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Road Books, Road Movies

ENGL 292.910
instructor(s):
TR 5:30-8:40

 

Taking to the road is often a subversive activity, and a traveler can be a social critic as well as a tourist, a refugee or an outlaw. This course will bring together a variety of British, American, French, and Latin American journeys, real and fictitious. The key question in the course will be: What do books and films as different as the following have in common: Henry Fielding's Tom Jones, Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath, Che Guevara's Motorcycle Diaries, Voltaire's Candide, Callie Khourie's Thelma and Louise, and Karen Muller's Hitchhiking Vietnam? Among the literary traditions of travel we'll consider are exile, the picaresque, the satirical, and the pastoral. We'll also look closely at what happens to a novel when it is made into a film. Course work will include short response papers, a mid-term essay, and a research paper on a novel/film of one's choice.

fulfills requirements