Module Information For Visiting and Erasmus Students
2013/14
Department*
Notes
Film Studies
Please note that Film Studies also offers a Broad Curriculum
module; BCFilm and the module outline may be found on the Broad
Curriculum website at www.tcd.ie/broad_curriculum
The number of spaces available in the below modules are:
FSS019 – 5
FSS010 - 4
FSS009 - 12
FSS003 - 4
FSS021 - 3
FS7026 – 10
FSS020 – 6
MODULE TITLE AND CODE:
LECTURER:
CONTACT HOURS:
SEMESTER:
ECTS value:
Melodrama (FSS003)
Dr. Paula Quigley
22 lecture/seminar hours
22 screening hours
2 (Hilary term)
5
Rationale and aims
The melodrama has occupied a central role in the history of narrative cinema;
indeed, it is often considered virtually synonymous with cinema. In addition, it has
provided a focus for debates around genre and cultural forms, film style and
authorship, questions of family, sexuality and gender, as well as issues of
spectatorship and audience. This module will consider a wide range of variations on
the melodramatic mode, including examples from early cinema, classical Hollywood
cinema, as well as current American and European cinema. We will explore key
theoretical debates and link these debates with critically informed close analysis of
the films under discussion.
Course Content
Defining melodrama
Genre and sub-genres
Film style and mise-en-scene
Questions of authorship
Issues of audience and spectatorship
Social and cultural contexts
National and industrial contexts
Critical responses
Textual analyses
Generic revisionism
Resources
There is no set text for this course. Required viewing and reading is set each week.
Further viewing and reading is recommended as appropriate.
The following titles are useful accompaniments to the module as a whole.
Basinger, J. A Woman’s View: How Hollywood Spoke to Women 1930-1960.
London, Chatto & Windus, 1994.
Bratton, Jackie et al. (eds) Melodrama: Stage, Picture, Screen. London: BFI, 1994.
Brooks, P. The Melodramatic Imagination. New York: Columbia University Press.
1985.
Byars, J. All that Heaven allows: Re-reading gender in 1950s melodrama. University
of North Carolina Press, 1991.
Campbell, J. Film and cinema spectatorship: melodrama and mimesis. Polity Press,
2005.
Gledhill, C. Home is where the heart is: studies in melodrama and the woman’s film.
BFI, 1987.
Lang, R. American Film Melodrama: Griffith, Vidor, Minnelli. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1989.
Laing, H. The Gendered Score: Music in 1940s Melodrama and the Woman’s Film.
Ashgate Publishing, 2007.
Doane, M.A. The Desire to Desire: The Woman’s Film of the 1940s. London:
MacMillan, 1987.
Landy, M. (ed.) Imitations of Life: A Reader on Film and Television Melodrama.
Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1991.
Mercer, J. and Shingler, M. Melodrama: Genre, Style and Sensibility. London,
Wallflower Press, 2004.
Singer, B. Melodrama and Modernity: Early Sensational Cinema and its Contexts.
Columbia University Press, 2001.
Learning outcomes
On successful completion of this module students will be able to:
Synthesise their knowledge of melodrama within a wider economic, industrial,
aesthetic and socio-cultural context;
Analyse current issues within the study of melodrama within the broader context of
currents within film studies;
Differentiate between the range of material that characterizes the category of
melodrama;
Apply the theoretical models and critical approaches under discussion to specific
films and film styles;
Methods of Teaching and Student Learning
Teaching methods include film screenings, lectures and seminar discussions.
Students will be expected to attend all classes and screenings; read from primary as
well as secondary sources and comment upon these readings; participate in class
discussion; perform the required assessment. Students may be required to make a
class presentation on some aspect of the course covered.
Methods of assessment
90% coursework
10% participation
Module Evaluation
Course and Teaching Surveys will be circulated to students at the end of the module.
Feedback will be used to reflect on course development.
Course Code:
Course Title:
Lecturer:
Term:
FSS019
National Cinemas: Post-war British Cinema
Dr Ruth Barton
Michaelmas
Contact Hours:
11 hours lectures
11 hours seminars
22 hours screenings
ECTS value: 5 ECTS
Rationale and Aims:
This is a Sophister Option course. It is designed to introduce students to the main
analytical tools that can be applied to British filmmaking, notably questions of social
realism, of class, race and gender representation and of the relationship between
British and Hollywood cinemas.
Course Content:
Moving from David Lean’s Brief Encounter and Carol Reed’s The Third Man, through
the cinema of the British New Wave, of Ken Loach and on to Gurinder Chadha’s
Bhaji on the Beach and Mike Leigh’s Vera Drake, this course provides a history of
British cinema in the post-war period. We will be discussing the idea of a British art
film and the influence on British cinema of government policies as analysing the films
and discussing their themes.
Indicative Resources:
The film to be screened include those listed above as well as Black Narcissus
(Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, GB, 1947), This Sporting Life (Lindsay
Anderson, 1963), The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, & Her Lover (Peter Greenaway,
1989) and others. Textbooks will include: Steve Blandford (2007), Film, Drama and
the Break-Up of Britain, Bristol, Chicago: Intellect Books, John Hill (1995), Sex. Class
and Realism, London: British Film Institute, Robert Murphy (1989) Realism and
Tinsel, London and New York: Routledge, and Robert Murphy (ed.), British Cinema
of the 90s, London: British Film Institute.
Methods of Teaching and Student Learning:
This course will be taught through a combination of film screenings, lectures and
seminars. Students will be expected to prepare for seminar discussion by reading the
set texts and viewing the set film. Students may be required to make a class
presentation on some aspect of the course covered.
Methods of Assessment:
10% class participation
90% term essay
A two-part essay of 3,500 – 4,000 words is required:
Part one consisting of about 1,500 words should be a literature review of the main
writings on the essay topic.
Part two of about 2,000 words should be the application of the
critical/theoretical/historical writings on the topic to chosen film texts or/and
interpretation of contexts such as key events/historical period.
Evaluations:
This course will be evaluated by an end-of-term survey.
MODULE TITLE AND CODE:
LECTURER:
CONTACT HOURS:
SEMESTER:
ECTS value:
Postclassical Hollywood Cinema (FSS010)
Dr. Paula Quigley
22 lecture/seminar hours
22 screening hours
1 (Michaelmas term)
5
Rationale and aims
This module will examine the social, cultural, aesthetic, economic and industrial
forces that shaped the Hollywood film industry during the 1970s and 1980s. We will
begin by considering the social, cultural and political shifts of the late 1960s, as well
as the developments in the film production sector in the early to mid-seventies, that
allowed a ‘new’ Hollywood to develop. We will then address the narrative, visual and
generic realignments that marked the output of this decade, and the influence of
these on subsequent film production. In addition, we will consider the key sociocultural shifts of the late 1970s and early 1980s, and we will address the notion that
Hollywood in the 1980s generated its own distinctive patterns of film genre, style and
spectatorship.
Course Content
American culture from the late 1960s up to and during the 1980s
The American film industry from the late 1960s up to and during the 1980s
The Blockbuster
Independent production during this period
Film style and technology during this period
Questions of authorship
Generic revisionism
Generic restaging
Sexual politics
Screen style and performance
Resources
There is no set text for this course. Required viewing and reading is set each week.
Further viewing and reading is recommended as appropriate.
The following titles are useful accompaniments to module as a whole.
Robin Wood, Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan. Columbia University, 2003.
Geoff King, New Hollywood Cinema, I.B. Tauris, 2002.
Steve Neale, ed. Genre and Contemporary Hollywood. BFI, 2002.
Geoff King, Spectacular Narratives, I.B. Tauris, 2000.
Jon Lewis (ed) The New American Cinema. Durham: Duke University Press, 1998.
Steve Neale & Murray Smith (eds), Contemporary Hollywood Cinema. Routledge,
1998.
Peter Biskind, Easy riders, raging bulls; how the sex-drugs-and-rock ‘n’ roll generation saved
Hollywood, 1998.
Michael Ryan and Douglas Kellner, Camera Politica: The Politics and Ideology of the
Contemporary Hollywood Film. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990.
Learning outcomes
On successful completion of this module students will be able to:
 Analyse the forces and factors that allowed a ‘new’ Hollywood to develop;
 Contextualise their knowledge of the Hollywood film industry’s output during
this period within its social, cultural, economic and industrial framework;



Differentiate between the range of material that characterized the output of
the Hollywood film industry during this period in its history;
Apply the theoretical models and critical approaches under discussion to
specific films and film styles from this period;
Evaluate the impact of the various output of this period on subsequent
Hollywood film production.
Methods of Teaching and Student Learning
Teaching methods include film screenings, lectures and seminar discussions.
Students will be expected to attend all classes and screenings; read from primary as
well as secondary sources and comment upon these readings; participate in class
discussion; perform the required assessment. Students may be required to make a
class presentation on some aspect of the course covered.
Methods of assessment
90% coursework
10% participation
Evaluation
Surveys will be circulated to students at the end of the module. Feedback will be
used to reflect on course development.
Course Code:
Course Title:
Course Co-ordinator:
Teaching Staff:
Term:
FSS020
Transnational Cinemas
Dr Ruth Barton
Dr Ruth Barton
Hilary
Contact Hours:
11 hours lectures
11 hours seminars
ECTS value:
5 ECTS
Rationale and Aims:
This is a Sophister Option course.
This course acknowledges and responds to the new shifts within globalisation that
have led to a rethinking of the dominance of the national and the emergence of the
notion of the transnational. The objective is to expose students to non-mainstream
models of filmmaking and to introduce them to concepts of migration, ethnic mobility
and conflict and to the industrial background of filmmaking within the terms of
Transnationalism.
Course Content:
We will be looking at, for example, cinemas of the diaspora, such as Turkish-German
cinema or French Beur cinema, or the movement of film stars between different
national cinemas and the making of films in a non-national language. We will be
discussing concepts of diasporic space, of multiculturalism and the relationship
between ‘self’ and ‘other’ in specific societies.
Indicative Resources:
The main course textbook will be: Ezra, Elizabeth and Terry Rowden (eds), (2006),
Transnational Cinema: The Film Reader, London and New York: Routledge.
Films to be screened and discussed include: Exils/Exiles (Tony Gatlif, 2004),
Children of Men (Alfonso Cuarón, 2006) and Bolse Vita (Ibolya Fekete, 1996).
Methods of Teaching and Student Learning:
This course will be taught through a combination of film screenings, lectures and
seminars. Students will be expected to prepare for seminar discussion by reading the
set texts and viewing the set film. Students may be required to make a class
presentation on some aspect of the course covered.
Methods of Assessment:
10% class participation
90% term essay
A two-part essay of 3,500 – 4,000 words is required:
Part one consisting of about 1,500 words should be a literature review of the main
writings on the essay topic.
Part two of about 2,000 words should be the application of the
critical/theoretical/historical writings on the topic to chosen film texts or/and
interpretation of contexts such as key events/historical period.
Evaluations:
This course will be evaluated by an end-of-term survey.
Module Descriptor Screening Irish-America
Hilary Semester 2013/14
Course Code:
Course Title:
Lecturer:
Term:
FSS021
Screening Irish-America
Dr Ruth Barton
Hilary
Contact Hours:
11 hours lectures
11 hours seminars
ECTS value: 5 ECTS
Rationale and Aims:
This is a Sophister Option course. We will be asking what kind of narratives and
cinematic space Irish characters have occupied within Hollywood and how political
events, such as 9/11, have inflected these representations. The objective is to
produce a critical historical approach to issues of representation in Irish-American
themed films.
Course Content:
This module will cover the history and development of the representation of IrishAmerica on screen from early and silent filmmaking to Martin Scorsese’s The
Departed. We will consider the historical and sociological background to these
representations and analyse the films via theoretical considerations of race, religion
and ethnicity as well as genre, gender, stardom and authorship. Thus we will
consider the key figures of James Cagney and John Ford and examine the
contrasting depictions of masculinity and femininity in these films. We will discuss
how films from the early and silent period and the Classic period built the foundation
for subsequent filmmakers and how the model was altered by subsequent
generations from the Kennedy era to the present.
Indicative Resources:
Films to be screened and discussed will include: Irene (Alfred E Green, 1926), True
Confessions (Ulu Grosbard, 1981), Miller’s Crossing (Joel Coen, 1990). The principal
course textbook will be Ruth Barton (ed) (2009) Screening Irish-America (Dublin &
Portland Or.: Irish Academic Press).
Methods of Teaching and Student Learning:
This course will be taught through a combination of film screenings, lectures and
seminars. Students will be expected to prepare for seminar discussion by reading the
set texts and viewing the set film. Students may be required to make a class
presentation on some aspect of the course covered.
Methods of Assessment:
10% class participation
90% term essay
A two-part essay of 3,500 – 4,000 words is required:
Part one consisting of about 1,500 words should be a literature review of the main
writings on the essay topic.
Part two of about 2,000 words should be the application of the
critical/theoretical/historical writings on the topic to chosen film texts or/and
interpretation of contexts such as key events/historical period.
Evaluations:
This course will be evaluated by an end-of-term survey.
Course Code: FSS009
Course Title: French Cinema
LECTURER: Professor Kevin Rockett
CONTACT HOURS: 22 lecture/seminar hours
22 screening hours
SEMESTER: Hilary Term (semester 2)
ECTS value: 5
Rationale and Aims:
This is a Sophister option course. The objective is to explore the history of French
cinema from the silent era to the present. It will examine key periods, directors and
themes as a means of uncovering its rich variety of representations and relate these
to broader cultural and social issues.
Course Content
Areas to be covered include the silent era; Jean Vigo (Zero de Conduite, 1934); Jean
Renoir and popular front cinema (Le Crime de Monsieur Lange, 1936); Julien
Duvivier and the African exotic (Pepe le Moko, 1937); Marcel Carné and poetic
realism (Le Jour se Leve, 1939); French cinema during and World War Two; the
policier (Bob le Flambeur, 1995); Alain Resnais and the problem of memory (Last
Year at Marienbad, 1961); cinema of the banlieue (La Haine, 1995).
Resources
Required viewing and reading will be set for each week. Further viewing and reading
is proposed as appropriate. The following books are recommended:
Dudley Andrew, Mists of Regret: Culture and Sensibility in Classic French Film,
Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995.
Jill Forbes and Michael Kelly, French Cultural Studies: An Introduction, Oxford
University Press, 1995.
Susan Hayward, French National Cinema, London: Routledge, 1993.
Susan Hayward and Ginette Vincendeau, French Film: Texts and Contexts, eds.,
London: Routledge, 2nd edition, 2000.
Learning outcomes
This course will enable students to:




synthesise their knowledge of French cinema within
economic, industrial, aesthetic and socio-cultural
context (PO1)
be conversant with the historical, political and social
backgrounds to these works (PO1, PO3)
evaluate the shifting nature of film representation in the
periods covered (PO4, PO5)
apply the critical approaches under discussion to
specific films and film styles (PO3, PO6)
Methods of Teaching and Student Learning
This course will be taught through a combination of film screenings, lectures and
seminars. Students will be expected to prepare for seminar discussion by reading the
set texts and viewing the set film. Students may be required to make a class
presentation on some aspect of the course covered.
Methods of Assessment:
One 3,500 to 4,000 word essay (90 per cent) and class participation (10 per cent).
Evaluations:
This course will be evaluated by an end-of-term survey.