PHIL 353 | Philosophy of Film and Performing Arts

This course surveys some of the fundamental philosophical questions that arise from the performing arts in general, and cinema in particular. What is a film? What does it have in common and how does it differ from other performing arts? How do these in turn differ from the other arts? What challenges do they pose to the traditional understanding of art? How do cinema and television differ? Other topics covered may include: the problem of identifying authorship in a collective enterprise such as a film or a theater production; the reasons and nature of our emotional engagement with movies or plays; the relation between film and society.