Literary Kinds: Thinking Through Genre, From Blogs to...?

We will turn next to our first set of imaginative test cases: the emerging genre of blogging. Several tri-co professors and senior English majors who are engaging in this activity in a variety of ways will be guest lecturers in the class, and each of us will also be writing a blog on Serendip as a portion of our work for this course.

For the last six weeks of the semester, the class will select together a second (and possibly third?) genre for our shared examination. Do you want to look @ something old? (Following Bakhtin’s claim that “faced with the problem of the novel, genre theory must submit to a radical restructuring,” it might be interesting to explore three hybrid novel forms written in the United States during the same decade as The Origin of the Species: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “romance,” The Scarlet Letter [1850], Herman Melville’s “anatomy,” Moby-Dick [1851], and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “sentimental novel,” Uncle Tom’s Cabin [1852]). Or will you want to look together @ something newer, such as graphic novels, feminist documentary films, or video games? Or would you prefer to work through the writings of a single author, such as the South African J.M. Coetzee, about whom this advice was given in a NYTimes Review: "the prism through which to read...most of Coetzee’s work [is]...as a series of provocative genre-deformations...." ?

In a series of linked writing projects, students will 1) post weekly on-line reflections about the readings;  2) explore the specific new genre of blogs, and 3) of a second and 4) third generic form, before 5) examining a topic that has arisen for them in the course of the course, which they wish to explore further. In addition to the weekly postings, a total of twenty-four pages of writing will be required by semester’s end.

Course Requirements:
Bi-weekly attendance and participation in class
10 reflections on assigned readings/our discussions/related topics,
posted on the world-wide web (including one summary of a class discussion)
Three 4-pp. papers:

• S, 2/21: what are you thinking about the emergence of the genre
  of the blog (or other dimensions of the digital humanities)?
• F, 3/26:  what are you thinking about the genre of parody
  (or other ideas that have arisen for you, since your last paper??
• F, 4/23: what are you thinking about the genre of the graphic
  narrative, or of film, or of framed stories, or of sequels....?