CLIT1008

Ways of Reading: Film, Literature and Culture

 

First Semester / 6 Credits / Quota: 120 

Dr. Esther Cheung

 

The objective of this course is to introduce to students different approaches and techniques to read a wide range of texts such as short stories, poems, films, photographs, fashion statements, architecture, the city and urban spaces. Drawing on Nietzsche's view that “slow reading” is important, the course will initiate students to close and critical reading as well as the psychoanalytical practice of “reading otherwise.”

 

The topics that we will explore include the following: What is the relation between a text and its social and cultural context? How do we decode the abundant visual images that bombard us every day? What are the basic elements of filmic and literary narratives? How do we read an event which generates multiple interpretations? How do we analyze a text-within-a-text structure? Can we decipher the meaning of what is absent in a text? Are issues on race and gender intricately related? How can the city be read? In what ways do texts serve as forms of public criticism?

 

As Roland Barthes says, "those who fail to re-read are doomed to read the same text everywhere." The aim of the course is to learn the art of reading and seeing through different textual strategies. Through critical ways of thinking, students will be introduced to a number of foundational concepts of critical and cultural theory.

 

 

 

Selected Texts / Films (subject to change):

Akira Kurosawa: Dreams (film)

Richard Linklater’s Waking Life (animation)

Gordon Chan: A1 Headline (film) 陳嘉上:《 A-1頭條》

Rainer Werner Fassbinder: Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (film)

Wong Kar-wai: Chungking Express (film) 王家衛:《重慶森林》

Roland Barthes: Camera Lucida (selected essays on photography)

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” (short story)

Lu Xun: “Warning to the People” and others (short story) 魯迅：《示眾》及其他

Dung Kai-cheung: “The Young Shengnon” (short story) 董啓章：《少年神農》

Poems from Wordsworth, Shelley, and others

Paintings by Rene Magritte, Velazquez, Hans Holbein, and others.

John Berger, selections from Ways of Seeing (essays)

 

 

Assessment:  100% continuous assessment

 

Teaching Activities: lecture, tutorial discussion, oral presentation, screening.

 

 (This course is also offered to second and third year non-BA students for inter-faculty broadening purposes.)