Subjects Taught by Semester

Introductory

21L.006	American Literature	Laura Finch	TR	1:00-2:30p	56-154
Prereq: none 3-0-9 HASS-H, CI-H Topics: Improves Close Reading, Improves Oral Communication, Includes Critical Theory, Is Writing-Intensive, Thinks about Popular Culture, Thinks about Race or Class, Thinks about Science, Technology, Environment, Thinks about Social Justice Issues Climate crisis and COVID-19 are a forceful reminder of the entangled lives of everyone and everything on the planet. This class turns to contemporary literature to think through ways of living together that exceed the imagination of Capitalism, an economic system that will only ever put profit before life. We will think about issues of social justice, such as environmental racism and the use of Indigenous lands for nuclear mining, waste, or weapons testing. We will also think about stories that place non-human characters at their centre (some examples include: mushrooms, a piece of plastic waste at sea, the planet itself). And we will read a range of novels, poems, and short stories that use the imaginative potential of fiction to try and envision mutually sustaining modes of togetherness.
21L.007	World Literatures: East Asian Literature as World Literature	Wiebke Denecke	MW	9:30-11:00a	2-103
Prereq: none 3-0-9 HASS-H, CI-H Topics: Improves Close Reading, Includes Critical Theory, Involves Creative Writing, Is Writing-Intensive, Studies Adaptations or Translations, Thinks about Gender or Sexuality, Thinks about Popular Culture, Thinks about Race or Class, Thinks about Social Justice Issues, Works with Visual Materials/Film/Media Today we have the luxury of reading more literatures in more languages than ever before in world history. In this course we ask: what can we learn from the great diversity of literatures? In what ways does “literature” look different when viewed through a different lens (such as through the literary heritage of China, Japan, or Korea)? What does poetry written in Chinese characters accomplish that alphabetic poetry cannot? How does Buddhist reincarnation change the way you tell stories and devise novels? Why is Japan the world’s only major literature where female authors dominated certain literary genres as early as the 11th century? Our selective journey through world literature will take us through some of Asia’s most seminal and thought-provoking texts, including philosophical masters such as Confucius, Laozi, and Zhuangzi; Tang poetry; China’s classical novels Dream of the Red Chamber and Journey to the West; Japan’s female-authored tales and diaries, such as The Tale of Genji and The Pillow Book; Korea’s classical novel The Nine Cloud Dream, and the pansori play Song of Ch’unhyang. To enhance your ability to appreciate these rich texts and to speak and write about how they matter to us today, we will also draw in films, venture into creative exercises, and work on a translation project.
21L.011	Introduction to Film Studies	Eugenie Brinkema
	Lecture		T	3:30-5:00p	3-270
	Screening		M	7:00-10:00p	3-270
	Recitation 1		R	3:00-4:00p	1-277
	Recitation 2		R	4:00-5:00p	1-277
Prereq: none 3-3-6 HASS-A, CI-H Topics: Improves Close Reading, Includes Critical Theory, Is Writing-Intensive, Thinks about Gender or Sexuality, Thinks about Popular Culture, Thinks about Race or Class, Works with Visual Materials/Film/Media Films are familiar to you; this course should make them strange again. Introduction to film studies will concentrate on close analysis and criticism. Students will learn the technical vocabulary for analyzing the cinematic narrative, frame, and editing; develop the critical means for turning close analysis into interpretations and comparative readings of films; and explore theoretical issues. We will look beyond the surface pleasures of cinema to ask how films are put together; what choices are made formally, narratively, and politically in the constructions of different types of films; and how films have changed historically and in different production and national contexts. We will study a wide range of works made between 1895 and 2020, including films from the early silent period, documentary and avant-garde films, European art cinema, and contemporary Hollywood fare.

Intermediate

21L.435	Literature and Film: End of the World: Apocalypse in Film and Literature CMS.840	Caitlyn Doyle	MW	3:30-5:00p	56-191
Prereq: One subject in Literature or Comparative Media Studies 3-3-6 HASS-H; Can be repeated for credit Topics: Improves Close Reading, Improves Oral Communication, Includes Critical Theory, Involves Creative Writing, Is Writing-Intensive, Thinks about Gender or Sexuality, Thinks about Popular Culture, Thinks about Race or Class, Thinks about Science, Technology, Environment, Thinks about Social Justice Issues, Works with Visual Materials/Film/Media The world is ending, or has it already ended? This course examines films and novels that grapple with apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic scenarios threatening humankind—scenarios that appear particularly prescient in the wake of a global pandemic and in the midst of an ongoing climate crisis. Comparing the different capacities of film and literature in representing such cataclysms, we will further consider the extent to which artworks can challenge our understanding of our own historical moment and the future it promises. Whether the end of the world takes the form of nuclear disaster, climate crisis, plague, or invasion, these works offer insight into the social, commercial, environmental, and civic structures of society as well as the forces that threaten them. Closely examining films such as Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), Melancholia (2011), and Blood Quantum (2019) and novels such as The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), Parable of the Sower (1993), and The Marrow Thieves (2017), we will examine the apocalypse from different cultural and historical perspectives, focusing on the dystopic and utopic possibilities in a world that is suddenly forced to change dramatically.
21L.481[J]	HIV/AIDS in American Culture: Black Lives and Queer Bodies WGS.250	Joaquín Terrones	MW	9:30-11:00a	2-147
Prereq: none 3-0-9 H Topics: Improves Close Reading, Includes Critical Theory, Thinks about Popular Culture, Thinks about Race or Class, Thinks about Science, Technology, Environment, Thinks about Social Justice Issues, Works with Visual Materials/Film/Media During the first years of the HIV/AIDS crisis, in the eighties and early nineties, activists protested across major cities demanding government action, some of them still hooked up to IV drips and oxygen tanks; alongside them, writers, visual artists, and filmmakers continued creating, many up until their last breath. This course examines the relationship between different forms of cultural expression—from art to activism—during those first fifteen years of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, prior to the advent of highly active antiretroviral therapy. In particular, we will analyze the way in which mainstream narratives about the disease associated it with Blackness and queerness. With a focus on the work of Black queer and trans creators and activists, we will also study how literature, film, and visual art were mobilized against these mainstream narratives in order to effect changes in public consciousness and even policy. Finally, we will discuss the legacy of these cultural responses, particularly as it pertains to communities of color. We will do so through close readings across a variety of genres and media: fiction, poetry, film, theater, television, journalism, popular music, painting, sculpture, performance, and installation art. Some of the works we will analyze include: Samuel Delany’s The Tale of Plagues and Carnival; Octavia Butler’s Fledgling; Jamaica Kincaid’s My Brother; Sapphire’s Push and its screen adaptation Precious; the films of Marlon Riggs; and the latest season of the television series Pose.

Seminars

21L.706

Studies in Film: Genre Unsettled: The Politics of Popular Indigenous Films
CMS.830

Caitlyn Doyle

11:00-12:30p

4-257

Prereq: 21L.011, one subject in Literature or Comparative Media Studies; or permission of instructor
3-3-6 HASS-H, CI-M; Can be repeated for credit
Topics: Improves Close Reading, Improves Oral Communication, Includes Critical Theory, Is Writing-Intensive, Thinks about Popular Culture, Thinks about Race or Class, Thinks about Social Justice Issues, Works with Visual Materials/Film/Media

This course explores the internationally popular musicals, Westerns, police procedurals, horror and comedy films being produced by a new generation of Indigenous filmmakers. These directors have shifted away from the activist-based documentaries and politically committed narrative films for which Indigenous cinemas have become globally recognized, but their films are far from a-political. From Turtle Island (Canada & the United States) to Aotearoa (New Zealand), Indigenous directors have begun to unsettle the conventions of genres and the expectations regarding Indigenous aesthetic and political commitments alike. From reconciliation to indebtedness, from migration to climate change, these films grapple with pressing issues of our time, but decline to propose solutions from within the institutional, discursive, and political contexts to which they directly respond. Films examined will include: Bran Nue Dae, by Rachel Perkins (Arrernte and Kalkadoon), Hunt for the Wilderpeople, by Taika Waititi (Māori), Rhymes for Young Ghouls, by Jeff Barnaby (Mi’kmaq), and Maliglutit, by Zacharias Kunuk (Inuk).