Below are descriptions for courses in the graduate program in Cinema and Media Studies (CMS). For further work in Cinema and Media Studies, students are also encouraged to investigate other courses taught by the Resource Faculty. Film screenings add three to four hours per week to class time for the majority of courses.

332. Italian Americana: Literature and Cinema (=CMST 232, GsHum, Ital 289/389):

A study of the history and culture of Italian-Americans through filmic and literary representations. Writers include Helen Barolini, Tina De Rosa, Giose Rimanelli, and Ed McBain (Savatore Lambino); directors include Coppola, Scorsese, Savoca, Cimino, and Ferrara. R. West. Spring. Not offered 2001-2002.

334. Le Cinéma Classique en France (=French 382):

Classic French cinema (from the earliest filmmakers to the beginnings of the New Wave) will be studied through the examples of ten movies, which influenced its history and represented the development of an esthetical movement: the French school before 1914 (Louis Feuillade’s "Fantômas"), the "avant-garde" of the 20s (Jean Epstein’s "La Chute de la maison Usher"), the surrealist cinema (Luis Buñuel’s "L’Age d’or"), the musical comedy (Rene Clair’s "Le Million"), the "100% talking" film (Sacha Guitry’s "Le Roman d’un tricheur"), the poetic realism (Jean Renoir’s "La Bête humaine", Marcel Carne "Le Jour se lève"), the cinema under the Occupation (Henri-Georges Clouzot’s "Le Corbeau"), the evocation of the Belle Epoque (Max Ophuls’ "Le Plaisir"), the revival of the literary adaptation (Robert Bresson’s "Journal d’un cure de campagne"). N. Herpe. Winter.

337. Eric Rohmer (=CMST 237, French 292):

The films of Rohmer will be studied as a new "Comedie humaine," offering a rich gallery of the faces of France from the 60s to the 90s, from "La Collectionneuse" to "Conte d’automne..." and, according to his first reviews in "Cahiers du cinema," as a cinematographic work which could rediscover in its own way the liberty of a literary creation (especially in "adaptations" like "La Marquise d’O" and "Perceval le Gallois"). This course will be taught in English. N. Herpe. Spring.

339. African-American Migration Narratives (=ENGL 454):

During the first half of the 20th century, millions of African Americans moved from the South to Northern cities in search of increased social, political and economic opportunities. This "Great Migration" dramatically shifted America’s racial demographics, and raised difficult questions about the role of African Americans in urban industrial modernity. This course considers the emergence and development of the African American migration narrative, a form which, as Farah Jasmine Griffin has argued, occupies a major place in 20th century African American cultural production. We will discuss how African American artists and intellectuals have documented and refigured the migration in a variety of media (literature, film, visual art, music) to serve their particular historical, aesthetic and political projects. We will pay particular attention to how intra-racial questions of class, color and gender inflect African American migration narratives produced at different historical moments. Texts include novels by Ralph Ellison (Invisible Man) and Toni Morrison (Jazz); essays by LeRoi Jones (Blues People) and Richard Wright (12 Million Black Voices); selections of jazz, blues and R & B music; paintings by Jacob Lawrence ("The Migration of the Negro" series); letters written by migrants; and films by Oscar Micheaux (Within Our Gates) and Julie Dash (Daughters of the Dust). J. Stewart. Winter.

34100. Film in India (=CMST 24100, Anth 20600/31100, Hist 26700/36700, SALC 20500/30500):

Considers the film world from just before Independence (1947) down to the present. Most attention will be paid to the Hindi film, especially to its "peculiar" features, for example, the song and dance. Emphasis is placed on reconstruction of film-related activities that can be taken as life practices from the standpoint of "elites" and "masses," "middle classes," men and women, people in cities and villages, governmental institutions, businesses, and the "nation." The course will rely on people’s notions of the everyday, festive days, paradise, arcadia and utopia to pose questions about how people try to realize their wishes and themselves through film. How film practices articulated with colonialism, nationalism, "socialist development," and, now, "free markets" will be a major concern. Students will be asked to familiarize themselves with existing approaches to Indian film against the background of more general approaches to film and the media. Some knowledge of Hindi desirable but not required (most films will be subtitled in English and have English synopses). R. Inden. Winter.

34300. Religion and Modernity in Film (=CMST 24300, ANTH 21900/32400, HIST 26800/36800):

Considers the problem of how popular films in the US, India, and Europe have represented the conventional religions relation to modernity: the idea of film practices ("youth culture") as constituting a secular religion alternative or antagonistic to the conventional religions and the recuperation and transformation of conventional religiosity in modernist, especially patriotic and science-fiction films as a national theology ("civil religion"). R. Inden. Autumn.

350. Eisenstein and Soviet Aesthetic Theory (=CMST 250, ArtH 375, ComLit 223/323, COVA 248, Russ 228/328):

Eisenstein’s career as a director covers twenty years of rapidly changing styles and techniques of film making; as a theorist, he responded to every topic posed by film history, and his cultural influence does not seem to weaken with years. Despite his fame, however, Eisenstein largely remains an unknown figure. Only part of his writings have been published and his debt, as well as his contribution, to major trends in 20th century thought remain largely unexplored. Approaching this versatile figure from the perspectives of film, theater, art history, comparative literature, Slavic studies, and art history, we will place Eisenstein’s work in the context of contemporary Soviet aesthetics–and Soviet aesthetics in the context of Eisenstein. Reading knowledge of Russian useful but not required. Y. Tsivian. Winter.

351. East/Central European Avant-garde (=CMST 251, ArtH 255/355, GnSlav 284/384, GsHum 280/380). PQ: Knowledge of one of the languages of the region (including French or German):

The avant-gardes of the "other" Europe are the mainstay of this course which focuses especially, but not exclusively, on the interwar avant-gardes of Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, and Yugoslavia. A comparative framework will be employed whenever lucrative to comprehend the East/Central European movements in the wider context of the European avant-garde. The course also traces the development and legacy (political, artistic) of these avant-gardes in their contemporary scenes. Plastic, verbal and performative arts (including film) are studied. M. Sternstein. Autumn.

370. Classical Film Theory (=CMST 270, ENGL 283/483, GS Hum 206):

This course examines basic questions associated with the film medium through the writings of some of its earliest and most influential theorists. Beginning with the question of what constitutes a "theoretical" or "philosophical" approach to film, we pursue a series of persistent issues. What is the nature of filmÕs relationship to reality? Are there "essential" features of the medium that determine its form? How do images and editing make meaning? We place writers (such as Vachel Lindsay, Hugo MŸnsterberg, Sergei Eisenstein, Siegfried Kracauer, Walter Benjamin, André Bazin) in historical and cultural terms, and use their work to frame our own theoretical questions. J. Naremore. Winter.

376. Beginning Photography (=CMST 276, COVA 240). PQ: COVA 101, 102, or consent of instructor. A camera and light meter are required:

Photography affords a relatively simple and accessible means for making pictures. Through demonstration, students are introduced to technical procedures and basic skills, and begin to establish criteria for artistic expression. Possibilities and limitations inherent in the medium are topics of classroom discussion. Class sessions and field trips to local exhibitions investigate the contemporary photograph in relation to its historical and social context. Course work culminates in a portfolio of works exemplary of the student’s understanding of the medium. Lab fee $40. L. Letinsky. Autumn, Winter.

377. Advanced Photography (=CMST 277, COVA 278). PQ: COVA 101 or 102, and 240 or 241, or consent of instructor

Throughout the quarter, students concentrate on a set of issues and ideas that expand upon their experience and knowledge, and that have particular relevance to them. All course work is directed towards the production of a cohesive body of either color or black-and-white photographs. An investigation of contemporary and historic photographic issues informs the students’ photographic practice and includes visits to local exhibitions, critical readings, darkroom techniques, and class and individual critiques. Lab fee $40. L. Letinsky. Winter.

378. Radical Interpretation on Stage and Screen (=CMST 278, ComLit 207/307, German 246/346, GsHum 246/346, MAPH, Music 222/302):

The history and aesthetics of radical interpretation of canonical works in theater, opera, film. Examination of aesthetic tracts (e.g. Appia, Artaud, Brecht, Peter Brooks), theory (Barthes, Derrida, E. Diamond, Foucault), as well as modern forays into radical interpretation (e.g. Derek Jarman/Marlowe’s Edward II, Patrice Chereau/Wagner’s Ring, Peter Sellers/Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Baz Luhrmann’s William Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet, Sally Potter’s Thriller, and recent work by the Wooster Group). D. Levin. Spring.

379. Musicals: Staging Everyday Worlds (=CMST 279, Anthro, ENGL 295/435, German, Music 227/305, GSHum 210/310):

When movie characters break into song, they express emotion and create community, comment on everyday life and escape or transcend it. Musicals straddle the utopian world of the screen and the popular, lay performances of high schools and community theaters. This course considers the genre’s formal, cultural, social, and performative dimensions (from its conventions of sound, dance, and color, to its representations of race, ethnicity, and cultural contact). Films will range from early American and European musicals (The Jazz Singer, Le Million, Three from the Gas Station, and Volga Volga) to Yiddish and immigrant musical theater (The Dybbuk and West-Side Story) to classic Hollywood films (Shall We Dance, Showboat, A Star Is Born, Oklahoma, and Singing in the Rain) to revisionist music films (Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Window Shopping, Killer of Sheep, Latcho Drom, Buena Vista Social Club). P. Bohlman and K. Trumpener. Spring.

383. Film Noir (=CMST 283).

The term "film noir" evokes images from a series of shadowy, seductive Hollywood pictures about private eyes, femmes fatales, criminal gangs, and lovers on the run. Almost every major American director since World War II has made at least one movie that could be called noir, and the classic noir thrillers of the 1940s continue to have a powerful hold on the contemporary imagination. This course will survey the history of the form, concentrating chiefly on the period between 1941 and 1958. The films screened will include major studio features such as Double Indemnity and Laura, B-pictures such as Detour and Gun Crazy, and "neo-noirs" such as Devil in a Blue Dress. The lectures and discussions will emphasize several important issues, including the history and function of "noir" as a critical term; the literary sources of American film noir; the changing patterns of Hollywood censorship and politics since the 1940s; the evolution of film style and technology; the economics of film production and their relation to critical discrimination; and the cross-media and cross-cultural implications of noir narratives. Readings for the course will include two volumes of history and criticism on film noir, an encyclopedic reference work, and a novel by Raymond Chandler. Undergraduates will write two take-home essay exams and a short (7Ð10 page) paper. Graduates may have a few extra reading assignments involving books or essays on noir, and they will write one take-home exam and either two 7Ð10 page papers or a single 18Ð20 page paper. J. Naremore. Winter.

400. Methods and Issues in Cinema Studies (=ArtH 399, ENGL 480, MAPH 330).:

This course offers an introduction to ways of reading, writing on, and teaching film. The focus of discussion will range from methods of close analysis and basic concepts of film form, technique and style; through industrial/critical categories of genre and authorship (studios, stars, directors); through aspects of the cinema as a social institution, psycho-sexual apparatus and cultural practice; to the relationship between filmic texts and the historical horizon of production and reception. Films discussed will include works by Griffith, Lang, Hitchcock, Deren, Godard. T. Gunning. Autumn.

474. Modernity and the Sense of Things (=CMST 274, ENGL 292/692, GendSt 292):

This course will ENGLage the discourse of modernity as an account of the subject/object relation that foregrounds, on the one hand, the history of the senses, and, on the other, the fate of "things." Modernity has come to name a mode of experience: experience of the disembedding of social relations as of traditional definitions of gender and sexuality, the changed fabric of built space and everyday life, the emergence of technical media like photography and film, the promises of mass consumption. Within this experience of modernity, what happens to the definition of experience itself? How do mechanization, marketing, advertising, the glamorization of commodities change the character of "things"? And how does the changed character of "things" alter structures of perception and subjectivity? What are the real losses entailed by these transformations, what are the possibilities that have yet to be realized? The course will begin with classic sociological accounts of modernity in work by Simmel, Weber, Veblen, Lukács. We will then track some key problems through accounts of the material, cultural and sensory manifestations of modernity, with a particular focus on how the cinema was seen to crystallize the changed experience of things and people. This will include work by Giedion, Kracauer, Benjamin, Mumford, Stein, Gorky, Epstein, Woolf, Barnes, Heidegger. B. Brown and M. Hansen. Winter.

485. History of International Cinema, Part I, Silent Era (=CMST 285, ArtH 285/385, ENGL 293/487, MAPH 336). PQ: This is the first part of a two-quarter course:

The two parts may be taken individually, but taking them in sequence is helpful. The aim of this course is to introduce students to what was singular about the art and craft of silent film. Its general outline is chronological. We will discuss main national schools and international trends of filmmaking. Y. Tsivian. Autumn.

486. History of International Cinema, Part II, Sound Cinema to 1960 (=CMS 286, ArtH 286/386, ENGL 296/489, MAPH 337). PQ: This is the second part of the international survey history of film covering the sound era up to 1960. It is strongly recommended that students take the first section first:

This survey will deal with issues of film form, industry organization and film culture during three decades, focusing on the crystallization of the Classical Hollywood Film as a key issue. But international alternatives to Hollywood will also be discussed, from the unique forms of Japanese cinema to movements like Italian Neo-realism and the beginnings of the New Wave in France. Film style, from the classical scene break down to the introduction of deep focus, stylistic experimentation and technical innovation (sound, wide screen, location shooting) will form the center of the course, while attention will also be paid to the development of a film culture. Texts will include Bordwell and Thompson, Film History: An Introduction, and works by Bazin, Belton, Sitney, Godard and others. Screenings will include films by Hitchcock, Welles, Rossellini, Bresson, Ozu, Antonioni, and Renoir. T. Gunning. Winter.

615. Seminar: Classical Music and Film (=Music 477):

This seminar will explore the use of classical music in film, ranging from the silent era to present times. We will address questions of the changing function and cultural significance of classical music from a time when it primarily carried its own associations into film to the time when film appears to carry its association into the music. Seminar sessions will typically consist of discussing the weekly screening (ranging from The Shining to Shine) in conjunction with larger theoretical issues raised in the weekly readings (including excerpts from Marks’s Music and the Silent Film, Chion’s Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen, Brown’s Overtones and Undertones, Flinn’s, Strains of Utopia, Cook’s Analyzing Musical Multimedia, Gorbman’s Unheard Melodies, etc.). B. Hoeckner. Winter.

616. Seminar: The Sentimental (=ENGL 639):

This seminar will give advanced students a chance to pursue research and criticism over a range of periods and objects of study. The broad topic will be the theory and practice of the sentimental over the course of nearly three centuries, on stage, page, and screen. In addition to looking at the philosophical treatments of the sentiments in Shaftesbury, Hume, and Smith, and critical discussions of the "sentimental" as a literary mode (in Schiller), we will look at sentimental comedy, sentimental fiction, and sentimental cinema. Since the sentimental is inevitably a mode of mediated affective exchange, the place of the media and of translation between media, will have special importance in the course. Primary works by such figures Steele, Sterne, MacKenzie, Charlotte Smith, William Hall Brown, the poets of sensibility and Romanticism, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Dickens, D.W. Griffith, Frank Capra, Douglas Sirk, and others. Secondary works from the burgeoning field of "sensibility studies." Seminar presentation and paper. J. Chandler. Spring.

640. Seminar: 19th Century Cinema (=ArtH 452, ENGL 636). PQ: Consent of Instructor:

Although frequently described as the art form of the twentieth century, cinema was in fact invented at the end of the nineteenth century and is in many ways the product of that century in terms of technology, narrative and visual forms, social and political contexts, and philosophical and aesthetic preoccupations. This seminar will explore the nineteenth century visual forms that contributed to the cinema (photography, panoramas, dioramas, stereoscopy, magic lantern shows); its mechanical invention and institutional origins; its place within Nineteenth century amusements (vaudeville, melodrama, dance, comic strips). The place of the earliest cinema within what Walter Benjamin terms the "topoi of modernity" (the modern urban streets, the department store, the world expositions, ) will also be explored. Screening of the first films will be undertaken to determine aesthetic strategies, genres, and relations to other forms. Students should have some background in nineteenth century culture and some idea of aspects they would like to research in relation to cinema. Works by Simmel, Benjamin, Crary, Hansen, Singer, and others will be read. T. Gunning. Spring.

646. Seminar: South African Literature in English: Colonial, Postcolonial, and other Canonizations and Contestations (=ComLit 400, ENGL 667):

This seminar will examine the legitimization of South African English Literature in the colonial, neocolonial, and (maybe) postcolonial context, as well as the objects of that process--texts that have been established as legitimately South African, or those subject to contestation by competing social, racial, and cultural constituencies. Our texts will include those by authors in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century colonial period (Schreiner, Haggard, Plaatje, Stephen Black...), the neocolonial Union, 1910-1948 (Herbert Dhlomo, Wiliam Plomer, Modikwe Dikobe...), as well as the response to apartheid (1950-1994), from the Sophiatown generation (Nkosi, Mphahlele, Modisane, Gordimer, Fugard...) and beyond (Ndebele, Coetzee, Bessie Head), and the writers of plays and stories of the so-called Soweto generation, and the present post-anti-apartheid (if not post-apartheid period), especially the work of minority ("Indian," "colored") South Africans, such as Achmat Dangor and Ismael Mahomed. We will also examine the ways in which criticism and theory, both local (Dhlomo, Nkosi, Ndebele, Coetzee...) and abroad (Bhabha, Fanon, Chakrabarty, Gramsci, Laclau, Meaghan Morris...), traverse, affirm, and undermine the applicability of post/colonial terminology to South Africa. Requirements: oral presentation, short archival paper (using NorthwesternÕs extensive collection as well as U of C), and long research paper. PQ: Ph.D. course; interested MAÕs must consult instructor in AUTUMN quarter. L. Kruger. Winter.

675. Seminar: Frankfurt School on Cinema, Modernity, and Mass Culture (=ENGL 687):

In this seminar, we will consider debates on film and mass culture in the tradition of the Frankfurt School (or, more precisely, Critical Theory), focusing mainly on Siegfried Kracauer, Walter Benjamin, and Theodor W. Adorno. Discussions will revolve around the following issues: the impact of technology on artistic practices as well as the institution of art; consumerism and new forms of subjectivity and reception; ideology and the "culture industry"; the transformation of the "public sphere" and the democratization of culture; the role of gender and sexuality. We will consider these debates both in their historical, political, and philosophical contexts and in their relevance to current debates in film theory and cultural studies. Texts will be read in translation, but reading knowledge of German would be highly useful. Prerequisite: background in film theory or at least one course in cinema studies. M. Hansen. Spring.