ENGL 373

Spring 2025 All Classes

All Classes

Special Topics in Film Studies

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Credit: 3 hours.

Extended investigation of major subjects and issues in cinema and other media; topics vary and typically include studies of author/directors, genres, historical movements, critical approaches, and themes.

Same as MACS 373. May be repeated with permission of English advising office to a maximum of 6 hours if topics vary. Prerequisite: One college-level course in film studies or literature.

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ENGL 373 class schedule data for spring 2025
	CRN	Type	Section	Time	Day	Location	Instructor	Section Details
	46555	Lecture-Discussion	S	4:00PM -5:15PM	TR	241 Armory	Basu, A	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 01/21/25-05/07/25 Section Info: SP25 - ENGL 373 - Special Topics in Film Studies - The Western as a Film Genre - Anustup Basu - The western has been a quintessentially American genre. That is, unlike other major cine templates like the romantic or screwball comedy, the war film, domestic melodrama, detective or science fiction that drew from European theatrical, operative, or fictional traditions, the western was, for American cinema, a home-grown product closely tied to American history and national self-mythologization. It has been described as an epic form that, at its best, performs as the American counterpart to Europe’s classical Greek tragedies. It is supposed to tell us not just who we are, but how exactly we came into being. In this class we will take a critical look at the grandiose, and starkly polarized themes of the ‘classic’ American western of the 1940s and 1950s: civilization versus wilderness, law versus lawlessness, manifest destiny, and settler colonialism versus Native American resistance. Almost all the generic elements and cliches of the western – the single street frontier town, the wagon train heading west, the cattle drive across the prairies, the arrival of the telegraph or the transcontinental railroad are thus invested with grand symbolic meanings. Following that, we will study the ‘revisionist’ western of the 60s and 70s when the genre deconstructs its own earlier mythography on the lines of class, race, and gender. We will also look at how the western resonates across global film cultures, from the Italian Spanish ‘Spaghetti’ Western to the ‘curry western’ of Bollywood or the Japanese Samurai film. Students will be expected to write short responses to each film, do one group presentation in the course of the semester, and write two 7–8-page papers. Restriction(s): Restricted to Undergrad - Urbana-Champaign.