Department of English

Why can doing nothing feel so bad? When we “bed rot” are we actively decaying? Or, even if we like staying in bed, why might we fear others knowing or perceiving us as someone who does nothing? Does the adage “only boring people are bored” hold true? We will use these questions to make boredom interesting and to define this activity that looks like doing nothing. Boredom is at once something you might feel (“you are bored”) and something you judge others and things for being (“a boring person” or a boring book, movie, etc.).

To better understand boredom, we will look at when boredom first cohered as a concept and emerged etymologically in English: late eighteenth-century Britain. The critic Patricia Meyer Spacks argues that several cultural factors invented boredom at this historical moment: people had more leisure time; there was an increased investment in personal happiness; and, an explosion in print culture brought more potential diversions and distractions. People had both more to entertain them and more anxiety about their own idleness. How can this earlier articulation of boredom teach us about our own forms? How are we bored differently and similarly to those in the past?

We will read together literary texts that use boredom as feeling and a judgement to express different kinds of discontent at different historical moments. We will read, watch, and engage with texts that purposefully solicit boredom, consider boredom, or try very hard to stave it off. Authors will include Alexander Pope, Samuel Johnson, Jane Austen, among others. We will also occasionally engage with recent, digital and multi-media projects, such as The Trainee (2008), video game Depression Quest (2013), and the experimental period drama Zama (2017). Assignments include frequent short, informal writing and two short essays.