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.

31500. Film, Ethnography, and Re-Appropriation (=CMST 21500, ISHU 21000, HMRT 21500/31500):

In light of aboriginal peoples producing their own ethnography and media, there is a need to re-examine ethnographic and documentary film practice. We will survey expositions and fairs, museum displays, the development of visual anthropology, feature and documentary films, collaboration between ethnographer and filmmaker and filmmaker and subject, arriving at the movement where aboriginal peoples create their own documents. This re-contextualization demands transforming traditional disciplinary boundaries to include the collecting and artifact industry, exhibition, museology, travel, and counter-media. The organizing principle for the course will be my twenty years of film and video work with the 'Namgis First Nation of the Kwakwaka'wakw (Kwakiut'l) Nation of British Columbia. J. Hoffman. Winter.

33200. Italian Neorealism: From Ossessione to Umberto D (=CMST 23200, ITAL 22400/32400):

This course will explore the rise and fall of the Neo-realism, from the very seeds in the early Forties, till the last Neo-realist works by Vittorio De Sica and Cesare Zavattini in the early Fifties. We will focus on the theoretical debate which took place in film journals between young scholars and future directors postulating the need for a new cinema, more related to the reality of Italian society, and we will evaluate those movies produced during the war period. The second part of the course will focus on close readings of some of the most significant Neo-realist movies. Finally, the last part of the course will be devoted to the influence of Neo-realism on the subsequent Italian cinema of the Fifties and Sixties. G. Alonge. Spring.

33300. Italian Resistance: Contended Memories (=CMST 23300, ITAL 22500/32500):

Theoretically, the guerra di liberazione is considered to be a founding historical event in Italy, meant to give birth to the Italian Republic. However, the Resistance has never been a national myth for all citizens, and fifty years later it remains a burning memory, an issue of bitter political debate. In this long controversy, filmmakers and novelists have played a large role. The goal of this course is to present the different readings and interpretations of the Resistance, from the post-war period to the present, in various contexts and media: cinema, literature, historiography. Readings will include writers on either side of the Resistance, as well as contemporary historians like Pavone and Luzzatto. G. Alonge. Spring.

33600. The "Latin Lover" and the "Tough Guy" (=CMST 23600, GNDR 26400/33600, ITAL 26700/36700):

The course will concentrate on comparative analyses of the screen types known as the "Latin Lover" and the "Tough Guy," with particular attention given to Italian, Italian-American, and mainstream American cinema. Included will be Valentino, Mastroianni, De Niro, Keitel, and Eastwood. How are the normative assumptions regarding masculine types that underly the figures of the "latin lover" and the "tough guy" questioned, fractured, and "queered" in the films we shall study? How do ethnic and cultural attitudes shape screen masculinities, and what might comparisons between Italian and American male types reveal about the nations and cultures in question? R. West. Winter.

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.

35100. Avant-Garde in East Central Europe (=CMST 25100, SLAV 28400/38400):

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 is 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.

36300. Ernst Lubitsch and Hollywood (=CMST 26300, GNDR 26900, ENGL29402/49402):

This course examines the Hollywood career of Ernst Lubitsch, one of the most successful directors and producers in the Hollywood studio system (1920s-1940s). We will explore what his career reveals about the studio system and the genre of romantic comedy in which he excelled. We will also consider the infamous "Lubitsch touch" and its subversion of the Hays Code, theatrical adaptation, and the representation of national character, politics, class, gender and sexuality in his films. Screenings will include Rosita, The Marriage Circle, The Love Parade, Trouble in Paradise, Design for Living, Ninotchka, To Be or Not to Be, Heaven Can Wait, and Cluny Brown. R. Gregg. Autumn.

36600. Andrei Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev (=CMST 26600, RUSS 23300/33300, CMLT 22800, HUMA 23301, ISHU 23301/33301):

Using Andrei Tarkovsky's 1966 film Andrei Rublev as our primary focus we will investigate Tarkovsky's oeuvre and its antecedents in world cinema from Dreyer and Eisenstein to Bresson and Pasolini. Developing an aesthetic language capable of describing Tarkovsky's cinema, we will seek a critical evaluation of such concepts as poetic or transcendental cinema, anti-montage cinema, Deleuze's "time-image", and Tarkovsky's own concept of cinema as "imprinted time". Class discussion encouraged. R. Bird. Autumn.

37300. Perspectives on Imaging (=CMST 27300, ARTH 26900/36900, BIOS 29207, HIPS 24801):

Imaging plays a central role in biomedical research and practice. This role is likely to grow in the future as seen by the recent creation of the new National Institute for Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering within the National Institutes of Health. This course explores technical, historical, artistic, and cultural aspects of imaging from the earliest attempts to enhance and capture visual stimuli through the medical imaging revolution of the twentieth century. Topics include the development of early optical instruments (e.g., microscopes, telescopes); the first recording of photographic images; the emergence of motion pictures; the development of image-transmission technologies (e.g., offset printing, television, the Internet); and the invention of means to visualize the invisible within the body through the use of X-rays, magnetic resonance, and ultrasound.B. Stafford and P. La Riviere. 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 $40. L. Brown, Autumn. L. Letinsky, Winter, Spring.

37701. Advanced Black and White Photography (=CMST 27701, COVA 27802):

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. Winter.

37800. Theories of Media (=CMST 27800, ARTH 25900/35900, COVA 25400, ENGL 12800/32800, MAPH 32800, ISHU 21800):

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.

37900. Color Photography (=CMST 27900, COVA 27900):

PQ: COVA 10100 or 10200, and 24000 or 24100, or consent of instructor. Lab fee $60. L. Letinsky. Winter.

38100. Issues in Film Music (=CMST 28100, MUSI 22900/30900):

This course will explore the role of film music from its origins in silent film, its significance in the classical Hollywood movie, to its increasingly self-reflexive use in recent cinema (both avant-garde and commercial, Western and non-Western). We will look at the ways music plays a central role both as part of the narrative and as non-diegetic music, how its stylistic diversity contributes its own semiotic universe to the screen, and how it became a central participant in twentieth-century visual culture. Since the course will partly focus on technical, compositional, and stylistic aspects of film music, some reading knowledge of music can be helpful, but is not a prerequisite. B. Hoeckner. Spring.

38220. The Art of Confrontation: Chinese Visual Culture in the 20th Century (=CMST 38220, ARTH 28700/38700, CHIN 27700/37700, EALC 27700):

This course is a survey of Chinese visual culture of the twentieth century, focused around the theme of confrontation. In the twentieth century, traditional modes of Chinese visual culture have confronted Western styles and techniques of visual expression, Modernism, competing political ideologies, developments in China's distant and recent history, disparate regional Chinese identities (i.e. China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan), and technological change. This course will explore these confrontations through a variety of media from traditional Chinese painting to film, and methodological approaches from formalism to post-Colonial theory. One film screening per week will be required. J. Purtle. Winter.

38300. Novel Films: Cinematic Adaptations of Russian and Polish Literary Works (=CMST 28300, ISHU 26601/36601, SLAV 26600/36600):

In this course we examine the phenomenon of translating literature into filmic texts. In juxtaposing literature and films, we critically evaluate the dominant concept of faithfulness to the literary originals. Filmic adaptations are viewed as creative commentaries on literary works and interpreted in conjunction with recent theoretical thought. B. Shallcross. Spring.

28301. Dramaturgy, Opera, Theater, and Film (=CMST 28301, GRMN 34100, ISHU 26100, MUSI 30704):

This experimental seminar/workshop course considers the history and development of dramaturgy, including its conceptual foundations and pragmatic aspirations as well as its generic peculiarities (e.g., what distinguishes a dramaturgy of theater, film, and opera). The course will focus on multiple renderings of the same material: that is, Macbeth as Elizabethan drama, 19th century opera, and various 20th century films. In addition to our more or less conventional academic analysis (of the history & various theories of dramaturgy), students will engage in dramaturgical practice(s) in writing and on stage. Among works to be considered: critical works by G.E. Lessing and Bertolt Brecht; and films, dramas, operas, (e.g., Shakespeare's Macbeth, Verdi's Macbeth, Polanski's and Welles' Macbeth, Kurosawa's Throne of Blood). D. Levin. Winter.

38700. Early Video Art, 1968-1979 (=CMST 28700, 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. Winter.

38904. Video: Camera, Lights, Sound (=CMST 28904, COVA 23903/33903):

PQ: COVA 23800. Lab fee $50. This intensive laboratory will explore differences between video and film, experiment with basic lighting design and set-ups, and practice field audio recording. The class will be organized around a series of shooting situations. Students will work in crews to understand modes of production. Each crew will learn to operate and maintain the Panasonic AG-DVX100 24p camera; Sachtler tripod; Arri lights, gels, diffusion, and grip equipment; and Shure mixer with Sennheiser wireless microphones. Though video or film experience is helpful, the class will be open to students who want to acquire technical knowledge of how films get made. Enrollment will be limited to 12 students who must have the consent of the instructor to register.J. Hoffman. 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. T. Gunning. Autumn.

41100. African American Literature on Film (=ENGL 47100):

This course surveys a range of 20th century African American literary works that have been adapted to the screen in order to explore the formal and stylistic relationships between literature and the cinema, as well as our approaches to them as objects of study. How are different literary forms and genres and approaches (i.e., novels, plays, short stories, poetry, autobiography, melodrama, social realism) translated into cinematic terms? What tools of literary analysis can or should we bring to the interpretation of cinematic texts - adaptations and others? How can we think about the "authorship" of an adaptation? How are films with Black literary origins presented to and received by different readers/audiences? We will pay particular attention to the ways in which race inflects issues of production, representation and address between literary and cinematic institutions. Texts include essays on adaptation by Bazin, Eisenstein, Naremore and cases of adaptation such as A Raisin in the Sun; Native Son; "King of the Bingo Game"; Cotton Comes to Harlem; The Color Purple; Daughters of the Dust. J. Stewart. Spring.

48401. Film Acting:

This course explores acting in film from critical, historical, and theoretical perspectives. We'll consider how film has borrowed from theatrical traditions and how acting has been transformed in the age of mechanical reproduction and through film editing, sound technologies, and digital imaging. We'll consider links between theatrical traditions and film, such as reading Chaplin and the Marx Brothers against commedia dell'arte, and vaudeville; Lillian Gish's performance in D.W. Griffith films against 19th century traditions of pantomime and melodrama; the Method in theatre and film; and improvisation in Cassavetes films. We'll consider avant-garde practice, Brechtian performance, and the use of non-actors in film. We'll consider institutional factors, such as historical casting practices, that affect acting. We'll consider the role of character actors and the meaning and practice of typecasting. Students will be expected to write one 15 page paper and weekly one page comments on readings. There will be one screening a week. P. Wojcik. Spring.

48500. History of International Cinema, Part I, Silent Era (=CMST 28500, ARTH 28500/38500, CMLT 22400/32400, COVA 26500, 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. T. Gunning. Winter.

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. This course focuses on industrial practices and aesthetics during Hollywood's studio era (1927 to 1960) and alternatives to the Hollywood film, including French poetic realism, Italian neorealism, and Japanese cinema. We will also consider the important political, economic, social and cultural forces, which influenced Hollywood and other cinemas during this period, particularly the rise of fascism in the 1930s, WWII, Hollywood's postwar economic struggles, and various national new wave cinemas. Screenings will include films by Berkeley, Renoir, Huston, Welles, De Sica, Ozu, Hitchcock and Godard. R. Gregg. Spring.

59900. Reading & Research:

PQ: Consent of instructor. Please register by faculty section. Staff. Autumn, Winter, Spring.

62200. Seminar: Drama, Theatre, Image, Performance (=ENGL 59300, CMLT 42600):

This PhD intensive reading course examines theoretical texts that deal with the interdisciplinary issues arising out of the confluence and conflict of word, image, and performance in various cultural contexts. Central concerns will include dramatic action, theatricality, visual and aural representation, and the competing phenomenologies of audience experiences of performance and cinema/video. We will be looking closely at the nature of drama and theatre, the mediation of performance through cinema and video, and the ways in which drama and theatricality manifest themselves in cultural activity more broadly. We will also scrutinize the ways on which metaphors of theatricality and performativity have been appropriated by other disciplines. Requirements: ACTIVE class participation; two presentations (P/F) and a short position paper (grade). L. Kruger. Spring.

64901. Seminar: Studies in Japanese New Wave Cinema, 1954-1964 (=JAPN 69405):

Weekly screenings and some readings in Japanese. M. Raine. Winter.

65200. Animate and Inanimate: Cinema's Uncanny relation to the Illusion of Life (=ENGL 63601, ARTH 49400):

This seminar will explore the nature of film's relation to animation, the "bringing to life" through moving images. It will explore cinema's relation to other traditions of life-like illusions (from automatons to panoramas), its exploration of the thresholds between animate and inanimate in horror films, (The Bride of Frankenstein) fairy tales (The Return to OZ) and comedies (Lubitsch's Die Puppe), and all of these in relation to what is technically referred to as film animation, both animated films which bring things to life (Brothers Quay, Svankmajer, Cohl) as well as abstract animation which aspires to trace patterns of animation (Fischinger, Ruttmann, Breer). Issues of 19th century vitalism (Henri Bergson) and the role of motion in the aesthetics of the cinema will be explored as well as discussion of new foundation for a theory of cinematic specificity. Freud and Jentsch's discussions of the Uncanny and the literature these essays have prompted will be central to our discussions, as well as readings of fiction by Hoffman, Hawthorne, Baum and others. T. Gunning. Spring.

67200. Classical Film Theory (=ENGL 68600):

This course examines major texts in film theory from Vachel Lindsay and Hugo Muensterberg in the 1910s through Andre Bazin's writings in the 1940s and 1950s. We will devote special attention to the emergence of issues that continue to be of major importance, such as the film/language analogy, film semiotics, spectatorship, realism, montage, the modernism/mass culture debate, and the relationship between film history and film style. We will concentrate on the major theoretical writings of Muensterberg, Rudolf Arnheim, Jean Epstein, Sergei Eisenstein, Siegfried Kracauer, Bela Balazs, Bazin, as well as writings by Walter Benjamin, Germaine Dulac, Maya Deren, Jean Mitry, Vsevolod Pudovkin, and others. J. Lastra. Winter.

68200. Media Archeology: Part I, The Early Moderns (=ARTH 44500):

For description, see Art History. B. Stafford. Winter.

69200. Seminar: Space, Place, and Landscape (=ENGL 60301):

This seminar will analyze the concepts of space, place, and landscape across the media (painting, photography, cinema, sculpture, architecture, and garden design, as well as poetic and literary renderings of setting, and "virtual" media-scapes). Key theoretical readings from a variety of disciplines, including geography, art history, literature, and philosophy will be included: Foucault's "Of Other Spaces"; Michel de Certeau's Concept of Heterotopia; Heidegger's "Art and Space"; Gaston Bachelard's The Poetics of Space; Henri Lefebvre's Production of Space; David Harvey's Geography of Difference; Raymond Williams's The Country and the City; Mitchell, Landscape and Power. Topics for discussion will include the concept of the picturesque and the rise of landscape painting in Europe; the landscape garden; place, memory, and identity; sacred sites and holy lands; national landscapes; embodiment and the gendering of space; the genius of place; literary and textual space. Course requirements: 2 oral presentations: one on a place (or representation of a place); the other on a critical or theoretical text. Final paper. W.J.T. Mitchell. Autumn.