short digital film.


Workshops on producing, directing, lighting, camera, sound and editing will build skills necessary for the hands-on production shoots. Visiting lecturers will critically discuss the individual roles of product ion in the context of the history of films. L/R 103.


(ARTH107, ENGL095) Introduction to Film Theory. (C) Beckman. This course offers students an introduction to the major texts in film theory across the 20th and 21st centuries.


The course g ives students an opportunity to read these central texts closely, to understand the range of historical contexts in which film theor ies are developed, to explore the relationship between film theory and the major film movements, to grapple with the points of contention that have emerged among theorists, and finally to consider: what is the status of film theory today? This course is required for all Cinema Studies majors, but is open to all students, and no prior knowledge of film theory is assumed. Requirements: Close reading of all assigned texts; attendance and participation in section discussions; 1 midterm exam; 1 take- home final exam.


105. (RELS105) Religion and Film. (M) Staff.


Introduction to different ways in which religion is represented in film. Emphasis upon religious themes, but some attention to cinematic devices and strategies. Although most films studied will deal with only one of the major historical religious tradit ions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam), the selection will always include at least two of those traditions.


SM 116. (ENGL116) Screenwriting Workshop. (C) Staff.


This course will look at the screenplay as both a literary text and a blue print for production. Several classic screenplay te xts will be critically analyzed (REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE, DOCTOR STRANGELOVE, PSYCHO, etc.) Students will then embark on writing their own scripts. We will intensively focus on: character enhancement, creating "believable" cinematic dialogue, p lot development and story structure, conflict, pacing, dramatic foreshadowing, the element of surprise, text and subtext and visual story-telling.


Class attendance is mandatory. Students will submit their works-in-progress to the workshop for discussion. SM 125.


(COML127, GSOC125, RUSS125) ADULTERY NOVEL. (C) 160. (ENGL061) British Cinema.


(M) Beckman. Penn-in-London. Fran´ois Truffaut once famously suggested that there was a certain incompatibility between the terms cinema and Britain ; Satyajit Ray declared, I do not think the British are temperamentally equipped to make the best use of the movie camera ; and throughout the history of film criticism, British cinema has been condemned for its theatrical style, lack of emotion, imitatio n of Hollywood and/or European cinema, and failure to achieve a national character.


Yet in spite of this history of dismissal, Brit ish cinema has a long and complex history that we will begin to explore through film screenings, critical reading, and visits to archives and museums. Topics covered will include: Early Cinema of Attractions ; British cinema s relation to other countries; war propaganda and the British documentary film; cinematic adaptations of British literature; British film theory; British experimental film/moving images in the art gallery; British cinema and identity. Requirements: attendance at screenings/discussions/trips; final paper; film journal.


165. (RUSS165, SLAV165) Russian and East European Film. (M) Todorov.


The purpose of this course is to present the Russian and East European contribution to world cinema in terms of film theory, experimentation with the cinematic language, and social and political reflex. We discuss major themes and issues such as: the invention of montage, the means of visual propaganda and the cinematic component to the communist cultural revolutions, party ideology and practices of social engineering, cinematic response to the emergence of the totalitarian state in Russia and its subsequent installation in Eastern Europe after World War II; repression, resistance and conformity under such a system; legal and illegal desires; the nature of the authoritarian personality, the mind and the body of homo sovieticus; sexual and politica l transgression; treason and disgrace; public degradation and individual redemption; the profane and the sublime ends of human suffering and humiliation; the unmasking of the official "truth" as a general lie. SM 201.


(ARTH290, COML201, ENGL291) Topics in Film History. (M) Katz, Corrigan, Decherney, Beckman. This topic course explores aspects of Film History intensively.


Specific course topics vary from year to year. See the Cinema Studies website at for a description of the current offerings. SM 202.


(ARTH292, COML292, ENGL292) Topics in Film Practice. (M) Katz, Corrigan, Decherney, Beckman. This topic course explores aspects of Film Practice intensively.


Specific course topics vary from year to year. See the Cinem a Studies website at for a description of the current offerings. 203.


(COMM140) Introduction to Film, Form, and Context. (C) Messaris. This course will trace the development of the classical Hollywood cinema, as well as significant alternatives to this dominant mode of representation, by relating analyses of the formal elements of film texts to discussions of film industries and audienc es as well as the larger social, historical context.


A variety of analytical methods and perspectives will be applied to films dr awn from different times and countries in order to consider the cinema as a cultural construction. 204. (COMM262) Visual Communication.


(C) Messaris. Examination of the structure and effects of visual media (film, television, advertising, and other kinds of pictures). 208.


(ARTH292, GSOC228, GSOC234) Topics in Gender and Cinema. (C) Beckman. This topic course explores aspects of Gender in Film intensively.


Specific course topics vary from year to year. See the Cine ma Studies website at for a description of the current offerings. SM 210.


(AFRC231, AFST231, FREN231) Topics in Narrative Cinema. (M) Met. This topic course explores aspects of Film Narrative intensively.


Specific course topics vary from year to year. See the Cine ma Studies website at for a description of the current offerings. L/R 220.


(EALC125) Chinese Cinema. (B) Staff. This topic course explores aspects of Chinese Cinema.


Specific course topics vary from year to year. See the Cinema Studies website at for a description of the current offerings. SM 225.


(THAR273, THAR275) Topics in Theater and Cinema. (M) Staff. This topic course explores aspects of Film and Theater intensively.


Specific course topics vary from year to year. See the Cinema Studies website at for a description of the current offerings. SM 232.


(LALS240, PRTG240, SPAN223) Luso-Brazilian Film. (M) Arts & Letters Sector. All Classes.


Gouveia. This course will survey films from different Portuguese-speaking countries. Still unknown to many viewers, Luso & Brazilian films include a variety of genres and styles.


We will explore films from the cultural perspective of Portugal, Cape Verde, Mozambique, and Brazil. The first segment of this course will expose students to theoretical approaches to the study of film. The second segment of the course will focus on Portugal and Portuguese-speaking countries in Africa.


We will also discuss emblematic Portuguese filmmakers such as Manuel de Oliveira and African writers whose work has been translated to the screen such as Mia Couto and Germano de Almeida. The third segment will focus on Brazilian films produced since the mid 1990s. In the early 1990s, there was a virtual collapse of Embrafilme (the state agency that funds most Brazilian films).


Brazilian cinematic production only resumed around 1995. Throughout the last 8 years numerous quality films have been released, many of them directed by a new generation of filmmakers. Films like Cidade de Deus, Carandiru, Onibus 174 present a critical view o f political, social and economic issues in post-dictatorial Brazil.


Most of the films also provide commentaries on (and are themselves part of) the effects of economic and cultural globalization. Inequality, corruption, poverty, violence, crime, drug s, and prejudice are themes that permeate all of these films. The course will be conducted in English.


241. (COMM241) Feature-Length Motion Picture Production Laboratory I. (C) Messaris.


Prerequisite(s): COMM140/CINE203 and/or COMM262/CINE204. This course gives students the opportunity to participate in the ¶ production of a feature-length fiction film. Students engag e in all ¶ aspects of production, including: screenplay writing, production ¶ design, cinematography, production sound, acting, and directing.


The ¶ course is intended as a follow-up to COMM 140, Film Forms and ¶ Contexts, and COMM 262, Visual Communication. Students who have not ¶ taken either of those courses should consult with the instructor ¶ before enrolling. COMM 241 is followed by COMM 242.


Students may ¶ enroll in either or both. L/R 245. (FREN230) French Cinema.


(M) Met. This topic course explores aspects of French Cinema. Specific course topics vary from year to year.


See the Cinema Studies website at for a description of the current offerings. SM 271. (ENGL274, THAR271) AMERICAN MUSICAL THEATRE.


(M) SM 272. (ASAM150, ASAM202, ENGL272) Asian-American Literature and Film. (M) Staff.


This topic course explores aspects of Asian-American Literature and Cinema intensively. Specific course topics vary from year to year. See the Cinema Studies website at for a description of the current offerings.


SM 295. (ENGL266) Topics in Cultural Studies. (M) Decherney.


This topic course explores aspects of Film Cultural Studies intensively. Specific course topics vary from year to year. See th e Cinema Studies website at for a description of the current offerings.


SM 300. (AFRC303, ARTH301) Cinema and Other Arts. (C) Beckman.


This topic course explores aspects of Film in others arts intensively. Specific course topics vary from year to year. See the Cinema Studies website at for a description of the current offerings.


SM 340. (COML300, COML382, ITAL300, ITAL380) Topics in Italian Cinema and Culture. (M) Staff.


Modern Italy has added to the traditional belle arti of painting, sculpture and architecture new fields like fashion, industria l design and film. "Made in Italy" has come to stand all over the world for quality workmanship and fine design. Yet this same country has been involved in the last hundred years in two terrible world wars, a brutal fascist dictatorship, violence both po litical and criminal and a flood of emigration.


In this course we will review that history, its triumphs and disasters, by combining f ilm and written tests. Both media are equally important and ought to enrich each other. The weekly film is part of that work and you will be expected to do the assigned reading as well.


This course will be open to seniors and juniors, and sophomores (with special permission). L/R 352. (COML241, GRMN256, RELS236) Devil's Pact Literature and Film.


(C) Arts & Letters Sector. All Classes. Richter.


For centuries the pact with the devil has signified humankind's desire to surpass the limits of human knowledge and power. Fro m the reformation chap book to the rock lyrics of Randy Newman's Faust, from Marlowe and Goethe to key Hollywood films, the legend of the devil's pact continues to be useful for exploring our fascination with forbidden powers. SM 370.


(AFRC400) Blacks in American Film and Television. (C) Bogle. An examination and analysis of the changing images and achievements of African Americans in motion pictures and television.


The first half of the course focuses on African-American film images from the early years of D.W. Griffith's "renegade bucks" i n The Birth of a Nation (1915); to the comic servants played by Steppin Fetchit, Hattie McDaniel, and others during the Depressio n era; to the post-World War II New Negro heroes and heroines of Pinky (1949) and The Defiant Ones (1958); to the rise of the new movement of African American directors such as Spike Lee (Do the Right Thing), Julie Dash (Daughters of the Dust), Charles Burnett, (To Sleep With Anger) and John Singleton (Boyz N the Hood). The second half explores television images from the early sitcoms "Amos 'n Andy" and "Beulah" to the "Cosby Show," "Fresh Prince of Bel Air," and "Martin." Foremost this course will examine Black stereotypes in American films and television--and the manner in which those stereotypes have reflected national attitudes and outlooks during various historical periods.


This course will also explore the unique "personal statements" and the sometimes controversial "star personas" of such screen artists as Sidney Poitier, Dorothy Dandridge, Paul Robeson, Richard Pryor, Oscar Micheaux, Spike Lee, Bill Cosby, Eddie Murphy, and Whoopi Goldberg. The in-class screenings and discussions will include such films as Show Boat (1936), the independently produced "race movies" of the 1930s and 1940s, Cabin in the Sky (1943), The Defiant Ones (1958), Imitation of Life (the 1959 remake), Super Fly (1972), and She's Gotta Have It (1986) and such television series as "I Spy," "Julia," "Good Times," "The Jeffersons," "Roots," "A Different World," "I'll Fly Away," "LA Law," and "Hangin' With Mr. Cooper." SM 392.


(ARTH489, ENGL292, ENGL392) Topics in Cinema Studies. (M) Corrigan. This topic course explores aspects of Cinema Studies intensively.


Specific course topics vary from year to year. See the Cine ma Studies website at for a description of the current offerings. SM 462.


(COMM462) Visual Communication and Social Advocacy. (M) Messaris. Prerequisite(s): COMM 262 / CINE 262.


The course explores the use of video and other visual media for social causes. Students choose their own area of interest, cond uct background research, design and produce videos, and post them on-line. The course uses a seminar format, and class size is limited to fifteen people.


504. (COMM562) Out of Hollywood: Literature to Film. (B) Shawcross.


Since the beginnings of the motion picture industry, producers and directors have drawn from existing literary works for adaptation to the "big screen." The past decade has proven to be no exception. We will explore several screen adaptations from the recent past and consider the artistic challenges, the financial compromises, and the technical realities of translation fro m one medium to another, as well as the motivations behind these film adaptations. Films may include *The Age of Innocence* (1993), *Smoke* (1994), *Clueless* (1995), *Emma* (1996), Trainspotting* (1996), *Fight Club* (1996), *L.A.


Confidential* (1997), *Out of Sight* (1998), and *Bridget Jones's Diary* (2001). Listed films are based on: Edith Wharton's *The Age of Innocence* (1920), Paul Auster's "Auggie Wren's Christmas Story" (1992), Jane Austen's *Emma* (1816), Irvine Welsh's *Trainspotting* (1993), Chuck Palahniuk's *Fight Club* (1996), James Ellroy's *L. A.


Confidential* (1990), Elmore Leonard's *Out of Sight* (1996), Helen Fielding's *Bridget Jones's Diary* (1996), and Jane Austen's *Pride and Prejudice* (1813). SM 550. (ARTH550, COML552, GRMN550) Topics in German Cinema.


(K) Staff. This graduate topic course explores aspects of German Cinema intensively. Specific course topics vary from year to year.


See the Cinema Studies website at for a description of the current offerings. 599. Independent Study.


(C) SM 619. (COMM619) The Politics and Practices of Representation. Sender.


This course engages with the following question from both theoretical and practical perspectives: Who says what about whom, under what circumstances, in which medium, with what effects? We will spend the first two thirds of the semester investigating different approaches to this question, looking at insider accounts, processes of othering, realism and other narrative conventi ons, the ethics of consent, "objective" and "biased" shooting techniques, the politics of editing, the role of the intended audience in the production of a work, and so on. We will simultaneously cover the technical aspects of production that will enable you to produce digital video projects: shooting (Canon GL1s), lighting, sound, editing (Final Cut Pro on Mac), graphics, music, and so on.


During the final third of the semester all students will produce short (5-10 minute) documentary and/or experimental digit al videos. SM 680. (COML595, FREN680) Topics in French Cinema.


(M) Met. This graduate topic course explores aspects of French Cinema intensively. Specific course topics vary from year to year.


See t he Cinema Studies website at for a description of the current offerings. SM 694. (SPAN694) Mexican Cinema.


(M) Staff. This seminar will address the specificity and uniqueness of Spanish America's cultural production, that is, those elements that make the Spanish American case differ from the paradigmatic postcolonial situation, and which make recent developments in postcolonial studies not fully applicable to it. We will explore these issues in the context of the literary production of the twentieth century in Spanish America from roughly the twenties to the present, that is, the epoch encompassing the larger metropolitan cultural phenomena of Modernism and Postmodernism.


SM 793. (ASAM510, COML653, ENGL591, SAST610) Topics In Film Studies. (M) Staff.


Topic varies. SM 842. (ANTH842, COMM842) The Filmic.


(C) Jackson. This interdisciplinary graduate course takes "film" as its object of study, theorizing it as a medium/mode of representation. We draw on film theory, psychoanalysis, literary analysis, cognitive theory, communication studies, and visual anthropology to discuss several key issues related to the state of film/filmmaking in an age of "digital" media.


We interrogate contentious no tions of authority, reflexivity, and objectivity. We analyze film's claim to "realistic" (iconic and indexical) representation. We interrogate how "film" and "video" get imagined in all their visual particularity, sometimes conflated into a single visual for m and at other moments distinguished as a function of the difference between photochemical and electro-magnetic processes.


We also highlight the kinds of techniques filmmakers use to thematize these same issues "on screen." Students will be responsible for watching one film each week (along with the the course readings), and part of the final project involves helping to produce a group documentary/ethnographic "film" that engages the course's central concerns. SM 846. (COMM846) Ordinary People and the Media: The Demotic Turn.


This course will explore the proposition that we are witnessing a 'demotic turn' in media culture: the development of a broader , possibly even a new, field of relations between media and culture in which the participation of ordinary people has become a more fundamental component than ever before. Rather than necessarily signifying the rise of a democratic politics or a process of media democratization, the politics of that participation are contingent and instantiated rather than determined in advance. T he course will explore how this politics of participation actually plays out in a range of contemporary media 'hot spots' - realit y television, user-generated content online, debates about the future of journalism in an online environment heavily populated by bloggers and citizen journalists, the connection between the commodification of celebrity and the construction of social identi ties, utopian and dystopian readings of the potential of new media, and populist formations of talk radio.


899. INDEPENDENT STUDY. (M)

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