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Science Fiction and the Multi-Genreverse of Doom

Submitted by Shayna S on Sat, 02/27/2010 - 9:47pm

 

science fiction

This is not just about Star Wars, Dune, or exploding spaceships. This is not just about scantily-clad princesses in high-tech towers, Captain Kirk, or the robot apocalypse. Science-fiction is a genre that encompasses almost every other genre there is. It crosses mediums: television, radio, video games, books, graphic novels, comics, movies... It can be about the future or the past, our humanity or lack-there-of, or the comedy or drama or dramatic comedy of our lives. 

Genres 2010 - Final Papers

This is the final set of webpapers for a course on Literary Kinds: Thinking Through Genre, a course offered @ Bryn Mawr College in Spring 2010. 

Take a look around, and feel warmly welcome to respond in the comment area available at the end of each paper. What strikes, intrigues, puzzles you...what, among your reactions, might be of interest or use to the writer, or others in the class, or others who--exploring the internet--might be in search of thoughtful conversation about how we are making sense of the way literature, and literary theory, portrays the world?

 

Genres 2010 - Web Paper 3

This is the third set of webpapers to emerge from Literary Kinds: Thinking Through Genres, a course about category-making and category-breaking offered at Bryn Mawr College in Spring 2010. Three months into the semester, students are exploring here the questions they have been mulling over since they left Alice in Wonderland: there are essays here about the genre of the graphic narrative, of film, of framed stories, of sequels...

Take a look around, and feel warmly welcome to respond in the comment area available at the end of each paper. What strikes, intrigues, puzzles you...what, among your reactions, might be of interest or use to the writer, or others in the class, or others who--exploring the internet--might be in search of thoughtful conversation about how we are making sense of the way literature, and literary theory, portrays the world?

 

Genres 2010 - Web Paper 2

This is the second set of webpapers to emerge from Literary Kinds: Thinking Through Genre, a course about category-making offered at Bryn Mawr College in Spring 2010. Two months into the semester, students are exploring here the questions that have arisen for them since they last wrote; you'll find essays here about the digital humanities, syllabus construction, the genre we call "parody," and the particular imaginative test case we call Alice in Wonderland.

Take a look around, and feel warmly welcome to respond in the comment area available at the end of each paper. What strikes, intrigues, puzzles you...what, among your reactions, might be of interest or use to the writer, or others in the class, or others who--exploring the internet--might be in search of thoughtful conversation about how we are making sense of the way old and new forms of literature, and literary theory, portray the world?

 

Genres 2010 - Web Paper 1

These are the first webpapers to emerge from Literary Kinds: Thinking Through Genres, a course about category-making offered at Bryn Mawr College in Spring 2010. One month into the semester, students are exploring here the questions that have arisen for them around the emerging literary "kind" that we know as blogs, or about what difference the internet is making, more generally, in our work as intellectuals.

Take a look around, and feel warmly welcome to respond in the comment area available at the end of each paper. What strikes, intrigues, puzzles you...what, among your reactions, might be of interest or use to the writer, others in the class, or those who--exploring the internet--might be in search of thoughtful conversation about how we are making sense of the world in which we find ourselves?

 

One Student's picture

This Is Not a Performance: Critique of a ?Genre? (final performance)

Submitted by One Student on Thu, 05/01/2008 - 2:40pm
Stage directions: I drag my chair to the front of the room, out of the horse-shoe of chairs in which the rest of the class is seated. A few minutes are spent in deciding whether to turn the projector off or if I should drag my chair to the side. Shortly, the projector is turned off. I stand on the chair.

 

This is not a pipe

One Student's picture

triangle of satire; and infinite uses of humor

Submitted by One Student on Wed, 04/02/2008 - 10:07pm

"Roman satirists may be thought of as functioning within a triangle of which the apices are (a) attack, (b) entertainment, and (c) preaching. If a poem rests too long on apex (a) it passes into lampoon or invective; if it lingers on (b) it changes into some form of comedy; and if it remains on (c) it becomes a sermon." Niall Rudd, Themes in Roman Satire

What is striking and original about Rudd's application of this theoretical structure for satire is the fact that he sees a good deal of movement within individual pieces; the effect is on of hovering and flitting, like a bird that never alights. (Which is why my bird traps on the ground keep turning up with nothing more than handfuls of feathers, I suppose - time to construct a bow and arrow.)

One Student's picture

Genre = Structure?

Submitted by One Student on Tue, 04/01/2008 - 9:01pm

            One of my basic, but as yet unexplored and unsupported, assumptions about genre is that ‘genre’ refers to structure, and that ‘genre’ does not give a very reliable indication of content or of function. Thus, I identify Oscar Wilde’s “De Profundis” as a letter on the basis of the structural elements at the beginning and end: the piece opens with “H.M. Prison, Reading” and “Dear Bosie”, and ends with “your affectionate friend, Oscar Wilde”, as well as putting the piece into the context of a history and a potential future of correspondence. However, on page 97 right near the beginning, Wilde refers to what he is doing as “writing your [Bosie’s] life and

One Student's picture

genres of gay (male) narrative; and the genre(?) of fanfiction

Submitted by One Student on Tue, 03/25/2008 - 10:13pm

In the first chapter ('History') of Neil Bartlett's Who Was That Man? (a bio of Oscar Wilde), Bartlett describes three forms of gay narrative, three genres:

1) The personal coming out story.

2) The history of homosexuality.

3) And one which "combines the historical methods of the second with the individual subject of the first. The hero in this case is a single, usually 'great' homosexual. His fame rests in part on being hidden, on being in need of revelation ..."

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Remote Ready Biology Learning Activities has 50 remote-ready activities, which work for either your classroom or remote teaching.

Narrative is determined not by a desire to narrate but by a desire to exchange. (Roland Barthes, S/Z)

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