Fall Semester with Mark Schenker: Great Books / Great Films (Zoom)

Please join us for a new kind of literary series with Mark Schenker in which we’ll look at literary works that were made into great films.

In the early years of cinema, movie producers looked for material from classic American, British and Continental novels. There were two reasons for this: first, those novels were out of copyright and so they allowed them free material; second, the producers were eager to legitimize the new genre of cinema by giving their movies the cachet of literary masterpieces. And so, the first decades of cinema saw Robinson Crusoe, Huckleberry Finn, The Scarlet Letter, then All Quiet on the Western Front, Anna Karenina, and many others.

The six books in this series, published from 1930 to 1968 – by four men and two women; four Americans, and two Brits – include a hard-boiled detective novel, an unconventional western, a sea adventure, two psychological thrillers and a science fiction novel that set a new standard for such works.

The schedule is as follows:

• 9/23 - The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett (novel 1930, film 1941)
• 10/7 – Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier (novel 1938, film 1940)
• 10/30 – The Ox-Bow Incident by Walter van Tilburg Clark (novel 1940, film 1943)
• 11/18 – Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith (novel 1950, film 1951)
• 12/2 – The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (novel 1952, Film 1958)
• 12/16 – 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke (story 1951, film 1968, novel 1968)

No charge for the program. These lectures are made possible with the support of the Literary Series in Memory of Amy Quigley. Advance registration required. Register online or call 203-762-6334. You will automatically be registered for all six sessions.

Mark J. Schenker, having served in various decanal roles in Yale College since 1990, retired last year. A former lecturer in the English Department, he received his Ph.D. from Columbia University with a concentration in 19th-century and early 20th-century English Literature. He had taught previously at Columbia, New York University, and Trinity College (Hartford, CT). Outside of academia, Mark has for over 35 years lectured on literature and film, and has led book discussion series in more than 100 venues in Connecticut, including public libraries, museums, and cultural centers. He also conducts monthly sessions for a number of private reading groups in the state. In 2001, he received the Wilbur Cross Award for Outstanding Humanities Scholar, presented by the Connecticut Humanities Council.