Monthly Archives: September 2015

Two Tracks (HUM220/ HUM303)

If Skip James represents the weird, dark Root of country blues, a sound that would migrate north and west from the Jim Crow South, then Rockwell stands in for the shallow repetition-compulsion of Big 80s Pop. Both, I think, have a goth inflection. “Somebody’s Watching Me” seems obvious, even hamfisted, given its creepshow organ music and its accompanying video, but “Devil Got My Woman” is truly haunted. Listening to it– and this is something that the film Ghost World gets right– conjures up the profound pleasure to be experienced in feeling sad.

In the Doghouse (HUM415)

This is an interesting article. Not only does it address a critical situation in our immediate environment– it also offers us an opening for thinking about about one of the key features of contemporary capitalist culture: the IT-inspired conviction that social problems can be fixed via innovation.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/sep/08/tech-entrepreneurs-san-francisco-homeless-plan-flounders-amid-acrimony

First Essay (HUM303)

Here is the prompt for your first paper. Check the course information page for the length requirement and due date, and consult the Paper Guidelines page above for other pertinent information such as formatting.

Several of the secondary readings to date offer something like a theory of the gothic. Drawing insight from the articles by Eagleton, Armstrong, and Aiken discuss the ways that The Castle of Otranto assembles (what will become) gothic conventions to produce a fictive atmosphere. What formal elements (character, action, imagery, etc.) does Walpole use to create the novel’s tone? How do those elements and their effects relate to the novel’s social context? What, for that matter, is the socio-historical context of The Castle of Otranto? What is Walpole’s version of gothic and how does it work? Nick Groom’s introduction could be useful in thinking through answers to these questions.

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First Essay (HUM415)

Here is the prompt for your first paper. Check the course information page for the length requirement and due date, and consult the Paper Guidelines page above for other pertinent information such as formatting.

What does Shakespeare and Middleton’s Timon of Athens have to tell us about exchange and social relations? Consider the different forms and principles of exchange as they are sketched out in Graeber’s essay. Carefully reference specific elements of the play (ex. character, action, imagery) in detail in assembling evidence for your claims.

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