COML282 - Israeli Film & Lit: Haifa: Literature, Architecture, Film

Like James Joyce’s Dublin, Italo Calvino’s Venice, Carl Sandburg’s Chicago, or even Woody Allen’s Paris, cities have long been the object of yearning and the subject of art. While focusing on the city of Haifa and the various works devoted to it, this course will examine the ways in which a city is forged in cinema, literature and scholarship. It highlights the depictions of other Israeli cities, like Amos Oz’s and Natalie Portman’s Jerusalem, and compares those to the ways in which American and European cities are portrayed in prose, poetry and film created in English and other languages. The emotional and physical connection between the writer or director and his/her present or past place of dwelling is transformed in the artistic work. A city, its streets and landmarks, may reflect the inner world, an interpersonal bond, or social, political and national conflicts.