Eastman School of Music English
Course Section Listing Course Course Title Term Credits Status
COURSE_SECTION-3-128567 ENG 281-1 Fairy Tales Spring 2022 4.0 - 0.0 Open
Schedule:
Day Begin End Location Start Date End Date
TR 835 AM 950 AM Miller Center Room 320
Enrollment: Enrolled     
10
Capacity     
20
Instructors: Susan Uselmann
Description: ENG 281 (I-4) Fairy tales are more than just “children’s literature” and the impact of fairy tales in music, literature, art, and film tells us that these stories contain something that is vital to the human experience. What is it about these stories that seems to endure? To answer this question, we will explore fairy tales as universal phenomena and as expressions of the specific cultures out of which they arise. We will look at classic fairy tales and explore the history and various reinventions of these stories in both European and non-European contexts, as well as how fairy tale stories and themes were transformed by animators such as Walt Disney, Hayao Miyazaki, and others. This course is also useful for students interested in continuing their EAP studies:  there will be assignments related to speaking and writing skills, as well as reading about and listening to fairy tales.
Offered: Fall

Course Section Listing Course Course Title Term Credits Status
ENG281_20211_74239 ENG 281-1 The Gothic Imagination Fall 2020 4.0 - 0.0 Open
Schedule:
Day Begin End Location Start Date End Date
Enrollment: Enrolled     
21
Capacity     
30
Instructors: Jonathan Baldo
Description: ENG 281 (I-4) The Gothic Imagination: Contradiction and mystery lie at the heart of the word “gothic.” Why do we sometimes take pleasure in fear? Why at the dawn of the modern gothic sensibility would an English landscape architect take the trouble to plant dead trees in the gardens of the imposing Kensington Palace? And today, why do we flock to movies that fill us with terror? Who was the first teenage goth, and what did it mean to be “goth” in the eighteenth century? Why do vampires, zombies, ghouls, and ghosts continue to be hugely popular with readers and moviegoers? Why, in other words, do the undead continue to live so vividly in the stories we tell? To understand the enduring appeal of the gothic imagination is to understand an important aspect of ourselves as well as our history over the past two and a half centuries. As the novelist Michael Crichton has memorably written, “If you don’t know history, . . . you are a leaf that doesn’t know it is part of a tree.” Or, in the more gothic formulation of Richard Davenport-Hines, “The gothic imagination continues to haunt us all.” This semester we will seek to understand the vogue for the gothic in all of the arts over the past two and a half centuries: both the extent of the gothic imagination and possible reasons for its influence. In this brand new course—ironically, a course not haunted by its past iterations—students will have the opportunity to explore manifestations of the gothic imagination from the earliest days of romanticism, to Southern Gothic fiction, to the present day.
Offered: Fall