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Special Topics in Film – Bodies in Contemporary Horror
170 002 | CCN: 26986
Daniel Cuong O'Neill
Location: Dwinelle 142
Date and Time: M, W 10:00am - 11:29am
4 Units
The course explores how horror cinema unsettles the integrity of the human body by rearticulating the relations between viewers and the screen; the spectacle and the networked; the spectral and the virtual. We will raise questions about the body’s subjection to forms of gendered, racist, and class-based violence: how do different forms of horror encode histories of violence and oppression within bodies? How do we interpret and contextualize this “body language” within its representative history, in cinema and other media forms? We will think through these questions by reading and viewing recent works of horror cinema as well as a rich tradition of film criticism as it intersects with developments in affect studies, performance studies, and queer theory. Film screenings will include works by both established auteurs and emerging directors from contemporary world cinema (Ari Aster, Bong Joon-Ho, Jayro Bustamante, Julia Ducournau, Jean Luc Herbulot, Jennifer Kent, Kurosawa Kiyoshi, Issa López, Jordan Peele, Goran Stolevski, among others.)