COLT 10.24 Screening Family Matters: Gender, Crisis, and New Communities
This is a course on contemporary film focused on the boundaries of "family." The course studies how "classic" films in different cultural contexts expose the ways the concept of family is deeply rooted in societal norms regarding gender roles, gender identity, race, and class configurations and how these intersect with normative configurations of love and care (and their opposites). These earlier films will serve as our starting point for critiquing societal values and traditions that can very often become oppressive and violent. Students will compare earlier filmmaking to more experimental and contemporary films that turn the concept of the traditional family structure on its head. These films will demonstrate a wider range of emotional territories, of alternative understandings of identity (queerness and trans-identity), and to thinking about care outside of the patriarchal family structure and more in terms of community. What kinds of new families do these films reveal?
Instructor
Martin