First Essay!

Here are the guidelines for the first essay, which is due Thursday June 12th in class.

Word count: 1200-1500 words (4-5 pages)

Format: double spaced or 1.5 spaced.

Use standard academic referencing and citations, as well as standard bibliography format. You may have a "Works Cited" page for the bibliography, but must include authors and page numbers within your essay text. All web sources must have complete URLs.

You are to use at least three outside sources. You can find many articles online in the JSTOR archive via the library website. The library also has many print journals on film which may be useful, as well as books in the stacks. Film texts may be used as sources, but your three minimum sources must include articles or other print materials. Interviews and biographical information can be found at the Senses of Cinema website. Try to use source material beyond basic ones such as imdb.com or Wikipedia: you are expected to utilize academic and scholarly sources.

Topics: for this first essay, your topic must include films made prior to 1960. It is preferable you choose a film we have viewed or discussed in class, or a director, producer, author or performer that also falls into this category. This would so far include the films or shorts by Chaplin, Keaton. Lloyd, Laurel and Hardy, Abbott & Costello, The Marx Brothers, Howard Hawks that we've viewed in class, and any actors, writers or producers associated with them. Try to choose as focused and specific a topic as you can. For example, instead of a general essay about Chaplin, what about Chaplin's portrayal of romance, or his well-known perfectionism, or focus on a specific film. A close analysis of one film or a scene/scenes therein is also fine. Genres or styles of comedy within these films may provide a starting point: Harold Lloyd's comic relationship with clothing, for example, or the use of slapstick by Abbott & Costello, or the portrayal of war and the military in films referencing WW2. You might choose a general topic of critical theory to explore (a reading of gender or queer theory might lead you to explore the comedy of cross-dressing in one of these films, for example; looking at Marxist or Brechtian theory might make you want to explore the portrayal of socioeconomic inequity). If you're unsure about a topic, feel free to email and discuss it with me.

We'll be continuing our discussion of comedy genres next week, when we begin looking at 1950s sex comedies and musical comedies.