In this course, we will read (and watch!) some of the best-known stories about pirates in the age of sail. We’ll explore both the myths and realities of these infamous outlaws, and ask why their crimes were treated so uniquely: sometimes the stateless “villains of all nations,” society’s most wanted criminals; sometimes celebrated for their daring, or even seen as patriotic heroes. We’ll also consider what work stories about pirates do in our culture. The “wooden world” of the ship’s decks offers a space for thinking about how communities are made. It is a space where state violence is enacted and ideas of criminality are formed. It is also a space where norms and perceptions about gender, sexuality, race, and class can be re-imagined in new ways. But does this translate into subversive potential? Or are tales of life at sea just places where society can make castaways of its own inner demons? And, perhaps most strangely of all, how do the murderous escapades of society’s villains become the stuff of Disney rides and cartoons for children? In other words: why are pirates "fun"?

We’ll begin the class with some stories of real-life pyrates, both men and women, from the Golden Age of Caribbean piracy that were collected by the pilloried, exiled, and nine-times-imprisoned opposition journalist Nathaniel Mist in his bestselling General History of the Pyrates. We’ll examine the rhetoric of these tales and think about the way they are told and the political and social “work” they do. Then, in the second unit of the class, we’ll read the most famous fictional tale of piracy, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, and think about the role it (and stories like it) played in reshaping the pirate’s modern myth as one of boyhood and masculinity. In the class’s final weeks, we’ll look at some film and popular culture and consider the ongoing life of the legends of piracy today.