Litflix: Literature After Television
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Summer 2015 | ENGL 104–01 | Brian Ganter | Capilano University
In this crossover course students will read contemporary classics of American literature — and one Shakespeare play, Richard III — alongside of three Netflix television series: Breaking Bad, House of Cards, and Orange is The New Black. The course is an introduction to the study of contemporary literature and an exercise in “literary” approaches to the medium of television and visual storytelling. Students will explore the pre-history of literary serial storytelling; the clash of commercialism and creativity; and the links between politics, philosophy and popular culture. We will move from overt literary references (Breaking Bad’s use of Shelley’s “Ozymandias” and Whitman’s Leaves of Grass) to a critical exploration of the modern Western, the feminist gothic, and the demands of reading in the age of the moving image.
Assignments + Readings
Submit Completed MEDIA assignments (YouTube clips, etc.)
Submit Course Absence Make-Up Materials
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Screenshots: House of Cards, Breaking Bad, Orange is the New Black
Getting Started: How do I Write An Academic Essay on Medium.com?
Course Research Portal
House of Cards (Season One)
Orange is the New Black (Season One)
- The Bechdel Test
- “Oppressed Majority: the Film About a World Run By Women That Went Viral” (The Guardian)
- “‘Orange’ Creator Jenji Kohan: ‘Piper Was My Trojan Horse’” (NPR)
Breaking Bad (Season One)
- “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer — Breaking Bad (orig: Walt Whitman)”
- “Ozymandias — As Read by Bryan Cranston: Breaking Bad”
Andrew Bennett and Nicholas Royle, This Thing Called Literature: Reading, Writing, Thinking
Octavia Butler, Fledgling
William Shakespeare, Richard III
Don DeLillo, Point Omega
Blood Meridian
- “’Books are Made Out of Books’ — Blood Meridian and Samuel Chamberlain” (Biblioklept)
- “Cormac McCarthy: A Rare Literary Life” (biography, requires login)
- “James Franco’s ‘Blood Meridian’ Test” (VICE Magazine)
- “John Glanton’s Gang” (University of Virginia)
- U.S.-Mexican War Timeline (PBS)
Serial Storytelling
- “All in the Game: The Wire, Serial Storytelling, and Procedural Logic” (Electronic Book Review)
- Project Boz | Charles Dickens and Serial Storytelling (Worcester Polytechnic Institute)
- “‘Serial’: The Podcast We’ve Been Waiting For” (The New Yorker)
- Victorian Serial Novels (University of Victoria)
