Course Times: Tuesdays & Thursdays, 2:30-3:45PM, in EPB 207
Screenings: Thursdays, 6:00-8:00 PM, in EPB 107
Office Hours: Tuesdays & Thursdays, 1-2:20 PM, and by appointment, in EPB 455
Phone/E-mail: 335-0465 (EPB office); 335-0035 (JB office); rob-latham@uiowa.edu
Required Texts (all at Prairie Lights Bookstore):
Also Required:
Description: This course provides an introduction to the study of popular culture through the lens of queer theory. The goal is to develop a set of critical tools for analyzing representations of sexuality&emdash;especially representations of erotic "deviance"&emdash;in popular media. The course begins with a survey of major theories of "camp," then proceeds to examine a series of linked case studies: Andy Warhol and underground cinema; David Bowie and glam rock; and contemporary vampire fiction and film.
Note: While this course assumes no prior knowledge of its subject matter, it is also not an introduction to either queer theory or popular culture studies, but rather to the forms of critical exchange between them. A certain level of sophisticated engagement with the course materials is expected, though I believe all this calls for is intellectual curiosity and an open mind, not an extensive background of reading. If you want to acquire a general understanding of these areas of inquiry, good introductory volumes are available, such as Annamarie Jagose's Queer Theory: An Introduction (NYU Press, 1997) and Dominic Strinati's An Introduction to Studying Popular Culture (Routledge, 2000).
Requirements and Assignments: The first requirement is preparation and attendance; you must be here for every class meeting with the day's reading and/or viewing completed. You must also attend the weekly film screenings, which are mandatory. Missing more than four classes or two screenings will cause you to fail the course.
The required writing consists of weekly reading responses and three medium-length (8-10 page) papers. The reading responses should be clear and engaging, recording significant observations, questions, concerns, and/or criticisms that emerge from the readings and viewings. I do not want raw reading notes, but rather a coherent response distilled from such notes. Three times over the course of the semester, your responses will be circulated to the class to provide an agenda for discussion; on such occasions, you must post your responses to a course email list by 6 PM of the previous day. The other students will then need to access and read the responses before class meets the following afternoon. At all other times, your responses will be collected in class on Thursdays. (I will set up a rotation schedule for posted responses during the first week of class.) Individual responses will be graded check plus, check, or check minus, and a letter grade will be assigned to them in total at semester's end. If you miss handing in more than two responses, your overall grade on this assignment will be an F. No late responses will be accepted under any circumstances, so if you are going to miss a Thursday class, you should turn your response in earlier in the week to receive credit for it.
The longer papers are designed to give you the opportunity to respond, in a more extended fashion, to the assignments. These papers will be both synthetic, drawing on several items from the syllabus, and analytical, developing a substantial reading or argument. I will hand out topic sheets for the papers, including more detailed instructions, at least one week before they are due. The important thing to bear in mind is that these papers should show an active, critical engagement with the materials, as well as a willingness to test out strong ideas and take argumentative risks. Perfunctory essays that merely go through the motions are not going to get good grades. The materials we are covering in the class are complex, controversial, and sometimes confrontational; you are encouraged to show a similar boldness of spirit in your own papers. The first two papers will be collected during the Tuesday class sessions of Weeks 5 and 10; the third paper will be due in my mailbox in 310 EPB by 5 PM on the Tuesday of exam week. I will not accept late papers for any reason short of serious illness or other unavoidable catastrophe, for which I will require written proof.
Grading: Participation = 10%; Responses Papers = 15%; Longer Papers = 25% each.
Week 1. (January 22, 24)
Tuesday:
Introduction; review of syllabus
Thursday:
Susan Sontag, "Notes on 'Camp'" (in Camp)
Mark Booth, "'Campe-toi!: On the Origins and Definitions of Camp" (in Camp)
Screening: The Boys in the Band (1970)
Week 2. (January 29, 31)
Tuesday:
Richard Dyer, "It's Being So Camp as Keeps Us Going" (in Camp)
Jack Babuscio, "The Cinema of Camp (aka Camp and the Gay Sensibility)" (in Camp)
Thursday:
Andrew Britton, "For Interpretation: Notes Against Camp" (in Camp)
Pamela Robertson, "What Makes the Feminist Camp?" (in Camp)
Screening: The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994)
Week 3. (February 5, 7)
Tuesday:
Esther Newton, "Role Models" (in Camp)
Carole-Anne Tyler, "Boys Will Be Girls: Drag and Transvestic Fetishism" (in Camp)
Thursday:
Judith Butler, "From Interiority to Gender Performatives" (in Camp)
Vicki Cooper, "'Female Camp'? Drag and the Politics of Parody and 'Queer' Performance" (online at http://artsweb.bham.ac.uk/bccsr/issue1/cooper.htm)
Screening: The Killing of Sister George (1968)
Week 4. (February 12, 14)
Tuesday:
Sue-Ellen Case, "Toward a Butch-Femme Aesthetic" (in Camp)
June L. Reich, "Genderfuck: The Law of the Dildo" (in Camp)
Thursday:
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, "From 'Wilde, Nietzsche, and the Sentimental Relations of the Male Body'" (in Camp)
Andrew Ross, "Uses of Camp" (in Camp)
Screening: Slaves to the Underground (1997)
Week 5. (February 19, 21)
Tuesday:
Suarez, "Introduction" (in Bike Boys, Drag Queens, and Superstars)
First paper due
Thursday:
Suarez, Chapter One: "Avant-Garde and Mass Culture: Mapping the Dialectic"
Screening: None
Week 6. (February 26, 28)
Tuesday:
Suarez, Chapter One, cont'd
Thursday:
Suarez, Chapter Three: "The 1960s Underground as Political Postmodernism: From the New Sensibility to Gay Cultural Activism"
Screening: Scorpio Rising and Flaming Creatures (both 1963)
Week 7. (March 5, 7)
Tuesday:
Suarez, Chapter Four: "Pop, Queer, or Fascist? The Ambiguity of Mass Culture in Kenneth Anger's Scorpio Rising"
Thursday:
Suarez, Chapter Five: "Drag, Rubble, and 'Secret Flix': Jack Smith's Avant-Garde against the Lucky Landlord Empire"
Screening: Selected Warhol shorts and excerpts (1962-68)
Week 8. (March 12, 14)
Tuesday:
Suarez, Chapter Six: "The Artist as Advertiser: Stardom, Style, and Commodification in Andy Warhol's Underground Films"
Simon Watney, "Queer Warhol" (in Pop Out)
Thursday:
Michael Moon, "Screen Memories, or, Pop Comes from the Outside: Warhol and Queer Childhood" (in Pop Out)
Kelly Cresap, "New York School's 'Out': Andy Warhol Presents Dumb and Dumber" (in Course Reader)
Screening: Superstar: The Life and Times of Andy Warhol (1991)
Week 9. (March 19, 21)
Spring Break--No Classes
Week 10. (March 26, 28)
Tuesday:
No class
Thursday:
Jonathan Flatley, "Warhol Gives Good Face: Publicity and the Politics of Prosopopoeia" (in Pop Out)
Second Paper Due
Screening: Flesh (1968) & I Shot Andy Warhol (1996)
Week 11. (April 2, 4)
Tuesday:
Thomas Waugh, "Cockteaser" (in Pop Out)
Jennifer Doyle, "Tricks of the Trade: Pop Art/Pop Sex" (in Pop Out)
Thursday:
Marcie Frank, "Popping Off Warhol: From the Gutter to the Underground and Beyond" (in Pop Out)
Laura Winkiel, "The 'Sweet Assassin' and the Performative Politics of the Scum Manifesto" (in Course Reader)
Screening: The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976)
Week 12. (April 9, 11)
Tuesday:
Van M. Cagle, Reconstructing Pop/Subculture: Art, Rock, and Andy Warhol&emdash;excerpts (in Course Reader)
Thursday:
David Bowie, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars
Screening: Velvet Goldmine (1998)
Week 13. (April 16, 18)
Tuesday:
The Bowie Companion (selections to be announced)
Thursday:
The Bowie Companion (selections to be announced)
Screening: The Hunger (1983)
Week 14. (April 23, 25)
Tuesday:
Anne Rice, "David Bowie and the End of Gender" (in Bowie Companion, pp. 183-86)
Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire
Thursday:
Rice, Interview, continued
Screening: Daughters of Darkness (1971)
Week 15. (April 30, May 2)
Tuesday:
Sue-Ellen Case, "Tracking the Vampire" (in Course Reader)
Richard Dyer, "Children of the Night: Vampirism as Homosexuality, Homosexuality as Vampirism" (in Course Reader)
Thursday:
Pat Califia, "The Vampire" (in Course Reader)
"Queer Horror" website (online at http://www.queerhorror.com/Qvamp)
Screening: None
Week 16. (May 7, 9)
Tuesday:
Poppy Z. Brite, Lost Souls
Thursday:
Brite, Lost Souls, continued
Screening: None
Exam Week.
Third Paper Due (Tuesday, May 14, by 5 PM)