Cinema and Media Studies

This course introduces basic concepts of film analysis, which students will discuss through examples from different national cinemas, genres, and directorial oeuvres. Along with questions of film technique and style, students will examine the cinema as an institution that comprises an industrial system of production, social and aesthetic norms and codes, and particular modes of reception. Films discussed will include works by Dorothy Arzner, Vera Chytilová, Julie Dash, Alfred Hitchcock, Barry Jenkins, Wanuri Kahiu, Akira Kurosawa, and Agnès Varda.

This course will be fully remote. 

This seminar explores new writing on the topic of new media, digital technology, and new practices of image-making. We’ll explore a range of different theoretical texts, but also explore recent writing on some of the following topics: media infrastructures; the materiality of media; techniques and technologies of image-making (3D, VR, animation); video games; media archeology; race and media; the politics of social media; queer theory and media studies; and the internationalization of debates on media. We’ll look at writers such as: Nicole Starosielski; Melody Jue; Yak Hui; Kara Keeling; Lisa Nakamura; Lisa Parks; Wendy Hui Kyong Chun; Andrew Johnston; Ina Blom; Patrick Jagoda; Kris Cohen; Shane Denson; Brooke Belisle; and others.

This course will be fully remote. 

This graduate seminar will prepare students to conduct archival research, and to build a research archive from different historical, methodological, and theoretical perspectives. While we will engage a range of texts on archival methodology, theory, and the phenomenology of the archive, we will also examine questions concerning aesthetics, materiality, visual culture, and the digital that inform our understanding of archives today. The seminar will be partially organized around case studies that foreground different archival modes of discovery, evaluation, and interpretation—including those that constitute the “counter archive.” Students will learn practical skills for conducting research in filmic, paper and print, and internet archives, and develop the investigative, analytical abilities that are necessary for building an archive around either material objects or theoretical questions.

This course will be fully remote. 

This seminar considers innovations and trends in Black film aesthetics and politics over the past twenty years. We will focus specifically on their implications for film theory and criticism.

This course will be fully remote. 

The center of this course is film style, from the classical scene breakdown to the introduction of deep focus, stylistic experimentation, and technical innovation (sound, wide screen, location shooting). The development of a film culture is also discussed. Texts include Thompson and Bordwell's Film History: An Introduction; and works by Bazin, Belton, Sitney, and Godard. Screenings include films by Hitchcock, Welles, Rossellini, Bresson, Ozu, Antonioni, and Renoir.

This course will have occasional in-person meetings.

Focusing on experimental moving-image approaches at a crucial moment in the emerging medium of augmented reality, this course will explore and interrogate each stage of production of augmented reality works. Students in this production-based course will examine the techniques and opportunities of this new kind of moving image. During this course we will study the construction of examples across a gamut from locative media, journalism, and gameplay-based works to museum installations. Students will complete a series of critical essays and sketches towards a final augmented reality project using a custom set of software tools developed in and for the course.

Documentary Production II focuses on the shaping and crafting of a non-fiction video. Enrollment will be limited to those students who have taken CMST 23930 Documentary Production I. The class will discuss issues of ethics, power, and representation in this most philosophical and problematic of genres. Students will be expected to write a treatment outline detailing their project and learn about granting agencies and budgeting. Production techniques will concentrate on the language of handheld camera versus tripod, interview methodologies, microphone placement including working with wireless systems and mixers, and lighting for the interview. Post-production will cover editing techniques including color correction and audio sweetening, how to prepare for exhibition, and distribution strategies.

This course will be fully remote.

The naming of the current era after the human—Anthropocene—is widely criticized. Scholars such as Donna Haraway bemoan the emphasis on the human being and its control over earthly matters at a moment when non-human entanglements with the world are simultaneously overlooked. Other thinkers point out that the planetary changes of the Anthropocene have occurred mainly due to capitalism and industrialization. In the course of these debates, the role of the human and the understanding of the human as part of the Earth’s ecosystem is discussed again and again. Especially in the arts and design, new figurations of the human and a future outside anthropocentrism are being developed. This course follows fundamental questions around the emergence of this discourse: Which tropes, materials, and concepts do we collectively use to imagine our future? Who gets to participate in these imaginaries and who is thereby excluded? What role do the arts and design play in this process?

In this class, students will gain understanding of an emerging area of interdisciplinary research that reframes the category of the “human” in face of contemporary environmental challenges such as climate change and resource scarcity. Students will become familiar with concepts and theories associated with post-humanism, new materialisms, and environmental humanities and use them to reflect on examples from architecture, design, and the arts. Assignments involve the reading and discussion preparation of selected literature, written reflections on projects from architecture, design, and the arts, small lectures, and active participation in class.

This course will have occasional in-person meetings.

This course focuses on the films of Alfred Hitchcock, one of the greatest filmmakers of the 20th century. We study both his films and a variety of approaches to them. We investigate the enduring power of his movies; his contributions to genre and popular cinema; his storytelling techniques; his stylistic command; his approach to romance, suspense, and action; his status as a master and auteur; and his remarkable control over the audience’s thoughts and feelings.

This course will be fully remote.

This course centers on yōkai (monsters or fantastic creatures) and theories of the fantastic in cinema and media. Historically, it spans the range from medieval emaki and Edo chōnin culture through 20th and 21st century manga and anime. Inquiry into yōkai and the fantastic is intended to develop new strategies for putting cinema and media into dialogue with theories of political sovereignty and capitalism in the context of everyday life and its urban myths.