Fragments
of Identities
in North
American Postmodern Fiction and Film
'Who are you?'
said the caterpiller.
Alice replied rather shyly, 'I -- I hardly know, Sir, just at present
-- at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I
must have changed several times since then.'"
Alice's puzzle over her self-identity can never compare
with ours today, which are constantly challenged by the theories, cultural
products, technological innovations, political changes as well as natural
disasters in postmodern society. How do North American postmodern fictions
and films respond to this overwhelming sense of unstable identities, which
are seen as split, fragmentary, hybrid, imaginary, or temporary?
In this course, we will divide this issue of identity
into 5 interrelated topics, and for each category we (tentatively) select
the films and fictions as follows:
-
Artist and Author-ity:
-
Fiction: John Barth's Lost in the Funhouse
-
Film: Woody Allen's Deconstructing Harry,
Robert Altman's The Player
-
Theories of metafiction and textuality
-
Media, Popular Culture and Ethnic Identity
-
Fiction: Disappearing Moon Cafe by SKY
Lee
-
Film: Atom Egoyan's Calendar
-
Theories of postmodernity: Jean Baudrillard, Jameson
and Lyotard
-
History, Memory and Identity:
-
Fiction: Slaughterhouse V
-
Film: Robert Zemekis' Forrest Gump, David
Lynch's Blue Velvet
-
Theory: F. Jameson and Linda Hutcheon on parody
and patische
-
Cyborg, Machine, Animal and Human Identity
-
Fiction: Larissa Lai When Fox is a Thousand
-
Film: Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, Davide
Cronenberg's Videodrome
-
Theory: Donna Haraway
-
Fragments and Reconstructions
Fiction & Film: The English Patient
Requirements:
-
No absence! No lateness for class or assignments!
-
3 journals (respectively on a theoretical, literary
and filmic text),
-
2 reports (10 mins on a theoretical text and
20 mins on a primary text),
-
1 final paper.
TEACHERS:
Please feel free
to write to us, call us
or make an appointment
with us!
Kate Chiwen Liu ¼B¬ö¶²
Office: SF 124
Office Hours:
Tues. 1:00 - 3:00 &
Fri. 10:00 - 12:00
|
TEL: (O)
02- 2903-1111, ext. 3676¡@¡@¡@¡@
E-Mail: engl1009@fujens.fju.edu.tw |
|
Wenchi
Lin ªL¤å²N
Office Hours:
Wed. 1:00
- 3:00
Thurs. 11:00 - 11:50
|
TEL: (O) 03- 4227151,
ext. 3201
E-Mail: wenchi@ncu.edu.tw |
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