DELIVERY FORMAT – In person (SAKAM C203)
OVERVIEW
This heavy-on-the-reading course will survey the voluminous (but mainly 20th-century and contemporary) literature that has been written in serial form or as a series, emphasis on the latter. For serialized literature, we will Dickens’s first novel and then a science-fiction novel originally serialized in a science-fiction magazine. For books in a series, we will focus both on series that I have read (and continue to read) and also on series for different kinds of readers: juvenile (Tom Swift and Nancy Drew), middle school (Rick Riordan), slightly older children (Harry Potter), young adult (The Hunger Games), and adults (novels in these different genres [series titles in square brackets]: nautical [Horatio Hornblower], mystery [Spenser], futuristic romance [Eve Dallas], procedural [Kay Scarpetta], fantasy [Pern], science fiction [Vorkosigan Saga]; “nautical fantasy” [Temeraire]; and online fan fiction [chosen by groups of students]).
COURSE REQUIREMENTS
Regular e-letters to the class posted on Laulima; a portfolio of selected e-letters + a retrospective essay on all e-letters written; a written report on an academic treatment of popular literature; a written and oral report on a favorite series not on the reading list for this class; a group report about a kind of online fan fiction; a prospectus and an annotated bibliography for the project; a long independent research project (which may be a creative piece + a critical afterword); a peer review of a classmate’s independent research project; final exam; class attendance.
TEXTS
Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers (in twenry parts, March 1836-October 1837)
Robert Heinlein, Have Spacesuit – Will Travel (in three parts, August-October, 1958)
Carolyn Keene, The Secret of the Old Clock (1930)
Victor Appleton II, Tom Swift and His Flying Lab (1954)
C. S. Forster, Mr. Midshipman Hornblower (1950)
Anne McCaffrey, Dragonflight (1968)
Robert B. Parker, The Godwulf Manuscript (1973)
Lois McMaster Bujold, The Warrior’s Apprentice (1986)
Patricia Cornwell, Postmortem (1990)
J. D. Robb, Naked in Death (1995)
J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (1997)
Rick Riordan, The Lightning Thief (2005)
Naomi Novik, His Majesty’s Dragon (2006)
Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (2008)