Spring 2024 - ENGL 415W D100
Seminar in Media, Culture and Performance (4)
Class Number: 4814
Delivery Method: In Person
Overview
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Course Times + Location:
Jan 8 – Apr 12, 2024: Tue, Thu, 2:30–4:20 p.m.
Burnaby
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Instructor:
Michael Everton
meverton@sfu.ca
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Prerequisites:
45 units or two 300-division English courses.
Description
CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:
Advanced seminar in the relation of literature and media (manuscript, print, visual, aural, electronic, and/or oral) within their cultural and/or performative contexts. This course may be repeated for credit if a different topic is taught. Writing.
COURSE DETAILS:
Writing on Reading
This is a course about reading and readers. It’s about BookTok, BookTube, Bookstagram, and what’s been called the “mass personal” of sharing our reading online, but it's also about why reading remains solitary, private. It’s about the history, the philosophy, and even the (neuro)science of reading. It’s about academic theories of reading—“surface reading,” “distant reading,” “symptomatic reading,” “close reading”—and it’s about why we read differently when we’re not reading for classes like this. It’s about what being “a reader” signals—about why we arrange our bookshelves just so, and why bookstores spend so much time arranging theirs a certain way, too. Above all, this class is about how reading is represented in literature, and we’ll spend the bulk of our time reading novels that ask what reading means, how it happens, and why it matters.
Grading
REQUIREMENTS:
Assignments (tentative)
Materials
MATERIALS + SUPPLIES:
Texts (tentative)
Henry James, The Turn of the Screw and Other Ghost Stories (Penguin, 2018)
Please obtain the texts on your own in any format you like, though I am requiring you to have the print edition of House of Leaves for reasons you’ll understand when you see it. As for editions, I’ve noted above which editions I’ll be using.
We may also do an optional book club-style reading over the course of the semester with R. F. Kuang's new novel Babel, depending on interest.
REQUIRED READING NOTES:
Your personalized Course Material list, including digital and physical textbooks, are available through the SFU Bookstore website by simply entering your Computing ID at: shop.sfu.ca/course-materials/my-personalized-course-materials.
Department Undergraduate Notes:
IMPORTANT NOTE Re 300 and 400 level courses: 75% of spaces in 300 level English courses, and 100% of spaces in 400 level English courses, are reserved for declared English Major, Minor, Extended Minor, Joint Major, and Honours students only, until open enrollment begins.
For all On-Campus Courses, please note the following:
- To receive credit for the course, students must complete all requirements.
- Tutorials/Seminars WILL be held the first week of classes.
- When choosing your schedule, remember to check "Show lab/tutorial sections" to see all Lecture/Seminar/Tutorial times required.
Registrar Notes:
ACADEMIC INTEGRITY: YOUR WORK, YOUR SUCCESS
SFU’s Academic Integrity website http://www.sfu.ca/students/academicintegrity.html is filled with information on what is meant by academic dishonesty, where you can find resources to help with your studies and the consequences of cheating. Check out the site for more information and videos that help explain the issues in plain English.
Each student is responsible for his or her conduct as it affects the university community. Academic dishonesty, in whatever form, is ultimately destructive of the values of the university. Furthermore, it is unfair and discouraging to the majority of students who pursue their studies honestly. Scholarly integrity is required of all members of the university. http://www.sfu.ca/policies/gazette/student/s10-01.html