Fetishism

1. Discussion: Syllabus & Overview

Homework due by Wednesday 17 July, 12 noon: email top 3 choices for paper.

Reading for class 2: Karl Marx “The Fetishism of the Commodity and its Secret”

2. Discussion: Marx & the Commodity Fetish; paper topics assigned

Reading for class 3: Naomi Klein No Logo “Chapter 1” and/or Eric Schlosser Fast Food Nation “Introduction” (If you're feeling really ambitious, or if Fast Food Nation piques your interest, here's the longer, original Rolling Stone articles from which the entire book developed.)

link: No Logo video

3. Discussion: Commodity Fetishism: Contemporary Applications; bibliography guidelines

Reading for class 4: Sigmund Freud “Fetishism” and Laura Mulvey “Fetishisms”

4. Discussion: Freudian Fetish; outline/paper guidelines

Homework due by class 5: bibliography for final paper

Reading for class 5: Laura Mulvey “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”

5. Discussion: Scopophilia and Fragmentation

Homework due by class 6: outline for final paper

Reading for class 6: Richard Dyer “Don’t Look Now—The Male Pin-Up” or Steve Neale “Masculinity as Spectacle”

6. Discussion: Deconstructing Masculinity

Reading for class 7: Amy Bloom “Conservative Men in Conservative Dress” or Carl Elliott “A New Way to Be Mad” or Valerie Steele Fetish: Fashion, Sex, and Power "Chapter 7: Fashion, Fetish, Fantasy"

7. Discussion: Perversions

Homework due by class 8: final paper

Reading for class 8: 2-page synopsis of Edward Said Orientalism and Keith Windschuttle “Edward Said’s ‘Orientalism revisited’” or Kobena Mercer “Reading Racial Fetishism: The Photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe”