“I want your love and all your lover’s revenge, you and me could write a bad romance.”- Lady Gaga “Sweet love, sweet thorn, I took your thrust . . . whereby I since am slain [. . .]”- Edna St. Vincent Millay This course will focus on the idea of “bad romance” through the different lenses of music, literature, film, and philosophy. As a class, we will seek to uncover the meaning of romance and what it means when love has gone awry. Musically, we will be looking at artists as varied as Lady Gaga to Billy Joel. Literature will aid us in our investigation of “tainted love” through texts ranging from Greek mythology to Shakespearean plays to modern poetry. We will also be looking at films ranging from Casablanca to 500 Days of Summer as well as exploring the psychological aspects of love gone wrong, through the concept of romantic love as disease and mental disorders that flirt with the idea of love. This course hopes to provide a deeper poetic and philosophic understanding of the nature of “bad romance” in contemporary society and throughout the ages. Each class will be part lecture, with multimedia aspects, and part discussion.