麻豆AV

Description: This course will explore representative writings in American Literature from the Revolution to the late nineteenth-century.聽 We will consider the legacy of the Revolution in relation to both its role as a seminal event in the emergence of American national identity and its place in the international political scene of the late eighteenth-century.聽 We will also examine the shifting construction of this national identity in the first half of the nineteenth-century, paying particular attention to the ongoing conflicts between unification and division that culminated in the Civil War. We will situate the literary works in the context of central cultural and social issues of the period, including slavery, industrial growth, consolidation, reformation, and the First and Second Party Systems.聽 We will also consider the intellectual context of the period, specifically the movement between Transcendentalism and Romanticism, as well as the foundations of Pragmatism and Modernism.聽 Some of the writers we will read will include Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, Washington Irving, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Edgar Allan Poe, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Emily Dickinson, and Henry James.

Texts: (available at the 麻豆AV Bookstore)

• The American Tradition in Literature, Volume 1, Twelfth Edition.
• James, Henry. Washington Square. Oxford University Press.听听听

Format: Lectures and Discussions

Evaluation:

• In-Class Essay: 20%
• Long Essay (7-8 pp., secondary research required): 30%
• Final exam: 35% (in class)
• Class participation: 15% (includes attendance and discussion)

Description: This is an introductory but occasionally advanced survey course that focuses on three aspects of film as mass medium: genre, propaganda, and celebrity. Beginning with Linda Williams鈥� assertion that 鈥淸m]elodrama is the fundamental mode of American moving pictures鈥� (鈥淢elodrama Revised,鈥� 1998) and with a viewing of Welles鈥� Citizen Kane (1941), we will trace that mode through four different genres to learn how genres teach viewers how to look at movies. Our main examples will be Citizen Kane, a fictionalized biographical film or biopic; Stevens鈥� Shane (1953), a Western; Hitchcock鈥檚 Rear Window (1954), a thriller; and Coppola鈥檚 Dracula (1992), a horror movie with surprising implications about film as a mass medium.

The second part of the course will focus on a broad historical range of propaganda, starting with Riefenstahl鈥檚 Triumph of the Will (1935) and Curtiz鈥檚 Casablanca (1942). In these examples, we will consider representations of nationality that often serve to mobilize support for war. With more recent films arguably involved in propaganda, such as Moore鈥檚 Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004), we will reflect upon the potential application of Williams鈥� arguments about melodrama鈥攖his time in the context of the documentary genre and realism. We will also consider a recent comic book adaptation, Favreau鈥檚 Iron Man (2008), so that we can discuss the relationship of propaganda and ideology in popular culture as a transition to the next unit of the course.

To conclude the course, we will consider our cultural and personal imagination of narratives of intimacy that promote celebrity. The main examples will be Wilder鈥檚 Sunset Boulevard (1950), Brittain and Owen鈥檚 Ladies and Gentlemen... Mr. Leonard Cohen (1965), Bergman鈥檚 Persona (1966), and Weir鈥檚 The Truman Show (1998). These films will remind us not only of how we have been taught to look at movies, but also of how we have been taught to look at celebrities. We will discuss the consequences鈥攆or us and them, and both together鈥攐f our looking and gazing at celebrities, who are almost inescapably objects of our interest. We will also discuss the system that produces celebrity and the simultaneously private and mass subject.

The course will have two screenings of the same film per week, and the remaining films will be viewed during regular class time or extra-curricularly. For students who cannot attend either the afternoon or evening screening, all the films will be available on reserve at the library, as will some of the additional texts (e.g. articles and chapters). Each week, one or two secondary readings on genre, propaganda, celebrity, or mass media will be required or recommended.

In support of local business and culture, the required textbook, Maria Pramaggiore and Tom Wallis鈥� Film: A Critical Introduction, third edition, will be available ($138) at The Word bookstore, 469 Milton Street (cash or cheque only). Used copies of the earlier edition might also be available, but some of the required readings might not be in that edition.

Format: Informal lectures, screenings, activities, and discussions.

Description: In this course we will examine the ways in which Renaissance writers represented the powers and dangers of passion. We will begin by looking at the different myths about desire which the Renaissance inherited from the classical and Christian traditions. Our main focus will be the rise and fall of Petrarchan love, which we will trace from the idealistic courtly lovers of 13th鈥恈entury Italy to the cynical rakes of late 17th鈥怑ngland. Following the evolution of the passions through time and space will enable us to examine how desire is both an intimate expression of the individual self and shaped by cultural influences. Questions we will consider will include the nature of erotic passion and its relation to other forms of desire such as love of God, country, family, power, and especially art itself; same鈥恠ex desire; the relation between desire and disgust. Readings of literature will be juxtaposed with visits to art galleries in Florence and other cities, and discussions of the historical contexts which shaped a growing passion for passion itself.

Texts (tentative): Course pack with short selections from: Plato; The Bible; Ovid; Ficino; Petrarch; Castiglione; Aretino; Wyatt; Surrey; Marlowe; Donne; Suckling; Carew; Marvell; Rochester; Dante, La Vita Nuova; Shakespeare: selections from the Sonnets, Venus and Adonis, Romeo and Juliet, Antony and Cleopatra

Prerequisites: None.

Method of Evaluation: Participation (20%); 10鈥�15 minute presentation (10%); Midterm (30%); final 10 page paper (40%).

Enrollment: Limited to 15 students, admission by permission of instructor. Students interested in taking this course should email maggie.kilgour [at] mcgill.ca as soon as possible.

Further information on 麻豆AV鈥檚 summer program in Florence, including costs and application forms, will be available in early January 2012 at www.mcgill.ca/italian.

* Note: this course will count towards the Backgrounds/Renaissance requirement of 麻豆AV鈥檚 English program.