PRIOR SEMESTER MALAS COURSES

Spring 2010 MALAS Courses

MALAS 600 D Monday nights from 7 to 9:40pm
HIP HOP AESTHETICS: MUSIC, CULTURES, SPIRIT, MIND
...with the one and only ROY WHITAKER running the show...

Hip-Hop is one of the most important and misunderstood cultural expressions of the past 40 years. For instance, this movement has been widely appropriated by urban and suburban youth; however, it’s been viewed as a pseudo-art form with little relevance for academic reflection. This course examines this core problem and many other criticisms leveled against Hip-Hop – e.g. use of the N-word, homophobia, misogyny, materialism, and hedonism. To be sure, Hip-Hop is a panoply of sorted issues that concerns critical thinkers in post-modernity like democracy, empire, capitalism, feminism, hegemony, and internationalism. Topics covered in this class will include: commercialization of Hip-Hop; Hip-Hop movies; Hip-Hop and women; rap, politics, and resistance; Hip-Hop Chicano/a; global dimensions of Hip-Hop; Hip-Hop as mediated narrative; Hip-Hop and graffiti; just to name a few.The course’s title – “Hip-Hop Aesthetics” – indicates the larger concern that frames the class discourse: the nature of artistic expression in an inhumane world. “Hip-Hop Aesthetics” pushes the boundary of what is considered “great works” and what is not. Furthermore, since Hip-Hop is a global phenomenon, this class utilizes and encourages a multidisciplinary approach to this subject matter – e.g. sociology, politics, economics, communications theory, American studies, musicology, cultural studies, and film studies.

Spring 2010 MALAS-approved courses (in other departments)

ENGL 563.2 
Drugs, Sex, Rock & Roll

with MALAS Director, Bill Nericcio, in Hepner Hall 210, aka 'the HOUSE of Love' from 9:30am to 10:45 Tuesdays and Thursdays

New seminar investigating the life & work of Shel Silverstein offered this Spring, 2010: ENGL 528. Perfect for MALAS students, this course engages Silverstein's diverse artistic output: his short plays, screen writing, comic strips, cartoons, picture books, poetry, music, fiction, travel writing (for Playboy magazine, no less), & of course, his lifetime project of living the life of the unrepentant, iconoclastic wag, Shel Silverstein.  The professor, SDSU English professor Joseph Thomas, author of the award-winning book Poetry's Playground: The Culture of Contemporary American Children's Poetry, is currently working on a book-length study of Silverstein, tentatively titled The Devil's Favorite Pet: Shel Silverstein, American Iconoclast. Join him in investgating one of the U.S's most inventive & popular artistic & literary figures.

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GEOG 575
GEOGRAPHY OF
RECREATIONAL LAND USE
with Professor Diana Gauss Richardson

                                                 

Geography of Recreational Land Use examines the importance of location and environment in the use, management, and quality of recreation areas.  The significance of recreation in the human psyche is reviewed through a historical context and carried through to current trends.  Socioeconomic variations among regions and populations are considered in the analysis of established and proposed recreational land uses.  Land use policies and political influences are included in the examination of the establishment of areas set aside or used for recreation.  Field trips are required, and consist of local (San Diego) trips to city/county/regional, state and federal recreational areas, as well as a 4-day trip to Yosemite National Park.

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ENGL 549.1 from 11:00am to 1215 TTh
Dystopias and Utopias: From the Erotic
Electric to the Anarchy of Technology
with MALAS Director, Bill Nericcio, in Hepner Hall 222, aka 'The Mad Lab'

Intoxicatingly disturbing and visionary novels!  Mesmerizingly evocative cinema! That's what's on the menu in this peculiar seminar where, among other things, we will explore the notion of a perfect society: a Utopia. Good old Webster's reassures us with its notion of the term: "Utopia n. [NL., fr. Gr. utopia not + a place.] 1. An imaginary island, represented by Sir Thomas More, in Utopia, enjoying the greatest perfection in politics, laws, and the like; hence, any place or state of ideal perfection." But literary history and world cinema is awash in what may be thought of as Utopia's "other"--books and films, that is, bearing the distinct aroma of Utopia's nemesis: Dystopia. From January to May 2010, we will hang out in both Utopias and Dystopias.

The tentative list of texts include Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, Daniel Clowes's Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron, George Orwell's 1984, Terry Gilliam's Brazil, Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men, Phillip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, and Orson Welles's  Touch of Evil--we will also delve into my own deathless prose tome Tex[t]-Mex in the last part of the semester as we turn to the verge, the US/MEXICO, that MOST dystopic of geocultural enigmas, rich in tradition, conflict, etc. The class is open to all MALAS and English/ Comparative Literature students, but all other interested parties from history, philosophy, political science and the like are welcome to tag along as well.

ENGL 700: 
Seminar: Virginia Woolf
with Professor Bonnie Kime Scott on Mondays 3:30-6:10, CSQ 208
Contact: bkscott@mail.sdsu.edu