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The Craft of Writing – Film Focus – Film and the Environment
R1B 004 | CCN: 31051
Location: Evans 5
Date and Time: M, W 5:00pm - 6:29pm
4 Units
Films have provided some of the most memorable, emotionally compelling images of nature that circulate in popular culture and an important means for environmental activism. To a greater extent than written media, cinema also directly affects the physical environment itself. Filmmakers use places, animals, and natural resources as they create moving images and sounds—sometimes leaving traces of these materials on screen, other times not. This course explores this relationship between film and the environment to introduce students to college-level academic research and writing in the humanities.
Devoting equal attention to documentary and fiction films, this course examines how films in a variety of genres, styles, and production contexts represent the environment and how films' production, distribution, and exhibition are connected to environmental issues. We will engage with both foundational texts in the environmental humanities and studies of relevant topics within Film Studies specifically. In accordance with the university standard for R1B, student engagement with both texts and films will aid in pursuing intensive writing projects. Students will build on writing skills developed in R1A with additional attention to how to formulate a research question, gather relevant sources, and construct a convincing argument based on research and close reading.