Fantasy, Fandom and Fans
Warburton, Jaime

ICSM 11800 - 1
CRN: 21882
ICSM-WHNR: Fantasy Fandom Fans
MWF 11:00 AM - 11:50 AM, W 12:00 PM - 12:50 PM

In this class, we’ll explore and blog the texts that surround us, inspire us, and invite us to imagine our world more fully, such as Harry Potter, Star Wars, and Star Trek; cultural markers that develop around love of sports and music; the cultural hierarchy of fandom based on religion, sports, and sci-fi/fantasy; technological, fiscal, and legal concerns; elements of participatory culture, specifically fan fiction; and the impact of fan-based communities, both online and IRL (in real life). Students will be expected to engage in analysis of such texts in a scholarly fashion led by Henry Jenkins’ definition of the “aca/fan,” a “hybrid creature which is part fan and part academic.” We’ll emphasize written forays into fandom along with writing in response to “original” texts as we explore what drives us to imagine ourselves in universes/lives other than our own, and define the ways fandom binds together disparate parts of our lives. Research projects can also include created fan film/art/writing. This course is available only to those students accepted onto the Honors Program. This course fulfills the ICC ‘Academic Writing’ competency requirement.

Gothic: Hidden & Grotesque
Reed, Alex

ICSM 11000 - 2
CRN: 22807
ICSM-HNR: Gothic: Grotesque
MWF 3:00 PM - 3:50 PM, W 12:00 PM - 12:50 PM

This interdisciplinary course concerns the aesthetic of the gothic across media and throughout history, blending elements of media studies, philosophy, creative artistry, and sociology. From the Romantic symphony to Lana Del Rey, from Oscar Wilde to horror film, why do visual, literary, and musical media so return to the ideas of the hidden and the grotesque with such fascination and consistency? Students in this class will create works and engage with a wide range of both famous and lesser-known texts in pursuit of a variety of questions: How do music, art, and words create mood? Why do we like to be scared? Why do we sometimes conflate “dark” with “deep”? What do vampires have to do with our modern day-to-day lives, values, and politics? And what is behind that door? This course is available only to those students accepted onto the Honors Program.

The Gun: Violence and the Common Good in the United States
Holmes, Chris

ICSM 11000 - 4
CRN: 22805
ICSM-HNR: Gun Violence A Study
TR 9:25 AM - 10:40 AM, W 12:00 PM - 12:50 PM

ICSM 11000 - 5
CRN: 22190
ICSM-HNR: Gun Violence A Study
TR 1:10 PM - 2:25 PM, W 12:00 PM - 12:50 PM

Is there any single American object more demanding of our attention than the gun? Whether we ever hold one or experience the violence they perpetrate, the gun fundamentally affects the ways in which we understand our rights and liberties, privacy and community, and the very sovereignty of the body. In this class we will examine guns and gun violence through a nexus of academic interventions. These will include the law, medicine/public health, media and culture, and history and politics. The aim of this class, while not polemical will not be even-handed in its treatment of the gun. Nor should it be. We begin with the understanding that the cultural history of the gun is inseparable from development of weapons designed to kill people with increasing lethality. The American obsession with firearms too often seeks to eclipse this fact, but our exploration will always return to the cost in lives of the proliferation of guns. The historical and cultural sensitivity of this course will give us the opportunity to ask a fundamental question: what is the relationship between the gun and the common good? This course is available only to those students accepted onto the Honors Program.