Why Screenplayology?

Welcome to Screenplayology: An Online Study for American Screenplay Studies.

As a graduate student in 2006, I was charged by my chair with the task of re-developing and teaching an existing course in the curriculum called Script Analysis. Wishing to bring a new level of academic rigor and scholarship to the course, I sought scholarly sources on the subject of screenplay studies. I was shocked to discover that few existed and most were difficult to find. My first discovery was Claudia Sternberg’s Written for the Screen: The American Motion Picture Screenplay as Text, and this text immediately became the template of my work. Little did I know in 2006, however, that I was but a single soldier in a building movement. Recent years have seen the publication of important texts, such as Kevin Alexander Boon’s Script Culture and the American Screenplay and Steven Maras’ Screenwriting: History, Theory and Practice, as well as the creation of the Journal of Screenwriting, the first academic journal dedicated to screenplay studies. Academic recognition of the screenplay is on the rise. Continue reading

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