SC&I Courses

New courses developed in response to emerging areas of interest, and courses in traditional areas given occasionally as student demand dictates.

New courses developed in response to emerging areas of interest, and courses in traditional areas given occasionally as student demand dictates.

Students who must interrupt their studies may, with the approval of a program director, register for Matriculation Continued (leave of absence). There is no tuition fee for this registration, although a student fee is charged. Students who do not register for Matriculation Continued will be charged a reactivation fee upon their return to the program. (Students on temporary visas who interrupt their studies must in most cases leave the United States during such periods.) Matriculation Continued is available only to students not enrolled in any coursework and not using faculty time and university facilities, except to complete previous coursework from classes with incomplete or temporary grades. Students may enroll in Matriculation Continued for a maximum of two consecutive semesters.

This course is open only by special permission in unique cases for MI students.  May be 3 or 6 credits; credits do not count towards the MI degree.

This course is open only by special permission in unique cases for MI students. May be 3 or 6 credits; credits do not count towards the MI degree.

Librarians and teachers are often called upon to select and recommend websites, CD-ROMs, and other electronic information resources for young people, a task that can be very difficult without an understanding of what aspects of these resources appeal to and repel young users. This course is intended to facilitate that evaluation and recommendation process by helping you to understand how young people interact with and evaluate digital information.  This is largely a reading course, requiring you to read the foundational works and core research in youth electronic information behaviors and preferences, including works from library science, information science, and gender studies.  Major assignments will include a related research project and a Web-based annotated bibliography of recommended websites for young people.

This course examines the interpretive structures of American children's movies that are based on children's literature with a focus on how themes, storytelling, and characters are translated from one medium to another. Discussions will center on a variety of contemporary issues, including how literal fidelity relates to creative license (i.e., adaptation versus translation); how the technical differences between film and literature impose directorial choices; how evolving understandings of race, gender, ethnicity and age affect filmic interpretation and presentation; and whether a book's theme or core narrative can be divided from the vast body of cultural, ideological and political influences that constitute its identity. While the primary focus of the course will fall on the process of inter-media translation, significant attention will be paid to questions of intra-generic translation as well: To what extent do the conventions of the children's film dictate a director's interpretive decisions? How do successful children's films of the past, whether recent hits or old classics, impose upon the presentation of new works?  What, if any, are the generic paradigms to which new movies must conform? Finally, Children's Literature Goes To The Movies will ask students to decide whether knowledge of the original book enriches the experience of going to the movies (and if the movie enriches one's understanding of the original book), or whether movie and book are essentially separate, and knowledge of one does not meaningfully translate into a deeper knowledge or a richer experience of the other. Films we will study will include: The Little Mermaid, Snow White, Cinderella, Aladdin, Pinocchio, I Am the Cheese, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Matilda, Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, The Fellowship of the Ring, and several versions of Little Women. Genres that we will consider in relationship to these films will include: the bildungsroman, the fairy tale, enchanted realism, and the quest.

New courses developed in response to emerging areas of interest, and courses in traditional areas given occasionally as student demand dictates.

New courses developed in response to emerging areas of interest, and courses in traditional areas given occasionally as student demand dictates.

New courses developed in response to emerging areas of interest, and courses in traditional areas given occasionally as student demand dictates.