American Film Genres

Prerequisite - Junior standing. (4 credits)

This course devotes concentrated attention to the origins of the Hollywood genre system and the history and development of several of our film culture's most enduring genres (the Western, the Musical, the Gangster Film, the Melodrama, the "Film-Noir" Thriller) from the century's early decades to the present day. In a given semester, the course deals with four of these genres. It explores how the underlying semantics of each genre (created not only through the narrative, but through specialized stylistic structures) relates to problems in the culture and society (particularly, to problems of race, gender, economics, and the rule of law).

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