|
|
Graduate Program | Graduate Courses || Recent Courses | Dissertations ||
Undergrad Courses | Undergrad Program || Summer Courses
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.
|
Graduate Course Descriptions, 2002-2003
|
30900. Queer Representation in Film before Stonewall (=CMST 20900, GNDR 22700/32700).
This course examines the representation of queer sexuality and culture in classical Hollywood
films from silent film to 1970. The course will pay particular attention to the changing modes
of Hollywood production, the impact of censorship before, during and after the Hays Code, the
shifting codes used to connote queerness (even when it was prohibited) and the ways different
audiences read these codes. We will analyze these representational shifts in relationship to
broader changes in the understanding of gender and same-sex desire. Finally, Hollywood films
will be compared to experimental film and early German cinema.
R. Gregg. Autumn.
32900. New German Cinema. (=CMST 22900/32900, GRMN 24000/34800):
PQ: Advanced standing. Introduction to the poetics and politics of some of the
major works of postwar German Cinema, including films by Wolfgang Staudte, Helma Sanders-Brahms,
Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Werner Herzog, Alexander Kluge, Wim Wenders, Michael Verhoeven, and
Monika Treut. In English. All films with English subtitles.
D. Levin. Spring.
33800. The French Exception in Hollywood (=CMST 23800, FREN 22900/32900)
From the the veterans of the 10s (Maurice Tourneur, Louis Gasnier) until the "visiting auteurs"
of the 70s (Louis Malle), we will study the difficult integration of the French filmmakers in
the United States. We will mostly focus on the period of Word War II, with the exile of some
leading artists of the thirties (Ren Clair, Jean Renoir, Julien Duvivier, Max Ophuls), in
order to analyse how these filmmakers follow an "European dream" within the limits of the
American industry. Staff. Spring.
34100. Film in India (=CMST 24100, Anth 20600/31100, Hist 26700/36700, SALC 20500/30500):
Considers the film world from 1975 to the present. Most attention
will be paid to the Hindi film and especially to its "peculiar" features, for
example, the song and dance. Emphasis is placed on the reconstruction of
film-related activities which can be taken as life practices from the stand point
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 nationalism, first
in the wake of a failing "socialist pattern of development," and, then, with
"liberalization," of the promise or threat "free markets" would bring, will be
the major concern. A brief look will also be taken at how film is related to
other media such as television. Some comparisons with Hollywood will be made.
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 (films will be
subtitled in English and have English synopses). One film per week will be shown.
Requirement: One 10-page paper, written in two stages. R. Inden.
Autumn.
34300. Religion and Modernity in Film (=CMST 24300, ANTH 21900/32400, HIST
26800/36800):
Considers the problem of how popular films in the US, Europe, and
Asia 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"). One to two
films per week will be shown. Requirement: One 10-page paper, written in two
stages. R. Inden. Winter.
34701. Soviet Art and Film Culture of the 1920s. (=CMST 24700/34701, SLAV 26700/36700, ARTH 28100/38100).
This course will consider Soviet "montage cinema" of the twenties in the context of
coeval aesthetic projects in other arts. How did Eisensteins theory and practice of
"intellectual cinema" connect to Fernand Leger and Vladimir Tatlin? What did Meyerholds
"biomechanics" mean for film makers? Among other figures and issues, we will address
Dziga Vertov and Constructivism, German Expressionism and Aleksandr Dovzhenko, Formalist
poetics and FEKS directors. The course will be film-intensive (up to three hours of
out-of-class viewings per week). Y. Tsivian. Winter.
36500. The Films of Max Ophls (=CMST 26500, ENGL )
Max Ophls has variously been discussed as master of the long take and mise-en-scene,
of theatrical adaptation and self-conscious narration; as director of the "woman's film,"
of melodramatic pathos and irony; and as artist and analyst of erotic and cinematic --
obsession. Following the trajectory of his life and work from Germany through France, Italy,
Hollywood, and back to Europe, we will consider Ophls' films in terms of style and genre;
the question of his gynocentric aesthetic and the feminist debate surrounding it;
filmmaking and reception under the conditions of exile and industrial production.
Films include Liebelei, La Signora di tutti, Letter from an Unknown Woman, Caught,
The Reckless Moment, La Ronde, Madame de..., Le Plaisir, and Lola Monts.
(M.A. students require permission of instructor.)
M. Hansen. Winter
37600. Beginning Photography (=CMST 27600, COVA 24000):
PQ: COVA 10100, 10200,
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 $60. L. Brown, Spring. L.
Letinsky, Autumn, Winter.
37700. Advanced Photography (=CMST 27700, COVA 27800):
PQ: COVA 10100 or 10200, and 24000 or 24100, 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 $60. L.
Letinsky. Spring.
38700. Early Video Art, 1968-1979 (=COVA 30100):
A survey of the first wave of video art in the U.S. We will be screening and
discussing the first ten years of video produced by artists and activists, primarily
on the east coast and in California, including Bruce Nauman, John Baldessari, Martha Rosler,
Eleanor Antin and Top Value Television. Because of relatively inexpensive equipment
and inherently synced sound, video democratized the production of moving images, allowing
artists to challenge imagined limits of broadcast television and encultured gender
representations. Much of the work we will be looking at in this new medium was made as
an auxillary activity by artists already working in sculpture, conceptual art, and performance.
We will analyze the work as it relates both to this art context and to the socio-political
climate of the seventies. Lab Fee $30. H. Mirra. Spring.
37800. Theories of Media (=CMST 27800, ARTH 26000/36000, COVA 25400, ENGL 12800/32800, MPAH 33000):
This course explores the fundamental questions in the
interdisciplinary study of visual culture: What are the cultural (and by the same
token, natural) components in the structure of visual experience? What is seeing?
What is a spectator? What is the difference between visual and verbal
representation? How do visual media exert power, elicit desire and pleasure, and
construct the boundaries of subjective and social experience in the private and
public spheres? How do questions of politics, gender, sexuality, and ethnicity
inflect the construction of visual semiosis? W. J. T. Mitchell.
Winter.
39200. Philosophy & Visual Culture. (=CMST 29200/39200, ARTH 26900/36900, PHIL 31000):
J. Snyder and J. Conant. Winter.
40000. Methods and Issues in Cinema Studies (=ArtH 39900, ENGL 48000, MAPH
33000):
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. M. Hansen. Autumn.
46200. Brechtian Representations: Theatre, Theory, Cinema (=ENGL 44500, CMLT 40500, GRMN 32900):
This course will examine the contribution of Brecht, the most influential playwright
of the twentieth century and its principal theatre theorist, to the practice and theory
of theatre and cinema. We will pay particular attention to the relationships between
theory and practice in Brecht's own work so as to clarify the use and significance of
terms that are both concepts and techniques--epic theatre, Verfremdung, gest, historicizing,
refunctioning the apparatus, and the formation of the critical audience--and go on to consider
the influence (and refunctioning) of Brechtian theory and practice in the more recent work
of playwrights (Heiner Mller, Peter Weiss,RW Fassbinder, Edward Bond, Athol Fugard, ...),
film-makers (Jean-Luc Godard, Alexander Kluge, Fassbinder, Djibril Diop Mambety ...), and
cultural theorists (Barthes, Adorno, ...). L.Kruger. Spring.
48500. History of International Cinema, Part I, Silent Era (=CMST 28500, ARTH
28500/38500, ENGL 29300/48700, MAPH 33600):
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.
48600. History of International Cinema, Part II, Sound Era (=CMST
28600, ArtH 28600/38600, COVA 26500, Engl 29600/48900, MAPH 33700):
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. The course will cover the period from the advent
of sound (late 1920s) through the 1960s (the last decade of 'classical' film culture)
regarded in conjunction with major trends in film theories of the time.
Y. Tsivian. Winter.
48800. Neuronal Aesthetics. (=ARTH 45500).
Recently seeing has become an even more amazing process. findings concrning the
internal circuitry of the visual brain, insights into brain architecture, biology,
psychology, new media, and computation suggest that the domain of aesthetics must be
re-defined. tfhis seminar will explore how neurology, optical technology, and both old
and new media do and might intersect to create a new area of study. B. Stafford. Winter.
59900. Reading and Research: CMS:
PQ: Consent of instructor. Staff. Autumn, Winter,
Spring.
64400. Problematics in Asian Cinema: City & Speed in Asian Cinema. (=JAPN 44800)
The course examines relations between the city, cinematic apparatus, and affects of modernity
in Asian cinemas. Hyperbole, displacement, commodity, anonymity, loss, fetish, and speed are
among the tropes of urban life that we examine within, and as a product of, Asian cinemas of
the modern. Wartime Shanghai, imperial Tokyo, mid-century Bombay, late-century Hong-Kong --we
examine the familiar and foreign Asian city as site of cinematic production and consumption
in the local, national, and global contexts of various Asian cinemas.
J. Hall. Spring. Undergraduates may register only with consent of the instructor.
65100. Topics In Film Music. (=MUSI 42000).
This course explores how music participates in the formation and workings of memory
in film. While music has long been instrumental in preserving and communicating private and public
memories, its ability to do so has been significantly broadened by reproduction technology in the
20th century. A prominent manifestation of what might be called the "memory track" of culture is
the musical soundtrack in films, which functions as a passive repository of memories, or becomes
an active agent of remembrance. Film music is key to notions of nostalgia and sentiment, as well
as periodic commemoration and ritual. The goal of the seminar is twofold (1) Since the study of
film music has played a marginal role in both musicology and film studies, we will draw on a
selection of literature to acquaint ourselves with important issues in the relationship between
music and image (this will include Adorno's and Eisler's Composing for the Films). (2) We will
explore theoretical models and metaphorical traditions of memory and remembrance and investigate
how they might contribute to the aesthetics of film music as well as advance our understanding of
individual movies in which memory is thematic.In the first half of the quarter, we will study
selected films ranging, for example, from "Once upon a time in the West" to "Dead Again," from
"Radio Days" to "Night and Fog." Participants with a musical background will have the opportunity
to reconstruct and analyze Eisler's score for Night and Fog, while those who have no reading
knowledge of music will work on related projects tailored to their expertise. In the second half
of the quarter, we will work on films selected by the participants.
B. Hoeckner. Autumn.
67100. Realism Socialism Modernism: The Politics of Social and Literary Form
(=ENGL 59400, CMLT 40400, GRMN 43700)
The theoretical influence of arguments in the 1920s and 1930s about the relative value
of realism and modernism is well-known, but the entwinement of theory with contemporary
fictions and political debates is less so. This intensive reading course will attempt to
historicize theory by revaluating the work relatively familiar theorists such as Benjamin,
Lenin, and esp. Lukacs in the light of their interlocutors, in fiction, film, and drama--Brecht,
Gladkov, Gorki, Pudovkin, Eisenstein, Dovzhenko, Seghers, Sholokhov, Christa Wolf,
Konrad Wolf, Frank Beyer and their counterparts in America, the Living Newspaper,
Film and Photo League, writers for New Masses--as well as in theory--Bloch, Eisler,
Zhdanov, Kenneth Burke, Mike Gold, John Howard Lawson, among others. Essential texts
are available in English but working knowledge of German (or Russian) and/or marxist
basics would be very helpful. L. Kruger. Winter.
67400. Seminar: Vernacular Modernism Strikes Back (= ENGL, ARTH ).
This seminar is neither a sequel to nor a repeat of the class on vernacular
modernism that Miriam Hansen offered last spring; rather, this young concept will be
subjected to a few practical tasks. What does it add to film historians toolkit? Does it
let us probe deeper into the monolith of Hollywood film history? We will look at vernacular
modernism as a working hypothesis that may help to account for the European impact of silent
film in the US. Stable as it may appear, Hollywood style (or styles, if we do not take its
unity too much for granted) is by no means a closed or immanent system; what truly provides
for its homeostasis are things that change, not ones that remain in place. The dynamics
between American and European styles of filmmaking must be viewed as give-and-take, not as
Hollywoods conquest of world cinema. It is that less obvious angle the reciprocity between
Europe on Hollywood that this seminar will be concerned with. We will look at the ways early
American cinema responded to Mlis-like trick-film aesthetics, or to Film-dArt-like noble
pictures; at its war for independence from Path Frres after 1908; how Griffith reacted to
Italian innovations; what impact the success of German Expressionist cinema had in the United
States; on Eisenstein and von Sternberg, Murnau and Borgese, or Murnau and Ford. In most of
these cases, our goal will be to keep in sight both rounds of this ongoing interaction what
the American success of Fritz Langs German films changed in American film culture, but also
what its German success owed to American impact on Lang.
Y. Tsivian.Autumn.
67500. Problems in 19thC Photo History. (=ARTH 46900):
J. Snyder. Spring.
69000. Historiography (=ENGL 68500):
This research seminar seeks to accomplish two goals: to familiarize students
with basic issues associated with the writing of history, especially the history of the cinema,
and to serve as a practical introduction to the archival resources and methods of film-historical
research. Toward the latter end the class will engage in a collaborative research project,
which we will carry out during the quarter. During this process we will discuss how archives
are produced and structured, and how they may be used in familiar and unfamiliar ways.
Likewise, we will discuss and evaluate different approaches to the writing of film history.
In addition to texts devoted to film history by Bazin, Gomery and Allen, Buscombe, Comolli,
Bordwell, Altman, Crafton, and Gunning, we will look at broader developments in the writing of
history, focusing, in part, on the post-Annales schools of history. J. Lastra.
Spring.
Graduate Program | Graduate Courses || Recent Courses | Dissertations ||
Undergrad Courses | Undergrad Program
|
