AUTUMN 2020
CHID 250: “Monsters” on/off Screen: Horror Genre and Beyond (Chang)
This course examines the development of the horror genre across contemporary cinematic landscapes—narrative film, serial, documentary, and art cinema. As Robin Wood notes, “Central to the effect and fascination of horror films is their fulfilment of our nightmare wish to smash the norms that oppress us and which our moral conditioning teaches us to revere” (Jancovich 2002: 28), our mapping of the horror genre will focus specifically on its connections to shifts in social-cultural phenomenon associated with the complex interactions and negotiations between different waves of human occupation and their environment. In addition to exploring how horror films and their monsters reflect and traverse the different social-cultural and geopolitical boundaries with their charm that has long sparked popular imagination and fascination, we will trace the spectacle embodied by these monsters particularly with a feminist approach as a way of considering the cinematic representations of the monsters in terms of social hierarchy, aesthetic form, and ideology. Students will be encouraged to participate in opportunities with the Northwest Film Forum, SAM’s annual film noir series, and MoPOP’s horror cinema screenings, “Scared to Death: The Thrill of Horror Film.”
CHID 480: Ethnographies of Fear & Terror: Monsters, Urban Legends, and Contemporary Myths in
the Pacific Northwest (Salazar-Zeledón)
Bigfoot = I believe. Monsters could be related to terror, identity, or jokes. Urban legends could be part of a policy of fear, but also of a sense of belonging and understanding of cultural codes. Contemporary Myths can be silly or naïve, but they also explain our societal interactions. A careful study of this body of “anecdotes” is particularly illuminating considering how the narratives surrounding them are more than often shaped, if not oppressed or repressed, by the dominant historiography’s attempt to gloss over the economic and socio-cultural changes of a society. With a particular focus on the Pacific Northwest, this course will study the development and transformation of the concept of fear and terror in contemporary society, using elements of monstrosity, urban legends, and contemporary myths. Through the practice of historically reconstructing moments of fear and terror in the 20th and 21st centuries in the forms of theatre, television, literature, radio-dramas, and podcasts, students will engage with how contemporary societies create an “ethos of the scary.” Students will be encouraged to participate in opportunities with the MoPOP exhibitions and events such as “Fantasy: Worlds of Myth and Magic,” Annex Theatre, Valtesse, and other alternative performances.
WINTER 2021
CHID 250: Processes of Everyday Resilience: Decoding and Recoding Cultural Languages in Foods and Eating-related Events (Salazar-Zeledón)
What messages and meanings does food create and acquire with culture? What are the feelings, emotions, and meanings that foods and other eating-related events embody? This course will develop an understanding of our foods and the dynamic messages that we as a society interchange in the events and performances related to culinary traditions through the lens of cultural studies and ethnography. Taking the City of Seattle and its inhabitants as fields of research, we will develop a practical analysis of cultural events such as Thanksgiving, Ramadan, Dia de los Muertos, and Christmas, as well as performances of belonging related to ethnic food, food and diaspora, American nostalgia (dinners and 1950’s cafés), and the food trucks phenomena in relation to the Street Culture. These inquiries, with an emphasis on the diverse practices and forms of “fusion” associated with the marketing of food and the (re)shaping of identities and communities, will enable us to unpack the interlocking structures of power intertwined with these processes and to further consider how foods reproduce social relations and perform resilience in everyday practices.
CHID 480: Diasporic (Re-)envisioning of Social Movements: Multisensory Encounter and Multimodal Research (Chang)
This course provides a critical overview of how the idea of diaspora has been (re)shaped through different understandings of the notions of roots, routes, and returns, with an emphasis on how such mobility
(re)shapes the ways we participate in and (re-)envision, from a distance and often through the mode of virtual encounter, social movements that explore personal and collective identities, rebel against social injustices, and ignite social and political transformation. This course also introduces students to the emerging scholarly form of multimodal research to further engage the course projects in unpacking and participating in the interlocking webs of mobility, connectivity, and communication at moments of encounter. With an emphasis on the positionalities emerged particularly from the UW campus, the City of Seattle, and the Pacific Northwest, students will build a theoretical toolkit for critically engaging creative forms of both cultural and scholarly production and for communicating about the debates surrounding the notion of diaspora and the diasporic mode of participation in social movements using diverse media and presentational strategies.
SPRING 2021
CHID 250 Embodied Modes of Research: From Cityscape to Cityscaping (Co-taught by Salazar-Zeledón & Chang)
This seminar understands City as a living entity with the cityscape as embodied modes of habitation and encounter in which ongoing processes of acting in and with the city take place and through which feelings and desires emerge. We will examine issues concerning the publics and counterpublics through the methodologies of auto-ethnography, psycho-geography, performance analysis, and critical perspectives, as ways to develop a system to analyze City as a whole. The City of Seattle becomes a laboratory where the seminar participants explore themes such as racial and religious geographies, new frontiers on the public sphere in the 21st century, City as the contemporary commons, and city landmarks and emotional links. By focusing on processes of encounter and mediation, we also seek to redefine City with a specific approach.