i once again find that i need to turn to screen-L with a classroom question among the classes i teach is an intro to cinema studies course taken entirely by first year students with absolutely no background either in film study or in academic conventions . . . i'm eager to get them to start reading in cinema studies, and [importantly] to learn how to write about cinema, by assigning good solid essays that deal with any aspect of the field and are [with some hard work] accessible to total novices . . . but i find that almost everything i know -- everything in the anthologies or the journals -- requires a degree of sophistication that my students don't come close to having: concepts and terms such as "representation," "ideological," "the gaze," "frankfurt school," "semiotic," "overdetermined," "postmodern," and the like so dot our texts -- are are so much taken for granted by experienced readers -- that my students can barely get through a single paragraph . . . of course i could explain all of these terms and concepts, but they are so common in our essays and play such a structuring role that in effect i'd have to explain the whole essay to the class which would eliminate the whole point of the assignment the most obvious alternative is to assign an intro textbook - and these in fact do operate on the level that i'm looking for . . . but textbooks don't work the way essays work, and represent a kind of discourse that i'm not interested in modeling for my students . . . so, i'm wondering if any screen-L folks can suggest respectable essays [or books] on some aspect of our field [especially material that raises larger theoretical, conceptual, or methodological questions] that someone fresh out of high school might be able to read and understand thanks in advance for any suggestions mike ---- For past messages, visit the Screen-L Archives: http://bama.ua.edu/archives/screen-l.html