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Catalog Descriptions
Summer Session I
COM 007V - Literature of Fantasy & the Supernatural | Michael Subialka
Wizard dreamers, monsters of imagination, parallel worlds (inverted, crossing, and upside-down)… the literature of fantasy has long been a place for our mind to unravel its most unusual thoughts – not just to escape into alternative worlds but to rethink our own world, as well. This course delves into categories of literature that trouble or disturb our everyday reality. Many authors have constructed elaborate fantasy worlds that run parallel to, underneath, outside of, or even crisscross with our world. Others have written works of imagination meant to challenge our ability to distinguish the two. Yet others have focused on the supernatural as a monstrous extension of human imagination, a dimension that has been developed from undead creatures like vampires to artificial or machine monsters, ever more resonant in the age of AI. This class will examine literary texts in conjunction with their reverberations across media, especially film. Looking across cultures, time periods, and media, we will ask how fantasy and the supernatural mirror, distort, and reconfigure our perception of the world. GE Credits Fulfilled: Arts & Humanities, World Cultures, Writing Experience
Summer Session II
COM 006V - Myths & Legends | Cheri Ross
Course Description:
Myths and legends are the most ancient and yet most influential stories worldwide. In different ways, myths and legends express ideas about being human in relationship to phenomena and experiences apart from and greater than the mundane: connecting everyday experience both to metaphysical realms and to the natural world. Myths and legends also express deep thoughts about the complexities of being human: coping with life experiences such as growing up, growing old; coming to terms with identities, relationships and obligations (often conflicting ones); understanding patterns that define insiders and outsiders, individuals and their communities. These stories have inspired countless adaptations in literature, the visual arts, and, more recently, film. In this course we will investigate a selection of myths and legends along with some later reworkings of these stories. We will also explore some major analytic approaches to such texts and practice our own interpretive and argumentative skills on these compelling, foundational works.
GE credits: Arts & Humanities, World Cultures, Writing Experience