sign in sign up
<<
Home , Far from Heaven, Mississippi Burning, Prelude to War

Film, Video, and American History FILM S247/ HIST S187/ AMST S483 Mondays and Wednesdays, 1-4:15pm

Instructor: Carolyn Jacobs Email: [email protected] Office Hours will be held by appointment on Zoom

Since its inception, cinema has represented, recorded, reimagined, and changed history. Films and videos can be seen as historical documents that allow us to understand the cultural values, beliefs, and anxieties of the moment they were made. They also actively take part in the production of history by engaging consciously with current and past events. This course examines American history of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries through the lens of motion pictures.

In this seminar course, students will learn to closely analyze films and videos in relation to the historical moments in which they were made, paying attention to the relationship between a text’s narrative and style and the cultural context from which it emerged. Through film screenings, scholarly texts, group discussion, and engagement with primary sources, students will gain a deeper understanding of both film analysis and American history. Time periods discussed with include the Progressive Era, the Great Depression, World War II, the Civil Rights era, the , and 9/11.

Course Format:

Yale Summer Session courses will be held remotely this summer. Online learning poses certain challenges but also offers opportunities for new forms of engagement and learning, which we will take full advantage of in this class. Here’s how our class will be structured, in general:

1:00-1:30 pm: Log into Zoom. We’ll begin with student presentations on the week’s topic.

1:30-1:45pm: Break

2:00-3:15: Group discussion

3:15-3:30pm: Break

3:30- 4:15: Lecture on next week’s topic and film

Policies:

Attendance: Because this course is an accelerated seminar, it is very important that you attend each group Zoom discussion. Please contact me in advance if you will not be able to sign into our class for any reason. Unexcused absences will result in a lower grade.

Screenings: Two weekly screenings are required for this class. Videos will be available in the “Media Library” in Canvas and can be viewed at your convenience (before the next class meeting).

Participation: The success of this seminar depends on your engaged and generous participation during each session. Please come to class prepared (having seen the week’s film and done the assigned reading) and ready to contribute to . We will talk about how to best participate on Zoom during the first class.

Academic Integrity: Yale has a strict code of academic honesty. Violations of this code will have serious consequences. Please read over the following policies and adhere to them when completing assignments for this class: http://catalog.yale.edu/undergraduate- regulations/policies/definitions-plagiarism-cheating/

We will be relying upon a variety of primary and secondary sources in our assignments. Using reputable sources and citing them appropriately will be key to succeeding in this course. If you have any questions about what constitutes a reputable source, or how to properly cite sources, please see this guide (https://poorvucenter.yale.edu/writing-using-sources) or speak to me.

Readings:

All readings for the course will be made available online, as either e-books through Yale’s library (log in using VPN) or PDFs on Canvas. The main texts that we will use are:

Hollywood’s America: Understanding History Through Film, 5th Edition, ed. Steven Mintz, Randy W. Roberts, David Welky (Wiley-Blackwell, 2016): https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/yale-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4307074

Movies and American Society, 2nd Edition, ed. Steven J. Ross (Wiley-Blackwell, 2014) (PDFs of assigned chapters will be available on Canvas. You may also purchase this text through Yale’s bookstore online or other online retailers).

Assignments:

All assignments should be submitted on Canvas by the time specified on the syllabus. Late assignments will result in a lower grade.

1. Weekly Screening Responses: Students will be required to submit a very short response (3-5 sentences) to each film screened in class, which will help guide our group discussion during the next session. Your response can address any aspect of the film you find important, compelling, confusing, problematic, interesting, etc. You may pose questions about the film or connect the film to the week’s readings or previous topics addressed in class (though this is not required). Responses should be submitted on Canvas by midnight the evening before the next class session.

2. Presentation (8-10 mins): Each student is expected to give one brief (8-10 minute) presentation over the course of the semester on a topic related to the era and/or film we are discussing. For instance, you may focus on one specific aspect of the film (the director, screenwriter, genre, stars, advertising, reception), a different film made during the same era, a major cultural event of the time period, or anything else that you find interesting and relevant. You may present live or show a pre-recorded presentation. Dates for presentations will be assigned during the first session.

3. Reception Assignment (3-4 pages, double-spaced): You will submit a short report on one of the films screened in class, focusing on its reception by audiences and/or critics at the time it was made. You will rely upon several (at least three) primary sources (newspapers, magazines, posters, trade journals, etc.) published at the time the film was first released. You may also use secondary sources, though doing so is not required. We will go over resources and databases available online through Yale’s library early in the semester. Due Wednesday 7/15 by midnight.

4. Final Paper (8-10 pages, double-spaced): The final assignment for this class will ask you to look closely at a topic discussed in class, using one of the films we have screened (or two films, including at least one screened in class). A list of general prompts will be distributed early in the semester, but you are encouraged to choose a topic that interests you. Due Wednesday 7/29 by midnight.

Grading:

Participation and Attendance: 10% Screening Responses: 15% Presentation: 15% Reception Assignment: 25% Final Paper: 35%

Schedule *Screenings go with the topic of the following session.

Week 1 Monday, June 29th Introduction and Early American Cinema Clips: Before the Nickelodeon (Musser, 1982), Boxing Cats (Dickson/ Heise, 1894), The May Irwin Kiss (Edison, 1896), The Great Train Robbery (Porter, 1903), A Trip Down Market Street (Miles Brothers, 1906)

Screening: The Tramp (Charlie Chaplin, 1915), Shoes (Lois Weber, 1916).

Wednesday, July 1st The Progressive Era: Film as a Social Force Reading: Ross, Introduction & Chapter 2; Shelley Stamp, “Lois Weber, Progressive Cinema, and the ‘Work-a-Day Girl’ in Shoes” (On Canvas) Clips: Suspense (Weber and Smalley, 1913), A Traffic in Souls (Tucker, 1913), The Birth of a Nation (Griffith, 1915), Intolerance (Griffith, 1916), Within Our Gates (Micheaux, 1920)

Screening: The Big Parade (Vidor, 1925)

Week 2 Monday, July 6th After WWI: Fantasies of Prosperity and Mobility Reading: Ross, Chapter 3; Mintz Chapters 2&3 Clips: Don’t Change Your Husband (Cecil B. DeMille, 1919), Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (Murnau, 1927), The Jazz Singer (Alan Crosland, 1927), The Crowd (Vidor, 1928), The Wild Party (Arzner, 1929)

*There will be a brief presentation on using Yale’s libraries, databases, and other resources to find primary sources after discussion today. Please plan to remain on Zoom for an 30 minutes today (we will take a break beforehand).

Screening: Modern Times (Charlie Chaplin, 1936),

Wednesday, July 8th The Great Depression: Realism and Escapism at Reading: Mintz, Chapter 5 & 6; Donna Kornhaber, “Dangerous Voices: Modern Times and the Great Dictator.” Clips: City Lights (Chaplin, 1931), Little Caesar (LeRoy, 1931), Scarface (Howard Hawks, 1932), Gold Diggers of 1933 (LeRoy and Berkeley, 1933), Baby Face (Green, 1933), My Man Godfrey (La Cava, 1936), The Gay Divorcée (Sandrich, 1934), Imitation of Life (Stahl, 1934)

Screening: Foreign Correspondent (Alfred Hitchcock, 1940)

Week 3 Monday, July 13th World War II: Hollywood and the “Prelude to War” Readings: Mintz, Chapters 10, 11 & 12. Clips: : Prelude to War (Capra, 1942), The Great Dictator (Chaplin, 1940), Casablanca (Curtiz, 1942), Mrs. Miniver (Wyler, 1942), To Be or Not to Be (Lubitsch, 1942), They Were Expendable (Ford, 1945), The Best Years of Our Lives (Wyler, 1946)

Screening: The Hitch-Hiker (Ida Lupino, 1953) Singin’ in the Rain (Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly, 1952)

*Midterm paper due on July 15th*

Wednesday, July 15th Postwar Anxiety and Optimism *Reception Assignment due at the beginning of class today Readings: Ross, Chapter 8; Mintz, Chapter 15 Clips: Double Indemnity (Wilder, 1944), Rebel Without a Cause (Ray, 1955), (Kazan, 1954), Giant (Stevens, 1956), Some Like it Hot (Wilder, 1959), Sunset Boulevard (Wilder, 1950), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (Hawks, 1953), It’s Always Fair Weather (Kelly and Donen, 1955)

Screening: The World, The Flesh, and the Devil (Ranald MacDougall, 1959)

Week 4 Monday, July 20th Fear of Change: The Cold War and Civil Rights Reading: Mintz, Chapters 20 & 24; Stéphanie Larrieux, “The World, the Flesh, and the Devil: The Politics of Race, Gender, and Power in Post-Apocalyptic Hollywood Cinema” (On Canvas) Clips: The Manchurian Candidate (Condon, 1959), Dr. Strangelove (Kubrick, 1964), Fail Safe (Lumet, 1964), Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (Kramer, 1967), In the Heat of the Night (Jewison, 1967), Sweet Sweetback’s Badasssss Song (Van Peebles, 1971)

Screening: Hearts and Minds (Peter Davis, 1974)

Wednesday, July 22nd Vietnam and Counterculture Movements Reading: Mintz, Chapter 21 & 22 Clips: Easy Rider (Hopper, 1969Woodstock (Wadleigh, 1970), Gimme Shelter (The Maysles, 1970), Dirty Harry (Siegel, 1971), Gimme Shelter (Maysles, Zwerin, 1969), Harlan County, USA (Kopple, 1977), (Coppola, 1979), (Cimino, 1979), Platoon (Stone, 1986), Full Metal Jacket (Kubrick, 1987), Jaws (Spielberg, 1975)

Screening: (Katherine Bigelow, 2008)

Week 5 Monday, July 27th Nostalgia, Fear, and Aggression from the Reagan Era to Today Reading: Ross, Chapter 12; David Fear, “’Make my Day:’ J. Hoberman on Reagan, , and ‘80s Movies,” (8 July 2019) [On Canvas]; Kim Toffoletti and Victoria Grace, “Terminal Indifference: The Hollywood War Film Post-September 11,” Film-Philosophy 14.2 (2010) [On Canvas] Clips: Rocky (Avildsen, 1976) Rambo: First Blood (Kotcheff, 1982), Top Gun (Scott, 1986), Die Hard (McTiernan, 1988), Fahrenheit 9/11 (Moore, 2004), United 93 (Greengrass, 2006), (Poitras, 2014), (Bigelow, 2012), American Sniper (Eastwood, 2014), The Report (Burns, 2019)

Screening: Selma (Ava DuVernay, 2014)

Wednesday, July 29th Contemporary Hollywood and the Remaking of History Readings: Mintz, Chapter 32; Melvyn Stokes, “Remembering the 60s: Burning and JFK,” in American History Through Hollywood Film (On Canvas) Clips: Pocahontas (Goldberg and Gabriel, 1995), (Parker, 1988), JFK (Stone, 2002), Daughters of the Dust (Dash, 1991), Glory (Zwick, 1989), Hidden Figures (Melfi, 2016), 12 Years a Slave (McQueen, 2013), (Spielberg, 1998), (Tarantino, 2009), (Haynes, 2002),

*Final Paper due on July 29th*