The aim of the course is to give better understanding of the way in which some of the classical texts of American literature have found their way into the most popular of the arts, the cinema.  Comparing the old and the new film versions of some of these literary works and analyzing the recent revival of the film industry’s interest towards some of them, the students will gain better insight in the mechanisms and the discourses governing the contemporary popular culture in the USA.

The topics to be discussed include the basics of film aesthetics and film theory as well as different models of adapting novels such as transference, commentary and analogy. The films to be analyzed include some of the film adaptations of Henry James’s novella Daisy Miller, novel Washington Square,and short story “The Altar of the Dead .

As a final paper the students will have to write a critical analysis of one of the film adaptations of either a classical American novel, or a postmodern American bestseller.