Film & Media Studies 379 - The Question of Accent: Polyphony on the Page, Screen, and Stage

(Offered as ENGL 379 and FAMS 379) “I detect an accent…” Anyone who has heard this sentence has had to navigate the topography of voice, accent and identity that is our multilingual world. But what is an “accent”? What assumptions about speakers and listeners do we make when we “detect” accents—or when we perform them as writers, actors, and citizens? How, in other words, does the simple act of perceiving an accent allow us to “fix” and stabilize our sense of a speaker’s origins, education, affiliations, affects, preferences, and tendencies--even their tastes? In this course we will attend closely to our habits of reading, watching, and interpreting accent as a key to social relations, and imagine alternative modes of perceiving and performing difference. Our case studies will include drama and cinema, poetry and pedagogy, fiction and nonfiction. We will put traditional literary analysis of voice in conversation with questions of legal and political power, translation and migration, and the uses and abuses of synthetic media. The course will welcome a range of global and vernacular Englishes and cultivate a multilingual and multidialectal environment. 

Not recommended for first years. Fall semester. Professors Rangan and Bosman.

How to handle overenrollment:

Students who enroll in this course will likely encounter and be expected to engage in the following intellectual skills, modes of learning, and assessment: Deep listening, reading aloud, theoretical discussion, analysis of literary and audiovisual texts, collaborative group work, sharing work in progress, and independent research. This class is not recommended for first year students, as the reading load will be rigorous and interdisciplinary.