CSP 19 Visual Storytelling And Narrative Film

As a first-year seminar, this course is intended to introduce you to the critical thinking and writing that will be expected of you throughout your career at Oxy. Although our study will focus on a single topic—visual storytelling in narrative film—the skills you learn in this course should transmit seamlessly to your other courses. In particular, you should learn to read primary sources (in our case, the films themselves and what the filmmakers say and write about their work) sympathetically and critically. Then you will critically engage with scholarly and other analyses of these sources. The result, after careful reading and deep thinking, will be to assert your own positions regarding the material in interesting, sophisticated, and clear ways both verbally and through writing.

Ideally, you will gain more confidence in your writing abilities, which you can carry with you as you respond to any number of writing situations at Oxy (and beyond). We’ll work together towards developing, shaping, and polishing clear, organized, coherent, detailed and compelling essays, the main form of expression in college writing at all levels.