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This new film genre course addresses the cultural heritage of our national cinema. How has cinema shaped American culture, and how has American culture shaped cinema? We will focus on iconic figures in American film: cowboys, gangsters, detectives, soldiers, aliens, machines, lovers, orphans, monsters, teenagers. Each week will pair an early film with a later one to trace a given genre's evolution; for example, the week on westerns might pair John Ford's "The Searchers" (1956) with Ang Lee's "Brokeback Mountain" (2005). The course studies not art house films but commercial Hollywood films that serve as important barometers of their times.