1:25-2:15P  M  WH 118

This course examines twentieth-century popular culture versions of
literary classics, including movies, TV adaptations, musicals, plays, and
comic strips. We will address the fact that most remakes are movies and we
will ask the question "What aesthetic or thematic changes are triggered by
the alteration in the medium of expression?" Many of the literary
"classics" were popular in their time. What constitutes a classic and what
is popular culture? We will define the relationship between the two. We
will read classics by Shakespeare, Victor Hugo, Jane Austen, Mary Shelley,
and Anton Chekhov, and we will view famous remakes such as Disney's The
Hunchback of Notre Dame, Batman, Kenneth Branagh's Frankenstein, Nikita
Mihalkov's Dark Eyes, and Clueless. Students will write three 4-page
papers.