HIST 200
History and Film
Fall 2025
Course Description
Calendar Description for HIST 200
An introduction to issues in modern cultural history through the study of selected narratives and documentary films with supplementary reading, lectures, and discussions. This course helps students to place films in historical context by teaching them how to analyze films like a historian and understand the historical significance of films. Assigned work may include essays, midterms, a final exam, and online or in-person discussion elements. Students will be able to develop research abilities, visual literacy, and writing skills through analytical film responses and other written assignments. Students will also be better able to determine the historical accuracy of films, and identify how cinema relates to cultural, social, and political discourses and debates. This course will introduce you to the experience of viewing motion pictures through the lens of a historian, with the goal of helping you to critically assess the historical films that you watch. After the first week's introductory Module (that does not have an Assigned Film), we will watch a different movie each week that is representative of the topic that will be our focus that week. Such broad themes as race and race relations, gender, religion, politics, social class, war, humour, and memory (i.e., how certain periods of time are remembered) will be explored in this course. The moving picture has been with us for nearly a century and a half, and although it is largely considered a form. of entertainment, it is also the means by which many people have learned what they understand about history. The course will be largely about how people learn history through film and to consider what film adds to our understanding of the past. Questions we will probe include: How do films convey a sense of the past? How important is historical accuracy in films? Can film tell the truth about history? Should films be taken seriously as history? These – and other questions – will form. the basis of our explorations in this course.
The purpose of this course is to help students be able to place films in historical context by teaching them how to “read” a film like a historian. To this end, students will engage in writing critical analytical film reviews (with a focus on such overarching themes as race, gender and social class), discuss films online, and write assignments that demonstrate historical thinking in their analysis of films.
Learning Outcomes
Upon completion of the course, students will be able to:
analyze film within its historical context,
determine how accurate (or inaccurate) different films depict the past,
develop and hone research, visual literacy, and writing skills through analytical film responses and other assignments,
build confidence in your communication skills through online discussion engagement, and
identify how cinema relates to cultural, social, and political discourses and debates.