Module: MCO6104-20 Feminist Film Criticism

Credit Value: 20

Module Tutor: Rebecca Feasey

Module Tutor Contact Details: R.Feasey@bathspa.ac.uk

1. Brief description and aims of module:

Feminist Film Criticism provides you with the opportunity to study the key debates in feminist film theory as they relate to notions of exhibitionism, visual display and the spectacular body. The syllabus will begin by identifying the ways in which Hollywood has objectified women for the male gaze and disavowed the active female subject. It will go on to negotiate the universalism of this thesis by looking at the ways in which more recent theorists have explored the possibility of an active, investigating female in contemporary genre texts. The module will conclude by exploring extant literature relating to the dialogue between the female spectator and the silver screen. Feminist Film Criticism will identify a range of historic and contemporary debates and encourage you to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of such literature in relation to a range of relevant filmic examples. The assessment will test your ability to analyse extant literature in the field, your skills in applying such work to relevant film texts and your capacity to communicate your ideas effectively.

2. Outline syllabus:

• Visual pleasure and narrative cinema

• Masculinity as spectacle

• When the woman looks in horror

• Phallic females, figurative males and the female action hero

• Work, criminality and the female investigator

• Power, revenge and the exhibitionistic object

• Down with love and the feminist politics of romance

• Clothing, power and the paradoxes of consumption

• Rethinking authors, subjects and heroes

3. Teaching and learning activities

Feminist Film Criticism will cover a number of key debates concerning the representation of gender in mainstream Hollywood film, with each debate being introduced in a formal lecture and then challenged, considered and reconsidered in the ensuing seminar. Each avenue of enquiry will require looking at the relevant lecture slides, the essential reading, a range of further readings and film texts as outlined on the weekly schedule. The Minerva site for the module will act as a research centre and will contain both weekly support materials (lecture slides, essential and further reading) and broader research materials.

Assessment Item 1:

• Assessment Type: CW

• Description: Essay (5000 words)

• % Weighting: 100