|
|
Course Criteria
Add courses to your favorites to save, share, and find your best transfer school.
-
1.00 Credits
In this course we will study selected adaptations of novels into film, examining some of the basic theoretical and practical issues involved in adapting a text from one medium to another, using as case studies selected novels and films. Text to be studied may include Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter (comparing the 1926 version to the 1996 version), Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence (Scorsese film), John McDonald, The Executioners with two films: Cape Fear, (1962, J. Lee Thompson) and (1991, Martin Scorsese); Mario Puzo, The Godfather (1972, Coppola film); Daphne duMaurier, Rebecca (1940, Hitchcock). Other films and novels may be chosen, but the focus of the course will be the nature of the individual adaptation in relationship to the issues generically involved in adapting prose fiction to the medium of film. We will read the films as texts in their own right. This course counts as a core course for the Writing, Rhetoric, and Media Arts track of the English M.A. or en elective in the Literary Studies track; for undergraduate English majors, it counts as a course emphasizing literature after 1800 or a literary theory course. 1.00 units, Seminar
-
1.00 Credits
This seminar will examine both fiction written by "ethnic" American writers and other texts that discuss issues of ethnicity, race, borders, bi-lingualism, bi-culturalism, immigration, and the like. Writers whose work might be studied include Maxine Hong Kingston, Gish Jen, Lan Cao, Leslie Silko, N. Scott Momaday, Louise Erdrich, Rebecca Goldstein, Grace Paley, Rolando Hinojosa, and Gloria Anzaldúa. (Note: English 459 and English 859 are the same course.) For English majors, this course satisfies the requirement of a course emphasizing cultural context. For the English Graduate Program, this course satisfies the requirements of a course in American literature, or a course emphasizing cultural contexts for the literary studies track. It satisfies a literary history requirement for the old requirements, predating fall 2004 1.00 units, Seminar
-
3.00 Credits
In this course, we will study selected films based on Shakespeare plays. Though we will read the Shakespeare plays as prelude to film analysis, the films will be studied as independent texts. The film script (adapted from or based on a Shakespeare play) will be treated as one aspect of the text. Students will concentrate on analyzing camera angles, mise-en-scene, lighting, sound, editing, and script as aspects of a composite text. We will also discuss film genres and look at the signature work of specific directors, such as Laurence Olivier and Kenneth Branagh. Plays may be selected from Titus Andronicus, Hamlet, Much Ado About Nothing, Richard III, Romeo and Juliet, The Taming of the Shrew, and King Lear. This course satisfies the requirement of a course emphasizing cultural context or a course emphasizing literature written before 1800. 1.00 units, Lecture
-
1.00 Credits
This course will look at the ways in which Old Media are in decline. Alas, chances are good that we will be able to study the shuttering of a major newspaper in real time. We will examine the new tricks some older outlets are using to revive themselves. Of course, we will look at the structure, nature and implication of Web 2.0 models and whatever sits beyond that. We will use the work of McLuhan to give us a tree of theory on which to hang our new ornaments. Participants should be willing to blog and participate on sites such as Facebook. (Note: English 464 and English 864 are the same course.) For undergraduate English majors, this course satisfies the requirement of a course emphasizing cultural context, or as an elective; for writing, rhetoric, and media arts minors, this course counts as a core course. For the English graduate program, this course counts as a core course for the writing, rhetoric, and media arts track and as an elective for the literary studies track. 1.00 units, Seminar
-
1.00 Credits
In this course, students will use the current presidential election as a living laboratory as they explore the role of the media in shaping perceptions, presenting content, and providing criticism. Students will follow the election in each news medium (including the Internet), interview consultants and "spin doctors," analyze television broadcasts, including television election ads, and prepare a talk radio show. The course will focus also on such issues as media bias, corporate ownership, and FCC regulation. We will also look at the nature of "content" in the political process and how it corresponds (or doesn't) to literary notions of "text." The instructor has worked for 32 years in daily newspapers and talk radio. This course will count as a core course in the writing, rhetoric, and media arts track and an elective for the literary studies track in the English M.A. This English course also counts towards the American Studies graduate program. It is advisable to register early. 1.00 units, Seminar
-
1.00 Credits
More than eight million Americans have created and maintained "blogs" which Merriam-Webster defines as "a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments and often hyperlinks." But what is a blog What kind of writing goes on there, and how does it differ, rhetorically, from other kinds How does information pass from blog to blog and what is the impact of this new activity on mainstream culture Participants in this seminar will read and analyze blogs. Most students will, in lieu of a final paper, produce and maintain a blog (although those who wish to do a more traditional analytical paper will be accommodated). Other readings in the course will include The Meme Machine by Susan Blackmore as we work on a theoretical framework for understanding the way information spreads. (Note: English 476 and English 866 are the same course.) For English majors, this course satisfies the requirement of a course emphasizing cultural context, or as an elective. For writing and rhetoric minors, this course counts as a core course. For the English graduate program, this course counts as a core course for the writing, rhetoric, and media arts track, and as an elective for the literary studies track. 1.00 units, Seminar
-
1.00 Credits
Their lives stretched from a pre-industrial time of horses and carriages to a modern era of automobiles and skyscrapers. As members of social and cultural elites, they were front-line observers of the original Gilded Age (to which many have likened our own historical moment). With Victorian mores on the wane, they and their characters contended with complicated and shifting ideas about gender and marriage. In this course, we will study the work of two American writers who represented these profound social changes in intricate psychological dramas written in some of the most stylistically accomplished prose in the English language. By reading and discussing short stories, novels, and essays by Edith Wharton and Henry James, we will consider their influence on each other and on the literary categories of realism and modernism; their works' implications about gender, identity, and power; and the historical and economic context of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. (Note: English 468-05 and English 868-17 are the same course.) For the English graduate program, this course satisfies the requirement of a course in American literature, or a course emphasizing cultural contexts for the literary studies track; it satisfies the requirement of an elective for the writing, rhetoric, and media arts track. For English majors, this course satisfies the requirement of a course emphasizing literature written after 1800, or a course emphasizing cultural context. 1.00 units, Seminar
-
1.00 Credits
Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow is, despite its sprawling length and mind-numbing complexity, arguably the most important and influential literary text to emerge from the U.S. of the 1960s. Both individually and in groups, concentrating on both social and literary contexts, we will use the methods of British cultural studies to investigate the conditions and constituents out of which Pynchon's daffy and difficult novel emerged, as well as the contexts in the discourses through which it was declared a "masterpiece" and endowed with literary value. Students taking this course should be skilled close readers and eager researchers, capable of thinking and arguing for themselves, yet also able and willing to work together to inventory one text's raw materials and enabling conditions, and map out that text's cultural meanings and effects. For the English Graduate Program, this course satisfies the requirements of a course in American literature, or a course emphasizing cultural contexts for the literary studies track; it counts as an elective for the writing, rhetoric, and media arts tr 1.00 units, Seminar
-
1.00 Credits
This course introduces the most important theoretical models which have been used to explain how films function as art, ideology, language, history, politics and philosophy. Some theorists are mainly concerned with the aesthetic potentials of the cinema: How do categories such as realism, authorship and genre explain and enhance our experience of films Other theorists are focused on the relations between films and the societies that produce them, or on general processes of spectatorship: How do Hollywood films address their audiences How do narrative structures shape our responses to fictional characters As the variety of these questions suggests, film theory opens onto a wide set of practices and possibilities; though it always begins with what we experience at the movies, it is ultimately concerned with the wider world that we experience through the movies. Theorists to be examined include Munsterberg, Eisenstein, Burch, Kracauer, Balazs, Bazin, Altman, Gunning, Mulvey, Metz, Wollen, Havel, Benjamin, Pasolini, Deleuze, and Jameson. (Note: English 470 and English 870 are the same course.)For undergraduate English majors, this course satisfies the requirement of a literary theory course, or a course emphasizing literature after 1800. For the English graduate program this course can count as an elective for the literary studies track, or a core course for the writing, rhetoric, and media arts track. 1.00 units, Seminar
-
1.00 Credits
This course examines Victorian literature through the lens of colonialism and postcolonial theory. Readings and class discussions will address the various definitions given to such terms as empire, colonialism, and imperialism and also consider the relation between metropole and colony in order to better understand the literature and culture of Victorian Britain. Additionally, the course focuses, in part, on depictions of religious practices, especially the unique ways in which Victorian literature often fictionalizes these practices, blending such traditions as Christianity, Spiritualism, Buddhism, Judaism, and Islam to refigure personhood through imagining global spirituality. Finally, this course will introduce students to primary special collections research, allowing each student to devise his or her own research project on literary depictions of the British Empire. Readings will include works by Wilkie Collins, Christina Rossetti, George Eliot, Cora Linn Daniels, and Elizabeth Gaskell. This course is open to graduate students and advanced undergraduates. 1.00 units, Seminar
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|