling through the Text. Experimental Narrative
Fall 2004, Daniel Gilfillan

COURSE SYLLABUS

****Course reading packets are available for purchase at Uni-Print and Design, 710 S. Forest Avenue, (480) 968-0799****

****For the Digital Text Archive website, (http://www.public.asu.edu/~dgilfill/texts/index.shtml), the username is digit and the password is texts

Week 1: Introduction(s). Course Overview. Reading and Narrative.
08/26

Readings Due:

  1. Sven Birkerts. “Paging the Self. Privacies of Reading.” (Web)
  2. Peter Brooks. “Reading for the Plot” (Web)

Film:

  1. Blow-Up. (1966), Michelangelo Antonioni, dir., 111 min., Clips

Blackboard Assignment:

  1. Please visit the Blackboard Coursesite to view and complete this week’s assignment (http://myasucourses.asu.edu).
Week 2: Jorge Luis Borges. Notions of Textual Infinity.
09/02

Readings Due:

  1. Borges. “The Garden of Forking Paths.” pp. 89-101.
  2. Borges. “Library of Babel.” pp. 79-88.
  3. Borges. “The Book of Sand” (Course Packet)
  4. Gilles Deleuze/Felix Guattari. “Introduction: Rhizome.” (Course Packet)

Browse:

  1. Vaios Papanagnou. “The Garden of Forking Paths by Jorge Luis Borges.” (http://www.geocities.com/papanagnou/)

Blackboard Assignment:

  1. Please visit the Blackboard Coursesite to view and complete this week’s assignment (http://myasucourses.asu.edu).
Week 3: Borges (cont'd.)
09/09

Readings Due:

  1. Borges. “Funes, the Memorius.” pp. 107-116.
  2. Stuart Moulthrop. “Reading from the Map: Metonymy and Metaphor in the Fiction of ‘Forking Paths’.” (Course Packet)
  3. Pierre Macherey. “Borges and the Fictive Narrative.” (Course Packet)

Blackboard Assignment:

  1. Please visit the Blackboard Coursesite to view and complete this week’s assignment (http://myasucourses.asu.edu).
Week 4: Italo Calvino. Discarding the Author?
09/16

Readings Due:

  1. Calvino. If on a winter’s night a traveler. pp. 3-130.
  2. Roland Barthes. “The Death of the Author.” Image-Music-Text, 142-149. Also available on Web.

Blackboard Assignment:

  1. Please visit the Blackboard Coursesite to view and complete this week’s assignment (http://myasucourses.asu.edu).
Week 5: Calvino. (cont'd.)
09/23

Readings Due:

  1. Calvino. If on a winter’s night a traveler. pp. 131-260.
  2. Michel Foucault. “What is an Author?” (Web)
  3. Walter Benjamin. “The Author as Producer.” (Web)

Blackboard Assignment:

  1. Please visit the Blackboard Coursesite to view and complete this week’s assignment (http://myasucourses.asu.edu).
Week 6: Alain Robbe-Grillet. Memory and Forgetting.
09/30

Readings Due:

  1. Robbe-Grillet. Djinn. pp. 11-128.
  2. Robbe-Grillet. “A Future for the Novel.” (Course Packet)

Film:

  1. Memento. (2000), Christopher Nolan, dir., 113 min.

Blackboard Assignment:

  1. Please visit the Blackboard Coursesite to view and complete this week’s assignment (http://myasucourses.asu.edu).
Week 7: Robbe-Grillet. (cont'd.)
10/07

Readings Due:

  1. Vannevar Bush. “As We May Think.” (Web)
  2. Robbe-Grillet. “New Novel, New Man.” (Course Packet)

Film:

  1. Hiroshima mon amour (1959), Alain Resnais, dir., 91 min.

Blackboard Assignment:

  1. Please visit the Blackboard Coursesite to view and complete this week’s assignment (http://myasucourses.asu.edu).
Week 8: Patrick Süskind. Senses and Seriality
10/14

Readings Due:

  1. Süskind. Perfume. Story of a Murderer. pp. 3-133.
    German Version: pp. 5-170.
  2. Hans Rindisbacher. “In Search of the Ultimate Scents.” (Course Packet)

Blackboard Assignment:

  1. Please visit the Blackboard Coursesite to view and complete this week’s assignment (http://myasucourses.asu.edu).
Week 9: Süskind. (cont'd.)
10/21

Readings Due:

  1. Süskind. Perfume. pp. 133-255.
    German version: pp. 170-320.
  2. Richard Dyer. “Lethal Repetition.” (Course Packet)

Blackboard Assignment:

  1. Please visit the Blackboard Coursesite to view and complete this week’s assignment (http://myasucourses.asu.edu).
UNDERGRADUATES PICK UP TAKE-HOME MIDTERM EXAMINATION, DUE 10/28
Week 10: Hypertext. Exploding the Print Narrative.
10/28

Readings Due:

  1. Michael Joyce. afternoon. Keep a “reading map” to your walk-through of the CD.
  2. J. Yellowlees Douglas. “Just Tell Me When to Stop: Hypertext and the Displacement of Closure.” (Course Packet).
  3. George P. Landow. “Hypertext and Critical Theory.” (Course Packet)
  4. Robert Coover. “The End of Books.” (Web)

Blackboard Assignment:

  1. Please visit the Blackboard Coursesite to view and complete this week’s assignment (http://myasucourses.asu.edu).

UNDERGRADUATES TURN IN TAKE-HOME MIDTERM EXAMINATION AT BEGINNING OF CLASS.
GRADUATE STUDENTS TURN IN CRITICAL BOOK/ARTICLE REVIEW
Week 11: Hypertext. (cont'd.)
11/04

Readings Due:

  1. Shelley Jackson. Patchwork Girl
  2. Shelley Jackson. “Stitch Bitch: the patchwork girl.” (Web)
  3. Alyda Faber. “Saint Orlan: Ritual as Violent Spectacle and Cultural Criticism.” (Course Packet)

Film: Synthetic Pleasures. (1995) Iara Lee, dir., 83 min. Clips

Blackboard Assignment:

  1. Please visit the Blackboard Coursesite to view and complete this week’s assignment (http://myasucourses.asu.edu).
SEMINAR PROJECT TOPIC PROPOSALS DUE (TYPEWRITTEN)
Week 12: Veteran's Day (No Class)
11/11

No Class

Week 13: Cyberspace and Identity
11/18

Readings Due:

  1. Michael Benedikt. “Cyberspace: First Steps” (Course Packet)
  2. Sherry Turkle. “Introduction: Identity in the Age of the Internet.” (Course Packet)
  3. Julian Dibble. “A Rape in Cyberspace, or How an Evil Clown, a Haitian Trickster Spirit, Two Wizards, and a Cast of Dozens Turned a Database into a Society.” (Web)

Film: Strange Days. (1999). Kathyrn Bigelow, dir., 145 min., Clips.

Blackboard Assignment:

  1. Please visit the Blackboard Coursesite to view and complete this week’s assignment (http://myasucourses.asu.edu).
Week 14: Thanksgiving (No Class)
11/25 No Class
Week 15: Cyberculture in Film
12/02

Readings Due:

  1. Claudia Mesch. “Racing Berlin: The Games of Run Lola Run.” (Course Packet)

Film:

  1. Lola rennt (Run Lola Run), (1998). Tom Tykwer, dir., 80 min.
  2. eXistenZ (1999). David Cronenberg, dir., 97 min.

Blackboard Assignment:

  1. Please visit the Blackboard Coursesite to view and complete this week’s assignment (http://myasucourses.asu.edu).

Course Evaluations, Semester Wrap-Up

Week 16: Finals Week
12/09

Seminar Project DUE by 5 pm in my mailbox in Languages and Literatures main office (LL 440).