a variety of postings over the months convinces me that others on the list have students not unlike mine and that we share certain pedagogical problems . . . that encourages me to ask for feedback on a bibliographical matter . . . in my intro to film course i often assign research projects so students can develop more familiarity with some corner of cinema than an intro class can provide . . . problem is that ive been pretty unsuccessful in finding print resources [books and journal articles] on the right level . . . virtually all my students take "intro to film" as one option for a soph level required humanities course, after which they tend to go their own professional ways . . .none of them are film [or lit] majors, and almost none are even liberal arts majors . . . they have very little liberal arts background and close to no experience reading any of the kinds of discourse that characterizes serious work in the field . . . . . . the stuff i wish they could read--say the kind of stuff that generally appears in CINEMA JOURNAL, WIDE ANGLE, FILM QUARTERLY, even SCREENis totally beyond them . . . even parts of the bordwell or kawin textbooks drive them crazy . . . as a result they tend to find mass market books, often full of glossy pictures and anecdotes, that offer precious little in the way of criticism, history, or analysis . . . what I'm looking for are suggestions for works that can be taken seriously as part of a study of cinema while still being accessible to a starting student whos willing to make a concerted effort . . . perhaps an example will help: on the topic of "women and film" [or feminist criticism] i have tried to assign penley, doane, linda williams, etc [knowing in advance that de lauretis, silverman, bergstrom would never fly] only to find eventually and dismayingly--that even such relatively more accessible writers such as modleski and even e.a. kaplanwhose book is meant precisely to introduce such students to complex issuesare largely unintelligible except to the very best of my students . . . the kind of book they CAN read is rosens POPCORN VENUS or haskells REVERENCE TO RAPE but both of those books are by now two [or more] critical generations old . . . . . . so here, after this windy pre-amble, is my question cum proposal: can the members of this list help put together a kind of basic bibliography for cinema studies that will serve the needs of beginning non-specialist students? . . . if we can do that--and no one else volunteers to do the book-keeping-- i will gladly keep track of the suggestions and perhaps post them to the list with up-dates as seems appropriate . . . some categories in which i myself hope for helpmerely exemplary, very sloppily arrayed, and included just because i happen to have used them in my classesare listed below . . . but other suggested categories as well as suggestions for books and articles in them, are very welcome, as are comments about the project as a whole CATEGORIES: silent film / screwball comedy / film acting feminism and film / high vs. low culture auteur theory / film and video / montage theory westerns / suture / continuity & continuity editing soviet film theory / film noir / the movie musical documentary / cinematic narration / genres slapstick comedy / romantic com. / melodrama gender issues in cinema / film &/vs. drama voyeurism / horror films / the "apparatus" mike frank p.s. i suspect that it makes the most sense to post all responses to the list, but if anyone needs to contact me off-list I'm at <[log in to unmask]> ---- To signoff SCREEN-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF SCREEN-L in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask]