Spring

This seminar undertakes a study of primarily post-World War II French and Belgian film and art movements in order to query the different status and conceptualization of the image and its relationship to history. We will begin our study with a brief look into pre-WWII of avant-garde art and film movements, and classic theories of the avant-garde. Turning our attention to late Surrealist practices, and the rise of neo-avant-garde movements such as Lettrism and the Situationist International, we will grapple with how these groups both understood the stakes of the image and history, as well as developed theoretical models to transform the agency of both within their political aesthetics. We will subsequently ask similar questions of the films and theories that eventually define the French New Wave before moving on to think about social documentary, politically militant image production, and collective film and art practices.Reading knowledge of French is not required, but may prove beneficial. Screenings are mandatory. With some possible exceptions, all films will be subtitled. Students enrolled through the FREN section will be required to complete all reading and writing in French

This class will examine the history and production of “hard” sound-image relationships through the lens of computational form. Through studying the range of digital and mechanical tools that have sought to couple the senses — from 19th century color organs and dreams of synesthesia, through music videos and contemporary new media installations, to recent advances in “machine listening” — students will complete a series of critical essays and sketches leading towards a final project using custom software developed in and for the class.

This course will examine closely the recent dramatic advantages in the fields of image analysis and generation in a broad range of contexts: from the lab to their everyday use in social media and government surveillance. Students will be given the opportunity to sharpen their understanding of the possibilities and limits of machine learning by testing contemporary algorithms against datasets of their own design. This course seeks to close the critical and cultural distance between industrial advances in image understanding, the scientific discourses behind this field, and conceptions and uses of the image traditionally available to the humanities.

In our contemporary moment, we have become accustomed to terms such as 'counter-terrorism' that signal an effort to resist internal and external threats, and those suggesting that we live in an age of 'post-truth' dominated by 'corporate-media,' 'fake news,' and 'fact-challenged' journalism. Taking this platform as our starting place, this class explores how these terms and their use have been gendered; have situated both gender and sexuality as either weapons of resistance or objects of destruction. This class will be historically organized insofar as we will begin our discussion with ways that media - broadly conceived to include cinema, print and visual-cultural forms, television, and the internet - have aimed to 'counter' patriarchal, heteronormative, and hegemonic systems of representation of gender and sexuality.

Cinema is, unarguably, the medium most apposite for thinking through the complexities of democratic politics, especially so in a place like India. While Indian cinema has recently gained international currency through the song and dance ensembles of Bollywood, there remains much more to be said about that body of films. Moreover, Bollywood is a small (though very important) part of Indian cinema. Through a close analysis of a wide range of films in Hindi, Bengali, Kannada, and Urdu, this course will ask if Indian cinema can be thought of as a form of knowledge of the twentieth century.

This course introduces basic concepts of film analysis, which are discussed through examples from different national cinemas, genres, and directorial oeuvres. Along with questions of film technique and style, we consider the notion of 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 include works by Hitchcock, Porter, Griffith, Eisenstein, Lang, Renoir, Sternberg, and Welles.

This course seeks to develop skills in perception, comprehension, and interpretation when dealing with film and other moving image media. It encourages the close analysis of audiovisual forms, their materials and formal attributes, and explores the range of questions and methods appropriate to the explication of a given film or moving image text. It also examines the intellectual structures basic to the systematic study and understanding of moving images. Most importantly, the course aims to foster in students the ability to translate this understanding into verbal expression, both oral and written. Texts and films are drawn from the history of narrative, experimental, animated, and documentary or non-fiction cinema. Screenings are a mandatory course component.Attendance in first class is mandatory to confirm enrollment. Open only to non-CMS majors; may not count towards CMS major requirements. For non-majors, any CMST 14400 through 14599 course meets the general education requirement of Arts, Music, Drama (AMD) Courses.

Brecht is indisputably the most influential playwright in the 20th century, but his influence on film theory and practice and on cultural theory generally is also considerable. In this course we will explore the range and variety of Brecht's own theatre, from the anarchic plays of the 1920's to the agitprop Lehrstück and film esp Kühle Wampe) to the classical parable plays, as well as the work of his heirs in German theatre (Heiner Müller, Peter Weiss) and film (RW Fassbinder, Alexander Kluge), in French film (Jean-Luc Godard) and cultural theory (the Situationists and May 68), film and theatre in Britain (such as Caryl Churchill or Mike Leigh), theatre and film in Africa, from South Africa to Senegal, and if possible a film or play from the US that engages with Brechtian theory and/or practice. (Drama)

This laboratory seminar is devoted to exploring the texts of Franz Kafka through the lens of performance. In addition to weekly scenic experiments and extensive critical readings (on Kafka as well as performance theory) we will explore the rich history of adapting Kafka in film, theater, puppetry, opera, and performance.

Since 2000, in the United States alone, there have been over a hundred films and more than two dozen television series inspired by comics as source material. With each installment of Marvel’s Avengers franchise continuing to claim spots atop box office records, with each ensemble cast film naturally splintering into a series of stand-alone character vehicles, with regenerating “reboots” occurring only years after originals, the popular appeal of adapting comics—to both studios and general audiences—seems unlikely to dissipate anytime soon. However, it is precisely the form’s popularity that tends to stymie the critical discourses. After all, if it is popular it can hardly be worthy of serious study, right? But what does that leave us with? What do we really understand about the marriage of comics and film, comics and art? In a climate in which the borders differentiating media continue to collapse into something now referred to as “transmedia,” what does it actually mean for us to move between mediums—particularly mediums that raise familiar issues of representation, temporality, and narrative?     The objective of this course is to provide the necessary tools to enable critical reflection on the respective values and mutual relationships of comics, art and film. To achieve this, the course is divided into two units. The first weeks will be spent acquiring the technical and historical context that will enable us to begin to recognize the breadth and depth of word/image narrative practices. After developing a core vocabulary for thinking about comics as a medium we will then look at how artists and directors have drawn on that vocabulary in a range of different contexts. Retaining a sense of the specificity of both comics and film as artistic mediums, we will consider topics ranging from cross-cultural translation, ontologies of otherness, and modes of mediated history. Beyond questions of fidelity, we will look at what it means to adapt particular stories at particular moments. How does an X-Men comic from 1982 adapt to meet the historical needs of its film adaptation in 2002? What do we mean when we say a particular adaptation is “good” or that another attempt “failed”? The works this course will consider are meant to challenge our understanding of what the art of comics can be. Comics as Medium intends to undertake the task of taking seriously—through close consideration of authorial and formal choices—that which is often considered unserious.