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Spectacles of Terror & Theories of Violence

CWL 581
image from CWL 581 course flyer for Spring 2022, Professor Harris

From The Battle of Algiers (1966) to Omar (2014) and Bethlehem (2014) this graduate seminar takes a comparative approach to examining cinematic depictions of terrorism. Addressing Ruby Rich’s call to approach the study of terrorism and film, through “successive schools of scholarly engagement (postcolonial, multicultural, feminist, postfeminist, multiculturalist, queer, anticolonial, antiracist, Marxist, subaltern poststructuralist, genre-based, Lacanian, semiotic, and structuralist) and close textual readings,” this course will consider the connection between real-world catastrophic trauma and our expectations that ‘it looks like a movie’.