Comparative Literature 153: “International Cultures: Film and Literature”
Dr. Thomas Jay Lynn * Penn State Berks * Fall 2015 * MWF 12:00-12:50
Franco 101 * Office Meeting Period MWF 1:15-2:15
(For an office meeting during this or a different time, please e-mail, phone, or speak to me in advance, if possible.)
Office: 117 Franco * Office Phone: (610) 396-6298 * E-mail: TJL7@PSU.EDU

Please note: This syllabus and various other course documents (including essay guidelines) will be posted online at our ANGEL course site.

“I am proud of my humanity when I can acknowledge the poets and artists of other countries as my own. Let me feel with unalloyed gladness that all the great glories of man are mine.”
~ Rabindranath Tagore

Course Overview

Official Penn State description of CMLIT 153: “Comparison of narrative techniques employed by literature and film in portraying different cultures, topics may vary each semester.”

This Fall 2015 offering of CMLIT 153, “International Cultures: Film and Literature,” focuses on cultural tensions in varied parts of the world. Among the tensions that these films and novels explore are ones that arise in relation to poverty and wealth (class tensions); changing female and male gender roles; concepts of love and marriage; family dynamics; traditional and modern identities; work and education; and shifting political realities.

In your approach to the works considered in this course, moreover, please consider how such tensions are expressed through the imaginative prisms of cinema and literature. What are some of the resources that films employ to which textually-based literatures do not have access and vice versa?

Although this course does not presume to achieve comprehensive coverage of global conditions, it does seek to expose students to social experiences that in some cases are shared in diverse parts of the