FMCS2300
10 units
2000 level
Course handbook
Description
This course studies Hollywood films in the wider context of cinema from continental America within and beyond the USA. Each week, it examines a specific feature film and its historical, industrial, national, social, economic, political, and cultural dimensions, covering key moments in Hollywood history and select other American cinema. The course charts the connections and stark differences within films from this part of the world and the similarly diverse nature of cinema studies from the region, gaining both inside and outside perspectives on the most powerful country in history and its equally dominant commercial cinema.
Availability
Not currently offered.
This Course was last offered in Semester 2 - 2022.
Learning outcomes
On successful completion of the course students will be able to:
1. Situate Hollywood films within their historical, spatial, geopolitical, industrial, socio-cultural contexts.
2. Apply appropriate interpretive and theoretical models to the discussion of American cinema within and beyond the USA.
3. Analyse the narrative and aesthetic form of Hollywood and other American films.
4. Demonstrate intermediate research, analytical and communication skills in the area of screen studies.
Content
Course topics may include:
- Classical Hollywood cinema
- 1970s 'New Hollywood'
- Recent blockbuster and franchise Hollywood films
- US 'independent' cinema
- Cuban and other Latin American cinema
- Canadian cinema
- Representations of slavery, diaspora, and empire on screen
- National identity and screen narrative as myth-making
- The political economy of Hollywood
- Hollywood and ideology
- American avant garde films
- Radical anti-colonial Latin American cinema
- Postcolonial American film-making
- American cinema and the world
Assumed knowledge
60 units of 1000 level courses
Assessment items
Journal: Weekly Journal
Annotated Bibliography: Research Exercise
Essay: Major Research Essay
Course outline
Course outline not yet available.
The University of Newcastle acknowledges the traditional custodians of the lands within our footprint areas: Awabakal, Darkinjung, Biripai, Worimi, Wonnarua, and Eora Nations. We also pay respect to the wisdom of our Elders past and present.