THEA 71400/ART79500/MALS 77100, Aesthetics of Film, Professor Stuart Liebman Monday,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. (Enrollment limited to 20, no Auditors.)

THEA 81500 Chinese Cinema(s) in the Age of Globalization, Professor Peter Hitchcock, Tuesday, 6:30-9:30pm, Room C-419, 3 credits

This course aims to track the extraordinary developments in Chinese film production and distribution of the last quarter century along several contrasting yet linked trajectories: economic and social changes within East Asia, the paths and perils of diaspora, and specific coordinates of globalization that interpellate various forms of "Chineseness" in transnational image markets.

What elements, themes, or innovations of Chinese film narrative disrupt the tidy categores of "nation" and "state" identities in world cinema? What is the evidence in Chinese film itself? How might the globality of Chinese cinema paradoxically unhinge or problematize globalization?

It is hoped that the course will not only function as a primer in recent Chinese film, but more importantly as an in-depth series of case studies on the new ways we might think about national cinema and the contours of film history.

Films will include Yellow Earth (Chen), Red Sorghum (Zhang), The Women's Story (Peng) Terrorizer (Yang), City of Sadness (Hou), Rouge (Kwan), Durian Durian (Chan), What Time is It There? (Tsai), Suzhou River (Ye), and Platform (Jia). Readings will be drawn from, for example, Lu (ed.) Transnational Chinese Cinemas, Lu, China, Transnational Visuality, Global Postmodernity, Chow, Modern Chinese Literary and Cultural Studies in the Age of Theory, and Dai, Cinema and Desire, as well as extracts from Jameson, Dirlik, Marchetti, Zhang, Zizek, Chow, Appadurai, Berry, and Yip. I hope to include some art house alternatives in the form of sci-fi and "underground" video as well as special guests.

THEA 81500/ENGL 87400/ASCP 82000  Film Noir in Context: From Expressionism to Neo-Noir, Professor Morris Dickstein, Wednesday, 6:30-9:30pm, Room C-419, 3 credits

The course will explore the style, sensibility, and historical context of film noir. After tracing its origins in German expressionism, French "poetic realism," American crime movies, the hard-boiled fiction of Dashiell Hammett and James M. Cain, and the example of Citizen Kane, we will examine some of the key films noirs of the period between John Huston's The Maltese Falcon of 1941 and Welles's Touch of Evil in 1958, including such works as Double Indemnity, Mildred Pierce, Out of the Past, Detour, Shadow of a Doubt, In a Lonely Place, Gun Crazy, The Killers, DOA, Ace in the Hole, The Big Heat, and Kiss Me Deadly.

We'll examine the role of French critics in defining and revaluing this style, and delve into its influence on French directors like Melville (Second Breath), Truffaut (Shoot the Piano Player), and Chabrol (La Femme Infidele, Le Boucher). Finally, we'll look at the post-1970s noir revival in America in such films as Chinatown, Blade Runner, Body Heat, and Red Rock West.

Readings will include materials on the historical background of this style, key critical and theoretical texts on film noir, and hard- boiled fiction by writers such as Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain, and Patricia Highsmith.

THEA 81500/ASCP 81500  Realism and Naturalism in Film and Literature, Professor Robert Singer, Thursday, 6:30-9:30pm, Room C-419, 3 credits

This course, "Realism and Naturalism in Film and Literature," will examine the aesthetic and historical evolution and relationship of literary and film Realism and Naturalism. Beginning with representative discourse from science and the humanities, this course will present multiple, international literary and film narratives that exhibit core precepts of Realist and Naturalist ideology: a commitment to social and psychological verisimilitude, issues of genetic/ environmental causality; an anti-romantic/anti-supernatural "objective" observation of the working world; a class-based context that suggests an informing ideological perspective.
 

Naturalism's foundation in narrative realism alerts the reader to social and historical contexts that mobilize the suppositions of verisimilitude. Naturalism indicates an interpretive range that frames the meaning of human nature and conditions, whether depicting the rage of the worker, abuse of the prostitute, desperation of the indigent, or violence of the alcoholic.

Realist and Naturalist literature, evolving in the 19^th century, largely parallels the appearance of photography and film art. This course will explore the genesis of this dynamic and transforming/continuing relationship, demonstrating how select silent and sound film narratives retain the core precepts of Realism and Naturalism. It will focus on both film adaptations and original screenplays that may be read as Realist/Naturalist texts. All films and reading assignments will be in English or else translated.

Students will be assigned two writing projects, a short, independent project that examines issues and questions arising from the discussion of course precepts and their contextual representation, or an area of personal interest arising from the analysis of the material. A second, longer end-term project will evolve from an interpretation and analysis of course material that the student will develop with the instructor. Students are encouraged to engage in discussion of the material throughout the course. Students will also make class presentations (approx.10 mins.) at various points throughout the term on topics arising from or relating to the Realist and/or Naturalist film, literature and course material. All required texts are utilized throughout the term. Some reading material and DVDs/videos will be placed on reserve. The instructor will duplicate and distribute packets of excerpted material from texts (averaging 3-6 pages per selection) and this material is subject to revision.