Welcome to Intro to the Overview degree for our How to Draw a Banana doctoral program. In this twelve-week course you will be immersed in the contextual conditions necessary to absorb the preparation for your attempt at becoming a Doctor of Bananas, Drawing (PhDB-D).

This intro course was created after it was discovered that too many students were undertaking their graduate Overview degree without fully appreciating the ramifications of such a pursuit. The vast majority of them assumed, quite arrogantly, that the Overview would handle any remedial information necessary. Nothing could be further from the truth (in fact, in week seven we will be reading James P. Nealston's “Hyperbullies: Politics and the New World Disorder,” a detailed history of the development of the State Bureau of Comparative Hyperbole, which has vetted this statement; copies of the vettification certificate can be purchased in the student bookstore).

The graduate Overview degree program itself was created after PhD students in no less than seven countries (and no more than nine) took their own lives after failing to complete their banana-drawing doctoral theses in a timely matter, owing, experts have agreed, on lacking the appropriate studentialesque “evolution” from BFA to ABT-PHdB-D. We will cover these deaths in week three: “Topics in PhD-Chasing Based Suicide.

Undergraduates who are working towards a BA in Life-Drawing with a minor in Fruit and a sub-minor in Yellows who are taking this course to fulfill their final elective will already be familiar with some of the books in the syllabus below. However, it is recommended that these students compare their editions to the editions noted, as most are updated annually and this is a comprehensive course. (To date no PHdB-D program-offering university (in any first-world country) accepts applicant who earn below an A- in this class.)

The following syllabus has been designed to provide a contextual condition that errs on the side of excess: although we may not discuss every book in this list, the final exam will draw from all of these.

Hyperbullies: Politics and the New World Disorder, James P. Nealston

Yellow is the New Yellow: Stretching the boundaries of nomenclature at 577 and 597 nanometers

Still Life and Taxes: philosophical approaches to the Life-Drawing Paradox

Art Wasn't Just a Garfunkel

Who Framed the Framers: the function of bowls in the backgrounds of revolutionary-era painting.

How to Read Invoices, or the Tao of Chacquita, from the Safra Group New Hire Manual (reprinted by permission)

Po-Po-Tassium: Understanding K, the 19th element, through the lens of Phill Collins circa 1985