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COLT 380 - Comparative Media (WEB)

CRN: 36373

Instructor: Steven Brown

Term: Spring 2023

Doppelgänger Cinema- WEB Based

“Film is in its essence a world of doubles.”–Nicholas Royle

As media theorist Friedrich Kittler and others have noted, cinema from its very inception has been haunted by doubles through the celluloid and digital “ghosts” of the actors’ bodies. Considered both in terms of its intermediality with literary evocations of the uncanny and with respect to the ghostly effects of the cinematic apparatus itself, this seminar will examine the figure of the doppelgänger and its variations (twins, clones, split personalities) in films such as Bilocation (2013), Black Swan (2010), The Dark Half (1993), Dead Ringers (1988), Doppelgänger (2003), The Double (2013), Enemy (2013), The Prestige (2006), and Us (2019).

Repeatable 3X when the topic changes