ENGL 3305

Film theory formally began in the 1920s and is an evolving framework of scholarly approaches developed to analyze film. In this course, we will study select topics chosen from the history of film theory to understand film’s changing relationship to reality, art, spectatorship, and society. Theoretical frameworks may include, but are not restricted to, silent film theory, auteurism, feminist/psychoanalytic theory, third world cinema, genre film, queer theory, and post-cinema/digital cinema. We will consider theories in their historical, cultural, and political contexts and learn to analyze and apply critical and theoretical perspectives to select films from the silent era to the present day.