As Roger Shattuck suggests in Forbidden Knowledge, the seeking for forbidden knowledge tends to be about the history of curiosity. “Is curiosity the one human drive that should never be restricted?  Or does it embody the greatest threat to our survival as ourselves?” (7)  

This Inquiry explodes the differences among mythologies/religions and sciences/technologies by embracing what they share: the desire for forbidden knowledge.  A long time ago, Eve wanted an apple.  Recently, scientists in Texas wanted to clone a cat.  So far, every body has succeeded.  Knowledge might be forbidden because it is inaccessible or unobtainable.  It might be prohibited by divine, religious, moral, military, or secular authority.  Authority might sanction it as dangerous, destructive, or unwelcome.  But information wants to be free.  Can you handle forbidden knowledge?  Should you want to?  Should you fear to?  This course asks you to decide. Through stories, films, case studies, field research, art, science fiction, and original projects, we will amplify and elaborate on these arenas of inquiry with our own questions and ideas. 

The initial year of the university experience should expose you to new ways of seeing and exploring the world, and from this personal inquiry you should be prepared to choose a major field of concentration. In this course, we will approach the scared and profane of forbidden knowledge images and topics from a number of perspectives. Philosophy, including “natural philosophers,” or scientists, religion, history, and literature are strongholds for the inquiry of forbidden knowledge  Literary, anthropological, and cinematic theorists, for instance, might study the fin-de-siecle or appropriation of aesthetic transmutations in myths, novels, film, poetry or short stories. Does their approach differ from or complement how historians and artists would proceed? Will an environmental scientist apply chaos theory in the same way that a literary critic would? Professionals in the sciences and in the humanities in fact can help each other to understand the complexities of forbidden knowledge which deploys simultaneously scientific and fictional discourses and in doing so can gain an appreciation for other disciplines. Embarking on the Forbidden Knowledge inquiry will involve you in this journey of personal and professional discovery.

This spring we will focus on poetry, the implications of the pacifist anarchism, culture-  jamming, “oppositional consciousness,” chaos-complexity theory, and slipstream fiction especially steampunk literature, gothic fantasy, and cyberculture, or the New Weird. If we can truly say in the vein of Roland Barthes that we are now more “myth-reader” than “myth-consumer” then are we also “rogue fans” intent on culture-jamming as Pierre Bourdieu has referenced or are we at least, “active consumers” as John Fiske has suggested? As we head further into the 21^st century and contemplate the transformations in questioning what it means to be human or post-human or "more than human", this exploration of our own continuous re-shaping and metamorphosis provides a rich forum for an exchange of ideas about communitas, the potential for cyberracism, and the post considerations of cyberpunk. We will focus on transformations such as those between reality and constructed or artificial forms of reality, between fantasy and science fiction, between film noir and film disney, and, finally, between the fragmented postmodern identity and oppositional “postcolonial cyborgs” as Joseba Gabilando has suggested. In the politics of race and technology , the cyborg is not only a hybrid of machine and organism, it is also a racial hybrid. Like Gloria Anzaldua’s mestiza, the figure of a dark-haired woman of indeterminate race sitting at a computer keyboard in the cover art of Donna Haraway’s Simians, Cyborgs, and Women represents an avatar of ethnic and racial hybridity. What kind of wisdom traditions are we evolving, disregarding, re-evaluating, and heeding as we sort out the social and media constructions, not only of self but of nationhood and transnational identities? What do we reserve as sacred and not to be profaned, even as we continue to embrace very diverse perspectives?

GENERAL POLICY: Be sure to hand in all pre-writing, annotated notes on essays/stories, and rough drafts with your final draft for each essay. These, too, are part of your  work-in-progress. One grade point per class meeting missed will be deducted from each late assignment.

Requirements: Projects: Community-based Learning : 10 %; Electronic portfolio: 15%; Attendance and Participation in sessions (includes group workshops, discussions or in-class journals): 15%;  Film Essay (1) and Dialogue-Response Journals (4) : 25%; Midterm: 25%; Creative project which can be a video, e-zine, music compilation, etc. : 10%.

Community-based Learning: Note that you individually will document and reflect upon your 10-20 hours of community-based-learning that you engaged in over the past year and/or during this spring quarter and these individual responses will be collated in a community-based e-zine.  Be creative, have fun, and select an area that you are strongly an advocate for.

Dialogue Response Journals (4): In these two-three page typewritten journals, you will respond to assigned writing prompts relating to the readings and generally the topics noted in class: Specific (and possible) directions will be provided for you. These responses will aid you in reflecting on the partnered discussions or quick workshops at the beginning of sessions and in synthesizing critical theoretical material or in amplifying a new direction you were alerted to after pondering the material. In sorting out the meaning of each article or assigned reading or project suggested provide your own concrete cultural examples that are relevant to the areas noted for that particular session. Feel free to do "field work" if pertinent to the subject.  For example, why not head toward and become involved in a poetry beat if you are analyzing contemporary poetry?

Film Essay: You will complete a film essay that  incorporates scholarly film analysis of the film you selected based on the possible choices in the handout or on a selection OKed by your professor. See Schafermeyer and Stam handouts in packet for suggestions of film approaches to experiment with.

Creative project:   Here's your chance to imaginatively create a project that reflects perhaps quite closely the ideas of forbidden knowledge we are engaged in this quarter or have been over the past three quarters. You will take any of the forms of forbidden knowledge looked at this past year such as transnational imaginaries, and/or neoliberal globalization, imperialism, the carnivalesque, biogenetic engineering, transgenics, techno-orientalism, the figure of excess or the figure of abstinence, knowledge double-bound, pacifist anarchism, and culture-jamming and "interpret" it through its metamorphosis (which, according to Victor Vitanza, equals morphing which equals "a transformation, as by magic or sorcery") into any creative project whether a video, an E-Zine, a painting, a multi-media exploration, a series of poems, a (video-taped?) "ractive" or piece of performance art, a creative writing story, film script, or a musical compilation. With cyberculture on the horizon, feel free to redefine inventively what that creative project may actually involve.  Animated cartoons after experimenting with cyberware? You may work individually on this or form your own community for this project. These projects will be showcased in the final week!

Electronic Portfolio:  One end goal of the University Studies program is to produce a portfolio showcasing your activities and performances throughout your college career.  The portfolio should showcase your best work over time and across genres. We'll continue this portfolio here in the final quarter of freshman inquiry; it will include samples of your writing and miscellaneous creative or imaginative work along with reflections on how you produced the work and its significance to you. Continuing to follow the format given in class last quarter, you will revise and amplify the web page that encompasses the projects you have done so far in this year-long course and demonstrate your work in the final week of class.  Think of this as not only a potential re-write and re-visualization of works-in-progress for your final portfolio but also as an opportunity to set up a scholarly-oriented web page on-line.

ATTENDANCE: Because this class emphasizes group workshops and interactive discussions, absences are discouraged. Each absence after the first three lowers your grade one level. If you miss more than two weeks' worth of classes, you should consider dropping the course and retaking it when your schedule permits. If you arrive late or leave early, you may be counted absent for the day. Please notify Teresa and me if you must miss class for some reason. 

REQUIRED TEXTS: 1) Mieville, China. The Scar. New York: Del Rey, 2002. 2) Packet of readings available at Smart Copy (Pck.)  

Recommended texts: 1) Continue the Diana Hacker Handbook or use of any other convenient current handbook. 2) Bordwell, David and Thompson, Kristin. Film Art: An Introduction. New York: McGraw Hill, 2004.

 Optional Texts: Any continued novels by Mieville such as King Rat or his earlier novel on Bellis’s society, Perdito Street Station.  For a theoretical look at neo-tribalism, check out Michel Maffesoli’s The Time of Tribes: The Decline Of Individualism in Mass Society.  Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 1996. A recent, carefully researched cultural study on body modification is Victoria Pitt’s In the Flesh: The Cultural Politics of Body Modification. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. A excellent collection of  poetically cybernetic stories is Walter Mosley’s Futureland: Nine Stories of an Imminent World, 2001. And who can resist the newly available translation and edition of Cosmos Latinos: An Anthology of Science Fiction from Latin America and Spain?  The undulating poetic prose of  Sandra Cisneros’ Woman Hollering Creek and other stories along with her House on Mango Street (more often connected to cybernetic ideas) can prove to be irresistible as well.

COURSE SCHEDULE: The day-to-day schedule follows. Note that you should complete reading assignments by the day on which they are listed.

WEEK ONE: 

T 4/4   Introduction to course. 

R 4/6  Poetry.  From subversive blazons and overturning  canonical ‘dismemberments” to exploding barriers in science /art and the third space, the nonbinary of in between  to discordia concors to the cipher of “spiritual rhyme theory.” Maya Angelou to John Cage. Canadian indigenous tales and poetry.  Procedural poetry lines shared here. (Handouts from class session on T 4/4.)

 Mentor Session 1(T 4/4): Introduction.

Mentor Session 2 (R 4/6):  Poetry Contest: Ten Word Draw. Re-enacting the Surrealist communities, procedural poetry, and mesotics.

WEEK TWO:

T 4/11    Guest Lecturer:  Chris Ross. “Hidden Between the Panels: The Aura of Comics. 

R 4/13   Guest Lecturer:  Jack Straton. Forms of activist music. 

Mentor Session 1(T 4/11):    Bring your own lyrics accompanied by the music that have impacted you to class today. Discussion:  Can music and /or musical communities create genuine political changes?

Mentor Session 2 (R 4/13):  E-Portfolio and visual literacy.

WEEK THREE:

T 4/18   Ursula K. Le Guin, "The Good Trip,"  Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan,”  Keats' "La Belle dam sans merci,"  and Dreamwork Theory. (Pck.)  2-3 page dialogue journal response due; topic: poetry or music. 

R 4/20  Sandra Cisneros’ “Woman Hollering Creek” and “The Eyes of Zapata,” Daína Chaviano’s “The Annunciation,” and Gloria Anzaldúa’s “How to Tame A Wild Tongue.” (Pck.) Chela Sandoval’s “cyborg consciousness,”  “third world feminism,” and mestizaje. 

Mentor session 1 (4/18):  Mike “reading” of own poetry or selected poem/song lyric at café TBA or outside. (Weather permitting.) 

Mentor session 2 (4/20):  Bring in journaled dreams of the past two weeks for a dreamwork workshop.  

WEEK  FOUR:

T 4/25  Lisa Nakamura, “Where do you want to go today?” and Susan Bordo’s The Male Body referenced.  Corporate ads and racial identities.  Male body images including “the lean look” and “the face-off.”  Try to find a “destabilizing” ad on racial identities to bring to class today. 

R 4/27   Lao Tzu, uncarved blocks of wood, and other states of the sacred. 2-3 page dialogue journal response on Cisneros, Coleridge, Keats, or Le Guin due. 

Mentor Session 1( T 4/25): Sacred texts (and/or objects) and communities session.  Bring in a portion of your own sacred text (and/or object) from a community you identify with to share.

Mentor Session 2 (R 4/27):  E-Portfolio and visual literacy continued.

WEEK FIVE:

T 5/2  China Mieville’s The Scar. Have the entire novel read by today.

R  5/4  China Mieville’s The Scar. 

Mentor Session 1( T 5/2): Wisdom traditions continued.

Mentor Session 2( R 5/4): Creative Project brainstorming. 

WEEK SIX:

T 5/9 China Mieville’s The Scar.  Midterm handed out.  

R  5/11  Read Mark Dery’s “The Empire of Signs” available online at http://www.well.com:70/0/cyberpunk/cultjam.txt  and his recent culture jamming on his floating signifier blog, October 28, 2005: http://www.markdery.com/archives/blog/floating_signifier/index.htm1#000051  Culture jamming, internet activism, and adbusters.  Discuss experiences while collecting material for journals. Field research involved? 2-3 page dialogue journal response on counter-culture, alternative media formats, and activism  due.

Mentor Session 1(T 5/9): Creative Project. Music projects, video projects, and e-zine discussion. 

Mentor Session 2(R 5/11): CBL project frame-worked.

WEEK SEVEN:

T 5/16  Film Essay discussion.  See  Schaefermeyer ‘s “Film Criticism.” ( Pck.) Film clips such as Real Women Have Curves, Desperado, and Once Upon a Time in Mexico. 

R 5/18  Readings: Robert Stam’s “Film and the Postcolonial” and “The Poetics and Politics of Postmodernism.” (Pck.) Glance over Film Comment’s “Inside Out-Gavin Smith Goes One-on-One with David Fincher” and Henry A. Giroux and Imre Szeman’s “Ikea Boy Fights Back: Fight Club, Consumerism, and the Political Limits of the Nineties Cinema.” (Pck.) Film Analysis continued with film clips. Midterm due.

Mentor Session 1(T 5/16): Community-based learning reflections.

Mentor Session 2(R 5/18): Searching on-line for cinematic scholarship and film essays at library.

WEEK EIGHT:

T 5/23  Stallybrass and Allon White. “From Carnival to Transgression.” (Pck.) Humour encoded in horror. Film clips in class. CBL reflections are due today. 

R 5/25  Antonia Bird’s Ravenous(2000), Christopher Gans’ Brotherhood of the Wolf (2002), Grant Harvey’s Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning (2004),and  Andrew Raj Berzins and Norma Bailey’s Cowboy and Indians:  The J.J. Harper Story  (2003).  Reading (re-reading): Robert Stam’s “The Poetics of the Postmodern.” (Pck.)  Postmodernism, anti-western traditions, neo-globalization, and the windigo spirit.  Intimate intersections and forbidden frontiers.  

Mentor Session 1(T 5/23):     Creative Project workshop. 

Mentor Session 2(R 5/25):    Field Trip to Art Gallery. (This will prepare you for your observations for dialogue journal 4.)

WEEK NINE:

T 5/30  Comedy gone awry! Unsettling the queer, postcolonial mayhem, and the “overgoing” of both high and low culture. Margaret Cho. Eddie Izzard. Dave Chapelle.  2-3 dialogue journal response on art gallery due today. 

R 6/1  Guest Lecturer: Beth Dillon on “Franchisements, Reifications, and Interactive Art and Technology in Video Games.”  Film Essay due. 

Mentor Session 1(T 5/30): Work on portfolio reflections.

Mentor Session 2(R 6/1):  E-portfolio finalizations. Any bugs left?

WEEK  TEN:

T 6/6   E-Zine, Web Page, Music Project, or Video Project showcasing.     

R 6/8  E-Zine, Web Page, Music Project, or Video Project showcasing continued. E-Zine Community-Based Learning showcased. 

Mentor Session 1(T 6/6):  Final collations on E-Zine Community Based Learning.

Mentor Session 2: (R 6/8)  Plan beach party.  That's a wrap!

Final Exam Schedule:  Monday, June 2, 10:15 a.m.-12:05 p.m.  Portfolio due by 5 p.m. that day. Beach party on Friday, June 16.