Courses

CRWT B266 Screenwriting

Spring 2026

An introduction to screenwriting. Issues basic to the art of storytelling in film will be addressed and analyzed: character, dramatic structure, theme, setting, image, sound. The course focuses on the film adaptation; readings include novels, screenplays, and short stories. Films adapted from the readings will be screened. In the course of the semester, students will be expected to outline and complete the first act of an adapted screenplay of their own.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Counts Toward: Creative Writing; English; Film Studies.

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EALC B315 Spirits, Saints, Snakes, Swords: Women in East Asian Literature & Film

Spring 2026

This interdisciplinary course focuses on a critical survey of literary and visual texts by and about Chinese women. We will begin by focusing on the cultural norms that defined women's lives beginning in early China, and consider how those tropes are reflected and rejected over time and geographical borders (in Japan, Hong Kong and the United States). No prior knowledge of Chinese culture or language necessary.

Counts Toward: Comparative Literature; East Asian Languages & Culture; Film Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies.

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ENGL B105 Hollywood on Hollywood

Spring 2026

How did Hollywood become a global powerhouse of cultural production? How have Hollywood films responded to technological and political change? What, frankly, does Hollywood think about itself? This class will provide an introduction to the history of Hollywood film production through the stories Hollywood has told about itself, from the golden age of the studio system, to the trailblazing directors of New Hollywood, to the contemporary world of franchises and streaming. By watching movies about movies, we will consider Hollywood as a land of both enchanting dreams and deadly nightmares, populated with forgotten film stars, maniacal directors, aspiring outsiders, and insufferable studio executives. In so doing, students will learn how to watch movies critically, considering their thematic content and their historical conditions of production, and gain an understanding of and appreciation for Hollywood's history and its connection to American and global politics. Likely films include Singin' in the Rain, Sunset Boulevard, The Player, and Mulholland Dr.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Counts Toward: Film Studies.

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ENGL B205 Introduction to Film

Spring 2026

This course is intended to provide students with the tools of critical film analysis. Through readings of images and sounds, sections of films and entire narratives, students will cultivate the habits of critical viewing and establish a foundation for focused work in film studies. The course introduces formal and technical units of cinematic meaning and categories of genre and history that add up to the experiences and meanings we call cinema. Although much of the course material will focus on the Hollywood style of film, examples will be drawn from the history of cinema. Attendance at weekly screenings is mandatory.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Counts Toward: Film Studies; History of Art; Visual Studies.

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ENGL B213 Global Cinema

Not offered 2025-26

This course introduces students to one possible history of global cinema. We will discuss and analyze a variety of filmmakers and film movements from around the world. Students will be exposed to the discipline of film studies as it is specifically related to the cinema of East Asia, South Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East. We will study these works with special emphasis on film language, aesthetics, and politics, as well as film style and genre. Along the way, we will explore a number of key terms and concepts, including colonialism, postcolonialism, form, realism, surrealism, futurism, orientalism, modernity, postmodernity, hegemony, the subaltern, and globalization. Filmmakers will include, among others, Wong Kar-wai, Satyajit Ray, Shirin Neshat, Fernando Mereilles, Agnès Varda, and Werner Herzog.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward: Comparative Literature; Film Studies.

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ENGL B267 Theories of the Image

Fall 2025

Our contemporary world contains a seemingly endless amount of images, from television and cinema to the jpegs, gifs, and memes of social media and the internet, but this was not always the case. This class will consider how theorists and philosophers reckoned with the rise of the image and the birth of "image culture." What exactly is an image? What happens when an image can be reproduced and disseminated at unimagined speeds? What happens when that image moves? What sort of gazes does the image produce, and what are the social and political power of such gazes? We will pay particular attention to how the invention of cinema changed the meaning of the image at the end of the 19th century and how, in turn, the end of World War II (with the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the discovery of the Nazi's extermination camps) challenged the meaning of cinema, undermining its supposed ability to show us what was "real." In asking these and related questions, this course will provide students with a robust understanding of film theory and of different theoretical and historical approaches to the image. We will consider a wide range of methods-including Marxism, critical race theory, feminist theory, and psychoanalysis-and view a number of photographic, cinematic, and digital images against which we can test these theories. Fulfills Film Studies Theory course requirement

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward: Film Studies; Visual Studies.

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ENGL B340 Iranian Cinema: Before and After the Revolution

Fall 2025

One of the most celebrated global cinemas to date, Iranian cinema has been recognized in film festivals around the world for its unique aesthetic vision, political complexities, and social import. This course will expose students to major masterpieces of Iranian cinema both prior to and after the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Along the way, students will learn to meaningfully engage topics such as film form, colonialism, imperialism, labor migration, realism, expressionism, and issues concerning the politics of gender, race, ethnicity, and religion.

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

Counts Toward: Comparative Literature; Film Studies.

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ENGL B357 A Star is Born: Race, Gender, and Celebrity

Not offered 2025-26

This course will explore the concept of celebrity in cinema and cinematic culture from the standpoint of race and gender. Focusing on, but not limiting ourselves to, the classical Hollywood cinema (about the 1910s to the 1960s), we will approach the topic of stardom from theoretical and institutional perspectives. We will quickly discover that the study of celebrity opens out onto broad questions about the distinction between art and reality. What is the distinction, for instance, between a person and a character? What is it about celebrities that makes this question especially salient? What are we doing, precisely, when we identify with a character on screen, and, moreover, when that character is played by someone extremely famous? What are the racial, sexual, and gendered performances that go into the construction of celebrity? What political operations are at work in the formal construction of identification? Under what circumstances is identification something to be complicated, challenged, or avoided altogether? Celebrity also seems to hold within it the promise of its own demise. The extremely famous, for instance, are susceptible to infamy-or worse, irrelevance. How do race, gender, and sexuality intersect with fame's fundamental fragility, the way that celebrity seems to court obsolescence? We will examine these and other questions by way of classical and contemporary stars such as Josephine Baker, Bette Davis, Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, Judy Garland, Anna May Wong, Beyoncé, and Lady Gaga.

Counts Toward: Film Studies.

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FREN B208 La diversité dans le cinéma français contemporain

Spring 2026

Until the closing years of the 20th century, ethnic diversity was virtually absent from French cinema. While Francophone directors from Northern and Sub-Saharan Africa debunked colonialism and neocolonialism in their films, minorities hardly appeared on French screens. Movies were made by white filmmakers for a white audience. Since the 1980's and the 1990's, minorities have become more visible in French films. Are French Blacks and Arabs portrayed in French cinema beyond stereotypes, or are they still objects of a euro-centric gaze? Have minorities gained agency in storytelling, not just as actors, but as directors? What is the national narrative at play in the recent French films that focus on diversity? Is it still "us against them", or has the new generation of French filmmakers found a way to include the different components of French identity into a collective subject? From Bouchareb to Gomis, from Kechiche to Benyamina and Jean-Baptiste, this course will map out the visual fault lines of the French self and examine the prospects for a post-republican sense of community. This course will be taught in French. Open to non-majors. There will be a weekly screening on Sunday, 7:00pm-9:00pm.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

Counts Toward: Africana Studies; Film Studies.

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GEOL B112 Geology in Film

Fall 2025

Geologic processes make for great film storylines, but filmmakers take great liberty with how they depict scientific "facts" and scientists. We will explore how and why filmmakers choose to deviate from science reality. We will study and view one film per week and discuss its issues from a geologist's perspective.

Course does not meet an Approach

Counts Toward: Film Studies.

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HART B170 History of Narrative Cinema, 1945 to the present

Spring 2026

This course surveys the history of narrative film from 1945 to the present. We will analyze a chronological series of styles and national cinemas, including Classical Hollywood, Italian Neorealism, the French New Wave, and other post-war movements and genres. Viewings of canonical films will be supplemented by more recent examples of global cinema. While historical in approach, this course emphasizes the theory and criticism of the sound film, and we will consider various methodological approaches to the aesthetic, socio-political, and psychological dimensions of cinema. Readings will provide historical context, and will introduce students to key concepts in film studies such as realism, formalism, spectatorship, the auteur theory, and genre studies. Fulfills the history requirement or the introductory course requirement for the Film Studies minor. This course was formerly numbered HART B299; students who previously completed HART B299 may not repeat this course.

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward: English; Film Studies.

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HART B235 Critical Approaches to Visual Representation: Identification in the Cinema

Fall 2025

This course is writing intensive. An introduction to the analysis of film and other lensed, time-based media through particular attention to the role of the spectator. Why do moving images compel our fascination? How exactly do spectators relate to the people, objects, and places that appear on the screen? Wherein lies the power of images to move, attract, repel, persuade, or transform their viewers? Students will be introduced to film theory through the rich and complex topic of identification. We will explore how points of view are framed by the camera in still photography, film, television, video games, and other media. Prerequisite: one course in History of Art at the 100-level or permission of the instructor. Enrollment preference given to majors and minors in History of Art and Film Studies. Fulfills Film Studies Introductory or Theory course requirement. This course was formerly numbered HART B110; students who previously completed HART B110 may not repeat this course.

Writing Intensive

Critical Interpretation (CI)

Inquiry into the Past (IP)

Counts Toward: Comparative Literature; Film Studies; Visual Studies.

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HART B380 Topics in Film Studies

Section 001 (Fall 2025): Ecologies of Empire:Western in Contemporary Cinema
Section 002 (Fall 2025): Art & Film in Philadelphia
Section 001 (Fall 2026): Art & Film in Philadelphia

Fall 2025

This is a topics course. Course content varies. Prerequisite: one course in History of Art at the 100- or 200-level or permission of the instructor. Enrollment preference given to majors and minors in History of Art and Film Studies. This course was formerly numbered HART B334.

Current topic description: D. N. Rodowick has argued that the digital arts "are the most radical instance yet of an old Cartesian dream: the best representations are the most immaterial ones because they seen to free the mind from the body and the world of substance." In this seminar, we will explore digital images in relation to cinema, photography, and other media. We will examine the fate of materiality, the body, and duration in 21st c. media, and consider whether or not the digital marks a significant break from the analog. Texts by Gilles Deleuze, Lev Manovich, Hito Steyerl, and others; works by Natalie Bookchin, Harun Farocki, Jacolby Satterwhite, and others.

Course does not meet an Approach

Counts Toward: Film Studies; Visual Studies.

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ITAL B255 Mafia and Organized Crimes

Fall 2025

This course will be a study of the mafia in its historical, social, economic, cultural, and political dimensions. A wide range of novels, films, testimonies and TV series will offer different representations of the Mafia: its ethics, its relationship with politics, religion and business, its ideas of friendship, family, masculinity and femininity. The Associazione Libera was established in 1995 with the purpose of involving and supporting those who are interested in the fight against mafias and organized crime. Thanks to Italian Law n. 109/96, the Italian government is able now to seize property from Mafiosi and give it to co-operations such as Libera. Specialized sectors of mafia activities explored include prostitution, drugs, finance, and human trafficking. Ecomafia receives special attention, examining the implications of mafia for the environment, agriculture and food markets.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Power, Inequity, and Justice (PIJ)

Counts Toward: Film Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies.

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ITAL B325 Literature and Film, Literature into Films and Back

Spring 2026

This course is a critical analysis of Modern Italian society through cinematic production and literature, from the Risorgimento to the present. According to Alfred Hitchock's little stories, two goats were eating the reel of a movie taken from a famous novel. "I liked the book better," says one to the other. While at times we too chew on movies taken from books, our main objective will not be to compare books and films, but rather to explore the more complex relation between literature and cinema: how text is put into film, how cultural references operate with respect to issues of style, technique, and perspective. We will discuss how cinema conditions literary imagination, and how literature leaves its imprint on cinema. We will "read" films as "literary images" and "see" novels as "visual stories". Students will become acquainted with literary sources through careful readings; on viewing the corresponding film, students will consider how narrative and descriptive textual elements are transposed into cinematic audio/visual elements. An important concern of this course will be to analyze the particularity of each film/book in relation to a set of themes -gender, death, class, discrimination, history, migration- through close textual analysis. We shall use contemporary Film theory and critical methodology to access these themes.

Counts Toward: Comparative Literature; Film Studies; Film Studies; Gender Sexuality Studies; Hebrew and Judaic Studies.

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MEST B201 Society and Culture of the Middle East Through Film

Spring 2026

This course is designed so that students begin to acquire a knowledge and understanding of the contemporary Arab world through film. A main focus would be society and the representation of family life with all its intricacies. Because the region is extremely diverse and the life of its people and their experiences are, especially in the present, complex, it is necessary to select only a few of the countries in the region and their cinemas to focus on. This should allow for deeper study and meaningful conclusions. The cinemas of several Arab countries will be examined. Egypt has always been and to a large extent remains the center of Arabic-language cinema; three quarters of all Arabic-language feature films having been produced there. Films by famous directors such as Youssef Chahine and Shadi Abdel Salam, among others, will be appropriate to consider. But films from other Arab countries, e.g., from North Africa and the Middle East, will also be included for comparison and a more comprehensive picture.

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward: Film Studies; Visual Studies.

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SPAN B252 Compassion, Indignation, and Anxiety in Latin American Film

Spring 2026

Stereotypically, Latin Americans are viewed as "emotional people"--often a euphemism to mean irrational, impulsive, wildly heroic, fickle. This course takes this expression at face value to ask: Are there particular emotions that identify Latin Americans? And, conversely, do these "people" become such because they share certain emotions? Can we find a correlation between emotions and political trajectories? To answer these questions, we will explore three types of films that seem to have, at different times, taken hold of the Latin American imagination and feelings: melodramas (1950s-1960s), documentaries (1970s-1990s), and "low-key" comedies (since 2000s.) This course is offered in both Spanish and English. Prerequisite: SPAN 120 or permission of instructor

Cross-Cultural Analysis (CC)

Counts Toward: Film Studies; Latin American Iberian Latinx.

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