Gothic and Horror This course examines the forms and meanings of the Gothic and horror over the last 250 years in the West. How have effects of fright, terror, or awe been achieved over this span and why do audiences find such effects attractive? Our purpose will be to understand the generic structures of horror and their evolution in tandem with broader cultural changes. Course materials will include fiction, film, readings in the theory of horror, architecture, visual arts, and electronic media.

Science Fiction Time travel, aliens, androids, robots, corporate and political domination, reimaginings of race, gender, sexuality and the human body--these concerns have dominated science fiction over the last 150 years.  But for all of its interest in the future, science fiction tends to focus on technologies and social problems relevant to the period in which it is written. In this course, we'll work to understand both the way that authors imagine technology's role in society and how those imaginings create meanings for science and its objects of study and transformation.  Some likely reading and films include Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, H. G. Wells, The Island of Doctor Moreau, Ridley Scott, Blade Runner, and works by William Gibson, Ursula LeGuin, Octavia Butler and other contemporary writers. (Students who have taken FYSE 1162 are not eligible to register for this course).

American Psycho: Disease, Doctors, and Discontents (Pre-1900 AL) What constitutes a pathological response to the pressures of modernity?  How do pathological protagonists drive readers toward the precariousness of their own physical and mental health?  The readings for this class center on the provisional nature of sanity and the challenges to bodily health in a world of modern commerce, media, and medical diagnoses.  We will begin with 19th century texts and their engagement with seemingly "diseased" responses to urbanization, new forms of work, and new structures of the family and end with contemporary fictional psychopaths engaged in attacks on the world of images we inhabit in the present.  Nineteenth century texts will likely include stories by Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman.  Later  20th-century works will likely include Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Thomas Harris, The Silence of the Lambs, Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted, and Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho.

The Graphic Novel In this course we will study some of the most widely respected graphic novels produced in the last thirty years. Our purpose will be to understand how the form works and is structured by its dual, but sometimes competing, interests in the verbal and the visual, and to think about distinct styles of illustration.  We will also think about how landmark examples have shaped the form.  Working with software designed for the purpose, students will use photographs to produce short comics of their own.  Possible texts include: Alan Moore, Watchmen; Art Spiegelman, Maus; Chris Ware, Jimmy Corrigan; Alison Bechdel, Fun Home.

American Psycho: Disease, Doctors, and Discontents What constitutes a pathological response to the pressures of modernity?  How do pathological protagonists drive readers toward the precariousness of their own physical and mental health?  The readings for this class center on the provisional nature of sanity and the challenges to bodily health in a world of modern commerce, media, and medical diagnoses.  We will begin with 19th century texts and their engagement with seemingly "diseased" responses to urbanization, new forms of work, and new structures of the family and end with contemporary fictional psychopaths engaged in attacks on the world of images we inhabit in the present.  Nineteenth century texts will likely include stories by Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman.  Later  20th-century works will likely include Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Thomas Harris, The Silence of the Lambs, Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted, and Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho.

The Graphic Novel and the Postmodern City  From dystopian visions of isolation and alienation to utopian illustrations of soaring towers and integrated communities, comics and graphic novels since the 1970s have represented a range of cityscapes and ways of living in them. Our efforts will focus on understanding how comics work as a cultural form distinct from others and how various artists and writers have imagined urban space in relatively recent cultural history.  Some texts might include: Daniel Clowes, Ghost World; Alan Moore and David Lloyd, V for Vendetta; Thi Bui, The Best We Could Do; and G. Willow Wilson and Adrian Alphono, Ms. Marvel.

Posthuman Medicine: Morals, Machines, and Bodies Medical treatments and technologies now keep people alive when they once surely would have died. But the increasing power of medicine has also raised nightmarish possibilities of lives controlled, squandered, or sacrificed to a system that often alienates patients, is centered on profit, and has a long history of treating marginal populations recklessly. How do science fiction writers, doctors, film makers, memoirists, and healthcare corporations portray an ever more medicalized vision of human experience and human bodies? Texts and films for the course will include HG Wells, The Island of Doctor Moreau, Atul Gawande, Complications; Octavia Butler, Clay’s Ark; Michael Gondry, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Karen Russell, Sleep Donation, and Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go.

Michael Newbury

Reviews and ratings for Michael Newbury at Middlebury College.Michael Newbury teaches Gothic and Horror, Science Fiction, American Psycho and more.  Explore top rated instructors and find the best for you.Is Michael Newbury good ? Find out on MiddCourses.

I took this course simply because the description sounded so interesting and I would 100% recommend this course and Michael Newbury to anyone, regardless of their academic interests. It is such a nice break from formal academic coursework and reading, much of the readings are novels or films or short stories and the assignments were fun and student led. You get assigned a group for a presentation on an assigned film and there were two papers - one shorter and one longer. This is the best class! 

Michael Newbury is an extremely chill professor who is highly invested in the things he teaches. In this class, we read novels, short stories, a play, and a comic book, and we watched movies and TV shows. Certainly very fascinating and tied heavily to real-life medical practice as well. Class was largely discussion based and most of my learning came from deepening my analysis via the analysis of my classmates. Would take the class again.

Michael Newbury is such a chill professor. His class is mostly discussion based on the readings/films but there is a lot to say. Interesting if you're drawn towards english and medicine, 2 papers and a presentation make up your grade beside a few discussion posts. 