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School of Modern Languages & Cultures
Boat trip in the rainforest

The Art of the Moving Image 2:  Theories and Contexts

In this module, you will be introduced to key film theory and contexts in which the moving image has intersected with political, social and cultural developments in in a range of national and transnational contexts in the last hundred years or so.

Discussing topics such as, on the one hand, psychoanalysis and film, authorship, spectatorship, star studies, eco-cinema or the digital age and, on the other, issues of gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity and ideology, the course will focus on a range of films and moving image art from around the globe.

Films studied will vary from year to year, but the main films in Term 1 will include:

  • Vertigo (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)
  • The Piano (dir. Jane Campion, 1993)
  • Ben-Hur (dir. William Wyler, 1959)
  • Paris is Burning (dir. Jennie Livingston, 1990)
  • All About My Mother (dir. Pedro Almodóvar, 1999)

Text Book

  • Vaughan, Hunter and Tom Conley (eds) (2018) The Anthem Handbook of Screen Theory. London and New York: Anthem Press.

Key readings (Term 1):

  • Aaron, Michelle (1999) (ed) The Body’s Perilous Pleasures. Dangerous Desires and Contemporary Culture, ed. by Michele Aaron. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press
  • Cohan, Steven & Ina Rae Hark (1993), eds., Screening the Male: Exploring Masculinities in Hollywood Cinema. London: Routledge
  • D’Lugo, Marvin and Kathleen Vernon (eds) (2013) A Companion to Pedro Almodóvar. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 19-38
  • Epps, Brad and Despina Kakoudaki, eds. (2009) All About Almodóvar: A Passion for cinema. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press
  • Lehman, Peter and William Luhr (2018) Thinking About Movies. Watching, Questioning, Enjoying, 4th Ed. Hoboken, NJ, Chichester and Oxford: Wiley Blackwell
  • Marks, Laura U. (2000) The Skin of the Film. Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and The Senses. Durham and London: Duke University Press
  • Screen (eds) (1992) The Sexual Subject: A Screen Reader in Sexuality. London and New York: Routledge
  • Sobchack, Vivian (2004) Carnal Thoughts: Embodiment and Moving Image Culture. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press
  • Schoonover, Karl and Rosalind Galt (2016) Queer Cinema in the World. Durham, NC: Duke UP
  • Stam, Robert (2000) Film Theory. An Introduction. Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell
  • Williams, Linda (1991), 'Film Bodies: Gender, Genre and Excess', Film Quarterly 44 (4) (Summer), 2- 13

Coordinator (Term 1):  Professor Santiago Fouz-Hernández

Further details of pre-requisites, co-requisites, aims, contact hours and assessment.