PSCI 250: Politics, Literature & Cinema: the Cinema of Kurosawa
Description: This course aims to introduce students to a range of underlying historical, sociological, and psychoanalytic themes central to the study of Political Science through the medium of world cinema. The initial thrust of the course will consist in introducing students, both theoretically and historically, to cinema as a distinct medium. Subsequently, the course will proceed to focus on either a) one of the great film-makers, b) a specific school of film-makers, or c) a particular thematic element around which the semester’s readings and viewings will be organized. Although the focus will thus vary, according to the instructor’s prerogative, from semester to semester, the following list will nonetheless indicate an initial series of potential options open to consideration in course offerings to come: Michelangelo Antonioni, Ingmar Bergman, Luis Buñuel, Francis Ford Coppola, Federic Fellini, Jean-Luc Godard, Werner Herzog, Alfred Hitchcock, Akira Kurosawa, Fritz Lang, David Lean, F.W. Murnau, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Orson Welles, the schools of German Expressionism and the Iranian New Wave, or such fundamental themes as the ego and the id, war and peace, imperialism and third world politics, political oppression, or class and factional conflict. Students should note that the precise focus of each ensuing course will be announced a full semester in advance so that students may have adequate time to decide whether its content suits their interests.
As indicated above, however, the inaugural offering of this course will focus on the
works of the great Japanese filmmaker, Akira Kurosawa. As students will soon recognize, Kurosawa was not merely one of the world’s greatest filmmakers; he also was capable of extraordinary insight into human behavior and political matters. The problems of warlordism, factionalism, class rivalry, the social psychology of political leadership, bureaucracy, human destiny, and the nature of truth and lie will therefore all function as
central themes of this semester’s class.
Contact:
For more information about this course, contact Brook Blair