Cinema and Media Studies

This course offers an introduction to ways of reading, writing on, and teaching film. The focus of discussion will range from methods of close analysis and basic concepts of film form, technique and style; through industrial/critical categories of genre and authorship (studios, stars, directors); through aspects of the cinema as a social institution, psycho-sexual apparatus and cultural practice; to the relationship between filmic texts and the historical horizon of production and reception. Films discussed will include works by Griffith, Lang, Hitchcock, Deren, Godard.

• One in-person seminar weekly + one in-person screening weekly

Brecht is indisputably the most influential playwright in the 20th century, but his influence on film theory and practice and on cultural theory is also considerable. We will explore the range and variety of Brecht's work, from the Threepenny hit to the agitprop film Kühle Wampe) to classic parable plays, as well as Brecht heirs in German theatre and film (RW Fassbinder & Peter Weiss) theatre and film in Britain (Peter Brook & John McGrath), African theatre and film influenced by Brecht, and the NYC post-Occupy adaptation of Brecht’s Days of the Commune. (Drama, 1830-1940)

This course examines the short form storytelling of the digital web series. Through lectures, viewings, and discussions in weekly meetings, students will determine what makes a strong web series and apply the findings to writing and polishing the pilot episode of their own web series. Students will write weekly four-to-five-page assignments building toward the creation of a five-to-six-episode series.

This course will explore the evolving relationship between moving bodies and video technologies. From early filmmakers using dancers as test subjects, to movie musicals and contemporary dance for the camera festivals, mediatization of the body continues to challenge the ephemerality of live dance performance. This course focuses on the growing field of screendance, videodance, or dance-on-camera, working to define this hybrid genre and to understand the collaborative roles of choreographer, director, dancer, cameraman, and video editor.

This course is both a practical and scholarly approach to the genre of screendance, each component essential to a full understanding and mastery of the other. Course work will be divided between the studio and the classroom. For the studio component, students will learn basic video editing and filming techniques. For the classroom component, students will be asked to watch screendance and read a cross-section of criticism. Assignments will be both technological and choreographic (making screendance) and scholarly (written reflections and a seminar paper).

Attendance at first class is mandatory. This course counts for a Media Practice & Design requirement in the MAAD program. 

How do films move? What happens when they stop moving? This course will introduce theoretical debates in cinema and media studies that challenge the relation between the still frame and the moving image. We will look at static moments in films (photographs, freeze frames, and the tableau vivant, to name a few examples) and examine how they were theorized in both classical and contemporary works of film theory. Topics will include the medium and its transformations, methods of close and detail-focused analysis, the role of interruptions or pauses in our viewing practices, and alternative models of film criticism. Screenings will include films and moving image media from a variety of genres and historical and national contexts.

Nazi cinema.  An examination of a broad range of films produced under the National Socialist regime, from mass spectacles to domestic melodramas, from comedies to hagiographic bio-pics to dramatized propaganda. We will explore the national aspirations, formal organization, ideological inflections, and conceptual logic of these films in order to ask: what constitutes a National Socialist (film) aesthetic?  Readings in film history, film theory, and cultural theory.  No prerequisites, but a commitment to close readings – of film and criticism – and lively, thoughtful engagement will be essential.  In English.  If there is sufficient interest, we may add a German language discussion section.

The last twelve years of financial crisis have had a profound effect on the production and criticism of art across a variety of medial and disciplinary traditions. Whether this shift is located in the rise and institutionalization of social practice art, or the radicalization of art students as they confront their past debts and future wagelessness, practitioners and critics have acknowledged what some have simply but forcefully called “the economic turn.” As we now confront an economic contraction and reconstitution of unprecedented intensity in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, a focus on the possibility of transmedial economic representation and its criticism offers a timely and necessary opportunity to consider what art is and does in our historical moment. “Economic Objects: Capitalism as Medium” explores how shifting modes of the representation of the economy reflect transformed medial practices and their critique. We seek to complicate the relationship of Marxist aesthetic theory with contemporary habits of criticism including notions of “economic performativity,” debt and finance as objects of artistic analysis, and ongoing debates about the scope and logic of commodification, each of which opens up new questions about the very representability of capitalism itself.

The course will be organized around a set of “economic objects,” which range from proper art objects to phenomena (practices, objects, material) not conventionally belonging to the category of “art.” Readings will offer students exposure to current debates in aesthetics, critical theory and economic criticism. Economic objects may include: Wu-Tang Clan’s Once Upon A Time In Shaolin (2014), the Facebook “like,” Rimini Protokoll’s Annual Shareholder Meeting (2009); the year 1973, Cassie Thornton’s Application to the London School of Economics (2012), The Rolling Jubilee (2012) and subsequent “debt strike.” Readings may include: Nicole Shukin’s Animal Capital, Fredric Jameson’s “Cognitive Mapping,” Jacques Lezra’s On The Nature of Marx’s Things, Dara Ornstein’s Out of Stock: The Warehouse In The History of Capitalism, Hito Steyerl Duty Free Art, Lisa Gitelman’s Paper Knowledge, Marx’s Capital, Ben Davis’s 9.5 Theses on Art and Class, Jonathan Sterne’s MP3: The Meaning of a Format, and Jacques Derrida’s The Truth In Painting.

Students will have the chance to work with faculty in the curation and commission of a new set of economic objects through the Gray Center. Art students and practitioners are encouraged to join.

This course will be fully remote. 

This course proposes an overview of Francophone cinema of the last decade.It will reflect the diversity and the richness of contemporary auteur cinema through various genres and genre-defying works. We will screen a selection of recent internationally acclaimed movies from renowned filmmakers such as Agnès Varda, Claire Denis, Leos Carax, as well as from a new generation of filmmakers such as Céline Sciamma, Ladj Ly, or Mati Diop. We will also discuss the controversy surrounding the film Cuties (Mignonnes) by Maïmouna Doucouré.

Students taking the class for French credit are expected to complete assignments (and readings as applicable) in French.

This studio course introduces fundamental tools and concepts used in the production of computer-mediated artwork. Instruction includes a survey of standard digital imaging software and hardware (i.e., Photoshop, scanners, storage, printing, etc.), as well as exposure to more sophisticated methods. We also view and discuss the historical precedents and current practice of media art. Using input and output hardware, students complete conceptually driven projects emphasizing personal direction while gaining core digital knowledge.

This course will have occasional in-person meetings.

What is love? What is attachment? Is the notion of romantic love thought to be a universal force or should it be understood differently in different cultural contexts? Why did early twentieth-century Chinese writers claim that they had never known true love? How did the notion of romantic love shift its valences in Chinese translations (or recreations) of novels of Western origin? How did ideas of romantic love change from the early twentieth century to the 1940s, and how did cinema and print culture contribute to promoting them? This interdisciplinary seminar invites you to rethink love in all its complexity. We will examine a wide range of materials, including women’s magazines, love letters, fiction writing, photographs, films, and popular songs, situate these works in their historical and social contexts, and analyze how they adapt elements from other cultures and media. We will also discuss some of the issues and problems involved in locating appropriate sources, gaining access to digital archives and collections, and choosing particular methods of investigation and analysis that pertain to studies of modern China. This course includes a two-part peer-review workshop, which will serve as a forum for developing innovative research projects.