“Who will write the history of tears?” – Roland Barthes

From cowboys to captains of industry, from old-money gentlemen to new-world adventurers, from uniformed soldiers to mold-breaking mavericks, Americans have long looked up to masculine heroes. Meanwhile, those who fail to conform to conventional standards of masculinity – effete intellectuals and stay-at-home dads, cuckolded husbands and 40-year-old virgins – earn society’s mockery and scorn.

Fiction is full of characters who exert a pull on their readers: those in whom we see versions of ourselves, those we hate to love or love to hate, and those who remain forever inscrutable no matter how hard we try to get inside their thoughts and feelings.

Fandom gets a bad name in the academic world. Literary scholars pride themselves on their analytical approach to, and critical distance from, works already recognized as high art. Fans, on the other hand, throw themselves into the least esteemed genres and forms.

Studying about vacation – during vacation – can sound like a contradiction. We think of vacations as escapes from study, as existing separately from our lives as students. But, as we all know too well, sometimes these two worlds necessarily collide and in this class we’ll develop oral and written tools of analysis to help us understand and come to terms with what it means to be on vacation. Does vacation require something exceptional: travel, beaches, family and/or friends?