ENG 393, 394 - Literary Remix

Course unit(s): 1
Meets requirement: W when offered as 394
It is perhaps ironic that so many of our contemporary ideas about “intellectual property” were developed by “landscape” poets like Wordsworth, who argued that the descendants of a poet should be able to live off his “intellectual property” just as the heirs to a landed gentleman could derive a living from his “estate.” Today, issues of copyright and intellectual property are in radical flux as IP regimes tighten even as “the remix”- the adaptation, transformation, or other use of culture is used to make new culture-becomes perhaps the defining art form of the twenty-first century. While most discussion of remix culture tends to focus on mass media-music mashups, video remix, YouTube and Napster, etc-remix culture, like intellectual property, has its roots in the literary. This course will examine the nineteenth-century emergence of intellectual property regimes in the arts and consider the ways in which the historical transformation and adaptation of stories is in conflict with increasingly rigid IP regimes. Texts will change radically from term to term, but might include such adaptations as West Side Story, Wicked, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Ahab’s Wife, March, The Wind Done Gone, Shylock, Lo’s Diary, Moulin Rouge, and other adapted works. Satisfies departmental Drama/Transmedia requirement.