LFU:online

To familiarize students with the relationship between media and culture by exploring a variety of historical and theoretical approaches to mountain movies.

  In this course we will explore a diverse set of historical and conceptual questions about mountains from the perspective of film and media studies. How and where do mountains feature in the cinematic imagination of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries? As mountains have been attractive sujets since the beginning of cinema, we may inquire about their contributions to our understanding of early cinema. How do mountain movies negotiate romantic and modernist conceptions of mountains? What cultural, national and gender politics have been projected onto mountains? How are mountains represented and narrativized in documentaries and fictional film genres? Given the recent boom of mountain-film festivals around the world, we may ask what new genres, aesthetics and alternative forms of filmmaking have mountains inspired? To what extent have mountains also provided conceptual metaphors for theorizing film and media?

The seminar is organized in co-operation with an international research workshop on film and mountain studies that brings together mountain and film scholars, artists and extreme athletes.

Presentations, discussions, reading and writing assignments

Active participation, presentation, research paper

Prerequisite for the Master Program (812): positive completion of compulsory module 4,
for the Diploma Program (Diplomstudium: 343) and the Teacher Training Program (Lehramtsstudium: 344): completed first part of studies

For the Diploma Program (Diplomstudium: 343): SE2: American Literature/Culture, for the Teacher Training Program (Lehramtsstudium: 344): SE2: American Literature and Culture.

Due to substantial differences in the allocation of ECTS-Credits in various curricula (teacher training program - BA/MA English and American Studies), the requirements for this course vary. Information will be provided by the instructor at the beginning of the course.