FS 539 - Hollywood’s Greatest Year: 1939

In this graduate seminar, students examine 1939, a Hollywood high point, in concrete cultural terms: what was the Hollywood system and what sorts of films did it produce and how and to what effect? Students will examine studio style, economic imperatives and operations, institutional regulation (censorship), film technology, genre and stardom, the role of film criticism, and audience taste and reception. While students will engage with important secondary studies from the field of American cinema history and historiography, they will also study and utilize primary sources of the time in order to establish the historical context of how the Hollywood system functioned during its presumed pinnacle of artistic achievement and when cinema was the mass medium in the U.S. In sum, graduate students will examine the intermeshed areas of American cinema, film history, and audience/reception studies, focusing particularly on audience and reception studies, archival and primary research, and historiography. Topics covered include (but are not limited to): Stardom, genre, and authorship, Exhibition and Distribution of American Cinema during the 1930s, Regulation and Censorship of American films, particularly in regard to gender, race and class, Publicity, marketing, and PR campaigns around Hollywood cinema, Engaging with, and understanding the immense body of scholarship in the field on the “Studio System” also known as classical Hollywood, in American cinema. Some sections of FS 539 and FS 339 may be held together. Letter grade with Pass/No Pass option. (Offered as needed.) 3 credits