Topic Jonesin': Addicts and Addictions in Popular Culture

Have you ever gone a day without a cup of coffee?  Or without watching your favorite soap
opera?  What about chocolate?  Miss that Hershey bar late at night?  Are you depressed if you
don't exercise?  Can you go to the mall without buying something?  Anything?  Though we may,
for the most part, think these are harmless little compulsions, and indeed they are, they might
also be considered addictions.  Certainly they are not addictions to alcohol, nicotine, narcotics,
sex, or violence, but they nevertheless inform who we are and how we behave in the world just
as significantly as these more hazardous dependencies.  In this course we will be examining how
addiction affects the way that we think of ourselves and how the logic of addiction shapes our
relationship to our culture.  We will not be interested in making moral evaluations of particular
addictions (i.e., heroin is bad but coffee is o.k.), nor will the class be a forum for exposing and
exploring our own cravings (and how we meet them).  Instead, we will look at the way in which
the concept of addiction has been represented in popular culture.  This investigation will examine
how family values, patriotism, gender and race distinctions, and personal identity intersect with
cultural representations of addiction.  Texts may include but are not limited to: _Trainspotting_,
a selected Harlequin romance novel, Thomas de Quincey's _Confessions of an English Opium
Eater_, plus analysis of print and video advertisements for alcohol, cigarettes, and food.