FILM STUDIES CERTIFICATE PROGRAM
FALL 2001 COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
THEATRE 71400/ART 79500/MALS 77100--Aesthetics of Film, Professor Tony Pipolo, Thursday, 6:30-9:30pm, Room C419. 3 credits
This course introduces students to graduate-level film analysis by acquainting them with basic film techniques, strategies, and styles. Central topics to be studied include narrative and nonnarrative forms, mise-en-scène, composition, camera movement, editing, sound and music, genre, and spectatorship.
In addition, students will become familiar with a variety of critical perspectives on film as well as the essential bibliographical sources and fundamentals of research in the field.
Information: Professor Tony Pipolo
THEATRE 81500/MALS 73100 /ASCP 82000/ART 89500-- Film and American Culture in the 1930s, Professor Morris Dickstein, Wednesday, 6:30-9:30 p.m., Room C419, 3 credits
This course will focus on the role of film, the arts, and popular culture during a period of social and economic upheaval America in the 1930s. We'll explore some of the leading film genres of the period, including gangster movies, backstage musicals, dance films, monster movies, screwball comedies, and dramas or documentaries about the social conditions of the Depression itself, from I Am A Futigive from a Chain Gang to The Grapes of Wrath.
Special attention will be paid to the work of Frank Capra and Howard Hawks, to the evolution of studio styles, the economic situation of the industry itself, and the role of other socially meaningful art forms during the Depression, including the novel, documentary photography, and mural painting.
Readings will include some works of fiction, journalism, and social history, as well as selections from film histories such as Andrew Bergman, We're in the Money, James Harvey, Romantic Comedy in Hollywood, and Thomas Schatz, The Genius of the System.
Information: Professor Morris Dickstein
THEATRE 81500/GERMAN 79100-- Holocaust Memories: Films, Monuments and Museums, Professor Stuart Liebman, Monday, 6:30-9:30pm, Room C419, 3 credits
The Holocaust's incomparable horrors have made it problematic--to some, even forbidden--territory for literary and visual artists. And yet, over the last fifty years, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of films, monuments and museums have been created to memorialize this unprecedented historical event. This course will be devoted to the complex issues surrounding the representation of the Holocaust in three different "media"--films, monuments and other memorial sites, and Holocaust museums.
Readings will include memoirs, novels, theoretical reflections and plays about the Holocaust including works by Primo Levi, Wolfgang Borchert, Saul Friedlander, George Mosse, Pierre Nora, Peter Novick, Claude Lanzmann and James Young, among others. Films to be screened include Wanda Jakubowska's The Last Stop (1948) Alain Resnais's Night and Fog (1956), Jan Nemec's Diamonds of the Night (1964) Claude Lanzmann's Shoah (1985), and Stephen Spielberg's Schindler's List (1992).
Questions to be addressed include: What roles have films played in shaping public awareness of the historical events? How have cinematic representations of the Holocaust changed over time in different countries? How will the Holocaust be remembered and represented once the first generation of victims and eyewitnesses has passed from the scene?
Special attention will be paid to the visual and conceptual forms of the films and memory sites and to the political and social contexts in which they were produced. The changing recollection and depiction of the Holocaust in America as well as in Germany, France and Eastern Europe where the events actually took place, and the vicissitudes of the Cold War and its aftermath have shifted the political, social and moral meanings of World War II, will form the background of all our discussions.
Information: Professor Stuart Liebman
ENGLISH 86200 -- Stars, Professor Wayne Koestenbaum, Tuesday, 4:15-6:15p.m., Room C419, 4 credits
This seminar will provide an introduction to the practice of closely reading a star's work, life, and image as a hybrid "text." We will read some basic theoretical works, including some or all of the following: Richard Dyer's Stars and Heavenly Bodies, Patrick Horrigan's Widescreen Dreams, Richard DeCordova's Picture Personalities, selections from Christine Gledhill's Stardom, as well as Roland Barthes's essay on Garbo, Richard Meyer's essay on Rock Hudson, and Bruce Hainley's essay on Paul Lynde.
We will also study the literature and art of fandom: it is likely that we will read Gore Vidal's Myra Breckinridge, the journals of Candy Darling, Joseph Cornell, and Andy Warhol, the poems of Frank O'Hara and Edward Field, as well as a memoir by the playwright Adrienne Kennedy. (In our attempt to study the literature of adoration more generally, we may also read selections from Marcel Proust and Michel Leiris.)
We will read selections from thespian autobiographies, to understand the poetics of star self-construction (perhaps Joan Crawford's My Way of Life or Marilyn Monroe's autobiography?).
Finally, we will analyze one "star" per week: each student will be required to do a research project/analytical paper on a star, and to present this work to the class, in conjunction with our discussion of a film in which that star appears. (For example, one week we will read Richard Dyer's essay on Judy Garland, screen I Could Go On Singing, and hear a student presentation on the Judy Garland "star-text.")
The stars we will discuss will most likely be relics from the great era of the Hollywood machine (Monroe, Garbo, Garland, Clift), but we will remain open to areas of student interest and knowledge.
I should add,as well, that the complicated and many-faceted queer subcultural investment in star culture is one of the crucial foundations of this course.
Information: Professor Wayne Koestenbaum