Course Times: Tuesdays & Thursdays, 10:55 AM-12:10 PM, in 212 EPB
Office Hours: Tuesdays & Thursdays, 1:00-2:15 PM, and by app't, in 455 EPB
Phone: 335-0465 (office); 337-3364 (home); robert-latham@uiowa.edu (e-mail)
Required Texts (all at Prairie Lights Bookstore):
Also Required (on library reserve):
Recommended (at Prairie Lights):
Note: There will be four film screenings over the course of the semester. Students are encouraged to attend, but copies of the films will also be available in the library's Media Center for those with conflicts. All screenings are in EPB 107; the dates and times are as follows:
Thurs. 9/25, 8:00PM: VIDEODROME (assigned for Tues. 9/30)
Thurs. 10/9, 5:30 PM: SPEAKING PARTS (assigned for Thurs. 10/16)
Thurs. 11/6, 7:30 PM: BLADE RUNNER (assigned for Tues. 11/11)
Thurs. 11/13, 7:30 PM: TETSUO: THE IRON MAN (assigned for Tues. 11/18)
Description: This seminar is designed to introduce students, in an interdisciplinary and multimedia fashion, to issues related to the contemporary (postwar/post-modern) intersection of technology and culture. The readings and viewings are organized into three more or less chronologically distinct sections, each centered by a crucial theoretical construction. The first section, dating roughly 1945 to the early '60s, is the period of cybernetics, the emerging discipline devoted to the study of complex systems founded by Norbert Wiener. The second section, from the early 1960s to the late '70s, is the era of simulation, a concept referring to the growing authority of mass media (especially television) prominently deployed in the work of Jean Baudrillard. The third section, from the early 1980s to the present (and beyond), is the moment of cyberpunk, a term encoding a complex set of ideas and attitudes about high technology (especially computers) associated with the science fiction writings of William Gibson (and others). These three concepts--cybernetics, simulation, cyberpunk--are connected but meaningfully distinct, and the various assigned texts within each section both contribute to their definition and illustrate their various implications. Among the central of these implications are: the collapse of secure distinctions between humans and machines, the increasing technologization of the personal and social environment, the reorientation of embodied experience in relation to proliferating technological interfaces, and the reinvention of aesthetic, political, sexual, and other practices in light of the foregoing. Basically, our concern throughout will be to see what happens to the personal and social worlds--and to the links between them--as technological systems come more and more to establish their formal boundaries and horizons of possibility.
Assignments: This class will be held seminar-style, meaning continuous and intense student input will be essential to its success. Obviously, therefore, solid preparation and regular attendance are absolutely crucial: you must consistently do the assigned reading/viewing and come to class ready to discuss it.
To insure strong engagement with the material, you will all be responsible for opening our discussions by means of in-class presentations. These presenta-tions will involve teams of two students, and all of you are required to participate in three presentations over the course of the semester. The purpose of the presentations is to initiate and orient discussion of the texts we have read in common, and thus presenters should focus their remarks on these texts and not ramble into digressions, introduce unfamiliar material, or otherwise wander off-topic. The particular focus can be expository (explaining some issue or implication in the texts), critical (arraigning the texts on the basis of factual or ideological problems), and/or quizzical (formulating questions to be addressed in our collective response to the texts). The two students participating in each presentation must consult with one another in advance, so that their work can be profitably divided up and their individual remarks coherently dovetailed. Each co-operative presentation must take no longer than 12 minutes (I will forcibly abridge them, if necessary), but their particular structure is up to the presenters: you can speak serially, or engage in critical dialogue, or whatever. Generally speaking, your best bet is to work from a brief outline, rather than reading from a prepared text or trying to wing it. You are welcome to use A/V or computer materials in your presentations, though I will need to know at least one week in advance so I can arrange to have the equipment on hand. Above all, please try and be interesting.
The required writing is as follows: three short (5 page) papers, an annotated bibliography, and a final research paper (roughly 12-15 pages). The three short papers, corresponding to the three broad divisions within the syllabus, must address some issue relating to the themes of cybernetics, simulation, and cyber-punk, respectively. The form of this engagement, however, is open: you can offer a critical reading of an assigned text, or synthetically address several of the texts, or extrapolate a concept deriving from these texts to apply to other material(s) not on the syllabus. These papers may be developed from ideas and issues generated by your in-class presentations. Feel free, in the papers, to be creative and exploratory. One of these papers can--and ideally should--form the seed for your final research project.
By the end of Week 7, you must all have settled upon a topic for this project, in consultation with me, and should soon thereafter begin to pursue individual research towards it. In Week 12, an annotated bibliography of likely sources (at least eight) for your research paper is due; the annotations need not be exhaustive (indeed, by this point you will probably not have read all the individual items in their entirety), but they should briefly indicate why you think these particular items are important to your topic and how you see them contributing to the development of a substantial argument. During Weeks 13 and 14, I will hold conferences with each student to go over your bibliographies and help you develop final strategies for planning and writing your research papers. The two weeks following Thanksgiving break will be given over entirely to discussions of your individual projects: you will each have roughly fifteen minutes to give a capsule overview of your research and basic argument and an indication of any final questions or concerns you may have regarding it, leaving time for feedback from the class.
During these weeks you should be finishing your research papers, which are due the Wednesday of exam week by 5 PM in my mailbox in EPB 310. These papers should develop, clearly and cogently, a relatively original argument relating to the general topic of the course; you may--but need not--make extensive use of the assigned texts, though if you do, your paper should still reflect significant external research. I am not concerned that your paper necessarily be an exercise in literary criticism; feel free to adopt an alternative disciplinary (or even inter-disciplinary) focus for your discussion: philosophical, sociological, art-historical, or whatever. Of course, you are also welcome to write in depth about literary and filmic texts.
Note: I am willing to accept a hypertext, CD-Rom, or other electronic-based format in lieu of the standard research paper, though students interested in this option should understand that their final product needs to contain or reflect a substantial argument. In some cases, this may require handing in supplementary matter, such as a conceptual outline or a discursive summary.
Grading: The breakdown in grading is as follows: class participation = 10%; three in-class presentations = 5% each; three short papers = 15% each; final research paper = 30%. The annotated bibliography will be ungraded.
Week 1. (August 26, 28)
Tuesday:
- Introduction
Thursday:
- David Tomas, "Feedback and Cybernetics: Reimaging the Body in the Age of the Cyborg" *
Week 2. (September 2, 4)
Tuesday:
- Norbert Wiener, THE HUMAN USE OF HUMAN BEINGS, pp. 7-104
- N. Katherine Hayles, "Designs on the Body: Norbert Wiener, Cybernetics, and the Play of Metaphor" *
Thursday:
- Wiener, pp. 105-193
- Peter Galison, "The Ontology of the Enemy: Norbert Wiener and the Cybernetic Vision" *
Week 3. (September 9, 11)
Tuesday:
- Thomas Pynchon, GRAVITY'S RAINBOW, pp. 3-177
- Steven Weisenburger, A "GRAVITY'S RAINBOW" COMPANION, pp. 1-101
Thursday:
- Pynchon, pp. 181-314
- Weisenburger, pp. 105-160
Week 4. (September 16, 18)
Tuesday:
- Pynchon, pp. 314-532
- Weisenburger, pp. 161-231
Thursday:
- Pynchon, pp. 532-663
- Weisenburger, pp. 231-280
Week 5. (September 23)
Tuesday:
- Pynchon, pp. 663-760
- Weisenburger, pp. 280-315
- David Porush, "Reading in the Servo-Mechanical Loop: The Machinery of Metaphor in Pynchon's Fictions" *
FIRST PAPER DUE
Week 5. Cont'd (September 25)
Thursday:
- Marshall McLuhan, UNDERSTANDING MEDIA--all of Part I; Part II, chapters 8, 20, 31, 33
Week 6. (September 30, October 2)
Tuesday:
- Arthur Kroker and David Cook, "Television and the Triumph of Culture" *
- VIDEODROME (film)
Thursday:
- Marshall McLuhan, "Notes on Burroughs" *
- William S. Burroughs, NOVA EXPRESS--excerpt *
- Robin Lydenberg, "The Negative Poetics of the Cut-Up Method" *
Week 7. (October 7, 9)
Tuesday:
- Hans Magnus Enzensberger, "Constituents of a Theory of the Media" *
- Jean Baudrillard, "Requiem for the Media" *
Thursday:
- ---, "The Precession of Simulacra" *
- ---, "The Ecstasy of Communication" *
RESEARCH TOPIC DUE
Week 8. (October 14, 16)
Tuesday:
- Frederic Jameson, "Postmodernism or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism" *
Thursday:
- J.G. Ballard, "The Intensive Care Unit" *
- Haruki Murakami, "TV People" *
- SPEAKING PARTS (film)
Week 9. (October 21, 23)
Tuesday:
- J.G. Ballard, CRASH
Thursday:
- Ballard, cont'd
- Jean Baudrillard, "Simulacra and Science Fiction" *
- ---, "Ballard's CRASH" *
- Responses to Baudrillard by Hayles, Porush, Landon & Sobchack *
Week 10. (October 28, 30)
Tuesday:
- Stephen Wright, GOING NATIVE
Thursday:
- Wright, cont'd
- Howard Besser, "From Internet to Information Super- highway" *
- Arthur Kroker & Michael A. Weinstein, "The Theory of the Virtual Class" *
SECOND PAPER DUE
Week 11. (November 4, 6)
Tuesday:
- Sherry Turkle, "Constructions and Reconstructions of the Self in Virtual Reality" *
- Anne Balsamo, "The Virtual Body in Cyberspace" *
Thursday:
- Mark Pauline, "Survival Research Laboratories Performs in Austria" *
- Interviews with Mark Pauline, excerpted from Industrial Culture Handbook *
- Jim Pomeroy, "Black Box S-Thetix: Labor, Research, and Survival in the He[Art] of the Beast" *
Week 12. (November 11, 13)
Tuesday:
- William Gibson, NEUROMANCER
- BLADE RUNNER (film)
Thursday:
- Gibson, cont'd
- Peter Fitting, "The Lessons of Cyberpunk" *
ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY DUE
Week 13. (November 18, 20)
Tuesday:
- Marge Piercy, HE, SHE, AND IT
- TETSUO: THE IRON MAN (film)
Thursday:
- Piercy, cont'd
- Alison Adam, "Embodying Knowledge: A Feminist Critique of Artificial Intelligence" *
Week 14. (November 25, 27)
Tuesday:
- Donna Haraway, "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century" *
THIRD PAPER DUE
Thursday:
- Thankgiving Holiday
Weeks 15 & 16: Student Presentations
Finals Week: RESEARCH PAPER DUE on Wed. 12/17