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Course Offerings for 2011-2012
First Year course offerings
Theories of National Cinema - Fall term (Burucua) required course
9373A Monday 10:30-1:30 UC 12 & Wednesday 11:30-1:30 UC 12
The course will provide students with a critical interrogation of the concept of "national cinema". Informed by theories of nation developed by Benedict Anderson, Eric Hobsbawm, Homi Bhabha and others, the course troubles notions of nation as an organic, homogeneous, unitary entity before shifting into different case studies in which cinematic representations of nation will be read in relation to questions of ideology and the political economies that facilitate the production of national cinemas. Readings of the ‘national’ will be underpinned by understandings of class, gender, race and sexuality. Films from various postcolonial, national and diasporic cinemas will be examined in the context of debates about what constitutes a national cinema and in the light of key essays written on those matters by leading scholars such as Stephen Crofts, Andrew Higson, Susan Hayward, Robert Stam, Ella Shohat, Zuzana Pick, among others.
To download the course syllabus click here
Silent Cinema - Fall term (Nagl) elective course
9210A Thursday 4:30-7:30 UC 12 & Monday 2:30-4:30 UC 12
This course explores the history, aesthetics and social significance of silent cinema as mass entertainment, art, and transnational business, covering the period from the emergence of cinema in the context of 19th century visual culture to the transition to synchronized sound in the late 1920s. Course screenings include the live presentation of pre-cinematic optical toys, magic lanterns and hand-cranked projectors, early shorts from the Edison laboratory and the Lumière brothers, some of the first features that emerged in the 1910s, as well as the work of directors such as D.W. Griffith, Georges Méliès, Oscar Micheaux, and Buster Keaton. Taking our clues from new historical approaches that emerged in film studies in the past three decades, we will discuss topics such as the history of screen practices and “new” media, stardom and its relationship to gender and sexuality, moral reform movements and the sociology of early cinema, the serial, women and African American film pioneers, urban perception and modernity.
To download the course syllabus click here
Blaxploitation- Fall term (Wlodarz) elective course
9212A Tuesdays 12:30-3:30 UC 12 & Thursdays 1:30-3:30 UC 12
In the history of black cinema, seldom has a body of filmmaking been as controversial and as rife with contradiction as the so-called blaxploitation films of the early 1970s. An outgrowth of the collapse of the Hollywood studio system, the civil rights and Black Power movements, the counterculture, feminism, and gay liberation, the blaxploitation films embody the cultural crises of ‘70s America. Although the short-lived era remains tainted in the eyes of many due to valid charges of opportunism and exploitation, the cultural significance of blaxploitation cinema cannot be overestimated given its influence on both hip-hop culture and contemporary filmmaking (from Tarantino to John Singleton to the Hughes Brothers). The primary goal of this course will be to unpack the culturally loaded term "blaxploitation" in terms of its relationship to economics, audience, identity politics, art, music, stardom, and genre.
To download the course syllabus click here
Film Theories, Criticisms, Histories - Winter term (Coates) required course
9200B Tuesday 11:30-2:30 UC 12 & Thursday 4:30-6:30 UC 12
This graduate seminar will provide an overview and meta-critical analysis of some of the major trends and methods of analyzing film, focusing especially on the contemporary re-evaluation of both classical and contemporary film theories so central to the history of film studies. We will examine the distinct but sometimes intersecting approaches of film theory, criticism, and history, concentrating in particular on the key concepts shaping film theoretical discourses. Some of the topics we will explore in the course will be drawn from the following areas: cinema as a system of meaning-production; realism and ideology; theories of the cinematic apparatus and construction of vision; semiotics, psychoanalytic, post-structuralist, and feminist film theories; theories of spectatorship and cinematic address; auteur, star, and genre studies; the recent historical turn of cinema and media studies; theories of globalization and post-coloniality; and intermediality.
Research Methods - Winter term (Blankenship) required course
9100B Monday 1:30-4:30 UC 12 & Wednesday 11:30-1:30 UC 12
This graduate seminar will provide a practical introduction to the distinctive, sometimes intertwined methods involved in the study of film, building on the ideas discussed in its prerequisite course, “Film Theories, Histories, and Criticisms.” In this course, students also will begin to develop their own research projects, focusing on the combination of the chosen methods and texts, both written and cinematic, that eventually will comprise the thesis. The focus of the course, then, is two-fold. On the one hand, it will use the the work of Alfred Hitchock as a case study for how different research methods in film studies are generated. We will recap major analytical and historical methodologies in film studies from "auteurism" to the "archival turn" and examine the effects these distinct modes of scholarship produce. Students will also begin to develop their own thesis topics in this course, as well as draft a short segment of the thesis itself as a seminar paper. Thus, by the end of this seminar, students will present and discuss some of their preliminary thesis research to the class as a whole, and generate a draft of their thesis prospecti in a forum that will allow students to receive feedback on the document before submitting it for approval to their respective advisors.
Second Year course offerings
Silent Screen - Fall term (Nagl) required course
9210A Thursday 4:30-7:30 UC 12 & Monday 2:30-4:30 UC 12
This course explores the history, aesthetics and social significance of silent cinema as mass entertainment, art, and transnational business, covering the period from the emergence of cinema in the context of 19th century visual culture to the transition to synchronized sound in the late 1920s. Course screenings include the live presentation of pre-cinematic optical toys, magic lanterns and hand-cranked projectors, early shorts from the Edison laboratory and the Lumière brothers, some of the first features that emerged in the 1910s, as well as the work of directors such as D.W. Griffith, Georges Méliès, Oscar Micheaux, and Buster Keaton. Taking our clues from new historical approaches that emerged in film studies in the past three decades, we will discuss topics such as the history of screen practices and “new” media, stardom and its relationship to gender and sexuality, moral reform movements and the sociology of early cinema, the serial, women and African American film pioneers, urban perception and modernity.
To download the course syllabus click here
Blaxploitation- Fall term (Wlodarz) required course
9212A Tuesdays 12:30-3:30 UC 12 & Thursdays 1:30-3:30 UC 12
In the history of black cinema, seldom has a body of filmmaking been as controversial and as rife with contradiction as the so-called blaxploitation films of the early 1970s. An outgrowth of the collapse of the Hollywood studio system, the civil rights and Black Power movements, the counterculture, feminism, and gay liberation, the blaxploitation films embody the cultural crises of ‘70s America. Although the short-lived era remains tainted in the eyes of many due to valid charges of opportunism and exploitation, the cultural significance of blaxploitation cinema cannot be overestimated given its influence on both hip-hop culture and contemporary filmmaking (from Tarantino to John Singleton to the Hughes Brothers). The primary goal of this course will be to unpack the culturally loaded term "blaxploitation" in terms of its relationship to economics, audience, identity politics, art, music, stardom, and genre.
To download the course syllabus click here