Cinema Studies (CINE-UT)

This course introduces students to the study of cinema as an industry, art form and cultural practice. By learning about aspects of film form and style, such as narrative, cinematography, and editing, students gain familiarity with key terms and concepts in film studies. Students are also introduced to critical methods of film analysis and topics in film history. Screenings represent a wide range of genres and national cinemas spanning the history of the medium. This course aims to provide Cinema Studies majors and minors, and others with the knowledge and skills to think and write critically about film. This course is open to Cinema Studies Majors only, with limited seats for Cinema Studies minors.

This course introduces students to the basic vocabulary used in the discussion and writing about film, and through the study to enable students to master the language and develop the skills to read a film in a well-informed way. From the study of key formal terms or concepts, such as mise-en-scene, cinematography, editing, sound, and narrative, the course proceeds to the exploration of the broader context of a film text, for instance, genre, mode and film history. Consequently, helping the students to acquire the competency to do close and cogent reading of a film formally and stylistically constitutes the course’s focus. Simultaneously, students are encouraged to relate their reading to the larger modal, generic, and historical context. Film selection for the course ranges from Hollywood classics to European avant-garde and Asian films.

Variety of topics offered. See current listings for updated topic/description.

Examines the question of how the history of cinema has been studied and written by taking the period of silent film as its case study. Explores the historical and cultural contexts that governed the emergence of film as art and mass culture. Investigates the different approaches to narrative filmmaking that developed, internationally, in the silent period. Screenings include early cinema, works of Hollywood drama and comedy, Russian film and Soviet montage cinema, Weimar cinema, and silent black cinema.

Closely examines a variety of theoretical writings concerned with aesthetic, social, and psychological aspects of the medium. Students study the writing of both classical theorists such as Eisenstein, Bazin, and Cracauer and contemporary thinkers such as Metz, Mulvey, and Baudrillard. Questions addressed range from the nature of cinematic representation and its relationship to other forms of cultural expression to the way in which cinema shapes our conception of racial and gender identity.

Examines the background, context, and history of radio, television, video, and sound. Topics include politics and economics of media institutions, audiences and reception, cultural and broadcast policy, and aesthetic modes and movements.

Variety of topics offered. See current listings for updated topic/description.

Variety of topics offered. See current listings for updated topic/description.

This course offers a broad survey of American cinema from its beginnings (and even its pre-history) up to 1960. While the emphasis will be on the dominant, narrative fiction film, there will be attention to other modes of American cinema such as experimental film, animation, shorts, and non-fiction film. The course will look closely at films themselves -- how do their styles and narrative structures change over time? -- but also at contexts: how do films reflect their times? how does the film industry develop? what are the key institutions that had impact on American film over its history? We will also attend to the role of key figures in film's history: from creative personnel (for example, the director or the screenwriter) to industrialists and administrators, to censors to critics and to audiences themselves. The goal will be to provide an overall understanding of one of the most consequential of modern popular art forms and of its particular contributions to the art and culture of our modernity.

This course surveys the major aesthetic movements and technological developments within international cinema from the birth of the art form until the 1960s. The course will approach films, from a variety of countries, as products of their time, as responses to technological developments, or as contributions to ongoing dialogues about the nature of cinema as an artistic medium. Later sections of the course, after the war and coming of sound, follow more traditional national cinema models. The course will also explore a wide variety of formats including short subjects, serials, and features as well as documentaries and experimental works. The course will introduce students to central texts and concepts of key aesthetic movements such as Expressionism, Surrealism, Poetic Realism, and Neorealism, movements that continued to influence filmmaking far beyond the course’s endpoint in the 1960s.

This course surveys key historical movements and production moments in international cinema since 1960. Through close readings of exemplary films, the course will familiarize students with significant aesthetic, industrial, and technological developments that have occurred internationally over the past half-century. Emphasis will be placed on how social, political, economic, and cultural factors impact modes of production as well as film form and style in various contexts. Studies of historically innovative movements in particular national cinemas will be complemented with transnational perspectives that seek to trace lines of influence across borders. Students will encounter works from a diverse spectrum of filmmakers, including Agnès Varda, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Andrey Tarkovsky, Stephen Frears, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Jane Campion, and Alejandro González Iñárritu.

Variety of topics offered. See current listings for updated topic/description.

The last decade saw a series of Hollywood remakes and DVD releases of Asian horror films. What is the fascination with Asian horror cinema? This course examines horror films from Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Thailand, and Taiwan. Drawing attention to the social economies and histories particular to these nations’ horror film productions, this course also investigates the transnational dynamics in the pan-Asian region vis-à-vis such productions. Specific topics include horror in relation to historical trauma, J-Horror Movement, representation of violence, ghostly sexualities, vampirism, transcultural encounters, horror genre hybridizations (through melodrama, detective thriller, martial arts, comedy, musical), as well as the politics of transnational remakes. Special attention also goes to such international auteurs as Kurosawa Kiyoshi, Miiki Takashi, Park Chan-wook, Bong Joon-ho, Tsui Hark, Ann Hui, and Oxide and Danny Pang. It is not necessary for students to have prior knowledge of Asian cinema, and all are welcome.

Nina Auerbach observes that “every age embraces the vampire it needs,” and often gets the one it deserves (1995: 145). In our contemporary moment, we are torn between the moralist and regressive postfeminist abstinence politics championed by Twilight and its ilk and highly productive interpretations of the vampire as a queer figure that develop from the homoerotic overtones of canonic vampire films and proceed to the rampant lesbianism of vampire narratives of the seventies and eighties. Indeed, the vampire’s transgressive protean nature has oft been linked to a logic of gender and sexual ambiguity common throughout its myriad representations, expressed via an erotic ambivalence that replaces conventional genitality with aggressive orality and destabilizes heterosexual libidinal economy as discretely pleasurable human acts of feeding and sex conflate. This course will examine the simultaneously alluring and horrifying figure of the vampire and its idealized, evolutionary, almost-human body, as rendered in film and literature. Examining divers iterations of these undead provides a fruitful site for critical reflection and speculation on subjectivity and embodiment; animacy and animality; abjection and necrosexuality; cyborgism, hybridity and monstrosity; intergenerational and interspecial sexualities; fluidity, mutability, regeneration and transformation; and the disruption of rigid binaries of gender, race, sex and more.

Variety of topics offered. See current listings for updated topic/description.

Variety of topics offered. See current listings for updated topic/description.

“Neo Noir” explores the multiple ways that films made beyond the classic period reference, appropriate, extend, pay homage to, and even define that amorphous category called “film noir”: from nostalgia to escalation, from remakes to meta discourse retroactively constructing a “genre,” from (further) genre hybridization to the dispersion of disconnected noir elements (crime, paranoia, the femme fatale, subjective flashback, existentialism), from realist-expressionist black and white to blatant and stylized color, from censorship’s dark sexuality to hyperreal violence, from national to international. A tentative list of films includes Body Heat, Taxi Driver, Blood Simple, Exotica, Coup de Torchon, High and Low, One False Move, The Grifters, Memento, Usual Suspects, The Last Seduction, Kill Bill, Chungking Express, Mulholland Drive, The Thin Blue Line, and Funny Games. Rather than attempting to rein in film noir, the course celebrates Neo Noir’s exponential extrapolations. Students are encouraged to pursue their cinephilic aptitude in outside screenings. Key literary texts will also be examined. Hence, although critical readings are crucial, a large component of the course assignments will include creative works.

This course examines the history and politics of television’s most enduring genre, the situation comedy. The sitcom occupies a particularly important place in U.S. cultural hierarchies. Some see it as an innovative, quintessentially televisual form. For others it embodies mass culture's formulaic dross. But regardless of which side they may fall on, most scholars of TV history agree that the genre showcases U.S. preoccupations with class, race, gender, and other forms of difference, and that it simultaneously defines a particular kind of televisual aesthetic. How do we talk about this aesthetic—the distinctive typologies of character, plot, and mise-en-scene, and the unique institutional and narrative voices that find expression therein—in the context of debates over genre's political meanings? Such questions invite new ways of conceiving, and writing, genre criticism in TV, and that is the goal of this writing-intensive class.

This course is designed to survey Korean cinema aligned with topics related to the social, political, and cultural history of Korea and beyond: colonialism, war, modernity, dictatorship, anti-communism, civil movements, global capitalism, mobility, labor, gender, diaspora, national cries, etc. Selected fiction and nonfiction films from the colonial and post-Korean war era to the platform age will provide students an overview of the development of Korean cinema in a chronological sense. Paired with scholarly readings, we will analyze the films from various points at issue.

India’s economic liberalization, followed by the onslaught of satellite television and eventually the government’s decision to grant industry status to filmmaking, made the 1990s a decade of exciting and palpable change for Hindi cinema, most notable in the sheer extravagance of its masala films and the colossal revenues generated by them. This survey course seeks to critically interrogate and analyze the idea of the Bollywood blockbuster in terms of its epic narrative and lavish scale of production; public impact across classes and masses; the consolidation of heart-thumping and hip gyrating ‘item numbers’; the complexities of single-screen versus multiplex releases; the negotiation of mass markets and critical acclamation; and finally the intensification of star power through beauty, brawn and consumerism. The course will also engage with the dynamics of the thriving South Asian diaspora that creates successful markets outside of India and stimulates transnational processes of production and distribution of Hindi films. Some of the films that will be screened are Hum Aapke Hain Koun, Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge, Lage Raho Munna Bhai, 3 Idiots, Dhoom 2, Dabangg and Ek Tha Tiger.

What do the knife-wielding outcasts of the juvenile delinquency films of 1950s; the giddy surfer girls of 1960s beach comedies; and the disaffected suburbanites of John Hughes’ movies of the 1980s and ‘90s have in common? They all occupy the world of the “teenpic,” a film genre noteworthy for both its resiliency and adaptability. In fact, the continued popularity of the teenpic is arguably due to its extraordinary capacity for change—its ability to shed outdated character types and narrative devices and adopt new ones, gaining energy and fresh perspective with each succeeding generation. Yet one might justifiably ask: if the generic conventions of teenpic are so unstable, how can we define it as a genre at all? This course addresses this question by charting the transformation of the teenpic over time, from the J.D. films of the 1950s to the teen comedies of today.

The presence on movie screens of stories that originated in comic books or graphic novels seems, over the past several years, to have increased considerably. Are these films representative of a new movie genre or are they merely one form of adaptation among many? This course will address both the long history of the relationship between comics and the cinema as well as survey theories of adaptation that allow for a greater understanding of the changes which occur as these stories are translated from sequential art to moving images. Particular attention will be paid to the dynamics of contemporary Hollywood filmmaking and its effect on this process. We will view several versions of the Superman story (radio, animation, television and theatrical film) as well as other ‘superhero’ movies (Batman, The Punisher, Iron Man), but will also consider adaptations from other graphic sources such as 30 Days of Night and Ghost World.

Hitchcock is the most recognized and imitated film director in the history of movies. The course will seek to examine and explain Hitchcock's influence and seek to understand, through the case of Hitchcock, the very idea of cinematic influence. The class will begin by closely examining key works of Hitchcock (Rear Window, Vertigo, Psycho, and The Birds) in order to understand the elements that make up Hitchcock's universe, in particular, the complex role and function of suspense. We shall then examine the nature and scope of Hitchcock's influence upon American and European Cinema in the work of directors such as Chabrol, Truffaut, Almodóvar, Argento, Verhoeven, Spielberg, Scorcese, Lynch, Antonioni, Fincher, and de Palma.

The films of Stanley Kubrick constitute one of the most innovative bodies of work in the cinema. This course investigates Kubrick’s films in detail with emphasis on their narrative conceptions and structures. The course will explore the uses of irony and voiceover, the relationship between humans and technology, the centrality of the topic of war, and questions of genre in his films.

Variety of topics offered. See current listings for updated topic/description.

This course explores the rise and fall of Hollywood's "Blaxploitation" period and genre. As well we will look at the genre's continuing influence on American commercial cinema and popular culture. We will locate the fifty-odd films of the period in the cultural, political, ‘black identity and liberation' contexts at the end of the Civil Rights Movement, and at the rise of the Black Power and Black Aesthetics movements of the mid-‘70s. Also, we will explore what Blaxploitation was ‘saying' to (and about) its audience; how Blaxploitation draws upon black literary convention; the black crime novel; and black music and film noir. We will also examine Blaxploitation's niche in, and contribution to, Hollywood's political economy, and how Blaxploitation's aesthetic and cultural conventions, and formula have crossed over to address a broad popular audience in a number of popular contemporary films and popular cultural expressions.

Hollywood filmgoing, especially during the summer, has become synonymous with “the blockbuster,” a category of films defined by big expectations—big budgets, big buzz, big special effects, big stars, big marketing campaigns, and, increasingly, big controversies! This course will examine the place of this ubiquitous mode of contemporary American film production by approaching it as a formal and narrative style, industrial strategy, mode of production, and cultural phenomenon. Through these lenses, we will consider cinema’s roots in spectacle, high concept narratives, special effects, the contemporary preponderance of sequels and remakes, transmedia storytelling, fandom, and staples of the blockbuster form such as action thrillers, superhero films, and outsized epic adventures; we will also consider the term relationally to address phenomena such as the “box office bomb” and “sleeper hits.” We will consider these films alongside a slew of media paratexts such as trailers, print advertisements, merchandising, and viral marketing campaigns that position and surround these products in the marketplace. Finally, we will also focus on how the blockbuster has become a sizzling site of controversy and an visible site for recent efforts to reform Hollywood’s production culture in direct response to greater calls for diversity in cast and crew and the #MeToo and #TimesUp Movements. In situating the “blockbuster”—and the industry and business machine that sustains it—this summer course will examine the multivalent qualities that have informed and continue to inform commercial filmmaking on a global scale.

Variety of topics offered. See current listings for updated topic/description.

Pedro Almodóvar is the most notorious Spanish filmmaker since Luis Buñuel, and, like Buñuel, he rapidly gained international acclaim. This course will attend to Almodóvar’s appealing body of work (What Have I Done to Deserve This, Matador, Law of Desire, Tie Me Up Tie Me Down, All About My Mother, Talk to Her, Bad Education, Volver, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, The Skin I Live In, among others) in relation to: national political history; international film exhibition; intertextual popular culture; comedy-thriller-melodrama genre mixing; convoluted narrative structures; theatrical uses of color, music, acting, and scale; interrelated themes of family, desire, and identity; and an aesthetics of excess. Finally we will consider the “outstanding” Almodóvar within a context of “influence.”

Variety of topics offered. See current listings for updated topic/description.

This course will focus on the New York City films of Martin Scorsese. We shall approach several of the films (e.g. Gangs of New York, The Age of Innocence) as filmic examples of historical fiction and most of the other films in terms of their socio-cultural representation of New York City phenomena (e.g. immigration, crime, the art and entertainment industries). As well, we will be concerned with exploring Scorsese’s “narrative method” – his usages of film form and style – in relation to the above issues.

Variety of topics offered. See current listings for updated topic/description.

Variety of topics offered. See current listings for updated topic/description.

While the meaning of environmental disaster seems at first self-evident, this course proposes that the juxtaposition of “environment”—usually denoting nonhuman nature—with “disaster” opens up the possibility of inquiries that challenge the meaning of each term. For example, who is the agent of environmental disaster? Is nature a purely external force that acts against humanity, or is disaster the effect of human actions? Movies depicting environmental disasters have been increasingly common over the past three decades, paralleling growing concerns over pollution, wildlife conservation, and climate change. In this course we will explore how representations of environmental disaster on screen relate to that larger conversation about our environment, and how moving images can pose questions about how we should live in the world as a species among many. Looking to a variety of cinema traditions, ranging from Hollywood “blockbuster” productions, to independent features, to documentaries, we will discover how cinema has participated in and contributed to a growing environmental consciousness. This course is open to undergraduate students only.

The release of Skyfall in 2012 coincided with the fiftieth anniversary of the James Bond franchise. Ever since the release of Dr. No in 1962, this illustrious icon of western popular culture has captivated audiences across the globe, transgressing boundaries of ideology, nation, empire, gender, race, ethnicity, age, and generation in spite of its blatantly white, heterosexual, and Eurocentric worldview. Why is “the misogynist dinosaur from the Cold War” still so popular with female audiences today? How do we explain the success of the offensively orientalist You Only Live Twice in Japan? Why do queer audiences often favor Roger Moore’s raised eyebrow over Daniel Craig’s blue speedo? Chronicling the evolution of 007 over half a century of political, social, and cultural permutations, this summer course will examine the historical and theoretical dimensions and discrepancies of the James Bond phenomenon to understand its seemingly perpetual allure.

American independent film has always operated in tandem with the Hollywood mainstream, but its specific manifestations have never been static or monolithic. This course examines independent film through the lens of the contemporary “indie,” a buzzword whose meanings extend far beyond autonomous projects unbeholden to money-hungry Hollywood executives. Yet, since the 1990s, “indie film” has increasingly been institutionalized on the domestic festival circuit and through studio specialty divisions; it has also become a conduit through which young actors and directors may "graduate" to higher-budget, blockbuster fare. At the same time, the indie has come to possess specific narrative formulas, styles, and representational connotations that arguably make it a genre classification unto itself. In its ubiquity, then, has the “indie” outlived its relevance? With these considerations in mind, students will examine a cross section of fiction films that characterize 21st century American fiction filmmaking outside—and, in many cases, alongside or even inside—the Hollywood mainstream. We will consider independence as practiced and reflected in matters of production, narrative, formal style, and racial, ethnic, gender, and sexual identity. At the end of the course, students will produce their own original research project on a current independent filmmaker of their choice. We will test the boundaries of “indie” through in-class screenings and discussions of the works of current filmmakers such as Wes Anderson, Noah Baumbach, Sofia Coppola, Todd Haynes, Jim Jarmusch, Charlie Kaufman, Harmony Korine, Spike Lee, Richard Linklater, Mike Mills, Kelly Reichardt, Quentin Tarantino, Gregg Araki, Ryan Coogler, Dee Rees, and Todd Solondz.

For January 2023 Close Encounters of the Third Kind and the New Hollywood (and “newer” Hollywood) of the 1970s Film historians tend to argue that in Hollywood cinema there’s a transition around 1975 to 1977 from films early in the decade that often concentrate on alienated anti-heroes (men generally) restlessly on the go, perhaps looking for some meaning but not finding it, to later works that are less cynical, less downbeat, and less critical and are granted blockbuster success. From a cinema of negativity to a cinema of upbeat optimism, from films grounded in oppressive everyday realities of life to the dazzle of inspiring special effects that promise transcendence of life’s cares. Concentrating on a smash hit in this moment of transition, Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, this course interrogates 70s film history to test the accuracy of the transition-narrative. Spielberg’s film plays on the awe of vibrant visual effects, for both characters in the narrative and we the spectators outside the film, to imagine a new universe of spiritual possibility. On the other hand, it shares with earlier films of the 1970s an emphasis on a male anti-hero who is lost and searching and can find his way at the cost of turning his back on humankind. The course offers a close study of Spielberg’s film but also engages with the director’s career overall in the period (from Jaws to E.T., say); with the diverse qualities of 70s cinema overall (between cynicism and uplift), with the business of Hollywood in the period (franchises, commodity tie-ins, and so on), with content issues of gender and social norms (for example, whiteness as an ideological default mode for much of dominant cinema in the period), to investigate the complex nature of American entertainment cinema in a key moment of its history.

Variety of topics offered. See current listings for updated topic/description.

Dark Humor: What We Do in the Shadows of Comedy (Summer 2022) According to humor studies scholar Mathew Winston, dark comedy is not so much a genre as ‘‘an ‘‘attitude, a stance, or a perspective’’ that crosses generic boundaries and forms (Winston 1972: 270). Often, dark comedy ‘‘uses an ironic and biting intelligence to attack sentimentality, social convention . . . and an apparently absurd universe’’; it ‘‘favors the fantastic, the surreal, and the grotesque’’; and it attempts to ‘‘break down complacency’’ by employing ‘‘violent images and shock tactics’’ (Winston 1972: 270). Taking Winston’s observation into account, this course seeks to understand the role of dark comedy in the midst of crisis. Can we look back and face historical atrocities with humor? Are there situations or subjects that remain risibly off limits? Certain events or ideas that cannot or should not be considered “laughing matters?” From the cannibalistic comedy of Eating Raoul, to Fascism made funny and a time-traveling Hitler in Look Who’s Back, to the comic examination of systematic racism through a subversive form of economic mockery in Sorry to Bother You these are some of the questions that will be explored in this course through a broad examination of dark humor in the cinema.

Over the course of the 20th century, the horror film grew from a disreputable flank of the Hollywood genre machine into a billion-dollar global enterprise. Tracking pivotal moments in the history of the genre, this course focuses on horror films from around the world and across eras: from 70s' Italian horror, 80s' American slasher films and Indian ghost films, to contemporary Japanese techno-horror, Korean serial killer films, Pakistani zombie films and French splatter films. Central questions posed are these: (1) How do we coherently define the horror genre given its diverse aesthetic iterations across time and space? (2) Can researching the production, reception and circulation of horror films meaningfully contribute to our conception of the genre?

This course will analyze various ways in which “the child” is portrayed in films across a broad range of non-American national and historical contexts. Making a departure from the more common study of Hollywood “teen pics”, it will survey the child’s complex representations in films from Europe, Asia, Russia, Latin America and Australia; made by such auteurs as François Truffaut, Ingmar Bergman, Andrei Tarkovsky, Satyajit Ray, Majid Majidi etc. It will explore the cinematic child thematically, ranging from the innocent and the vulnerable to the sexual and the evil, while also advancing from younger children to those in their late teens. In addition to learning how to critically analyze films and getting introduced to authorship in cinema, students will discover how the child is usually defined by cinema in opposition to an adult; unpack the sub-characteristics associated with the young child, the preteen and the adolescent; and explore the metaphoric meanings of cinematic childhoods. This course is open to undergraduate students only.

Situated between art and advertisement, between television and experimental filmmaking, the music video sells much more than music. What used to be played on a loop on TV now gets millions of views online, making the music video a must-have for any singer or band. These 3 to 5 minutes of content can shape an artist’s career, launch a new dance or fashion trend, and even go viral like Gangnam Style, the Harlem Shake and Happy. This course will examine the history and aesthetics of music videos from MTV to YouTube and consider their impact on popular culture. As we view videos from Michael Jackson, Madonna, Nirvana, Radiohead, Daft Punk, Bjork, Beyonce, Lady Gaga and many others, we will question the politics of representation at work. We will study auteur directors such as Spike Jonze, Michel Gondry and Chris Cunningham to question the relationship between music videos and cinema.

Variety of topics offered. See current listings for updated topic/description.

Fall 2023: Noir of the 90s This course is an interdisciplinary approach to American cinema with a focus on noir films of the 1990s and an investment in noir not as a fixed categorical genre but as a discourse, modality, or what James Naremore calls “the history of an idea.” Students will study how these films consequentially restaged issues of criminality, detection, the social contract, the city, and the ambiguities of good and evil. Rather than defer to the classical noir model and the reductive frame of “neo-noir,” this course considers how this period posed distinct enactments of film form, historiography, culture, gender, sexuality, class, and race/ethnicity.

The Hong Kong movie industry is one of the success stories of world cinema. From The Matrix to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, from the video game to comic books, its influence is tangible but so widespread that the pioneering work of Hong Kong filmmakers over the decades risks being unacknowledged by a wider audience. In this course we will examine the developments of five film genres from the 1970s on. These include the wuxia ‘sword and chivalry’ films of King Hu and Tsui Hark, and the kung fu film, whose most iconic actors (Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Jet Li and Stephen Chow) also embody the genre’s moments of transition. We will be looking at innovations in the crime film by John Woo, and in Andrew Lau and Alan Mak’s Infernal Affairs trilogy. ‘Asian horror’ has also made its mark thanks to the Hong Kong brand. Finally, in contrast to the gourmet treatment of violence in much of Hong Kong’s popular cinema, the stylish nostalgia films of Stanley Kwan and Wong Kar-wai provide further insights into the identity politics of a regional, yet global cinema in a rapidly changing world.

Where and when did the martial arts film emerge? What are the cultural resources this hybrid genre draws from? What kinds of spectatorship has it fostered over the course of nearly a century across national borders? This course addresses these and other related questions through a historical tracing of the genre’s origins and transformations in the broad landscape of transnational Chinese-language cinema (Hong Kong in particular) and its articulations in other cinemas (e.g.; US, Thailand, and Vietnam). Screenings include works by or featuring key figures such as King Hu, Chang Cheh, Bruce Lee, Tsui Hark, Chuck Norris, and Tony Jaa, as well as neglected experiments and films associated with their female stars including Angela Mao, Michelle Yeoh, and Cynthia Rothrock.

This course will survey the many types of movement and ranges of motion found across the moving image. By focusing on choreography, understood here as the design of movement for the screen, we will explore how the performance of the moving body provokes cinematic technologies. How much or how little can the moving image move? How does the camera cope with its dynamic subject? Between the body and the camera what type of dialogue is established? From mechanical to corporeal motion, we will examine the technologies and aesthetics of experimental and commercial work, from short films, though Hollywood to music videos. Films such as Playtime, An American in Paris, Beau Travail, Pina, Kung Fu Hustle, Saturday Night Fever and Step Up 3D will be screened alongside videos such as Beyonce's Single Ladies, Gangnam Style and the many, many Harlem Shakes.

Contemporary African and Black Diasporic Filmmaking Exploring films made between 1980 and the present day, this course aims to highlight Black filmmakers from a range of African, Caribbean, and European countries as well as the United States and United Kingdom whose films represent a variety of diasporic positions–whether those of recent immigrants, those based in diaspora for many generations, or those based on the African continent. Exploring films including Gessica Geneus’ Freda (2021), Nikyatu Jusu’s Nanny (2022), and Martine Syms’ The African Desperate (2022) and informed by a queer, Black feminist lens, the course focuses heavily on the perspectives of women, representations of queerness, and other experiences outside of those of dominant groups. Rather than a definitive survey of contemporary African and Black diasporic film, the course offers a curated selection of works whose themes include girlhood, migration, spirituality, and the quotidian. Focusing on fiction films, the course will also engage experimental films and music videos. Class meetings will be enhanced by visits from filmmakers (TBC).

Summer in the City: This course examines New York City’s role as America’s second “movie capital” from the time of the invention of motion pictures right up through the mid-1980s. Topics covered include: New York’s centrality to the creation of the American film industry in the early silent period; the City’s role as an icon of modernity in Hollywood movies of the 1930s and ‘40s; and Manhattan’s emergence in the Postwar period as a center for alternate filmmaking practices, especially independent and exploitation features, “underground” experimental films, and early televisual forms such as “direct cinema” and live “anthology” dramas. In sum, the course analyzes a set of generic and formal practices intimately associated with Greater New York as well as offering an introduction to the City’s rich cultural history. Screenings include Dog Day Afternoon (1975), Escape from New York (1981), King Kong (1933), Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), Midnight Cowboy (1969) and Twelve Angry Men (1954).

Since the mid 1990s the Internet has evolved from a space viewed as ripe with potential but fraught with unknown dangers to a true mass medium full of new opportunities and risks we must now negotiate. Throughout, artists have used this medium to make art that employs, documents, and examines emerging online platforms and social media. Charting a loose timeline of art works, formative debates, and happenings, this course will look at the ongoing relationship of art and technology. From the early online copy wars and the url gold rush, to surf clubs, image chat, and now emoji domains, we’ll look at how online art has evolved and the key players involved in making it all happen. We’ll also examine commercial platforms for art practice, art in the age of surveillance, and the scholarship that has emerged simultaneously, including concepts such as Net Aesthetics 2.0, The New Aesthetic, and Post-Internet art.

January 2021: Elvis When the US Postal Service first floated the idea of an “Elvis Presley” stamp (which some detractors felt gave justification to a dissolute life), they asked patrons to vote between two images: the young rocker from the South, simple in look and garb, and the extravagant Las Vegas superstar in white sequined jumpsuit. The young Elvis won out, but the very fact that there could be such a choice catches something of the ambiguities and instabilities in the star image, especially for this iconic figure in American life. This course sets out to investigate the contradictions of media stardom as embodied in the example of Elvis Presley: the rapid ascend to fame and acclaim and the as-rapid descent into squalid tragedy; the appeal to authenticity (as in the simple guitar and un-mic’ed directness of the “Comeback special”) and the exploitation of overblown artificiality (Las Vegas); the projection of white Southern masculinity combined with a welcoming of racial diversity (for example, the influence of African American folk music traditions); likewise, a blurring of gender identities (the 50s male rocker as intensely macho yet inflected by stereotypical traits of femininity); complex and perhaps even confused standards of artistic taste (the sheer silliness or laziness of many Elvis movies in the 1960s combined with their ongoing box office success), and so on. The goal of the course is not to come up with a singular, dogmatic evaluation of Elvis’s career, across media, but to examine how he lives out the many contradictions of stardom and success idealized in stereotypes of the American dream.

Variety of topics offered. See current listings for updated topic/description.

Variety of topics offered. See current listings for updated topic/description.

Variety of topics offered. See current listings for updated topic/description.

The “New” Hollywood (Fall 2020) In the late 1960s, a group of young filmmakers took Hollywood by storm during a moment of crisis in the then-hegemonic studio system. Directors such as Martin Scorsese, Terrence Malick, Steven Spielberg, Brian de Palma, among others, established new ways to make and market films that earned the rubric of a 'New Hollywood.' Directed by the first generation of filmmakers to come out of film schools (NYU, USC, AFI, etc) and thrive in the industry, these films allied a profound knowledge of the history of cinema with a direct connection to the pulse of their time, and an acute awareness of the discoveries of New Cinema movements worldwide (the French, Czech, and Japanese New Waves, the Brazilian Cinema Novo, Third Cinema, etc). However, what's behind the term 'New Hollywood' is not only a group of filmmakers, but a specific convergence of social, cultural, technological, and economic changes that presented an opportunity. As no-less impactful cultural and technological changes accelerated in the late 1990s, the New Hollywood was no longer new, and the surviving filmmakers of that generation were forced to reposition themselves in a mediascape that is vastly different from the one they helped shape. This class will focus primarily on works made in the 21st century by prominent filmmakers directly or indirectly associated with the 'New Hollywood' from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s - to quote David Thomson, "the decade when movies mattered." The course will track significant changes in the film industry and art through the films, and the individual trajectories of these ​auteurs​, identifying how they reveal and comment upon the social, cultural, economic, and political structures that determine them.

This course will consider popular film and literary representations of psychopaths and sociopaths. We will be interested not only in what horrifies audiences but what attracts them to these figures. When, how, and why are we asked/required to identify/empathize with psychopaths? How do such characters negotiate attractions to and fears of hyper/hypo masculinity? What type of female falls for psychopaths (i.e., into love and/or into death)? How do popular renditions of psychopathy compare and contrast with journalistic and medical discourses on the subject? Several key films/novels from mid 20th century provide a core for our investigation of a classic contradiction in this characterization: Night of the Hunter (dir. Charles Laughton, based on novel by Davis Grubb); In a Lonely Place (dir. Nicholas Ray, based on novel by Dorothy Hughes); Brighton Rock (dir. Rowan Joffee, based on novel by Graham Greene); The Talented Mr. Ripley (dir. Anthony Minghella, based on novel by Patricia Highsmith); In Cold Blood (Richard Brookes, based on the novel by Truman Capote). More recent films that extend narrative conventions and aesthetic strategies and/or raise new issues include: Silence of the Lambs (Jonathan Demme); The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer); Funny Games (Michael Haneke); I Stand Alone (Gaspar Noé). Students will be assigned to read one novel, participate in discussion of several critical texts, and present/write on their own favorite psychopaths.

At the heart of the literature-film debate throbs the issue of fidelity – whether or not a film is faithful to the literary text – and the exalted position usually held by literary classics that has inevitably led most audiences to claim, “the book is better!” Adaptation theory however, has undergone significant changes since George Bluestone's influential text Novels into Film (1957) to Robert Stam's more recent scholarship on Bakhtinian intertextuality, which proposes that each text, acknowledged as adaptation or not, is based upon innumerable earlier texts from which it could not help borrowing. By focusing on American culture and landmark Hollywood adaptations in the 21st century, this course seeks to re-examine some of the key tropes in Adaptation Studies such as appropriation, remediation, transmutation and dialogization, emphasizing that films have “cultural capital” and taking into consideration the rapidly growing multimedia-franchise-phenomena (novel/film/videogame/vlogs) that complicates the debates further. Some of the films that will be screened are American Psycho, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, The Dark Knight, Capote, The Twilight Saga: New Moon, The Hunger Games, The Great Gatsby and The Lizzie Bennet Diaries.

This course demystifies the professional and intellectual roles of film criticism in the contemporary media landscape through a historical foundation. Students will encounter criticism from a diverse range of sources and eras in addition to writing reviews of recent films, all of which should aid those interested in pursuing further opportunities in criticism and/or developing a deeper understanding of the craft. Through a combination of readings, discussions, and screenings, we will explore the expansive possibilities of criticism across multiple media, online ecosystems, and the impact of the practice on the film and television industries themselves. We will cover the influence of major figures in the profession with course readings and discussions based around work by major figures including Ebert, Kael, Sontag, and many others. Major critics, filmmakers, and other working professionals will visit the course to provide additional context. We will also explore the related field of entertainment journalism. Students will be expected to keep up with readings and assignments, including a final project, and participate in class discussions.

This course involves in-depth study of a specific topic and encourages the student to produce original research. Variety of topics offered. See current listings for updated topic/description.

This course involves in-depth study of a specific topic and encourages the student to produce original research. Variety of topics offered. See current listings for updated topic/description.

This course involves in-depth study of a specific topic and encourages the student to produce original research. Variety of topics offered. See current listings for updated topic/description.

This course involves in-depth study of a specific topic and encourages the student to produce original research.

This course involves in-depth study of a specific topic and encourages the student to produce original research. Variety of topics offered. See current listings for updated topic/description.

This course involves in-depth study of a specific topic and encourages the student to produce original research. Variety of topics offered. See current listings for updated topic/description.

Variety of topics offered. See current listings for updated topic/description.

Cinema Studies majors ONLY. Cinema Studies students interested in registering for an Independent Study must submit an advisor-approved Independent Study form to be registered.

Cinema Studies majors ONLY. Cinema Studies students interested in registering for an Independent Study must submit an advisor-approved Independent Study form to be registered.

Cinema Studies majors ONLY. Cinema Studies students interested in registering for an Independent Study must submit an advisor-approved Independent Study form to be registered.

Cinema Studies majors ONLY. Cinema Studies students interested in registering for an Independent Study must submit an advisor-approved Independent Study form to be registered.

Cinema Studies majors ONLY. Cinema Studies students interested in registering for an Independent Study must submit an advisor-approved Independent Study form to be registered.

Cinema Studies majors ONLY. A student wishing to pursue an internship must obtain the internship and submit the Learning Contract before receiving a permission code. All internship grades are pass/fail.

Cinema Studies majors ONLY. A student wishing to pursue an internship must obtain the internship and submit the Learning Contract before receiving a permission code. All internship grades are pass/fail.

In a world where individuals are constantly generating digital content for personal and professional use, learning how to organize and save this material is essential for ensuring its long-term accessibility. This introductory course will impart practical skills from the world of archiving to help students take control of the media they store at home, in the studio, or online. Students will learn to identify legacy analog and digital formats, assess a filmmaker's collection for a digitization project, and plan for the ongoing care of their media. Designed for anyone who wants to save their digital content, this course is especially well-suited for students, scholars, artists, filmmakers, musicians, activists, bloggers, and journalists. Emphasis will be placed on preserving audiovisual and photographic materials, with additional consideration of documents and social media.

Students conceive, produce, direct, and edit a short film exploring the Paris experience with smartphone technology. A survey of cellphone cinema history leads to the study of visual storytelling principles and techniques, which students apply through practical exercises. Choosing among available short film genres (experimental, documentary, portrait, essay, fiction), students are trained through every stage of the movie making process: pitching the idea, scripting and storyboarding, shooting, and editing. Each student finishes the course with a facility in smartphone video technology as well as a coherent film record of his or her particular vision of Paris.