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COMM 2250: Film Studies: Home

For the final project for this class, you will be writing a paper about one of the films from your course textbook. Your analysis will need to be well researched, incorporating several types of information. This guide points you towards resources that will help you find the sources you need for this assignment.

Historical Context

Scholarly books
Encylopedias

Recommended Search Tools: library catalog; Gale Virtual Reference Library

Film Criticism and Scholarly Analysis

DVD liner notes
Magazine article
Scholarly articles
Chapters from scholarly books
Scholarly books

Recommended Search Tools: library catalog; JSTOR; MLA

Biographical Information

Biographies of director, actor,
IMDB profile
Encyclopedia articles

Recommended Search Tools: library catalog; Gale Virtual Reference Library; google

Film Reviews

contemporary reviews (in newspapers usually)

Recommended Search Tools: Metacritic; Nexis Uni; "Find a Journal by Title" tool

Example

Library Resources

Do the Right Thing (DVD of the film)
Spike Lee by Laurie Lanzen Harris (a biography of the filmmaker)
"But compared to what? Reading realism, representation, and essentialism in 'School Daze,' 'Do the Right Thing', and the Spike Lee Discourse" by Wahneema Lubiano. In Representing Blackness: Issues in Film and Video. (chapter in a book)
"Right Thing: Sizzling City" by Hal Hinson for The Washington Post (review of the film)
Race and Ethnicity in America: A Concise History, ed. by Ronald Bayor (book about race relations in the U.S.)
"Spike Lee and the Sympathetic Racist" by Dan Flory (scholarly journal article)

Web Resources

"Spike Lee" (IMDB entry)
"Do the Right Thing" (Wikipedia entry)
"The Enduring Urgency of Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing at Thirty" by Richard Brody (article in The New Yorker)

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Last Updated: Jan 26, 2022 1:08 PM
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