This seminar explores how American films construct, reflect, and challenge cultural understandings of identity. Focusing on the intersection of gender, race, and class, we will analyze how narratives, visual styles, and character portrayals contribute to broader conversations about power, representation, and social difference.
Throughout the course, we will engage with a range of films—spanning genres and time periods—to investigate how identity is performed and mediated on screen. Topics will include the visual presentation of gendered bodies, the construction of racialized ‘others,’ and the depiction of class-based struggle and mobility. We will also consider how genre conventions and filmmaking techniques reinforce or subvert dominant cultural narratives. Through critical readings, film analysis, and class discussion, students will develop tools for interpreting how identity operates in visual culture. Overall, we will focus how film can work as a site of identity construction and critique and what its cultural work is.
The seminar will enable students to deepen their understanding of American literature and culture as well as to engage with literary and cultural theory in order to analyze a primary text of their choice. The exam for this module is a portfolio exam that will consist of different written components which will showcase what students have learned throughout the semester.
- Trainer/in: Eleonora Ravizza