Your College English Class, An Introduction to Monetizable I.P.

Welcome to the Class of 2028!

From all of us here in the English Department, congratulations for successfully enrolling in this prestigious academic institution. We are confident that you will thrive here.

If you’re reading this, it means you’ve decided to pursue a major track in English. I know I speak for the whole faculty when I say—you’ve made a great decision.

We’ve all heard the question: what use is an English degree?

Well, here in this department, we pride ourselves on our commitment to academic integrity and intellectual curiosity. We believe that the study of the written word is a significant and valuable pursuit in and of itself, and that by immersing themselves in the literary canon, our students gain something that transcends vocational training: an understanding of, and appreciation for, the power and beauty of language.

[Some things have changed since the creation of this template welcome e-mail. The Board of Trustees has complained that the English department is not “pulling its weight” when it comes to alumni donations and has threatened to dissolve the department if we don’t start “getting real” and “cutting out the hoity-toity bullshit” so that we can start “churning out some high net-worth graduates ASAP!!!”]

Let us re-consider that perfectly reasonable question: what use is an English degree?

Well, you might ask. After all, what value does anything hold if it isn't optimized for maximum market efficiency? It has become abundantly clear to us in the English department that thinking of novels, poems, and short stories as “works of literature” is simply no longer tenable under late-stage capitalism. Therefore, we have altered the structure of our program accordingly.

Alongside their elective classes, first year English students will be required to take one mandatory class: “An Introduction to Monetizable I.P.” In this rigorous foundation course, students will become acquainted with several representative works of literary importance—or as we must now exclusively refer to them: “leverageable assets with income-producing potential.” Below is an outline of the course structure.

Week One: “18th Century Verse: A Sure-Fire Investment?”

The first piece of monetizable I.P. that we’ll be covering is “The Rape of the Lock” by Alexander Pope. Students will be asked to analyse Pope’s asset, and then to consider which streaming platform is best suited to the mock-heroic narrative voice. Were he alive today, would the great Enlightenment-era satirist have any preference between Disney+, Hulu, or Peacock? How effectively does Pope’s poem leave things open for a potential second season? These are the sorts of questions we hope to cover in this wide-ranging seminar.

Week Two: “Monetizing I.P. in Pre-Babylonian Mesopotamia”

The discussion will be centred around several key questions pertaining to The Epic of Gilgamesh and the author’s complete failure to commercialize their intellectual property. For instance: how does the author expect to stand out in a market already saturated with epic/fantasy/quest narratives? Why should the author consider adding a strong female character into their story alongside the pretty one-dimensional Shamhat the Seductress? And why carving their asset into cuneiform tablets may be one marketing gimmick too far.

Week Three: “The Marvell Cinematic Universe: Franchising To His Coy Mistress”

Like Dune, Andrew Marvell’s poem was long considered unadaptable. In this seminar, students will be asked to reconsider this notion, and how the 17th-century English poet might have actually optimised his metaphysical poem for box office success.

Week Four: “Edith Wharton and the Age of Multi-Asset Portfolio Management”

Students will be required to use ChatGPT to summarize the plot of Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence. They will then need to come to class ready to defend the proposition that Wharton’s classic novel would have worked better as a podcast.