American Literature on Screen

(5 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

A large number of films and television programmes are adapted from literary sources, and often produce powerful responses from viewers and critics. This module explores the phenomenon of American literature on screen, comparing the adapted screen versions with their literary originals to consider how and why the decision to adapt is taken, and what effect is achieved. This module provides the tools to critically assess and interpret how American literature adapted for the screen approaches key issues in American culture such as race, gender, class, identity, and power. We will also explore the intersectional nature of systemic structures such as settler colonialism, patriarchy, capitalism, organised religion, etc. Additionally, this module will consider the ways that screen adaptation appropriates literary texts, and assess the political and economic dimensions of such appropriations. Literary genres covered will include autobiography and the novel, including the graphic novel, with examples ranging from the 19th to the 21st centuries; screen media will include both film and television adaptations. Students will be encouraged to explore the connections and the differences between the uses of specific media, and to think through how and why adaptation works in a range of critical and often tense American cultural contexts. Students will also consider narrative and narration, characterisation, voice, point of view, style, and audience. The module is team taught by a wide variety of American Studies specialists, and our approach is firmly interdisciplinary and intersectional; students will be encouraged to take similarly diverse critical approaches. Weekly seminars will explore a range of texts and films from the 19th to 21st centuries, and students will be expected to devise their own essay topics from the interests they develop across the module.