Courses
ENG 331 Film Studies
ENG 274 Topics in Shakespeare: Shakespeare on Film
ENG 332 Topics in Film
ENG 332 Topics in Film: Literary Adaptations
ENG 333 American Film
ENG 334 Contemporary Film
ENG 359 Topics in Comparative Literature: Film and Literature
HST 239 Media and History
HST 219 Topics in Cultural History
JRN 309 Documentary Production
Other graduate courses may be substituted if they meet the requirements of graduate-level film courses. These courses are subject to approval.
Graduate Course Descriptions
ENG 274 Shakespeare on Film
Film modifies the crucial problems of the spatial relationship between audience and play, and forces dramatic criticism to reassess the old criteria that it may be tempted to impose on a very different medium. The films we will study in this course will exemplify various methods of presenting Shakespeare's plays in cinematic terms: the "transportation" of a theatrical production to the studio stage with various degees of filmic adaptation (ex: Orson Welles' Macbeth); the "transposition" of Shakespearean drama to a relatively faithful adaptation of the Shakespearean play (ex: Olivier's Hamlet or Kozintsev's King Lear); and the "transformation" of a Shakespeare play into an entirely new film structure that fulfills the fimmaker's personal vision but which may not necessarily be faithful to the Shakespearean text (ex: Kurosawa's Ran).
ENG 331 Film Studies
This course functions both as an introduction to the analysis of fiction films and to the major issues in film theory. Topics many vary, but generally the first two weeks will be devoted to an intensive introduction to film language. During the remainder of the course, some major issues in film theory are examined: narration, representation, authorship, style, and spectatorship (psychoanalytic approaches vs. cognitive approaches; gender, race, and ideology).
Focuses on some specific dimension of film studies--a genre of film such as film noir, a director like Alfred Hitchcock or Francis Ford Coppola, a film movement like Expressionism or social realism, or a particular historical moment in film history, such as post-1967 Hollywood. Topics chosen determine texts and films.
ENG 332 Topics in Film: Literary Adaptations
This course surveys cinematic adaptations of literature beginning with how the early cinema used French Symbolism and Disney Animation to transform legend and fairytales, to the recent spate of incarnations of Shakespeare's plays, including Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet (1996), Baz Luhrman's Romeo and Juliet (1995), Richard Loncraine's Richard III (1995), and Al Pacino's Looking for Richard (1996). As we analyze works from traditional literary genres (such as the revenge drama or the novel film of manners) we will consider how the overlay of cinematic genres (film noir, the gangster film, and the western, for example) impact our understanding of literature transformed into the medium of film.
ENG 332 Topics in Film: Surrealism
The historical part of the course will consider the origins of surrealism in the modernist avant-garde of the 1920s as a response to the emergence of new social configurations in the post-WWI period. We will look at the way surrealism attempts to redefine the role of the artist and of artistic production--whether in painting, film, or literature--as oppositional and subversive. We will study major figures from this period, developing a gendered perspective on such concepts as "l'amour fou," black humor, dream logic, objective change, and the surrealist image. The last part of the course will deal with the legacy of surrealism in narrative film of the last three decades. Theoretical readings will include diverse approaches, including psychoanalysis, cognitivism, and Marxist aesthetics.
ENG 333 American Film
A history of American film from the beginnings to the present. We will pay particular attention to the way we negotiate social norms and values, reproduce or contest dominant ideologies, and represent (or fail to represent) their historical movement. Films from Birth of a Nation to Citizen Kane to The Godfather to Thelma and Louise.
ENG 334 Contemporary Film
A survey of contemporary film, both American and international. We will study the major new developments in film, from the new ethnic filmmaking to the recent turn to gender and sexuality. In addition, the course engages some of the central critical and theoretical issues and debates in film studies, from spectatorship to post-modernism. A large part of the course will be devoted to the analyis of visual and narrative form and to the link between form and meaning.
ENG 359 Topics in Comparative Literature: Film and Literature
HST 239 Media and History
Explores such topics as the advantages and drawbacks of specific media, the uses and abuses of media in research and teaching, and the construction of media. Requires each student to participate in a research project involving the creation and/or evaluation of historically valid films, slide tapes, and other materials.
HST 219 Topics in Cultural History: The Image of Russia in American Culture
The course examines the origins and evolution of the perception and representation of Russia and the USSR in American culture during the period from the 1917 Revolutions to the collapse of the USSR in 1991, with special attention paid to the Cold War period (1945-1991). In investigating this "image" we will examine texts drawn from history, fiction, non-fiction and cinema. The goal is not only to understand better the ideological and historical basis of the American image of Russia (the "other" superpower for most of the twentieth century), but also to reflect upon the mechanisms behind the popular representation of any national and racial stereotypes. We will also attempt to answer the question: to what extent do these images reflect popular attitudes, and to what extent do they shape them?