It’s rather easy to get distracted these days, and we have the keywords to prove it: “on demand,” “hyperattention” and “multitasking,” to name but a few. Of course, these keywords aren’t empty. They are associated with practices—embodied practices, cultural practices, technological practices. That’s quite a complex mix, the analysis of which demands an array of texts and contexts. In this course, we will attempt such an analysis by, first, historically locating Cultural Studies and learning how it emerged as a critical framework. We will then follow a series of trajectories, unpacking how technology is culturally embedded and unfolding its effects on sense experience. These trajectories will explore conversations about animation and what is implied by “being animated,” in tandem with inquiries into technology-enhanced perception, human-technology relations, the senses and consumer culture, and digitizing race, gender and sexuality. Along the way, we’ll also consider how Cultural Studies, which tends to situate and make sense of bodies as socially or discursively constructed, might address some more transitional aspects of embodiment (including sensation, movement and affect) that are difficult to pin down. But for now, one thing is certain: we’ll entertain—and even get distracted by—matters in excess of thought.

Student Writing: A series of short blogging assignments on the class blog will instruct students in how to read through a Cultural Studies lens and stress the critical value of that lens. Over the duration of the quarter, students will translate their blog entries and in-class participation into a final research paper (6-8 pages). If interested, students will be encouraged to produce digital “webtext” versions of their final papers.

Writing credit (a “W”) is an option for this course, in which case the above writing requirements will be adjusted.

And a course reader with readings related to comics, cybernetics, artificial intelligence, cultural studies methodologies, and digitizing race, gender, and sexuality

Texts:

• • Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus. Norton Critical Edition. [0393964582]
• • Pynchon, Thomas. The Crying of Lot 49. 1966. [006091307X]
• • Moore, Alan, Steve Bissette, and John Totleben. Swamp Thing, Vol. 1: Saga of the Swamp Thing, 1984. [0930289226]
• • Sterling, Bruce and Lorraine Wild. Shaping Things. 2005. [0262693267]
• • Planet Earth. BBC television series, 2006.
• • A.L.I.C.E. chatterbot, 1995. [web-bot]
• • McLuhan, Marshall. The Medium Is the Massage. 1967. [audio book]
• • Jackson, Shelley. Patchwork Girl. electronic literature, 1995. [1884511236]