Spring

Since the advent of photography, artists and commentators have likened the camera to an eye. Immediately, it became apparent that the eye in question was not quite human. The nature of the “creature” incorporating the camera eye has been the subject of speculation and disagreement ever since. In this class we will examine the relationship between human and machine perception, and the possibility of non-human filmic subjectivities. Epstein’s “the Bell and Howell is a metal brain,” Vertov’s “Kino-eye,” Benjamin’s optical unconscious, theories of the animistic camera, the possessed cameras of Jean Rouch and Maya Deren, Michael Snow’s mechanical landscape cinema will all be important points of reference. We will screen films by these filmmakers as well as surveillance, microscopic, and underwater films. This class is dedicated to interrogating and celebrating the manners in which the camera (and the microphone as well) allow us access to an expanded perception.

This seminar explores the emergence of film theory during the period between the mid-1960s and mid-1970s. Part of the aim is historiographic: to look at accounts of how and why something called Film Theory emerged in the wake of a set of intellectual, political, and institutional forces. The main focus of the seminar, however, will be to create an alternate approach to a set of questions that—as the recent resurgence of work on Film Theory show—have not gone away, and also to pick up a set of questions and topics that got left by the wayside. We’ll examine the idea that film theory arose in these years as a struggle over the legacy and meaning of modernism, especially an inheritance of modernist movements in the 1920s and 1930s. Among the central ideas to be explored is that the line between theory and criticism was extremely porous in this period, and that film theory emerged out of a sustained dialogue with debates in art history. The seminar will trace three strands of film theory that laid claim to different modernist traditions: one exemplified by Stanley Cavell and Michael Fried; a second by Annette Michelson and Rosalind Krauss; and a third by Peter Wollen and what has been called “Screen Theory.” Readings will position central texts from these strands of theory alongside their modernist influences, from Cubism to Duchamp to Dada to Benjamin to Brecht. The debates between major journals of the time, including Art Forum, October, and Screen, will be central to this history. Screenings will focus on work from Classical Hollywood, the rise of global new waves, and the American avant-garde.

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.

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.

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.

This seminar explores what might be encountered under the categories of “Blackness” and “audio-visuality” with an emphasis on African-American and Black diasporic audio-visual culture. We will consider a range of studies of “Blackness” produced in English in the areas of African American and Black Studies, cinema and media studies, performance studies, art history, and visual studies.

On the fiftieth anniversary of 1968 our course couples the study of revolutionary films (and films about revolution) with seminal readings on revolutionary ideology and on the theory of film and video. The goal will be to articulate the mechanics of revolution and its representation in time-based media. Students will produce a video or videos adapting the rich archive of revolutionary film for today's situation. The films screened will be drawn primarily from Soviet and US cinema, from the 1920s to the present day, proceeding more or less chronologically. We begin with newsreels and a "poetic documentary" by Dziga Vertov; they will be paired with classic readings from revolutionary theory, from Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin to Fidel Castro and Bill Ayres, and from film theory, including Vertov, Andre Bazin and Jean-Luc Godard. Readings will acquaint students with contemporary assessments of the emancipatory potential of film.

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.