Course Description.

The practical and ideological role of American formal education is pivotal in articulating the nation’s democratic assumptions and in forwarding its aspirations towards equal opportunity, a fact not lost in Presidential Election Year 2008.

From Blackboard Jungle, 1955 to The Great Debaters, 2007, the subject of schooling has, not surprisingly, emerged as a challenging and often lucrative Hollywood sub-genre that uniquely and explicitly addresses issues of hegemony, discourse, and resistance. Likewise, commentaries on such representations is prominent in recent book publications (The Hollywood Curriculum, Dalton; Tales Out of School, Keroes).

This course will include but then advance beyond these genre-specific accounts to consider American film form and narrative in general and through the prism of contrasting learning theories (from Watson/behaviorism, through Bruner/cognitive to Gigerenzer/heuristics).

The represented workings of such theories in Hollywood narrative will therefore inform our detailed exploration that will include analysis and discussion of two complete films and a range of sequences.

• In keeping with certain behaviorist principles, schein/credit rewards will be gained for 80% + attendance and the completion of two short essays. These will be written, and subject to written feedback during the course.
• Research Paper opportunities are designed to attract the professional interest and intellectual ambitions of students of psychology, pedagogic practice, and applied film/ media theory.

For full details, including our weekly schedule and recommended reading/viewings, please see the dedicated page JFK-I: American Yodas at KINOWORDS: http://kinowords.edublogs.org

• http://www.fu-berlin.de/vorlesungsverzeichnis/ss08/jfki/013003002001001001.html

Alan returns to the John F. Kennedy for the Fall Term:

Aims & Objectives:

- celebrate student’s skills in critical thinking, powers of analysis and individual initiative
- introduce students new &familiar to film studies to U.S cinema history &working practices
- explore aspects of genre, narrative &representation in mainstream film
- pinpoint and explore key moments in film theory
- critically engage with present U.S / international digital filmmaking production, exhibition and distribution networks

Course Content

The spine of the course will focus on key aspects of mainstream American cinema - the most influential and pervasive form of global mass media in the 20th Century. The course will balance introductory sessions on traditional industry, studio working practices and storytelling paradigms with core features of post-1958 film theory...

http://www.fu-berlin.de/vorlesungsverzeichnis/ws0708/jfki/013003006001001001.html  

The advanced MA Film/Media course (hauptseminar) is now set  for the Spring Term 2007 at the John F. Kennedy Institute of North American Studies, the Free University of Berlin,  covering developments in U.S. film and media since the 1920s. 

"The spine of the course will explore how ten corporate intertextualities - from Network (20th Century Fox, 1976) to The Insider (Touchstone, 1999) - reflected public disquiet about media ownership, gender representation, corporate mergers, free speech, new technologies, war coverage, and even the influential powers of market journalism itself. In addition, our study will be enriched by contextual histories, which, since the 1920s, consider relevant legal, institutional and political interventions in the early development of the U.S. public media. This will lead to a Case Study analysis of cable news coverage post 9/11."

For the weekly schedule, with relevant links, see the "We, the media..." blog here:

http://wethemedia.edublogs.org/the-jfk-berlin-programme/

Our 14 week schedule is available in PDF format below (ie: the LEFT attachment box). The PowerPoint presentations for each week will be available on this site in due course.