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. Please note: This page is updated only periodically; for the most accurate, up-to-date information, consult the Registrar's online timeschedules.

24903. Cinema in Japan: Art and Commerce in a Transnational Medium. (=CMST 34903, EALC 24903/34903)

This course surveys Japanese cinema from its prehistory to the work of contemporary transnational auteurs. We will focus on both aspects of the object of study: Japan and the cinema. Each week will present, in roughly chronological order, a "moment" from the history of Japanese cinema and a methodological issue in film studies brought into focus by that week's films. For example, we will study vernacular modernism in 1930s Japan, the war film and theories of propaganda, genre theory and 1950s program pictures. We will of course pay attention to the Masters of Japanese cinema (Mizoguchi, Ozu, Kurosawa, et. al.) but we will also study film in relation to broader cultural movements such as the "new wave" and the "political modernist" turn. We will also interrogate theories of national cinema and study theories of ethnicity and recent Japanese representations of the Other. All readings on the course are in English; no Japanese is required, though accommodations will be made for students who wish to read original language material. M. Raine. Autumn.

28500.   History of International Cinema, Part I, Silent Era. (= CMST 48500, ArtH 28500/38500 , CMLT 22400/32400, DOVA 26500 , Engl 29300/48700, MAPH 33600 )  

PQ: CMST 10100 must be take before or concurrently with this course. 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 .   J. Lastra.   Autumn.

28920. Introduction to Film Production. (=CMST 38920, ARTV 23850/33850)

This intensive laboratory will be an introduction to 16mm film production, experimenting with various film stocks and basic lighting designs. The class will be organized around a series of production situations and students will work in crews.   Each crew will learn to operate and maintain the 16mm Bolex film camera, tripod; Arri lights, gels, diffusion, and grip equipment.   The final project will be an in camera edit.   No prerequisites. Lab fee $100. J. Hoffman. Autumn.

33202.   Rome In Literature and Film.   (=CMST 23202, ITAL 23202/33202)

Description coming soon.   R. West.   Autumn

33404.  French Cinema, 1920s-1930s.

In our study of two decades in the history of French cinema, we will track the rise of the poetic realist style from the culture of experimentation that was alive in both the French film industry and its surrounding artistic and literary landscape. As an exercise in the excavation of a history of film style, we will consider the salient features of the socio-political, cultural, theoretical, and critical landscape that frame the emergence and the apex of poetic realism, and that reveal it as a complicated nexus in the history of film aesthetics. Main texts by Dudley Andrew and Richard Abel will accompany a wide range of primary texts. Films by Epstein, L'Herbier, BuÒuel, Dulluc, Dulac, Gance, Clair, Vigo, Feyder, Renoir, Duvivier, AllÈgret, CarnÈ, GrÈmillon. This class is cross-listed with the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures and may be accompanied by a French language section. J. Wild. Winter.

25505/35505. The Detective Film

The detective appears in the middle of the nineteenth century as a harbinger of a new modern world of urban crime and uncertain identity. As a figure in fiction, the detective not only marks new attitudes towards criminality and surveillance, but also introduces new modes of popular narrative. This course will deal the detective as a figure of modern society and with the narrative of investigation as a new storytelling mode in which time, point of view and engagement with the reader become foregrounded. Although focused primarily on films, we will also read literary models and precursors and discuss the relation between literary and cinematic modes of narration. The classical armchair detective such as Sherlock Holmes; the comic detective of the 1930's; the hard-boiled private eye of film noir; and the metaphysical detectives of modernist works will all be explored, as well such themes as master criminals, erotic obsessions and the labyrinth of the past. Films by Griffith, Feuliade, Lang, Tourneur, Aldrich, Wilder, Godard and others will be screened. T. Gunning. Winter.

33903. Creative Thesis Seminar. 

(=ARTV 23904/33904) This seminar will focus on how to craft a creative thesis in film or video. Works-in-progress will be screened each week, and technical and structural issues relating to the work will be explored. The seminar will also develop the written portion of the creative thesis. The class is limited to seniors from CMS and DOVA, and MAPH students working on a creative thesis. J. Hoffman. Winter.

34701. Left-Wing Art and Soviet Film Culture of the 1920s. 

(=CMST 24701) The course will consider Soviet "montage cinema" of the twenties in the context of coeval aesthetic projects in other arts. How did Eisenstein's theory and practice of "intellectual cinema" connect to Fernand Leger and Vladimir Tatlin? What did Meyerkhold's "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). T. Tsivian.  Winter.

34904. Authors of the Japanese Cinema: Ozu Yasujiro and Postwar Japan.

(=CMST 24904) Ozu Yasujiro is widely regarded as one of the finest film-makers in the history of the medium. This course studies every film Ozu made during the later part of his career. Half of the films will be 35mm prints shown as part of a series at DOC films on Sunday nights, the rest will be class screenings. After surveying Ozu's early career we move through the Occupation-era films that dented and then reestablished Ozu's reputation to the rigorous "late style" of Ozu's final films, made when he was one of the most prestigious filmmakers in Japan and the Japanese film industry was at the height of its commercial success. Topics covered in the course include the wartime reinvention of Japanese cinema, the overt connection between Ozu's films and social change in postwar Japan, the shifts in the film industry of which these films were a part, the theory and practice of Ozu the auteur, and the peculiar understanding of the film medium that develops in Ozu's films. Spring. M. Raine.

35505.  The Detective Story: Narratives of Investigation. 

T. Gunning.  Winter.
Please contact Instructor for course description.

35509. Media and Theology (=GRMN 35509).  

Theology as the discourse of the divine is predicated on the deep chasm between God and man, transcendence and immanence, as well as the assumption that communication across this divide is simultaneously possible and problematical.  At different historical junctures the problem of mediation and communication came especially to the fore.  Beginning with the Old and the New Testaments we will examine some of these junctures, but we will focus in particular on the European Reformation and its cultures of communication.   Arguably, at the center of the Reformation was a crisis of mediation to which it responded and which it helped to perpetuate.  Religious media were thought to be fundamentally corrupted and corruptive and hence in need of reform.  To name only a few examples, priesthood, liturgy, worship, and scripture had all been perverted and had to be restored to their original state of ‘pure communication.’  Consequently, media were as much instruments of reform as they were its targets.  Likewise, the various theologies of the Reformation offered different solutions to the perceived crisis of mediation.  It will be one of the working assumptions of this course that theology and Reformation theology in particular are one of the major tributaries of modern thinking about media and communication. Readings and discussions in English. C. Wild, Winter.

26200/36200. Brecht and Beyond 

Brecht is indisputably the most influential playwright in the 20th century, but his influence on film theory and practice and on cultural theory generally is also considerable. In this course we will explore the range and variety of Brecht's own theatre, from the anarchic plays of the 1920's to the agitprop Lehrst¸ck and film esp K¸hle Wampe) to the classical parable plays, as well as the work of his heirs in German theatre (Heiner M¸ller, Peter Weiss) and film (RW Fassbinder, Alexander Kluge), in French film (Jean-Luc Godard) and cultural theory (the Situationists and May 68) Britain (John McGrath, Caryl Churchill, and the film-maker Lindsay Anderson), and theatre and film in Africa, from South Africa to Senegalís master film maker Djibril Diop Mambety. L. Kruger. Winter.

36500.  The Cinema of Max Ophüls. (=CMST 26500, ENGL 28101/48101)

Max Ophüls has variously been discussed as a 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 Ophüls' films in terms of style and genre; the question of his gynocentric aesthetic and the feminist debate surrounding it; authorship and industrial production; and the challenge diasporic film practice poses to paradigms of national cinema and national film history.  Films include Liebelei, La Signora di tutti, Letter from an Unknown Woman, Caught, The Reckless Moment, La Ronde, Madame de..., Le Plaisir, and Lola Montès.  M. Hansen. Spring.

38200. Non-fiction Film:  Representations and Performance. (=CMST 28200, ARTV 25100/35100, HMRT 25101) 

We will attempt to define Non-Fiction cinema by looking at the history of its major modes. These include the Documentary, Essay, Ethnographic, and Agit-prop film, as well as Personal/autobiographical and Experimental works that are less easily classifiable.  We will explore some of the theoretical discourses that surround this most philosophical of film genres, such as the ethics and politics of representation, and the shifting lines between fact and fiction, truth and reality.  The relationship between the Documentary and the State will be examined in light of the genre’s tendancy to inform and instruct.  We will consider the tensions of filmmaking and the performative aspects in front of the lens, as well as the performance of the camera itself.  Finally, we will look at the ways in which distribution and television effect the production and content of non-fiction film. J. Hoffman. Spring.

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.

41200. Richard Wagner and Critical Theory.

PQ: Advanced standing and consent of instructor.This course examines the intersection of Wagner and contemporary critical theory. We read a broad range of Wagner’s writings and a broad range of writings on Wagner; we explore a number of the stage works on paper and in production. In addition to Wagner’s own writings, we read critical works by: Carolyn Abbate, Theodor Adorno, Elisabeth Bronfen, Catherine Clement, Carl Dahlhaus, Friedrich Kittler, Barry Millington, Jean-Jacques Nattiez, Michel Poizat, Michael Steinberg, Hans-Rudolf Vaget, Samuel Weber, Marc Weiner and Slavoj Zizek. D. Levin.  Winter, 2009.

41401. The Harlem Renaissance and Hollywood.   (=ENGL)  

This course will consider how African American artists and intellectuals of the Harlem Renaissance and beyond shaped and were shaped by the Hollywood film industry.   How were the aesthetic and political goals of African American artistic production affected by the economic and narrative practices of the studio system?   Our consideration will include writers who were employed by the studios, whose work was considered for studio adaptation, or who directly critiqued studio production, including Wallace Thurman, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, Frank Yerby, Chester Himes and James Baldwin.   E. Binggeli. Autumn

41402. Cinema Studies and the Archive. (=ENGL 48102) 

This course will examine the use of primary source material in historical approaches to cinema studies. Each week we will focus on a particular topic in cinema studies (including censorship, marketing, fan culture, critical reception, and exhibition), examining published scholarship on American and international cinema as potential methodological models, and plumbing related archival material in the university's digital and material collections as potential primary texts for analysis. Class will be held in the Regenstein Library's Special Collections Research Center. The final project will take the form of a presentation and research dossier for a proposed paper. E. Binggeli. Winter.

43405.  The 7th Art.

Coined by Ricciotto Canudo in 1911, the term "the 7th art" (1911) was part of a legitimizing discourse on the film medium as art, but it was also a way of situating the film form's radical synthesis of temporal and spatial media within a lineage of classic aesthetic thought. In this seminar, we will explore the film's challenge to classically conceived medial divisions, and examine how the moving photographic image has contributed to aesthetic thought over the course of the 20th century especially in terms of the representation of motion and its perception. The films will be drawn from the texts when possible, but we will also be screening a wide variety of films that will animate our discussion. Texts by Lessing, Riegl, Warburg, LÈger, Faure, Lindsay, Arnheim, Panofsky, Eisenstein, Malraux, Gombrich, Langer, Bazin, Carroll, and others. Films by Von Sternberg, Feyder, Pabst, Clair, and others. J. Wild. Winter.

44604.  Women in Chinese Film.  (=CMST 24604, GNDR 24601/44600) 

From the earliest days of filmmaking in China, a succession of iconic women provided focal points for questions of cultural identity, modernity, and national liberation.  This course surveys changing meanings associated with the figure of woman -- as subject, performer, and author -- in classics of Shanghai and Hong Kong cinema, and in the work of recent filmmakers such as Chen Kaige, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Stanley Kwan, Li Shaohong, Li Yu, Wong Kar-wai, Zhang Nuanxin, and Zhang Yimou.  Throughout, we take into account aesthetic and social contexts of production and reception, examining the films alongside the related media of fiction, the illustrated periodical press, theatre, and television.  K. Harris.  Spring.

44607. Shanghai Film Mediascape.

Knowledge of Chinese not required.  The distinctive historical situation of Shanghai has stimulated and haunted the imaginations of Chinese filmmakers throughout the twentieth century, and into the twenty-first. In this course we track the multiform significance of Shanghai as location, subject, and the artistic and commercial center of film production, as a site, variously, for experiment, self-reflection, dislocation, yearning, loss, and apotheosis.  We explore the lively relationships between cinema and the diverse urban media proliferating in this multinational “treaty port” city, with special attention to developments in photography, lithography, the illustrated periodical press, serialized fiction, advertising, architecture, design, popular music, theatre, the recording industry, radio, and new media.  Interconnections among urban films from other cinema cultures will be discussed.  Films include Crossroads, Street Angel, Myriads of Lights, The City that Never Sleeps, A Spring River Flows East, and Suzhou River, among others.  K. Harris. Spring.

48600.  History of International Cinema, Part II, Sound Era. (=CMST 28600, ARTH 28600/38600, ARTV 26600, CMLT 22500/32500, ENGL 29600/48900, MAPH 33700). 

PQ: CMST 10100.  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.  Y. Tsivian. Winter.

64608. Uprooting and Displacement in Chinese Literature and Film. (=EALC 48200)  

The experience of uprooting, which we will preliminarily define as the distancing oneself from one's native or familiar place, has often been seen as a constitutive element of the modern as well as the central feature in otherwise decentered modernist aesthetics. This course looks at various theoretical elaborations on the realities and myths of uprootingÑon its pains but also on its promises and appealÑin relation with experiences of   displacement and marginality in and of contemporary Chinese fiction and film. Screenings will include Jia Zhangke's Still Life and Zhang Ming's In Expectations, organized in conjunction with the exhibition "Displacement" at the Smart Museum. Autumn. P. Iovene

67200. Classical Film Theory. (= ENGL 68600)

This course examines major texts in film theory from Vachel Lindsay and Hugo Münsterberg in the 1910s through André 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 Münsterberg, 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.

67201.  Montage: History, Theory, Practice.  

This seminar will look at the history of editing from early attempts at multi-shot sequencing to self-conscious experiments in "intellectual montage;" at editing techniques ranging from cross-cutting to CGI sequences; and at the variety of montage theories from Eisenstein and Pudovkin to Bazin. We will test Eisenstein's hypothesis about biological foundations of temporality in art; connect dynamic patterns of film editing to Daniel Stern's study The Present Moment;link temporal contours of cutting to theories of gendered narratology.  Y. Tsivian.  Spring.

67806.  Ontologies of Cinema: Movement, Projection and Photography. (=ARTH 42909)

This doctoral seminar will review previous, current – and perhaps future – conceptions of the ontology of the moving image: its nature and characteristics and its relation as a form of representation to the world.  The speculations of Andre Bazin will form a key reference, but the challenge issued by both the pre-history of cinema and the emergence of new digital media will allow us to extend and question Bazin beyond the era of classical cinema. The role of movement, projection and photography as aspects of the moving image medium will be discussed both in terms of their affects and their claims to reference.  Theorists such as Metz, Kracauer, Deleuze, Manovich, Rodowick, and others will be explored along with film and video-makers such as Frampton, Godard and Eisenstein. T. Gunning. Spring.