ENG 207 Intro to Playwriting
Students will learn the rudiments of dramatic writing through lecture, readings, and weekly assignments dealing with structure, characterizations, dialogue, and other areas of the playwright's art. Students' works will be shared and critiqued by the class, operating as a playwrights group. Each student will complete at least a ten-minute play and a 30-minute one-act play during the semester.
Meets general academic requirement AR. Meets EXC requirement CE.
ENG 257,258, 321, 322 Shakespeare Reproduced
This course primarily focuses on the reproduction of Shakespeare's plays on film and, to a lesser extent, the appropriation of Shakespeare's plays by modern playwrights. Plays and films on which we will focus in the next several years include Heiner Muller's "Hamletmachine", Julie Taynor's "Titus", Michael Almereyda's "Hamlet", and Kristian Levring's "The King is Alive".
Prerequisite(s): THR 100 Theatre & Society: An Historical Introduction or any 200 level ENG course or permission of instructor.
Meets general academic requirement HU if 257 or 321. Meets general academic requirement HU and W if 258 or 322. Meets EXC requirement W if 258 or 322.
ENG 917 Advanced Screenwriting
Examination of screenwriting fundamentals: story structure (theme and plot), character, dialogue, scene description and development, and script formats. Students will prepare character profiles, treatments, and at least one screenplay. Meets general academic requirement AR. Meets EXC requirement CE.
FLM 250 Contemporary World Cinema
This course offers a selective survey of some of the most cutting-edge films produced around the world in the last 10-20 years, including those that offer sustained insight into specific national cultures and those that are more global in orientation and address the worldwide mixing and mingling of people and cultures. Films explored in this course will likely include Bad Education (Spain), Amores Perros (Mexico), Code Unknown (Austria/France), Chunkging Express (Hong Kong/China), The World (China), A Separation (Iran), Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (Turkey), The Best of Youth (Italy), Waltz with Bashir (Israel), The Class (France), and District 9 (South Africa), among others. Special attention will be paid throughout to contemporary developments in film style, evolving cultures of film taste and reception, and film art as cultural expression. Open to all students at all levels. Meets general academic requirements DE and HU.
FLM 349 Film Reviewing
This writing-intensive course focuses on reviewing film and other art forms for both popular and scholarly outlets. Students will review classic and contemporary films, as well as television programs, books, visual art, music, theatre, video games, and food, in a variety of lengths and formats, for different intended audiences. The course will also include extensive practice in editing and re-writing and may include trips to local cinemas to review films on short deadlines. Students will learn about ways to develop and market their own critical voice.
Attendance at weekly screenings is required.
Meets general academic requirement W. Meets EXC requirement W.
FLM 360 Major Filmmakers
This course focuses on one or two major filmmakers and considers repeated and/or developing themes in his or her body of work. While the filmmakers under consideration vary, the course deals with similar questions each time: the validity of the auteur theory as a way of understanding film, the relationships between filmmakers and their art, and the nature of our ideas about art and artistic production. Attendance at weekly screenings is required. Meets general academic requirement HU.
FLM 388 ST 1999
While the turns of the calendar might be arbitrary, 1999 turned out to be a year of epoch-defining films, many of which still attract significant critical and cultural attention nearly 25 years later. While the films in this course are widely varied, we can use them to create a hazy portrait of a transitional year, when concerns about the future, the economic system, racial hierarchies and shifting gender roles played out on multiplex screens. This course will consider a variety of blockbusters and art-house films in multiple genres. Attendance at weekly screenings is required.
