Explores how films about romantic love shape, reinforce, or challenge cultural norms of gender and sexuality. Focusing on romantic comedies, melodramas, and global reworkings of these genres, the course traces how constructions and critiques of romance appear in cinema from classical Hollywood to the present. Readings from feminist film theory, queer theory, and sociology guide discussions on spectatorship, heteronormativity, gender performativity, race and masculinity, and more.