This course introduces students to the study of media with particular emphasis on film studies and gender representations within media. After an overview on various aspects of media history, media theory, and media analysis, we will focus on award-winning American movies which utilize mystery and suspense and analyze changing gender representations within these films. American movies often utilize mystery and suspense to comment on American society, incorporating criticism about the American dream and American ideals. Ultimately, fear of the unknown or ”other” is frequently not connected to unfamiliar objects/entities but interconnected to well-known institutions and hierarchies. This course will provide students with a tool kit to critically analyze different media productions and investigate how media productions are shaped by current discourses in society while they at the same time add to these discourses. Students will be introduced to foundations of film studies, for example film narrative, cinematique techniques, approaches to contextual interpretation, genre analysis; some seminal texts to foster discussions on American/Southern Gothic, horror/terror, the uncanny and suspense, as well as selected Gender theories to enhance critical discussion of our examples. We will discuss a selection of award-winning films like Jaws (1974), Sleepy Hollow (1999), Mystic River (2003) and Get Out (2017) to explore how media productions are shaped by historical and social contexts on the one hand, while they contribute to and influence discourses in society at the same time.
Readings/materials: A selection of relevant essays and excerpts from books will be made available via moodle. We will discuss access to visual material in the first session.
Course requirements: Completion of reading assignments, a short (oral) presentation, and a short written assignment at the end of the course. Students are required to watch (excerpts) from movies in advance of the sessions in which we discuss them. Regular attendance and active participation in seminar discussions is expected.
- DozentIn: Bärbel Schlimbach