This course is for all who stay to the end of the credits, purchase soundtracks, and argue over who should have won the Oscar for Best Score, along with anyone else interested in the undervalued importance of music to the general effect of a motion picture. We will explore and discuss the myriad ways in which these two media interact. The course will focus on classic scores by Herrmann, Morricone, and Williams, as well as the uses of pre-existing music in films of Kubrick and Tarantino.

(Component course for Film Studies) How did the events of the twentieth century set the stage for Korea in the twenty-first century? How did the country become divided into North and South, and how have their paths diverged in the decades since? In this course, students will develop a nuanced perspective of the key political, social, and cultural developments in twentieth-century Korean history through close readings of short stories, novellas, and films, including North Korean productions and rare propaganda films produced during the colonial and Korean War eras.

This course provides a foundation in the principles, techniques, and equipment involved in video production. Students will make several short videos over the course of the term as well as one final piece. We will develop our own voices while learning the vocabulary of moving images and gaining production and post-production skills. In addition to technical training, classes will include critiques, screenings, readings, and discussion.

This course will explore visual and literary images of nineteenth through early 20th-century marriage and motherhood. Discussion of Virginia's Woolf's A Room of One's Own and Barbara Welter's essay The Cult of True Womanhood will serve as the springboard for our focus on representations of women in the home. We will incorporate a visit to the art museum, and will analyze film adaptations of some of the texts we read.

The course will study the literature, politics, and art of the Harlem Renaissance--roughly a period from 1915 to 1940. The New Negro Movement brought together writers, artists, philosophers, musicians, and everyday people from many parts of the United States and the Caribbean to New York City's Harlem. Their efforts to create a distinct African American art resulted in a flowering of art from several different perspectives.

This seminar will examine the various screen adaptations of assorted novels by Henry James. We will read the novels against the films, exploring how James's texts translate--or do not translate-- into film. Novels and films to be studied include Washington Square, The Europeans, Portrait of a Lady, The Turn of the Screw, and Wings of the Dove.

This course explores the interplay between literary art and scientific thinking in the period held as the dawn of modernity, in which the distinction between such as terms as art and science was anything but clear. Reading the works of prominent poets and dramatists (Shakespeare, Jonson, Donne, Milton) alongside scientific and philosophical literature (Lucretius, Montaigne, Bacon, Burton) we will ponder the relation between aesthetic and empirical paths to truth.

In this class we will read extensively from contemporary articles in the New Yorker, Slate, Vanity Fair, the New York Times Sunday Magazine, and other mainstream publications as we study the best magazine writing in America today. Writing assignments will stress getting students out of the library and into the world. Each student will be asked to pursue stories of her own, and produce original writing distinguished by solid reporting, independent research, and compelling and elegant prose.

If you've ever sunk deeply into the rich world of a novel, you know the rewards this genre offers. This workshop will examine the challenges the novel places on writers, including the development of a longer and more complex plot. Elements of craft will include: characterization, point of view, scene development, research (especially as related to setting), plot, and narrative structure. Students will complete the opening pages of a novel and a plot synopsis. Extensive reading is required, as well as critiques of student work.

This course will examine narrative nonfiction biographies written by women biographers in order to determine the specific ways in which women tell the stories of other women's lives. We will investigate stylistic and theoretical approaches to writing biographies in which gender is a central focus. We will ask if feminist biography constitutes a literary genre. We will experience the challenges (and thrills) of conducting archival and primary research. The course will culminate in students writing chapter-length biographies.