Silent Cinema

• The Early Years of Cinema: Origins and Survival
• Early Cinema: The Cinema of Attractions
• Transitional Cinema
• The Hollywood Studio System
• The Worldwide Spread of Cinema
• Comedy
• Germany: The Weimar Years
• The Soviet Union and the Russian Émigrés
• Documentary and Avant-Garde
• The Heyday of the Silents

Sound Cinema: Classical

• The Introduction of Sound
• The Triumph of the Studio System
• Censorship and Self-Regulation
• The Sound of Music
• Technology and Innovation
• Cinema and Genre
• The Musical
• Germany: Nazism and After
• The Popular Art of French Cinema
• Italy from Fascism to Neo-Realism
• The Classical Cinema of Japan

Sound Cinema: Contemporary

• Sex and Sensation
• French Cinema and The French New Wave and “The 400 Blows” from Criterion
• The Black Presence in American Cinema
• The New Hollywood and American Auteurs
• Dreams and Nightmares in the Hollywood Blockbuster
• The Resurgence of Cinema