Course Description

This course explores how literature and film inform the ways we understand, communicate, and reimagine our experiences in art and life. How might something become real, from patterns and variations in sound, image and text? We will travel together through universes that range from microcosmic and parallel to the invented and surreal, to discover how we not only consume stories when we encounter them; we participate at the same time in producing these worlds, via pathways such as expectation, translation and memory.

Course Learning Outcomes

On completing the course, students will be able to:

1. Demonstrate an awareness of different narrative forms in literature as both shaped by concrete situations and shaping responses to such situations.
2. Engage in critical analysis of different modes of worldbuilding, in relation to the dynamics between storyteller and audience.
3. Identify key conventions in storytelling and trace their histories across different cultural traditions.
4. Recognize distinct patterns and representations of reality in literature and engage in arguments about their relevance across a multiplicity of time and space.

Offer Semester and Day of Teaching

First semester (Wed)