Cool

I don't want it to sound like I am tooting my own horn, here, but I have almost finished up my syllabus for the class I am teaching in the spring, and it looks awesome. Check out the readings, and feel free to make suggestions:

Unit One: The Resurgence of Fantasy as Hip.

Jan 23 (W): Kidd, Dustin. “Harry Potter and the Functions of Popular Culture.” Journal of Popular Culture 40.1 (2007): 69-89.

Jan 25 (F): Strimel, Courtney B. “The Politics of Terror.” Children’s Literature in Education 35.1 (March 2004): 35-52.

Jan 28 (M): Hunter, John C. “The Evidence of Things Not Seen: Critical Mythology and The Lord of the Rings.” Journal of Modern Literature **************************

Jan 30 (W): Lord of the Rings Reading coming soon!

Unit Two: Sci-fi: Us (usually Americans) and Them

Feb 1 (F): Geraghty, Lincoln. “Creating and Comparing Myth in Twentiety-Century Science Fiction: Star Trek and Star Wars.” Literature Film Quarterly 33.3 (2005): 191-200.

Feb 4 (M): Lancashire, Anne. “Attack of the Clones and the Politics of Star Wars.” The Dalhousie Review 82.2 (Summer 2002): 235-253.

Feb 6 (W): Geraghty, Lincoln. “The American Jeremiad and Star Trek’s Puritan Legacy.” Journal of the Fantastic 14.2 (2003): 228- 245.

Feb 8 (F): Lagon, Mark P. “’We Owe it to Them to Interfere’: Star Trek and US Statecraft in the 1960’s and 1990’s.” Extrapolation: A Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy 34.3 (Fall 1993): 251-264.

Unit Three: In Which You Get Some Action

Feb 11 (M): Indiana Jones, coming soon

Feb 13 (W): Indiana Jones, coming soon

Feb 15 (F): Jancovich, Mark. “Modernity and Subjectivity in The Terminator: The Machine as Monster in Contemporary American Culture.” The Velvet Light Trap 30 (Fall 1992): 3-17.

Feb 18 (M): Goscilo, Margaret. “Deconstructing the Terminator.” Film Criticism 12.2 (1998): 37-52.

Unit 4: The Universally Accepted Symbols for America: Disney and McDonald’s

Feb 22 (F): Boje, David; Driver, Michaela; Yue cai. “Fiction and Humor in Transforming McDonald’s Narrative Strategies.” Culture and Organization 11.3 (September 2005): 195-208
AND
Kramer, Gina. “McDomination: Trade and the Golden Arches.” Harvard International Review 22.2 (Summer 2000): 12-13.

Feb 25 (M): Helmer, James. “Love on a Bun: How McDonald’s Won the Burger Wars.” Journal of Popular Culture ***********: 85-97.
AND
“Don’t Trash McDonald’s.” New Perspectives Quarterly 18.4 (Fall 2001): 12-13.

Feb 27 (W): Do Rozario, Rebecca-Anne C. “The Princess and the Magic Kingdom: Beyond Nostalgia, the Function of the Disney Princess.” Women’s Studies in Communication 27.1 (Spring 2004): 34-59.

Feb 29 (F): Hurley, Dorothy I. “Seeing White: Children of Color and the Disney Fairy Tale Princess.” Journal of Negro Education 74.3 (Spring 2005): 221-232.

Mar 3 (M): Tanner, Litsa Renee; Haddock, Shelley A.; Zimmerman, Toni Schindles, Lund, Lori K. “Images of Couples and Families in Disney Feature-Length Animated Films.” The American Journal of Family Therapy 31.5 (October 2003): 355-373

Unit 5: Cartoons for Big Kids

Mar 5 (W): Bruna, Katherine Richardson. “Addicted to Democracy: South Park and the Salutary Effects of Agitation (Reflections of a Ranting and Raving South Park Junkie).” Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy 47.8 (May 2004): 692-697.

Mar 7 (F): Lewis, Todd V. “Religious Rhetoric and the Comic Frame in The Simpsons.” Journal of Media and Religion 1.13 (2002): 153-165.

Mar 17 (M): Baybee, Carl; Overbeck, Ashley. “Home Simpson Explains our Postmodern Identity Crisis, Whether We Like it or Not: Media Literacy after The Simpsons.” Studies in Media & Information Literacy Education 1.1 (2001):N/A.

Mar 19 (W): Mittell, Jason. “Cartoon Realism: Genre Mixing and the Cultural Life of the Simpsons.” Velvet Light Trap 47 (2001): 15-30.

Unit 6: Rock Your World (or We Will Rock You, take your pick): Elvis and the Beatles

Mar 26 (W): Carlson, Thomas C. “Ad Hoc Rock: Elvis and the Aesthetics of Post-Modernism.” Studies in Popular Culture 16.2 (1994): 39-50.

Mar 28 (F): Wilson, Charles Reagan. “’Just a Little Talk with Jesus’: Elvis Presley, Religious Music, and Southern Spirituality.” ************************************

Mar 31 (M): Moorman, Charles. “Those Heroic Beatles.” Southern Quarterly: A Journal of the Arts in the South 8 (1969): 75-89.

Apr 2 (W): Kimsey, John. “How the Beatles Invented the A-Bomb.” Proteus 18.1 (Spring 2001): 6-12

Unit 7: Superheroes

Apr 4(F): Genter, Robert. “’With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility’: Cold War Culture and the Birth of Marvel Comics.” Journal of Popular Culture 40.6 (2007): 953-978.

Apr 7 (M): Kozloff, Sarah R. “Superman as Saviour: Christian Allegory in the Superman Movies.” Journal of Popular Film and Television 9.2 (1981): 78-82

Apr 9 (W): Brody, Michael. “Batman: Psychic Trauma and Its Solution.” Journal of Popular Culture *************:171-179.

Apr 11 (F): Killian, Kyle. “Batman (and World War III) Begins: Hollywood Takes on Terror.” Journal of Feminist Family Therapy 19.1 (2007):77-82.

Apr 14 (M): Richardson, Niall. “The Gospel According to Spider-Man.” The Journal of Popular Culture 37.4 (2004): 694-703.

Apr 16 (W): Emad, Mitra C. “Reading Wonder Woman’s Body: Mythologies of Gender and Nation.” Journal of Popular Culture 39.6 (2006): 954-984.

Apr 18 (F): Jones, Sara Gwenllian. “Histories, Fictions, and Xena: Warrior Princess.” Television and New Media 1.4 (November 2000): 403-418.

Apr 21 (M): Morreale, Joanne. “Xena: Warrior Princess as Feminist Camp.” Journal of Popular Culture *************: 79-86.

Apr 23 (W): Owen, A. Susan. “Vampires, Postmodernity, and Postfeminism: Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” Journal of Popular Film and Television 27.2 (Summer 1999): 24-31.

Apr 25 (F): Leigh, Harbin. “’You Know You Wanna Dance’: Buffy the Vampire Slayer as Contemporary Gothic Heroine.” Studies in the Humanities 32.1 (2005): 22-37.