Module Information

This module will give students an essential grounding in a range of theoretical traditions (and their associated concepts, questions and approaches) that have established, shaped and developed film studies as a discipline. Throughout the module, students will encounter important canonical writings and theoretical approaches within film studies, will consider how these theories can be approached and critically evaluated, and how they can be employed to inform the analysis of film texts and other film-related materials and to explore the range of ways in which film can be seen to have aesthetic, ideological, cultural and historical significance.

This module will look at the range of ways in which films and the cinema have been studied over time (through a focus on theoretical approaches to essential areas of study within film studies, such as the study of realism, gender and sexuality, film genre, authorship and stardom, narrative, and spectator engagement and reception). It will thus stress particular traditions within film studies, focusing on the critical analysis of different approaches that have proven influential within historical moments and their relation to wider theoretical paradigms that have informed and influenced the study of film (from psychoanalysis and cognitive psychology, to structuralism and philosophy, to cultural and historical reception studies) and the dialogue and debate that has occurred between these traditions and paradigms. It will encourage students to critically reflect on these ways of approaching films and the cinema. In particular, the module will encourage students to consider how these theoretical traditions (and their associated principles and concepts) might inform types and forms of analysis and interpretation within film studies (through the questions that particular theorists ask about films and the cinema, and the elements of films and the cinema that their theories focus upon).