Students will conduct research and analyze the impact of Disney as mass media on American society, as well as the role mass media plays in American society. Students will theorize in their project the impact of Disney on American society, now and in the future.
This class will investigate the ways in which the formal aspects of Western storytelling in various media have shaped both fantasies and perceptions, making certain understandings of experience possible through the selection, arrangement, and processing of narrative material. Surveying the field chronologically across the major narrative genres and sub-genres from Homeric epic through the novel and across media to include live performance, film, and video games, we will be examining the ways in which new ideologies and psychological insights become available through the development of various narrative techniques and new technologies. Emphasis will be placed on the generic conventions of story-telling as well as on literary and cultural issues, the role of media and modes of transmission, the artistic significance of the chosen texts and their identity as anthropological artifacts whose conventions and assumptions are rooted in particular times, places, and technologies. Authors will include: Homer, Sophocles, Herodotus, Christian evangelists, Marie de France, Cervantes, La Clos, Poe, Lang, Cocteau, Disney-Pixar, and Maxis-Electronic Arts, with theoretical readings in Propp, Bakhtin, Girard, Freud, and Marx.
This course approaches the question of what constitutes Frenchness in today’s era of globalization through issues of memory, belonging, and cultural production. It explores the role of timeless traditions – common technologies, an internationally-spoken language, monuments open to the world, and foods such as wine and cheese – that remain quintessentially French. The course also covers recent scandals about France’s role in the world, such as its colonial identity and Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s New York debacle.
Taught in French.
This course takes a deep look at a big subject. We ask where Fairy Tales come from and we examine the structure of Fairy Tales. We’ll also look at how Fairy Tales are conditioned by oral transmission and inherited story-telling techniques.