Course description
Gender identity and its potential for both stereotyping and fluidity is a key concern for our time. What role do screen narratives play in the structuring and absorption of these ideas? To what extent do the ideas of compulsory heterosexuality and gender complementarity (that men and women are somehow ‘made for’ one another) still influence our ideas about gender and the continued prevalence of heterosexual romance on screen? How might the questions of age and gender intersect and structure our expectations regarding gender and relationships? What roles do racial and religious identity play? To what extent does age become the most powerful determining factor in how we imagine our gender identity? What happens to ideas about sex and romantic love as we age? How do ageing star bodies structure our ideas about gender? On this course we will consider these questions across a variety of national contexts and films, focussing in particular on those which make age ‘an issue’ in romance. We will be studying in particular what cinema might have to offer that can both confirm and unsettle our patterns of thought and behaviour, paying attention to the way in which the language of film (both genre and cinematography) might draw us into particular ways of thinking and feeling. Students will be encouraged to work on a film of their choice, in dialogue with films studied on the module itself.

Learning Outcomes
• Demonstrate an informed understanding and detailed knowledge of the works studied on the module
• Demonstrate an understanding of their significance in the broader cultural context in which they were produced
• Demonstrate an informed understanding of a number of key debates in gender studies theory and an ability to apply these to film
• After initial input from the course tutor(s), apply and evaluate critical approaches to the material
under analysis independently
• Argue at length and in detail about an aspect of the topic, supporting the argument with evidence from the text and with opinions from secondary literature
• Use a range of film‐critical terminology, applying it to independently researched material as well as to material introduced by the course tutor(s)
• Analyse films in a variety of genres and styles, showing awareness of their relation to the social, historical
• Through written or videographic analysis, demonstrate appropriate research and bibliographic skills, a capacity to construct a coherent, substantiated argument
• Through work on the video or written essay, demonstrate the ability to research, collate and manage video or written material in the creation of an argument, using diverse IT skills
• Through research, seminar discussion, and essay writing/video essay making, demonstrate a capacity to question assumptions, to distinguish between fact and opinion, and to critically reflect on your own learning process

Syllabus
Week 1: Gender, Age and Romance on Screen (The Awful Truth, McCarey, 1937)
Week 2: An introduction to genre: Romantic comedy and romantic drama (When Harry Met Sally, Reiner, 1989)

Part I: Girlhoods and Boyhoods
Week 3: Mainstream Comedy with a multicultural twist: Bend It Like Beckham (Chadha, 2002)
Week 4: Looking to the banlieu film: Bande de filles (Sciamma, 2014). (Invited speaker: Professor Fiona Handyside, University of Exeter)
Week 5: Boys Don’t Cry (Peirce, 1999)
Week 6: Romantic heartbreak and the Chalamet phenomenon: Call Me By Your Name (Guadagnino, 2017) Week 7: Workshops on the video essay

Part II: Romancing Age
Week 8: Playing around with age: Something’s Gotta Give (Meyers, 2003) (Invited speaker: Dr. Valentina Re, Link campus University, Rome)
Week 9: Female sexuality: All That Heaven Allows (Sirk, 1955) / Angst Essen Seele Auf/Fear Eats the Soul (Fassbinder, 1974)
Week 10: Facing endings: Amour (Hanneke, 2012)
Weeks 11‐12: Sharing of student film suggestions and projects

Teaching Assessment
The course will be assessed on the following basis:
Participation in class: 10%
Blog posts/creative writing (minimum of two examples, 500 words each): 30% Student presentation (sequence analysis): 20%
Video essay (5‐7 min) or final essay (3,000 words): 40%

Bibliography/Recommended Reading
• Sara Ahmed, ‘Bend it, happy multiculturalism?’ https://feministkilljoys.com/2013/08/31/bend‐it‐ happy‐multiculturalism/
• Caroline Bainbridge, ‘Growing up girl in the ‘hood: Vulnerability, violence and the girl‐gang state of mind in Bande de Filles/Girlhood (Sciamma, France, 2014) in Femininity and Psychoanalysis: Cinema, Culture, Theory, edited by Agnieszka Piotrowska and Ben Tyrer (Routledge: 2019), 48‐65
• Gargi Bhattacharyya and John Gabriel, 'Gurinder Chadha and The Apna Generation', Third Text
(Summer 1994), pp. 55‐63.
• Mridula Nath Chakraborty, ‘Crossing Race, Crossing Sex in Gurinder Chadha’s Bend It Like Beckham (2002): Managing Anxiety in Multicultural Britain’, in Radner and Stringer, Feminism at the Movies, 122‐133
• Celestine Deleyto, The Secret Life of Romantic Comedy (Manchester University Press, 2009)
• Galt, Rosalind & Karl Schoonover, ‘Untimely Desires, Historical Efflorescence, and Italy in Call Me by Your Name’, Italian Culture, 2019, 37:1, 64‐81.
• Miller, D. A, ‘Elio’s Education’, in Los Angeles Review of Books, February 19th, 2018.
• Frances Gateward and Murray Pomerance (eds), Sugar, Spice and Everything Nice: Cinemas of Girlhood
(Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2002)
• Frances Gateward and Murray Pomerance (eds), Where the boys are: Cinemas of masculinity and youth (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2005)
• Rosalind Gill, ‘Postfeminist Media Culture: Elements of a sensibility’ in European Journal of Cultural Studies, Vol. 10 (2), 147‐166
• Rosalind Gill, Gender and the Media (Cambridge: Polity, 2007)
• Fiona Handyside and Kate Taylor‐Jones (eds), International Cinema and the Girl (Palgrave, 2014)
• Anita Harris, Future Girl: Young Women in the Twenty First Century (London: Routledge, 2004)
• Anita Harris (ed.), All About the Girl: Culture, Power and Identity (London: Routledge, 2004)
• Kathleen Rowe Karlyn, The Unruly Woman: Gender and the Genres of Laughter (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995)
• Tamar Jeffers McDonald, Romantic Comedy: Boy Meet Girl Meets Genre (London: Wallflower Press, 2007) (Introduction and Chapter 1), pp. 1‐17.
• Claire Mouflard, ‘ “Il y a des règles: Gender, Surveillance and Circulation in Céline Sciamma’s Bande de filles’, Women in French Studies 24: 16 (2016), 113‐126
• Claire Mortimer, Romantic Comedy (Routledge, 2010)
• Anoop Nayak and Mary Jane Kehily, Gender, Youth and Culture: Young Masculinities and Femininities (London: Palgrave, 2007)
• Diane Negra, What A Girl Wants?: Fantasizing the Reclamation of Self in Postfeminism (London: Routledge, 2009)
• Susan Pickard, Age, Gender and Sexuality through the Life Course (London: Routledge, 2020)
• Sadie Wearing, ‘Subjects of Rejuvenation: Aging in Postfeminist Culture’ in Y. Tasker, D. Negra (eds), Interrogating Postfeminism: Gender and the Politics of Popular Culture (Duke University Press, Durham‐London, 2007), pp. 277‐310.

Last updated: February 29, 2024