Given that American horror cinema often takes center stage in studies of the horror genre, the first aim of the class is to expand the student’s knowledge of horror cinema beyond Hollywood productions, in order to explore the global diversity of this genre in relation to various historical, aesthetic, national, and transnational contexts. Secondly, the class aims to familiarize students with diverse thematic, historical, and generic approaches to the horror genre. Since it would be impossible to cover the full range of international horror within a ten-week quarter, comprehensive geographical coverage is not the goal of the class. Instead, the final course objective is for students to understand and analyze regional, transnational, or global flows, whether in terms of influence (historical development, borrowing, and remaking) or circulation (reception, co-production, marketing, distribution, and exhibition).   The course is organized around various approaches to global horror and its generic hybridity, from the postwar emergence of “Eurohorror”, with its continuing international cult following, to the transnationalization of Asian horror cinema via DVD in the early 2000s, to camp, queer, and feminist valences in contemporary horror filmmaking.
Days: MO WE  10:30-11:50 AM

The term ‘globalization’ has become popular only over the past quarter century, since about 1990. By the end of the 20th century a decade later, ‘globalization’ had become one of the dominant terms for academic analyses, in the social sciences as much as in studies of culture, literature, film, media, ecology the arts and so on.

It is also true, though, that the United States has been the world’s most globalized country in its very formation, with settlers and slaves arriving in the earliest phase, followed by migrants and refugees from all corners of the world over centuries, mostly at the expense of the original indigenous population. ‘Globalization’ can then be seen not as a phenomenon of just recent origin but as something much older that begins with the beginning of Europe’s world-wide colonial expansion several centuries ago.

The course will be structured along these two emphases: (1) the historical processes that account for long-term but very unequal social, cultural and economic integration of the world across continents; and (2) the historical changes unfolding over the past few decades which are now seen as the main features of contemporary globalization. In other words, globalization is seen not as a static contemporary condition but a dynamic process involving continuous change.


Days: TU TH  03:30-04:50 PM

In ancient times only a few goods traveled by sea but today nearly 75 percent of all trade travels this way. Topics we will discuss include: how modern seafaring came to be, how Greeks, Romans, Norsemen, Polynesians, Indians, and Chinese came to travel on ships, and the legendary pirates they faced.
Days: TU TH  09:30-10:50 AM

The 30-year period spanning the Depression, World War II, and the Cold War witnessed profound changes in production and exhibition technology, the global dynamics of film markets, and film censorship and regulation, along with the consolidation of film genres inside Hollywood and the contestation of Hollywood's hegemony in Europe, Latin America, and Asia, as well as within the U.S. It is also the period in which electronic media began to compete with cinema as a vehicle for news and entertainment. By engaging with the sociocultural dimensions, production contexts, and formal characteristics of sound films produced between 1930 and the late 1960s, students will be able to acquire the necessary analytical tools and writing skills needed to understand the stylistic movements and public expectations placed on cinema as modern art and industry, as well as the powerful economic and political forces that shaped it during a period of maximum consumption. Course requirements include prompt attendance and participation, assignments, midterm exam, final exam. The prerequisite for this course is FLM&MDA 85A.
Days: TU TH  05:00-06:20 PM

Emphasis/Category: Inter-Area Studies
Examines risk factors that can be used to predict gang membership. Compares generational with non-generational gangs and develops a working sociological definition that can be used to identify street gangs. Myths about juveniles, street gangs.   
Days: TTH  09:30-10:50 AM