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“World Enough and Time”: Seriality 1915/2015
Film 240 | CCN: 31852
Date and Time: M 4-7P, 226 DWINELLE
4 Units
This course will pretend that there is “world enough and time” to examine the nature of seriality in fictional literature, film, television and possibly web-based media. The class is given as preparation for, and for possible participation in, the Third International Berkeley Conference on Film and Media. The special topic of this conference in February of 2015 will be “Seriality 1915/2015.” My hope is that the class at the very least will prepare us to be well-prepared conference goers and, at the very best might help some of us become participants in the conference, whether as speakers of panel moderators. We will concentrate on two periods of intense continuous storytelling: the serial queens of the US, the more artful serials of Feuillade in France during the teens of the twentieth century and the current “golden age” of serial television in the US, Britain, France and Denmark since the millennium. Those students interested in participating in some way in the conference should contact me (lwillie@berkeley.edu) before the second week of May. I will call a meeting to ask for your advice in crafting the call for papers.
Possible serials:
Serial novels: Eugene Sue, Les Mysteres de Paris, Dickens, Our Mutual Friend
Serial films: Hazards of Helen, Exploits of Elaine, Les Vampires
Serial Television: The Wire, Breaking Bad, Black is the New Orange, Mad Men, Forbrydelsen (The Killing), Borgen, Broen (The Bridge), The TunnelReadings:
Pat Harrigan, Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Third Person: Authoring and Exploring Vast Narrative
Jenifer Haywood, Consuming Pleasures: Active Audiences and Serial Fictions from Dickens to Soap Opera Lexington: University Press of Kentucky
Peter Brooks, Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative
Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition. Translated by Paul Patton. London: Continuum
Manuscript of the anthology Serial Television Melodrama: “World Enough and Time”