ENG 1131: Writing Through Media |
"The Intertextual Fairy Tale"
"The Intertextual Fairy Tale"
University of Florida
Semester: Summer A, 2018
Section: 01G9 Class Meetings: MTWRF 4 (12:30 – 1:45pm) | Screenings: MW 6-7 (3:30 – 6:15pm) Fairy tales are a foundational element of nearly every culture, their universal themes and stock characters granting them a malleability that has allowed creators the world over to craft countless retellings, reinterpretations, and even rowdy parodies. While fairy tales are often dismissed as “kid’s stuff,” our present culture has demonstrated a marked interest in the more mature aspects of fairy tales, reshaping these stories into films, TV shows, novels, musicals, short stories, comics, fan fiction, and much more enjoyed by children, teens, and adults. Guillermo Del Toro’s The Shape of Water winning this year’s Academy Award for Best Picture demonstrates that our hunger for “dark” adaptations of fairy tales, myths, and monster stories is as alive as ever – and if those stories can interrogate both our contemporary values and what elements of these centuries-old stories remain relatable to us, then so much the better.
In this course, students will engage with cultural studies, fandom studies, and adaptation/remix theory through close readings of a select group of fairy tales and their adaptations from a number of different genres, mediums, and historical periods. For consistency, our class will look to “animal husband” tales and other folklore focusing on romances as strange, fantastical, and transformative as the radical retellings they have inspired. Tales will include “Hades and Persephone,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “Bluebeard,” and “Little Red Riding Hood.” Writing assignments in this course will be experimental and creative and will require students to engage with a number of writing tools and platforms, as well as different methods of production/strategies of “making” – that is, what it means to write through media, as the creators that we will study this term have done. |
INSTRUCTOR CONTACT INFORMATION:
Office Location: Turlington 4367 Office Hours: MW Period 5 or by appointment Email: [email protected] |