Handbook : Unit informationEdith Cowan University

School: Arts and Humanities

This unit information may be updated and amended immediately prior to semester. To ensure you have the correct outline, please check it again at the beginning of semester.

• Unit Title

  From Fiction to Film

• Unit Code

  ENG3140

• Year

  2018

• Enrolment Period

  1

• Version

  1

• Credit Points

  15

• Full Year Unit

  N

• Mode of Delivery

  On Campus
  

• Unit Coordinator

  A/Prof Debra Lynn DUDEK

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Description

Screen adaptations of books abound in both film and television. Short stories, graphic novels, plays, picture books, and novels all serve as source material for filmmakers. This unit is designed to provide students with an understanding of issues involved in adapting verbal or visual stories for the cinematic screen. It will move beyond the question of whether or not a book is better than a film and instead will ask students to analyse the characteristics of each medium. Students will consider how the form of a text works together with its content to produce its meaning. This unit will provide students with the tools to analyse verbal and visual features of literary and cinematic texts and to understand these texts in the context in which they were produced and consumed.

Learning Outcomes

On completion of this unit students should be able to:

1. Analyse and synthesise the relationship between specific fiction and film texts and their historical, social, and cultural contexts.
2. Assess the principal components of the novel as a literary genre that make it translatable into film.
3. Compare a selective range of critical approaches and ideas.
4. Evaluate appropriate research, critical, analytical, and interpretative skills in the study of fiction and its translation into film.
5. Explain the principal types of novel in terms of their forms, themes, and other characteristics and relate these to the factors determining their development and transcription into film.
6. Read and analyse novels with enhanced critical understanding and assess their transposability into film.
7. Synthesise and evaluate different critical approaches to the novel and its translation to the screen.

Unit Content

1. Primary texts - such as short stories, graphic novels, plays, picture books, novels - and their cinematic adaptations.
2. Secondary sources about adaptation, genre, and the primary sources.
3. Theoretical texts that provide insights into representations of race, gender, sexuality, and ability.
4. Analysis of the form and content of a source text.
5. Analysis of the form and content of a cinematic adaptation.
6. Use of secondary sources and theoretical perspectives to enhance analysis of primary texts.

Learning Experience

Students will attend on campus classes as well as engage in learning activities through ECU Blackboard.

For more information see the Semester Timetable

Additional Learning Experience Information

Seminar.

Assessment

GS1 GRADING SCHEMA 1 Used for standard coursework units

Students please note: The marks and grades received by students on assessments may be subject to further moderation. All marks and grades are to be considered provisional until endorsed by the relevant Board of Examiners.

Core Reading(s)

• Stevenson, N. (2015). Nimona (pp. 1–266). New York: HarperTeen.

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