Undergraduate Courses
Rhetoric
130: Novel Into Film
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This course examines literary-to-cinematic adaptation in the genre of science – or “speculative” – fiction. We will begin with theories of the genre and of adaptation, experimenting with definitions of SF on page and screen, with occasional forays into graphic novels, television, and contemporary art. As we move between media we will read rhetorically, focusing on how our course materials describe categories like the human, natural, and technological, perform race, gender and sexuality, and challenge ideas about history, nation, and environment. Texts may include prose by Joseph Campbell, Arthur C. Clarke, Philip K. Dick, Ursula K. Le Guin, Stanislaw Lem, Jules Verne and such films as
The Thing from Another World (Hawks/Nyby, 1951),
2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968),
Blade Runner (Scott, 1982),
Avatar (Cameron, 2009),
Solaris (Tarkovsky, 1972 & Soderbergh, 2002), and
Le voyage à travers l’impossible (Méliès, 1904).