Film, Video, and American History
FILM S247 (CRN: 30037)
Instructors: Melinda Stang
Dates: Session A, May 26 - June 27, 2025
Course Mode: In-Person
Meeting Times: TTh 9.00-12.15
Distributional Requirements: Humanities
Eligibility: Open to pre-college and college students
In-person Course. Screens large and small have projected, reimagined, and made U.S. history. This course will examine axes of social difference with a media archaeology methodology. With this approach, students will consider 20th and 21st-century U.S. history through comparisons, juxtapositions, and continuities between mediated representations of America’s racially, ethnically, and economically marginalized. In this seminar, students will learn to use film, television, and other mass entertainments as historical documentation that can illuminate the social and cultural history of American domesticity, youth (sub)cultures, racial formations, migration, indigeneity, and activist movements. Students can anticipate watching a mix of films, television shows, and other moving images from across the 20th and 21st centuries, ranging from classic American cinema to YouTube videos. The class will meet Tuesdays and Thursdays, 9:00a-12:15p, which will include lectures, short in-class screenings, discussion groups, and structured time for assignments. Assessments will include a mix of methods-based assignments, group presentations, short quizzes, and a final exam in addition to evaluation of participation in discussion groups. 1 Credit. Session A: May 26 – June 27. Tuition: $5270.
Yale Summer Session 2025