MUSIC 1271 - THE SOUNDS OF ROMANTIC COMEDY

Minimum Credits: 3
Maximum Credits: 3
Sometime between Ernst Lubitsch's The Shop Around the Corner (1940) and Nora Ephron's You've Got Mail (1998), romance changed in the United States. Where class and wealth used to be deciding factors for romantic love, there now emerged the concept of the soulmate, who could be anyone. In this course, we will watch American romantic comedies of the last 100 years, paying particular attention to how the development of the soundtrack has changed what love sounds and feels like.Students will develop skills in closely analyzing sound and image in film, critically interpreting popular culture in relation to broader events in society, and thinking about the relation between music, identity, and politics. In particular, we will together develop answers to the following questions: how did capitalism, social justice movements, the changing nature of work, and other cultural transformations affect what people expected from intimate union? What aesthetic norms for representing romance changed alongside cultural norms? How is the narrative of love inflected by race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, religious difference, ability difference, and/or economic disparity?
Academic Career: Undergraduate
Course Component: Lecture
Grade Component: LG/SNC Elective Basis
Course Attributes: DSAS Diversity General Ed. Requirement, DSAS The Arts General Ed. Requirement, SCI Diversity General Ed. Requirements, SCI Polymathic Contexts: Humanistic GE. Req., Undergraduate Research

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