ENG 3175: Studies in Film Genre (The Western)
Tuesdays and Thursdays
9:30-10:45 AM
Sanford Hall 312
Film studies scholar Robert Ray once wrote that “many of Classic Hollywood’s genre movies, like many of the most important American novels, were thinly camouflaged westerns.” This course seeks to investigate that claim by examining film form, genre, and history through the lens of the cinematic Western, with all of the idealism and ugliness the form entails. While the beginning of the course will focus primarily on the Western as imagined in Classical Hollywood, our analysis will eventually cross national and medial borders as we track the genre’s development into the modern day. We will watch and analyze films by directors including Buster Keaton, John Ford, John Huston, George Stevens, Sergio Leone, Richard Altman, Zacharias Kunuk, Katherine Bigelow, Mario van Peebles, and Ang Lee. In addition to illuminating the concept of genre study and the history of US film, this course will view the Western as a barometer of American social anxieties and ideologies as the genre (and the nation) continually reinvent themselves over time.