Analysis and Writing
Students will develop skills to allow them to view, analyze, critically interpret, and write about films that come from a wide variety of cinematic genres.
Analytic Vocabulary and Critical Skills
Students will develop an analytic vocabulary and critical skills that will allow them to participate in scholarly discussions of key cinematic texts from Nordic and German history.
Reading, Critiquing and Writing Formal Sequence Analyses
Students will be able to read, critique and write formal sequence analyses of key scenes from German and Scandinavian films.
Developing Intellectually Sound Interpretations
Students will be able to develop their own well-informed, critically provocative, and intellectually sound interpretations of different cinematic texts and be able to defend and expand these interpretations in classroom discussions and in writing assignments. A list of these specific skills can be found in the grading rubric for each of these assignments.
Increasing Cultural Literacy
Because the course is structured around a variety of historical, theoretical, and cultural questions, students will develop and demonstrate an increased cultural literacy as they grapple with questions of ideology, identity, class, race, gender and memory in the context of the German and Scandinavian cultures and film history.
Becoming more Aware of Student habits of Seeing and Thinking
As students are confronted with the startling and strange and intriguing ways that Germans and Scandinavians represent the world, they will become more aware of their own habits of seeing and thinking. In several of their written assignments and class discussions, students will demonstrate their ability to thoughtfully reflect upon these different visual practices and to engage these different ideas into meaningful dialogue.