Bulletin - John Jay College Of Criminal Justice - CUNY

Courses Offered
LIT 284 Film and Society
3 hours, 3 credits
A survey of significant films and major filmmakers on the special
topic, Film and Society, through an examination of the cinema as an
art form shaping and reflecting the changing perceptions of its
society.
Prerequisite: ENG 102 or ENG 201
LIT 285 The Rebel in Film
3 hours, 3 credits
This course is a survey of significant films and major filmmakers on
the special topic, The Rebel in Film, through an examination of the
cinema as an art form shaping and reflecting the changing
perceptions of its society.
Prerequisite: ENG 102 or 201
specific sub-topics, primary texts, cultures, and historical moments,
depending on their areas of specialization.
Prerequisites: ENG 102 or 201, and LIT 260
LIT 305 Foundations of Literature and Law
3 hours, 3 credits
This course will give students the tools to think and write effectively
about the emerging interdisciplinary field of literature and the law.
We will identify and question the basic rules and assumptions of both
literature and the law, and examine the ways in which the two
disciplines converge and diverge. Topics may include: literature and
law as narrative systems; acts of interpretation; the status of facts;
literature as a point of resistance to the law; the role of persuasion in
law and storytelling; reading law as literature.
Prerequisites: ENG 102 or 201, and LIT 260
LIT 290 Special Topics
3 hours, 3 credits
A single-semester course dealing with an announced topic, theme, or
author.
Prerequisite: ENG 102 or ENG 201
LIT 300 Text and Context
3 hours, 3 credits
This course introduces students to the contexts within which literary
works are created and interpreted, and gives them theoretical
frameworks for their own interpretations. The course will place one
or more literary texts into context by focusing on relevant historical
backgrounds and critical reception. The course will also introduce a
variety of interpretive approaches, and may include critical race
theory, deconstruction, feminism, formalism, Marxism, new
historicism, post-colonialist, psychoanalytic and reception theories.
Each semester individual instructors will anchor the course in
LIT 309 Contemporary Fiction
3 hours, 3 credits
This course examines novels and short stories written within the last
50 years. Particular attention will also be given to how these texts
reflect major aesthetic, ethical, psychological, social and political
concerns. Students will be introduced to the cultural, linguistic and
other literary theories relevant to the interpretation of contemporary
narratives.
Prerequisite: one of the following: LIT 230, LIT 231, LIT 232 or LIT
233
LIT 311 Literature and Ethics
3 hours, 3 credits
This course will focus on the ways in which a literary text can
become a laboratory for ethical inquiry — a place where abstract
issues and complex questions about the “right,” the “good” and the
“just” come to life. We will also consider how, by creating specific
conditions of time, place, character, and action, literary texts provoke
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