LIT218 Literature & Film

2-19: If you are interested, I am teaching lit207-400 (English Literature I) this summer.

Sat, 26 Jan 2013 14:42:00 -0500

2-19: If you are interested, I am teaching lit207-400 (English Literature I) this summer.

The Odyssey...In Space!

Sat, 19 Jan 2013 10:34:42 -0500

It looks like The Odyssey…in space! might become a reality.

Oh, hello world.

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 14:30:13 -0500

Oh, hello world.

"When people don’t express themselves, they die one piece at a time. You’d be shocked at how many..."

Sun, 13 May 2012 13:06:00 -0400

“When people don’t express themselves, they die one piece at a time. You’d be shocked at how many adults are really dead inside—walking through their days with no idea who they are, just waiting for a heart attack or cancer or a Mack truck to come along and finish the job. It’s the saddest thing I know.”

- SPEAK, by Laurie Halse Anderson

Missing Student Papers

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 11:20:00 -0400

I am missing a number of student papers. Please get them in ASAP.

Pages Format

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 16:35:00 -0500

Folks, I think I have solved the issues I had with the .pages format. If you have a Mac, feel free to submit your first paper in that format and I will see if I have fixed this problem.

Director Commentaries

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 15:27:00 -0500

What if we did director commentaries, but instead did podcasted interviews with students about the films and books?????????? Maybe this could replace a paper!?!

Dress For Success Fashion Show

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 15:24:00 -0500

The second annual Dress for Success Fashion Show is taking place on Thursday, April 12, 2012 from 6:30-8 p.m. at the Mt. Laurel campus. Twenty students (10 men and 10 women) will be chosen to model professional business attire. These models will receive free business makeovers, including one professional suit along with a haircut and style. If you are interested in becoming one of the 20 student models, please complete this application by March 1, 2012 : http://staff.bcc.edu/careerservices/?pg=dress

Potential Odyssey Paper Topic

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 15:16:00 -0500

A potential paper topic could be about how our understanding of the poem changes or is affected by the seemingly intentional backgrounding of not only Penelope, but also Nausicaa and even Athena.

Vile Bodies/Bright Young Things

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 16:10:05 -0500

One of the Intermodern novels I thought about teaching in LIT218 was Evelyn Waugh’s novel Vile Bodies, which was made into the film Bright Young Things a few years ago. Waugh was easily outvoted by Mrs. Dalloway, but I think I will keep the novel as one of the options for the adaptation report.

Speak

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 08:06:05 -0500

Without getting too deeply into it, let’s just say Laurie Halse Anderson’s young adult novel Speak is something very close to my heart. It is an absolutely wonderful novel about a survivor of sexual assault’s coming of age and reclamation of her situation. Many students may have read the novel in high school as well. I know when I worked in a middle school, our eighth graders read it.

Dracula

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 16:10:05 -0500

Dracula was an obvious choice for me for a few reasons. First, its adaptation is difficult because of the numerous literary forms (narrative, journals, etc) used in the novel. How does one go about implementing these forms into an adaptation? Second, I wrote my Master’s Thesis on the novel, so I have probably way too much to say about it.

Mrs. Dalloway

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 09:07:46 -0500

One of the most obvious choices I had for LIT218 was using my favourite novel, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway for the class. I am quite knowledgeable about the novel because I wrote three papers in graduate school about Woolf and also write for the Blogging Woolf weblog. This is my favorite novel and one of my absolute favorites stories of any kind.

The 1990’s adaptation starring Vanessa Redgrave is well done and will fit the course sufficiently. This is the one I will be looking forward to the most.

V For Vendetta

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 17:11:43 -0500

I definitely wanted to include a graphic novel on our reading list, and given the recent usage of V For Vendetta’s imagery by the Occupy Wall Street movement Alan Moore’s classic graphic novel seemed like an obvious choice. The cinematic adaptation brings up some interesting issues given Moore’s disgust with the film and problems with publishers. I think this will be the one students look forward to the most.

Jane Eyre

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 16:35:05 -0500

The newest adaptation of Jane Eyre, a very artsy version that is cinematically beautiful, was one that a student turned me onto while I was planning LIT218. It doesn’t fit into the regular schedule, it’s somewhere between Dracula and Mrs. Dalloway I guess, but I will definitely add it to the list for final papers.

Orlando

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 12:59:00 -0500

At some point, I had hoped to have a section on queer issues in literature and film, and already kind of regret not doing it. Perhaps next time. Four works of literature came to mind right away. Virginia Woolf’s Orlando has a wonderful adaptation starring Tilda Swinton. The World Unseen is a great novel and film about queer issues in the Arab world. Two Shakespeare plays also came to mind: My absolute favourite As You Like It, with its disguises, and Cymberline, which Woolf writes a lot about.

I can always teach those if/when I teach Shakespeare.

Easy A

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 14:04:29 -0500

I’m not a huge fan, but a book I considered using for lit218 was The Scarlet Letter. I wanted to use this so I could show the excellent feminist adaptation of the novel Easy A. Easy A is a great, modern, retelling of the story that is equal parts critical and funny. As I said though, I’m not a big fan of The Scarlet Letter, so I decided to pass.

Hamlet

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 11:29:40 -0500

One of the smartest things I did while prepping lit218, I think, was having the Shakespearian Tragedies collection ordered for the course. This collection contains Othello, Macbeth, King Lear, and Hamlet. I already teach Othello and Lear in eng102 and lit207 respectively, so I think we will rotate between Macbeth and Hamlet.

Anyone who knows me knows the obvious choice for an adaptation of Hamlet is the David Tennant/Patrick Stewart adaptation from the RSC a few years back. Tennant is marvellous, just off of Doctor Who, and does the best performance of Hamlet I have seen. The modern setting also brings up questions of adaptation and how Shakespeare’s plays can be seen beyond time and place.

The Trojan Women

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 12:13:00 -0500

Another Greek work I thought about using in LIT218 was The Trojan Women. There is a really well done adaptation with Katherine Hepburn and a young Genevieve Bujold as Cassandra from the 1970s that is very teachable. We viewed it when I was in graduate school during a seminar on tragedy while discussing The Orestia and other works that take place in and around the fall of Troy.

I ended up deciding against using The Trojan Women for the same reason I decided against The Agemenon. Students are probably, if at all, more familiar with The Odyssey. There is too much background information that is needed to fully understand The Trojan Women that I thought it would be too much for students. Maybe next time, when I am more accustomed to the course, I will try it out as some sort of supplemental text.

Agamemnon

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 10:59:00 -0500

A work of Greek Tragedy I thought about using in lit218 was The Agamemnon from The Oresteia. I thought that students would be familiar with at least the basics of some parts of the story from The Odyssey and various bits of pop culture (like the use of “Cassie” on Buffy The Vampire Slayer) that the play has been used for in the past. I ended up not using it because I felt The Odyssey was a better way to begin the course and my own discomfort with using only a piece of a larger set of stories. This is the same reason I don’t teach Oedipus in eng102.