EGMT 1510: All Kinds of Weird

While every culture, every subculture, every person has their own individual intuitive sense, by its very nature the weird is a notoriously slippery aesthetic category to pin down. In this class we will pursue the weird across definitions, media, genres, and centuries—from the Weird Sisters in Macbeth and the weird tales of UVA’s favorite dropout, Edgar Allan Poe, to the Weirdcore, New Weird, and high weirdness of today. We’ll seek the weird in literature, music, film, video games, fashion, art, and anywhere else it might be found, including our own communities and brains. We’ll distinguish the weird not just from its opposites—the common, the familiar, the normal—but also its near kin: the strange and the eerie, the oddball and the grotesque, the creepy and the cringe. Ultimately, as a collective, we will assemble an Uncommonplace Book: a documentation and presentation of what we find weird—as well as an exhortation to keep pushing against aesthetic boundaries.