Module description
Affect, broadly construed, has earned a new currency in film studies as of late. So-called an ethical turn in film studies has led film scholars to investigate the spectator's sensorial and affective engagement with film and tease out the moral implications of such response; be it affection, emotion, and even other types of non-social emotions such as melancholy, it is considered to provide a moral ground for connecting with others and reality. This module is designed to introduce to students some of the classic philosophical writings on sentiment and its related aesthetic modes: (1) the tragic (2) the comic (3) epochal sensibilities such as the interesting and the postmodern (4) melancholy and (5) sentimentality, which will help students to trace the philosophical traditions registered, and ethical questions explored, in contemporary film theories and criticisms. This module will further help students to hone their conceptual tools and analytic skills to critically assess various approaches to affective engagement with film.Seminars will be dedicated to reading closely philosophical texts and investigate some of the insightful ways to bridge the readings to the film of each week.Films that will be discussed may include but are not limited to: The Gladiator (Scott, 2000), 2046 (Wong,2004), A Night at the Opera (Marx Brothers and Wood, 1935) Our Hospitality (Keaton and Blystone, 1923),The Beguiled (S. Coppola, 2017), Upstream Color (Carruth, 2013), and Gates of Heaven (Morris, 1978).
Assessment details
4000 word essay (100%)