ENGL 10303

Welcome to the course website for ENGL 10303 sections .055 and .075, taught by Dr. Alexandra Edwards in Spring 2025. Here you’ll find all the information that usually goes in a syllabus.¹

What is this course about?

The “Hollywood studio system” refers to the period in American film history from roughly the 1920s to the 1950s, when the major film studios had a virtual monopoly on the film industry. During this time, the studios controlled every aspect of the movie business, including financing, production, distribution, and exhibition. The studio system was characterized by a highly organized and hierarchical structure that drove artistic and technical innovation but also encouraged conformity, commercialism, and censorship.

In this course, students will explore the technological, industrial, and cultural contexts of films from each of the five major and three major-minor studios of the era. Topics covered in the course include the studio system’s organization and structure, technological innovations, genre conventions, censorship, and the relationship between Hollywood and American culture. We will pay close attention to how the studio system represented issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality. Throughout the course, students will develop analytical and communication skills through class discussion, reading, writing, and research.

Who teaches this class?

Hi, I’m Dr. Edwards! I teach writing, film, and American literature in the English department at TCU.

I’m originally from St. Augustine, FL. I went to an arts magnet for high school, where I majored in theater for 3 years and creative writing for my final year.

I then moved to Atlanta to get my BA in English at a small liberal arts college, Oglethorpe University. Our mascot was the stormy petrel. Oglethorpe only had about 800 students, and I never took a class with more than 15 people. I have very fond memories of my time in undergrad (and a couple tattoos to commemorate those times). After college I had a bunch of random jobs, like paralegal, smoothie store clerk, and puppet theater manager.

I eventually got my MA in English at Villanova University and my PhD in English at the University of Georgia. My dissertation was about fans and fanfiction from 1890-1950, which meant I spent a lot of time reading about women in the 1890s who loved Walt Whitman. In 2023, I published an updated version of my dissertation as a book.

I have lived in Jacksonville, FL; Brooklyn; Atlanta; Philadelphia; Athens, GA; and now Fort Worth.

Land Acknowledgement

TCU is founded on the traditional and unceded territories of the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes. Native peoples from these and other tribes have lived in these lands and across Texas since time immemorial and in the present day. We recognize and mark the painful history of genocide and forced removal of Native peoples, and we honor the many diverse indigenous people still connected to this place.

The Wichita and Affiliated Tribes have lived for hundreds of years in a region stretching from what is now Kansas down to near Waco, Texas; including what eventually became the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. The Wichita, or Kirikirʔi:s, consisted of several bands of Caddoan-speaking peoples, including the Wichita, Waco, Tawakoni, Kichai (Keechi), Iscani, Taovaya and others.

The Caddo confederacy resided for centuries in lands located in portions of what became the states of Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas, with its western edges reaching into what would become the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex.

The Caddo included three large groups: the Cadohadacho (“Caddo” became a shortened form which was eventually applied to all three groups), the Natchitoches and the Hasinai (who inhabited east Texas).

Other tribes have come at different times to what is called north and east Texas, residing for varying periods. These include peoples of the Comanche, Kiowa, Cherokee, and Alabama-Coushatta nations, as well as many others.

After Texas worked with the United States for more than a century to expel Native Americans from its borders, the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex participated (along with other cities across the nation) in a federal effort to bring them back under the Indian Relocation Act of 1956, attempting to persuade Native Americans to assimilate into American society.

Today, tens of thousands of Native Americans live in the metroplex, representing over 200 tribal nations.