Keele University Prospectus Undergraduate | 2016 | Page 102

HUMANITIES

Film Studies
Overview

Film Studies is a broad and challenging discipline
involving the rigorous and critical study of films
from around the world. It is an exciting and relatively
new academic discipline that allows you to develop
skills in critical argument, and involves imaginative
engagement with films from the past and present
and from a variety of different global cultures.
Recognising that film has become one of the
20th and 21st centuries’ most pre-eminent and
influential forms of both art and mass entertainment,
the course allows you to investigate the possibilities
and limitations of film language and its influence on
how we understand history, as well as our various
forms of identity. All modules offered will be taught
by a team of staff who are research active and
experts in their fields, with a commitment to lively
and innovative teaching methods.
You will explore the ways in which our familiarity
with and understanding of film has become central
to the way in which we understand the world.
You will investigate how meaning is created in
cinema, who the author of a film is, how films
are categorised in relation to each other, how the
meanings of films are shaped by the historical period
and national cultures that produced them and
what ideas and ideologies about race and gender
films include and exclude. You will also have the
opportunity to take a practical module in digital
video enabling you to combine your theoretical
knowledge with practical skills.
Our Film Studies degree programme is open to
both students with and without prior Film Studies
experience. In short, we welcome those with
enthusiasm for filmic knowledge and an enquiring
mind. Film Studies is an interdisciplinary course
combining the specialist skills and expertise
of staff from a range of programmes including
English, Media, Communications and Culture,
American Studies, Visual Arts, Sociology and Music,
coordinated and administrated by the School of
Humanities.

Course content

You will take a series of modules, some of which
are compulsory, some of which can be chosen from
a list of electives. As you work your way through
the degree programme you will begin to discover
the specific areas of study that you want to pursue.
As such, you are able to specialise in particular
areas of film according to personal interests, career
aspirations and strengths.
You will also have the opportunity to study abroad
for one semester in the second year. Under this
scheme students can study at universities in Europe,
Australia, Canada or the US. You will also have
the opportunity to attend and participate in a film
summer school at Dongguk University in Seoul,
South Korea.
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First year
Core modules:
Reading Film aims to introduce essential elements
of film language, narrative and analysis in order to
engage you in thinking critically about the choices
made by filmmakers in constructing the look and
sound of their films, with an emphasis on variety of
film practice. Texts currently studied include Citizen
Kane (Welles, 1941) and Jaws (Spielberg, 1975).
Film Texts and Contexts I provides a detailed
and analytical overview of the development of
the feature film, from the beginning of the 20th
century to the beginning of the 21st. We will look
at the history of film’s development internationally,
reflecting on the various circumstances – cultural,
economic, technological, and political – shaping
the transformation of film across different contexts.
Texts to be studied include The Cabinet of Dr Caligari
(Wiene, 1920), Casablanca (Curtiz, 1942) and The
Usual Suspects (Singer, 1995).
Elective modules include:
• Popular British Cinema: From the 1990s
to the Present Day
• Introduction to European Cinema
• Digital Video
• Introduction to Television Studies
• The Photographic Message
• Understanding Culture
Second year
Gender and the Cinematic Gaze explores the
significance of gendered representation in film,
focusing on theories of gendered spectatorship,
voyeurism and the dis/pleasure of looking. You
will be introduced to a number of significant
theorists such as Laura Mulvey, Judith Butler and
Sue Thornham in order to gain an understanding
of gender as a cultural and social construction
(differentiated from ‘sex’) and influenced by political
movements such as feminism. Texts to be studied
include Beauty and the Beast (Trousdale and Wise,
1991), Point Break (Bigelow, 1991) and Caramel
(Labaki, 2007).
Film Texts and Contexts II analyses some of the
contexts for understanding contemporary popular
cinemas at a ‘global’ level. We will look at a series of
films across a range of different national contexts,
focusing especially on the impact of globalization,
as both an economic and cultural process, on the
content, style and distribution of different cinemas
internationally. You will consider the ways in which
the wider influence and viewing of different cinemas
across different filmmaking contexts has impacted
on the types of films produced globally, and the ways
these films are made and seen. Texts to be studied
include Crouching Tiger, Hi FFV