Seats still available in the following courses—please share with interested students:
ENGL 273: American Cinema Since 1950
Lecture/Discussion: 2-3:15 T/R
Laboratory: 5-7:30 W
Prerequisite: Completion of the Composition I requirement.
This English department-based cinema-studies course analyzes selected films made in the last sixty-five years in the U.S. from key critical approaches including perspectives on authorship, genre, narrative, gender and racial representation, and the impact of spectacle. While it does not offer a film historical survey, the course addresses a range of latter 20th?early 21st century cinematic developments in the context of major transitions in the American film industry and in society. Among the trends we will examine are the dominant stylistic and ideological models of classical Hollywood and the shift away from those during the late 1960s; the emergence of the New Hollywood in the 1970s with its stylistic eclecticism and emphasis on formulaic blockbusters; and the typical Hollywood ways of representing key social issues such as race.
ENGL 373: Special Topics in Film Studies – Haunted Cinema
Lecture/Discussion: 10-11:50 T/R
Prerequisite: One college-level course in film studies or literature.
Haunted Cinema In this section of ENGL/MACS 373 we will examine narrative films about haunting featuring ghosts, vampires, demons, and other weird creatures to explore the many ways in which cinema is itself a haunted cultural form with complex, fascinating, sometimes troubling psychic, emotional, religious, and political meanings. Our examination will range from some of the earliest cinematic haunting narratives to some very recent Hollywood films. We’ll consider these far-reaching questions, among others: How can cinema, that quintessentially 20th-century art form, reveal to us what forces and fears haunt the modern world? In what ways is cinema a “haunted” form and the viewer of films both haunter and haunted? How can cinematic narratives of haunting provide us with powerful metaphors of hidden interconnection, even some degree of religious or spiritual experience, in the fragmented, skeptical environment of modernity? ?How do these narratives allow us to explore anxieties and fantasies involving identity, gender, and sexuality that often seem taboo in our everyday lives?
ENGL 374: World Cinema in English – The Great White North: Films of Canada
Lecture/Discussion: 3:30-5:20 T/R
Prerequisite: Sophomore or higher standing.
The Great White North: Films of Canada In this course we will get to know our neighbor to the north. You may be surprised at how many well-known directors and actors are Canadian. Canadian directors whom we will meet include David Cronenberg, Atom Egoyan, John Maddin, and Patricia Rozema. Canada, like every other country, uses its national cinema as an expression of, exploration of, and advertisement for its national identity. We will look at Canadian films with the aim of discovering what issues Canadians see as central, as worthy of display, and as problematic. We will look at the relationship between these film representations and actual social and political ideas and practices. We will also see how Canada negotiates its economic and industrial relationship to the 800-pound gorilla of the film world: Hollywood.
Kristine
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Kristine McCoskey, Ed M
Academic Advisor
Department of English
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign