Greta Gerwig’s 2019 film adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s nineteenth-century children’s classic, Little Women (1868–69), is the latest of numerous adaptations for a variety of media—theater, television, and film. Little Women’s many adaptations have not only maintained the appeal of the 19th-century children’s classic, each of them has also added yet another interpretation of the story. Alongside our study of Alcott’s children’s classic itself (“Part First” and “Part Second”), this class focuses on the four feature films of Little Women from 1933, 1949, 1994, and 2019. The course aims to familiarize students with central theoretical aspects of the theory of adaptation (novels into films) and undertakes a brief foray into (feminist) film theory as well. Moreover, students will develop an understanding of the variations, repetitions, and interpretations which the film adaptations have produced under ever-changing cultural, historical contexts and cinematic, technological developments.
Please purchase and read the following primary texts/films:
- Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. 1868. Eds. Anne K. Phillips and Gregory Eiselein. New York: W.W. Norton, 2003 (ISBN-13: 978-0-393-97614-4; ISBN-10: 0393976149)
- Little Women. Dir. George Cukor. Perf. Katharine Hepburn, Frances Dee, Joan Bennet, Jean Parker, Paul Lukas, and Douglas Montgomery. RKO Radio Picture, 1933. (If you sign up for archive.org, which is a wonderful source for digitized books as well, you can watch the film here:
https://archive.org/details/LittleWomen1933)
- Little Women. Dir. Mervyn LeRoy. Perf. June Allyson, Margaret O’Brien, Elizabeth Taylor, and Janet Leigh. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1949.
- Little Women. Dir. Gillian Armstrong. Perf. Winona Ryder, Claire Danes, Trini Alvarado, Kirsten Dunst, Samantha Mathis, Susan Sarandon, Gabriel Byrne, Christian Bale. Columbia Pictures, 1994.
- Little Women. Dir. Greta Gerwig. Perf. Saorise Ronan, Emma Watson, Florence Pugh, Eliza Scanlen, and Laura Dern. Columbia, 2019.
The syllabus will be made available a few weeks ahead of the semester together with other reading materials.