GI410      Half Unit
Screening the Present: contemporary cinema and cultural critique

This information is for the 2019/20 session.

Teacher responsible

Dr Sadie Wearing, Pankhurst House.11.01C

Availability

This course is available on the MPhil/PhD in Gender, MSc in Culture and Society, MSc in Gender, MSc in Gender (Research), MSc in Gender (Sexuality) and MSc in Gender, Development and Globalisation. This course is available as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

Pre-requisites

Students need to have an awareness of and interest in contemporary cultural theory.

Course content

The aims of the course are to offer students the opportunity to critically explore contemporary international cinema as a site for the interrogation of contested contemporary social and political processes such as migration, globalisation and conflict. The course links cinematic representations to the preoccupations of contemporary cultural theory in relation to themes such as, colonial/postcolonial memory, neo liberalism and cultural dislocations, ethics and subjectivity, gendered migration and gendered violence. The course introduces students to a range of international film and will develop the critical tools for the analysis of both mainstream and marginal (or marginalised) cultural productions. It explores  a range of critical and theoretical writing on film considering questions such as cinema as oppositional practice, the emergence of transnational cinema, questions of representation, global spectatorship and 'witnessing' and the affective dimensions of cinema. Indicative films are: Unknown Pleasures (dir. Jia Zhang-Ke), Persepolis (dir. Marjane Satrapi), Black Skin White Mask (dir. Isaac Julien), Waltz with Bashir (dir. Ari Folman), Cache (dir. Michael Haneke), The Road to Guantanamo (dir. Michael Winterbottom).

Teaching

10 hours of lectures, 10 hours of seminars and 20 hours of classes in the LT.

Class is a compulsory film screening.

Students on this course will have a reading week in Week 6, in line with departmental policy.

 

 

Formative coursework

Essay (1500 words) including an element of film analysis in the LT.

Group Presentation as part of Class Conference held at the end of course LT.  This session will take place in week 11 and will last the whole morning.

 

 

Indicative reading

Assessment

Essay (100%, 4000 words) in the ST.

Key facts

Department: Gender Studies

Total students 2018/19: Unavailable

Average class size 2018/19: Unavailable

Controlled access 2018/19: No

Value: Half Unit

Guidelines for interpreting course guide information

Personal development skills

Student performance results

(2015/16 - 2017/18 combined)

Classification % of students
Distinction 32.2
Merit 55.2
Pass 11.5
Fail 1.1