Women, Film and Hollywood

Catalog description

The course Women, Film and Hollywood will have a strong historical dimension, beginning with an exploration of early/silent film, then moving through the classical Hollywood period, the contradictory decades of the 1950s and 60s for women in film (when there were no female directors, while pinups and the male gaze dominated in film at the same time as powerful female actors often subverted masculine assumptions through their performances). During the height of the 1960/70s feminisms, women directors emerged out of a political fight within Hollywood to allow female filmmakers to tell their stories. In the 90s and up to the resent, women filmmakers have been rewriting male-defined genres, such as film noir and the western, and in the 21st century, we face contradictory dynamics in Hollywood, which is supporting women in film more (in part following the MeToo movement, while women still struggle to find funding for projects and to gain power within the Hollywood system. The course will focus on the multiple creative contributions of women to the history of American film, from star, to writer, producer, and director. Women, Film, and Hollywood will aim to show the ways in which women participated fundamentally in Hollywood by navigating images and often subverting a sexist system that generally aimed at excluding them.