ATS2530 · Film and television genres

Overview

The concept of genre is a useful way of looking at how media texts are organised, categorised and consumed, and can be applied to both film and television. This unit describes genre as a complex situation that is at once enabled and limited by the related roles and practices of industry, critics and audiences. This understanding of genre is developed through three broad approaches: genre as industrial category, deals with issues of production, including commerce and authorship; genre as textual category, considers plots and structures; and genre as critical category, investigates issues of reception, audiences and institutions. In any one semester, this unit explores these questions with reference to a specific genre – such as, teen film, horror, science fiction – or selection of genres.

Areas of study: Film and screen studies

Offerings

Assessment

The Handbook does not list a final examination among the assessment items. That is not a guarantee there is none.

Within semester assessment: 100%

Assessment details may change. Please refer to the assessment information in Moodle closer to the start of the teaching period.

Requisites

The Handbook lists no prerequisite, corequisite or prohibition for this unit.

Learning outcomes

1. Recognise that meaning is not simply an intra-textual property of a particular text but an effect of historically specific inter- and extra-textual material technologies or institutions;
2. Demonstrate an understanding of the concept of intertextuality in film and television studies and its relation to genre through the categories of quotation, allusion, translation and adaptation;
3. Translate the in-principle concept of intertextuality into an understanding of the particular institutional structures that maintain the categories of film and television series, serials, remakes and sequels;
4. Display an ability to critically engage with written and visual texts in a clear and confident manner in both written and oral presentation.

Workload

Minimum total expected workload to achieve the learning outcomes for this unit is 144 hours per semester typically comprising a mixture of scheduled learning activities and independent study. A unit requires on average three/four hours of scheduled activities per week. Scheduled activities may include a combination of teacher directed learning, peer directed learning and online engagement.

Student experience, not official rules. Nothing here changes what the Handbook says.