LFU:online

This course aims at familiarizing students with research objectives of ecocinema and the environmental humanities, especially as they relate to films about volcanos, caves and mining.

From Plato's cave to Mount Doom in Tolkien's Mordor, the inside of mountains has been a realm of cultural fascination and projection of what lies beneath, supports and sustains, haunts, invigorates, or contests reality. In this seminar we set out to explore imaginaries of mountain interiors in film and television culture. We will study and discuss movies that deal with caves, mining, and volcanos in a variety of genres and formats including documentary, horror and science fiction film, adventure and melodrama, as well as essay films, experimental film and video installation art. 

The seminar will take place in cooperation with the lecture series “Inside Mountains: Material Extractions and Mythical Exploits in the Americas” hosted by the Center of Inter-American Studies and the International Film Festival Innsbruck (IFFI). Our guest speakers are Sharea Deckard (University College Dublin), Michael Fuchs (University of Innsbruck), Rachel Webb Jekanoski (Memorial University of Newfoundland), filmmaker Salomé Lamas (Portugal), and Fernando Ruiz Peyré (Austrian Academy of Science).

Presentations, discussions, reading and writing assignments

Active participation, presentation, research paper/response paper

A list of filmic and literary works to be viewed and read will be distributed in the first session of class.

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The seminar "SE American Film, Media and Culture I" can be attended as the "SE American Literature and Culture II". If you wish to obtain credits for both seminars, the seminars' contents must differ substantially.