SU English Department - Outstanding Students' Essays in Cinema Studies

 

The following essays were composed in courses currently taught at Salisbury University. Dr. Elsie Walker created this database because she was inspired by her students' work. Over the coming years, Walker and her colleagues, Drs. Dave Johnson and Ryan Conrath, will add more to this collection. These essays reflect a range of levels and ambitions, but they are united in representing some of the most finely detailed work produced by our film students at Salisbury University. For more information on the Film Concentration program at SU, please visit http://www.salisbury.edu/english/film/

Recent Submissions

  • Mirror (1975): Dreamscape Interpretations 

    Giggey, Margaret (2021-04)
    Adaptation in film is traditionally thought of as taking a written work and translating it into the moving elements of the cinema; however, a reciprocal phenomenon can also occur—adaptation of film into another artform. ...

  • Persepolis: Held Within the Grip of Both Now and Then 

    Marshall, Bailey (2021-03)
    An analysis of Marjane Satrapi's film PERSEPOLIS written for the Cinema of Exile course at Salisbury University.

  • An Ongoing Battle: Emily Dickinson and Adaptation 

    Murray, Siobhan (2020-12-16)
    In A Quiet Passion, Terrence Davies grapples with Emily Dickinson’s poetry and offers an explanation for her life of isolation. Through the themes in Dickinson’s poetry and her obsession with “the looming man”, the author ...

  • Soundwalk Assignment 

    Pace, Christian (2019-02-15)
    This paper is the record of the student's "soundwalk". The purpose of a soundwalk is to develop skills of listening to and hearing sounds of all life at a heightened level. This feeds into being able to hear everything in ...

  • Communication is the Weapon, Living is the Result 

    Marshall, Bailey (2019)
    This paper was developed from a "mystery screening", where the student had a couple of days to develop the essay after experiencing the film for the first time. The purpose of a mystery screening is to test the skills of ...

  • Bodies and Binaries in "Black Swan" 

    Jones, Hannah (2016)
    The horror film, like other genres, has its characteristic conventions—a strong female protagonist, a sort of “monster,” gory spectacles, emphasis on sound, and the prominence of sex or sexuality, to name a few. However, ...

  • "An Inconvenient Truth:" A Documentary Film Where the Ethos, Logos, and Pathos All Depend on One Man 

    Booker, Dacey (2015)
    An Inconvenient Truth, 2006’s Oscar-winning documentary on global warming, is arguably one of the most popular films of its kind in the last decade. Among the highest grossing documentaries of all time, the movie centers ...

  • The role of editing in the success of Steven Spielberg's "Jaws" 

    Reynolds, Kevin
    Editing presents a great opportunity for filmmakers to construct their films in a variety of ways. According to David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, the decisions made during the editing period help to “build the film’s ...

  • “If you can’t fix it, you gotta stand it”: "Brokeback Mountain" and the western genre 

    Swinney, Jake
    There are many common associations that come with the western genre: cowboy hats, boots, spurs, horses, and a rugged hero, just to name a few. Classic westerns, like John Ford’s _Stagecoach_, have programmed us to have ...

  • The aural identity of George in Tom Ford’s "A Single Man" 

    Reeb, Celeste
    Tom Ford’s directorial debut, _A Single Man_ (2009), was widely acclaimed at film festivals across the globe. The film earned him several nominations, including Best Original Score at the Golden Globes, and The Golden Lion ...