HUM 2250: Lit: Voice & Vision
Film Adaptation
Summer 2011
Dr. Perdigao
class time: T Th 2:00-4:35 pm
office: 626 Crawford Hall
phone: 321-674-8370
email: lperdiga@fit.edu
my.fit.edu/~lperdiga
Course Description:
Film adaptations of novels, short stories, and plays offer a range of ideas about the processes of
interpretation and reinterpretation. In this course, we will examine a range of literary texts and their film
adaptations: Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, Neil Gaiman’s Coraline, Brian Aldiss’ “Super-Toys
Last All Summer Long” (AI), Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club, and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.
Representing the genres of fantasy, science fiction, and realism, these works play with our ideas of reality
and fiction and are productive sites for exploring the relationship between word and image. Ultimately,
we will examine how film adaptations of literary texts perform as works of translation while occupying
their own places within a history of film.
Required Texts:
Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland (with Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the LookingGlass) (Norton Critical; ISBN: 9780393958041)
Neil Gaiman, Coraline (HarperCollins; ISBN: 9780380807345)
Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club (Norton; ISBN: 9780393327342)
Cormac McCarthy, The Road (Vintage; ISBN: 9780307387899)
Bernard Dick, Anatomy of Film (Bedford/St. Martin’s; ISBN: 9780312487119)
Policies and Procedures
Grading:
Quizzes
Film responses
Final Exam
Class participation
30%
30%
30%
10%
A quiz will occur at the end of each section. As regular attendance is mandatory, make-up quizzes are
unlikely.
A film response consists of a 1-2 page response to one of the questions about the relationship between
the novel/short story and the film adaptation. While the responses are not formal essays, you must
demonstrate knowledge of the readings and the relationships between the texts we are discussing.
For the film responses, students are required to submit their papers to www.turnitin.com on the
assigned date; failure to submit the paper to turnitin.com and/or to turn in the hard copy in class
on the due date will lead to a failure of the assignment. Our class ID is 4031557 and the password is
Buttons.
Academic Dishonesty will be handled in accordance with Humanities and Communication Department
policy. Cheating and plagiarism will result in failure of assignment and/or failure of course and will be
reported to the Dean of Students and recorded in your permanent student file. Dishonest conduct may
lead to formal disciplinary proceedings. Be certain that you are familiar with Florida Tech’s academic
dishonesty policy (http://www.fit.edu/current/documents/plagiarism.pdf).
Cell phone policy: If your phone rings, if you try to make an outgoing call or text messages are sent or
received (translation: basically any variation of playing with your phone when you should be paying
attention) you are responsible for bringing pizza (or an acceptable alternative) to the following class.
Attendance is required. If you miss more than 10% of the classes, you run the risk of failing the course.
You are responsible for all of the work you miss.
Course Schedule
May 17
Introduction
Viewing: Disney’s Alice in Wonderland (75 min.)
May 19
Reading: Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (3-69)
May 24
Reading: Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (70-99)
Reading: Anatomy of Film (Chapter 1: 1-20)
Viewing: Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland (108 min.)
May 26
Reading: Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass (103-168)
Reading: Anatomy of Film (Chapter 8: 268-281 [examples: 281-312])
Viewing: Nick Willing’s Alice (SyFy) (180 min.)
Film response 1
May 31
Reading: Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass (169-209)
Viewing: Nick Willing’s Alice (SyFy) (180 min.)
June 2
Reading: Neil Gaiman’s Coraline (1-162)
Film response 2
Quiz 1
June 7
Henry Selick’s Coraline (96 min.)
Reading: Anatomy of Film (Chapter 3: 51-98)
June 9
Viewing: Steven Spielberg’s A.I.: Artificial Intelligence (146 min.)
Film response 3
June 14
Reading: Brian Aldiss’ “Super-Toys Last All Summer Long”
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/5.01/ffsupertoys_pr.html
Reading: Anatomy of Film (Chapter 4: “The Reflexive Film,” 165-177; “The
Science-Fiction Film,” 193-198)
June 16
Reading: Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club (11-150)
Film response 4
Quiz 2
June 21
Reading: Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club (151-208)
Reading: Anatomy of Film (Chapter 6: 200-202)
Viewing: David Fincher’s Fight Club (139 min.)
June 23
Reading: Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club (Afterword: 209-218)
Film response 5
June 28
Reading: Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (3-114)
June 30
Reading: Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (115-233)
Viewing: John Hillcoat’s The Road (111 min.)
July 5
Reading: Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (234-287)
Film response 6
Quiz 3
July 7
Final exam