Retrofuturism and Neo-Victorianism: Steampunk,Revivals and Retrophilia

Objectives

- To become more learned in retrofuturism and neo-Victorianism connected with steampunk, revivals and retrophilia; - To discuss (de)constructions of possession and appropriation of the past from a retrofuturistic and neo Victorian perspective; - To rediscover paradigms within Victorian Studies in the areas of society, politics, economics, aesthetics and the arts; -To master a various corpus of textual and visual records so as to make possible a metacultural problematisation and to articulate intertextualities with cultural practices; - To do critical readings/reviews and relevant thematic and bibliographical research in the field of Cultural Studies, Neo Victorian Studies and Utopian Studies; - To produce a research paper on one of the topics addressed in the course syllabus.

General characterization

Code

02107558

Credits

10.0

Responsible teacher

Iolanda Cristina de Freitas Ramos

Hours

Weekly - 3

Total - 280

Teaching language

English

Prerequisites

Available soon

Bibliography

  • Arias, R. & Pulham P. (Eds.) (2010). Haunting and Spectrality in Neo Victorian Fiction: Possessing the Past. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Bauman, Z. (2017). Retrotopia. Polity Press: Oxford.
  • Guffey, E. (2006). Retro: The Culture of Revival. London: Reaktion Books.
  • Heilmann, A. & Llewellyn, M. (2010). Neo Victorianism: The Victorians in the Twenty First Century, 1999 2009. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Kucich, J. & Sadoff, D. F. (Eds.) (2000). Victorian Afterlife: Postmodern Culture Rewrites the Nineteenth Century. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press.
  • Roland, P. (2015). Steampunk: Back to the Future with the New Victorians. Harpenden: Oldcastle Books.
  • Sanders, J. (2006). Adaptation and Appropriation. London: Routledge.
  • Sargent, L. T. (2010). Utopianism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Vandermeer, J. (2011). The Steampunk Bible. New York: Abrams Image.
  • West-Pavlov, R. (2013). Temporalities. Routledge: London and New York.

Teaching method

Classes use a theoretical-practical teaching methodology based on: presentation of the topics of the course syllabus by the lecturer; interactive methodology, drawing on audiovisual resources and support texts, and contributions by the students based on the reading of primary sources and contemporary analyses for oral presentation and/or group discussion; tutorial supervision of the critical readings/reviews and/or the thematic and bibliographical research tasks related to the final research paper on one of the topics addressed in the course syllabus.

Evaluation method

Método de Avaliação - participation in the debates, readings and short research tasks, added to the preparation and oral presentation of a glossary/critical review(50%), preparation and oral presentation of the table of contents that sustains the production of a final research paper(50%)

Subject matter

1. Cultural temporalities: 'retro', 'neo' and 'post' trends. 2. Past and present intertextualities and cultural appropriations of the future. 2.1. Victorianism revisited: 'fact-fiction' and 'f(r)iction'. 2.2. The subversion of History and the paradigm of the British Empire: progress, commodity culture and imperial iconography. 2.3. Disrupting respectability: freakery, performativity, spectrality and sensationalism. 3. Cultural practices, aesthetic representations and multimodal production after the Age of Steam. 3.1. The paradigm of science and technology: transtemporality, alternate history/stories and parallel worlds. 3.2. Defying conventions within the punk legacy: identity (de)constructions, subcultures and countercultures. 3.3. Questioning the canon: dieselpunk, steamfunk and multicultural steampunk. 4. Current crossroads: postmodernity, utopianism and retrotopia

Programs

Programs where the course is taught: