Professor Laura Levine
levine@nyc.rr.com
THEA_UT 801.002~ 4 credits
Tuesdays 10:00-1:45
Hans Baldung Grien’s Bewitched Stable Groom (1544) is an “adaptation” in at least two senses of the word. It “adapts” a number of images by Albrecht Durer (The Witch [1501], Small Horse [1505] and most famously Durer’s Artist Sketching a Reclining Nude [1525]). It also articulates its “discontents” with each of these images, leading the viewer’s eye not to a reclining nude but up through the crotch of a bewitched groom into the anus of a horse. But for all Baldung’s reworking of sources, Bewitched Stable Groom has also been called one of his most profoundly autobiographical works, a “final and most monumental expression of the vanquished artistic self.” As such, the image raises a number of questions about “adaptation” itself. At what point does an “adaptation” cease to be one and become biography, even autobiography, a new species entirely? Are translations themselves “adaptations” rather than being translations? This course will be dedicated both to the study of a few key “adaptations” with the aim of seeing how artists—dramatists, painters, choreographers and others -- repurpose the stories and philosophical material of their predecessors to serve new and often personal ends and to the creation of a manuscript which uses one or more of the texts studied as a vehicle for telling one’s own story. The objects of study change from one incarnation of this course to another, but possibilities might include visual images which rethink debates about witchcraft—Shakespeare plays which reflect on philosophical debates about knowledge, ballets which adapt Shakespeare and/or stories from Ovid or the bible which serve as the material for adaptations.
The course will be a writing intensive course in at least two ways. Students will be required to submit weekly exercises about the plays, paintings and source texts being considered and they will be required to create their own adaptations as well. The creation of a final project will grow out of both kinds of work.
The course meets from 10-145 (don’t want to commit to time yet, but this is probable) on Tuesdays. In addition to the application, there will be a phone interview. The ideal student will be equally interested in the literary, historical, visual and dramatic texts studied in the course and the creation of their own adaptation and will have the discipline to produce written work in both modes on a weekly basis. Students with an interest or background in Shakespeare, art history, ballet, philosophy, classics and other interdisciplinary interests are particularly welcome although knowledge of these subjects is in no way a pre-requisite. Applicants are asked to describe at the phone interview a possible project growing out of one or more of the texts which are possible subjects of study in the course. The project will not be binding but will give me an idea of what you are interested in and how you think. All communications should be cut and paste, no google docs, pdfs, attachments, zip files, drop files etc. opened.
