2012-2013 Academic Year Calendar - Marianopolis

General Education: Englishidentifying the characteristics of theparticular genre studied, and therelationship of the texts to theirhistorical and literary period.These courses also continue thedevelopment of students’ readingand writing skills with an emphasison providing guidance and practicein writing a well-crafted essay(1000 words).Comics as LiteratureThis course introduces students to thegraphic novel and the academic studyof comics as literature. It provides avocabulary with which to analyzeboth the visual and textual aspectsof comics, as well as information onthis relatively new medium’s history,developments and conventions.Through in-class work and writtenassignments, students in this courselearn to perform effectiveliterary/visual analysis, explorecomics as a diverse and evolvingmedium, and better understand theimportance of genre in studying anyform of narrative.Detective FictionThis course explores the development,conventions and features of the formaldetective story. Through the examinationof works representative of keyperiods in the history of the genre,students explore the relationshipbetween a story’s particular use of theformal characteristics and the beliefsand anxieties of the historical periodin which it was written.Short FictionStudents learn to recognize the formalcharacteristics of the short story andthe use of literary conventions withinthe short story, and to produce literaryanalysis and oral presentationsdemonstrating their understanding.28The WesternThe Western remains a popular andinfluential genre constituted by avariety of motifs (e.g. cowboys,Native Americans, saloons, six gunsand sheriffs), settings (e.g. wild openspaces and the American West circa1870), plots (e.g. a train/stagecoachversus thieves and a man seekingrevenge) and subjects (e.g. freedom,violence, otherness andpersonal/national regeneration).Through short stories, novels andfilm, this course will explore how theformulas of the early Western haveparadoxically enabled the genre’smore recent engagement withrevisionist historicism and postmodernism.Folk and Fairy TalesThis course explores the conventionsand characteristics of folk and fairytales. Students employ a variety ofcritical approaches (e.g. Freudian,Jungian, Feminist, Marxist) toanalyze tales. The course focusesfirst on fairy tales in early writtenforms, then on versions of these talesby authors such as Charles Perrault,Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, andJoseph Jacobs, and finally onreinterpretations by 20th and 21stcentury authors and filmmakers. Thecourse also includes study of originalliterary tales by authors such as HansChristian Andersen and Oscar Wilde.Tragedy‘Tragedy’, as used in the media,describes an event that is emotionallydevastating. This course explores thedistinction between that common useand its roots in ancient Greek drama.Tragedy will gain perspective fromcritical theories (existentialistphilosophy, evolutionary psychology,Adlerian psychoanalysis and gendertheory). Film screenings willsupplement readings for discussionof performance and filmic productionaspects. In addition to submittingconventional essays, you will also beasked (in groups) to write, film andultimately screen your own shorttragic film.PoetryIn this course, students will examinea variety of poetic forms and styles,covering a broad historical range,with emphasis on more recentsamples from the 20th and 21stcenturies. Topics to be coveredinclude: an overview of poeticperformance (from bardic recitationto the contemporary poetry slam);analyses of sound, rhythm and meter;a brief review of popular poetic forms(including ballads, sonnets, epigrams,and haikus); an exploration of controversiesregarding the interpretation ofpoetry; and, examinations of poets’prose commentaries on theirinfluences, practices, andphilosophies.Twentieth-Century PoetryThis course examines the American,British and Canadian poetry of thetwentieth century in relation to ahistorical period. Students are taughtto apply a critical approach to thedifferent forms of poetic discourserepresentative of this period throughthe study of specific literary movementslike imagism, formalism, Beat,confessional, projective and feministverse.Cinema and the NovelThis course explores the challengesinherent in adapting novels in general,and the novels considered in class, inparticular, for the feature film. Thehistory of the relationship between