Course Offerings by term

A series of topic-centered courses refining the skills of academic essay writing, studying a wide range of ideas as expressed in diverse literary genres and periods. Introduces the analysis of literary texts and gives training in the writing of critical essays and research papers. Recent topics include: Utopia and Anti-Utopia, City as Metaphor, Portraits of Women, Culture Conflict, and Labyrinths.

This workshop gives students the opportunity to explore through reading, research and writing assignments an array of creative nonfiction forms, including memoir, travel writing, food and nature writing, and social essays. Assignments help students strengthen their ability to create the self as character, a first-person narrator who leads the reader into the world of personal experiences and research. The course explores narrative structure, description, characterization, dialogue, and tension, all key elements in making writing spirited and appealing. The workshop also includes guest speakers and field exercises in Paris. May be taken twice for credit.

How do contemporary films make meaning? How does cinematic language convey emotion and raise ideas? how do we, as contemporary spectators, relate to and make sense of the screen? This course, while centered on contemporary films, is an introduction to cinematic language, its techniques, and the social and cultural factors that have made it one of the most influential art forms of our time. Looking at international films from just the last 20 years, we will explore and discover the ways these films creatively explore ideas and look at the technological, economic and political forces that fuel their production. Together with readings and screenings, individual and group assignments will help students deepen their understanding of lectures, readings and films and develop new critical skills and aesthetic understanding.

Analyzes classical Hollywood style from the 1940s onwards, looking at the work of some of the masters of the American system including Welles, Wyler, and Hitchcock. Studies postwar Hollywood genres including: film noir, the musical, the comedy, the Western, the gangster film, and sci-fi films. Traces important directions of postwar European Art Cinema (in particular Italian Neo-Realism and the Italian and French New
Waves) and offers a brief overview of ‘new' cinemas worldwide.
Explores the important developments that have taken place in Hollywood from the 1960s through to the present covering topics such as: New Hollywood cinema, the auteur renaissance of the seventies and eighties, neo-noir in the nineties, the digital age, and contemporary cinema.