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Courses

English (ENG)
Concentrations
Film Studies
  • FILM-C 292 Introduction to Film (3 cr.) Nature of film technique and film language; analysis of specific films; major historical, theoretical, and critical developments in film and film study from the beginnings of cinema to the present.
  • FILM-C 350 Film Noir (3 cr.) Private detectives, femmes fatales, dark, shadowy criminal underworlds.  But what, really, is Film Noir? A genre? A historical cycle? Film scholars don't agree.  Ironic noirs of the1940's and 1950's lurk here alongside international examples, precursors, and contemporary neo-noirs.
  • FILM-C 351 Musicals (3 cr.) A study of the genre from the dawn of "talkies" to the Glee era; the film musical in its folk, fairy tale, and show business variants; the "organic" musical; Busby Berkeley; Astaire and Rogers; the Freed Unit at M-G-M; Broadway adaptations; revisionist musicals; revival in the 2000s: All will be covered.
  • FILM-C 353 History of Animated Cinema (3 cr.) This course will explore one of the most popular and durable of all film genres, animation. We will look at the development of animation in all its aspects-as short subjects shown before features, animation as modern art, and the competition in the 1930s between the Walt Disney Studio in Bur-bank, California and the New York-based and more adult-oriented Fleischer Studios. We will see how Disney's move to features changed the medium even as the anarchic shorts from Warner Bros.- "Termite Terrace" influenced popular culture for many years. We will see the evolution of animation from a drawn, cel-based medium to the three-dimensional computer animation of Pixar, Dream-Works, and other animation studios of today. We will also look at animation internationally, with particular attention to Japanese animation and animation as modern art, as well as the effects of computer generated imagery (CGI) on live-action films. There will be regular class screenings.
  • FILM-C 361 Hollywood Studio Era 1930-1949 (3 cr.) Hollywood's "Golden Age"; "pre-Code" era; genres, auteurs, and stars; "House style"; "mass audience" when that meant something; the House Un-American Activities Committee and the Hollywood Ten; the U.S. vs. Paramount decision and other factors that ended the era.
  • FILM-C 362 Hollywood in the 1950s (3 cr.) A period of transition and reinvention. Television, the blacklist, widescreen, Method acting, psychological realism, the decline of the Production Code, the influence of art cinema; iconic films from Sunset Blvd. to Some Like It Hot, Singin' in the Rain to The Searchers, Rebel Without a Cause to On the Waterfront.
  • FILM-C 364 The Hollywood Renaissance: 1967-80 (3 cr.) Survey of an era of great change in American Cinema: the Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam War, and second-wave feminism, and international art cinemas impacted genres and conventions, in a crucial time of creative experimentation. The Hollywood Renaissance can still be felt in American independent as well as mainstream cinemas.
  • FILM-C 380 French Cinema (3 cr.) Arguably the world's most fervid and versatile film culture; the first public film showings; the first fantasy/science fiction films; the wide-screen lens; the idea of film noir, the Auteur Theory, the New Wave; philosophy and aesthetics, culture and politics; the cross-pollenation between French and U.S. cinemas.
  • FILM-C 390 The Film and Society: Topics (3 cr.) Film and politics; race and gender; social influences of the cinema; rise of the film industry. May be repeated once with different topic.
  • FILM-C 391 The Film: Theory and Aesthetics (3 cr.) Film form and techniques; aesthetic and critical theories of the cinema; relationships between film movements and literary and artistic movements; relationships of word and image; analysis of significant motion pictures. 
  • FILM-C 392 Genre Study in Film (3 cr.) Problems of definition; the evolution of film genres such as criminal or social drama, comedy, the western, science fiction, horror, or documentary film; themes, subject matter, conventions, and iconography peculiar to given genres; relationship of film genres to literary genres. Focus on one specific genre each time the course is offered.  May be repeated once with different topic.
  • FILM-C 393 History of European and American Films I (3 cr.) C393 is a survey of the development of cinema from its beginnings in 1895 to approximately 1949. We will see classic films in their historical, political, and social contexts. The class includes the silent era, the coming of sound in the late 1920s, the Golden Age of Hollywood, Film Noir, and world cinema before, during, and immediately after World War II, including movements such as French Poetic Realism and Italian postwar Neo-Realism.
  • FILM-C 394 History of European and American Films II (3 cr.) C394 is a survey of world cinema since 1950. Particular attention will paid to representative work of leading filmmakers, the emergence of film movements and the development of national trends, the diversification of film industries, and the growth of cinema internationally, from European countries such as Italy, France, and Germany, to Japan to China to Hong Kong to Iran and South America. We study the impact of changing technologies, such as television, home video, and the digital revolution.
  • FILM-C 491 Authorship and Cinema (3 cr.) Study of the work of one or more film artists. Attention paid to the style, themes, and methods that make the filmmaker's work unique. Filmmakers studied in the contexts of film traditions, ideologies, and industries that informed their work.  May be repeated once with a different topic.
  • FILM-C 493 Film Adaptations of Literature (3 cr.) Analysis of the processes and problems involved in turning a literary work (novel, play, or poem) into a screenplay and then into a film. Close study of literary and film techniques and short exercises in adaptation. 
  • ENG-W 260 Writing of Film Criticism (3 cr.) Viewing and critiquing currently playing films, with emphasis on genre, authorship, and cinematic and narrative values. Attention to cultural, historical, and ideological contexts. Students view contemporary films. This is a writing course, which teaches the writing of film criticism; students produce first drafts, present them to classmates for peer reviewing, and complete a final draft for grading. Essays spanning film history serve as models for review writing. 
  • ENG-W 302 Screenwriting (3 cr.) P: ENG-W 206 or ENG-W 207, or permission of instructor. A practical course in basic techniques of writing for film and television. Covers the essentials of dramatic structure, story development, characterization and theme, scene construction, dialogue, and, briefly, the practicalities of working as a screenwriter today.