RTF 331R Death

Unique No. see course schedule

Faculty: Stone

Class Time: T 200P - 500P

Room: CMB 4.110 (STUDIO 4B)

Writing Comp: N

Comm/Cult Req: N

Closing Limit: 15

Cross-Listed RTF 390N

PREREQUISITES

For RTF majors, the following coursework, with a grade of at least C in each course: RTF 305; 318 or 319; and 6 additional semester hours of lower-division coursework chosen from RTF 309, 314, 316, 317, and 318 OR 319 (whichever has not already been taken). For others, consent of instructor on the first class day.

REGISTRATION INFORMATION

Registration is open via the online registration system to all RTF majors.

FIRST CLASS DAY POLICY

Students must attend the first class day or be dropped.

COURSE DESCRIPTION

This is a course about change, transition, breakage, and rupture, in which death means not necessarily finality but rather process. We will examine the peculiar and powerful place of death and its accompanying corruption in Western culture, but a great deal of our focus will be on death in the broad sense as a transformative idea, source of spiritual and aesthetic power, topic of narrative fascination, means of control, and all-purpose (ethnic) cleanser. Further, we’ll expand the definition to include the undead, the brain-dead, the nearly dead, the apparently dead, the walking dead, the extremely dead, and the (your term here) dead.

The main thrust of the course is making. There are no written exams. Instead you will produce two mini-projects and one substantial final project during the semester, based loosely on the theme of death. All our classwork has the goal of providing ideas and methods for these projects. Projects may be in any form: film, video, sound, performance, or other media or combinations of media, and incorporate the theoretical and methodological work of the semester.

“In his brief discourse ‘Of False Revenants,’ Francois Richard argues that the bodies of the dead can and do ‘walk’ among the living... the existence of these reanimated corpses represents proof of the supernatural forces at work in this world and beyond the grave.” —M. Mitchell