ENG 3310 - Fall 2026 - Peebles

This course explores how animation makes — and unmakes — the boundaries that shape human life. Moving from early experiments in motion to contemporary global features, we study animation as a medium uniquely suited to visualizing connection and disconnection: between humans and the nonhuman world, between humans and other humans, between humans and themselves, and between people and their sense of home, belonging, and identity. Each unit asks how animated form (line, texture, timing, sound, design, and transformation) reshapes familiar genres such as fantasy, horror, science fiction, coming-of-age, and documentary, and how those genres help audiences think about violence, war, prejudice, and the “superficial” categories that divide communities. We will analyze how animated films represent structural harm (policing, nationalism, gendered constraints, extraction) alongside practices of care, witness, and repair. Readings in film and animation theory will provide concepts for close reading and argumentation, while screenings span multiple countries, techniques (hand-drawn, stop-motion, CGI, hybrid), and historical moments.