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Cinematic Travel

ENGL 392.401
instructor(s):
TR 9-10:30 Screenings R 5-7:00

This course will engage one of the most prominent and important� figures in film history: travel. We will investigate this figure as it evolves historically from 1895 to the present and at the same time� examine the particular practices and permutations it has inspired as travelogues and documentaries, movie genres such as the road movie, and film�s ideological and economic engagements with borders and globalization. Such a rich vehicle will additionally open numerous theoretical questions in film aesthetics: for example, about mobile and immobile spectatorship, about �traveling shots� and aesthetic realism, and about� subjectivity and ethnographic filmmaking. Since our topic parallels the 2006-07 theme of the Penn Humanties Forum, we will also take advantage of the
various university lectures, presentations, and exhibitions around the university as a way of broadening and complicating the issues we find in fill history. In addition to gaining more intellectual mobility about film and the larger implications of �travel� as a mode of experience, we will, I am certain, become better writers and more independent researchers.

fulfills requirements