Classical bias
I have my departmental webpage up and running. Included are syllabi for my courses, Introduction to Film and Video Analysis and the graduate Film History and Theory seminar. As you can see, there were a lot of changes I'd made to my initial draft for the intro class, largely to scale down the screening and lecture time to match the schedule here at Temple.
Chuck Tryon offers his thoughts on the Intro course. Like him, I find myself wondering if the emphasis on classical Hollywood is a good thing, and like him, I've decided to go ahead with it. There are simply too many useful concepts in film studies formulated in reference to Hollywood in its classical period for me not to gravitate toward examples like Stagecoach or Casablanca. This is particularly exacerbated by the need I feel to use articles and readings to supplement the Bordwell and Thompson text; the best of these readings tend to deal with a finite subset of films. I'm always looking for suggestions of new articles to consider, however.
I have tried to mix up the film selection a bit, though, with some uncoventional choices - and some non-Western films - here and there.
Chuck Tryon offers his thoughts on the Intro course. Like him, I find myself wondering if the emphasis on classical Hollywood is a good thing, and like him, I've decided to go ahead with it. There are simply too many useful concepts in film studies formulated in reference to Hollywood in its classical period for me not to gravitate toward examples like Stagecoach or Casablanca. This is particularly exacerbated by the need I feel to use articles and readings to supplement the Bordwell and Thompson text; the best of these readings tend to deal with a finite subset of films. I'm always looking for suggestions of new articles to consider, however.
I have tried to mix up the film selection a bit, though, with some uncoventional choices - and some non-Western films - here and there.
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