Week Eight: Adaptation

Fiction Writer and Activist for North Korean Refugees Krys Lee

We have discussed how texts are textiles with threads of context and subtext that we see as patterns of all sorts. It is these patterns that we work to perceive and relate to one another when we read. This week's assignment emphasizes seeing those textual patterns through a specific and applied point of view.

Reading/Writing Assignment: Before coming to class please read one of the screenplays linked to the course resource page. You will find a number of them available to read somewhat down the page. Writing from the position of one of the major collaborators in the work--the Director, the Set Designer, the Director of Photography, the Costume Designer, an Actor of one of the parts--write a statement (memoradum) of 250-350 words that would explain the main elements of how you would approach the script when executing your role in its hypothetical production.  Choose a screenplay to read that is for a movie you have never seen. Please wait to see the movie until after you have written your blog post. 

Adapting a Literary Text to a Film

Link to Interview with Krys Lee

Week Six: Writing and Reading from Diverse Positions

Photo by Jessie Cohen and Ramsey Matthews

Reading Assignment: This week's featured novel is Marriage of  a Thousand Lies by Sri Lankan-American author S J Sindu.  It can be purchased through the bookstore, through Amazon either in hard copy or electronic copy. There is also an audible version.  This book is the first novel by Sindu and has received significant notice and acclaim as a important new work in queer literature and Asian-American literature in general. For anyone interested, Sindu will be teaching a course in the Fall in Asian and Asian-American literature at Ringling. She currently teaches in the Creative Writing major and in the Liberal Arts Program. 

In an interview on The Rumpus, Sindu discusses in detail the issues of the novel in relation to Tamil culture and the literary world in general. She also makes some useful recommendations for other books to read that explore LGBT issues in a South-Asian context. Follow this link. 

In the interview Sindu recounts:

" I wanted to explore the things that weren’t really being explored in South Asian American fiction. A lot of South Asians I knew were considering or were in straight marriages—even marriages of convenience. There was a lot of pressure for me to get an arranged marriage and conform. But it never actually occurred to me to do it. There was absolutely no way I wanted to enter into an arranged marriage or a marriage of convenience, so I was also fascinated by the kind of person who would make that decision. As I was writing it, this novel was the anti-me story. Lucky is very different from me as a person, which is why it was an interesting story for me to write. But I also knew that when the novel was published, people would just assume that I was Lucky, that this is my story. Part of this is because people assume that you write what you know, and the assumption is especially enforced for women/non-binary writers, queer writers, and writers of color. This brings up a lot of issues of privilege and power. There’s an assumption of white cisgender heterosexual maleness as the default, so any deviation from that and people question whether you’re just writing a thinly veiled memoir."

In Class: we will be watching the movie, Circumstance (2011) directed by Maryam Keshavarz. The film, like the book, deals with the conflicts between generations in traditional societies, especially in respect to LGBT relationships and identities. After the movie,  Sindu will join us for conversation and a session of questions and answers about her novel and writing in general.

Writing Assignment: Before or after class please post your response to the experience of reading the book. You may want to wait until you see the movie and have a chance to talk with Sindu before you make your post, but please write your post before Wednesday so I can include it in my mid-term evaluation of your blog.

Week Five: Privilege as a Position

Reading Assignment:  This week we are reading a fairly short novel from the early years of this millenium, Cosmopolis by Don DeLillo, first published in 2003. Be prepared for a certain challenge because the author is asking you to read a story that does not have an easily relatable central character with whom you are not asked to bond emotionally but to observe over the course of a day. Whether you like the character or the book is really not the point here, but rather what you make of it as an experience and how articulate you can be about the experience when communicating with others. Abandon the continuum of like/dislike, observe the observer.  Remember this text is not an attempt at recreating in some way "real" life. It is a story, intentionally and rather substantially, contrived. Can we discuss it without judgement or reference to our prejudices? 

Writing Assignment:  I have curated this class to bring certain works to your attention. I have chosen this work to open up questions of privilege. When you write your response you might talk about whether or not the work addresses issues of privilege,  does it do so effectively or tangentially? What does it appear to say about issues of privilege. 

In Class: In class we will watch the movie 2012 version of the book which was directed by David Cronenberg and stars Robert Pattinson.  Our discussion is a joint investigation, I haven't taught the book before, and like you, have read it once.

Week Four: Reading from a Position

Reading Assignment: This week I am asking you to read as much as you can of Jill Lepore's book, The Secret History of Wonder Woman.  She is an historian and a writer and discusses many of the contexts in which the orginal texts of Wonder Woman are embedded. In addition, to understand the character of Wonder Woman, you can read any of the comics I have put on the course resource page including some of the orginal versions of the character, of the character during the 1970s revival of the character and some from recent versions of the character.

Link to Interview with Gail Simone who recently wrote the character.

Writing Assignment: This week's writing assignment will start in-class. Using any of the information you gathered from reading The Secret History of Wonder Woman or from reading any of the Wonder Woman stories consider how you would design a Wonder Woman Theme Park World. What aspects of the character would you represent? What story would you tell? From what postition would you tell the story? How would visitors interact with the world and what aspects of the Wonder Woman story, both the historical background and the fictional character, would be highlighted? We will begin this assignment in this week's class, and you can choose to finish it for this week's post or simply respond to the book in the usual way.