Below is a tentative course schedule with reading and writing assignments. You should read the sections of the text listed in the schedule and complete any written assignments before the associated class meeting.

Guiding Questions:

• How does Star Wars, explicitly or allegorically, represent various aspects of Otherness?
• What does Star Wars reveal about our attitudes toward the supernatural?
• What person(s) or groups does Star Wars identify as “other” or stranger? How are such persons/groups described and treated?
• What does Star Wars reveal about the politics and/or psychology of terror?
• How does Star Wars respond to or comment upon its own characters, themes, or assumptions?
• How does Star Wars, a piece of media in the Western pop-culture canon, reinforce or undermine the Gothic through its representation of oppression and tyranny?
• What are the implications of removing Star Wars from its original cultural and theatrical contexts in order to view it through a Gothic lens?

Tue. 9/3 “You must unlearn what you have learned” (Yoda, The Empire Strikes Back).

Small group rhetorical analysis of Star Wars propaganda posters. While images certainly contain information, they are not primarily conveyers of this inert information. Rather, images are rhetorically purposeful messages aimed at effecting some change in the reader’s view of the subject. As readers become more aware that images are trying to change their views in some way, we can interrogate them more actively, trying to decide what to accept and what to doubt. What do we learn about the Empire or the Rebellion from reading their propaganda posters?

Thurs. 9/5 Fred Botting, “Negative Aesthetics,” Gothic, Second Edition. Routledge, 2014.

DUE: Marginalia

The goal of this assignment is to carry on a dialogue with Fred Botting in the margins. Use the margins to summarize the text, ask questions, give assent, protest vehemently––don’t just color the pages with a highlighter. Every time you highlight something, write out in the margins why you wanted to underline it. Why is that passage important? Is it a major new point in the argument? A significant piece of support? A summary or the opposition? A particularly strong or particularly weak point?