Unit information: Screening Nations in 2011/12

Unit name	Screening Nations
Unit code	DRAMM1119
Credit points	20
Level of study	M/7
Teaching block(s)	Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24)
Unit director	Dr. Maingard
Open unit status	Not open
Pre-requisites	None
Co-requisites	None
School/department	Department of Film and Television
Faculty	Faculty of Arts

Description including Unit Aims

Screening Nations will examine the notion of national cinema and consider issues in its definition. It will focus on the history, constraints and characteristics of a specific national cinema. This background will provide a focus for a consideration of the current state of a nation's cinema industry, within a broad context. Topics covered will include: (as appropriate) historical silent films; the transition to sound cinema; dominant genres and themes; questions of economics, in particular relations with Hollywood and other national cinemas where relevant; relations with television; policy, censorship and regulatory questions; the position of the state and relations with government; globalisation and global media networks; colonial and post-colonial questions; questions of representation, especially with regard to national identities. It will also focus on questions of popularity; audience response; and cinema-going as a social/cultural activity. The unit will provide a context for further dissertation research.

Aims:

• To introduce major debates, themes and problems in relation to national cinemas, the transnational and world cinema

• To historicise, problematise and interrogate ideas around national cinema

• To situate cinema within a global framework

• To explore contexts of cinema reception and/or cinemas place in society

• To examine the ways in which cinema and related media circulate internationally

• To explore cinemas place within larger political, cultural and/or ideological histories.

Intended Learning Outcomes

• To understand and apply a range of methodologies to the study of cinema and shifting conceptions of the national

• To critically analyse and apply a range of cultural theory (e.g., postcolonial theory) to cinema

• To be able to analyse cinema in relation to audiences, industries and/or their national and international regulatory frameworks

• To gain knowledge of a comparative and broad range of relevant cinema texts

Teaching Information

Seminars and screenings.

Assessment Information

1 X 2,700 word essay (90%) + in-class presentation (10%).

Reading and References

• Chaudhuri, Shohini, Contemporary World Cinema (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005).

• Grant, Catherine and Annette Kuhn (eds), Screening World Cinema (London: Routledge, 2006).

• Appadurai, Arjun, Modernity at Large (Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press, 1996).

• Cook, Pam (ed.), The Cinema Book, 3rd ed. (London: British Film Institute, 2007).

• Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey (ed.), The Oxford History of World Cinema (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).

• Hill, John and Pamela Church Gibson (eds.), World Cinema: Critical Approaches (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).