This module is designed to engage students with a series of perspectives on certain aspects of the narrative histories of film and television, from their origins to the present day. This is a period of well over a hundred years which saw a series of significant transitional moments in production histories. The module will look at such moments as the coming of sound, the rise and demise of the Hollywood studio system, and the emergence of the network system. It will ask what transition means at different historical moments by raising a number of questions such as: What are the industries producing at these moments and why? How are the industries doing this? How are the cultural products marketed and distributed? The module is also designed to introduce historical method and the idea of historiography. To this end, the course will provide examples of different critical approaches to film and television history and interrogate some of the key debates around the periodization of that history. In each case, specific case examples and materials will be used to examine the various kinds of evidence used by film and television historians and the particular forms of knowledge these produce.
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