Film and Literature

Week 1: Introduction to Film and Literature

Week 1 is devoted to introducing the course, its requirements, and the technology to navigate it. It also will serve as a meet and greet for students, their classmates, and their instructor, and the start of a lively exchange of ideas about film and cinematography.

Week 2-6: Pride and Prejudice and Film Techniques

Students will read Austen’s classic novel, focusing on style, characterization, and universal themes. At the same time, they will learn about and interpret examples of film techniques in the following categories: production design, camera work, lighting, sound, and music. This unit will culminate with students watching and evaluating the entire 2005 film version of the story, and with a literary essay that explores why Pride and Prejudice has remained so popular (or why students believe it should not have the reputation it has earned).

Week 7-11: The Hunger Games

In the second unit, students will read Suzanne Collins’ novel The Hunger Games, learning about the idea of dystopia and continuing to explore elements of literary craft such as mood and flashback. After reading the novel, students will create a presentation that contrasts different scenes from the novel with how those scenes are portrayed in the 2012 film. During this unit, students will also work in collaborative groups to explore another dystopian novel/film pair and present their findings to the entire class.

Week 12-15: Choice Text/Film Pairs

In this section of the class, students will choose to explore one of the following text/film pairs:

• Driving Miss Daisy by Alfred Uhry; Driving Miss Daisy, dir. Bruce Beresford, 1989
• Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare; Shakespeare in Love, dir. John Madden, 1998
• Stories from the Corner by F. X. Toole; Million Dollar Baby, dir. Clint Eastwood, 2004
• The Fault in Our Stars by John Green; The Fault in Our Stars, dir. Josh Boone, 2014
• Maze Runner by James Dashner; Maze Runner dir. Wes Ball, 2014
• "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" by Raymond Carver; Birdman or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance, dir. Alejandro G. Iñárritu, 2014

They will interpret the universal themes communicated by the text, and then review the film in either written or video format. The course will conclude with discussions of some topics related to film such as the Academy Awards and the era of “Peak TV.” In the final week, students will complete a proctored post-assessment, comment on each other’s film reviews, and bid each other farewell.