Summer 2004
English 624: From Fiction to Film
Professor Howard Silverstein
Tuesdays & Thursdays, 4:00 to 6:15 pm
From the birth of film, producers, screenwriters, and directors
have turned to fiction as a source for their inspiration.
For the director and the screenwriter, the essential problem
has always been the same: how does one adapt a novel into
a film? By what chemistry does a five hundred-page novel
transform itself into a two-hour film? In class we will
discuss the fidelity of the moving image to its written
source. Can a change of setting, incident, or character
still maintain the integrity of the work of fiction? This
course will focus on four novels that develop the theme
of the individual sensibility in conflict with the demands
of a restrictive society. The novels to be discussed are
Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, Henry James's
Washington Square, Edith Wharton's The Age of
Innocence, and Philip Roth's The Human Stain.
Students will be required to write four short critical papers
comparing the novel to the film. Most of the screenings
will take place in class, but one or two may require outside
viewing.
English 636: Seminar on Postcoloniality and Desire
Professor Huma Ibrahim
Mondays & Wednesdays, 1:00 to 3:15 pm
This course is going to traverse the connections between
postcolonial discourse and issues of the other's desire.
One of the segments for excavation into postcolonial discourse
is the idea of the native identity. Identity is related
to human desire and is an under-explored aspect of postcolonial
studies.
We will read secondary material as well as primary texts
in order to explore issues connected to agency within desire
for both men and women in the "other" world. Often
this seems to suggest interracial desire, but that is not
the concern of this course. What we will be looking at is
where desire intersects with identity in the postcolonial
context.
Some texts we will be reading are The Gender Sexuality
Reader, Tayeb Saleh's Season of Migration to the
North, Bessie Head's A Question of Power, Alifa
Riffat's Distant View of a Minaret, and some others.
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