ENGLISH 201 - Introduction to Narrative

Institution:

Reed College

Subject:

Description:

Form, Style, and Meaning in Cinema Full course for one semester. This course considers the cinema as a particular media form and explores issues and methods in cinema studies. The class focuses on questions of film form and style (narrative, editing, sound, framing, mise-en-scène) and introduces students to concepts in film history and theory (industry, auteurism, spectatorship, the star system, ideology, genre). We will pay particular attention to principles of film narration and film form that are instrumental across the study of literature: plot vs. story, dramatic development, temporal strategies, character development, point of view, symbolism, reality vs. illusion, visual metaphor, and so forth. Students will develop a basic critical vocabulary for examining the cinema as an art form, an industry, and a system of culturally meaningful representation. Prerequisite: Humanities 110 or sophomore standing. Lecture-conference. Not offered 2009-10. Graphic Novel Full course for one semester. In this course we will consider the historical development of the genre and techniques of the graphic novel in America. Authors will include Lynd Ward, Robert Crumb, Will Eisner, Keiji Nakazawa, Art Spiegelman, Frank Miller, Chris Ware, Daniel Clowes, Marjane Satrapi, Lynda Barry, Gene Luen Yang, and others. Our reading of the graphic novel will be contextualized within postmodernism and the changes in the notion of childhood, heroism, and evil in 20th- and 21st-century American culture. This course is designed to introduce students to the fundamental elements of narrative and will include analysis of genre, panels, framing devices, layout, speech, plot, and characterization. The course will emphasize close reading of the texts, and there will be frequent writing assignments. Prerequisite: Humanities 110 or sophomore standing. Conference. Not offered 2009-10. Literary and Visual Culture in 18th-century Britain Full course for one semester. This course is designed to introduce students to the literary and visual cultures of 18th-century Britain and their connections. We will read prose by Defoe, Johnson, Walpole and Austen, poetry by Pope, Swift, Gray, Goldsmith, Blake, Collier and Duck, and drama by Gay. We will also study discussions of aesthetics by Burke and Reynolds and the work of artists Hogarth, Reynolds, Gainsborough, Angelica Kauffman and Wright of Derby, as well as the role of patrons such as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Throughout our readings and viewings we will return to the following guiding questions: how are stories narrated, in images as well as in words What are the major aesthetic categories of this period and how do they operate to construct aesthetic experience Do these categories span literary and visual culture, or are they different in each form What are their modern legacies Prerequisite: Humanities 110 or sophomore standing. The Making of the Twentieth Century Full course for one semester. This course will focus on American writing produced between 1890 and 1910. Though much of our time will be spent reading novels and short stories-in particular, examples of realist, naturalist, and modernist fiction-we will approach the novel as just one of many narrative arts that played a crucial role in defining the nascent twentieth century. Other genres that we will consider include life writing, the tale, aesthetic and cultural criticism, reportage, photojournalism and the photo book, and protest writing. Our readings will be grouped into five units-"American Life, Writing, and Life Writing," "Race after Reconstruction," "Narrating City Life," "Between Asia and America," and "Modern Women"-and will be drawn from writers such as Henry Adams, Abraham Cahan, Charles Chesnutt, Stephen Crane, Theodore Dreiser, W. E. B. Du Bois, Sui Sin Far, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Henry James, Okakura Kakuzo, Jack London, Frank Norris, Jacob Riis, and Gertrude Stein. Prerequisite: Humanities 110 or sophomore standing

Credits:

3.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.reed.edu

Phone Number:

(503) 771-1112

Regional Accreditation:

Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities

Calendar System:

Semester

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