Illness in Literature and Film
195:271:01
M/Th, 9:50-11:10am
195 College Ave Seminar Room
Fall 2014
Disability, Race, and the Monstrous
Carolyn Ureña
carolyn.urena@rutgers.edu
Office Hours: Monday 12:30-1:30pm, and by appointment
“It’s time to face your fears.”
Catalog description
Comparative approaches to the portrayal of illness and disability, physical and/or mental, in fictional
and non-fictional literatures and film across different cultural traditions.
Course Learning Goals
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From Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein (1818) to David Cronenberg’s The Fly (1986) and beyond,
monsters have captured the imagination of readers and moviegoers for as long as we can
remember. Part of the attraction of monsters lies in the fact that they are strangely familiar
while remaining dangerously different, forcing us to ask how we draw the line between us
and them.
In this course we will be rethinking the monster through discourses of difference, including
illness, disability, and race to ponder the questions: What makes a monster? What does it
mean to be human?
We will begin by retracing the history of the freak show in American culture and explore the
ways that disability theorists have reframed the “freak” as indicative of mainstream society’s
discomfort with non-normative bodies.
Next, we will read monster narratives in literature and film from different world traditions
through the lens of disability—as it is represented in different cultures and histories--to
uncover new ways of understanding them. Finally, we will turn to narratives that align illness
and disability with race to consider how these identities complicate one another.
SAS Core Curriculum Learning Goals
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Examine critically philosophical and other theoretical issues concerning the nature of reality,
human experience, knowledge, value, and/or cultural production. [AHo]
Analyze arts and/or literatures in themselves and in relation to specific histories, values,
languages, cultures, and technologies. [AHp]
Respond effectively to editorial feedback from peers, instructors, and/or supervisors
through successive drafts and revision. [WCr]
Ureña 2
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Communicate effectively in modes appropriate to a discipline or area of inquiry.
[WCd-t]
Comparative Literature Program Learning Goals
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Students who major in Comparative Literature will demonstrate familiarity with a variety of
world literatures as well as methods of studying literature and culture across national and
linguistic boundaries and evaluate the nature, function and value of literature from a global
perspective. They will demonstrate critical reasoning and research skills; design and conduct
research in an individual field of concentration (such as literary or critical theory, women's
literature, postcolonial studies, literature and film, etc); analyze a specific body of research
and write a clear and well developed paper or project about a topic related to more than one
literary and cultural tradition. They will demonstrate competency in one foreign language and
at least a basic knowledge of the literature written in that language.
Assignments & Assessment
Participation
Close Reading Blog Reflections (5)
Oral Presentation Group Project
Peer Editing
Mid-Semester Paper (4-5 pages)
Final Paper (6-8 pages)
10%
20%
20%
10%
15%
25%
Required Texts
Ana Castillo, Peel My Love Like an Onion
Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, Of Love and Other Demons
Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis
Toni Morison, Beloved
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
Bram Stoker, Dracula
Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis
David Cronenberg, The Fly
Tod Browning, Freaks
Graff, Gerald, and Cathy Birkenstein. They Say/I Say: The Moves that Matter in Academic Writing. New
York: Norton, 2006. [ISBN: 978-0-393-93361-1]
Additional secondary sources on Disability Studies will be posted on Sakai by Rachel Adams, Susan
Antebi, Suzanne Bost, Ralph Ellison, Frantz Fanon, Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, and Harriet
McBryde Johnson.
Films will be available for viewing at the Rutgers Media Center on Douglass
Course Calendar
I.
Eye of the Beholder: Laying the Groundwork
Ureña 3
Week 1
Week 2
Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, selections from Extraordinary Bodies and
Staring (Sakai)
Episode of the Twilight Zone: “Eye of the Beholder”
“Introduction: Entering the Conversation” (TSIS 1-14)
“‘They Say’: Starting with What Others are Saying” (TSIS 19-28)
Harriet McBryde Johnson, selections from Too Late to Die Young (Sakai)
“‘So What? Who Cares?’: Saying Why It Matters” (TSIS 92-100);
“‘But Don’t Get Me Wrong’: The Art of Metacommentary” (TSIS 129-138)
Freaks (Browning)
selections from Dreger, One of Us (Sakai)
“‘As A Result’: Connecting the Parts” (TSIS 105-120)
Week 3
Ana Castillo, Peel My Love Like an Onion
selections from Bost, Encarnacion (Sakai)
“‘Her Point Is’: The Art of Summarizing” (TSIS 30-41)
Susan Antebi, selections from Carnal Inscriptions; Coney Island Narratives;
Possible Invited Guest: Susan Antebi, University of Toronto
“‘As He Himself Puts It’: The Art of Quoting” (TSIS 42-51),
“‘Yes/No/Okay, But’: Three Ways to Respond” (TSIS 55-67)
“‘Skeptics May Object’: Planting a Naysayer in Your Text” (TSIS 78-91)
Week 4
Draft Workshop: Peer-review or an original draft in groups of three students each
group.
Oral Presentations.
Week 5
Turn in to the instructor original draft with peer-reviewed markings, and revised
draft produced after the workshop.
Oral Presentations.
II.
Week 6
Dis-figured: Literary and Cinematic Monsters
Essay #1 returned to the students for further editing.
Shelley, Frankenstein; selections from Monster Theory
Frankenstein
Week 7
Ureña 4
Turn in final version of Essay #1.
Kafka, The Metamorphosis
The Fly; selected critical pieces (Sakai)
Optional: The Elephant Man
Week 8
Stoker, Dracula
Dracula
Week 9
Dracula
Dracula
III.
Week 10
Spooks: Invisible Others
Ellison, Prologue to Invisible Man (Sakai)
Fanon, Chapter V of Black Skin, White Masks, "The Lived Experience of the Black
Man" (Sakai)
Week 11
García-Márquez, Of Love and Other Demons
Of Love and Other Demons
Week 12
Of Love and Other Demons
Morrison, Beloved
selections from Adams, Sideshow U.S.A: Freaks and the American Cultural
Imagination (Sakai)
Week 13
Beloved
Beloved
Week 14
DRAFT WORKSHOP, Turn in to the instructor original draft of Essay #2 with
peer-reviewed markings (previously done online through sakai), and the revised draft
produced after the online workshop.
Ureña 5
DRAFT WORKSHOP, Essay #2 returned to the students for further editing.
Dec 10
Turn in final version Essay #2.