This module will explore American culture, society and identity through popular American film. By watching, discussing, critically analysing and writing about these films, it will examine how film creates a window into modern American culture and society. Students will learn how to read American films as cultural texts that help us better understand history and culture. The main aim of the module is to position contemporary American cinema in its broader historical and cultural contexts.

Knowledge and Understanding:

• Demonstrate knowledge of the main elements of major film genres during this period.
• Demonstrate an understanding of how film can help us to better understand and appreciate American culture and society post 1945.
• Demonstrate an awareness of the representation of gender, race, ethnicity, class, and ideology on the screen.

Intellectual Skills:

• Develop and apply their own criteria for judging the artistic merits, entertainment value, and ethical implications of the films that they watch.
• Become active, critical viewers of film.
• Initiate, undertake and articulate analysis of information drawn from a wide variety of sources.

Discipline Specific (including practical) Skills:

• Write critical film reviews that demonstrate critical analysis, research skills, and creative judgment.

• Deepen understanding of the broad themes and developments considered in the course through the analysis of a historical source or sources.
• To research, plan and structure essays and/or projects.
• To recognise, evaluate and interpret different types of evidence.
• To develop, at a basic level, subject-specific and critically-discerning information literacy skills.

This module is taught in 10, two-hour sessions, delivered on a weekly basis. These sessions will consist of a 1-hour lecture (including clips from the selected films) followed by class discussion and group work on specific topics relating to the module. The discussion and group work will enable the students to think critically and contribute to the debates and topics presented during the lectures. The discussion-led sessions and the lectures will be supplemented by resources available to the students via Learning Central. It will be assumed that students will have watched the assigned films in advance of each class. Class discussion will be based around the films listed below in the Syllabus Content

Academic Skills:

By the end of the period of learning, the typical student will have:

• found relevant resources in the library and online;
• assessed the reliability of different sources of information;
• demonstrated a critical approach to academic texts.

Transferable/employability Skills:

By the end of the period of learning, the typical student will have shown that he/she can:

• work effectively as part of a group;

• present an argument, accurately, succinctly and lucidly, and in written or oral form.
• time manage and organise study methods and workload;
• gather, organise and deploy evidence, data and information; and familiarity with appropriate means of identifying, finding, retrieving, sorting and exchanging information.

EITHER:

3 film reviews, 100%, 3 film reviews, 500 words each.  Set in Week 2 and submitted at the end of course

OR:

Essay, 100%, 1500 words.  Set in Week 2 and submitted at the end of course

Week 1

• Conflict, Politics, and Propaganda: America at War

• Saving Private Ryan. Dir. Steven Spielberg. Paramount Pictures, 1998
• The Best Years of Our Lives. Dir. William Wyler. MGM, 1946

Week 2

• Horse operas: the Western and American identity

• The Searchers. Dir. John Ford. Warner Bros, 1956
• Dances with Wolves. Dir. Kevin Costner. Orion Pictures, 1990

Week 3

• The Gangster in American popular culture

• Angels with Dirty Faces. Dir. Michael Curtiz. Warner Bros, 1938
• Goodfellas. Dir. Martin Scorsese. Warner Bros, 1990

Week 4

• Youth culture in American film

• Breakfast Club. Dir. John Hughes. Universal Pictures, 1985
• Rebel without a cause. Dir. Nicholas Ray. Warner Bros, 1955

Week 5

• The 1950s: a time of consumerism and contentment or conformism?

• Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Dir. Don Siegel. Walter Wanger, 1956
• Pleasantville. Dir. Gary Ross. New Line Cinema, 1998

Week 6

• Exploring racial identity in American cinema

• To Kill a Mockingbird. Dir. Robert Mulligan. Universal, 1962
• Mississippi Burning. Dir. Alan Parker. Orion Pictures, 1988

Week 7

• The 1960s: Vietnam and the counter-culture

• Easy Rider. Dir. Dennis Hopper. Columbia Pictures, 1969
• Platoon. Dir. Oliver Stone. Hemdale Film, 1986

Week 8

• Take me out to the ballpark: Sports and American film

• Field of Dreams. Dir. Phil Alden Robinson. Gordon Company, 1989
• Slapshot. Dir. George Roy Hill. Kings Road Entertainment, 1977

Week 9

• The 1980s and 1990s: Exigency or excess?

• Wall Street. Dir. Oliver Stone. Twentieth Century fox, 1987
• Trading Places. Dir. John Landis. Paramount Pictures, 1983

Week 10

• Back to the Future: Sci-fi and America re-imagined

• Sleeper. Dir. Woody Allen. Rollins-Joffe, 1973
• Blade Runner. Dir. Ridley Scott. Warner Bros, 1982

Essential text

Leonard Quart & Albert Auster, American Film and Society since 1945. Praeger; 4 edition (2011)

Recommended texts

John Belton, American Cinema/American Culture, 4^th edition (2012)

Harry M. Benshoff and Sean Griffin, America on Film: Representing Race, Class, Gender and Sexuality at the Movies, 2^nd edition (2009)

Barry Keith Grant (ed.), American Cinema of the 1960s: Themes and Variations (2008) 

Martin Halliwell, American Culture in the 1950s (2007)

Jon Lewis, American Film: A History (2008)

Mark Rawlinson, American Visual Culture (2009)

Robert Sklar, Movie-Made America: A Cultural History of American Movies (1975)