ENGL 3815

transcript

ENGL 3815

New due date for paper: December 3

Essays: (Essay 1) An essay at least 1,000 words in length dissecting/reading/interpreting a popular culture personality, artist, text, genre, series, episode, movie, place, product, icon, meme, etc.: worth 20% of your grade [20% of your grade]; (Essay 2) A source paper at least 1500 words in length on a popular culture phenomenon approved by me [30% of your grade].

Tests: A take-home essay final exam [20% of your grade].

GenreENGL 3815

Dictionarygenre |ˈ zh änrə|Nouna category of artistic composition, as in music or literature, characterized by similarities in form, style, or subject matter.ORIGIN early 19th cent.: French, literally ‘a kind’ (see gender ).

ThesaurusNoun

historical fiction is my favorite genre of literaturecategory, class, classification, group, set, list; type, sort, kind, breed, variety, style, model, school, stamp, cast, ilk.

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Why do we have genres? How do genres acquire their

conventions? Evolve? Do genres die?

Genre films essentially ask the audience, "Do you still want to believe this?" Popularity is the audience answering, "Yes." Change in genre occurs when the audience says, "That's too infantile a form of what we believe. Show us something more complicated." And genres turn to self-parody to say, "Well, at least if we make fun of it for being infantile, it will show how far we've come." Films and television have in this way speeded up cultural history.

Leo Braudy, American film scholar

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Tim Dirks Filmsite.org: Genres

Thomas Schatz's life history of a genre (from Hollywood Genres) :

an experimental stage, during which its conventions are isolated and established, a classic stage, in which the conventions reach their “equilibrium” and are mutually understood by artist and audience, an age of refinement, during which certain formal and stylistic details embellish the form, and finally a baroque (or “mannerist,” or “self-reflexive”) stage, when the form and its establishments are accented to the point where they “themselves become the “substance” or “content” of the work. (37-38)

Thomas Schatz, American film scholar

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Tim Dirks Filmsite.org: Genres

Genre ENGL 3815

Problematic Science Fiction

Genre ENGL 3815

Grandmother and the Kids. Ursula LeGuin’s special designation for the fantastic (the Grandmother) and all the literary forms it has spun-off over the centuries.

fantasy: takes place in a ‘verse where the governing paradigm is magic.

science fiction: takes place in a ‘verse where the governing paradigm is science.

Franco BrambillaInvading the Vintage

Problematic Genre Assignments

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Franco Brambilla, Invading the Vintage Problematic Genre Assignments

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Franco Brambilla, Invading the Vintage

Problematic Genre Assignments

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Franco Brambilla, Invading the VintageProblematic Genre

Assignments

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Alien Intrusions Alien Life Alternative Histories Artificial Intelligence Comic SF Cosmic Collisions Cutting-Edge Technology Cyberpunk Cyborgs Dinosaurs & Other Survivals Disaster Stories Dying Earth, The Dystopias Elixir of Life, The Endangered Environment Future Cities Genetic Engineering Lost Races Mental Powers

Nuclear War & Its Aftermath Overpopulation and Pollution Parallel Worlds Planetary Romance Prehistoricals Robots and Androids Sex Wars Space Habitats Space Opera Space Travel Steampunk Supermen & Other Mutants Superweapons and Future Wars Suspended Animation Teleportation & Matter Transmission Time Travels Transcendence Under the Surface Utopias

Some Science Fiction Templates and Motifs (from David Pringle's The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Science Fiction)

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