course+overview

This proposed 121 course Wiki is a combination of two final projects for classes at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. The classes are Dr. Mike Sell’s Literary Theory for Teachers and Scholarly Writers class and Dr. Kenneth Sherwood’s Topics in Postmodern Lit: Digital Literature class. As I was developing my two final projects for each course, it seemed as though they both were informing each other, and that is why they are not two halves of a larger collective project. My knowledge I had gained about the useful ways in which to teach and incorporate digital literature was something I felt strongly that I needed to include in my course syllabus for Dr. Sell. On the same note, the Theory that we studied and the freedom to create any course we wanted was a way in which to think pedagogically about having either a digital literature course, or a course with an entire digital literature unit.

A ‘book’ classified as magic realism tells its stories from the perspective of people who live in our world and experience a different reality from the one we [the rest of us] call reality” (Roger Holland, 2002). Not only will the texts reflect that definition, but the reading experience for each of the students also fits into that definition, making the act of engaging with some of the digital literature a magical realist experience in itself.

has become a ubiquitous term to describe various contemporary works, yet a certain ambiguity surrounds it. From the 1960’s to the present, there has been a strong current of magic realism within the general movement of post-modernism. These works are structured around multiple layers of reality. Like many modernist movements, however, magic realism rejects nineteenth-century positivism, the privileging of science and empiricism, returning instead to mythologies, folklore and mysticism. This in no way represents an abandonment of history; in fact, the representation of historical conflict is central to magic realist prose, and I would argue that in contemporary literature magic realism presents a way of restoring a historical dimension to post-modern texts. The disconcerting multiplicity of realities in magic realism emphasizes rather than denies the historical dimension of these narratives. The exploration of the quotidian in early magic realism increasingly gives way to the representation of conflict, which is often but not exclusively generated by a crisis of national/cultural identity resulting from the overlap of several layers of history and culture within a given geographic area. Queer Theory is a post-structuralist theory that emerged out of queer studies and women’s studies as a theory that I see as exploring the same ideas and issues as magical realism. Queer theory builds both upon feminist challenges to the idea that gender is part of the essential self and upon gay/lesbian studies’ closes examination of the socially constructed nature of sexual acts and <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16px;">identities <span class="apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16px;">. Whereas gay/lesbian studies focused its inquiries into "natural" and "unnatural" behavior with respect to homosexual behavior, queer theory expands its focus to encompass any kind of sexual activity or identity that falls into <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16px;">normative <span class="apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16px;">and <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16px;">deviant <span class="apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16px;"> categories.Queer theorist Michael Warner attempts to provide a definition of a concept that typically circumvents categorical definitions when he said, <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16px;">Social reflection carried out in such a manner tends to be creative, fragmentary, and defensive, and leaves us perpetually at a disadvantage. And it is easy to be misled by the utopian claims advanced in support of particular tactics. But the range and seriousness of the problems that are continually raised by queer practice indicate how much work remains to be done. Because the logic of the sexual order is so deeply embedded by now in an indescribably wide range of social institutions, and is embedded in the most standard accounts of the world, queer struggles aim not just at toleration or equal status but at challenging those institutions and accounts (1993). <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16px;">The dawning realization that themes of homophobia <span class="apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16px;">and <span class="apple-converted-space" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16px;"> ‘ <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16px;">heterosexism <span class="apple-style-span" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16px;">’ may be read in almost any document of our culture means that we are only beginning to have an idea of how widespread Queer Theory has become. <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16px;"> The texts that I am asking the students to read and engage with during this course will aim to look at the construction of these social institutions and how magical realism works to subvert, alter, and possibly work towards changing the social constructions. Both this theory and the genre of magical realism are concerned with the idea of identity and the influence of our history and society on these identities. Most of the texts explore other realities and magical elements that are not part of our ‘normal’ reality as a way to show other realities and other possible identities that are outside the ‘norm.’ For these reasons I think that using a wide variety of magic realist texts in a 121 classroom that are viewed with a Queer Theory lens would give students the opportunity to reach the goal I set forth in the paragraph above. I want my students to realize that they are allowed to question texts, and that we do not have to prescribe to a certain set list of novels included in the cannon in order to gain a deeper understanding of a theory and learning in general. <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16px;">As I have worked on and shaped this course a number of unexpected things happened. When I first started with the project, I knew I wanted to design a121 course influenced by Queer theory. Once I realized that this would indeed be feasible, I started looking at texts to use. I know that magic realism is not often used in conjunction with Queer Theory, but I do not know why not. Many of the texts are focused on the same issues, since magic realism is a genre that deals with people who are living in the same reality as ours, but either travel to another reality or feel as though they exist in another reality because of the isolation and possible stigma they feel as not part of the “norm” in our reality. Working with the definition of magic realism from Roger Holland that is in my course description, I realized that I now could include certain texts that I would have considered to fall into a Queer Theory category, but not necessarily a magic realist genre. Once I had this definition to work from, I found the connection between Queer Theory and magic realism to be much easier to make. It also opened up a wide variety of texts that I think will give the students the kind of experience in the classroom I am hoping for.