Course Description

This course examines issues related to authorship and appropriation in visual and literary culture, such as the historical development of notions of the author/artist, copyright and plagiarism, the use of quotation, parody and intertextuality, the role of found objects, collage and montage, and the significance of digital technologies.  We will examine both historical and contemporary examples from a wide range of media.

Learning Objectives & Outcomes

Students who work hard can expect to finish this course with a good understanding of the major issues in relation to representation and appropriation in art and visual and literary culture.  Students will have built a vocabulary for discussing and analyzing these issues, and will be able to recognize and critically evaluate nuances of appropriation in modern and contemporary art, literature and visual culture.  In addition, students will continue to develop the critical, methodological and research skills necessary for the study of images, texts, ideas and their history.  This is a writing intensive course, which will allow students to develop writing and thinking skills useful in university education and in general.  Students will also learn to work co-operatively.

Required Texts

1) Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis and Other Stories, translated by Joyce Crick, Oxford UP, 2009. (available in the Bookstore)

2) Franz Kafka and Coleridge Cook, The Meowmorphosis, Quirk Classics, 2011. (available in the Bookstore)

Other readings: Most readings will be available in the Gibson Library on reserve or as links on the course blog. Please note that each week you must print the article, read it and bring it to class with your notes.  We will be performing close readings with the full text in class.

Resources

I am available to answer your questions or concerns about any aspect of this course during my office hours.  If you need advice about assignments, or ever feel that you are falling behind, please come and talk to me.  I am here to help.

The Student Development Centre has many important services, including Services for Students with Disabilities and a Learning Skills office that offers free help with essay writing, note taking, etc.   Take a look at their website: http://www.brocku.ca/sdc/index.php.  If you are registered with Services for Students with Disabilities and need accommodations, let me know by January 25 so that I might accommodate your needs.

DISCLAIMER: SENSITIVE MATERIAL

In this course content that contains sexually referenced or explicit material or that may offend personal sensitivities and beliefs may arise out of readings, discussion or viewing of visual materials.  By remaining in the course, a student is giving his or her informed consent to such materials.  Certainly students should feel free to absent themselves without penalty if content comes up to which they strongly object.  Please see me about any such issues. 

 

Reading Schedule

Please note, that you must complete the readings before class on the date they are listed.  This schedule is subject (and likely) to change.  Any changes will be announced in class and posted on the blog a week in advance.

1. January 11              Introduction: Why Appropriation?

2. January 18              Copyright Law

  •  Familiarize yourself with Canadian copyright law and with the issues facing artists, musicians and the general public by reading some of the links under “copyright” on our blog. http://authorshipandappropriation.wordpress.com
  • Read as many of the links as you can (at least 25-50 pages of text).  Take notes and keep track of what information came from where.  What are the main issues?  What different points of view can you find?  Has copyright law changed over time?
  • Think about the issues raised by copyright and come to class ready to discuss them.  Whose rights are more important?  Authors?  Or readers?  How often do you break copyright law? When and where?  Do you feel differently about breaking the law now than before you read this information?

 January 19 — 7pm — Kent Monkman opening and artist’s talk at Rodman Hall: http://www.brocku.ca/rodman-hall/exhibitions/future

Look at Monkman’s work here: http://kentmonkman.com/main.php

Monkman uses appropriation in his work in a clever, thoughtful and engaging way.  Please attend.

3. January 25              What is an Author?  What is an Artist?

  • reading: Michel Foucault, “What is an Author?,” in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews (Ithaca, N.Y. : Cornell University Press, 1977).
  • reading: Roland Barthes, “The Death of the Author,” in Image, Music, Text (Glasgow: Fontana Collins, 1977.  On reserve

4.  February 1             Authenticity & Ownership

  • reading: Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” available online at http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm
  • possible screening: Orson Welles, F is for Fake

5.  February 8             Appropriation as Revolution I: The Avant-garde in the 1920s and 1930s

  • reading:
  • essay proposal due

 6. February 15                        Appropriation as Revolution II: The Situationists and Détournement

  • reading: “Definitions,” Internationale Situationniste 1 (1958), online at http://library.nothingness.org/articles/SI/en/display/7
  • reading: “Manifesto,” Internationale Situationniste 4 (1960), online at http://library.nothingness.org/articles/SI/en/display/9
  • reading: Guy Debord, “Methods of Détournement,” Les levres nus 8 (May 1956), available online at http://library.nothingness.org/articles/SI/en/display/3
  • reading: “Détournement as Negation and Prelude,” Internationale Situationniste 3 (1959), available online at http://library.nothingness.org/articles/SI/en/display/315
  • Screening: part of Guy Debord, Can the Dialectic Break Bricks?
  • response #1 due

FEBRUARY 22 NO CLASS – READING WEEK

 7. February 29                        Text, Literature, Language & Art

  •  reading: William S. Burroughs, “Les Voleurs,” in The Adding Machine: Selected Essays (New York: Arcade Publishing, 1985), 19-21.  Photocopy on reserve.
  • reading: William S Burroughs, Selections from Naked Lunch, photocopy on reserve.
  • look at Jenny Holzer’s truisms: http://mfx.dasburo.com/art/truisms.html and http://www.guggenheimcollection.org/site/artist_work_lg_65_1s.html and http://twitter.com/jennyholzer

8. March 7                   Poetry and Appropriation

  • reading: selections from M. NourbeSe Philip, Zong! (Toronto: The Mercury Press, 2008).  On reserve.
  • Selections from Gregory Betts, The Others Raisd in Me (Toronto: Pedlar Press, 2009). On reserve.

9. March 14                Appropriation and 80s Art

  • readings TBA
  • peer review – draft due

 

10. March 21               Cultural Appropriation

  • reading: Oswalde de Andrade, The Cannibal Manifesto, 1928, available online at http://feastofhateandfear.com/archives/andrade.html
  • other readings TBA
  • response #2 due

11.  March 28              Mash-Ups

  • Franz Kafka, “The Metamorphosis.”
  • Franz Kafka and Coleridge Cook, The Meowmorphosis, Quirk Classics, 2011.

12. April 4                    Final Class

  • this class will be student-driven – we will read what students want to read, cover topics of student interest; readings will be determined by March 24
  • final essay due