July 2016 English Literature and Performing Arts Course Outline

Transcription

1 July 2016 English Literature and Performing Arts Course Outline The English Literature and Performing Arts course aims to equip students with critical skills in understanding and analyzing literary texts, visual and performing arts, and screen culture. Students can expect to be fully immersed in an astounding variety of texts that span different genres, styles and movements these texts range from the classic Shakespeare cannon, to Romantic poetry, and even to contemporary and experimental works of film, performance texts and science fiction. Our academic tutors bring in unique perspectives to these texts by encouraging active discussion and comparative exercises in the classroom; these include seminars, group discussions, creative writing and performance. At the end of the course, students will be able to approach literary texts with an awareness of their different intellectual contexts and an acute sensitivity to the use of style and language in creating meaning. Session 1: How do we write the figure? Looking at key concepts in literature and the other arts through portraiture Mon 27 th June This opening session aims to provide a brief overview to the course. Through a discussion of the notion of portraiture as it appeared in the literary and graphic arts throughout the centuries, students will attempt to map a brief chronology of key movements and artists from the Renaissance to the Twentieth century. This not only allows them to engage with the changing nature of language, but also helps them to navigate through the course with a larger literary context in mind. Following that, we will take a closer look at specific artistic and literary portraits in the Twentieth century. What were the different choices that artists made in depicting the human figure as diverse artistic movements such as Cubism, Modernism and Abstract Expressionism swept through the century? Was it still important to remain faithful to the external appearance of a person, or was that no longer deemed a faithful attribute to human presence? Key issues discussed include the processes of seeing and framing in portraiture, the relationship between the portraitist and the portraited, the interrogation of the subject/object and external/internal boundaries, and the mediation of the environment in constituting the human figure. Texts and artists covered: Writings of Virginia Woolf, Ford Madox Ford, William Carlos Williams, Mina Loy and Gertrude Stein; paintings and sculptures of Picasso, Modigliani, Egon Schiele, Willem de Kooning, Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Alberto Giacometti and David Hockney; Studies of artists by John Berger, David Sylvester, Martin Gayford and James Lord. Session 2: Film Art and History Tue 28 th June These two sessions will give an overview of film art and film history as they developed through the Twentieth century. Students will be introduced to the key concepts of mise-en-scene, cinematography, editing and sound, and how these were significant in influencing cinematic movements and creating distinctive filmic styles of auteurs such as Tarantino, Welles, Hitchcock, Godard, Scorsese, Kurosawa, and David Lynch. Concepts of spectatorship, diegesis, montage and cultural memory will be explored.

2 Main text used: David Bordwell s Film Art: An Introduction; films covered include: Erich von Stroheim s Greed, Orson Welles s Citizen Kane, Eisenstein s Battleship Potemkin, de Sica s Bicycle Thieves, Hitchcock s Psycho and Vertigo, Kurosawa s Rashomon, Resnais s Hiroshima Mon Amour, Godard s Breathless, Tarantino s Pulp Fiction and The Inglourious Basterds, Lynch s Blue Velvet, Kubrick s Space Odyssey, Scorsese s Taxi Driver, and Woody Allen s Midnight in Paris. Session 3: Romanticism and A Midsummer Night s Dream Wed 29 th June This session will introduce students to the key ideas of the Romantic era. Themes of individual consciousness and imagination in the works of poets such as Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Robert Burns will be explored. Students will also attempt a comparative study of Romanticism in literature and painting through settings of nature, mythology and religion. In addition, the reverberations of Romanticism on contemporary literature and society will be discussed through case studies of present-day cultural objects and artistes, such as Taylor Swift s New Romantics. The second half of the session will concentrate on Shakespeare s A Midsummer Night s Dream. Students will be guided through the major themes, characters and historical production of the play; this will be followed by a brief reading to allow students to understand the challenges and realities of Shakespearean acting. Texts and artists covered: Shelley, Coleridge, Keats, Wordsworth, Christina Rossetti and Robert Burns; Caspar David Friedrich and Eugene Delacroix Session 4: Gothic Fri 1 st July This session will begin with a close analysis of Fuseli s The Nightmare: what makes this painting gothic and what kind of artistic techniques are employed in creating this gothic atmosphere? A contextual understanding of the gothic as it emerged during a specific socio-historical moment in history will follow; students will discuss the gothic in relation to the Romantic and the Victorian novel to understand its motivations and influences. Texts include: Excerpts from Frankenstein, Dracula and Wuthering Heights Session 5: Introduction to Modernism Mon 4 th July This session will introduce the artistic practices and philosophical preoccupations of Modernism through analysis and discussion of a variety of excerpts from modernist poems, paintings and collage art. Students will be challenged to create their own modernist art works that respond to Ezra Pound s demand that artists Make it New! Texts: Excerpts from Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, T.S. Eliot, H.D., William Carlos Williams, Blast

3 Session 6: Poetry of the First World War Tue 5 th July This session will explore the artistic responses to conflict created by British soldiers during the Great War. The session will examine the use of art as propaganda, and the impact of journalism upon domestic attitudes to the war, and contextualize some of the most famous British poetry of the 20 th Century. Texts: Excerpts from the poetry of Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves, Herbert Read, and Isaac Rosenberg. Session 7: Experimental Literature Wed 6 th July This session will explore the variety of means by which artists have experimented with literary forms and production in order to subvert or resist dominant trends within literature. The class will examine the political motivations behind experimental writing and challenge the students to create their own innovative methods of expression. Texts: Excerpts from Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries, Mark Z Danielewski, J.G. Ballard, Bridget Penney, and Sarah Kane. Session 8: Macbeth Thur 7 th July This session will tie-in with the student s Shakespeare theatre experience, and will explore 16 th Century dramatic strategies and theatre practices. The class will select a few key scenes from Macbeth for discussion and deconstruction, and will examine the relations of power, violence, masculinity and identity. Texts: Macbeth Session 9: Comedy on Stage and Screen: Laughing with Buster Keaton and Beckett Fri 8 th July This session will allow students to investigate why they laugh while watching plays and films, and how this laughter undermines and contributes to the creation of the text. In particular, students will discuss the indexical and cultural functions of laughter in relation to its different presentations in slapstick, farce, parody, irony, mockumentary and tragicomedy, amongst others. A socio-historical approach will also be adopted in a comparative study of Keaton and Beckett to illustrate the difficulties in conceptualizing humour across forms and genres, and how these challenges are essential to the dynamic and creative drive of laughter.

4 Films and plays include: Kubrick s Dr. Strangelove, Ashby s Harold and Maude, Woody Allen s Zelig and Annie Hall, Keaton s Sherlock Jr, Chaplin s Modern Times, Hawk s His Girl Friday, Tennessee William s The Glass Managerie and A Streetcar Named Desire, Ionesco s Rhinoceros, Albee s Who s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Beckett s Waiting for Godot and Happy Days, Stoppard s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, The Real Inspector Hound and After Magritte Session 10: Gender and Feminist Theory Mon 11 th July This session will introduce students to main concepts in gender and feminist theory and how they shape the creation and reception of contemporary works of fiction. By thinking through gender theories presented by Judith Butler, Helene Cixous and Simone de Beauvoir, students will discuss how gender intersects with identity, culture and society, and how these themes are presented through different modes of expression in literary works. In addition, this session will also examine how aspects of feminist science fiction were influenced by pulp science fiction and second wave feminism. Authors include: Margaret Atwood, Joanna Russ and Ursula Le Guin Session 11: Identity, Media and Popular Culture Tues 12 th July This session will explore the intersections of gender, media and identity through the critical lens of cultural studies. In particular, students will be encouraged to think through concepts of hegemony, representations of masculinity/femininity, and scales of oppression and power through a close analysis of cultural artifacts ranging from Manet s Déjeuner sur L herbe to Pink s Try. It is hoped that students will leave this session having gained a deeper insight into the social and political construction of individual and collective identities in the course of twentieth-century history. Theorists covered may include: Adorno, Foucault and McLuhan Session 12: Scoring the Scene: Film Music Workshop Wed 13 th July During this session, students will learn about the fundamentals of film music by looking at music's narrative role in film and TV, and the logistics of creating a soundtrack. As a group, students will put this knowledge into practice and score a scene from a film. Session 13: Join the Band: Performance Workshop Thur 14 th July Very much a hands-on session, students will be let loose on a selection of instruments in an attempt to analyze, learn, rehearse and perform recent chart-topping songs.

5 Session 14: Writing the Witness: Trauma and Language in the Twentieth Century Fri 15 th July This session will introduce students to the concepts and issues surrounding contemporary trauma studies in literature. In surveying texts ranging from Adorno s What does coming to terms with the past mean? to Lacan s re-interpretation of Freud s dream of the burning child in Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, students will discuss the role of stories and memory in loss and mourning. This session will also encourage students to understand trauma deviating from the grand narratives of the century; in this respect, topics covering diaspora, post-colonialism and gender oppression will be discussed. Texts and writers covered: Writings by Adorno, Benjamin, Freud, Lacan, Butler, Bachmann, Caruth; film excerpts from Resnais s Hiroshima Mon Amour, Makhmalbaf s At Five in the Afternoon and Hitchcock s Vertigo; sections from Sebald s The Emigrants and poems by Paul Celan