Major Essay—approximately 4000 words ( double spaced pages, 12 pt. font)

This is a research therefore I will expect your tightly structured and argumentative essay to proceed via the support, discussion and interrogation of your research.

The following topics are intentionally broad in order to allow you to accommodate your particular research interests—therefore you must narrow them down in order to provide your essay with a specific and argumentative thesis that can be convincingly pursued in the space available to you. Your essay and its apparatus—including its references and endnotes—must be formatted according to the MLA Handbook. （5 references limited ）

Topics （choose one of them）

1. Film theorists have attributed different political and social functions to cinema. Does cinema inevitably confirm ideology, or can it contest ideology? How and why? Discuss in relation to at least two theorists and use filmic examples.

2. With reference to a specific film, compare and contrast Christian Metz’s and Laura Mulvey’s accounts of voyeurism, fetishism and identification. Which is more useful? How and why?

3. How does the Lacanian mirror stage theorize film spectatorship? Evaluate the success and application of Lacanian psychoanalysis to the writing of two film theorists with respect to cinema.

4. Treating Mulvey’s “Visual Pleasure” as a model for film analysis, develop an analysis of TWO or THREE selected sequences that exemplify the workings of film narrative as Mulvey describes them. What does your analysis allow you to argue?

Students must write their assignments in their own words. Whenever students take an idea or a passage, from another author, they must acknowledge their debt both by using quotation marks where appropriate and by proper referencing with footnotes or citations. （5 references limited ）