HORROR, ABJECTION, AND YOU

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HORROR, ABJECTION, AND YOU EXP 0005 - GS Office: East 309 Monday 6:00-8:30pm Office Hours: T 2:30-3:30 [Building/Classroom] W 3:30-4:30 James Rizzi (& by appointment) Email: james.rizzi@tufts.

1 HORROR, ABJECTION, AND YOU EXP GS Office: East 309 Monday 6:00-8:30pm Office Hours: T 2:30-3:30 [Building/Classroom] W 3:30-4:30 James Rizzi (& by appointment) james.rizzi@tufts.edu Course Description: What are you afraid of? What in our world is abject? After a year of creepy clowns, Zika, and rampant political fear mongering, all of us have experienced horror on a number of levels; but how often do we think about horror s power to control us or about our power to transform what scares us, even to find it fun or funny? Why do we recoil or find ourselves disgusted by things that we encounter every day? How is inexpressible revulsion connected to language and the order through which we view the world, each other, and ourselves? This course will pair literature, film, advertisements, political speeches and more with theories put forth by philosophers, psychologists, biologists, theologians, and political scientists in order to question what frightens us about our world, about our bodies, and about what lurks in the recesses of our collective psyche. Understanding just what makes something abject will allow us to reevaluate our engagement with politics, medicine, and morality as well as all those things that go bump in the night. Through this course, we will uncover the roots of our fears and hopefully thereby learn to mediate our responses to them.

2 Course Organization: Throughout this semester we will meet for discussion through which we will grapple with images and texts in order to produce definitions of horror, abjection, disgust, etc. These discussions will require you to have read carefully and to come to class ready to engage creatively with the ideas of the authors and artists you ve read/viewed as well as with the ideas of your fellow classmates. This course is interactive, and thus we will be engaged in a number of physical and intellectual activities. These include 5-8 minute presentations that will explicate the material and link it to current events, creative group work such as acting out a theatrical scene, and offcampus visits to places that resonate with our course material. These activities, along with our discussions, should help you think through the critical contexts of the course and write three papers two shorter papers and one final research essay at the end of the term. Grade Breakdown: 15% - Participation 15% - Paper 1 40% - Final Paper 15% - Presentation 15% - Paper 2 & Presentation Course Policies: Absences: The success of this class depends on your working together in class. I realize that things happen, so I will excuse one absence provided that you me ahead of class time. For each subsequent absence, I will lower your final grade by ⅓ of a letter grade. Participation: In addition to being physically present in class, you must be mentally engaged as well. This means coming to class prepared to discuss the assignments and to engage your fellow classmates. Your level of active participation will affect your grade for the course. Writing: Throughout the course, I will ask you to submit short, informal writing on Trunk in order to collect your thoughts about the assigned reading this will be factored into your participation grade. You may choose to expand on any of these when writing your more formal papers. Extensions and Late Papers: I want you to be proud of your work, and I want to read the best work you can produce. If you require an extension on one of your papers, please me or talk to me in class at least 24 hours before the paper is due. Papers turned in late without my permission will be graded ⅓ of a letter grade lower for every day that they are late.

3 Student Accessibility Services: Tufts University is committed to providing equal access and support to all students by providing reasonable accommodations so that each student may access their curricula and achieve their personal and academic potential. If you have a disability that requires reasonable accommodations please contact the Student Accessibility Services office at , or through their at accessibility@tufts.edu to make an appointment with the director to determine appropriate accommodations. Please be aware that accommodations cannot be enacted retroactively, making timeliness a critical aspect for their provision. Academic Honesty: This course requires you to develop your own unique ideas as well as to work with the ideas of other scholars. Academic integrity is crucial and plagiarism the use of someone else s words or ideas, either intentionally or unintentionally, without proper attribution will not be tolerated. We will discuss plagiarism in class, but you may also find Tufts complete plagiarism policy at Academic Resource Center: Tufts has many resources available for those who might want help with their writing or presentation skills. I recognize that knowing when you need extra help is a useful skill to develop; therefore, if you want more feedback than I have provided, I strongly encourage you to bring your draft into the Academic Resource Center (720 Dowling Hall) or find a tutor online at ase.tufts.edu/arc/writingundergrad.asp?tutoring. These tutors are trained to help you at any stage of composition, from idea-generation and organizational planning to stylistic revision and grammar correction. Required Texts: Camus, Albert. The Stranger. Trans. Matthew Ward. Vintage: Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. Dover: Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Perennial Classics: All other reading material will be made available on the course s TRUNK site

4 Course Calendar: Unit 1 The Power of Horror January 23 rd What is Horrible? What is Abject? N/A N/A January 30 th Uncanny, Unheimlich Lovecraft The Beast in the Cave Freud selection from The Uncanny Trunk post February 6 th Waste Not: Want Not Kundera selections from The Unbearable Lightness of Being Laporte selection from The History of Shit February 13 th You Are What You Eat Scarry excerpt from The Body in Pain T. D. The Bloody Banquet Response Paper 2 (~3 pages) Unit 2 Our Bodies, (Not) Our Selves February 23 th What Lurks Within Alien (film) Klein excerpts from her essays on the primal scene *Note: Thursday February 27 th Fear of Biology/Biology of Fear March 6 th Can we Laugh at Horror? Covino selection from Amending the Abject Body: Aesthetic Makeovers in Medicine and Culture Teeth (film) Limon selection from Stand-up Comedy in Theory; or, Abjection in America

5 March 11 th Field Trip to Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge *Note: Saturday Stevenson The Body Snatcher Suggested: Stuff You Should Know (podcast) The Golden Age of Grave Robbing (20 Dec. 2016) Paper 2 (~3 pages) Unit 3 The Abject Body Politic March 27 th Whom do we Fear? Conrad Heart of Darkness Fanon selection from Black Skin, White Masks Suggested: Coppola Apocalypse Now Kirkland There was no rules at all: Stories from Vietnam April 3 rd Institutions, Internalization, and Categorical Segregation The Birth of a Nation Althusser selection from Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses April 10 th One More Time, With(out) Feeling! Camus The Stranger Bacon On Discourse April 24 th The Abject in the Everyday Edwards Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God Warner selection from The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Ethics, and the Politics of Queer Life May 1 st Wrapping up N/A Final Paper Presentations

LT218 Radical Theory

LT218 Radical Theory Seminar Leader: James Harker Course Times: Mondays and Wednesdays, 14:00-15:30 pm Email: j.harker@berlin.bard.edu Office Hours: Mondays and Wednesdays, 11:00 am-12:30 pm Course Description