Films 'n Books for Higher Ed in Film and Fiction Course...

Here are the films and books I am going to use in my Higher Education in Film and Fiction course...in just 3 short weeks....!

Films I will use...

-Mona Lisa Smile
-Higher Learning
-The Human Stain
-Educating Rita
-Dead Poets Society (set in a prep school, but deals with issues pertinent to higher education...and the Robin Williams character is modeled after a professor I had as a freshman at Dartmouth...so, in it goes...)
-Episodes of The Education of Max Bickford
-Oleanna
-Animal House (maybe? Again, more Dartmouth here...) or Good Will Hunting?

Films I will think about for another time...

-Possession
-Legally Blonde
-Paper Chase

Novels I will use...

-Philip Roth’s The Human Stain
-David Lodge’s Changing Places
-Richard Russo’s Straight Man
-Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim
-Jane Smiley’s Moo
-May Sarton’s The Small Room

Novels I will think about for another time...

-Tom Wolfe’s I Am Charlotte Simmons (been readin' lots on this, the publisher sent it to me, but it is long, and the reviews are not great. I think I will pass this time...)
-Michael Chabon’s Wonder Boys (just the movie this first time)
-James Hynes’s The Lecturer’s Tale
-J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace (I LOVED this novel...but next time)
-A. S. Byatt’s Possession

Theory and Memoir...

I also will set up the discussion with websites, a course pack of analytic articles, and essays about current higher educational issues, such as diversity, the role of the professor, governance, and other issues. I am looking at chapters from memoir or nonfiction discussions of current academic life, such as James Freedman’s Idealism and Liberal Education or James Axtell’s The Pleasures of Academe.