COM 617: Lenguaje del Video Juego

COM 617 es un curso teórico que introduce a los alumnos al videojuego como objeto cultural, estudiando su evolución desde sus albores hasta el día de hoy. El programa está dividido en seis grandes unidades temáticas a lo largo del semestre: antecedentes históricos del videojuego en occidente; acercamientos teóricos y culturales al videojuego; videojuegos en Asia, Esports, salud, e investigación-creación de videojuegos. Los contenidos reflejan una selección comparatista y global que abarca el videojuego en Asia, Norteamérica y Latinoamérica. A su vez, se incluye una revisión amplia de perspectivas teóricas o críticas sobre el consumo o el disfrute de los videojuegos, integrado el pensamiento humanístico (como estudios literarios o estudios de género) y el pensamiento científico (como estudios de psicología, comunicaciones, o ciencias de la salud.) Los ejercicios, tareas y evaluaciones propician el desarrollo de habilidades de comunicación avanzadas y pensamiento crítico, aplicándolas tanto al análisis cultural de los videojuegos como la creación de éstos.

Class size: 25 students

CMLIT 10: Introduction to World Literature

What is world literature, and what do we gain by studying it? Will reading such literature make us better global citizens and more compassionate people, as some have argued? How do we grapple with what one scholar has called the “unimaginable largeness” of a corpus spanning cultures, languages, eras, and geographic regions? Finally, and not least importantly, what are the stakes of these questions in the hyper-connected—and yet often seemingly discordant—world we inhabit today? Over the coming weeks, we will use these inquiries to frame our discussions, as we read and analyze some of the masterpieces of the global literary canon. Along the way, as we travel from imperial China to the pre-Columbian highlands of Latin America, from the Mesopotamian Fertile Crescent to a battlefield in northern India, we will examine how works of non-Western literature unsettle “familiar” definitions of genre, plot, and character; identify stylistic, thematic, and narrative similarities, as well as points of divergence, among the texts we encounter; and reflect thoughtfully on our own positions as readers, critics, and human beings in a heterogeneous and complex world literary space. Assignments will include short critical essays, daily reading quizzes, and two exams.

Class size: 100 students

CMLIT 415 Girls’ Comics Cultures

This course is a survey of comics made for and by women in regions where comics industries have flourished and maintained sufficient commercial activity to make room for girls’ comics cultures. We will look at the commercial conditions that fostered these cultures, and at the sociopolitical factors that promoted them, regulated them, and sometimes dismantled them. Girls’ comics cultures here means comics created by women, for women readerships, and that share aesthetic, thematic, and communal correspondences as cultural phenomena of their respective time period and region. To begin, this course will situate girls’ comics cultures within the field of comics studies. Next, the course will concentrate on primary texts from a variety of regions and time periods. Secondary texts include elementary comics theory, psychoanalysis and gender theory, queer readings of mainstream comics, commentary on the field of comics studies, and affective labor theory.

ENGL 136 The Graphic Novel

This course will begin by looking at graphic narratives of different lengths in order to examine the formal characteristics of sequential art. Then, we will read important works that have come to be signaled as part of the “canon” of the Graphic Novel, and discuss the importance or necessity of establishing a canon at all. We will end the course by looking at current trends that have diversified the landscape of graphic narratives in the twenty first century. This way, the course will provide you with a formal/technical language to talk about graphic narratives, and will prepare you to discuss these texts critically. Please notice that the great majority of the texts in this class have been originally published in the English language, and are representative of the North American tradition of comics. Other regions of the world have graphic narrative traditions that precede or enrich what we will be studying (i.e., bandes desinées, manga, etc). If you are interested in them, you may approach me during the semester and I can direct you towards resources or other courses that will help you study them.

Class size: 25 students