MAC 246 Topics in Film History

Classical and Post-Classical American Cinema (1930s to 1960s). A survey course on American independent cinema and Hollywood studio productions from the emergence of sound cinema and the fortification of business models and generic conventions in the studio system up through the social, political, and civil rumblings of the early 1960's. Topics include genre theory; gender, race, and class in American cinema and society; independent and experimental counter-cinemas operating outside the Hollywood model; censorship; and the evolution of film genres. The course will draw upon Occidental's location in Los Angeles as a source of research, screening, and programming opportunities.

 American Cinema (1970s to the Present). A survey course on American independent cinema and Hollywood studio productions from the late 1970s to the present. Topics include the response of independent and experimental cinemas to Hollywood's hegemony; the cultural significance of American cinema; the global success of American films and their impact upon production, stardom, distribution, and exhibition; the aesthetics of film image, sound, and narration; and the effects of new digital technologies on spectacle, and spectatorship. The course will draw upon Occidental's location in Los Angeles as a source of research, screening, and programming opportunities.

 
Modernity and the Rise of Cinematic Visuality. Many have argued that the history of modernity has been, above all, a history of visualization, changing the way we see. In this course, we will examine a diverse range of nineteenth and early twentieth century visual practices, technologies, and experiences -- including train rides, panoramas, shopping arcades, assembly lines, and amusement parks -- that helped shape the "modern observer" by altering both the perception and understanding of time and space, public and private, work and leisure, the normal and deviant, and the individual and collective. Through a combination of critical readings, screenings, and field trips, we will ask how such practices of looking not only influenced early cinematic form and content, but also how they continue to inflect postmodern media culture, from television to the internet. The course culminates in a 3D screening of HUGO (2011, Scorsese).