English 460: Fiction into Film

Photographer Laszlo Moholy-Nagy writes: “The illiterate of the [21st] century will be as ignorant of the camera as of the pen.” This single-semester course aims to create conscious and knowledgeable readers and viewers of film and adds a proper balance to the study of fiction and film through the act of writing.  Fiction into Film seeks to help the student see that literature and film go hand in hand by the nature of their common narrative elements despite the differences in their delivery. As you have learned to apply reading strategies and analytical skills to the printed text in your traditional English classes, in English 460 you will also learn to “read” a film, to “read in the dark.”  In the course of the semester, we will study works of cultural, historical, and aesthetic significance, among them, Casablanca, Citizen Kane, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, The Graduate, On the Waterfront, and Rear Window. The writing component of the course will be largely expository and in the form of critical papers discussing aspects of literary analysis and film technique as found in the particular works.