Undergraduate Courses
Course Descriptions for Fall 2022
01:175:201 Intro to Film 1 (Fresko)
This course introduces students to analytical concepts for understanding how films “work” at levels of form, theme, and culture. Through close analyses of individual films, we will see how spectators’ experiences and interpretations are shaped by cinematic techniques such as mise-en-scène, cinematography, editing, and sound design, among others. We will also examine the historical, cultural, and political conditions that impact who gets to make films and why according to race, gender, class, and geography. By learning how to “read” a film via terminology specific to the cinema, students will develop the ability to examine the cinema as an art, an experience, and a cultural artifact. To this end, we will generate a shared vocabulary so that we can all speak and write with intelligence, confidence, and specificity about the how movies make meaning and affect us in various ways
01:175:202:01 Intro to Film II (Martin- Márquez)
In this course, we will discuss some of the major modes and styles of fiction and non-fiction filmmaking, inside and outside of Hollywood, as well as several key approaches to film analysis. We will begin with an intensive introduction to Hollywood classical filmmaking and close textual analysis: mise-en-scène, cinematography, editing and sound (this may be a review for students who have taken Introduction to Film 1 or equivalent courses elsewhere). This will be followed by an exploration of genre and its permutations within different cultural contexts (looking at specific examples of the Western and melodrama), together with the concept of authorship (auteur theory), and performance and star image. We will then briefly discuss alternatives to classical narrative filmmaking from experimental filmmaking to the New Cinema and Counter Cinema movements of the 1960s and beyond. In the last part of the semester, we will consider (mostly) non-fiction filmmaking documentary, mockumentary, and doc-fiction hybrids.
01:175:265:01 American Experimental Film (Nigrin)
In-depth analyses of the structure and content of films by Andy Warhol, Maya Deren, Stan Brakhage, Sidney Peterson, Kenneth Anger, Bruce Baillie, Yoko Ono, and others. Emphasis on the "mise-en-scene," editing, narrative form, sound, and special effects in the films of these celebrated experimental filmmakers. Warning: some films may contain nudity, sexual situations, violence, profanity, substance abuse, and disturbing images.
01:175:320:01 World Cinema I (Williams)
A survey of the history of world cinema (including American cinema, to the extent that it participates in the global evolution of the medium), from its beginnings in the 1890s to post-World War II developments such as Italian Neorealism.
01:175:377:01 Tpcs in World Cinema: Film & Revolution (Fresko)
This course examines how film has envisioned and participated in revolutionary and proto-revolutionary movements from the 1920s to the present. Students will gain insight into debates regarding film aesthetics and politics in contexts such as the former Soviet Union, Third World Liberation, the African American freedom struggle, the global New Left of the 1960s and 1970s, the women’s movement, and more. We will also assess recent attempts to memorialize the revolutionary past via documentaries and docudramas. Seminar-style discussions will analyze filmmaking in its historical and theoretical complexity, touching above all on how filmmakers set out to challenge commercial cinemas at the level of form and content and reshape social relations (i.e. race, gender, class, sexuality and national identities) with the cinematic apparatus. Films by Sergei Eisenstein, Dziga Vertov, Santiago Álvarez, Sara Gómez, Jean-Luc Godard, Chris Marker, the Newsreel Collective, the L.A. Rebellion, Lizzie Borden, Hito Steyerl, and more will be included. Readings will be equally varied and challenging, but also engaging and thought provoking, drawing at once from film theory as well as left political philosophies of aesthetics, organizing, identity, and revolution.
01:175:377:02 Tpcs in World Cinema: Filmic Identities; Spain and Argentina (Martin- Márquez)
Cinema may contribute powerfully to the construction of social identities, and the interaction between films and audiences is often especially complex during authoritarian regimes and in their aftermath. In this course we will examine films produced from the 1960s to the present in Spain and Argentina, both of which have experienced periods of dictatorial rule as well as transitions to democracy, in order to explore their reflection of and intervention in processes of identity production (as inflected by kinship, national formations, race/ethnicity, class, religious belief, gender, sexuality, health and dis/ability, and life stages). We will study films by internationally acclaimed directors such as Pedro Almodóvar, Lucrecia Martel, Luis Buñuel, Isabel Coixet, Julio Medem, and Lucía Puenzo.
Readings and class discussions will be in English, and all films will be subtitled. Students wishing to receive Spanish major/minor credit for this course must complete all written work in Spanish.
01:175:398: Internship in Cinema Studies (Nigrin)
By arrangement
Course Descriptions for Spring 2022
Cinema Studies Course Descriptions SPRING 2022
01:175:202 Intro to Film 2
Course Description:
The discipline of film studies has a rich and varied history, and as film study moves into a digital age it continues to evolve as a body of knowledge. This course provides an introduction to many questions that have been foundational to the field: What are the fundamental properties that define film as a medium? What are the cinema’s psychological, affective, and social effects? How do we understand filmic representation with respect to race, gender, and sexuality? And what are the implications for the study of film today, when movies are more often streamed on digital platforms than projected in cinemas? These and similar questions will guide our study of a diverse body of films and the critical theories that have been developed to account for the medium’s various political, economic, cultural, and aesthetic uses. By learning how to “read” a film and use terminology specific to the study of cinema, students will be able to discuss with intelligence and confidence how movies make meaning and impact us on multiple levels.
Instructor: FRESKO
01:175:316 American Cinema II
Course Description:
This course surveys the major trends in American cinema from the 1940s to the present, a
period in film history that witnessed the decline of the Hollywood studio system and the rise of television, independent filmmaking, and the blockbuster. While examining these large scale industrial changes, we will consider how a range of films and movements—including the American New Wave and slasher horror, as well as animation and digital effects—shaped and were shaped by broader questions about everything from politics, race, and gender to youth culture, suburbanization, and techno-scientific innovation. Our goal in the process is to develop an understanding of the diversity of forms that American cinema has taken and the ways
it continues to evolve, both nationally and globally.
Instructor: WILLIAMSON
01:175:321 World Cinema II
Course Description:
This course will explore some of the major currents in filmmaking from around the globe since World War II. We will consider the validity of a number of concepts such as world cinema, counter cinema, first, second and third cinema, and third-world cinema, focusing in particular on the interplay between local traditions and transnational industrial and artistic practices. Readings as well as class lectures and discussions will focus on the historical and cultural contexts of production and reception of the individual films studied, and on close textual analysis.
We will study films from around the globe (likely including Russia, Italy, France, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Cuba, Argentina, Colombia, Mali, South Africa, Iran, India, Japan, and China). In class, we will explore how films from these diverse contexts engage with many issues of contemporary importance, relating to gender, sexuality, race, religion, terrorism, war, migration, political systems, economic policies, poverty, consumerism, and the environment.
This course satisfies two goals from the SAS Core Curriculum: Areas of Inquiry: Arts and Humanities [AHp]; and Contemporary Challenges/Diversities and Social Inequalities [CCD].
Instructor: MARTIN-MARQUEZ
01:175:349:90 Contemporary German and European Cinema
Course Description:
Taught in English. No prerequisites.
In light of the 2008 economic crisis, the refugee and humanitarian crisis as well as the Corona pandemic, the EU has seen a troubling resurgence of inequality, racism, and political hatred. Pairing the formal and stylistic specificities of contemporary German & European filmmaking with essays, poems, and short fiction by young, post-migrant, and queer voices, we will investigate the formation of history, memory, and cultural identity in Europe today, shed light on the role of film festivals, consider the impact of streaming platforms, and reframe the concept of national cinema. The course includes several workshops to train and hone your writing skills, including workshops with a renowned journalist and critic who will be giving you professional instructions on how to write a film review. Additionally, you will get to filmmakers and producers via guest visits and virtual interviews.
Fully online, mixed asynchronous and synchronous. Course taught in English. Satisfies SAS Core requirements AHp and WCD.
Instructor: KARL
01:175:350:01 Major Filmmakers
Course Description:
A course focusing on the films of Stanley Kubrick, Jean Cocteau, Powell/Pressburger, Nicolas Roeg, David Lynch, Peter Greenaway, Wes Anderson, and others. In-depth analyses of the structure and content of films which include: 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Man Who Fell to Earth, The Red Shoes, Moonrise Kingdom, Mulholland Drive, and others. Emphasis on the "mise-en-scene," narrative form, set design, sound, and special effects in the films of these celebrated filmmakers.
Warning: some films may contain nudity, sexual situations, violence, profanity, substance abuse, and disturbing images.
Instructor: NIGRIN
01:175:377:02 TPCS in World Cinema: American Animation
Course Description:
This course explores how American animated films by everyone from Winsor McCay in
the early 1900s to Walt Disney and Tim Burton have shaped and been shaped by national and international visual cultures. Deeply concerned with the labor and vision of individual artists, American animation reflects essential questions about the medium’s potential as an art of movement and transformation, an art of time, and an art of dreams, all of which are wrapped up in broader discourses on American ideals and ways of life. Our goal for the semester is to understand how animators have grappled with these questions using innovative formal and stylistic techniques that bring inanimate materials – drawings, puppets, and other objects – to life. To do this we will examine the many contexts that have shaped a wide range of films, from early hand-drawn animations and experimental films, to visual music films, realist animations, and contemporary computer animations. In the process, we will consider how American animated films intersect with the politics of race, class, and gender, as well as with other arts and media, including dance, painting, and comics.
Instructor: WILLIAMSON
16:420:678 History of French Cinema
TBA
Instructor: WILLIAMS
01:175:425 Senior Seminar in Cinema Studies:
Women and the New Wave
Course Description:
This capstone seminar treats advanced problems and issues in the study of film. For this semester, our focus will be the French New Wave, with emphasis on the positioning and critique of class, race, and gender. This is an unusual perspective and therefore it has the possibility of creating new visions of theory and practice. Not a general survey, the course will nonetheless provide an in-depth look at this revolutionizing group of films, filmmakers and theories that changed the landscape of the cinema. But we will also attempt to fill the gap left by the absence of issues surrounding marginal groups, especially women, at every level. Focused independent research will be encouraged, but group projects will also be part of the seminar.
Instructor: Flitterman-Lewis
Course Descriptions for Fall 2021
01:175:201 Intro to Film 1
This course introduces students to the close analysis of film and provides students with tools for understanding how films “work” at the levels of form, theme, and culture. Through close readings of individual films, we will see how spectators’ experiences and interpretations are shaped powerfully by cinematic techniques such as lighting, editing, sound design, and camera movement, among others; and by historical and cultural questions related to genre, authorship, and the politics of race and gender. Particularly because films engage with the assumptions, expectations, values, and habits of their audiences, this course is as much about understanding how films work as it is about understanding how we experience them.
01:175:265:01 American Experimental Film (Nigrin)
In-depth analyses of the structure and content of films by Andy Warhol, Maya Deren, Stan Brakhage, Sidney Peterson, Kenneth Anger, Bruce Baillie, Yoko Ono, and others. Emphasis on the "mise-en-scene," editing, narrative form, sound, and special effects in the films of these celebrated experimental filmmakers. Warning: some films may contain nudity, sexual situations, violence, profanity, substance abuse, and disturbing images.
01:175:320:01 World Cinema I (Williams)
A survey of the history of world cinema (including American cinema, to the extent that it participates in the global evolution of the medium), from its beginnings in the 1890s to post-World War II developments such as Italian Neorealism.
01:175:322: Science Fiction Film (Williamson)
This course surveys the science fiction genre in the history of American cinema. Our focus will be on the range of ways in which science fiction has been called upon to think through questions about the changing landscapes of science and technology in both American culture and the cinema. The sci-fi genre experiences intense popularity during periods of significant techno-scientific transformation—from the electrification of the United States in the late 19th century to the computerization of life in the late 20th—which in turn fueled innovations in the science and technology of motion pictures. These exchanges between film and culture make the sci-fi film a particularly rich space for experimenting with the real and imagined impacts of cycles of innovation. Drawing on the history of science, art history, literature, and film theory, we will approach science fiction in American cinema, not simply as a future-oriented and quite fanciful genre, but as a profound and illuminating mode for teaching audiences about what the cinema is, how moving images work, and how the nature of techno-scientific innovation bears on enduring concerns about what it means to be human.
01:175:360:01 CLASSICS OF GERMAN CINEMA (Karl)
This course introduces students to films of the Weimar, Nazi, and post-war period, as well as to contemporary German cinema. We will explore issues of social class, gender, historical memory, violence, and conflict by means of close analysis. The class seeks to sensitize students to the cultural context of these films and the changing socio-political climates in which they were made. Special attention will be paid to the issue of style. Directors and films include Robert Wiene (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, 1920), F.W. Murnau (The Last Laugh, 1924), Fritz Lang (Metropolis, 1927), Walter Ruttmann (Berlin: Symphony of a City, 1927) Josef von Sternberg (The Blue Angel, 1929), Leni Riefenstahl (Olympia, 1936), Billy Wilder (Sunset Boulevard, 1950), Alexander Kluge (Yesterday Girl, 1966), Werner Herzog (Aguirre, 1972), Rainer Werner Fassbinder (Ali. Fear Eats the Soul, 1974), Wim Wenders (Alice in the Cities, 1987), Harun Farocki (Images of the World and the Inscription of War, 1989), Michael Haneke (The White Ribbon, 2009), Christian Petzold (Barbara, 2012), Maren Ade (Toni Erdmann, 2016), Wolfgang Fischer (Styx, 2019), among others.
01:175:377: Topics in World Cinema: Hitchcock and Beyond (Fresko)
This course will examine questions of cinematic authorship (in addition to other theoretical concerns) through one of the medium’s most influential figures: Alfred Hitchcock. We will trace Hitchcock’s formal and thematic development across major films from the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s and then place this body of work in dialogue with filmmakers such as Michael Powell, Luis Buñuel, Brian De Palma, Dario Argento, Chantal Akerman, Bette Gordon, and more. Themes relating to voyeurism, psychosis, perversion, surveillance, paranoia, gender, sexuality, and reflexivity will feature prominently. In addition to gaining insight into authorship and the workings of the cinematic apparatus more generally, students will also develop proficiency with frameworks for critical analysis, including genre, ideology, form, psychoanalysis, feminist critique, and queer theory among others.
01:175:398: Internship in Cinema Studies (Nigrin)
01:351:203: Screenwriting for Film
Screenwriting for Film focuses on a more in-depth look at cinema scripting as a craft. In addition to learning how to write for film, students will read film scripts and screen selected works. Instructors also hold first-hand knowledge of the film industry, and bring their experiences directly into the classroom.
01:351:308: Playwriting
Students study different playwriting genres throughout the course, and the course features thoughtful reading choices that reflect in-class discussions. Dynamic, visceral, exciting. This is what writing for the stage and live performance are all about. In this class, you will explore, character, setting, site-specific work, and the poetry of writing imaginatively and without fear for live presentation. Whether you're interested in theatre, dance, or music, this workshop is designed to creatively unleash your imagination and explore the unique challenges of thinking about and making live work.
01:351:314: Documentary Filmmaking
In this course, documentary films are understood to be character driven non-fiction narratives created from the selecting, organizing and presenting of factual material. This course focuses on the importance of story-telling in documentaries and teaches students about the various filmic techniques, elements and choices needed to create their own successful short film. Students will learn how to conduct an interview, film additional visual material and b roll, utilize archival footage, and layer sound, music and image into a compelling film.
Course Descriptions for Spring 2021
01:175:202 Intro to Film 2
The discipline of film studies has a rich and varied history, and as film study moves into a digital age it continues to evolve as a body of knowledge. This course provides an introduction to many questions that have been foundational to the field: What are the fundamental properties that define film as a medium? What are the cinema’s psychological, affective, and social effects? How do we understand filmic representation with respect to race, gender, and sexuality? And what are the implications for the study of film today, when movies are more often streamed on digital platforms than projected in cinemas? These and similar questions will guide our study of a diverse body of films and the critical theories that have been developed to account for the medium’s various political, economic, cultural, and aesthetic uses. By learning how to “read” a film and use terminology specific to the study of cinema, students will be able to discuss with intelligence and confidence how movies make meaning and impact us on multiple levels.
Instructor: FRESKO
01:175:267 American Film Directors
A course focusing on the films of Stanley Kubrick, Orson Welles, John Frankenheimer, David Lynch, Val Lewton, Alfred Hitchcock, and others. In-depth analyses of the structure and content of films which include: 2001: A Space Odyssey, Psycho, Cat People, The Magnificent Ambersons, Mulholland Drive, and others. Emphasis on the "mise-en-scene," narrative form, set design, sound, and special effects in the films of these celebrated filmmakers.
Warning: some films may contain nudity, sexual situations, violence, profanity, substance abuse, and disturbing images.
Instructor: NIGRIN
01:175:321 World Cinema II
This course will explore dominant cinematic traditions of the world since the 1950s. In addition to studying the social and cultural contexts within which cinematic texts generate meaning, we will also engage with transnational dialogue between film cultures and movements. We will consider the validity of a number of concepts such as counter cinema, first, second and third cinema, and third-world cinema, focusing in particular on the interplay between local traditions and transnational industrial and artistic practices.
Instructor: SEN
01:175:377:01 Latin American Film: Emotion and Engagement
Revolutionary vampires in Havana fight the mafia to gain control of a potion that will allow them to enjoy the Cuban sun; a young indigenous couple suffers the terrible persecution of their community in Mexico; an Argentine taxidermist planning a lucrative heist confronts humans’ fraught relationship to non-human animals. Latin American filmmakers have often been on the forefront of efforts to use film to entertain and emotionally engage audiences while heightening their awareness of—and prompting them to take action to resolve—socio-economic problems and political oppression. In this course we will explore the wildly inventive ways in which different types of filmmaking (fiction, documentary, animation and hybrids) and a variety of cinematic genres (comedy, melodrama, horror and exploitation, noir) have been deployed by Latin American filmmakers to create politically-engaged cinema. Although extraordinary films have been produced throughout Latin America, this semester we will pay special attention to works from three countries: Cuba, Mexico, and Argentina. This will also allow us to explore in greater depth the complexities of each context.
Instructor: MARTIN-MARQUEZ
01:175:377:02 Modern French Cinema
This course surveys the history of French cinema from World War II to the present. These are tumultuous years; they include the "New Wave" of the late 1950s and 1960s (works of Resnais, Godard, and others), the return to traditional forms in the 1970s and 1980s (but often with untraditional content, as in the disturbing comedies of Bertrand Blier), the "New New Wave" that followed (films by Olivier Assayas and Claire Denis, among others), and the radically diverse cinema of the present day. Films screened will be examined both in their historical-political context and as works of art and/or entertainment. Please note that several films contain adult themes and situations, and occasional (full) nudity. [This course fulfills Core Requirements AHp]
Instructor: WILLIAMS
01:175:377:03 Classics of Italian Cinema
This course provides a historical introduction to Italian cinema, concentrating on examples of classical genres and movements, such as the early silent epic, the classics of neorealism, auteurs of the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s, the commedia all’italiana (comedy, Italian style), and the spaghetti Western. We will examine issues of cinematic representation and production, and societal values (e.g., gender, family relations, and national identity vs. local cultures), while refining close-analysis skills. No knowledge of Italian is required.
Instructor: GAMBAROTA
01:175:425 Senior Seminar in Cinema Studies:
The Documentary: Truth and Fiction in the Cinema
Description: This course explores the categories of truth and fiction in the cinema through the lens of the documentary. Our focus will be on the history and legacy of an international film movement known as cinéma vérité, which challenged conventional notions of documentary “truth” and “objectivity” in the 1960s and 1970s. By examining core concepts and techniques of the movement—for example, its experimentation with improvisation, participation, and provocation—we will develop an understanding of how and why cinéma vérité filmmakers tried to revolutionize documentary modes that had dominated much of the 20th century. In the process, we will consider how cinéma vérité continues to influence documentary filmmaking and the broader politics of race, gender, activism, and knowledge in film and related media. The documentary will serve two broader functions in this capstone seminar: 1) Each week will be devoted to using the documentary as a way to think through a foundational category in cinema studies—e.g., realism, spectatorship, ideology, postmodernism, race—so that students develop a deeper understanding of how broad conversations in the discipline are negotiated in a specific subfield. 2) The various ways in which documentaries use evidence, questioning, and argumentation will be used as frameworks for helping students develop their own analytical skills for using evidence, developing questions, and making arguments while writing in the discipline.
Instructor: WILLIAMSON
Course Descriptions for Fall 2020
01:175:201:02 Intro to Film 1
This course introduces students to the close analysis of film and provides students with tools for understanding how films “work” at the levels of form, theme, and culture. Through close readings of individual films, we will see how spectators’ experiences and interpretations are shaped powerfully by cinematic techniques such as lighting, editing, sound design, and camera movement, among others; and by historical and cultural questions related to genre, authorship, and the politics of race and gender. Particularly because films engage with the assumptions, expectations, values, and habits of their audiences, this course is as much about understanding how films work as it is about understanding how we experience them.
01:175:202:01 Intro to Film 2
In this course, we will discuss some of the major modes and styles of fiction and non-fiction filmmaking, inside and outside of Hollywood, as well as several key approaches to film analysis. We will begin with an intensive introduction to Hollywood classical filmmaking and close textual analysis: mise-en-scène, cinematography, editing and sound (this may be a review for students who have taken Introduction to Film 1 or equivalent courses elsewhere). This will be followed by an exploration of genre and its permutations within different cultural contexts (looking at specific examples of the Western and melodrama), together with the concept of authorship (auteur theory), and performance and star image. We will then briefly discuss alternatives to classical narrative filmmaking from experimental filmmaking to the New Cinema and Counter Cinema movements of the 1960s and beyond. In the last part of the semester we will consider (mostly) non-fiction filmmaking: documentary, mockumentary, and doc-fiction hybrids.
01:175:265:01 Experimental Film (cross-listed with 01:050:265:01)
A remote learning lecture-discussion survey course focusing on the history and development of the various American experimental cinema movements from its beginnings to the 1980s.
In-depth analyses of the structure and content of films by Andy Warhol, Maya Deren, Stan Brakhage, Sidney Peterson, Kenneth Anger, Bruce Baillie, Yoko Ono, and others. Emphasis on the "mise-en-scene," editing, narrative form, sound, and special effects in the films of these celebrated experimental filmmakers. Warning: some films may contain nudity, sexual situations, violence, profanity, substance abuse, and disturbing images.
01:175:320:01 World Cinema I
A survey of the history of world cinema (including American cinema, to the extent that it participates in the global evolution of the medium), from its beginnings in the 1890s to post-World War II developments such as Italian Neorealism.
01:175:365:01 Bollywood
India is the second most populous country in the world and has a cultural tradition that has evolved over 5,000 years. It is also the world’s largest film-producing nation, releasing over 900 films every year. Of these, approximately 200 films are made in Hindi in India’s film capital—Bombay. Driven by the growth and spread of the Indian diaspora in recent decades, the popular Bollywood has become a ubiquitous presence in theaters and film festivals across the globe. While remaining India’s most beloved art form, this cinema today is also India’s most visible and fascinating export. Bollywood remains an exceptional industry that has successfully resisted the onslaught of Hollywood films in the country of its birth. These and other factors have contributed in making academic exploration of Bombay cinema a relatively new, but extremely exciting field of study. What makes Hindi cinema different? How are such a staggering number of films made in India? How do these ‘song and dance’ movies challenge our perceptions of narrative forms? How do Bombay films negotiate the polarities of tradition and modernity? How do they bear the burden of postcoloniality? Despite the plethora of languages and cultures that comprise India, how does Hindi cinema maintain its hegemonic position both within the subcontinent and without? What is the status of Bollywood as a national cinema? These are some of the larger questions with which we will engage in this canopic overview.
01:175:377:01 TPCS in World Cinema: Dream Factories
Almost since its inception, Hollywood has been considered a “Dream Factory,” a striking concept that weds the intangible with the industrial. In this course we will explore the historical, political, economic, and cultural inflections of this phrase, which appears to be a contradiction in terms. Beginning with understandings of the “dream” by thinkers such as Freud and Bergson, we trace how the notion of dreaming informed a diverse set of cultural practices, from the shock-montage aesthetics of the Surrealists and Hollywood’s industrialized form of collective dreaming to post-war poetry by Langston Hughes, contemporary mixed media art, and more. Self-conscious texts (i.e., movies about movies), which thematize the notion of a dream factory, will make up a section of the syllabus. The course will culminate with a critique of the “American Dream” by Black and working class people in the United States. By the end of the semester, students will have a sophisticated sense of the cultural and political stakes of dreaming in an age of perpetual productivity and connectivity, and will start to dream up alternatives—even techniques of wakefulness and wokeness—to what the culture industries provide.
01:175:390:01 Global Horror
The horror genre has found its determined creators, passionate followers and scornful detractors across the globe. Often derided by critics for relying on questionable aesthetics and tasteless sensationalism, horror continues to inspire animated debates. The horror genre is local as well as global: deeply rooted in specific regional myths, folklore, rituals and traditions, it simultaneously regurgitates stock images, predictable narratives and pat conclusions across cinematic traditions. In this sense, the horror genre taps into what Carl Jung famously called the “collective unconscious”—a nightmarish substratum that all of humanity is wired into. In this course we will interrogate precisely this conundrum—how does the horror genre work in each national/cultural context and still resonate with audiences in other parts of the globe? Is fear a culturally determined response, or is there something universal about our deeply emotional response to frightening images/stories? Do audiences respond to horror in the same way everywhere, or is our response mitigated by socio-cultural and political contexts? Our ghosts, spooks, vampires, zombies, headless horsemen and serial killers will come from far-flung regions—USA, Japan, Germany, India, South Korea, Italy, Mexico, among others. We will engage with globally celebrated filmmakers such as Mizoguchi Kenji and Dario Argento to lesser-known horror producers such as the Ramsay brothers from India. The faint of heart and the squeamish be forewarned!