ENGL2701 - 01 - Literature and Film

(LI) Literary Inquiry

This course explores the relationship between visual and written media by studying adaptation both as a creative process and as a connecting theme in twentieth and twenty-first century American literature and film. On the level of content, students will ask overarching questions such as: How do artists adapt to a world that sometimes reveres and at times rejects both originality and the figure of the artist, especially when their art confronts social injustices related to race, gender, and class? How do artists work within established traditions to imagine systemic change? What happens when they do? Students also learn discipline-specific methods of analyzing both literature and film. At the same time, they consider a set of foundational questions springing from the long tradition of creative adaptation: In adapting a literary work for the screen, what happens to elements such as character, theme, and narrative? Must formal elements such as plot and setting remain the same to attain the same meaning? Must the same meaning be attained? Can it be? Can certain elements of a work be translated across media? Or are the forms--and therefore their contents or meanings-fundamentally different? How does each medium represent reality? What power does each hold over our imaginations, individually and culturally?