The Graduate School and University Center
of The City University of New York
Ph.D. Program in Art History
SPRING 2007 - COURSE DESCRIPTIONS & PRELIMINARY READINGS
If you purchase your books through http://www.gc.cuny.edu/bookshop, you will have these discount prices (through arrangement with Amazon.com and other retailers) and the Mina Rees Library will receive a 5-7% donation for the purchase of library books. Most of these books, of course, are also available to borrow from the Graduate Center and other CUNY schools’ libraries.
N.B. Lecture classes are limited to 20 students, Methods of Research is limited to 15 and seminar classes are limited to 12 students. Three overtallies are allowed in each class, but written permission from the instructor and from the Executive Officer and/or the Deputy Executive Officer is required.
ART 70000 - Methods of Research
GC: Tue., 9:30-11:30 A.M., 3 credits, Prof. Batchen, Rm. 3421, [67766]
Office Hours: Tues. 11:30 A.M.-12:30 P.M.
This seminar aims to introduce its participants to art historical study at the graduate level. The class will critically examine a variety of interpretive methods associated with the practice of art
history, particularly those developed over the past forty years, such as formalism, Marxism, social history, feminism, semiotics, deconstruction, visual culture, postcolonialism, and so on. In that
sense it will provide students with a necessarily partial typology of recent art historical practices. The class will ask participants to develop their skills in looking, researching, writing, and argumentation, four of the basic components of academic art history. However it will also take account of other common art historical
practices, such as those encountered in the studio, in museums, and in galleries. In brief, the motivating principle of the class will be a single crucial question: "what is the purpose of art history?" No auditors allowed.
Preliminary Reading
Eric Fernie, 'Introduction: A History of Methods,' Art History and its Methods: A Critical Anthology (London: Phaidon, 1995), 10-21.
Blake Stimson, 'Art History after the New Art History,' Art Journal (Spring 2002), 92-96.
ART 73000 – Topics in Medieval Art and Architecture: Problems in Gothic Art & Architecture
GC: Mon., 4:15-6:15 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Ball, Rm. 3421, [67769]
Office Hours: Mon., 3:00-4:00 P.M. or by appointments
Like many historical periods, the Gothic period, along with the very word "Gothic", was defined long after it was said to be over. First used during the Renaissance, the term "Gothic" was initially derogatory; the style itself has been redefined several times through the Gothic Survival and various Gothic Revivals throughout Europe, further muddying the understanding of this period. This class will survey the major art and architectural output of Western Medieval Europe in the late Middle Ages, roughly 1150-1500. The historiography of the period will be examined, especially the iconographical approach of Emile Mâle and his followers and the structuralist understanding of Gothic begun with the work of Viollet-le-Duc. While the term “Gothic” will be deconstructed, the class will focus on the ideas that tie the artistic output of the later Middle Ages together, including commonly held notions of hierarchy, narrative, space, and time. Two (2) auditors allowed.
SPRING 2007 - COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
ART 73000 – Cont’d
Preliminary Reading:
Michael Camille. Gothic Art: Glorious Visions. New York, 1996
ART 75000 – Topics in European Art and Architecture, 1300-1750: Renaissance Art in Global Perspective
GC: Thurs., 11:45 A.M.-1:45 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Saslow, Rm. 3421, [67771]
Office hours: Thurs. 2:15-3:30 P.M. or by appointment
The path-breaking 1992 exhibit marking the 500th anniversary of Columbus introduced the central concept of world-wide, cross-cultural encounter and fluidity to a widened audience. This course examines European art of the early modern period (1300-1750) in its increasingly international context. The Renaissance in the arts coincided with increasing exploration of the Old World and the discovery of the New World, both seminal historical processes which had the paradoxical effect of decentering Europeans’ sense of their place in the world through greater knowledge and cultural exchange, while also affording the major powers unprecedented opportunities for colonization, conversion, and wealth. The survey will begin with Europe’s long cultural interactions with its nearest neighbors, the Muslim and North African world; then, as European reach extended farther to Africa, China, India, and Japan, attention will shift to these new challenges to the received order of the West and their reciprocal influences. After 1492, we will trace the processes by which the two halves of the world were knitted together, at the cost of dramatic cultural upheaval in Europe, and considerable cultural loss or adaptation for native Americans and others.
The course will consider artistic influence in all directions, from Asian textiles and African ivories produced for the European market to the incorporation of these and other foreign motifs into European arts, down to the vogue for western motifs in Mughal India, the adaptation and subsequent suppression of Christian art in China and Japan, and the Spanish establishment of a round-the-world shipping network that facilitated both a syncretic Latin American religious art and the importation of Asian goods and cultural forms to both Latin America and Europe, touching off the world-wide Rococo-era vogue for things oriental known as “chinoiserie.” Emphasis will be on processes of cultural transmission and exchange, artistic reception, hybridization, and conflict that led to the international character of the modern political and cultural world. Auditors allowed.
Course Requirements: Weekly readings and discussion. Brief oral critique of one reading. Research paper on a topic approved by instructor.
Preliminary reading
Students should skim through two books from which we will be reading brief portions during the term, to see the larger context of each chapter:
Rosamond Mack, From Bazaar to PIazza: Islamic Trade and Italian Art, 1300-1600 (University of California, 2002)-- esp. introduction, chap. 1, chap. 9.
Gauvin Bailey, Art on the Jesuit Missions, 1542-1773 (University of Toronto, 1999), esp. introduction, chap.
5.
SPRING 2007 - COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
ART 76020 - Topics in Modern Art: African-American Art
GC: Wed., 6:30-8:30 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Vendryes, Rm. 3421, [67776]
Office Hours: Wed. 2:00-3:00 P.M. and by appointment
Africa-American art is a cornerstone in American art enriched by western and nonwestern influences. From African cultural retentions evident in the material remnants of enslaved 19th-century Africans in America to the modernisms and postmodernisms of the 21st Century that reveal multi-textured black cultural identities, this course investigates the lives, art and critical reception of African-American artists significant to the evolution and revolutions in the modern United States of America. Four (4) auditors allowed.
Preliminary reading
"Writing
African American Art History" essays by Jacqueline Francis, Mary Ann Calo,
James Smalls, Richard J. Powell, Deborah Willis, and Floyd Coleman in American
Art, Spring 2003
(Vol. 17, No. 1): 2-25.
Michael Harris, Colored Pictures: Race & Visual Representation
(2003)
ART 76020 - Topics in Modern Art: The Postwar Years: From Duchamp to Maya Lin
GC: Tues., 4:15-6:15 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Hadler, Rm.3421, [67772]
Office Hours: Tues. 3:00-4:00 P.M.
Beginning in l942 with Duchamp’s string installation for the First Papers of Surrealism show in New York and ending in l982 with the Vietnam War Memorial, this course casts a wide net examining the major artists and movements from those decades. Focus will be on key figures such as Pollock, Rauschenberg, Warhol, Smithson, Serra, Bontecou and Hesse and on movements including Fluxus, performance, and feminism of the seventies. Issues of politics and mass culture will be addressed as the postwar culture shifts from McCarthyism and the Cold War to the Vietnam era. Auditors allowed.
Preliminary Readings:
Thomas Crow, The Rise of the Sixties: American and European Art in the Era of Dissent (New York: Harry N. Abrams, l996).
ART 76020 - Topics in Modern Art: International Romanticism
GC: Wed., 11:45 A.M.-1:45 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Mainardi, Rm. 3421, [67773]
Office Hours: Wed., 1:45-2:45 P.M.
This course investigates revisionist thinking about Romanticism with emphasis on how new interpretations of gender, politics, nationalism, and popular arts interact with traditional readings. Subjects covered will include Orientalism, the Gothic Revival, the new individualism, naturalist landscape, shifts in artistic careers and exhibition venues, the relation of visual arts to literature, the rise of lithography and caricature. Major artists covered include Girodet, Géricault, Delacroix (France); Blake, Turner, Constable (England); Runge, Friedrich (Germany); Goya (Spain); Cole (America). Format of the course will be lecture and discussion. Auditors allowed.
SPRING 2007 - COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
ART 76020 – cont’d
Course Requirements: Students will choose individual reading projects and will each give a brief in-class presentation of their work. There will be a final essay based on this presentation and an exam at the end of the semester.
Preliminary Readings:
Hugh Honour, Romanticism (1979 or any subsequent edition).
ART 77300 - Topics in American Art and Architecture: Public Art in the U.S.: An Overview
GC: Wed., 9:30-11:30 A.M., Prof. Senie, Rm., 3421, [67778]
Office Hours: Wed., 11:30 A.M.-1:30 P.M.
Beginning with commemorative and architectural practices established in the 19th century, this course traces the development of public art from its heroic inception to contemporary community-based projects. Defining various evolving paradigms, the course will consider issues of art, patronage, public space and audience response. Class lectures will be augmented by visits to local commissioning agencies including one or more of the following: DCA Percent for Art, MTA, Public Art Fund and Creative Time. Up to 5 auditors allowed but they will be required to do one assignment.
Preliminary Readings:
Harriet F. Senie and Sally Webster, eds. Critical Issues in
Public Art (Smithsonian, 1998).
ART 77400 - Topics in Modern Latin American Art and Architecture: Latin American Art, 1820-2000: Themes and Issues
GC: Tues., 6:30-8:30 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Manthorne, Rm. 3421, [67780]
Office Hours: Mon. 1:30-3:30 P.M.
This course provides an overview of painting and sculpture produced in Mexico, Central and South America from the time of independence (c.1820s) to 2002. We focus larger and more diverse Latin American societies including Mexico, Brazil, and the Caribbean while at the same time attending to the particular situations from Nicaragua to Argentina and Chile. Latinos from the 19th century to the present are also interwoven into our survey as we look at major aesthetic movements and critical developments. As a primary theme, we follow the interest in landscape and the environment. Five (5) auditors allowed.
Preliminary
Readings:
In place of preparatory reading, students should visit the Latin American
exhibitions on view fall and winter 2006 at the Bronx and Jersey
City Museums and El Museo del Barrio.
SPRING 2007 - COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
ART 78000 – Topics in African Art and Architecture: African Art and Architecture
GC: Thurs., 9:30-11:30 A.M., 3 credits, Prof. Corbin, Rm. 3421, [67782]
Office Hours: Thurs. 11:30 A.M.-12:30 P.M.
This course is an introductory survey of West and Central African art and architecture. It covers the following art producing cultures: (alphabetically) Afro-Portuguese ivories (including Bini-Portuguese, Kongo-Portuguese, and Sapi-Portuguese), Akan terra cottas, Asante, Baga, Bamana, Bamum, Baule, Benin, Bwa, Chokwe, Dan, Djenne, Dogon, Fang, Ife, Igbo, Igbo-Ukwu, Ijo, Kongo, Kota, Kuba, Lower Niger R. Bronzes, Luba, Mambila, Mende, Mossi, Mumuye, Nok, Senufo, and Yoruba.
Course requirements: book report, research paper, and final exam. No auditors allowed.
Preliminary Readings:
Frank Willett, African Art: an introduction. New York, Thames and Hudson, 1993 (revised edition).
ART 79000 – History of Photography: Nineteenth-Century Photography
GC: Thurs., 2:00-4:00 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Batchen, Rm. 3421 [67783]
Office Hours: Thurs. 4:00-5:00 P.M.
Roland Barthes described the emergence of photography in the early nineteenth century as an "anthropological revolution in man's history," a "truly unprecedented type of consciousness." This lecture class aims to examine this proposition by tracing the history of photographic “consciousness” in the nineteenth century as it develops
within a number of specific thematics, from the medium's conception in the late 18th century through to debates in the early 20th century about photography's relationship to artistic and social issues. The class's structure will allow for individual sessions to combine a formal, illustrated presentation with some detailed discussion of
particular photographers, images and texts. Taken as a whole, the class will look at photography as a cultural phenomenon as much as an art form, critically studying the various discursive arenas that this new medium helped to foster and redefine. Auditors allowed (after consultation with the instructor).
Preliminary Readings
Douglas Nickel, “History of Photography: The State of Research,” The Art Bulletin, Vol. LXXXIII, No. 3 (September 2001), 548-558.
Joan Fontcuberta, “Revisiting the Histories of Photography,” Photography: Crisis of History (Barcelona: Actar, 2004), 6-17.
ART 79500 – History of the Motion Picture: History of Film II: 1930 to the present
GC: Thurs., 2:00-6:00 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. McElhaney, Rm. C-419, [67781], Cross-listed with FSCP 81000 and THEA 71600
While this course is designed to adhere to the Film History II course already offered by the CUNY Grad Center on a regular basis, some explanation of how I have chosen to organize my own version of it is needed. Broad historical survey courses of this nature are notoriously difficult to bring into a satisfying shape. Inevitably, enormous gaps and oversights will occur given the multiple histories taking place here. Rather than organize this class strictly in terms of a standard history of style I have chosen to organize it in terms of the relationship between film history (which will include matters of form and style) and the historical, cultural and political
SPRING 2007 - COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
ART 79500 – cont’d
situations which surround the films and national cinemas being covered. 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 not only of 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 sexuality and body, shifting ideas of realism, the unreliability of the image to signify, and the relationship between landscape, culture and history. Auditors by permission of instructor.
Course Requirements: Each student is required to write a long paper,
approximately 15 to 20 pages. Additionally, students are required to attend
all classes and participate in discussions.
ART 86020 - Seminar: Selected Topics in Modern Art: Minimalism in Perspective
GC: Tues., 2:00-4:00 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Chave, Rm. 3421, [67790]
Office Hours: Tues. 4:00-5:00 P.M. and by appointment. Email: annachave@aol.com
Beginning with an introduction to Minimalism in its inception in the 1960s, this course will proceed to focus on the eventual fortunes and fate of the movement, critically and institutionally speaking, in the evolution of a canon and an orthodoxy, as well as in terms of a history of artistic practice. Responses to Minimalism by selected artists during and since the movement's heydey, and the later careers of certain canonical figures will be addressed. The role of patronage in shaping the movement will be touched upon. Students must visit Dia:Beacon. Auditors allowed.
Preliminary Readings:
James Meyer, Minimalism: Art and Polemics in the Sixties, 2001.
ART 86020 - Seminar: Selected Topics in Modern Art: Representation in the Weimar Republic: Constructs of Gender, Race, and Religion
GC: Wed., 4:15-6:15 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Long, Rm. 3421, [67787]
Office Hours: Wed. 6:30-7:30 P.M. and by appointments.
This course will focus on representation in the Weimar Republic, particularly on the constructions of gender, race, and religion that emerged in the visual culture of this highly charged period from 1918 to 1933 when Germany first experimented with parliamentary democracy. A paradoxical mood of optimism and despair, which resulted in part from the inflated expectations for the new Republic, contributed to visual representations whose thematic and structural complexity echoed the conflicts and contradictions of a nation that would capitulate to fascism in 1933.
SPRING 2007 - COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
ART 86020 – cont’d
The course will begin with a series of lectures, providing a historical and cultural framework for the period. Among the artists to be discussed in relation to the impact of gender, race, religion, as well as class, will be Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, George Grosz, John Heartfield, Hannah Höch, Käthe Kollwitz, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, and August Sander. Students will investigate how photographers, designers, painters, architects, and/or critics responded to the dark undertones of anti-feminism, anti-semitism, anti-modernism, and anti-republicanism. Knowledge of German is helpful but is not required. Students present an oral report and a paper based on their report. Four (4) auditors allowed.
Preliminary Reading
Walter Benjamin, “Little History of Photography” (1931) in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings 2, 1927-1934, ed. M. Jennings, et. al (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999), 507-530.
Detlev J. K. Peukert, The Weimar Republic: The Crisis of Classical Modernity, trans. Richard Deveson (New York: Hill and Wang, 1993), xi-xv, 3-18.
ART 86030 – Seminar: Selected Topics in Modern Architecture, Urbanism, and Design: Layering Architecture: The Modern City as Palimpsest
Office Hours: Mon. 4:00-5:00 P.M.
Architectural historians and other social scientists commonly invoke the metaphor of the palimpsest (from the Greek palimpsestos, or “scraped again”) to understand a city’s layered accumulation of architectural inscriptions, abrupt erasures, and new insertions. This course uses the palimpsest as a point of departure for investigating modern architecture’s place in the city and in the cultural landscape of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Weekly readings and opinion papers, presentations, and discussions will address a variety of issues, including the shifting degrees of autonomy in art and architecture over time, the relationship of architectural history to art history and other disciplines, and the “layering” of architectural meaning in contemporary versus historic cities. Readings will include selections from such books as William Cronin, Nature’s Metropolis; Rem Koolhaas, Delirious New York; Robert Caro, The Power Broker; and Deyan Sudjic, The Edifice Complex. The course will begin with a reading and discussion of Le Corbusier, The City of Tomorrow and its Planning, in its entirety. There will be no auditors allowed in this course.
Preliminary readings:
Le Corbusier, The City of Tomorrow and its Planning (the first book you will be reading for the seminar, in case anyone wishes to get a head start over winter break.)
Art 86040 - Seminar: Selected Topics in Contemporary Art: The Gates of Janus: Art in the Age of Difference.
GC: Fridays, 2:00-4:00 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Moyo Okediji, Rm. 3421, [68724]
Office hours: TBA
The seminar will focus on the visual culture of Africa and the African diaspora and will explore strategies that artists use to assert or maintain relevance in a world increasingly fractured by differences. Janus is a metaphor for the landscape of Western hegemony, and the gates of janus are the boundaries and borders of global negotiations beyond the limits of traditional iconographies.
SPRING 2007 - COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
ART 86040 – cont’d
Requirements will include weekly readings and discussions, as well as a research paper to be presented at the end of the semester. Auditors allowed.
Note: The seminar will meet for double-sessions in the early part of the semester, will not meet for several weeks, then will reconvene at the end of the semester for student presentations.
ART 87000 – Seminar: Selected Topics in Pre-Columbian Art and Architecture: The Ancient Maya
GC: W, 4:15-6:15 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Pugh, Rm. 3421, [68334]. Cross-listed with ANTH 84700.
Office Hours: Mon. 3:00-4:00 P.M. and 6:15-7:00 P.M.; email: tpugh@gc.cuny.edu
This course will introduce students to the major cultural developments in the Maya region from the arrival of indigenous peoples up to their conquest by the Spaniards in the 16th century (and later in some areas). We will begin by considering general characteristics of the Maya region. Next, we will discuss Maya religion, time, calendars, writing, and society. After the first exam, the course begins with the Preclassic period and considers the initial development of complex societies in the Maya area with consideration of influence from the Olmec
and Mixteca-Puebla regions. Students will then follow the Maya into the Classic period with discussions of major cities such as Tikal, Copan, Palenque, Calakmul, Seibal, Uxmal, and Chich’en Itzá. The contributions of Teotihuacan will be considered as well. After the “collapse,” students will investigate Postclassic settlements such as Mayapán, Tulum, and Zacpetén, with some discussion of interactions with Central Mexico. Finally, we will chart the arrival of the Spaniards, the conquest, and the beginnings of colonialism. No auditors allowed.
ART 87100 - Seminar: Selected Topics in Colonial Latin American Art and Architecture: Colonial Cities in the Americas
GC: Wed., 2:00-4:00 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Quiñones-Keber, Rm. 3421, [67792]
Office Hours: Wed. 12:00-2:00 P.M.
This seminar approaches the colonial arts of the Spanish Americas from the 16th to the 18th centuries not as an undifferentiated “Latin American” entity but as the distinctive creative output of vastly different colonial cities and regions. Introductory lectures will survey such cities as Cuzco, Lima, Potosí, Havana, Guatemala City, Mexico City, Puebla, and Santa Fe, incorporating such themes as the relationship between a particular colonial city and its prehispanic predecessor; missions as “city”; maps and painted images of cities; artistic connection
with Asian, African, or European cities; city scenes and colonial society; and the distinctive schools of art
engendered in individual cities. For their reports students may further explore these themes and cities, or others of their choice. Requirements include weekly readings, written critiques, and discussion as well as a culminating seminar report (oral and written). Three auditors allowed, but they will be expected to do all readings and participate in discussions.
Preliminary Readings:
Students are encouraged to view “The Arts in Latin America, 1492-1820” exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (closing Dec. 31) and (or minimally) to survey the objects in the catalogue of the show with attention to the subject of the “city” and read “The Spanish American Colonial City: Its Origins, Development, and Function” by Alfonso Ortiz Crespo, pp. 23-38.
SPRING 2007 - COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
ART 87300 - Seminar: Selected Topics in American Art and Architecture: The American Bourgeois Interior, 1760-1880
GC: Mon., 6:30-8:30 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Jaffee, Rm. 3421, [67793]
Office Hours: By appointment – Mon. 5:00-6:30 P.M., Rm. 5114.11, email: djaffee@gc.cuny.edu
Domestic space has long helped Americans define themselves and their culture. By studying the American bourgeois interior—high and low--we can better understand a series of seismic cultural shifts from the mid-eighteenth century Atlantic consumer “revolution” with its striking family portraits, luxurious textiles, and Rococo chairs; the early national democratization" of refinement with federal furniture and “folk” portraits; and then the mid-nineteenth consolidation of middle class domesticity around the parlor and its panoply of mass-produced household goods such as Grand Rapids furniture, stereographs, Currier and Ives prints, and John Rogers sculptures. We will make significant use of various online digital databases as well as explore some new media presentations of art historical works on these topics. Three (3) auditors allowed.
Course Requirements: Students will participate in a class blog; the final project will be a collaborative website composed of student presentations (technical knowledge not expected).
Preliminary reading:
Katherine Grier, “Imagining the Parlor,” in Culture and Comfort: Parlor making and Middle-class Identity, 1850-1930 (Washington, D.C., 1988), 19-79.
Paul Staiti, "Accounting for Copley" and “Character and Class,” in Carrie Rebora et al., eds., John Singleton Copley in America (New York, 1995), 25-77.
ART 89400 - Seminar: Seminar in Film Theory: Theories of the Cinema
GC: Mon., 4:15 -6:15 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Boddy, Rm. C-419, [67794], Cross-listed with FSCP 81000 and THEA 81600
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 with a variety of backgrounds are welcome.
Course requirements: In addition to participation in seminar discussions, each student is responsible for presenting selected readings to the class, producing six weekly journal entries in response to course screenings and readings, and preparing a 15-page research paper on a topic selected in consultation with the instructor, along with an oral presentation of the research project to the seminar. Auditors by permission of instructor.
ARTH 89500 – Chinese Cinema(s) and the Art of Transnationalism
GC: Tues., 2:00-5:00 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Hitchcock, Room C-419, [67798], Cross-listed with FSCP 81000
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
SPRING 2007 - COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
ARTH 89500 – cont’d (Prof. Hitchcock)
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 Hsaio-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 Transnationalism” 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 categories 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 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 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. Auditors by permission of instructor.
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.
ART 89500 – Selected Topics in Film Studies: The Western Gaze: Word, Image, and Nation, 1890-1970
GC: Fri., 11:45 A.M.-2:45 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Dolan, Rm. C-419, [67796], Cross-listed with FSCP 81000
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 America 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. Auditors by permission of instructor.
Course requirements: Class participation; one 15-minute presentation; a 20-page
final paper.
SEE ALSO
FSCP 81000 Before Sundance: The Roots of American Independent Cinema
GC: Wed., 4:15-8:15 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Hendershot, Rm. C-419 [67839] Cross listed with THEA 81500 & ASCP 82000.
Many of the most respected directors, writers and cinematographers of 1970s America 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
SPRING 2007 - COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
FSCP 81000 – cont’d
cracks of film history courses. 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). Students will write a final 25-30 page research paper at the end of the semester. Auditors by permission of instructor.