Courses / Undergraduate

Fall 2019

  • Special Topics in Film Genre: Global Genres and East Asian Cinema

    108-002 | CCN: 31514

    Weihong Bao

    4 Units

    Tu/Th 3:30pm-5:00pm, Dwinelle 188; Screening Tues. 7:00pm-10:00pm, Dwinelle 188 ///

    How do film genres come into being? Do they evolve like species with identifiable features and family resemblance? Are they allowed to cross-breed? What enable film genres to travel across national boundaries? How does gender and class get mixed up with genre? This course engages the questions of genre through East Asian cinema. We will look at genre films as complex negotiations with the circulation of global film genres while they engage with specific economic, social, and political histories of East Asia. Throughout the semester we will study contemporary theories of film genre, examine how the case of East Asian genre films complicate existing theories, and follow the parallel transnational traffics–between East Asian Cinema and global film genre, and across East Asian Cinema in their history of cultural and economic flow as well as political confrontation. The course will integrate our investigations of genre-specific questions–industry, style, reception, spectatorship, affect–with those of gender, ethnicity, power as well as nation and transnational/transregional dynamic. Major genres to be discussed include melodrama, film noir, martial arts films, horror, samurai films, and musical. Students will acquire foundational skills for film analysis, familiarize themselves with the history of East Asian Cinema, and gain critical insights with film theory and genre theory.