SOC 3042 - Sociology of Film

The primary goal of this course is to use movies, documentaries, and docudramas to illuminate sociological phenomena and events in terms of sociological theory, concepts, and research, and thus help students to understand and apply core sociological concepts and theories and apply them to a number of movies watched in class and outside of class. Students will also evaluate movies in terms of the extent to which they uncritically transmit bias, stereotypes, ideology, and misinformation regarding gender, race ethnicity, poverty, and important social problems. The films addressed in the course will include dramas, comedies, foreign films, musicals, contemporary Hollywood films, older films, classics, foreign films, documentaries, silent films, animated films, and docudramas. In their analysis and criticism of movies, students will be encouraged to utilize what C. Wright Mills described as "The Sociological Imagination," to more deeply understand the relationship between individual well-being and the nature and structure of society.