ENGL 741-01: Hybrid Forms

Section Description:

What is a text? What is a literary genre? What links these two questions? According to Jacques Derrida, Lady Gaga, and other experts, all texts are always already hybrid. In this practicum, we will study—and create—texts that foreground their hybridity, dissolving and deconstructing the conventional boundaries of poetry, fiction, memoir, journalism, etc. Beyond literary hybridity, we will explore works that hybridize inscription with visual art, documentary evidence, film, digital media, t,v., theater, appropriated/found objects, performance, sound, music, noise, commerce, and protest. The politics, aesthetics, and ethics of hybridity will be examined as we conduct our own experiments in a range of derangements of genre. We will pay particularly close attention to works that explore theory/practice hybridity, including fictocriticism, autofiction, metafiction, documentary poetics, gonzo journalism. Ethnography, radical queer culture, and biology will make surprise appearances. Expect to write weekly, read critically, and engage in a variety of hybrid critical/creative practices.