What are some of your favorite genres? What conventions and inventions can you recognize in them? What larger aspects of your culture and/or personality are related to your genre preferences?
What is the difference between genre and medium? Provide examples of both.
What genres are emerging today? What do these genres suggest about our culture and its possible future directions?
Sample Assignments/Activities
Research a genre and consider its life-cycle, conventions, inventions, etc., and its related commentary on culture and society.
Trace a genre across various artistic media using examples and clips.
Suggested Readings
Propp’s Morphology of the Folk Tale
Radway’s Reading the Romance
Louis D. Giannetti, Understanding Movies
John Cawelti, Adventure, Mystery, and Romance: Formula Stories as Art and Popular Culture
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