Seminar
in Film Studies: Film History, Part Three (Professor
Ying Zhu) This seminar surveys the development of world narrative
fiction film from geopolitical, geoeconomic, and geoaesthetic
perspectives. It traces the institutional as well as the
stylistic evolutions of world cinema since the 1970s. It
examines major cinematic events, movements, and developments
within national and regional film industries of varying
political, economic and cultural milieus. While an exhaustive
coverage is not the goal, the course does seek to traverse a few
distinctive geographic terrains including new and planet
Hollywood, New German Cinema, British Cinema, Iranian Cinema,
Latin America cinema, and Asian popular cinema. Within each
nation/region, our survey highlights major trends in film style
including both the commercial and the art waves and film
practice including the organization of film production,
distribution, and exhibition, as well as film policy involving
censorship, regulation, and classification. Assignments:
Attendance (10%): Regular attendance and active participation in
seminar discussions. Weekly reading report (40%): Each student
is required to write, on a weekly basis, a one-page,
single-spaced abstract of a selected reading that summarizes the
central questions of the material; On a second page, each
student will submit two questions/comments s/he would like the
seminar to consider during that week discussion. Research paper
(50%): 20 pages; paper proposal and bibliography due on week
nine; presentation on final week of the seminar. (Syllabus and
reading list available in the Certificate Programs Office, Room
5109) Please note: This course is an elective, not one of the
required film history courses.
Tuesdays, 11:45am to 3:45pm.
Seminar
in Film Studies: Documenting the Self: Performance
in Nonfiction Film (Professor
Edward D. Miller): This seminar examines the
significance of performance in nonfiction film. We pay
particular attention to cinema vérité and direct cinema, new
styles of filmmaking that emerged in the early 1960s. Filmmakers
such as D.A. Pennebaker, the Maysles Brothers, and Fred Wiseman
did away with the artifice of voice-over, interviews, archival
footage, and incidental music—and made use of new lightweight
equipment—in order to create a more authentic documentary. They
were especially drawn to capturing backstage views of rock stars
(such as Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, David Bowie) as well as
gaining access to interactions of ordinary people in
extraordinary situations (such as in mental institutions, on the
road selling bibles, working in political campaigns, and
attending high school). We trace a selective history of
nonfiction film since 1960, beginning with the paradigm shift in
documentary inspired by the assembling of distinctive--and
talkative--Parisians in Edgar Morin and Jean Rouch’s Chronicle
of a Summer (1961). We conclude with Jonathan Caouette’s
aesthetics of self-preservation in Tarnation (2004) and
YouTube’s videos of self-display. We pay particular attention to
on-screen performances of gender and race due to the influence
of identity politics on many of the key nonfiction works of the
80s and 90s. Course Requirements: The student works on a
research topic throughout the semester. Class participation
includes presentation of a reading as well as a conference-like
talk that conveys the student’s research findings.In addition,
the final class is constructed as a series of conference panels.
Attendance in all classes and arriving on time is expected. If
you have more than three absences you'll be required to drop the
class or take a failing grade; multiple lateness will lower your
final grade. (Syllabus available in the Certificate Program's
Office, Room 5109.)
Wednesdays, 11:45am to 3:45pm.
Seminar
in Film Theory: Theories of the Cinema (Professor Amy Herzog): This class will
provide an overview of significant movements, debates, and
figures in film theory. Readings will span both classical and
contemporary film theory, addressing a range of approaches
including realism, structuralism, auteur theory, genre
criticism, psychoanalytic film theory, feminist and critical
race theories, and third cinema. The class will examine writings
on cinema in their historical and national contexts, looking at
the ways in which film theory intersects with political,
cultural, and aesthetic trends. The final sessions of the course
will focus on recent developments in film theory, in particular
the debates surrounding cognitive approaches to film, the
evolution of digital technology, and the writings of the
controversial philosopher Gilles Deleuze. In each case, new
theoretical work on cinema will be read in relation to the
complex history of film criticism. In addition, the class will
examine the field of film theory alongside related fields of
aesthetics and representation (e.g. art history and photography,
television studies, cultural studies, visual studies,
postmodernism), exploring the ways these disciplines have
overlapped. Each seminar meeting will involve close analyses of
readings related to a particular topic or theme. We will discuss
the contexts within which these writings emerged, and the
institutional frameworks that provided for the evolution of the
field. Written texts will be read alongside specific cinematic
examples. Students will be required to screen at least one film
per week outside class (independently, or preferably in groups).
We will view additional shorts and review clips in class.
Ideally, students will also view supplemental films that are
suggested, and attend screenings and discussions in venues
around the city. Students will be responsible for six weekly
response papers, to engage more deeply with the heavy reading
load, and as a means of invigorating class participation. They
will also be asked to complete a longer research project on a
topic of their choice, in consultation with the instructor.
Course Requirements: Response Papers (six, 2-3 pages each): 30%;
Participation: 10%; Research Paper (15-20 pages): 60%.
Screenings: Students will be required to watch one film before
class each week. Additional films will be screened in class,
along with clips to be viewed for close analysis. Text: Leo
Braudy and Marshall Cohen, eds., Film Theory and Criticism, 6th
Ed. (NY: Oxford University Press, 2004). Additional readings
will be available via electronic reserve. (A sample syllabus is
available in the Certificate Programs Office, Room 5109.)
Thursdays, 2:00pm to5:00pm.
Seminar
in a National Theatre: Japanese Traditional Theatre: Nô, Kyôgen,
Bunraku, and Kabuki (Professor
Samuel Leiter): This
course examines the four major forms of Japanese traditional
theatre. It covers their history, dramatic literature and
theory, and performance practice. Attention will be paid to
theatrical conventions, including acting, makeup and masks,
costumes, music, scenery, and theatre architecture. The relation
of Japanese theatre to Japanese culture will be discussed.
Readings will include selected plays in translation from each
theatre form as well as writings by major Japanese and Western
specialists. Videos of each form will be shown. The course also
will examine influences of Japanese traditional theatre on
Western performance. Attendance at local Japanese
theatre-related events will be encouraged.
Tuesdays,
2:00pm to 4:00pm.
Seminar
in Comparative Drama: Theatre and Drama of the Middle East ( Professor
Marvin Carlson): Although the Arab world is
thought by many Westerners to possess little or no theatre, a
complex and thriving international drama has in fact developed
there since the middle of the nineteenth century, anticipated by
medieval passion plays in Persia and by shadow and puppet plays
from as early as the eleventh century. Pre-state theatres were
established by the 1930s in Israel, and a major theatre has
developed in that nation since statehood. This course will
provide a brief survey of theatre in this region since the
middle ages, and will the focus on the twentieth-century theatre
of the major traditions in the area, in Egypt, Syria, and
Israel. Major dramatists from these countries such as Tawfik
al-Hakim, Sadallah Wannus, and Yehohua Sobol will be read, along
with representative dramas from other states in the region such
as Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Palestine, Tunisia, and Kuwait. The
course will consider how socio-political concerns, from
colonialism to current conflicts, have operated on the theatre
of this region, and such matters as levels of language and the
use of history, religion, mythology, and folk material in this
drama will also be considered. All material for the course will
be read in English translation. Required texts: Jayyusi and
Allen, Modern Arabic Drama, 1995; Michael Taub, Modern Israeli
Drama in Translation, 1993. 2 papers will be required.
Mondays,
4:15pm to 6:15pm.
Seminar
in Comparative Drama: Latino-American Theatre/Border
Crossings (Professor
Jean Graham-Jone): This course responds to recent trends in US latino/a and Latin
American thetre and performance studies that re-examine, if not
erase, the arbitrary and highly contested geopolitical border
separating the United States from Latin America. Is it still
productive to construct a "Latin American" theatre in
contradistinction to theatre produced by US- and Canada-based
latinos? How might we study "national" theatres in the age of
transnational globalization? Can we speak of a panlatinidad?
What is at stake in thinking about theatre and performance from
a hemispheric perspective? To engage with these questions we
will look at the multiple borders –historical and
contemporary—of Latino-American theatre and performance.
Throughout the semester we will employ recent "border theories"
to examine the work of various border-crossers throughout the
Latino Americas. Case studies will likely include, but not be
limited to, the Nicaraguan Güegüence, Cuban blackface bufo,
Southern Cone sainete criollo, Culture Clash's Amerikas project,
contemporary chicano transformations of classical Greek
tragedies, as well as the globalized success of Argentinean
troupe De la Guarda's Villa villa and Sabina Berman's
translation of an Irish play for a Mexico City audience.
Finally, we will consider what it means to be, in Delia Poey's
term, a border-crossing "coyote-scholar."
Thursdays,4:15pm to 6:15pm.
Theatre
in Society: Performing Conjugality: The Medieval
Heterosexual Marriage Debate (Professor
Glenn Burger): From the twelfth to the
sixteenth century the married estate underwent a profound
revaluation. The emphasis on marriage as a sacrament whose core
was the consent of its two participants, and the conferring on
this conjugal union of much of the signifying power previously
reserved for friendship between two men, worked to elevate the
lay married estate to a level on par with or even superior to
that of the celibate clergy. The newly gendered and sexualized
identities of self-controlled husband and good wife, conjoined
in one flesh through sacrament and marital affection, not only
founded a new household unit but also, to the extent that they
showed how such marital relations could act as a systematic
guide to a virtuous life, provided a model for civic society
dramatically different from previous aristocratic or clerical
ones. If by the Early Modern period, these changes had
effectively ushered in a new sex/gender system—what we have come
to know as modern heterosexuality—by selecting and controlling
what and how marriage signified, the late medieval period’s
engagement with conjugality remained much more open-ended and
conflicted. This course will consider some of the ways that
attempts to represent late medieval conjugality as something
“good to think with,” and thus useful in defining and
authorizing selfhood for newly emergent groups in that culture,
might also mark a certain experimentation with the real that is
frequently difficult to align with traditionally normative
clerical or chivalric gender roles organized around virginity or
noble bloodline. We will begin by considering the legal,
theological, and political discourses producing this new
emphasis on the value of the married estate in relation to
Chretien de Troyes’ romance Eric et Enide. We will consider the
variety of conduct literature that developed to regulate and
define this new gender system, particularly the wealth of
literature related to “the good wife,” her carefully husbanded
femininity, and the productive bourgeois household such
conjugality makes possible. Here we will consider such works as
Le Menagier de Paris and The Knight of La Tour Landry. In
particular, we will focus on the enormously popular story of the
absolutely patient wife, Griselda, as it travels across Europe.
In addition to an important French play version of Griselda, we
will consider the English Corpus Christi cycle plays’ depictions
of Noah and his Wife, as well as Mary and Joseph. We will
conclude with Early Modern assimilations of conjugality within
an increasingly patriarchal and heterosexual social system,
notably in an early seventeenth century play of Griselda as well
as in Milton’s depiction of Adam and Eve in Paradise Lost.
Middle English texts will be read in the original. For all other
texts we will use modern English translations.
Mondays, 2:00pm to 4:00pm.
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