ENGH 474: Topics in Screen Cultures

ENGH 474-001: Jailed: Incarceration on Screen
(Spring 2012)

04:30 PM to 07:10 PM M

Innovation Hall 133

Section Information for Spring 2012

This course will take a detailed look at how film and TV imagine and represent ideas of confinement and incarceration. This class is particularly interested in how governments and societies operate on notions of exclusion, policing the boundaries of belonging through physical and metaphorical prisons and the innovative ways that detained, enslaved, and incarcerated people manage to resist such confinement. We will examine representations of actual prisons and institutions designed to detain populations labeled security threats, but we will also study films that take a more conceptual approach to notions of imprisonment, presenting the body and identity as forms of confinement. The course will provide the opportunity to take a close look at state measures such as strip-search, checkpoints, interrogation and torture, forced labor, and internment as well as means of resistance like hunger striking, rioting, non-cooperation, and escape. This course will use incarceration as a way to explore questions of criminality, madness, subjugation, and resistance, paying close attention to gender, race, class, and ethnicity. Screenings include Cool Hand Luke, Oz, Hunger, The Magdalene Sisters, Memories of Underdevelopment, Rabbit-Proof Fence, and The Legend of Bhagat Singh. Note to 670 students: you will have additional reading assignments (Foucault's Discipline and Punish as well as theoretical texts on space, gender/sexuality, race and class), at least one in-class presentation, and different writing assignments. I am happy to answer any questions about the differences between the graduate and undergraduate versions of this course (jscarlat@gmu.edu).

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Course Information from the University Catalog

Credits: 3

American and foreign films selected by type, period, or director with emphasis varying from year to year. Required viewings, student discussion, and written critiques. Notes: May be repeated for a maximum of 6 credits with permission of department. Offered by English. May be repeated within the term for a maximum 6 credits.
Specialized Designation: Topic Varies
Recommended Prerequisite: ENGH 372 or permission of instructor.
Schedule Type: Lecture
Grading:
This course is graded on the Undergraduate Regular scale.

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