Spring 2003
Introductory Cinema Studies Course
Cinema Studies 101, 221, and 272 are open to students who have completed any Writing Intensive course, or have gained Writing Certification in any course in the Humanities. They are also open to those who have achieved a 5 on the AP exam in English Language/Composition or English Literature/Composition, or a score of 710 or better on the SAT II Writing test. Other students may be admitted by consent of the instructor, with the understanding that students should be able to demonstrate the ability to handle writing, discussion, and analysis in ways typically taught in Writing Intensive classes.
This course considers the cinema as a particular media form
and explores issues and methods in cinema studies. The class focuses on questions
of film form and style (narrative, editing, sound, framing, mise-en-scene) and
introduces students to concepts in film history and theory (industry, auteurism,
spectatorship, the star system, ideology, genre). Students develop a basic critical
vocabulary for examining the cinema as an art form, an industry, and a system
of culturally meaningful representation. Prerequisite: See headnote above.
Identical to ENGL 271. Enrollment Limit: 30.
Cinematic Traditions Courses
What exactly do we mean by "documentary"? Is it a mode able to capture the actual world in ways that fictional forms cannot? What is at stake in doing documentary work? In this course we will explore some of the practical and theoretical issues surrounding documentary representation. Focusing on cinema, we will examine an array of documentary texts and compare various documentary traditions, asking how each frames its pursuit of "the real." We will consider documentary practices from diverse standpoints -- structural, aesthetic, political, ethical, historical. Prerequisite: See headnote above. Enrollment Limit: 30.
West German filmmakers of the sixties and seventies broke ranks with the established film industry in an effort to create a new film language. This course examines representative films by such directors as Fassbinder, Herzog, von Trotta and Schlöndorff to ascertain what was "new" and what was "German" about this movement. Films (subtitled), with lectures and discussions in English. Identical to GERM 325. Prerequisite: none. Enrollment Limit: 30
This course surveys the American silent cinema and its spectators. It asks how the cinema, as one of many technologies invented at the turn of the last century, changed everyday life by changing our relationship to it. We will study how the new media of the cinema, once considered a source of danger, contamination, and vice, became a legitimate cultural institution in its own right. We discover how cinema promoted itself not simply as a national cultural pastime but as an integral feature of American everyday life. Our weekly screenings of silent films will be organized around the representations of race, sexual difference, and poverty that preoccupied the early cinema. Readings in classic and contemporary film theory will help us establish the particular character of early and silent-era cinematic form and narrative. Theoretical perspectives on the question of what it means to be modern will come from such social theorists and cultural critics as Benjamin, Freud, Simmel and Kracauer. Course Requirements: Active class participation and mandatory attendance at weekly film screenings; twelve one-page papers; final paper (12-15 pages). Identical to ENGL 273. Enrollment Limit: 30
In the context of Socialist and Post-Socialist cinemas of Eastern Europe, this course will focus primarily on the Czech New Wave period of the 1960s, the Yugoslav new film period of the 1960s and 1980s, and selected analyses of critically significant, internationally awarded films of the past decade; including Kolya; Underground; Pretty Village, Pretty Flame; Before the Rain; Wounds; Cabaret Balkan and No Man's Land. Enrollment Limit: 50.
Advanced Cinema Courses
This course explores documentary form in both critical and creative ways. The class introduces students to various ways to think about and understand documentaries (in terms of structure, purpose, audience, etc.) and then gives them the opportunity to practice basic documentary production (camera, lighting, sound, non-linear editing). After engaging in various individual and small group exercises, students spend the balance of the semester working together to produce a short documentary video. Identical to ENGL 320. Consent of instructor required. Enrollment Limit: 12.
What is the difference between going to see a movie at a multiplex theater and watching a movie on a flat screen during a trans-Atlantic flight? Between watching a movie in 1903 and watching a film in 2003? How do patterns of distribution and exhibition formats affect our experience of movies? This course is a wide-ranging investigation of what it means to go to the movies. It will provide both historical and technological frameworks for examining transformations in viewing habits and viewing experiences, from the silent cinema to the current moment. Topics covered will include storefront kinetoscopes, segregated nickelodeon audiences, film censorship, movie theater architecture, exhibitors' trade publications, early fan culture, widescreen cinema, journalistic and narrative accounts of moviegoing, and the shift from analogue to digital images. Readings from film and cultural theory on mass spectacle, the observer, the spectator, and the mass audience will shape our discussion and guide our individual research. Course requirements: Mandatory attendance at weekly screenings; each student will develop, propose, research and write a long (15-20 page) paper over the course of the semester. Identical to ENGL 345. Enrollment Limit: 25.
This course focuses on American culture in the 1930s with particular reference to the relation between the novel and cinema, though other arts and media such as photography, painting, and music will also be addressed. We will consider not only the relation of these arts to each other but to the social crisis of the Great Depression. Identical to ENGL 373. Prerequisite: Cinema Studies 101 or a Cinematic Traditions course or three 200-level courses in English. Enrollment Limit: 25.
Consent by instructor required.
This course will explore the long history, cultural contexts and critical challenges associated with melodramatic narrative cinema.We will study the origins of melodrama, the rise and fall of its status as a form, its association with women as subjects and audiences, its adaptation to different historical and cultural contexts, and its relationship to contemporary problems of cultural analysis. Expect a demanding viewing and reading schedule, high expectations about participation and presentations, and to develop a significant independent project. Identical to ENGL 436. Consent of instructor required. Enrollment Limit: 15.
Intensive work on the student's honors project, culminating in either an honors paper or creative project. Students interested in pursuing Honors should consult with the Director of the Program. Consent of instructor required.
Intensive work on the student's honors project, culminating in either an honors paper or creative project. Students interested in pursuing Honors should consult with the Director of the Program. Consent of instructor required
Cross-referenced Courses
This course will survey a century of French cinema by investigating one of its fundamental genres: the exploration of dreams and imagination. We will study films from 1902 to 1995 using cinema's own technical terms and each film's historical context. We will also analyze the films from theoretical perspectives by reading important texts on dreams (Freud), imagination (Sartre, Lacan), and cinema (Christian Metz). This course will be taught in English, for a general audience.Enrollment Limit: 30.
A survey of the history of film music, tracing the genre's antecedents
in program music, opera, ballet, melodrama, vaudeville, and pantomime through
the major film eras of the twentieth century (the silent era; the epic soundtracks
of Hollywood's "Golden Age"; Jazz and popular soundtracks; and neo-Romantic
soundtracks). The course will be comprehensive, discussing compositional developments
within the genre of film music (growth of instrumentation; use of Leitmotivic
structure; expansion of diegetic versus non-diegetic music); how music is used
within film to aid telling the story (generating continuity; providing momentum;
subliminal commentary); and the use of various sorts of music (Popular, Western
Art, Jazz, and World) as an iconographic character and plot device. Films viewed
will include those with soundtracks by major twentieth-century general musical
figures (Vaughan Williams, Britten, Copland, Milhaud, Shostokovich, Prokofiev,
Rota, Ellington, Davis, Berkley, Bernstein, Glass, et. al.) as well as specialized
soundtrack composers (Korngold, Steiner, Williams, Goldsmith, Barron, Moroder,
Preisner, Silvestri, et. al.).
Assignments: Weekly reading and viewing assignments, concentrating on one
or two films per class session; classroom discussion preparation; short writing
assignments; one major writing project (approximately 15 pages); midterm and
final presentations and/or exams. Limited to 20 with consent of instructor.
Description not available. Enrollment limit: 15
First-Year Seminars
First-year seminars do not count toward the Cinema Studies major, but are
recommended as an introduction to deeper-level skills in reading, viewing, analysis,
writing and discussion. The successful completion of a first-year seminar will
serve as one of the ways to satisfy the prerequisite for Cinematic Traditions
courses.
FYSP 113 (5106) Us/Them: Russian and American Mutual (Mis)Perceptions, 3 hours/ 3HU, CD, Wr
MW 2:30-3:45, Ms. Forman
An exploration of Russian and American interactions from tsarist times to the present day. We will examine fiction and film to see how both cultures have viewed and continue to view the other. Included will be 19th-century memoirs, along with works by Maxim Gorky, the satirists Ilf and Petrov, emigres (including Vladimir Nabokov, Ayn Rand, and third wave writers), as well as films by Lev Kuleshov, Georgij Aleksandrov, Ernst Lubitsch and others. Enrollment limit: 14 first-year students only.FYSP 128 (5126) Media and Memory, 3 hours/ 3HU, Wri
TuTh 11:00-12:15, Mr. Pence
Beyond offering different sorts of content and engagement for their audiences, various artistic forms and techniques can be understood to provide alternative models for individuals and groups to filter and process experience in general. This course will look at multiple artistic forms (e.g., painting, photography, film, literature), in light of their own technical developments and contrasts with each other across time, in order to develop a greater sense of the many ways medium matters. Enrollment Limit: 14 first-year students only.
Introductory Cinema Studies Course
Cinema Studies 101, 221, and 272 are open to students who have completed
any Writing Intensive course, or have gained Writing Certification in any course
in the Humanities. They are also open to those who have achieved a 5 on the
AP exam in English Language/Composition or English Literature/Composition, or
a score of 710 or better on the SAT II Writing test. Other students may be admitted
by consent of the instructor, with the understanding that students should be
able to demonstrate the ability to handle writing, discussion, and analysis
in ways typically taught in Writing Intensive classes.
101-01 (4729),
101-02 (4730), 101-03 (5153), 101-04 (5157).
Form, Style, and Meaning in Cinema
4 hours /4HU,WR
101-01: TuTh 9:35-10:50 + W 7:00-10:00 pm, Mr.
Pingree
101-02: TuTh 11:00-12:15 + W 7:00-10:00 pm, Mr.
Pingree
101-03: TuTh 1:30-2:45 + W 7:00-10:00 pm, Ms.
Horne
101-04: TuTh 3:00-4:15 + W 7:00-10:00 pm, Ms.
Horne
Cinematic Traditions Courses
German films played a prominent role in four
twentieth-century Germanies, rendering the very notion of "the" German
cinema complicated at best. This course examines representative films from 1919
until 1968 to examine the route and roots of film culture in the Weimar Republic,
the Third Reich, the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic. Films
(subtitled), with lectures and discussions in English. Identical to GERM 341.
Prerequisite: none. Enrollment
Limit: 30.
272 (4731). American
Cinema: The Possibilities of Art in the Entertainment Business
4 hours /4HU,WR
This course will focus on how American cinema functions as an
entertainment industry and the ways in which the demands of business and technology
have shaped it. At the same time we will explore American movies as works of
art produced in a tradition of strong genres and the star system, and efforts
of filmmakers to use these for individualized expression. The course will focus
particularly on the two great eras of American cinema, the late 1930s and early
1940s and the 1970s. (Not open to students who have already taken ENGL 273.). Identical to ENGL 272. Prerequisite:
See headnote above. Enrollment Limit: 30.
Contemporary innovations in technology are often
seen as promising either a starry futuristic dream (of interactivity and globalization)
or a dystopian nightmare (of regulation and homogenization). This course seeks
to move beyond such polarized judgments by looking closely at
formal and thematic representations of technology in various cultural
objects--film, literature, visual art, electronic resources. Along with these
texts, we will read critical and theoretical works on technology and its relation
to aesthetic and social experience. Identical to ENGL 340.
Prerequisite: Cinema Studies 101 or a Cinematic
Traditions course or three 200-level courses in English. Enrollment Limit:
25.
MW 12:00-1:15, Ms.
Horne
Major themes and debates in classical and contemporary
film theory and historiography. Topics to be explored include realism, montage,
semiotics, apparatus theory, theories of the Avant-Garde, Third Cinema, and
spectatorship. Authors: Bazin, Eisenstein, Kracauer, Mulvey, Metz, Doane, Williams,
and Wollen. Directors: Griffith, Ford, Micheaux, Godard, Marker, Hitchcock,
Ackerman, Varda, Haynes, Sembene, Trihn. Identical to ENGL 358.
Prerequisite: Cinema Studies 101 or a Cinematic
Traditions course or three 200-level courses in English. Enrollment Limit:
25.
399 (5195). Cinema Studies Practicum 1 hour/ 1HU
TBA, Mr. Pingree
413 (4733). Questions of Authorship in Cinema: Woody Allen and Spike
Lee 4 hours /4HU,WR
W 1:30-4:00 + Tu 7:00-10:00 pm, Mr.
Pingree
498 (4736). Honors 1-3 hours /1-3HU,WR
TBA, Staff
Students interested in pursuing Honors should consult with the Director
of the Program.
Consent of instructor required.
995-04, 995-05, 995-07,
995-08 (4737, 4738, 4739, 4740). Private Reading .5-3 hours /.5-3HU
TBA, Mr.
Day, Ms.
Hamilton, Mr.
Pence, Mr.
Pingree
Consent of instructor
required.
Th 7:00-10:00 pm, Ms. Smith
MW 9:00-12:00, Mr. Newman
MW 1:30-4:30, Ms. Brown-Orso
MW 7:00-10:00, Mr. Philippe