Film Studies
Minor offered
Cinema was born on December 28, 1895, when the Lumière Brothers
attracted 33 paying customers to the Grand Café (Boulevard des
Capucines in Paris) for a projection of 10 short films.
Since that evening, cinema has grown into an immense global industry,
a major participant in 20th-century consumer culture, the foremost signifying
practice of our time, and even, some have said, into a new art form — the
Seventh Art.
Film studies is an interdisciplinary program designed to introduce students
to the techniques of film analysis as well as the history and theory of
the cinema. Courses are offered both within the program in film studies
and in other departments. These courses provide the opportunity to view
and study some of the most important and most discussed cultural texts of
the 20th century. Students will learn about film styles, structure, genres,
periods, national cinemas and how techniques of shooting and editing contribute
to a film’s meaning.
Minor Requirements
Students pursuing a minor in film studies are required to take six courses. Three of these courses are offered in the film studies program: Film Studies 211 (Introduction to Film Studies); 251 (History of the Cinema); 311 (Seminar on Film Theory). The other three courses for the minor are electives offered either in film studies or in other departments.
Film Studies 211 and 251
have no prerequisites. (Students need not have taken 211
to enroll in 251.)
To enroll in Film Studies 311, a student must:
(1) have completed Film Studies 211 and 251
or (2) have completed either 211 or 251
and be enrolled in the other (uncompleted) course while taking 311.
The three electives may be taken at any time during a student's career-before, during or after the three required courses.
Courses
Semester Specific Course Descriptions
197. Quest for Self in a Postmodern World.
The concept of postmodernity describes a condition in which signs,
the raw material of culture, such as images, sounds, words, video clips
and artifacts, and the meanings associated with them, are freed from
the historical social contexts in which they were created and circulate
at ever-increasing velocities through our lives. In other words, our
culture is composed of flows of signs found in advertisements, news
stories, TV programs, films, books, magazines, etc. and these flows
travel past us at an accelerating rate. Postmodern social theorists
suggest that the resulting fragmented nature of our culture makes it
difficult to construct a coherent identity, one in which an individual
has strong links to other particular humans or to a notion of humanity
in general. Using this postmodernist argument as a starting point,
this course will look at the social forces that determine and structure
how we form our identities. We will link these concerns about selfhood
with the role of media, to the acceleration and subsequent fragmentation
of information, to the emergence of virtual reality, to the spread
of global capitalism, to the rise of the megalopolis, and to the experiences
of privatization, narcissism and cynicism. We will also look at how
traditional sociological categories such as race, gender and class,
which have been used by sociologists as the primary variables to explain
how we form our identities, are being affected by these emerging special
formations.
211. Introduction to Film.
Introduction to Film Studies is designed as the first course
in a sequence that will examine the structures, techniques, history and
theory of film. Questions of history and theory will be treated only
in passing during this first course. The prime focus of the introductory
course will be learning to identify, analyze and articulate what we see
when we watch a film. The course studies the terminology used to describe
film techniques and does exercises in applying this terminology to the
films viewed. A new film will be screened each week; the class will write
about this film and then discuss it in class. There will be some reading
in this course, a weekly writing assignment, a sequence analysis and
a major paper. The goal of this course is eventually to pass from close
analysis of film technique and film construction to interpretation. Students
will learn not only how a film is constructed, but also how the techniques
employed contribute to a film’s values and meaning.
247, 248. Special Topics.
251. History of the Cinema.
This course will examine the development of film technology
and film technique from the 19th century to 1960, and the place of the
new medium in the evolving cultural-social contexts of the 20th century.
Subjects to be studied include early experiments in photography; the
beginnings of narrative cinema; special effects; new camera dynamics;
the development of cinema stars; theories of editing and montage; the
introduction of sound; film aesthetics; deep focus photography and realism;
color photography. A new film will be screened each week; the class will
write about this film and then discuss it in class. Films by Lumière,
Méliès, Griffith, Wiene, Murnau, Eisenstein, Chaplin, Lang,
Renoir, Rossellini, Welles, Godard, Truffaut and others. Movements and
genres studied will include German Expressionism, poetic realism, forms
of comedy, film noir, Italian neorealism and French New Wave. There will
be significant reading and writing.
263. Austrialian
Cinema.
Using Australian films as
the primary texts, this course will explore how Australian national
identity is constructed. First we shall look at what constitutes a
national cinema (independent, government-sponsored and Aussiewood).
Second, we shall focus on three variables which heavily determine both
the shape of Australian cinema and national identity. These are the
power of nature, (the Coast, the Bush, the Outback), the relationship
of aboriginal peoples to non-indigenous peoples, and the role of class
and gender constructions (particularly masculinity). The course will
be organized around the following topics: white masculinity, as it
is constructed in relation to both nature and war; feminine(ist) themes;
ethnicity and immigration; revising history, and national identity
to include Aboriginal peoples (after Mabo, a 1992 land rights decision),
and the emergence of a global postmodern cinema. Required film viewings.
271. Introduction
to World Cinema.
This course complements course 251, History of the Cinema, by exploring
the history of film outside Western Europe and the United States.
The semester is typically divided into four units, each focusing
on a different national or regional cinema. We will study a new film
each week, and will take three main approaches to studying each film.
First, we should know something of the history of a particular national
film industry; second, we must understand how a director fits into
both local and global histories of cinema; and third, we need to
familiarize ourselves with the social terrain upon which filmmakers
work. Throughout the semester, one unifying topic will help us look
comparatively at some very different kinds of films. Includes weekly
screenings.
281. Music
Video.
Music television created new ways of visualizing music, new ways
of seeing sound, which have in turn influenced the ways filmmakers
use sounds and images in feature and documentary films. In this course,
we look at the rise of music video in the 1980s, its predecessors
and its influences. While we will focus primarily on the history
and criticism of music video, this course also includes a substantial
production component in which you will create and edit sound and
video files. Also offered as Music 281.
311. Film Theory.
This seminar offers a survey of film theory: its history, its
important concepts and figures and its key theoretical movements. We
begin with “classical” film theory, including auteur theory,
realism, genre theory and political criticism. Much of the course, however,
will be given to contemporary film theory: semiotics, Marxism, psychoanalysis,
feminism/masculinity studies, African-American film studies, postmodernism,
postcolonial and global studies. To ground all this theory, we will view,
discuss and write about an eclectic collection of films.
335. Semiotics of Advertising.
The course blends sociological analysis, semiotics, discourse analysis,
and theories of representation both to explore the social consequences
of advertising and to deconstruct ads and commercials as commodity
signs and narratives. First, drawing heavily on the work of Judith
Williamson, the course approaches advertising as a system of signs
composed of signifiers, signifieds, referents and relational structures
tying these elements together. Students will apply a semiotic analysis
to both commodity and corporate advertising to explore how representations
of race, gender, class and age are constructed in this discourse. Second,
focusing on the effects of advertising on social institutions, gender
relations, self conception, the organization of everyday life and the
environment, this course constructs a critical history of advertising
from the 1920s to the present. Here, the course explores cultural contradictions
embedded in advertising discourse.
479. Independent Study.
Departmental Offerings
English
244. Techniques of Screenwriting.
306. Advanced Screenwriting.
French
404. French Film.
German
218. The New German Film.
Spanish
439. Literature,
Film and Popular Culture in Contemporary Spain.
Performance and Communication Arts
244. Techniques of Screenwriting.
306. Advanced Screenwriting.
Sociology
172. Reading Film Sociologically.
202. Visual Sociology:
Analysis Through Images.
*Also offered through European Studies.
** Also offered as Literature in Translation 218 and through European Studies.
Special topics and courses in these and other departments
will be accepted for the minor when they treat film in a substantial
way.
Faculty
Professors
Peter Joseph Bailey (English), A.B., New
School for Social Research; M.A., Johns Hopkins; Ph.D., Southern California
Professor of English
and Coordinator for Jeffrey Campbell Graduate Fellows Program
Gudrun Brokoph, B.A., Missouri; M.A., Ph.D., California (Davis)
Harriet Lewis Professor of Modern Languages and Literatures (German)
William Alfred Hunt, B.A., Wesleyan; M.A., Ph.D., Harvard
Professor of History
Stephen Dennis Papson, B.A., Seton Hall; M.A., New School for Social
Research; Ph.D., Kentucky
Professor of Sociology; Sabbatical Spring 2005
Sidney Logan Sondergard, B.A., M.A., Wichita; Ph.D., Southern California
Professor of English
Associate Professors
Roy Chandler Caldwell, B.S., Rensselaer; M.A., Ph.D., North Carolina
(Chapel Hill)
Associate Professor of Modern Languages and Literatures (French) and
Chair of Department; FYP Leave Spring 2005
Ilia J. Casanova-Marengo, B.A., Puerto Rico; M.A.,
Rutgers
Assistant Professor in Modern Languages and Literatures (Spanish); Sabbatical
Spring 2005
Yoko Chiba, B.A., Tsuda, Tokyo; M.A., Dublin; M.A., Ph.D., Toronto
Associate Professor of Modern Languages and Literatures (Japanese)
Richard H. Jenseth, B.A., Western; M.A., SUNY Albany; Ph.D., Iowa
Associate Professor of English, Director of University Writing Program
Marina A. Llorente, M.A., Ph.D., Kansas
Assistant Professor of Modern Languages and Literatures (Spanish)
Assistant Professors
David R. Henderson, B.A., Pomona; M.A., Southern California; Ph.D.,
Austin
Visiting Assistant Professor of Music
G. Schwartz
Robert Torres (Sociology), B.A., B.S., Penn State ; M.S., Ph.D.,
Cornell University
Assistant Professor of Sociology
Instructor
Soto (Visiting)
