All Reading & Composition courses must be taken for a letter grade in order to fulfill this requirement for the Bachelor’s Degree. This course satisfies the second half or the “B” portion of the Reading and Composition requirement.

CCN: 53604

 What does it really mean to take a selfie? In this course, we will explore several films and literary texts that question the forms, ethics, and complications of representing the self. Some have called excessive attention paid to oneself narcissism—but what does this mean, anyways? And is narcissism all that bad? Our assigned texts interrogate various media of self-representation (diaries, photography, the imagination, supernatural occurrences, and more) and their depictions in several works of literature and cinema. Today, the digital world champions the personal essay and the selfie. Although they nearly all pre-date digital culture, the works that we will read challenge and critique common forms of representing the self in exciting and uncommon ways.

 Classical Russian works will be read with an uncommon pairing: American films, new and old. As we read Gogol’s stories, Lermontov’s A Hero of Our Time, and Dostoevsky’s The Double, we will ask how ideas of the self in these texts are reflected through different forms of self-representation, artistic practice, and individual psychology. Oscar Wilde’s The Portrait of Dorian Gray will pose an outside case study to which we will compare our earlier Russian works. Our discussion of each text will coincide with a film screening, and we will ask how 20th century visual culture augments, relates to, or alters the themes that accompany self-representation in our texts. All of our films take questions of selfhood to their core — alongside our literary study, we will develop a basic vocabulary and toolbox for film analysis in order to discuss our assigned works.

 The central goal of this course is to develop the skills necessary for writing clear, persuasive, and well-informed papers: Strunk and White’s classic The Elements of Style will be our go-to handbook, along with Michael Harvey’s The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing. We will also hone our ability to read critically and closely. Throughout the semester, students will write papers, essays, and film response pieces, and we will schedule several peer review workshops. Several assignments will be revised, and the course will culminate with a research project. Students are encouraged to pursue a theoretical line of inquiry that interests them for their individual research projects.

 Students should expect to read an average of 60 pages per week, and to actively participate in class discussions. Because we will spend some class time watching assigned films, attendance is crucial to success.

 Texts:
Gogol’, Nikolai Portrait + The Nose (1835)
Lermontov, Mikhail A Hero of Our Time (1840)
Dostoevsky, Fyodor The Double (1846)
Wilde, Oscar The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)
Short fiction by Martin Amis, more TBA
Strunk and White The Elements of Style
Harvey, Michael The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing

 Film/Video/Photography:
Sunset Boulevard (1950) dir. Billy Wilder
Taxi Driver (1976) dir. Martin Scorcese
Mulholland Drive (2001) dir. David Lynch
The Double (2013) dir. Richard Ayoade
Video works by Vito Acconci (excerpts), photographs by Cindy Sherman
The Sopranos (excerpts) (2006)

 Prerequisite: Successful completion of the “A” portion of the Reading & Composition requirement or its equivalent. Students may not enroll in nor attend R1B/R5B courses without completing this prerequisite.