Syllabus/achievement requirements

Books:

• Mark Harris, Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood (Penguin Books, 2008).
• Peter C. Rollins and John E. O’Connor, eds., Hollywood’s Indian: The Portrayal of the Native American in Film, Expanded Edition (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2003). (Chapters 1, 2, 6, 10, 13).

Articles: Note that all articles are available as electronic texts. Also a few are reprinted primary sources.

• Nancy J. Rosenbloom, “Between Reform and Regulation: The Struggle over Film Censorship in Progressive America, 1909-1922,” Film History 1:4 (1987) 307-325.
• Samantha Barbas, “The Political Spectator: Censorship, Protest and the Movie-going Experience, 1912-1922,” Film History 11:2 (1999) 217-229.
• Gregory D. Black, “Hollywood Censored: The Production Code Administration and the Hollywood Film Industry, 1930-1940,” Film History 3:3 (1989) 167-189.
• Richard C. Saylor, “Dr. Ellis Paxson Oberholtzer and the early years of the Pennsylvania State Board of Censors (Motion Picture),” Film History 16:2 (2004) 142-162.
• Mary P. Erickson, “’In the Interest of the Moral Life of Our City’: The Beginning of Motion Picture Censorship in Portland, Oregon,” Film History 22:2 (2010) 148-169.
• R. Bruce Brasell, “’A Dangerous Experiment to Try’: Film Censorship During the Twentieth Century in Mobile, Alabama,” Film History 15:1 (2003)81-102.
• Jane M. Greene, “Hollywood’s Production Code and Thirties Romantic Comedy,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 30:1 (2010) 55-73.
• Kevin Lewis, “Rev. Herbert Jump and the Motion Picture,” Film History 14:2 (2002) 210-215.
• Herbert A. Jump, “The Religious Possibilities of the Motion Picture,” Film History 14:2 (2002) 216-228. (Reprint of pamphlet)
• Sheldon Hall, “Selling Religion: How to Market a Biblical Epic,” Film History 14:2 (2002) 170-185.
• Maria Elena de las Carreras Kuntz, “The Catholic Vision in Hollywood: Ford, Capra, Borzage and Hitchcock,” Film History 14:2 (2002) 121-135.
• Stephen Weinberger, “Joe Breen’s Oscar,” Film History 17:4 (205) 380-391.
• Brian Neve, “Elia Kazan’s First Testimony to the House Committee on Un-American Activities, Executive Session, 14 January 1952,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 25: 2 (2005) 251-272. (Includes testimony).
• John A. Noakes, “Bankers and Common Men in Bedford Falls: How the FBI Determined that It’s a Wonderful Life was a Subversive Movie” Film History 10:3 (1998) 311-319.
• Rebecca Prime, “‘The Old Bogey’: The Hollywood Blacklist in Europe,” Film History 20:4 (2008) 474-486.
• John Sbardellati, “Brassbound G-Men and Celluloid Reds: The FBI’s Search for Communist Propaganda in Wartime Hollywood,” Film History 20:4 (2008) 412-436.
• K. Kevyne Baar, “’What Has My Union Done For Me?’ the Screen Actors Guild, the American Federation of Television and Radio artists, and Actors’ Equity Association respond to McCarthy-Era Blacklisting,” Film History 20:4 (2008) 437-455.
• Douglas Gomery, “What Was Adolph Zukor Doing in 1927?” Film History 17:2-3 (2005) 205-216.
• Max Alvarez, “The Origins of the Film Exchange,” Film History 17:4 (2005)431-465.
• Sean Pl. Holmes, “The Hollywood Star System and the Regulation of Actors’ Labour, 1916-1934,” Film History 12:1 (2000) 96-114.
• Robert H. Cochrane, “Beginning of Motion Picture Press Agenting,” Film History 19:3 (2007) 330-332.
• Timothy R. White, “Life After Divorce: The Corporate Strategy of Paramount Pictures Corporation in the 1950s,” Film History 2:2 (1988) 99-119.
• Max Alvarez, “The Motion Picture Distributing and Sales Company,” Film History 19 (2007) 247-270.
• Sarah Kozloff, “Wyler’s Wars,” Film History 20 (2008) 456-474.
• Daniel J. Leab, “Introduction: Politics and Film,” Film History 20:4 (2008) 395-398.
• Carl Laemmle, “The Business of Motion Pictures,” Film History 3:1 (2001) 47-71. (Reprint of Primary Source from 1927).
• Richard Abel, “Fan Discourse in the Heartland: The early 1910s,” Film History 18:2 (2006) 140-153.
• Ian Jarvie, “The Postwar Economic Foreign Policy of the American Film Industry: Europe 1945-1950,” Film History 4:4 (1990) 277-288.
• Richard Raskin, “Casablanca and United States Foreign Policy,” Film History 4:2 (1990) 153-164.
• Ian Jarvie, “Dollars and Ideology: Will Hays’ Economic Foreign Policy, 1922-1945,” Film History 2 (1988) 207-221.
• Philip Swanson, “Going Down on Good Neighbors: Imagining America in Hollywood Movies of the 1930s and 1940s (Flying Down to Rio and Down Argentine Way),” Bulletin of Latin American Research 29:1 (Jan 2010) 71-84.
• Mark A. Reid, “The Black Action Film: The End of the Patiently Enduring Black Hero,” Film History 2:1 (1988) 23-36.
• Thomas Cripps, “’Walter’s Thing’: The NAACP’s Hollywood Bureau of 1946 – A Cautionary Tale,” Journal of Popular Film and Television 33:2 (2005) 116-125.
• Matthew H. Bernstein and Dana F. White, “Imitation of Life in a Segregated Atlanta: Its Promotion, Distribution and Reception,” Film History 19 (2007) 152-178.
• William Paul, “The K-Mart Audience at the Mall Movies,” Film History 6 (1994) 487-501.
• Janna Jones, “Channeling Hollywood: Picture Palace Employees and Celebrity Culture,” Journal of Popular Film and Television 31:3 (2003) 109-124.
• Sherryl Vint, “The New Backlash: Popular Culture’s ‘Marriage’ with Feminism, or Love is All You Need,” Journal of Popular Film and Television 34:4 (2007) 160-169.
• Heidi Kenaga, “Making of the ‘Studio Girl’: The Hollywood Studio Club and Industry Regulation of Female Labour,” Film History 18:2 (2006) 129-139.
• J.J. Phelan, “Motion Pictures as a Phase of Commercialized Amusement in Toledo, Ohio;” “Mental Effects and Educational Significance;” The Moral and Physical Effects of the Movies;” “Non-commercialized Amusements and Community Work among the Young;” Film History 13:3 (2001) 236-304, with Garth Jowett, “Introduction,” Film History 13:3 (2001) 231-235.
• J. David Alvis and John E. Alvis, “Heroic Virtue and the Limits of Democracy in John Ford’s The Searchers,” Perspectives on Political Science 38:2 (2009) 69-78.
• J. Jeffrey Tillman, “High Noon and the Problems of American Political Obligation,” Perspectives on Political Science 36:1 (2007) 39-45.
• Antonio Sanchez-Escalonilla, “Hollywood and the Rhetoric of Panic: The Popular Genres of Action and Fantasy in the Wake of the 9/11 Attacks,” Journal of Popular Film and Television (2010) 10-20.
• Robert Genter, “’We All Go a Little Mad Sometimes’: Alfred Hitchcock, American Psychoanalysis, and the Construction of the Cold War Psychopath,” Canadian Review of American Studies 40:2 (2010) 133-162.

Films:

• Films in bold are required for all. Each student will choose at least 6 additional films from this list.

Available as Region 1 only

• Flying Down to Rio (1933)
• *Imitation of Life (1934 and 1959)
• Smoke Signals (1998)

Available as Region 2 on www.play.com or www.amazon.co.uk

• The Sheik (1926)
• It Happened One Night (1934)
• Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
• Citizen Kane (1941)
• Casablanca (1942)
• Double Indemnity (1944)
• Mildred Pierce (1945)
• It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
• Gentleman’s Agreement (1947)
• Broken Arrow (1950)
• High Noon (1952)
• Rear Window (1954)
• Rebel Without a Cause (1955)
• The Searchers (1956)
• Psycho (1960)
• Lilies of the Field (1963)
• The Graduate (1967)
• Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967)
• Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (1971)
• Dances with Wolves (1990)
• Stepford Wives (1975 and 2004)

Reference Works:

Film information: www.imdb.com

Overviews:

• Robert Sklar, Movie-Made America: A Cultural History of American Movies, Revised and updated ( NY: Vintage Books, 1994.
• Harry M. Benshoff and Sean Griffin, America on Film: Representing Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality at the Movies (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004).
• John Hill and Pamela Church Gibson, eds., The Oxford Guide to Film Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998)

Reference for writing:

• A good dictionary: (Webster’s is preferable, but others will suffice if you are unable to get Webster’s – though they are often better for British English, than American.)
• James D. Lester and James D. Lester, Jr., Writing Research Papers (available in Akademika in the English section). See especially the chapter on plagiarism.
• Dorothy Burton Skårdal, Rules for Writing English: A Practical Handbook for Students and Teachers of English in Norway (Info in class about access)
• Turabian manual website: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/books/turabian/turabian_citationguide.html