COM 75-673: Film Studies
Prerequisites: 75-113, 75-133 and/or consent of
instructor
Class Meetings: M, 2:30-5:00; FWO 324
Course Description:
This course introduces students to critical, analytical, and
theoretical approaches to the study of film as a mass medium and as an
aesthetic form. The course emphasizes the analysis of processes of meaning-making within film narrative as
well as the products of
the film industry, and gives attention to producers, texts, and audiences.
The
course engages film as an artistic and cultural medium in three ways: (1) by
introducing students to important individual films, genres, and trends within
the history of cinema, (2) by introducing students to the institutional
practices at all levels of the production and distribution of movies as well as
the "ways of seeing" and the "ways of doing" that guide
filmmakers who use film as a medium, and (3) by introducing students to some of
the major critical/analytical approaches to the study of film as a mass medium
and aesthetic form. Through the
readings and through discussions about particular film texts, we will explore
not only the ways that particular films and filmmakers perceive, understand,
and represent the world, but also the complex role that film has played in
American mass society since the early 20th Century. Students will apply their developing critical skills to
analyses of current film texts and institutional practices, as well as to a
consideration of how film is embedded in everyday life in contemporary American
and world culture.
Grading Components:
Mid-Term Film
Criticism Project , 25%; Final Film Criticism Project, 25%; Group Guerrilla
Film Project, 10%; Class Participation, 25%; Classwork, 15%
Required Texts:
Film Screenings: Visions
of Light, Apocalypse
Now, Hearts of Darkness, Rear Window, Mildred Pierce, Touch of Evil, Badlands, and Adaptation
A Course Packet of
selected readings in Film Theory and Film Criticism
Prerequisites: 75-113, 75-133
Satisfies POK: American and Western Cultural Heritage
Section 1 Class Meetings: MWF, 11:00 - 11:50, CB 22
Section 2 Class Meetings: MWF, 1:00 - 1:50, CB 22
Course Description:
This course provides an introductory overview to the critical cultural study of the macro political economy and history and functions of the major institutions involved in the production of mass media communication. Special emphasis is placed on the standard production practices of mass media industries that produce the media texts that surround us in our everyday lives within contemporary mass society: newspapers, radio, sound recordings, television, film, books, advertisements, public relations, and Internet websites. With a secondary emphasis on regulation, public policy, media ethics and media effects research, we will also explore how these institutionalized communication practices and organizations interrelate with other social institutions such as the government, the judiciary, education, business, organized public interest groups, etc.
Grading Components:
Group Research Projects/Presentations on major media industries, 20%; Two Everyday Application Paper Assignments, 25%; Comprehensive Final Exam, 30%; Classwork/Class Participation, 25%
Required Text:
Richard Campbell, Media and
Culture: An Introduction to Mass Communication Fourth Edition (2004)
Information about these courses is available at: www.southwestern.edu/~bednarb