FILM 605a and FILM 606b, Film and Media Studies Certificate Workshop  Staff

The workshop is built on students’ needs and orientations. It is aimed at helping the individual trajectories of students and at deepening the topics they have met while attending seminars, conferences, and lectures. Students are required to present a final qualifying paper demonstrating their capacity to do interdisciplinary work. The workshop covers two terms and counts as one regular course credit. Open only to students pursuing the Graduate Certificate in Film and Media Studies. Prerequisite: FILM 601.  ½ Course cr per term
M 1:30pm-3:30pm

FILM 614a, Early Film Theory and Modernity  Francesco Casetti

For a long time, early film theories have been overlooked and underestimated. Their recent rediscovery has, however, highlighted their crucial role in framing film as a “modern” invention. The main point of interest in early film theories is based on their capacity of highlight and focus some of the characteristic of modern life: speed, economy, contingency, excitation, etc. By prioritizing the filmic experience, they focalized attention on the spectator. But the idea of a “modern” art, as well as the research for a “modern” language, were also an important issue. On the background of this interest in modernity, early film theories were not uniform. Ideological differences and national identities played a major role in defining the perspective of theoretical research. In this respect, it is useful to compare the debate in the US and in Europe and to acknowledge the very different traditions which they represented. The seminar accordingly takes into account theories in France (Delluc, Epstein), Germany (Arnhein, Kracauer), Middle-Europe (Bálazs, Lukács, Tille), Italy (Papini, Thovez), Soviet Union (Eisenstein, Vertov, Pudovkin), and the US (Lindsay, Freeburg, Münsterberg). Every week there is a screening with films representative of the time.
MW 9am-10:15am

FILM 630b / RUSS 714b, Russian and Soviet Film  John MacKay

Overview of Russian, Soviet, and post-Soviet cinema, from prerevolutionary Russia to the present. Theoretical writings and canonical films of important figures such as Sergei Eisenstein, Dziga Vertov, Andrei Tarkovsky, Kira Muratova, Aleksei German, and Alexander Sokurov. A variety of film genres and modes are investigated, as well as non-Russophone Soviet film.
T 3:30pm-5:20pm, T 7pm-10pm

FILM 632a / CPLT 566a / GMAN 532a, Paper: Material and Medium  Austen Hinkley

Paper is one of the most ubiquitous and indispensable media of the modern era.  Although we are (still) surrounded by it, paper tends to recede into the background, working best when we do not notice it at all. This course sets out to challenge our understanding of paper as a neutral or passive bearer of inscriptions by foregrounding its material quality. Our focus will rest in equal parts on the media history of paper and on paper works of art – among them many literary texts – that reflect or take advantage of their medium. Studying materials and histories from the early modern period to the present, we will uncover paper’s status as a commodity bound up in a complex web of economic processes, as an instrument of political power, as a gendered and racialized object, and as a material that can be cut, shuffled, and even eaten. Ultimately, we will investigate the ways in which paper is still central to our lives, even in the age of tablets and PDFs. Readings will include Emily Dickinson’s envelope poems, Robert Walser’s “Microscripts,” and M. NourbeSe Philip’s “Zong!” The class will make several visits to the Beinecke Library for hands-on work with paper materials.
Th 1:30pm-3:20pm

FILM 652b / ENGL 6152b, Media Theory  John Peters

This course provides an intensive introduction to foundational texts in media theory old and new. (It supplements rather than replicate FILM 601, Foundations in Film and Media.) This course focuses either on influential articles of the past five decades or notable books of the last decade or so (or both). In either case, the aim is to gain a familiarity with key ideas, figures, traditions, questions, and methods in media theory. Previously ENGL 923.
W 3:30pm-5:20pm

FILM 653a / AMST 653a, Studies in Documentary Film  Charles Musser

This course examines key works, crucial texts, and fundamental concepts in the critical study of nonfiction cinema, exploring the participant-observer dialectic, the performative, and changing ideas of truth in documentary forms.
T 3:30pm-5:20pm, M 7pm-10pm

FILM 655a / CPLT 557a / GMAN 555a, Habit and Habitation: On Walter Benjamin’s Media Aesthetics and Philosophy of Technology  Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky

In recent years, Walter Benjamin has become one of the most quoted media theorists. His philosophy of technology is not as widely known as the concept of aura he developed in his essay The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility. The contemporary relevance of his philosophy of technology lies in the fact that Benjamin establishes a connection between technology and different forms of habitation and between the latter and the concept of habit (Gewohnheit), which is etymologically related to the concept of habitation (Wohnen). This enables a comparison of Benjamin’s approach with the philosophies of technology developed by Heidegger, Deleuze/Guattari, and Simondon, all of whom associate technology with the shaping of environments and the problem of poesis. In our seminar, we reconstruct Benjamin’s media anthropology of technology through a close reading of his diaries and essays and compare it to philosophies of technology very much being discussed today.
T 1:30pm-3:20pm

FILM 690a / CPLT 913a / SPAN 691, Radical Cinemas of Latin America  Moira Fradinger

An introductory overview of Latin American cinema, with an emphasis on post-World War II films produced in Cuba, Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico. Examination of each film in its historical and aesthetic aspects, and in light of questions concerning national cinema and “third cinema.” Examples from both pre-1945 and contemporary films. Conducted in English; knowledge of Spanish and Portuguese helpful but not required.
M 7pm-11pm, W 7pm-8:50pm

FILM 735a and FILM 736a / AMST 832a and AMST 833a, Documentary Film Workshop  Staff

This workshop in audiovisual scholarship explores ways to present research through the moving image. Students work within a Public Humanities framework to make a documentary that draws on their disciplinary fields of study. Designed to fulfill requirements for the M.A. with a concentration in Public Humanities.
W 3:30pm-6:20pm, T 7pm-10pm

FILM 751a / CPLT 933a / ENGL 928a, British Cinema  Katie Trumpener

Key films and topics in British cinema. Special attention to the provincial origins of British cinema; overlaps between filmic, literary, and visual modernism; attempts to build on the British literary and dramatic tradition; cinema’s role in the war effort and in redefining national identity; postwar auteur and experimental filmmaking; “heritage” films and alternative approaches to tradition. Accompanying readings in British film theorists, film sociology (including Mass Observation), and cultural studies accounts of film spectatorship and memories. Films by Mitchell and Kenyon, Maurice Elvey, Anthony Asquith, Len Lye, John Grierson, Alfred Hitchcock, Alberto Cavalcanti, Humphrey Jennings, Michael Powell, Carol Reed, David Lean, Karel Reisz, Lindsay Anderson, Richard Lester, Peter Watkins, Stanley Kubrick, Laura Mulvey, Ken Loach, Mike Leigh, Terence Davies, Terry Gilliam, Peter Greenaway, Michael Winterbottom, Patrick Keiller, Steve McQueen.
T 1:30pm-3:20pm, M 7pm-10pm

FILM 770b / CPLT 614b / GMAN 594b, East German Literature and Film  Katie Trumpener

The German Democratic Republic (1949–89) was a political and aesthetic experiment that failed, buffeted by external pressures and eroded by internal contradictions. For forty years, in fact, its most ambitious literary texts and films (some suppressed, others widely popular) explored such contradictions, often in a vigilant, Brechtian spirit of irony and dialectics. This course examines key texts both as aesthetic experiments and as critiques of the country’s emerging cultural institutions and state censorship, recurrent political debates, and pressing social issues. Texts by Brecht, Uwe Johnson, Heiner Müller, Christa Wolf, Johannes Bobrowski, Franz Fühmann, Wolf Biermann, Thomas Brasch, Christoph Hein; films by Slatan Dudow, Kurt Maetzig, Konrad Wolf, Heiner Carow, Frank Beyer, Jürgen Böttcher, Volker Koepp. Knowledge of German desirable but not crucial; all texts available in English.
T 1:30pm-3:20pm

FILM 772a / GMAN 544a, Landscape, Film, Architecture  Fatima Naqvi

Movement through post-1945 landscapes and cityscapes as a key to understanding them. The use of cameras and other visual-verbal means as a way to expand historical, aesthetic, and sociological inquiries into how these places are inhabited and experienced. Exploration of both real and imaginary spaces in works by filmmakers (Wenders, Herzog, Ottinger, Geyrhalter, Seidl, Ade, Grisebach), architects and sculptors (e.g. Rudofsky, Neutra, Abraham, Hollein, Pichler, Smithson, Wurm, Kienast), photographers (Sander, B. and H. Becher, Gursky, Höfer), and writers (Bachmann, Handke, Bernhard, Jelinek). Additional readings by Certeau, Freytag, J.B. Jackson, L. Burckhardt.
Th 9:25am-11:15am, W 6pm-8pm

FILM 809a / EALL 809a, Beyond Hallyu: Korean and Chinese Screen Culture in the Global Media Situation  Tian Li

This course examines the global new media situation through the lens of Korean and Chinese screen cultural interactions. Students explore the evolution of these interactions from the early twentieth century to the contemporary Hallyu era (late 1990s-present). The term “Hallyu” (한류/韓流), initially coined in Chinese as “hanliu” (韩流), has become a widely recognized term for Korea’s media cultural influence. The screen-based cultural diffusion of Hallyu—encompassing Korean films, K-dramas, K-pop, TV reality shows, video games, and social media—spreads Korean culture, values, and lifestyle globally, establishing Seoul as a new pop-culture hub. Hallyu first gained popularity in Asia, especially China and Japan, before extending its influence on other areas including the Middle East, Latin America, Europe, and the United States, becoming a global media phenomenon. Despite its worldwide impact, In North American academia, studies on Hallyu's reception in film, media, and cultural studies still predominantly revolve around the U.S. as the primary focus, serving as the entry and exit point for the study of understanding and analyzing other cultures. This course seeks to shift that perspective by emphasizing Global Asias in world cinema, media, and cultural studies, offering an alternative to the Western views on global media dynamics. Students explore under-discussed themes and topics in media and cultural studies, such as transnational screen cultural interactions, collaborative productions, inter-Asian media exchanges, cultural boycotts, geopolitical tensions,(trans)nationalism, cultural affinity and resistance.
M 9:25am-11:15am

FILM 833a, Semiotics  Francesco Casetti

Digging into semiotics tradition, the seminar provides analytical tools for “close readings” of a vast array of objects and operations, from verbal texts to all sorts of images, from cultural practices to all sorts of manipulation. Semiotics’ foundational goal consisted in retracing how meaning emerges in these objects and operations, how it circulates within and between different cultural environments, and how it affects and is affected by the cultural contexts in which these objects and operations are embedded. To revamp semiotics’ main tasks, after an introduction about the idea of “making meaning,” the seminar engages students in a weekly discussion about situations, procedures, objects, and attributes that are “meaningful,” in the double sense that they have meaning and they arrange reality in a meaningful way. Objects of analysis are intentionally disparate; the constant application of a set of analytical tools provides the coherence of the seminar. Students are expected to regularly attend the seminar, actively participate in discussions, propose new objects of analysis, present a case study (fifteen–twenty minutes), and write a final paper (max. 5,000 words). Enrollment limited to fifteen. Students from Film and Media Studies and the School of Architecture have priority: they are asked to express their choice by August 25. Students from other departments are asked to send the instructor up to ten lines with the reasons why they want to attend the seminar by August 26. The seminar is aimed at bolstering a dialogue that crosses cultures and disciplines.
T 2pm-3:50pm

FILM 880a / EALL 872a, Theories Popular Cult In Japan: TV  Aaron Gerow

Exploration of postwar theories of popular culture and subculture in Japan, particularly focusing on the intellectual debates over television and new media.
T 3:30pm-5:20pm

FILM 882b / EALL 571b, Japanese Cinema after 1960  Aaron Gerow

The development of Japanese cinema after the breakdown of the studio system, through the revival of the late 1990s, to the present.
MW 11:35am-12:50pm

FILM 900a or b, Directed Reading  Staff

HTBA

FILM 901a or b, Individual Research  Staff

HTBA

FILM 902a, Teaching Fellows Mentoring  John MacKay

Faculty members instruct their Teaching Fellows on the pedagogical methods for teaching specific subject matter.
HTBA

FILM 973b / ENGL 6873b, Modernity and the Time of Literature  John Williams

This course examines transformations in temporality that occurred in the sciences and arts during the twentieth century. From the arrival of Einsteinian relativity to more contemporary proofs on quantum nonlocality, the question of time in the twentieth century threatened to overturn some of our oldest assumptions about cause and effect, duration, history, presentness, and futurity. These new temporalities were as scientifically and philosophically vexing as they were rife with spiritual and aesthetic possibility—a dynamic reflected in the literary and artistic forms that were central to these transformations. Our reading reflects this deeply cross-cultural and interdisciplinary trajectory, including histories of science and technology (Peter Galison, N. Katherine Hayles, David Kaiser), philosophies of time (Heidegger, Bruno Latour, Bernard Stiegler, McLuhan, Luhmann), critical theories of temporal form (Derrida, Adorno, Jameson, Pamela Lee, Kojin Karatani), a wide array of literary texts (William Burroughs, Thomas Pynchon, Ursula K. Le Guin, Tom McCarthy, and others), as well as important cinematic innovations (Jodorowsky, Godard, Kubrick). What is the “time” of literature? of film? How does art transform or reinforce theories of temporal flow? How do new technologies of composition and circulation alter the temporal effects of a given work? What was the “End of History”? Previously ENGL 973.
HTBA

FILM 995a or b, Directed Reading  Staff

HTBA