2:30-3:45P  MW	BH319

This section meets with HON H226

In Lois Gould's short novel, A Sea Change, the main character transforms
herself into a version of the man who attacked her.

In John Varley's novella, the Persistence of Vision, a main character
disables her own sense of sight in order to join the in-group of her
society.

Mythic heroes turn into starry inhabitants of the night sky and
contemporary storytellers show up in Sheherazade's bedroom in John
Bartha's Chimera.

In William Golding's The Inheritors, the evolutionary morph from
Neanderthal to Cro-Magnon produces terror and suspense.

In Ursula LeGuin's the Left hand of Darkness, a major character shifts
gender on a monthly basis.

Geological and geographical rifts inform James Blish's Cities in Flight,
where whole communities rocket into space.

Robert Coover transforms Richard Nixon into a star quarterback in his
story Whatever Happened to Gloomy Gus of the Chicago Bears?

A golem and a cyborg play major roles in Marge Piercy's He, She, and It.

In Kafka's Metamorphosis, the main character awakens one morning to find
himself turned into a bug.

What's going on here? Sure, most fictional narratives present characters
in flux, characters whose attitudes or statuses alter as their stories
track. But the above do more. Their changes often manifest physically;
transformations occur tactilely or spatially. Why do such explicit ideas
or acts of transformation and metamorphosis inform so many fictions? (I've
mentioned just a few -- there are countless more.) Why is shape-shifting
such fun to read about, so easy to imagine? Does the motivation for such
events come from religion, from folklore, from magic? Or are such
happenings really about fiction-making? (How do words synapse into
embodied characters in your heart and mind after all?)

We will read Ovid's Metamorphoses (most of it) and Shakespeare's The
Tempest to start. And then look at most, if not all of the texts mentioned
above, as well (perhaps) at some appropriate Star Trek episodes, a film or
two, and at works of some of the following (maybe): Philip Roth, Patricia
Highsmith, Manual Puig, Tony Hillerman, or Louise Erdrich.

During a time when the transformations you are experiencing approach
shape-shifting in their magnitude and significance, it might be useful to
look at some literary shape-shifting, just to keep your own morphs in
perspective. Then again, in tracking the transformation trope, we might
also learn something about the age we inhabit, where images supersede
words and information goes cyber.

Directed discussion format.
Two exams, two papers.