Cultural Comparison Through Film
Course Description & Goals
This course uses film to introduce students to the anthropological perspective and key disciplinary topics. The class is premised not on a set of facts, a specific theory, or a geographical region, but instead on learning to make sense of cultural differences, interrogate common human dilemmas, and identify popular cultural myths.
Our focus will largely be relating film content to topics of particular interest to anthropologists – identity, worldview, family, hierarchy, violence, economics, and cultural change – and specifically how different societies approach and wrestle with the contradictions and ambiguities inherent in these issues (rather than how the issues are absolutely solved).
In addition to considering mainstream US culture, this class will provide an introduction to populations from Samoa, Japan, Brazil, Nigeria, New Zealand, and Iran, among other locales and subpopulations. Students will also enhance their digital citizenship and research skills.
Our focus will largely be relating film content to topics of particular interest to anthropologists – identity, worldview, family, hierarchy, violence, economics, and cultural change – and specifically how different societies approach and wrestle with the contradictions and ambiguities inherent in these issues (rather than how the issues are absolutely solved).
In addition to considering mainstream US culture, this class will provide an introduction to populations from Samoa, Japan, Brazil, Nigeria, New Zealand, and Iran, among other locales and subpopulations. Students will also enhance their digital citizenship and research skills.
Student Learning Outcomes
• Articulate, identify, and Interpret universal human problems and cultural myths as they are dramatized in popular films
• Critically appraise common ethnocentric assumptions and stereotypes about societies, and simplistic dichotomies for categorizing human behaviors, societal traits, and cultures
• Synthesize information, compiling disparate thoughts and ideas (your own and others’) into unique compositions that propose new patterns or alternative interpretations
• Demonstrate specific cultural knowledge of select world populations
• Critically appraise common ethnocentric assumptions and stereotypes about societies, and simplistic dichotomies for categorizing human behaviors, societal traits, and cultures
• Synthesize information, compiling disparate thoughts and ideas (your own and others’) into unique compositions that propose new patterns or alternative interpretations
• Demonstrate specific cultural knowledge of select world populations
Course Schedule
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Module 1: Real v Reel
Babies (2010) Krippendorf’s Tribe (1998) Module 2: Identity Mr. Baseball (1992) Pariah (2011) Module 3: Family Mother of George (2013) A Separation (2013) Module 4: Globalization Whale Rider (2002) Babel (2006) Module 5: Hierarchy Stand and Deliver (1988) Crash (2004) Module 6: Violence City of God (2002) The Orator (2011) |
Associated Readings
Small 1997 (7 pages) Downey 2011 (7 pages) Weisman 1991 (3 pages) Cole & Guy-Sheftall 2003 (27 pages) Smith 2004 (17 pages) Rahimieh 2009 (15 pages) Hokowhitu 2007 (8 pages) Ehrenreich et.al. 2002 (12 pages) Bulman 2002 (24 pages) Phyllis Jones 2000 (3 pages); Farris 2007 (5 pages); Alder-Bell 2015 (8 pages) Goldstein 2003 (50 pages) Macpherson and Macpherson 2006 (30 pages) |