2103-1
Seminar Kulturstudien: Screening the Past: British History on Film and TV
mittwochs 09.15-10.45 Uhr Seminargebäude S 223 Böhnke, Dietmar
Exam: term paper in this seminar or in 2103-2
Reading List: Cannadine, David, ed. (2004), History and the Media. Palgrave; Chapman, James (2005), Past and Present: National Identity and the British Historical Film. I.B.Tauris; De Groot, Jerome (2009), Consuming History: Historians and Heritage in Contemporary Popular Culture. Routledge; Fischer, Thomas and Thomas Schuhbauer (2016), Geschichte in Film und Fernsehen: Theorie, Praxis, Berufsfelder. A. Francke Verlag; Gray, Ann, and Erin Bell, eds. (2013), History on Television. Routledge; Higson, Andrew (2011), Film England. I.B.Tauris; Monk, Claire (2012), Heritage Film Audiences: Period Films and Contemporary Audiences in the UK. Edinburgh UP; ---- and Amy Sargeant, eds. (2002), British Historical Cinema. Routledge; Trimm, Ryan (2018), Heritage and the Legacy of the Past in Contemporary Britain. Routledge.
The UK is often seen as a country ‘steeped in the past’, and historical narratives certainly play a big part in British culture, politics and identity. For most people, access to these historical discourses is through the media, in particular film and (streaming) television. In the past decade or so, there have been many films and series about the British past which were at once (sometimes hugely) successful, innovative and controversial: Belfast, Belle, Bridgerton, The Crown, Darkest Hour, Downton Abbey, Dunkirk, Mary & George, Taboo and Wolf Hall, to name only a few examples. In this course, we are going to watch and analyse some of these in order to find out how and to what ends they construct British history, and how this fits into the contemporary political and social climate. Alongside this, we will be tackling theoretical concepts such as representation, adaptation, cultural memory, national identity, genre, heritage film/culture and industry etc.
- Trainer/in: Dietmar Böhnke