COURSE 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], forensic police 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 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 (which will be a group report about a kind of online fan fiction); class attendance.
STUDENT LEARNING OUTCOMES
By the end of the course, students should be able to (a) define the difference between serialized popular fiction and popular fiction in a series; (b) discuss the typical characteristics of both serialized popular fiction and popular fiction in a series; (c) discuss the differences among popular fiction in a series written for different audiences; (d) discuss the differences among the various different genres of popular fiction in a series, including fan fiction; and (e) produce a well-researched substantial essay on an aspect of either serialized popular fiction or popular fiction in a series.
TEXTS
Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers (in twenty 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)