Vijay Course Contract

Student Name: Vijay Sachdev                                  Course: ENGL-361-01

Instructor Name: Sheila Lloyd                                 Semester: Fall 2013

Advisor Name: Leela MadhavaRau                           Unit Value: 4

Course Description:

         What are the implications of our being affected by others (i.e., to be acted upon), and what are the implications of our capacity to affect others (i.e., to act)? These are two of the primary questions that in the last two decades or so literary critics have taken up.  In their studies of affect and emotions0 that is, of such states as depression, envy, optimism, grief, and anxiety—critics have pursued some of the connections linking aesthetics to politics and to circuits and systems of social attachment and belonging.

         Whether foregrounding the individualized or collectivized body as flow, system, and/or machine or capturing the “felt” of human life, critics have drawn attention to the omnipresence of affect and have contended with the notion that there has been a “waning of affect” (as Frederic Jameson argues about postmodernism) in contemporary culture.

         This course proposes an examination of what affect and affect theory are, a determination of the antecedents scholars drawn on when studying affect, an exploration of why affect has been such a compelling area of study in recent years, and an understanding of what affective studies helps critics to say about literature and art.

Course Contract:

            The question I hope to address throughout this course asks how theories like affect gain momentum in academia. I will gain a lot from reading required course material written by prominent figures in the field. In addition, I will bring in outside readings to be applied to affect. This will help me evaluate what I can explore in affect in relation to music, political economy, and radical egalitarian politics.

            I see anarchism as my thread for the course, incorporating punk movements, hip hop, and politics on the line. Thus, I hope to explore how anarchism can find its spirit within Affect Theory. This may be the topic I choose to address in my larger research paper for the course.

            This is the list of proposed literature I will bring into the course that will serve me in my research: Aberrations In Black by Roderick Ferguson, Anarchism and the Black Revolution, Capitalist Realism: Is There no Alternative? by Mark Fisher, From Black Power to Hip Hop by Patricia Hill Collins, and Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain.

            The direction of my final research will become solidified as I become more exposed to the literature in Affect Theory. Thus, I will complete all required course literature in addition to my proposed list of books while actively participating in classroom discussion.

            In place of the first paper and class presentation, I will attend a punk show at the Blood-Orange Infoshop in Riverside on 10/18.  I will use still photography as a medium to capture a story about punk in the Inland Empire.  Because this show will happen well after the date for submission of the first paper, I will create a balance by submitting my research proposal on 10/09.  I will turn in my artist statement on 10/24. Instead of doing one of the proposed presentations on affect, I will present my photographs during the twelfth week of the semester, applying punk to Affect.

          As the direction of this course will be metamorphic, this contract will remain open for negotiation throughout the semester.