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- FMS 101 WRUR DJ TRAINING
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- FMS 103 WAYS OF SEEING:CYBERASIA
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- FMS 131 INTRODUCTION TO MEDIA STUDIES
This course provides a broad overview and introduction to media. We will cover histories of different types of media (internet, radio, audio recordings, television, cable, film, journalism, magazines, advertising, public relations, etc.) as well as various theories and approaches to studying media. No prior knowledge is necessary, but a real interest and willingness to explore a variety of media will come in handy. Occasional outside screenings will be required (but if you cannot attend the scheduled screenings, you may watch the films on your own time through the Multimedia Center reserves.) Students will be evaluated based on assigned writing, classroom discussion leading, participation, short quizzes, midterm exam and final exam.
- FMS 132 INTRODUCTION TO THE ART OF FILM
As an introduction to the art of film, this course will present the concepts of film form, film aesthetics, and film style, while remaining attentive to the various ways in which cinema also involves an interaction with audiences and larger social structures.
- FMS 161 INTRODUCTION TO VIDEO & SOUND
This course introduces the basic aesthetic and technical elements of video production. Emphasis is on the creative use and understanding of the video medium while learning to use the video camera, video editing processes and the fundamental procedures of planning video projects. Video techniques will be studied through screenings, group discussions, readings, practice sessions and presentations of original video projects made during the course.
- FMS 199 AMERICAN INDEPENDENTS
Independent film occupies a central place in our cultural consciousness. Its success speaks to the value America places on the 'outsider'. From the pop-violence of Quentin Tarantino, to the introspective cinema of Mark Rappaport, what does it mean to be an 'independent'? After all, films we consider to be 'independent' often have more connections to Hollywood than we tend to think. But how do we begin to approach this term? For instance, is it a question of funding? Does it indicate certain conditions of authorship or production? Can we think of 'independent cinema' as a genre unto itself? We will consider such questions by examining a number of important works from the past 20 years by filmmakers such as Kelly Reichardt, Jon Jost, and the Coen brothers, while also attending to recent critical trends in film and visual studies.
- FMS 202 LANGUAGE IN ADVERTISING
The course examines the use advertisers make of language in selling their products and how it affects our perceptions of the product and ourselves. The emphasis in the course is on learning about the structure of language and how we can use it as a guide to observing and understanding the effectiveness of commercial messages.
- FMS 203 BROADCASTNG IN THE DIGITAL AGE
A descriptive and critical analysis of the nature of electronic mass media, broadcast practices and impact. Historical development of mass media institutions and role of media in society, including evaluation of news, government regulation, economics, emerging technologies, and audience dynamics, as well as decision-making and organizational aspects of the broadcast industry. Designed to provide a broad, rigorous orientation for understanding basic elements of media production as well as skills training in reporting, writing, editing, delivery and production of broadcast media. Enrollment limited to 20.
- FMS 204 COWBOYS AND INDIANS
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- FMS 205 INTRODUCTORY DIGITAL ART
For the purpose of this course, the computer and software will be a medium of artistic production. Students will use writings, and readings on contemporary art practice and theory to create work within the framework of contemporary digital art. Software, namely Adobe PhotoShop and Macromedia Dreamweaver, will be the medium for materializing conceptual ideas. Prior experience with the software used in this course is not required. Studio Art supplies fee: $50. Enrollment limited at 10.
- FMS 207 HAYAO MIYAZAKI&PLANT GHIBLI
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- FMS 209 HOLOCAUST IN FILM AND LIT
How does one represent the unrepresentable? This is the key question we will explore as we look at films and literature about the Holocaust. As we look at fictional films, novels, documentaries and memoirs, we will discuss topics including memory, trauma, truth and representation. This course offers a look at the ways in which artists and their audiences negotiate the themes of loss, horror and redemption within the context of the Holocaust and its aftermath.
- FMS 210 ANIMATION AND THE ARTS
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- FMS 213 RACE & GENDER IN POPULAR FILM
This course explores Hollywood's fascination with race and gender as social issues and as spectacles. In particular, we will focus on the ways that social difference have become the sites of conflicted narrative and visual interactions in our films. To examine competing representations of racial difference and sexual difference in US culture, we analyze popular films from the 1950’s to the present.
- FMS 214 MONSTERS,GHOSTS & ALIENS
This course focuses on the horror genre as popular entertainment in Germany, England, and the US in the 19th and 20th centuries. Particular attention will be paid to the construction of others as monsters (Frankenstein, vampires, devils, aliens, etc). Authors to include: Shelley, Stoker, Rice, and King. Films to include: The Haunting, Alien, The Shining, and Silence of the Lambs. This course is part of the Horror in Literature & Film Cluster.
- FMS 215 FAMILY REPRESSION & RAGE IN FILM
The course aims to understand the social psychology of modern and contemporary Western/American family experience, and especially its means of abetting the concealment, repression, and suppression of people's emotional lives. Study of the films combined with the readings seek to develop critical understanding of the nuclear family (and versions of it) and the conditions it may create for child-rape, racism, homophobia, murder and self-destructive behavior such as substance abuse, self-mutilation, and suicide. Sometimes the violence is arbitrary, sometimes it is inevitable, sometimes it is incomprehensible. In each case the course's attention is on the personal and collective machineries of repression, the resulting rage in many individals, and the frequent (and now often familiar)violent results. Readings in the course include works by Erik Erikson, Nancy Chodorow, Alice Miller, and Stephanie Coontz.
- FMS 220 FILM AS OBJECT
Film Studies involves the critical analysis of the pictorial and narrative qualities of motion pictures, film theory, and film history, understanding film as both industry and creative art. This course unconventionally focuses on the tangible object at the origin of the onscreen image, and what we can learn about the social, cultural and historical value of motion pictures and national film cinemas through an understanding of Film as an organic element with a finite life cycle. Focus is on the photographical element, but includes a consideration of alternative capture media. Enrollment limited to 15.
- FMS 221 NAPOLEON IMAGE, MYTH, HISTORY
With the exception of Jesus Christ, no historical personage has been more written about, or been the subject of more iconic portrayals, than Napoleon Bonaparte. This course examines the image of Napoleon at the intersection of myth and history, for Napoleon attempts to write his own history as myth. Literary accounts of Bourienne, Chateaubriand, Stendhal, Hugo, Dumas, Tolstoy, and Scott. Pictorial representations by David, Gros, Géricault. Abel Gances’ classic silent epic Napoleon (1927), Guitry’s Napoleon (1955), as well as other cinematic treatments. Modern historical treatments by Cole, Englund, Bell. Conducted in English.
- FMS 222 ART & THE CITY: NY IN THE 70S
The recession & fiscal crisis of the 1970s was paradoxically a highly productive period of artistic experimentation in New York City. In the wake of the transforming art movements of the 1960s--Pop, Minimalism, and Conceptual Art--the 1970s saw the invention of new and hybrid media: video art, performance art, & site-specific installation works. By the end of the decade a new group of artists that came to be known as the Pictures Generation began showing in alternative spaces such as Artists Space. In this seminar we will study how the de-industrialization of New York contributed to new kinds of art making & examine how art works take the city as their subject. Among the artists we will consider are Bernd & Hilla Becher, Gordon Matta-Clark, Joan Jonas, Peter Hujar, Danny Lyon, Cindy Sherman, and Thomas Struth. Avant-garde film also took the city as its subject; the course will include the work such film & video-makers as Dara Birnbaum, Ernie Gehr, Peter Hutton, Babette Mangotle, and Charles Simonds.
- FMS 223 THE SOCIAL USES OF MEDIA
This course introduces students to the study of media from an anthropological perspective. We will examine constructions of media as objects of social scientific analysis, as both textual artifacts and social practice. Questions that guide the course are, What is "the media"? How have recent transformations in global capital and communications technology altered how we consume, analyze and produce media? What can the study of media tell us about social life & the imagination? We will seek to understand the medias role in producing national and transnational public spheres, focusing on a range of media formations, from multinational corporate structures to indigenous & diasporic productions, to question media's power to shape subjectivities & conceptions of cultural difference. We will examine print journalism, television, film, radio, advertising, and visual art in both local & global contexts. Students will be encouraged to incorporate media analysis and media production in their own ethnographic projects.
- FMS 225 MEDIA ABC
Media ABC is an introduction to the very idea of medium and media-as in "the medium of print." The goal is to come to a basic understanding of that concept. The perspective of the course is historical and critical. The key assumption is that media-the human voice, film, electronic files--shape their "content"--words, pictures, sound- and their authors and their audiences. There have always been media because life cannot be lived without them.
- FMS 226 DOCUMENTARY, MOCK DOCUMENTARY, REALITY TV
This course combines a survey of major historical movements and styles in documentary film with an examination of more recent trends and challenges to the tradition. So, in addition to studying the expository political documentary, ethnographic film, and the direct cinema and cinéma vérité movements, we will explore forms including reality TV, mock documentary, and autobiographical film and video.
- FMS 227 THE POETICS OF TELEVISION
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- FMS 228 DIGITAL MEDIA
This course examines the histories, presents, and futures of digital media, particularly video games, computer generated images (CGI), and the Internet (including convergences with the media of sound recording, radio, television, and film). One of the underlying concepts we will explore is the relationship between digital media and globalization. We will also investigate how communities are constructed and transformed by their participation in digital media. Some experience with media studies is helpful but not required. Students will write blogs, academic essays, and have the option of producing an audiovisual mashup or other digital creation in lieu of one written assignment.
- FMS 229 GNDR,SEXLTY US FLM/TV COMEDY
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- FMS 230 ON THE MOVE:TRAVELERS,WANDERERS & EXPLORERS
This course will cover a wide variety of texts in which mobility plays a central role, including films, cultural theory and fiction . The time period we cover will be from the nineteenth century to the present day. Some of the questions we will explore are: What are the reasons people move from one place to another? Who controls the movement and how? How do these texts allow us as viewers and readers travel? Texts and discussions are in English.
- FMS 231 CHANGING GENRES OF EROTICA
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- FMS 232 POPULAR FILM GENRE: THE HORROR FILM
This course examines major critical issues surrounding the horror genre, through close study of Classical Hollywood, post-Classical, and international horror films, and readings in critical theory. Issues to be explored include boundary transgression and bodily abjection in the construction of the horror monster; gender, pregnancy, and the monstrous feminine; social Otherness (race, class, sexuality) as monstrosity; the figure of the serial killer and the shift from classic to modern horror; the grotesque and the blending of comedy and horror in the zombie film; international horror (especially Japan) and cross-cultural influences with Hollywood. As a research seminar, the course will involve the development of a substantial research project.
- FMS 233 SOCIAL USES OF MEDIA
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- FMS 236 MONSTERS,GHOSTS & ALIENS
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- FMS 237 POPULR FILM GENRES:FILM NOIR
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- FMS 238 POP FILM GENRE: GANGSTER FILMS
We will screen and study approximately 12 gangster and crime films from the rich genre of such movies. We will also read some related fiction and some critical studies of the form. We will look at films spanning the history of cinema from Little Caesar to The Godfather, examining the devices of the form, those elements that seem to define it, the relation of the subject to the culture, the meaning of the film, and so forth. The course will include lectures and discussion.
- FMS 239 POPULAR FILM GENRES: VAMPIRE FILM
This course will attempt to cover the history, literature, and above all, the cinema of vampirism from the silent era through the present day. We will study a number of important examples of the form, read a couple of significant literary works about the vampire, especially Bram Stoker's novel "Dracula,"and also employ one or two critical texts that deal with the vampire in cinema. Not open to freshmen. Applicable English Cluster: Modern and Contemporary Literature.
- FMS 241 POLISH CINEMA
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- FMS 242 ALL IS FAIR IN LOVE AND WAR
This course contests its title. There is language and literature/film that records how language has failed as a means of (human) species adaptation toward conflict resolution in domestic and international contexts. This course, following the observations of Virginia Woolf in Three Guineas (1939), tries to document the language/literary connections between domestic violence and war making. In domestic situations, violence is protected by traditions of privacy and male governance of households; in public situations, there has been an inertia throughout recorded history in enacting the ideal announced in Isaiah: "[nations] shall not learn war any more". In our own society genres of popular and elite culture teach the necessity and glory of war through literature, film, toys, sports, and ideals of heroic behavior. Our normal ways of speaking still presuppose violence and war as a "last resort" in solving domestic and international antagonisms.
- FMS 243 FILM AS OBJECT
Film Studies involves the critical analysis of the pictorial and narrative qualities of motion pictures, film theory, and film history, understanding film as both industry and creative art. This course unconventionally focuses on the tangible object at the origin of the onscreen image, and what we can learn about the social, cultural and historical value of motion pictures and national film cinemas through an understanding of Film as an organic element with a finite life cycle. Focus is on the photographical element, but includes a consideration of alternative capture media. Enrollment limited to 15.
- FMS 244 CLASSICAL FILM THEORY
No description
- FMS 246 BRIGHT LIGHTS BIG CITY
In the early twentieth century, our conceptualization of the city had a significant impact on how we understood our interactions with others and the notion of the individual. In this will look at a wide variety of texts including newspaper articles, essays, films and fiction to explore the following questions. What is the relationship between technology and man? How does the individual navigate the space of the city? What role do class and gender play in our ability to move through the city? What is the relationship between modernity and urban life?
- FMS 247 FILM HISTORY: EARLY CINEMA
Introduction to the history, technology, and cultural significance of motion pictures of the "pre-sound" era, with screenings of 35mm prints accompanied by live music in the Dryden Theatre. Special attention will be paid to the major pioneers, Dickson, Porter, Lumière, Méliès, and Griffith, but the course will include a variety of internationally produced films selected from the world-famous archival film collection of the GEH. Discussion sessions will cover the origins and development of the motion picture industry and its leading genres up to the general introduction of movies with pre-recorded music, sound and dialog, beginning in 1927. Broad issues relating to the transformation of American and world popular entertainment forms and traditions, in relation to the established performing arts of the period, will also be covered. Relevant connections to preserving the world's film heritage will be highlighted and the film restoration facilities of the Motion Picture Department will be visited this course.
- FMS 248 FILM HISTORY: 1929-1959
This course provides a transnational survey of film history, examining the technical and formal aspects of the medium in its production and exhibition. As we explore the development of cinema during this period, we will address a number of aesthetic and technological issues. For example, how did the development of sound technology affect film form? How did it affect cross-cultural cinematic exchange? What is the significance of genre across various film traditions? What did the studio system contribute to Hollywood's success in the international market? How did immigrant and exiled film personnel shape the industries they joined? Weekly screenings and film journals required.
- FMS 249 FILM HISTORY: 1959-PRESENT
This course will explore developments in world cinema—industrial, technological, social, and political—from 1959 to the present. It will consider aesthetic and technical issues, including questions like the following. What brought about the collapse of the Hollywood studio system? What’s new about the French New Wave? What do we mean by “Third Cinema”? How do different national cinemas influence each other? Weekly screenings and film journals required.
- FMS 251 FILMS OF THE 1930'S
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- FMS 252C DOCUMENTARY,MOCK DOC REAL TV
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- FMS 254D FILMS OF THE 30'S
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- FMS 256 ADVANCED DIGITAL ART
Looks at contemporary digital art and new media and practice using readings, visiting collections, galleries, and production of photographic work.
- FMS 256B POLITICAL FILMS
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- FMS 257 ADVANCED VIDEO & SOUND
In this advanced production course, video and sound will be considered as independent art forms as well as part of video installations. Students will produce experimental videos and sound pieces. They will also explore the use of these mediums when combined with two- and three-dimensional materials in real time. This course will cover both analogue and digital formats. Must have taken FMS 161/SA 161/ENG 161. Permission of instructor required. Studio arts supplies fee: $50.
- FMS 257F LANGUAGE IN ADVERTISING
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- FMS 260 SCREENWRITING WORKSHOP
An introduction to the three-act film structure. Students will read and view numerous screenplays and films, and develop their own film treatment into a full-length script.
- FMS 260A INTRODUCTORY DIGITAL ART
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- FMS 262A ADVANCED VIDEO & SOUND
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- FMS 262B ADVANCED VIDEO & SOUND
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- FMS 262C ADVANCED VIDEO & SOUND
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- FMS 263 AVATAR: DIGITAL ARTISTRY IN VIRTUAL WORLDS AND THEIR DEVELOPMENT
This course will examine the uses of Second Life and other virtual worlds to produce not just 3D artistic environments, but "machinima," film-clips using "avatars" as actors, with an emphasis on narrative and ultimately educational uses. Special attention given to the perceived pathos of the mechanical, the notions of the puppet and the android.
- FMS 264 STUDIES IN A DIRECTOR
A course in the works and career of an outstanding and identifiable film director: Hitchcock, Warhol, Huston, Bunuel, Renoir, etc.
- FMS 265 GUILT
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- FMS 268 FILMS OF MARTIN SCORSESE
The course will deal with a selection of films directed (and some also written) by the highly regarded contemporary director, Martin Scorcese. We will proceed in roughly chronological order, examining the growth and development of his career, his characteristic manner and matter, his successes and failures. We will also discuss the concept of the auteur as it applies to his work.
- FMS 269 THE FILMS OF BRIAN DE PALMA
We will study the career of a highly regarded contemporary American director whose work, most of it of the more or less violent genres of horror, crime, and suspense, displays both a highly self conscious experimentalism and an acknowledgement of film tradition. In the course we will attempt to discover those particular attributes that define a De Palma film. We will also discuss those directors who most influence his work, especially Alfred Hitchcock, and touch on some of the individual motion pictures that lie behind certain De Palma films. In this course we will screen a large selection of the director's films, in roughly chronological order, concentrating especially on the best known and most successful titles, including Carrie, Dressed to Kill, Blow Out, and Body Double. The syllabus will include some of the literary texts that provide the sources for some of his films and at least one critical study of the De Palma canon. Assignments will include critical papers and a final examination.
- FMS 270 FILMS OF JEAN-LUC GODARD
Survey the career of Jean-Luc Godard from Breathless (1959) to In Praise of Love (2001) through close analysis of his films and range of critical responses. Explore numerous issues Godard places before us as spectators and critics.
- FMS 271 ASIAN AMERICAN LITERATURE AND FILM
Focus on the literary genres of APA works and cinematic texts from the past century. Includes works by Chinese American, Filipina American, Indian American, Korean American, Japanese American, and Vietnamese American authors. Some prior knowledge of 20th century U.S. literature or Asian Pacific Islander American history helpful, but not necessary.
- FMS 273 AKIRA KUROSAWA
An intensive study of the films of Akira Kurosawa, Japan’s most durable and visible auteur. Thanks to Kurosawa’s prolific output during his fifty-year career, from his debut in the 1940s to his recent work in the 1990s, an analysis of his films also offers the opportunity to examine some of the major cultural, political, and social issues and events that have left an imprint on the theory and production of film in Japan. We will also consider the work of many individuals (for example, the screenwriter Shinobu Hashimoto) who made important contributions to creating the Kurosawa opus, and whose careers are closely associated with Kurosawa. In addition to Kurosawa’s recent films, (screenings will include his well-known period films as well as less familiar contemporary dramas), students are responsible for assigned readings and are required to attend screenings.
- FMS 276 LATIN AMERICAN FILM
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- FMS 277 WOMEN IN EAST ASIA
In seminar format, students will read and discuss books and articles on women's history in Japan, China, and Korea. Differences in their responses to the modern world and their role in the history of the modern East Asian society will be emphasized. The study of women in modern East Asian history will be used as a vehicle to improve student's critical reading, speaking, and writing skills.
- FMS 278 MEXICAN FILM
Visitors to Mexico already have Hollywood versions of the country in their heads, but the 'real' Mexico is a much more complex place. Archetypes of tough hombres, renegade outlaws, dark and sultry women, or beach bums lolling under the hot sun fall by the wayside when Mexican cinema introduces the grittier and much more varied realities of the contemporary nation. This course explores both historical antecedents and contemporary visions. It includes films by directors such as Spanish exile Luis Buñuel, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Jaime Humberto Hermosillo, Alfonso Cuarón, Carlos Reygadas, Raúl Ruiz, María Novaro, and other box office favorites. From Robert Rodríquez's Bedhead, to Desperado, Once Upon a Time in Mexico and, of course, Y tu mamá también, Entre Pancho Villa y una mujer desnuda, and La ley de Herodes we explore images of Mexican culture. Course taught in English but work may be written in Spanish for Spanish Credit.
- FMS 279 INVENTION OF BLACK AMER
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- FMS 280 FRENCH CINEMA: THE NEW WAVE
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- FMS 281 SPANISH FILM
Critical analysis of recent Spanish cinema within its cultural contexts. Beginning with the early post-Civil War period, focus is on film as the narrative representation of radical changes and transitions in Spanish society. Considers the translation of other media (literary, theatrical, etc.) into film and the problematic relationship between historical reality and the aesthetics of cinema.
- FMS 284 RUSSIA GOES TO THE MOVIES
The dawn of the age of movies coincided with the Russian Revolution, and film was Lenin’s favorite art form. The course surveys Russian film from the beginnings to the present. The course investigates the major role that cinema played in shaping the national and political identity of the Soviet Union, and looks at what was artistically interesting and popular about these films, some of whose directors, like Eisenstein and Tarkovsky, are among the world’s most influential filmmakers.
- FMS 285 TOPICS IN ITALIAN CULTURE/ITALIAN CINEMA
This course provides a compendium of Italian cinema from the post-war period to the 1960s through the work of a few directors who have made Italian cinematography famous all over the world and have often been a source of inspiration for important foreign directors. By looking at these artists as primary contributors to the narrative and interpretation of the years following Mussolini's dictatorship and the tragedy of World War II, the course aims at an understanding of the historical and social development of Italian society of the time and its quest for a definition of national identity. Themes addressed include: 1. From the Resistance to the new neorealist cinema. Definition of Neorealism; 2. Reconstruction and the restoration of the cinema system in the 1950s. Auteur cinema; 3. The modernity of the 1960's. New cinema and commedia all'italiana. Filmmakers include: De Sica, Rossellini, Visconti, Fellini, Germi and others.
- FMS 288 CINEMA & REVOLUTION: THE WEST GERMAN AVANT-GARDE
This course explores the relationship between film and revolution in West German film from 1965 to the present.
- FMS 289 MEN OF MARBLE WOMEN OF STEEL
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- FMS 290 HOLLYWOOD BEHIND THE WALL
This course uses the films of the Third Reich to examine the parameters of Nazi culture. It examines such diverse aspects as the Leader Principle, gender roles, racial hygiene, anti-Semitism, mass culture, propaganda, and visions of history. Films are analyzed both in terms of their aesthetics as well as the social and historical context of their production.
- FMS 291 CONTEMPORARY FRENCH FILM
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- FMS 292 HISTORY OF FRENCH CINEMA
Survey the history of French cinema from its early experiments through the "Tradition of Quality" to the moment immediately preceding the emergence of the New Wave. Study films selected from the work of the following directors: Lumiere, Melies, Gance, Dulac, Leger, Clair, Vigo, Renoir, Carne, Ophuls, Pagnol, Clement, and Bresson. Readings will include contemporary critical and theoretical discussions, as well as historical analyses. Knowledge of French is helpful but not necessary.
- FMS 293 FRENCH CINEMA: THE NEW WAVE
A study of French film from its beginnings through the New Wave.
- FMS 294 ASIAN-AMERICAN LITERATURE & FILM
We focus on cinematic texts--short, documentary, and feature--and literary genres of Asian Pacific Islander American (APA) works from the 20th and 21st century--drama, fiction, poetry, memoir. Our APA literature includes works by Chinese American, Filipina American, Indian American, Korean American, Japanese American, and Vietnamese American authors, among others. We will analyze APA theories too, interrogating the construction of "America," myths and "foundational fictions." Students will lead discussion, write essays, and write short response papers.
- FMS 295 ASIAN AMERICAN LITERATURE AND FILM
We focus on cinematic texts--short, documentary, and feature--and literary genres of Asian Pacific Islander American (APA) works from the 20th and 21st century--drama, fiction, poetry, memoir. Our APA literature includes works by Chinese American, Filipina American, Indian American, Korean American, Japanese American, and Vietnamese American authors, among others. We will analyze APA theories too, interrogating the construction of "America," myths and "foundational fictions." Students will lead discussion, write essays, and write short response papers.
- FMS 296 LATIN AMERICAN FILM
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- FMS 297 HISTORY OF JAPANESE CINEMA
A survey of Japanese cinema since its origins, this course examines the major issues, trends and moments that make up its history. Content varies according to the particular time span offered (origins to 1960s or origins to present), but significant topics addressed include: silent film and popular culture; the import market and its influence; prewar, wartime and postwar censorship; popular genres; animation; the early international festival circuit; the art film and New Wave; and patterns of global distribution and exchange. Course taught in English (additional instruction in Japanese available for majors).
- FMS 298 TOURIST JAPAN
"The Samurai" will examine the emergence of the warrior class in the 10th and 11th centuries, its evolution from rustic warriors to medieval military power holders, and military bureaucratic administrators. The class will include readings on the history, literature, philosophy, and religion of the samurai class. Films treating the popular imagery of the samurai will be projected in class. Various representations of the samurai will be compared and contrasted.
- FMS 299 ATOMIC CREATURES: GODZILLA
A study of the phenomenon that generated and helped define the Japanese kaiju eiga (monster film) genre: the Godzilla series that began with the original film by Inoshiro Honda (Gojira, 1954), and its better- known US remake (Godzilla, King of the Monsters, 1956). The larger context of the course is a critical investigation of the science-fiction/horror/creature feature film generated in the late 1940's by the dawn of the nuclear age. The course will begin with a sampling of seminal non-Japanese titles that created a paradigm for the Godzilla film, and will address the historical and social contexts for the series erratic trajectory since 1954. Students are responsible for assigned readings and are required to attend screenings.
- FMS 302 TOPICS IN CONTEMPORARY ART &CRITICISM: WARHOL
As the most famous artist of the second half of the twentieth century, Warhol has been the subject of a growing literature that expands upon art history and criticism to encompass queer theory and cultural studies. But the most important shift in Warhol’s reception has been brought about by the restoration and return to circulation of his prolific film output from the years 1963-69. The films will be the main focus of this course, but we will also consider Warhol’s early work as a fashion illustrator, his entrepreneurship at the Factory, his voracious collecting, and of course, his paintings. We will read Warhol’s writings, including A a Novel, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol, and Popism; and we will examine new approaches to Warhol and ask how they illuminate not only the art but also such issues as consumption, publicity, visibility, celebrity, sexuality, identity, and selfhood.
- FMS 303 POST-COLONIALISM & GLOBALIZATION THEORY
This class will provide an overview of postcolonial studies and investigate recent theories. It includes some study of short literary works and films. No prerequisites. Work includes discussion leading, research essays, and short writing assignments.
- FMS 308 DANCE, ART AND FILM
This course explores relations among dance, art, and film at significant moments in the 20th and 21st centuries. We will study instances in which the forms are particularly closely aligned, including the famous productions by artists such as Gontcharova, Picasso, and Matisse, for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes; Martha Graham’s partnership with Isamu Noguchi; and Merce Cunningham’s work with Robert Rauschenberg. We will also look simply at how dance is filmed or how dance uses film. The course will concentrate on two figures of the postwar American avant-garde: Merce Cunningham and Yvonne Rainer. Cunningham’s dances choreographed for film in collaboration with film- and video-makers and Rainer’s move from choreography to filmmaking and eventually to hybrids of the two will constitute the core of the course.
- FMS 355 FEMINIST FILM THEORY
Feminism has had a powerful impact on the developing field of film theory from the 1970s to the present. This course will examine the major feminist work on film, moving from the earlier text-based psychoanalytic theories of representation to theories of feminine spectatorship to studies of reception contexts and audience. We will also give some attention to the very important role of feminist theory in television studies. Weekly screenings, keyed to the readings, will allow us to test the value of these positions for close critical analysis of the film or television text. Readings to include: Laura Mulvey, Kaja Silverman, Constance Penley, Judith Mayne, Linda Williams, Jacqueline Bobo, Valerie Smith, Lynn Spigel, Lynne Joyrich, Julie D'Acci.
- FMS 356 CLASSICAL FILM THEORY
This course examines the philosophical, aesthetic, and social issues that are central to classical film theory. It traces the historical development of film theory from 1900 to the 1950s. We will begin with thinkers in the period of early cinema, including Germaine Dulac, Jean and Marie Epstein, and then we will examine the development of film theory in the work of later theorists, such as Jean Mitry, Sergei Eisenstein, Dziga Vertov, Siegfried Kracauer, Walter Benjamin, Andre Bazin, and Christian Metz. Weekly screenings of historically contemporary films will allow us to examine the ongoing dialogue between the evolving medium and the developing theoretical discussion.
- FMS 365 ROBIN HOOD: ALL AMERICAN HERO
This course will address the popularity of the outlaw hero Robin Hood across six centuries and through a variety of media. Course will require shared readings (including writings on media theory and history), but much of the work will entail individual research that will be available to other class members through live discussion and through the computer and website that will constitute the "research lab." Each member of the class will be expected to produce several finished projects over the course of the semester. Students will ultimately have the chance to make discoveries available to a wider audience through Robin Hood: A Digital Archive. Ultimately, the course, like the site, will attempt to enable mixed audiences to have digital access to those material objects and practices that provide the basis for reconstructing our understanding of popular culture over the last 500 years, insofar as Robin Hood and outlawry provide a focus.
- FMS 390 SUPERVISED TEACHING
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- FMS 391 INDEPENDENT STUDY
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- FMS 391W INDEPENDENT STUDY
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- FMS 392 SPECIAL TOPICS
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- FMS 393 SENIOR PROJECT
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- FMS 394 INTERNSHIP
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- FMS 407 HAYAO MIYAZAKI&PLANT GHIBLI
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- FMS 413 RACE & GENDER IN POPULAR FILM
This course explores Hollywood's fascination with race and gender as social issues and as spectacles. In particular, we will focus on the ways that social difference have become the sites of conflicted narrative and visual interactions in our films. To examine competing representations of racial difference and sexual difference in US culture, we analyze popular films from the 1950’s to the present.
- FMS 420 FILM AS OBJECT
Film Studies involves the critical analysis of the pictorial and narrative qualities of motion pictures, film theory, and film history, understanding film as both industry and creative art. This course unconventionally focuses on the tangible object at the origin of the onscreen image, and what we can learn about the social, cultural and historical value of motion pictures and national film cinemas through an understanding of Film as an organic element with a finite life cycle. Focus is on the photographical element, but includes a consideration of alternative capture media. Enrollment limited to 15.
- FMS 422 ART & THE CITY: NY IN THE 70S
The recession & fiscal crisis of the 1970s was paradoxically a highly productive period of artistic experimentation in New York City. In the wake of the transforming art movements of the 1960s--Pop, Minimalism, and Conceptual Art--the 1970s saw the invention of new and hybrid media: video art, performance art, & site-specific installation works. By the end of the decade a new group of artists that came to be known as the Pictures Generation began showing in alternative spaces such as Artists Space. In this seminar we will study how the de-industrialization of New York contributed to new kinds of art making & examine how art works take the city as their subject. Among the artists we will consider are Bernd & Hilla Becher, Gordon Matta-Clark, Joan Jonas, Peter Hujar, Danny Lyon, Cindy Sherman, and Thomas Struth. Avant-garde film also took the city as its subject; the course will include the work such film & video-makers as Dara Birnbaum, Ernie Gehr, Peter Hutton, Babette Mangotle, and Charles Simonds.
- FMS 427 THE POETICS OF TELEVISION
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- FMS 432 THE HORROR FILM
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- FMS 443 FILM AS OBJECT
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- FMS 446 BRIGHT LIGHTS BIG CITY
In the early twentieth century, our conceptualization of the city had a significant impact on how we understood our interactions with others and the notion of the individual. In this will look at a wide variety of texts including newspaper articles, essays, films and fiction to explore the following questions. What is the relationship between technology and man? How does the individual navigate the space of the city? What role do class and gender play in our ability to move through the city? What is the relationship between modernity and urban life?
- FMS 473 AKIRA KUROSAWA
An intensive study of the films of Akira Kurosawa, Japan’s most durable and visible auteur. Thanks to Kurosawa’s prolific output during his fifty-year career, from his debut in the 1940s to his recent work in the 1990s, an analysis of his films also offers the opportunity to examine some of the major cultural, political, and social issues and events that have left an imprint on the theory and production of film in Japan. We will also consider the work of many individuals (for example, the screenwriter Shinobu Hashimoto) who made important contributions to creating the Kurosawa opus, and whose careers are closely associated with Kurosawa.
- FMS 488 MOTHER, COMRADES AND WHORES
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- FMS 498 CONTEMPORARY JAPANESE CINEMA
Japanese cinema has changed radically since the 1980s: independent productions are now a commercial standard; a new home entertainment market irrevocably transformed patterns of consumption; an increasingly global market for Japanese (and, more broadly, Asian) film has generated "brand name" recognition at a new level of popularity worldwide. Concurrent demographic, socio-political, and economic changes have ruptured conventional conceptions of national identity; Japan has in particular been forced to reconsider its 20th century identity crisis as part of Asia. This course explores how recent films reflect such developments (e.g., reworking and reinterpreting once familiar genres) and the significance of contemporary works within the broader context of a global market (e.g., the singular popularity of specific genres like Horror, as well as the broad diversity such phenomena can conceal).
- FMS 499 ATOMIC CREATURES: GODZILLA
A study of the phenomenon that generated and helped define the Japanese kaiju eiga (monster film) genre: the Godzilla series that began with the original film by Inoshiro Honda (Gojira, 1954), and its better- known US remake (Godzilla, King of the Monsters, 1956). The larger context of the course is a critical investigation of the science-fiction/horror/creature feature film generated in the late 1940's by the dawn of the nuclear age. The course will begin with a sampling of seminal non-Japanese titles that created a paradigm for the Godzilla film, and will address the historical and social contexts for the series erratic trajectory since 1954. Students are responsible for assigned readings and are required to attend screenings.
- FMS 508 DANCE, ART AND FILM
This course explores relations among dance, art, and film at significant moments in the 20th and 21st centuries. We will study instances in which the forms are particularly closely aligned, including the famous productions by artists such as Gontcharova, Picasso, and Matisse, for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes; Martha Graham’s partnership with Isamu Noguchi; and Merce Cunningham’s work with Robert Rauschenberg. We will also look simply at how dance is filmed or how dance uses film. The course will concentrate on two figures of the postwar American avant-garde: Merce Cunningham and Yvonne Rainer. Cunningham’s dances choreographed for film in collaboration with film- and video-makers and Rainer’s move from choreography to filmmaking and eventually to hybrids of the two will constitute the core of the course.
- FMS 555 FEMINIST FILM THEORY
Feminism has had a powerful impact on the developing field of film theory from the 1970s to the present. This course will examine the major feminist work on film, moving from the earlier text-based psychoanalytic theories of representation to theories of feminine spectatorship to studies of reception contexts and audience. We will also give some attention to the very important role of feminist theory in television studies. Weekly screenings, keyed to the readings, will allow us to test the value of these positions for close critical analysis of the film or television text. Readings to include: Laura Mulvey, Kaja Silverman, Constance Penley, Judith Mayne, Linda Williams, Jacqueline Bobo, Valerie Smith, Lynn Spigel, Lynne Joyrich, Julie D'Acci.
- FMS 556 CLASSICAL FILM THEORY
This course examines the philosophical, aesthetic, and social issues that are central to classical film theory. It traces the historical development of film theory from 1900 to the 1950s. We will begin with thinkers in the period of early cinema, including Germaine Dulac, Jean and Marie Epstein, and then we will examine the development of film theory in the work of later theorists, such as Jean Mitry, Sergei Eisenstein, Dziga Vertov, Siegfried Kracauer, Walter Benjamin, Andre Bazin, and Christian Metz. Weekly screenings of historically contemporary films will allow us to examine the ongoing dialogue between the evolving medium and the developing theoretical discussion.