Humanities Arts Cultural Stu 0232 - Topics in Film Studies: Race, Gender, and Sexuality on Screen

This course is designed to introduce students to key issues in film studies, focusing on cinema in the United States from the silent era to the present. We will pay particular attention to discourses of racial identity, gender difference, and sexuality on screen, reading early, classical, and recent films in the context of contemporary conversations about politics, equity, and social justice. The course will highlight the history of filmmaking by women and people of color (including Dorothy Arzner, Julie Dash, Maya Deren, Sessue Hayakawa, Oscar Micheaux, Jordan Peele, and Lois Weber, among others) in an effort to critique and expand the film studies canon. Several short papers and in-class discussions will address how to interpret film on the formal/stylistic level (sequence analysis, close reading, visual language) as well as in the context of major trends and figures in film history.

Culture, Humanities, and Languages Independent Work Multiple Cultural Perspectives Writing and Research In this course, students can expect to spend 6 to 8 hours weekly on work and preparation outside of class time.