Film als cursus

Een voorbeeld van een cursus:

ENGL3433

States of Mind: Disability, Cognitive Impairment and Exceptionality in Contemporary Culture, Session 2007-2008, Semester 2
Dr Stuart Murray

The disabled or exceptional subject is often spoken and written of as being caught in a double bind: supposedly lacking in some essential capacity that denotes humanity, and yet also all too visibly and excessively human by virtue of an inherent difference. This module will examine a number of novels and films, dating from 1961 to 2003, which represent cognitive impairment as an example of such disability/exceptionality. It will specifically focus on four neurobehavioral conditions – schizophrenia, Tourette’s syndrome, aphasia and autism – that have frequently been a source of fascination for both practitioners of art and contemporary culture more widely. In doing so, it will address a number of key issues – technology, individuality, masculinity, sentimentality, genre and narrative form, and a concern to define ‘the human’ – that recur throughout the presentation of mental impairment.

Texts for essential Purchase

1. Ken Kesey, One flew over the cuckoo's nest (Picador)
2. Janet Frame, Faces in the water (Women’s Press)
3. Jonathan Lethem, Motherless Brooklyn (Faber)
4. Elizabeth Moon, Speed of dark (Orbit)
5. Mark Haddon, The curious incident of the dog in the night-time (Jonathan Cape)