Film Course "Revisiting Hitchcock: Intro to Film Theory" Coming This Winter

We are excited to announce the addition of a new course titled "Revisiting Hitchcock: Intro to Film Theory." The course will be co-taught by Steph, a philosopher, and Doug, a film theorist. Course description is as follows:

"Few artists have left such a lasting scar on the American consciousness as Alfred Hitchcock. While the “Master of Suspense” dealt in universal cinematic motifs, such as seeing and being seen, his hyper-psychological approach set him a great distance apart from his contemporaries, and created a style of filmmaking that has infected Hollywood to this day. The themes established in Hitchcock’s works (greatly abbreviated examples: The Man Who Knew Too Much, Notorious, Rear Window, Vertigo, and Psycho) echo strongly throughout both modern moviegoing and the American imagination itself.

This course will focus on Hitchcock’s career in the context of the film industry, as well as the great body of film theory that has been produced concerning his works, with a specific focus on psychoanalytic and feminist film theory. In adopting this focus, we hope to give each student a greater understanding of the movies of Alfred Hitchcock, as well as the study and appreciation of movies more broadly. No expertise required -- feel free to bring popcorn."

After lots of deliberations, we have decided to orient ourselves around the following three movies for the course:

Rope (continuous shots as claustrophobia and power, Nietzsche's Ubermench)

Rear Window (voyeurism, psychoanalysis [Freud/Lacan])

Rebecca (feminist psychoanalysis, misogyny and trauma)

The course will be 4 sessions long, meeting once weekly on Tuesday evenings from 6 pm to 9 pm in late January-early February 2022. Movies will be screened after the daily lectures. Enrollment will open in the beginning of December 2021.