Spring

ARTV 10100 or 10200; or consent of instructor. Camera and light meter required. Using photographic materials, black & white or color, students focus on a set of issues and ideas that expand upon their experience and knowledge, and that have particular relevance to them. All course work is directed toward the production of a cohesive body of photographic work. An investigation of contemporary and historic art issues informs the students' exploration as does extensive darkroom work, gallery visits, critical readings, group and individual critiques, and presentations. Course can be taken several times as color and/or black and white, with series of projects developing and changing. Taught concurrently with Photography Workshop II. Lab fee $60.

COVA 101, 102, or consent of instructor. A camera and light meter are required. Photography affords a relatively simple and accessible means for making pictures. Through demonstration, students are introduced to technical procedures and basic skills, and begin to establish criteria for artistic expression. Possibilities and limitations inherent in the medium are topics of classroom discussion. Class sessions and field trips to local exhibitions investigate the contemporary photograph in relation to its historical and social context. Course work culminates in a portfolio of works exemplary of the student's understanding of the medium. Lab fee $40.

Camera and light meter required. Photography affords a relatively simple and accessible means for making pictures. Through demonstration, students are introduced to technical procedures and basic skills, and begin to establish criteria for artistic expression. Possibilities and limitations inherent in the medium are topics of classroom discussion. Class sessions and field trips to local exhibitions investigate the contemporary photograph in relation to its historical and social context. Course work culminates in a portfolio of works exemplary of the student's understanding of the medium. Field trips required.

This course will trace relations between motion pictures and traditions of magic, both as a theatrical entertainment and as a belief system. The invention of cinema's roots in the magic lantern and other "philosophical toys" which trick the senses into seeing visual illusions will be explored in relation to traditions of "Natural Magic" as well as a secularization of magical practices into entertainment from the Renaissance on. The early trick films of Méliès and others will be discussed in relation to the tradition of stage magic in the 19th century, as well as a particular reception of the magical nature of new technologies (electricity, photography, sound recording). The relation between cinema and hypnosis, both as a social concern and as metapsychological description of spectatorship will also be explored. A consideration of the appeal of magic systems of thought (spiritualism, theosophy, ritual magic) for Avant-Garde movement and their relation to experimental films by Epstein, Artaud, Deren, Anger, Smith, Fischinger, and others.

This class surveys the ways in which cinema was understood and deployed as both national art and "optical weapon" during a time of total war. We will study the attempts to control cinema, particularly the Film Law of 1939 and the debates over "national policy films" and "people's films." We will analyze the German connection (co-productions and culture films) that was part of an attempt to raise the aesthetic and technical level of cinema in Japan in order to compete with the memory of Hollywood films both at "home" and in the Asian countries occupied by Japan. We will also study more local sources of wartime Japanese cinema, in the prewar leftist film movement, the documentary film movement, the narrative avant-garde, and the broader image culture of wartime Japan. Filmmakers we will study include Arnold Fanck, Mizoguchi Kenji, Ozu Yasujiro, Tasaka Tomotaka, Imai Tadashi, Yamamoto Kajiro, and Kurosawa Akira. No knowledge of Japanese is required: a separate section will be held for those wishing to read and discuss Japanese sources. Research topics and credit will be assigned according to interest and capabilities.

Knowledge of German required The building of the Berlin Wall in 1961 cemented the divison of Germany but it also, paradoxically, catalyzed a period of aesthetic experimentation and political ferment in West Germany and in the GDR. Beginning with the differing accounts of l961 produced on either side of the Wall, this course compares the cultural life of both Germanies, as manifested in literature and in film. Our focus is at once on aesthetic questions (late modernism, New Waves, the relationship between avant-garde and documentary impulses) and artistic attempts to process social and policial developments (the generation gap: the new, divided topography of Berlin; the Auschwitz trials, new discussions of fascism and stalinism; the student and feminist movements).

The insurgent film movement known as the Czech New Wave spawned such directors as as the internationally acclaimed Milos Forman (The Fireman's Ball, Loves of a Blonde), Jiri Menzel (Closely Watched Trains), Jan Kadar (The Shop on Main Street), and Vera Chytilova (Daisies), and the lesser known but nationally inspirational Evald Schorm, Jarmir Jires, Oldrich Lipsky and Jan Nemec. "Of course," Peter Cowie notes, "many of these directors had already slogged through various worthy feature-length assignments [before 1964]. But some magical alchemy worked upon them to respond to the spirit of their time in a way that remains unsurpassed." This indeterminate "magical alchemy of their time"--the serendipitous life of the Czech New Wave--is as much a subject of the course's inquiry as close technical and semantic research of the films themselves.

This course will explore the relationship between cultural production and gender identity. We will read a broad range of texts from contemporary cultural, performance, and film theory (e.g. Judith Butler, Catherine Clement, Mary Ann Doane, Susan McClary, Laura Mulvey, Slavoj Zizek) and examine a number of symptomatic films and operas where gender norms become apparent through their exaggeration, violation, or suspension. All readings in English. Films by Josef von Sternberg (The Blue Angel, 1930), Busby Berkeley (The Gang's All Here, 1943), King Vidor (Gilda, 1946), Werner Schroeter (Death of Maria Malibran, 1972) Rainer Werner Fassbinder (Lili Marleen, 1980), and Jean-Jacques Beineix (Diva, 1982); operas by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Marriage of Figaro), Gaetano Donizetti (Lucia di Lammermoor), and Giacomo Puccini (Turandot).

This course will screen and discuss films to consider whether there is a Chicago style of filmmaking. We will trace how the city informs documentary, educational, industrial, narrative feature, and avant-garde films. If there is a Chicago style of filmmaking, one must look at the landscape of the city, the design, politics, cultures, and labor of its people, and how they live their lives. The protagonists and villains in these films are the politicians and community organizers, our locations are the neighborhoods, and the set designers are MIes van der Rohe and the Chicago Housing Authority.

Consent of instructor. Students are required to submit the College Reading and Research Form. This course may not be counted toward distribution requirements for the concentration, but may be counted as a free-elective credit.