05-20-2011, 09:40 AM
I'm going to be teaching a college class in the fall, and get to design it from scratch. It's basically a freshman writing course. The idea is to get a class of brand new freshmen to write about a topic, then critique it and get them ready for college style writing, presentations, research, etc. The topic isn't important, it is just the vehicle to get them to write. I was encouraged to be creative. So I got together with my partner (it's co-taught) and we came up with this as the course description:
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Monsters in the Mainstream: An examination of vampires, zombies etc. as lenses on our modern lives.
"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you."
— Friedrich Nietzsche
We live in a world of monsters; real and imagined. Some of them we encounter in our daily lives and others lurk in the shadows of our imagination waiting for us to drift off into sleep. Some monsters such as recently deceased Osama Bin Laden have been bogeymen in the collective consciousness of an entire generation of young people. Other monsters such as Twilight’s Edward Cullen become romanticized and humanized into pop culture idols. What can we learn about what it is to be human from these examples of inhumanity? What do they tell us about the worlds we live in and the contents of our minds? How can we improve the quality of our own lives through their experience?
In this course we will explore the realms of Vampires, Zombies and other monsters through contemporary and historical literature and film. We will examine the places monsters come from and what they tell us about our society, psychology, and spirituality. Along the way we will strive to define what it means to be a human being living in our modern age.
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Pretty awesome huh?! I must admit, my partner wrote it. It was my idea, but he obviously is a fantastic writer, so he took the lead on getting it on paper. It sounds friggin' bad ass to me.
So, I have all summer to prep for the class. I have several hundred dollars to buy course materials. What I need to do is come up with a list of themes that will be addressed and the actual material the students will be viewing/reading. It can be movies and/or books.
I have some ideas already, but I figured you guys would be a good bunch to brainstorm with. So, based on the course description, does anyone have any ideas that fit with what we are trying to do with the class?
-------------------------------
Monsters in the Mainstream: An examination of vampires, zombies etc. as lenses on our modern lives.
"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you."
— Friedrich Nietzsche
We live in a world of monsters; real and imagined. Some of them we encounter in our daily lives and others lurk in the shadows of our imagination waiting for us to drift off into sleep. Some monsters such as recently deceased Osama Bin Laden have been bogeymen in the collective consciousness of an entire generation of young people. Other monsters such as Twilight’s Edward Cullen become romanticized and humanized into pop culture idols. What can we learn about what it is to be human from these examples of inhumanity? What do they tell us about the worlds we live in and the contents of our minds? How can we improve the quality of our own lives through their experience?
In this course we will explore the realms of Vampires, Zombies and other monsters through contemporary and historical literature and film. We will examine the places monsters come from and what they tell us about our society, psychology, and spirituality. Along the way we will strive to define what it means to be a human being living in our modern age.
-------------------------------
Pretty awesome huh?! I must admit, my partner wrote it. It was my idea, but he obviously is a fantastic writer, so he took the lead on getting it on paper. It sounds friggin' bad ass to me.
So, I have all summer to prep for the class. I have several hundred dollars to buy course materials. What I need to do is come up with a list of themes that will be addressed and the actual material the students will be viewing/reading. It can be movies and/or books.
I have some ideas already, but I figured you guys would be a good bunch to brainstorm with. So, based on the course description, does anyone have any ideas that fit with what we are trying to do with the class?