Assignments

Seminar Participation: Since this is a graduate seminar, your comments, questions, and ideas will drive the class. You must come fully prepared to discuss the weekly readings. Thoughtful, informed, and active participation will count 30% towards your final grade. Students will be occasionally assigned specific additional research, usually, to provide artistic examples for the next week's discussion.

Reading Logs:Each student is asked to keep concise, meaningful, well organized reading and research notes (different formats will be discussed in class) on the assigned readings. Additionally students are asked to keep notes on a series of readings chosen individually (in consultation with faculty/811 instructor) which pertain to their area of research and thesis project. These will not be discussed in class, but these notes are a way to bring individual research into the framework of the course. The logs are due on the second to final class (Nov. 25). The logs will count for 20% of the final grade.

Project/Presentation Midway through the course students will give a 20 min presentation on contemporary context for their work and hand in a concise “history” of their discipline. The first step is to identify one's "discipline". If your work uses computer generated sounds, for instance, you may decide that the history of the microprocessor is part of your disciplinary historical trajectory. Or if your work is about the "everyday" your history might be of the recognition and articulation of states of time and attention as well a history of artist's deployment of the "everyday" that you want to trace. This assignment calls for a creative response. The assignment will be further discussed in class. Together these will count 15% toward your final grade.

Essay: Each student will research and write an approx. 3500 word essay on a topic of their choice relevant to both the readings and their individual practice. This is an opportunity to further develop ideas which have developed in response to the readings and to work toward your thesis. If you are writing about readings we havent all done please take into account the "generalist" nature of your audience and remember to define your terms and articulate your references thoroughly. There is a preliminary deadline for the outline/bibliography and an exchange of first drafts. Both a hard copy and digital copy are required. I will make my comments in the body of the text on the digital copy. Students are encouraged to pass on a copy of their essay to their senior supervisor. The essay project will count 35% towards your final grade.

Note: If you plan to make audio/visual presentations during class please make sure to book the appropriate equipment through L.I.D.C. at Harbour Center. You can email your requests (including date, room number, course number, etc) to Yogesh at yogesh@sfu.ca, please cc me.

Texts:

Courseware package will be discussed in class

Recommended text: Key Concepts in Cultural Theory. Ed. Andrew Edgar, Peter Sedgwick, Routledge

We won't be using this text this semester but I find it a good collection. Clive Cazeaux: The Continental Aesthetics Reader