Seminar in Literary Studies
Topic: Psychonauts: Sex, Drugs and Magic in 20th Century Literature
Class Information
Instructor: Shershow, Scott
CRN: 54934
Time: TR 9:00-10:20
Location: 248 Voorhies
Description
In this seminar we consider a wide variety of different kinds of texts – novels, stories, poetry, essays and journalism — that participate in a twentieth-century tradition of psychic and spiritual exploration. In other words, we’ll be reading texts by or about what a 1966 anthology calls “astronauts of inner space:” people who experiment with occult researches, spiritual disciplines, psychotropic drugs — as well as avant-garde modes of art, literature, and theater — to envision and create new selves and new worlds.
In the final weeks of the quarter, students will develop and share individual projects in which they either read further in one of the writers on our list, or else research another example of a twentieth-century “psychonaut.”
Tentative reading List:
William James, First lecture, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1901-2).
Helena Blavatsky, from Isis Unveiled (1877)
W. E. B. Du Bois, “Of Our Spiritual Strivings,” from The Souls of Black Folk (1901).
Alistair Crowley (1875-1957), The Book of the Law, “The Drug,” and other writings.
Pauline Hopkins, Of One Blood: Or, The Hidden Self (1903).
Kenneth Graham, “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn,” from The Wind in the Willows (1908).
H.P. Lovecraft, “The Call of Cthulhu” (1926), and “The Dreams in the Witch House” (1932).
William Butler Yeats, from A Vision (1925) and selected poetry.
Antonin Artaud, from The Theater and its Double (1938) and “Concerning a Journey to the Land of the Tarahumaras” (1945).
Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited (1945).
Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception (1954)
Margaret St. Clair, The Sign of the Larys (1963).
Carl Jung, Man and His Symbols (1964).
Timothy Leary, The Psychedelic Experience (1964).
Phillip K. Dick, VALIS (1969).
William S. Burroughs and BrIon Gysin, selections from The Third Mind (1978).
David Bowie, selected interviews and songs (1971-2016).
Grading
Evaluation will be based on one short paper, a concluding term paper and presentation, a take-home final examination, and participation in seminar discussion.
Texts
Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
Of One Blood: Or, The Hidden Self, Pauline Hopkins
VALIS, Phillip K. Dick
The Sign of the Larys, Margaret St. Clair
Other texts availabel on electronic reserve