When the Russian director Sergei Eisenstein wanted to explain his theory of film editing, he turned to the haiku: what is the poem, he asked, but a list of separate shots? Best-selling writer Ben Mezrich writes his books only after he’s sold the movie rights. In this course we’ll ask, how does literature anticipate film? And how does film shape the work of literature? We’ll mine our own experiences with reading, writing and film watching, ask questions about things like racial imagery and global reading, and consider forms like narrative, the lyric, and the drama, as well as their film adaptations.
No previous technical knowledge of literature or film studies is required.
