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Conceptual
Overview
The
Gothic turn:In
the era of the French revolution audiences began to enjoy reading
in order to feel terror. At the center of this development is
what we call the "gothic"—a spectacularly popular form of fiction
which took Protestant readers back into dangerous European cultural
spaces of crypts, bodies, magic and danger. Since the 18th century
it has emerged as one of the most influential forms of modern
entertainment. Of particular interest to us are those gothic monsters
that anticipate the modern cyborg.
The
Cyborg turn:
Cyborg is an abreviation for "cybernetic organism",
that is, a living creature that processes information. The term
was first coined in the 1950s in the wake of the development of
cybernetics, an interdisciplinary approach to the study of information.
But it came into wide use through popular films like Alien,
Terminator and Blade Runner. It became an important
coordinate of cultural theory with the publication of Donna Haraway's
"A Cyborg Manifesto."
By splicing together the study of the modern cyborg with the gothic
monster, Cyborg
Genealogies: the Gothic will study a selective group of novels
and films and theoretical texts so as to trace the modern cyborg
back to the gothic monster. This course will will probe the meaning
of the intersection between the gothic genre and the onset of
technologies that make the cyborg thinkable. Here
are some of the questions we will explore:
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Why
does the encounter with a mechanical humanoid forms so often
release desires that are deep, dark and unnamable?
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How
does the scientific inquiry into the secrets of nature throw
into the question the stability of culture? Why do the hybrids
of nature and culture called cyborgs so often challenge our
moral sense of what it means to be human? Do these nonhumans
have legitimate moral claims upon the humans who invented them?
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Powerful
new technologies of simulation, image manipulation, and virtual
reality have strong affinities with Black magic--once the exclusive
province of the Devil. What does this connection suggest, for
example, about the pleasures and dangers of falling in love
with a cyborg?
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Does
getting jacked into a powerful information network bring control
or enslavement, a new erotics of connection or a trip toward
death?
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Finally,
why does the shiny new so often come to us in a gloomy gothic
form?
This course is part of
the UCSB's English Department's new curricular project titled Transcriptions:
Literary History and the Culture of Information. Besides the
cultural and literary inquiry outlined above, there is a practical
goal to this course: to introduce humanities students to skills
and technologies that are increasingly necessary in many future
careers. Besides traditional individual writing assignments (one
short paper, one longer paper), the course requires a team
online project.
For an overview of the
Transcriptions project, see Rationale.
Class Location
and Time:
South Hall 2635, Mon., Wed, 1:30-2:45
Instructor's Office
Hours:
South Hall 2507, Mon, 5-6pm.
Technology Help:
South Hall 2509, Fri., 2-3 (technology support provided by Robert
Hamm, Research Assistant for the Transcriptions project: rbh1@umail.ucsb.edu)
Required Texts
(see Materials and Schedule):
Books are available from the UCSB Bookstore; links
in this section are to descriptions on the Amazon.com site. (Policy
statement on links to commercial sites.)
- Matthew Lewis, The
Monk (Oxford World's Classics), Howard Anderson (editor)
(Oxford UP, 1998)
- Mary Wollstonecraft
Shelley, Frankenstein,
Or, the Modern Prometheus : The 1818 Text (Oxford World's
Classics), Marilyn Butler (Editor) (Blackwell, 1996)
- Bram Stoker, Dracula
(1897), (November 1992)
- Class
Reader: Available at the Alternative Copy Shop, Isla Vista
- Various
online readings
Assignments (Details):
- Participation in team
web project
- Occasional Quizzes
on reading assignments
- Short essay upon a
topic within the team web project; then posted to the team site
- Final essay
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