independent study syllabus map

why? why? why?

poetry

Cesaire-

• beat language, rhythm,
• metaphor-political/social context
• discourse on colonialism, addressing the idea of self, identity, black identity
• "decolonization of the mind" relationship between the colonizer/colonized

Anne Carson-

• focus on human problems within the rhetoric
• storytelling with conscious of the politics created by images
• feminist
• uses photography and film metaphor
• searching for identity-ex. autobiography of red

Lorca-

• mirror, galaxy metaphors
• using metaphors on a grand scale (the cosmos) to address something very immediate, very human (like an argument)
• short, visual imagery driven poems

Calvino-

• Invisible Cities
• referencing something without showing it
• constructing a system

Ginsberg-

• rhythm of language
• notion of travel/exploration in work
• movement, awareness of the body

Philosophy/History

Zizek-

• psychoanalysis in film
• analyzing politics from a philosophic standpoint
• constant questioning of what is real/Real

People's History of the US

• especially the civil rights chapters, the feminism chapter
• read alongside theory? contextualize the ideas within history

A History of Bombing

• bombing= destruction of life and all of the things we have constructed
• understanding a history of how humans can so easily destroy each other, how these developments have affected the way we view/treat ourselves and others

MLK Speeches

• more understanding of the civil rights struggle, the working class struggle, the vietnam war, how this affects/applies to our present situation

Film Theory

I need more ideas for this category. I've seen/read both of these. but I want to see/read them again. I just need more stuff along these lines.

Pervert's Guide to Cinema-Zizek

• addresses the metaphor of desire in film and how this relates to psychoanalysis
• desire is constructed, the film adds another layer of construction

Laura Mulvey

• Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema
• "A political use of psychoanalysis"
• more understanding of psychoanalysis and how it applies to cinema

CONCLUSION:

there are themes of construction/sudden deconstruction (explosion), identity, a concept of "reality", social structures, and forms of control.

there also seems to be an attempt to understand psychoanalysis, to relate it to film, and to better contextualize my work and the work of others within history, especially within a social-political context.