ENGL 8520 Seminar in Cultural Theory and Practice: American Places/Modern Times
Professor Jani Scandura will teach this course on Thursdays from 2:30-5:00 p.m. during the Fall 2017 semester. This
interdisciplinary seminar will explore current thinking about place and
space, with a particular focus on American places as portrayed in
fiction, poetry, film, and art. We will consider both “America” and
“place” in a broad sense, exploring and exploding understandings of
American place as geographical site, imagined community, idea, ideal,
style and aesthetic. The class is organized around the “modern” American
places depicted in Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times: the factory, asylum, crowd, the prison, home, department store, and cabaret. Readings and films that span the 19thto 21st centuries,
from Poe’s crowds to the prisons in Guantanamo Bay. Works by: Charlie
Chaplin, Antonio Gramsci, Nelly Bly, Michel Foucault, Edgar Allan Poe,
Miné Okubo, George Cukor, Al Jolson, David and Albert Maysles, Michael
Rogin, Jasmine Alinder, Lisa Guenther, Toyo Miyatake, Scott Herring, and others.
