Course Description

ENGL 3885:  Gender and Film

Instructor: Dr. Elyce Rae Helford

Prerequisites: Successful completion of ENGL 1010, 1020, and 2020 or 2030.

Credit: ENGL 3885 provides three hours credit in MTSU's English major, English minor, Film Studies minor, and Gender Studies minor.

Description: This course addresses the subject of gender as presented in film.  Course emphases include study of Hollywood cinema as well as "independent" and international film, explorations of femininity and masculinity, film genre, gender as performance, and queer film studies.  The course will be grounded in theoretical readings in gender studies, feminist studies, race studies, "global" studies, and queer studies.

Specific films vary by semester.  An arbitrarily organized sampling of past and possible selections: The Women, She's Gotta Have It, High Noon, Sylvia Scarlett, Fire, Fight Club, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Two Women, Priscilla Queen of the Desert, Pan's Labyrinth, Princess Mononoke, Enemy Mine, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Stranger Inside, Some Like It Hot, The Seven Samurai, Boys Don't Cry, Farewell My Concubine, Orlando, The Stepford Wives, Frida.

Textbooks vary by semester.  Past sections have used The Sexual Subject: A Screen Reader in Sexuality plus supplemental articles by such authors as Alexander Doty, bell hooks, and Judith Butler.