Film and Politics

Film here is treated as a political artifact — not entertainment to be analyzed, but a medium through which Cold War-era societies argued with themselves about ideology, empire, fear, and resistance. You'll work through screenings tied to specific historical ruptures (Hiroshima, the Red Scare, Algeria, Vietnam, the fall of communism), reading each film as propaganda, protest, or proposal for a political alternative, with the bulk of your effort going into a final research essay alongside a midterm and presentation. It's an upper-level elective that rewards students who already have some grounding in twentieth-century history or political theory and want to test how those frameworks survive contact with the image.