This is not a class about Facebook. However, we will think about how contemporary experiences of social networking can help us to describe relationships between individuals, social systems, and the connections between them. We will trace back some of these issues by reading books and watching films that predate contemporary social networks. Particular attention will be paid to the role of technology.

What family isn’t steeped in lore, haunted by skeletons in the closet, or delighted by its own humorous anecdotes no matter how many times they’ve been told? In this class we will explore the singular relationship between the family and story telling. What is the relationship between family, identity, memory, and narrative? To what extent do the stories that are passed down through our families shape who we are and determine what kind of a world we inherit? What is the importance of unearthing, reconstructing, telling, and re-telling the stories of how our families came to be?

In this course, we will read stories of people seduced away from a well-balanced life by the allures of beauty, art, revenge, sex, sentiment—or even by rational thought pushed to extremes. Although we could label these characters as mentally ill, many of the texts we will read portray their deviance as an ambiguous sort of exaltation. Accordingly, we will analyze how each text presents the terrible costs of losing grip, as well as how the characters, from the point of view of their extreme principles, offer a twisted justification for the unbalanced life.