Module: FSS5101-20 Film Genre

Level: 5

Credit Value: 20

Module Tutor: Jamie Steele

Module Tutor Contact Details: j.steele@bathspa.ac.uk

1. Brief description and aims of module:

This module provides an in depth introduction and understanding of a chosen genre in Hollywood film. It offers an opportunity to undertake a close study of a mainstream film form, including its history, narrative characteristics, evolution, reception and influence. Examples of such genres include Film Noir, Westerns, Science Fiction, Musicals, Romantic comedies, and many others. Students are introduced to a range of critical perspectives that investigate the often complex nature of film genres with a range of examples from the classical to the contemporary. Through close analysis of the defining films of the genre, the modules creates an opportunity to explore wider concepts including hybridity, osmosis, cross-genericity etc. with reference to current genre scholarship. These are often explored with reference to themes such as ideology, identity, race, class and gender. The key texts are selected in order to foreground the theoretical, political, cultural, and aesthetic questions with which the chosen genre is associated.

2.Outline syllabus:

• Genre Theory: Terms and Concepts

• Chosen Genre: The Beginnings, historical and cultural significance

• Narrative and Characterisation

• Genre cycles

• Generic iconography, evolution and movements

• Genre and Ideology/Race/Class/Gender

• Structuralist and post-structuralist readings

• Postmodernism, hybridity and cross-genericity

• Contemporary reconfigurations

3.Teaching and learning activities:

Learning and teaching activities will be based on weekly two-hour lecture-seminar slots. The weekly lecture will introduce, discuss and explore a named theme or aspect of the genre in detail, while the ‘seminar’ will involve learning through group activity, group discussion and presentation based tasks. These tasks will refer to or use relevant flip clips/ extracts, alongside relevant critical and contextual reading material. Some of this material will be made available electronically. Lecture and seminar content as well as learning resources and further links to them will be uploaded on Minerva.

Assessment Item 1:

• Assessment Type: Course Work

• Description: Blog: Individual Module Journal and Book Review’ (2500 words)

• % Weighting: 50%

Assessment Item 2:

• Assessment Type: Course Work

• Description: Research Essay (2500 words)

• % Weighting: 50%