We will examine basic theories of film and their relationship to the practice of “close analysis.” How do film theorists discuss the experience of film, spectatorship, apparatus, and production in a variety of theoretical contexts and explore major film theories such as those of formalism, realism, auteurism, star/celebrity culture, gender, psychoanalysis, genre, race, cultural and media studies? Theories are meant to provide students with a vocabulary for close analysis of film and will stress the many ways of seeing and experiencing film. Our primary responsibility will be finding ways to speak and write about film and its significance as a complex aesthetic and social sign. Film excerpts, particularly those discussed in the assigned texts, will be discussed along with other classic and contemporary films (e.g. Hitchcock's Psycho, Coppola's The Conversation, Garland's Ex Machina, Wes Anderson, Isle of Dogs, etc.)

This course satisfies the Genre requirement for English Literature majors.