Screening History: American History in Hollywood

Catalog description

This course explores how popular Hollywood films construct versions of the historical past, & can be utilized as historical documents themselves. The films reach mass audiences, they entertain, they mythologize, they produce compelling narratives about the past, they simplify complex problems, & they have been influential in creating audiences’ historical understanding. Hollywood films are significant & complex cultural texts, & this course will study them as artifacts of a powerful communications entertainment industry whose visions of the past & arguments regarding social, political, economic order throughout the 20th century & into the 21st centuries warrants our close examination.