Annotation
Title: Rethinking Genre: Theories, Methods, and the Example of Recent American Popular Cinema
Coordinator: RICHARD NOWELL, PHD.
Contact: richard_nowell@hotmail.com
Location: 408
Dates: 25.2., 10.3, 24. 3., 7. 4., 21. 4., 5. 5.
Time: 12:05 - 14:10
Course Description and Purpose
Rethinking Genre invites students to radically re-approach the concept of genre. It aims to do so, by furnishing them with cutting-edge conceptual models and methodological frameworks intended to help illuminate genre’s roles in the production, assembly, distribution, and reception of audiovisual texts. The course builds from the position that the sense of structure underpinning a "first generation" of scholarship on genre was as flawed as a "second generation" turn to polysemy. Instead, students will approach the phenomenon of genre - and by extension individual genres - as characterized by a structured polysemy, i.e. by a bounded range of elements, tendencies, and qualities. While drawing examples from recent American popular cinema, Rethinking Genre emphasizes the extent to which genre is an organizing principle traversing audiovisual culture; everything is in some way generic. The insights gleaned across this course therefore promise to be transferable or adaptable to analyses of other historical junctures, territories, and media.
Methods of Instruction
Delivered in the English language, Rethinking Genre is an advanced level course intended for students either actively engaged in or thinking about conducting original research on film or other aspects of audiovisual culture. The course is organized into six three-hour seminars, mainly comprising structured discussions and practical exercises. Where the discussion parts of the seminars weigh up the merits, shortcomings, and limitations of important theoretical contributions to the field, exercises are intended to reinforce the practical dimensions of these approaches. Based on multidirectional dialogue and debate, this learning environment demands students who are confident communicating in English and who are committed to working with (and through) sometimes challenging abstract ideas. A background in the study of film and/or other screen media is an essential prerequisite to this course, as is the drive to confront the complex realities of genre’s operations across audiovisual cultures.
Course Goals and Student Learning Objectives
Rethinking Genre emphasizes the compatibility of genre theory and historical research. And while each seminar centralizes a specific topic under this general rubric, students are encouraged to see these topics as offering complementary tools which can - and at times should - be synthesized within their repertoires of conceptual frameworks and practical skills. By the end of the course, students will be expected to demonstrate a solid understanding of all of the topics listed below and to produce a theoretically-sound and empirically-researched paper showcasing some of them:
• how genre might be conceptualized generally
• how and why perceptions of specific genres might differ and change somewhat
• how and why trends form across output; why they emerge, develop, and decline
• how and why perceptions of genre(s) influence the assembly and content of media texts
• how and why perceptions of genre(s) operate in marketing campaigns and materials
• how and why conceptions of genre shape the repackaging of certain types of text