CMS 597 B: Special Topics In Cinema And Media Studies

American Cinema, Historiography, and Popular Culture, 1895-1940
An overview of the relations between U.S. cinema and ideological shifts in concepts of American national identity and other cultural tensions in the years between the fin de siècle and the eve of WWII.  Periods to be covered include the Great Migration, the Progressive Era, the Jazz Age, the Depression, the New Deal and the Popular Front. These eras will be considered relative to moving-image experiments initially produced by artisan-style companies (largely based in New York, New Jersey and Chicago) in the early 20th century, and then by films produced by the burgeoning mainstream industry, commonly referred to as “Hollywood” by the late 1910s and early 1920s.  While the course is organized as a survey, discussions, reading materials, and assignments will concentrate on developing strategies of analysis as well as on framing new research questions.  Seminar members will assess alternative modes of historiographical practice in the field and develop skills for recovering and analyzing primary resources from the period.