CIN260: The Global Romantic Comedy

Instructor: Carrie Reese

This course combines romance and comedy at a global level, investigating the construction of both
romance and comedy in different cinemas and cultures around the world. Drawing from the
anthropological notion of kinship systems, or the way that familial relationships are culturally organized,
we’ll look at how cultures have distinct constructs of romance, comedy, and courtship. From these
cultural patterns stem expectations of what the romantic comedy might look like and what topics it
might tackle. Students will learn how a rom-com plot is constructed, why cinema is an ideal medium for
portraying the romantic comedy, how different cinemas around the world interpret the rom-com genre,
and what a radical rom-com might look like.