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 new narrative patterns about romance are emerging to address different kinds of sexual identity? What other kinds of relationship emerge alongside and compete with romantic ones in forming our gender identities? 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 and relationships? What happens to ideas about sex and romantic love as we age? How do ageing star bodies structure our ideas about gender? How do diverse genres, from romcom to romantic drama handle these questions of gender, age and romance differently?

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. We will use our seminars to focus on reading clips from the films in detail to understand this. Students will also be encouraged to work on films of their choice, in dialogue with films studied on the module itself. You will have the opportunity to try out your ideas in blogposts, creative writing, and presentations before developing your final essay.

We will also consider Italy itself (and Venice in particular!) as a film location deeply entangled with ideas about love and romance, a theme that you can examine in more depth for your final project, if that interests you.

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 how gender is constructed in films about romance
• 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 and historical context
• 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 (A Room with a View, Ivory, 1985)
Reading:
• Girelli, Elisabetta, ‘Beauty and the Beast: The construction of Italianness in A Room With A View and Where Angels Fear To Tread’, Studies in European Cinema, 2006 3(1): 25-35
• Monk, Claire, ‘Sexuality and Heritage’ (1995/2001), Sight and Sound, 5:10 (October 1995), pp.32-34, reprinted in Film/Literature/Heritage: A Sight and Sound Reader
• Entry on A Room with a View in Zambenedetti, Alberto, World Film Locations: Florence (Intellect, 2014) , pp. 6-9, pp. 82-3
Suggested additional film: Roman Holiday (Wyler, 1953)

Week 2: An introduction to genre: Romantic comedy and romantic drama (The Awful Truth, McCarey, 1937)
Reading:
• Jeffers McDonald, Tamar, ‘Screwball Comedies’ in Romantic Comedy: Boy Meet Girl Meets Genre (London: Wallflower, 2007)
• Mortimer, Claire, ‘The Comedy of Romance’ in Romantic Comedy (London: Routledge, 2010), pp. 69-83
Suggested additional film: It Happened One Night (Capra, 1934)

Part I: Girlhoods and Boyhoods

Week 3: Love and Basketball (Prince-Bythewood, 2000
Reading:
• Baker, Christina N., ‘Work as Passion: Love & Basketball and Beyond the Lights’ in Contemporary Black Women Filmmakers and the Art of Resistance (Ohio State University Press, 2018)
• Lindner, Katharina, ‘Bodies “in action”: Female athleticism on the cinema screen’, Feminist Media Studies, 11:3 (2011), pp. 321–345
Suggested additional film: Bend it Like Beckham (Chadha, 2002)

Week 4: Putting romance in (teengirl) perspective: Lady Bird (Gerwig, 2017)
Reading:
• Stone, Rob, Lady Bird: Self-determination for a New Century (Routledge, 2023)
• Winch, Alison, ‘The Girlfriend Flick’ in Girlfriends and Postfeminist Sisterhood (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013)
Suggested additional film: Booksmart (Wilde, 2019)

Week 5: Teen Heartbreak and Loss: Call Me By Your Name (Guadagnino, 2017)
Reading:
• 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.
Suggested additional films: Waterlilies/Naissance des pieuvres (Sciamma, 2007); Un amour de jeunesse/Goodbye First Love (Mia Hansen-Løve, 2011); Love, Simon (Berlanti, 2018)

Part II: Romance and Time

Week 6: Before Sunrise & Before Sunset (Linklater, 1995 & 2004)
Reading:
• Deleyto, Celestine, The Secret Life of Romantic Comedy, pp. 148-176
• James McDowell, ‘Comedy and Melodrama from Sunrise to Midnight: Genre and Gender in Richard Linklater’s Before Series in Maria San Filippo (ed.), Happily Ever After: Romantic Comedy in the Post-Romantic Age (Wayne State University Press, 2021)
Suggested additional film: Before Midnight (Linklater, 2013)

MIDTERM BREAK

Week 7: Time Panic: Bridget Jones’s Diary (Sharon MacGuire, 2001) / Knocked Up (Judd Apatow, 2007)
Reading:
• Claire Mortimer on Zellweger, pp. 118-131 and Knocked Up, pp. 60-68, in Romantic Comedy
• McRobbie, Angela, ‘Post-Feminism and Popular Culture: Bridget Jones and The New Gender Regime’ in The Aftermath of Feminism (London: Sage, 2009), pp. 11-23
• Negra, Diane, ‘Time Panic’ in What a Girl Wants: Fantasizing the Reclamation of the Self in Postfeminism (Oxford: Routledge, 2009)

Week 8: Past Lives (Celine Song, 2023); In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar Wai, 2000)
Reading:
• Rayns, Tony, ‘Valse Triste’ in In the Mood For Love (London, bfi, 2019)

Part III: Romancing Age

Week 9: Age and Female Sexuality: Something’s Gotta Give (Meyers, 2003)
Reading:
• Radner, Hilary, ‘Something’s Gotta Give (2003)’: Nancy Meyers, Neo-feminist Auteur’ in Neo-feminist Cinema: Girly Films, Chick Flicks and Consumer Culture ( )
• Wearing, Sadie, ‘Subjects of Rejuvenation: Aging in Postfeminist Culture’ in Interrogating Postfeminism: Gender and the Politics of Popular Culture, Negra and Tasker, eds (Duke University Press, 2007), pp. 277-310
• Whelehan, Imelda, ‘Ageing Appropriately: Postfeminist Discourses of Ageing in Contemporary Hollywood’ in Joel Gwynne and Nadine Muller (eds), Postfeminism and Contemporary Hollywood Cinema (London, New York: Palgrave, 2013)
Suggested additional film: Gloria (Lelio, 2013)

Week 10: Age and Female Emancipation: C’è ancora domani / There’s Still Tomorrow (Cortellesi, 2023)
Reading:
• Hipkins, Danielle, ‘Paola Cortellesi: Fragmenting the Latin Lover in Italian Romantic Comedy’ L'avventura, 2018, pp. 81-96.
Suggested additional film: Pane e tulipani (Soldini, 2000)

Week 11: Age and Male Sexuality: Broken Flowers (Jarmusch, 2005)
Reading:
• Peberdy, Donna, Masculinity and film performance: Male angst in contemporary American cinema (Palgrave, 2011), pp. 60-77, pp. 146-168
Suggested additional film: Lost in Translation (Coppola, 2003)

Week 12: Facing Endings: Amour (Hanneke, 2012)
Reading:
• Ferris-Taylor, Rita, Jane Grant, Hannah Grist, Ros Jennings, Rina Rosselson & Sylvia Wiseman (2019) ‘Reading Film with Age Through Collaborative Autoethnography: Old Age and Care, Encounters with Amour (Haneke, 2012), Chronic (Franco, 2015) and A Woman’s Tale (Cox, 1991), Life Writing, 16:1, 69-95
• Klonowska, Barbara, ‘The Aftermath of Love: Michael Haneke’s Amour’ in Robert Kusek et al (eds) Aftermath: The Fall and the Rise After the Event (Jagiellonian University Press, 2021), pp. 281-292
• Wartenberg, Thomas E., ‘ “Not Time’s Fool”: Marriage as an ethical relationship in Michael Haneke’s Amour’ in Bernd Herzogenrath (ed.) Film as Philosophy (University of Minnesota Press, 2017), pp. 286-305

Exam Week: Discussion of student projects
Teaching and Evaluation Methods:
Each week will consist of one interactive lecture (1.5 hours) and one seminar/workshop (1.5 hours). Students will be expected to prepare at least one reading for each seminar, and see the key recommended film(s). Suggested additional films are optional extras.

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% (at least ONE to be submitted by end of Week 5)
Student presentation (sequence analysis): 20%
Video essay (5-7 min) or final essay (3,000 words): 40%

Bibliography

• Abbott, Stacey and Jermyn, Deborah (eds), Falling in Love Again: Romantic comedy in contemporary cinema (London: I.B. Tauris, 2009)
• Ahmed, Sara, ‘Bend it, happy multiculturalism?’ https://feministkilljoys.com/2013/08/31/bend-it-happy-multiculturalism/
• Bauman, Zygmunt, ‘Falling in and Out of Love’ in Liquid Love: On the Frailty of Human Bonds (Cambridge: Polity, 2003), pp. 1-37
• Cavell, Stanley, Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981)
• Deleyto, Celestine, The Secret Life of Romantic Comedy (Manchester University Press, 2009)
• Evans, P.W. and Deleyto, C (eds), Terms of Endearment: Hollywood Romantic Comedy of the 1980s and the 1990s (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998) – electronic version
• Gateward, Frances and Murray Pomerance (eds), Sugar, Spice and Everything Nice: Cinemas of Girlhood (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2002)
• Gateward, Frances and Murray Pomerance (eds), Where the boys are: Cinemas of masculinity and youth (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2005)
• Gill, Rosalind, ‘Postfeminist Media Culture: Elements of a sensibility’ in European Journal of Cultural Studies, Vol. 10 (2), 147-166
• Gill, Rosalind, Gender and the Media (Cambridge: Polity, 2007)
• Handyside, Fiona and Kate Taylor-Jones (eds), International Cinema and the Girl (Palgrave, 2014)
• Harris, Anita, Future Girl: Young Women in the Twenty First Century (London: Routledge, 2004)
• Harris, Anita,(ed.), All About the Girl: Culture, Power and Identity (London: Routledge, 2004)
• Harrod, Mary, From France with Love: Gender and Identity in French Romantic Comedy (IB Tauris, 2015)
• Illouz, Eva, Consuming the Romantic Utopia: Love and the Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997)
• Ingraham, Chrys, White weddings: romancing heterosexuality in popular culture (London: Routledge, 2008)
• Jeffers McDonald, Tamar, Romantic Comedy: Boy Meet Girl Meets Genre (London: Wallflower Press, 2007) (Introduction and Chapter 1), pp. 1-17.
• King, Geoff, Film Comedy (London: Wallflower Press, 2006)
• Krutnik, Frank. ‘Conforming Passions? Contemporary Romantic Comedy’ in Genre and Contemporary Hollywood, ed. Steve Neale (London: Bfi, 2002), pp. 130-47
• Lapsley, Robert and Michael Westlake, ‘From Casablanca to Pretty Woman: the Politics of Romance’ Screen, 33.1 (1992), 27-49
• Mortimer, Claire, Romantic Comedy (Routledge, 2010)
• Negra, Diane, What A Girl Wants?: Fantasizing the Reclamation of Self in Postfeminism (London: Routledge, 2009)
• Pickard, Susan, Age, Gender and Sexuality through the Life Course (London: Routledge, 2020)
• Rowe Karlyn, Kathleen, The Unruly Woman: Gender and the Genres of Laughter (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995)

Last updated: July 4, 2024