Film History Seminar: Practical Film History

This seminar approaches the question “what good is film history?” by designing a series of four interconnected film history assignments that will be staged to involve research, writing, and final publication. All of the assignments will have the goal of reaching a specific audience beyond the seminar and will deal with elements of Hollywood classical film history or documentary film history. Group writing and collaborative research will be fostered in workshop-like, hands-on sessions. In all four assignments the goal of the session is to produce actual published or publishable writing, making the work of film history both practical (useful) and practiced (worked on). Students with strong writing skills and an interest in writing careers are especially encouraged to take this course.