Each student will prepare a one paragraph abstract detailing the content of their final paper project. All submissions should include the name of the film/TV series under investigation, its relevance to specific course themes and/or “real world” events, and preliminary research questions. Additionally, students are required to list three scholarly sources (books, journal articles, magazine articles, etc. – not online reviews or web sites) that will support the final paper’s critical analysis.
Important: The film must have been made before 2001 or be set prior to 2001 (no 9/11 or post-9/11 subjects will be allowed). If you choose a work of science fiction/fantasy (sff) set in an imagined world, you may pick a film after 2001, but be sure to relate the film’s metaphorical treatment of political violence to the “real world.”
See the example below:
For my final paper, I will be examining depiction of terrorism and counter-terror measures in the motion picture The Siege (dir. Edward Zwick, 1998). Premiering several years before the 9/11 attacks on the US, this big-budget Hollywood production focused on “blowback” from American military support for anti-regime insurgents in the Arab Middle East. In the wake of deadly terror attacks in New York City, the FBI, CIA, and US military each take different approaches to securing the “homeland” and interdict the perpetrators, including the use of human intelligence, digital surveillance, forced internment of ethnic/religious communities, torture, and extra-judicial killing. In my paper, my research questions are as follows: 1) How did this film represent the Islamist terrorist? 2) What geopolitical factors are portrayed as leading individuals to embrace terror tactics? and 3) How does the film treat controversial subjects (such as “enhanced interrogation” and ethnic profiling) that would come to define the Global War on Terror enacted under President George W. Bush in the 2000s.
External Sources:
Boggs, Carl. 2017. The Hollywood War Machine: U.S. Militarism and Popular Culture. London: Routledge.
Muravchik, Joshua. 1999. “Terrorism at the Multiplex,” Commentary, 107(10):57-60.
Peretz, Martin. 1998. “Siege Mentality,” New Republic, 219(22): 62-62.