SPRING 2007 COURSES
FSCP 81000/ART 79500/MALS 77300/THEA
71600 -- FILM HISTORY II: 1930 to the Present, Professor Joe
McElhaney, Thursday, 2:00-6:00pm, Room C-419, 3 credits
In the broadest political and social sense, the course begins with
cinema in relation to the rise of Nazism in the early 1930s and ends with
cinema in relation to the age of terrorism. In between these two extremes,
the films being discussed in the class cover a broad spectrum of
documentary and fiction, of the avant-garde and Hollywood, of the cinemas
of not only North America and Europe but also Asia and Africa.
Almost invariably, the films discussed address moments of major social and
political weight: the Depression, the Spanish Civil War and the rise of
fascism, World War II and the Holocaust, post-war recovery, Vietnam and
the rise of the counter-culture, the age of Reagan and the emergence of
new technologies.
In a stylistic and formal sense, the course begins with a film in which
the cinema first begins to talk and ends with a film in which the cinema
attempts to rediscover the act of speaking itself in an age in which
civilized discourse is threatened with extinction.
Language, in fact, is one of several threads running through the films
being screened as it assumes a significant role in post-war cinema:
language differences, accents, the act of speaking and narrating, and the
implications of these in terms of various modes of storytelling.
Additional topics addressed throughout the semester will include the
emergence of new concepts of sexuality and the body, shifting ideas of
realism, the unreliability of the image to signify, and the relationship
between landscape, culture and history.
Required texts:
Film History by Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell
M by Anton Kaes
Sansh Day by Dudley Andrew and Carole Cavanaugh
WR: Mysteries of the Organism by Raymond Durgnat
In addition, students are required to purchase a packet of photocopied
essays.
Course Requirements: Each student is required to write a long paper,
approximately 15 to 20 pages, touching upon the historical issues raised
by the class. The student may choose to either explore a topic already
raised in class in a more in-depth manner; or they may choose to engage in
independent research on a topic of relevance to the concerns of the class.
In either case, the paper topics must first be approved by me, first
verbally and then through a formal paper proposal, due mid-way through the
semester, as indicated in the syllabus.
In addition, students are required to attend all classes and participate
in discussions.
Syllabus available in Certificate Program Office/Room 5109.
FSCP 81000/ART 89600/THEA 81500-- The Western Gaze: Word, Image, and Nation, 1890-1970, Professor Marc Dolan, Friday, 11:45am-2:45pm, Room C-419, 3 credits
This course will examine the rise, fall, and perhaps second rise of one of the most popular American narrative genres of the 20th century: the Western. Both print and film sources will be examined beginning with a consideration of some late 19th century dime novels.
We will then move on to a parallel examination of the verbal and visual aspects of the genre in its heyday: the early 20th century. Obviously, central consideration will be given to the genre’s (re-)construction of both American manhood and American foreign policy, but we will also give consideration to the Western as a purely aesthetic genre—particularly in relation to landscape, where one may speak in both media of something like a "Western gaze."
This course will look only glancingly at works from before 1890 and after 1970, but students who wish to work in these periods are heartily encouraged to pursue their interests in their final paper and presentation.
Films to be studied, whole or in part, may include:
Edison and Dickson’s Buffalo Bill Wild West Show shorts (1894)
The Great Train Robbery (1903)/From Leadville to Aspen (1906)
The Invaders (1912)
Hell’s Hinges (1916)/Straight Shooting (1917)
The Iron Horse (1924)/The Covered Wagon (1925)
Jesse James (1939)/Stagecoach (1939)
Destry Rides Again (1939)/Utah (1945)
My Darling Clementine (1946)/Red River (1948)
Winchester ’73 (1950)/The Tall T (1957)
How the West Was Won (1962)/Once upon a Time in the West
(1968)
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
The Ballad of Little Jo (1993)
Primary readings may include:
Burton Wheeler, Deadwood Dick (1877)
Frederick Jackson Turner, "The Significance of the Frontier in American
History" (1893)
Owen Wister, The Virginian (1902)
Zane Grey, Riders of the Purple Sage (1912)
Walter van Tilburg Clark, The Ox-Bow Incident (1940)
Louis L’Amour, Hondo (1953)
Larry McMurtry, Anything for Billy (2001)
Secondary readings will be drawn from: John Cawelti, The Six-Gun Mystique; Richard Slotkin, Gunfighter Nation; Scott Simmon, The Invention of the Western Film; Jane Tompkins, West of Everything; Janet Walker, ed., Westerns: Films through History
Course requirements: Class participation; one 15-minute presentation; a
20-page final paper.
FSCP 81000/THEA 81500 – Before Sundance: The
Roots of American Independent Cinema, Professor Heather Hendershot,
Wednesday, 4:15-8:15pm, Room C-419, 3 credits
Many of the most respected directors, writers, and cinematographers of
1970s American cinema got their start working with Roger Corman in the
late 1950s and 1960s. Indeed, one might say that the roots of the
renaissance of American cinema in the 1970s can be found in the cheap
independent films of the 50s and 60s.
This course, then, catches many of the important and interesting
"marginal" films that often fall through the cracks of film history
classes. The course focuses on American independent genre cinema of the
post-studio era, up to about 1989, the year that sex, lies and
videotape premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, kicking off the
American independent cinema movement that would be exploited and
commercialized by both Sundance and Miramax. Within a few years of the
release of Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, "independent cinema"
was scarcely independent at all. It had become a marketing category.
Avoiding romanticization, this course looks back to the preceding era,
when truly independent cinema was produced using creative (if often
dubious) funding and distribution strategies. The class examines issues of
aesthetics and authorship, as well as economic and industrial issues.
Students will study what one might roughly call A, B, and C pictures.
("Roughly" since, technically, the A-B designations refer to the era of
studio dominance that began to decay in 1948). At the A level, we will
briefly look at how former contract players made the transition to
semi-independent filmmaking, some as producers (Kirk Douglas), others as
directors (Jerry Lewis).
At the next level down in terms of cultural prestige, the class will
consider a number of "low-rent auteurs," independents such as Roger Corman,
John Carpenter, George A. Romero, and William Castle who made genre
pictures on the edge of Hollywood, often creating films paying direct or
indirect homage to A-list auteurs. In other words, to understand
Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13, one must also understand its
relationship to the "high end" Rio Bravo, as well as Assault’s
"low-end" antecedent, Night of the Living Dead. Similarly, we will
consider the Castle-Hitchcock dialectic.
At the C level, we will consider the increase in pornography, horror, and
exploitation during this era, and, of course, the changing legal landscape
that allowed such graphic films to proliferate.
The final part of the class will turn to the rise of the "film school
brats" (focusing on Scorsese), as well as directors such as Kevin Smith,
Spike Lee, and Errol Morris, independent filmmakers who made important
low-budget films on the cusp of the Sundance explosion.
Throughout the semester, students will be asked to interrogate the complex
relationship between "high" and "low" culture, the strength and weaknesses
of auteur theory, and the industrial and theoretical meanings of
"independent" filmmaking. Though clips from avant-garde and experimental
work will be shown where appropriate, and some time will be devoted to
documentary production and the high-art end of independent production
(e.g. Shadows), the bulk of the class will focus on feature-length
genre films.
Our primary emphasis will be on American cinema, but we will also examine
the ways that some independent American films draw upon ideas and
aesthetics from European art cinema, and vice-versa (e.g. Masque of the
Red Death as a riff on The Seventh Seal; Godard’s homage to
Ladies Man in Tout va bien).
Each week students will see one film in class. To prepare for class,
though, students will often be asked to see an additional film on their
own to provide background context. There will also be recommended films
each week for extra motivated students. Readings will focus on theoretical
issues of authorship, as well as historical and industrial issues.
Autobiographies of a number of directors will be read critically.
Students will write a final 20-page research paper at the end of the
semester.
A list of readings and films is available in the Certificate Programs
Office/Room 5109.
FSCP 81000/ART 89600/THEA 81500 --Chinese Cinema(s) and the Art of Transnationalism, Professor Peter Hitchcock, Tuesday, 2:00-5:00pm, Room C-419, 3 credits
Chinese cinema has just celebrated its 100th anniversary.
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..
By now most Americans are familiar with the diasporic delights of, for
instance, a John Woo action film or the enormously successful Crouching
Tiger, Hidden Dragon of Ang Lee. Art house audiences have also come to
appreciate the Fifth Generation work of Chen Kaige or Zhang Yimou, the
postmodern Hong Kong of Wong Kar-Wai, or the nationalist dilemmas and more
complex Chineseness of Taiwan in the films of Edward Yang or Hou Hsiao-hsien.
New generations of filmmakers have recently begun to make their mark, like
Zhang Yuan or Jia Zhangke (a "Sixth Generation") of China, or Fruit Chan
of Hong Kong, and Tsai Mingliang of Taiwan.
Critics have used "Chinese transnational cinema" as an umbrella term for
this production and there is much to recommend such analysis. "Chinese
cinema(s) in the age of lobalization" will seek, however, to complicate
and deepen this approach, first by coming to terms with the ideological
and other underpinnings of "Chineseness" and by questioning whether the
transnational production and circulation of Chinese film is simply an
integer of commodification and economic prowess.
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 (a
question that goes beyond whether Chinese stars [Zhang and Gong] are used
to represent Japanese)?
In this way, it is hoped that the course will not only function as a
primer for understanding the immense impact of 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? and Goodbye Dragon Inn (Tsai), Suzhou
River (Ye), Green Tea (Zhang) and Platform and The
World (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 Hitchcock, Jameson, Dirlik, Marchetti, Zhang, Zizek, Chow,
Appadurai, Berry, and Yip.
We will consider at least one example of fiction in order to examine
processes of adaptation.
I hope to include some art house alternatives in the form of sci-fi (2046
[Wong]) and "underground" video as well as special guests (a director or
Chinese film scholar currently based in New York).
Course Requirements: a class presentation and a 20-25 page final paper.
It is hoped that the class presentation may provide a research base for
the term paper. Supplementary visual submissions are encouraged.
A film and reading schedule (provisional) is available in the Certificate
Programs Office (Room 5109).
FSCP 81000/ART 89400/THEA 81600
Seminar in Film Theory Professor William Boddy, Monday, 4:15-6:15 pm,
Room C-419, 3 credits
Course
Description: This course explores some of the major texts and
controversies in classical and contemporary film theory as well as a
number of related theoretical issues from the fields of cultural studies,
theatre, and media studies.
Our attention will focus on the analysis of primary theoretical texts,
although secondary works and films which assist in contextualizing film
theory will also be examined.
This course requires no previous experience in film studies, and students
from a variety of academic backgrounds are welcome.
Required Texts: Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen, eds., Film Theory
and Criticism: Introductory Readings Sixth Edition (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2004); selections from Robert Stam and Toby
Miller, Film and Theory: An Anthology (Malden, MA: Blackwell,
2000); Toby Miller and Robert Stam, eds., A Companion to Film Theory
(Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1999); Christine Gledhill and Linda Williams,
eds., Reinventing Film Studies (New York: Oxford University Press,
2000); John Hill and Pamela Church Gibson, eds., Film Studies
Critical Approaches (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).
Additional photocopied material will be placed on reserve at the Graduate
Center library.
Course Requirements: In addition to participation in seminar
discussions (representing 10% of the final grade), each student is
responsible for presenting selected readings to the class (10%), producing
six weekly journal entries in response to course screenings and readings
(20%), and preparing a 15-page research paper on a topic selected in
consultation with the instructor (50%), along with an oral presentation of
the research project to the seminar (10%).
A reading and screening schedule is available in the Certificate
Programs Office (Room 5109).
PAST COURSES:
Fall 2006;Spring 2006; Fall 2005; Spring 2005; Fall 2004; Spring 2004: Fall 2003;Spring 2003; Fall 2002; Spring 2002; Fall 2001; Spring 2001;Fall 2000;Spring 2000; Fall 1999; Spring 1999; Fall 1998