The course sessions will be as follows:
Week 1 : Introduction to general theoretical issues, including 'Ideology', 'Cultural mediation' and cultural materialist approaches to the study of media texts. Overview of this part of the course.
Second half introduces work on 'Images of the Nation in the thirties'. This would look at versions of Englishness in the 1930s in the work of the Documentary and Mass Observation movements, and with reference to films such as and the work of John Grieson. Reference also to popular literature of the period.
Week 2: Cinema in the 1930s
Texts and contexts, with further reference to the Documentary Realist tradition (in film and literature) and to popular cinema of the period (The Thirty-Nine Steps, and the films of Will Hay, Gracie Fields and George Formby).
Weeks 3 - 5: Wartime
Wartime mediations of Britishness and related issues. Examination of films such as Mrs Miniver, Love on the Dole (1941), Millions Like Us, Went the Day Well, and propaganda/documentary films of the period, such as A Diary for Timothy.
Week 6: Film in the immediate post-War period. Post-War films such as Brief Encounter, The Third Man and The Blue Lamp, with focus on expressions of austerity and post-War "reconstruction", new images of gender and social class.
Weeks 7 - 9: The Fifties.
The mediation of images of Britishness in the period from 1945-1960 in films, television and popular culture (including literature), and related issues of class and gender. This would entail looking at the post-War appropriation of notions of Britishness in films such as Reach for the Sky and Scott of the Antarctic, and the overt projection of images of Britishness in the Ealing films of the period (Passport to Pimlico and The Titfield Thunderbolt). There will also be consideration of the emergence of late 50s neo-realism (Room at the Top and Saturday Night, Sunday Morning) and the cultural treatment of issues such as Welfarism, Working Class life (I'm Alright, Jack) and Trade Unionism and gender relationships in films of the period.
Weeks 10 - 11: The Sixties, 'UK Hollywood' and the rise of Television. We will focus on the cultural mediation of notions of Britishness and the Nation. This would include discussion of the rise in popularity of Hammer productions and the subtext of 1960s Gothic films; the development of late-50s realism to television (Z Cars, Cathy Come Home, and Coronation Street); the influence of Americanisation; the presentation of "swinging London", etc.
Weeks 12 - 14: 1970-1990. The mediation of images of Britishness in contemporary media and popular culture in the, including films such as The Ploughman's Lunch, Sammy and Rosie Get Laid and My Beautiful Laundaurette. Whilst reference would be made to the representation of issues such as industrial relations (the Miner's Strike, Grunwick, etc) and the Falklands, the concern once again will be with the more abstract cultural mediation of ideological representation of issues of race, class and gender in relation to images of the nation.
Week 15: Review of general issues of cultural theory, ideology and mediation, theories of cultural reproduction, with particular emphasis on questions of popular nationalism.