This year, Steven Spielberg is releasing his most personal film, The Fabelmans, cementing his position as the most prolific Jewish-American filmmaker of our time. This course will study Spielberg's illustrious career and how he changed American filmmaking and American society. In light of his new biographical film, it will also examine how his Jewishness informed his work: sometimes as a text, in films such as Schindler's List and Munich, and sometimes as subtext, in films such as E.T. and West Side Story. We will also reflect on his films as a producer--An American Tail and The Prince of Egypt, among others. This rich body of work will allow us to explore the intersection of many different subjects: film and history, tradition and modernity, childhood and adulthood, Jewishness and otherness, and how a nice Jewish boy became a national treasure. |