- Posted: 3 marzo, 2026
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3 NEW AMERICAN CULTURAL STUDIES COURSES COMING IN April!
3 New American Cultural Studies Coming in April!
Hollywood Dreams and Nightmares: The 1960s and 1970s
April 22-June 24, 7:00-8:30 pm
Explore a vibrant era of creativity and change in Hollywood, when the film industry turned dreams and ideals into unforgettable stories. This course examines how cinema reflected social movements, youth culture, and evolving ideas about gender roles and diversity in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s.
Discover how “Old Hollywood” became “New Hollywood” and how these films captured the hopes, aspirations, and unique perspectives of their time. A fascinating experience for anyone interested in film and American culture.
Professor: Michael Engle
Women in American Science Fiction Cinema
April 21-June 23, 7:00-8:30
Sci-Fi films offer a fertile ground for imaginary creatures and worlds, which are nonetheless metaphors for very real anxieties, fears, and desires. This course will examine how women’s place in the realm of science fiction filmmaking has evolved over the last 70 years, both in front and behind the camera.
We will begin by looking at a wide range of female characters, from doting mothers and sensible mediators to fierce heroines, from monstrous vamps to brilliant scientists. As well we will examine the concerns they represent or counteract, such as foreign invaders, unsettling imaginary “others,” uncertainties regarding what is real and what is simulacra, dread of nuclear annihilation and existential conundrums brought on by technological progress.
We will also reflect on how these scenarios, characters, and plots vary when it is a woman at the helm, if in fact they do. To tackle this question, we will pay special attention to films directed, produced and/or written by women in the last twenty years.
Professor: Michael Engle
The Space Between Us
What does art do to the distance between people?
This course traces a line from Helen Levitt’s lyrical photographs of New York street life in the 1940s to the tender, participatory works of Felix Gonzalez-Torres and beyond — pausing along the way to look carefully at works that changed what art could be and do. Moving through photography, minimalism, conceptual art, identity-based practice, and activist art, each session builds a picture of post-war American art as something restless, contested, and very much alive — told through the full range of voices that shaped it.
No prior knowledge of art necessary — only a readiness to observe, reflect, and discuss the artworks in English.
Two visits anchor the course in direct experience: a trip to the Mapfre Foundation to spend time with Levitt’s New York streets, and a visit to the Reina Sofía Museum for Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Sweet Revenge — the exhibition that bookends our journey and brings its central question into sharp, moving focus.
By the end, the most compelling question turns out to be not a formal one but a human one: who are we to each other, and what can a work of art do about it?
Professor: Kae Newcomb
Información y consultas
Secretaría del Departamento de Inglés
Email: engdept@iie.es o llamando al 91 319 81 84/82 75, de 9:00 a 18:00
