ENG 180 001 GREAT MOVIES: Subtitle TBD

Kevin Bond

Course description forthcoming. UK Core: Arts & Creativity

ENG 180 003 GREAT MOVIES: Science Fiction

Frederick Bengtsson

Science fiction films have been around since the beginning of cinema. Filmmakers have transported us to the moon and taken us on space odysseys, have shown us futures both utopian and dystopian, have celebrated the possibilities of science and worried about its risks, have stretched the bounds of the imagination and pushed the possibilities of film and filmmaking. Along the way, we've had close encounters with aliens, robots, artificial intelligences—but also with ourselves. In this course we will engage with a variety of science fiction films, thinking about how and why they tell their stories; about what is at stake in their representations of the future, of technology, of the alien; and about the creation, representation, and perhaps even the meanings of the worlds imagined in them. UK Core: Arts & Creativity

ENG 180 004 GREAT MOVIES: Science Fiction

Frederick Bengtsson

Science fiction films have been around since the beginning of cinema. Filmmakers have transported us to the moon and taken us on space odysseys, have shown us futures both utopian and dystopian, have celebrated the possibilities of science and worried about its risks, have stretched the bounds of the imagination and pushed the possibilities of film and filmmaking. Along the way, we've had close encounters with aliens, robots, artificial intelligences—but also with ourselves. In this course we will engage with a variety of science fiction films, thinking about how and why they tell their stories; about what is at stake in their representations of the future, of technology, of the alien; and about the creation, representation, and perhaps even the meanings of the worlds imagined in them. UK Core: Arts & Creativity

ENG 280 001 INTRODUCTION TO FILM

Brandon West

ENG 280 002 INTRODUCTION TO FILM

Brandon West

This section of ENG 280 is a survey of film studies, intended to provide a broad overview of the academic study of cinema. As such, the course covers a large variety of topics, ranging from camera movements to editing to sound design to the more abstract concept of cinema as culture. As befitting this array of disparate subjects, the course likewise examines a variety of different films from various genres and contexts. Likely films include Get Out (2017), No Country for Old Men (2007), and Shin Godzilla (2016). Assessments may include mid-term and final exams, short papers, film quizzes, and in-class presentations. There is no assigned textbook for this course. UK Core: Intellectual Inquiry in the  Humanities

ENG 280 003 INTRODUCTION TO FILM

Rick Halkyard

Course description forthcoming. UK Core: Intellectual Inquiry in the  Humanities

ENG 280 004 INTRODUCTION TO FILM

Rick Halkyard

Course description forthcoming. UK Core: Intellectual Inquiry in the  Humanities

ENG 280 005 INTRODUCTION TO FILM

Amanda Salmon

This course is an introduction to film in two senses: to the wild array of possibilities of the medium and to the careful study of these possibilities. We will watch films as unlike each other as possible, in a range of formats (celluloid, digital), modes (fiction, documentary, animation), intended audience (mainstream, niche), and national origin. Coherence will be provided by careful attention to the technique and form of cinema (mise-en-scène, cinematography, editing, sound) as well as the conditions of spextatorship. The question that has occupied critics, scholars, and theorists for decades — what is cinema? — will guide us throughout the semester. Assessments will involve weekly quizzes, formal written responses, and an analysis of a film of your choice to be published for a public, non-academic audience on a class Web site. UK Core: Intellectual Inquiry in the  Humanities

ENG 280 006 INTRODUCTION TO FILM

Amanda Salmon

This course is an introduction to film in two senses: to the wild array of possibilities of the medium and to the careful study of these possibilities. We will watch films as unlike each other as possible, in a range of formats (celluloid, digital), modes (fiction, documentary, animation), intended audience (mainstream, niche), and national origin. Coherence will be provided by careful attention to the technique and form of cinema (mise-en-scène, cinematography, editing, sound) as well as the conditions of spextatorship. The question that has occupied critics, scholars, and theorists for decades — what is cinema? — will guide us throughout the semester. Assessments will involve weekly quizzes, formal written responses, and an analysis of a film of your choice to be published for a public, non-academic audience on a class Web site. UK Core: Intellectual Inquiry in the  Humanities

ENG 280 007 INTRODUCTION TO FILM

Jenn Murray

How do we remember and commemorate violence?  How reliable is the memory we share and pass on to others? This course will attempt to grapple with these questions and more as we consider a number of films representing conflict and how these films engage our course themes of Conflict, Memory, and Representation. At its heart, this is a basic introduction to the study of film. We will learn to analyze mise-en-scène, editing, cinematography, sound, film genres, and narrative structure. In addition to the textbook study of formal elements of film and film-making indicated above, this class will require students to view approximately one film per week outside of class and participate in large and small group discussions that move beyond the plot of the film and into a consideration of its form and the ways in which the film manufactures, represents, manipulates, interrogates and creates cultural memories of conflicts and contempt among peoples. Graded work in the course will include written critical and analytical responses of varying lengths, quizzes and exams, and a final short film pitch. UK Core: Intellectual Inquiry in the  Humanities

ENG 280 008 INTRODUCTION TO FILM

Jenn Murray

How do we remember and commemorate violence?  How reliable is the memory we share and pass on to others? This course will attempt to grapple with these questions and more as we consider a number of films representing conflict and how these films engage our course themes of Conflict, Memory, and Representation. At its heart, this is a basic introduction to the study of film. We will learn to analyze mise-en-scène, editing, cinematography, sound, film genres, and narrative structure. In addition to the textbook study of formal elements of film and film-making indicated above, this class will require students to view approximately one film per week outside of class and participate in large and small group discussions that move beyond the plot of the film and into a consideration of its form and the ways in which the film manufactures, represents, manipulates, interrogates and creates cultural memories of conflicts and contempt among peoples. Graded work in the course will include written critical and analytical responses of varying lengths, quizzes and exams, and a final short film pitch. UK Core: Intellectual Inquiry in the  Humanities

ENG 280 009 INTRODUCTION TO FILM

Zach Griffith

Today, we’re surrounded by visions of the past and the future. In the last decade or so, we’ve seen an onslaught of nostalgic media in American culture in shows like Stranger Things and films like Ready Player One, as well as a renewed interest in narratives about previously under-discussed historical events and figures, seen in works like Hamilton and The Trial of the Chicago 7. At the same time, we’ve also seen a number of massively popular works that speculate about the future, from dystopian narratives like The Hunger Games trilogy and The Handmaid’s Tale, to supernatural/sci-fi stories such as The Walking Dead and Black Mirror. In short, there’s considerable public interest in stories that are set in other times, and American culture is filled with narratives about who we were and what we might become. This raises a simple question: why? What drives our obsession with the styles and experiences of bygone eras? Why do we tell stories about what the future might hold? How do we remember the past, and how does that memory shape our present (and our future)? How does the present shape the way we conceive of the past and the future? This course will investigate these questions through a selection of films in an effort to consider why we turn to the past and the future, and what these desires tell us about the present. In doing so, the course will introduce students to the basics of film, interpretation, and argument, and we will produce work in written, oral, and digital forms. UK Core: Intellectual Inquiry in the Humanities

ENG 280 010 INTRODUCTION TO FILM

Zach Griffith

Today, we’re surrounded by visions of the past and the future. In the last decade or so, we’ve seen an onslaught of nostalgic media in American culture in shows like Stranger Things and films like Ready Player One, as well as a renewed interest in narratives about previously under-discussed historical events and figures, seen in works like Hamilton and The Trial of the Chicago 7. At the same time, we’ve also seen a number of massively popular works that speculate about the future, from dystopian narratives like The Hunger Games trilogy and The Handmaid’s Tale, to supernatural/sci-fi stories such as The Walking Dead and Black Mirror. In short, there’s considerable public interest in stories that are set in other times, and American culture is filled with narratives about who we were and what we might become. This raises a simple question: why? What drives our obsession with the styles and experiences of bygone eras? Why do we tell stories about what the future might hold? How do we remember the past, and how does that memory shape our present (and our future)? How does the present shape the way we conceive of the past and the future? This course will investigate these questions through a selection of films in an effort to consider why we turn to the past and the future, and what these desires tell us about the present. In doing so, the course will introduce students to the basics of film, interpretation, and argument, and we will produce work in written, oral, and digital forms. UK Core: Intellectual Inquiry in the Humanities

ENG 380 001 FILM AND GENRE: 21c American War Films

Alan Nadel

This course exams two genres of American war film that have emerged in the 21st Century. The first genre examines films that negotiate war that continues after the declaration that its “mission” was “accomplished,” such as, Jarhead, The Hurt Locker, Redacted, The Green Zone, and American Sniper; the second looks at films for which the only mission is to “get out.” These include: 13 Hours, Hacksaw Ridge, and Dunkirk. We will also look at the cultural narratives informing these films, as reflected in other films, such as, Get Out, Us, Deepwater Horizon, Sully, and Captain Phillips. There will be short quizzes, three take-home exams, and a final.

ENG 382 001 HISTORY OF FILM II

Jordan Brower

Course description forthcoming. 

 

ENG 384 001 LITERATURE AND FILM

Walt Foreman

An encounter with a variety of Shakespeare’s plays in both written and filmed forms.  We will begin with the poetic, dramatic, and theatrical values of Shakespeare’s texts and thus especially with Shakespearean language (“wordplay”) and the way words create character and scenes.  Then we will turn to movies made from the plays and to the elaborate and subtle visual “language” movies use to tell stories.  Inevitably, and intentionally, we will speak of what the filmmakers have “done to Shakespeare,” but it is important to recognize that we will see the films not only as versions of the plays but also as original and integral works.  We will also attend to the way the intelligence and imagination of audiences, including ourselves, engage the gaps in time and culture back to other periods, people, and places—to Shakespeare as the 16th century became the 17th, to people in several countries a hundred years ago trying to figure out how to “film Shakespeare,” to Laurence Olivier in World War II Britain, to Akira Kurosawa in Japan in the 1950s and again in the 1980s, to Al Pacino in 1990s’ America, and so forth.  The sweep we make from Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus (c. 1592) to Julie Taymor’s The Tempest (2010) and Joss Whedon's Much Ado about Nothing (2012) should tell us something about the world over the last four hundred years and about ways of seeing it.

ENG 440G 001 STUDIES IN BRITISH LIT: New World

Joyce MacDonald

Beginning with More’s Utopia, this section of English 440 will concentrate on Renaissance writings about the Americas. Sometimes factual, sometimes fictional, these writings—plays, poems, diaries, and more—helped formulate English ideas about a part of the world that most English people would never see, despite the fact that Britain’s American colonies would come to generate vast imperial wealth. We will pay especial attention to how our writers often had to rely on existing literary ancient forms—epic, ode, georgic—to write about the quite new experiences and challenges that settling the Americas presented. How did fact and fiction mix in writings about North America, and why? What did the writings we’ll study tell Britons about the Americas, the people who lived there, and the process of establishing British colonies across the Atlantic?

ENG 480 001 STUDIES IN FILM: Subtitle TBD

Armando Prats

Course description forthcoming. 

 

ENG 495 001 HONORS SEMINAR: Film, Literature, and Culture of Cold War America (1946 to 1963)

Alan Nadel

This honors seminar will look at the informing concepts and practices of American politics and culture during the “High” Cold War (i.e., between the end of WWII and the escalation of the Vietnam War), as manifest in the literature, film, court decisions, and public policies of the period. The topics will include: “McCarthyism,” desegregation, and the post-WWII reassignment of gender roles.  Texts will include the novels The Catcher in the Rye, Lolita, Invisible Man, and the films No Way Out, The Defiant Ones, Gigi, Lady and the Tramp, Rear Window, and In a Lonely Place. There will be two take-home exams and a research paper (2500 to 3500 words).