Randy Laist

Cinema U Randy Laist

Movies about college have been a staple of American cinema since the silent era. College movies such as The Paper Chase (1973), Animal House (1978), and Higher Learning (1995) provide insight into the ways that college has been variously imagined as a middle class rite of passage, a landscape of hedonistic fantasy, a microcosm of societal hypocrisy, a repressive system of deindividuation, and a carnivalesque holiday from "real life." This unique volume examines the representation of college and campus life in movies. Chapters discuss the extent to which movies about college inform the expectations, perceptions, and attitudes of students, faculty, and the public. Cinema U includes close analysis of individual films as well as broader examinations of the manner in which college films have addressed issues such as race, class, gender, technology, sexuality, and cultural difference.