Screen and the body

This unit focuses on the relationships between the screen and the body and mind. It shows how vision, hearing and touch, as well as other affective and embodied responses, contribute to our engagement with the moving image. The unit revises a range of critical perspectives in screen studies which may include scholarship on emotions, affect, cognitive comprehension, memory and ethical reasoning. Drawing on approaches from genre theory, performance studies and gender studies the unit also considers the diverse ways bodies are presented on screen, and the artistic, cultural and political consequences this creates. These positions are illustrated by a variety of screen texts, which demonstrate the role of the body on and in front of the screen.  By keeping bodies and the senses at the centre of its inquiry, the unit demonstrates how the screen image moves viewers and to what effects.