Greta Gerwig’s 2019 film adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s "Little Women" (1868) is the latest of numerous adaptations for the theater, television, and film. Indeed, the novel’s many cross-medial adaptations have not only contributed to the continuing appeal of the 19th-century children’s classic, each of them has also provided its very own interpretation and added yet another layer of meaning to the 19th-century novel.
Alongside our study of Alcott’s children’s classic itself, this class focuses on the four feature films from 1933, 1949, 1994, and 2019. The course aims to familiarize students with central theoretical aspects of the adaptation of novels into films in order to develop an understanding of the specific variation, accentuation, and interpretation, which each of these film adaptations has produced under changing cultural, historical, and cinematic contexts.
Please purchase and read Louisa May Alcott’s "Little Women" (1868) [part I & II] - preferably the Norton critical edition from 2004, edited by Anne K. Phillips and Gregory Eiselein. Furthermore, please purchase and watch the 1994 film versions directed by Gillian Armstrong and Greta Gerwig’s 2019 version. The 1933 adaptation with Katharine Hepburn, directed by George Cukor and Mervyn Leroy’s 1949 feature film can be accessed at https://archive.org/details/LittleWomen1933 and https://archive.org/details/LittleWomen1949 respectively. Additional reading materials will be made available on Stud.IP at the beginning of the semester.