Below are descriptions for courses in the undergraduate concentration 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.

101. Introduction to Film I (=ArtH 190, COVA 253, ENGL 108, GS Hum 200):

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 first part introduces basic concepts of film analysis, which are discussed through examples from different national cinemas, genres, and directorial oeuvres. Along with questions of film technique and style, we consider the notion of the cinema as an institution that comprises an industrial system of production, social and aesthetic norms and codes, and particular modes of reception. Films discussed include works by Hitchcock, Porter, Griffith, Eisenstein, Lang, Renoir, Sternberg, and Welles. J. Stewart. Autumn. S. Haenni. Spring.

210. (Re)Defining African American Cinema (=AfAfAm 214, ENGL 279):

This course examines African American cinema from the 1910’s to the present in order to think about the question: What is a Black film? Must a film be produced by Blacks, feature a Black cast, or primarily address a Black audience in order to be classified as an "African American film"? Is there a discernable Black film aesthetics? Can a Black film be produced within the Hollywood studio system? How important are theses distinctions? Focusing on films directed, written and/or produced by African Americans, we will discuss how Black American cinema has been defined and redefined in relation to Hollywood and independent filmmaking traditions. J. Stewart. Autumn.

232. Italian Americana: Literature and Cinema (=CMST 332, 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.

233. Italian Cinema (=Italian 217):

Through the analysis of a number of films produced in the last decade, the course will offer both a survey on major recent Italian directors (such as Amelio, Archibugi, Benigni, Ferrario, Martone, Mazzacurati, Moretti, Lucchetti, Ligabue, Salvatores, Soldini etc.) and a description of Italian contemporary civilization and culture. Italy as a land of new immigration, the problems of the last generation, the political and cultural tendency toward regionalism and secessionism on one side and Europe on the other, will be among the main topics taken into account. The films will be analyzed from a thematic, technical and linguistic point of view. A close scrutiny of references of the new Italian cinema to masters of Italian cinematic tradition such as Rossellini, Fellini, Pasolini is also one of the objectives of the course. Classes will be held in Italian. F. Nasi. Winter.

234. Classic French Cinema (=French 282):

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"). This course will be taught in English. N. Herpe. Spring.

241. Film in India (=CMST 341, Anth 206/31, Hist 267/367, SALC 205/305):

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.

243. Religion and Modernity in Film (=CMST 343, Anth, Hist):

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.

252. American Avant-garde Film (=ENGL 286):

This course will introduce students to the tradition of independent, experimental cinema in North America. From the relatively isolated pre-war contributions of James Sibley Watson and Melville Webber, Douglass Crockwell, Ralph Steiner, Joseph Cornell, and Robert Florey to the more concentrated post-war emergence of Maya Deren, Stan Brakhage, Sidney Peterson, Kenneth Anger, Harry Smith, and Bruce Conner, North America has consistently supported an artisanal, independent, avant-garde film culture. While rarely reaching the level of mass popularity, this film community has developed a richness and complexity equal to what we find in painting and music--arts with which it has often been in conversation. This course will concentrate on periods of greatest visibility and impact--the 1960s and 1970s--examining the development of underground film, personal cinema, "expanded cinema," minimalism, and structural film, paying particular attention to film’s interaction with other arts. We will end by taking stock or recent developments in the 1980s and 1990s. Filmmakers will include Christopher MacLaine, Michael Snow, Ernie Gehr, Andy Warhol, Joyce Wieland, Ken Jacobs, Jack Smith, Hollis Frampton, Carolee Schneeman, Yvonne Rainer, Morgan Fischer, Abigail Child, Martin Arnold, Lewis Klahr, Su Friedrich, and Brian Frye. J. Ma. Spring.

274. Modernity and the Sense of Things (=CMST 474, 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.

276. Beginning Photography (=CMST 376, 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.

277. Advanced Photography (=CMST 377, 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.

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

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.

279. Musicals: Staging Everyday Worlds (=CMST 379, 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.

284. Brecht and Beyond (=CompLit, ENGL 244, German 244):

Brecht is indisputably the most influential playwright in the 20th century but his influence on cinema is just as powerful. In this course we will explore the range and variety of Brecht’s own theatre, from the anarchic plays and agitprop film and theatre of the 1920’s to the classical parable plays, as well as the work of his heirs in Germany (Heiner Müller, Franz Xaver Kroetz, Peter Weiss), Britain (John Arden, Edward Bond, Caryl Churchill), and Subsaharan Africa (Soyinka, Ngugi, and various South African theatre practitioners). We will also consider the impact of Brechtian theory on film, from Brecht’s own Kuhle Wampe to Jean-Luc Godard, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Alexander Kluge, and Djibril Diop Mambety. L. Kruger. Spring.

285. History of International Cinema, Part I, Silent Era (=CMST 485, ArtH 285/385, ENGL 293/487, MAPH 336):

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.

286. History of International Cinema, Part II, Sound Cinema to 1960 (=CMS 486, 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.

297. Reading Course PQ: Consent of faculty adviser and Director of Undergraduate Studies:

Students are required to submit the College Reading and Research Course Form. Staff. Autumn, Winter, Spring.

298. Senior Colloquium PQ: CMS 101 and 102. Required of all Cinema and Media Studies concentrators:

This seminar is designed to provide senior concentrators with a sense of the variety of methods and approaches in the field (such as formal analysis, cultural history, industrial history, reception studies, psychoanalysis). Students will present material relating to their B.A. project, which will be discussed in relation to the issues of the course. Y. Tsivian. Autumn.

299. B.A. Essay. PQ: Consent of instructor:

Students are required to submit the College Reading and Research Form. May not be counted toward distribution requirements for the concentration, but may be counted as a free-elective credit.