Module description
In recent years, the question of the human has come under pressures from environmental destruction, new technologies, economic crisis, epidemics, and rapid, sometimes violent, political transformations. Ideas of the posthuman and the more-than-human, as well as ecocriticism, animal studies, critical plant studies, elemental philosophy, vital materialism, and object theory are transforming how we think about the non-human world. This module considers how contemporary world cinema imagines relations between the human and the non-human, by exploring how permeable the boundaries are between the two and by interrogating what is at stake in asserting their entanglement. We will address topics such as technology and nature, globalization and biopolitics, survival and futurity, while analysing a range of cinema, from sci-fi and horror to art and experimental films.
Assessment details
- Participation 10%
- 1500 Word Annotated Bibliography 30%
- 2500 Word Essay 60%
Educational aims & objectives
This module aims to enable students to engage with a range of critical perspectives across recent scholarship on the non-human, and to make connections between these theoretical debates and film scholarship on contemporary world cinema. It will enable students to mobilise key concepts and ideas around the human/non-human in order to analyse both the formal mechanisms and the cultural, historical, and political contexts of science fiction, horror, and art cinemas. It approaches the non-human from the following critical perspectives:
- Debates in the humanities on the posthuman and the challenges of thinking beyond the human;
- The central place of feminism, queer theory, and critical race theory to thinking the human;
- Biopolitics and cinematic representations of the body;
- Animal theory and cinematic representations of the non-human animal;
- Ecocriticism and the representation of the environment;
- Geopolitics and the significance of postcolonial thought;
- Approaches to film genre including science fiction and horror;
- Contemporary world cinema and its form, style, and narrative modes.
Learning outcomes
By the end of the module, students will have acquired the following knowledge and critical skills:
- In-depth knowledge of the ways non-human figures have been used in cinema, with particular emphasis on figures that destabilise the category of the human.
- Understanding of a range of critical debates around the posthuman and visual culture, engaging the philosophical, political, technological, and aesthetic issues that shape the category of the human.
- A transnational perspective on the diversity of filmic practices that engage the non-human, including global contexts of production.
- Understanding the role of non-human figures across a range of film genres, historical moments, and styles, notably sci-fi, horror, and art cinema.
- The methodological skills to undertake textual and cultural analysis of specific films in relation to issues emerging from posthuman theory.
- Ability to apply close-reading skills to the analysis of non-human figures in film, engaging both with close description of the films and theoretically informed analysis of their aesthetic, political, and cultural significance.