COURSE SYLLABUS CINE 700 Introduction to Graduate Studies

Transcription

1 COURSE SYLLABUS CINE 700 Introduction to Graduate Studies Prof. R. L. Rutsky Fall 2014 Office: EP Office Hours: F 4:15-5:15 and by appt. Class Time: F 1:10-3:55 Goals of the Course: The course provides a survey of cinematic and media culture theories, which is important as a foundation for future graduate work in cinema and media, even for students not primarily focusing on theoretical work. In concert with this theoretical overview, the course offers an orientation to graduate study, introducing students to the professional standards and practices of our discipline and of academia. Development of a tentative master's thesis forms the primary basis for written work. Required Texts: Course Readings, as listed, are online on ilearn. Screenings: In most cases, you will be required to view certain films on your own for discussion in class. Course Requirements: Attend all class meetings. Readings must be completed by the assigned dates. All written work must be submitted on time. Weekly Questions: Each student should prepare a series of at least 4 typed questions, which should directly address the assigned reading material for the day. The questions should be written with an eye to initiating dialogue in the classroom. These questions should be submitted to the instructor at the conclusion of each class meeting. Short Paper: Each student is expected to write a 4-5 page project proposal for an MA Thesis (Mock Thesis Proposal). Paper must include a Thesis Argument and brief discussion of How the Topic/Argument will be Pursued, a short Summary of Topics/Points, and a Bibliography/Filmography. Due Oct 24. Final Research Paper: Each student will write a page paper expanding on the short paper; if the student wishes to diverge from their earlier idea, they should consult with the instructor. Due by Dec 19th. Weekly Questions 25% Short Paper (4-5 pp.) Due 10/24 25% Final Research Paper (15 pp.) Due 12/19 50% Disability Related Aid: Students with disabilities who need reasonable accommodations are encouraged to contact the instructor. The Disability Programs and Resource Center (DPRC) is available to facilitate the reasonable accommodations process. The DPRC is located in the Student Service Building and can be reached by telephone (voice/tty ) or by (dprc@sfsu.edu).

2 COURSE SCHEDULE This schedule is subject to change. Readings are due on the date assigned. 8/29: WEEK 1: INTRODUCTION TO THE COURSE: FILM ANALYSIS, FILM HISTORY, AND FILM THEORY David Bordwell, The Significance of Stylistic History Recommended or Optional On Analysis and Writing Tips on Graduate Writing Introduction from Film Analysis: A Norton Reader Examples of SFSU Faculty Publications 9/5: WEEK 2: FORMALISM AND MONTAGE Viktor Shklovsky, Art as Technique (orig pub 1917) from Russian Formalist Criticism: Four Essays (U Nebraska Press, 1965) (22 pp) Dziga Vertov, We: Variant of a Manifesto (orig pub 1922) from Kino-Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov (UC Press, 1985) (5 pp) Sergei M. Eisenstein, Montage of Attractions (orig pub 1923) from The Film Sense (Harcourt Brace, 1947) (4 pp) Robert Stam, The Soviet Montage-Theorists and Russian Formalism and the Bakhtin School from Film Theory: An Introduction (Blackwell, 2000) (18 pp) Recommended: Sergei M. Eisenstein, A Dialectical Approach to Film Form (orig pub 1929) from Film Form (Harcourt Brace, 1949) (18 pp) View for Class: Man with a Movie Camera (1929) Dziga Vertov (69 m) 9/12: WEEK 3: MASS CULTURE AND TECHNOLOGICAL REPRODUCTION Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility (third version--1939) from Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Vol 4, (32 pp) Max Horkheimer & Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception, Excerpts (originally from Dialectic of Enlightenment, 1944) in Critical Visions in Film Theory (Bedford/St Martins, 2011) (17 pp) 9/19: WEEK 4: REALISMS AND PHENOMENOLOGY Robert Stam, The Phenomenology of Realism from Film Theory: An Introduction (Blackwell, 2000) (11 pp) André Bazin, The Ontology of the Photographic Image (orig pub 1945) from What is Cinema? Vol. 1 (UC Press, 1967) (7 pp) André Bazin, The Myth of Total Cinema (orig pub 1946) from What is Cinema? Vol. 1 (UC Press, 1967) (6 pp) Siegfried Kracauer, Basic Concepts from Theory of Film (1960) Excepted in Critical Visions in Film Theory (Bedford/St Martins, 2011) (11 pp) Recommended: André Bazin, The Evolution of the Language of Cinema (orig pub ) What is Cinema? Vol. 1 (UC Press, 1967) (20 pp) View for Class: The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) Orson Welles (88 m)

3 9/26: WEEK 5: WHAT IS AN AUTHOR? ART AND POLITICS Robert Stam, The Cult of the Auteur from Film Theory: An Introduction (Blackwell, 2000) (10 pp) François Truffaut, A Certain Tendency of the French Cinema (orig pub 1954) (10 pp) Robert Stam, Third World Film and Theory from Film Theory: An Introduction (Blackwell, 2000) (10 pp) Recommended: Andrew Sarris, Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962 in Film Theory and Criticism (Oxford, 1999) (4 pp) Michel Foucault, What is an Author? (orig pub 1969) from The Foucault Reader (Pantheon, 1984) (20 pp) View for Class: Hour of the Furnaces, Pt 1 (1968) Fernando E. Solanas & Octavio Getino (85 m) (available on YouTube) 10/3: WEEK 6: STRUCTURALISM AND SEMIOTICS IN FILM THEORY Philip Rosen, "The Saussurian Impulse and Cinema Semiotics" from Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology (Columbia Univ. Press, 1986) (11 pp) Peter Wollen, "The Auteur Theory" Signs and Meaning in the Cinema (BFI/Indiana University Press, 1969, 1972 Rev. Ed.) in Film Theory and Criticism (Oxford, 1999) (16 pp) Charles Eckert, The Anatomy of a Proletarian Film: Warner s Marked Woman (orig pub 1974) in Movies and Methods, Vol 2 (UC Press, 1985) (19 pp) Recommended: Raymond Bellour, The Obvious and the Code (orig pub 1973) from Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology (Columbia Univ. Press, 1986) (9 pp) View for Class: Marked Woman (1937) Lloyd Bacon (96 m) 10/10: WEEK 7: IDEOLOGY AND IDEOLOGICAL STRUCTURES Robert Stam, 1968 and the Leftist Turn and The Classic Realist Text Film Theory: An Introduction (Blackwell, 2000) (11 pp) Editors of Cahiers du Cinéma, John Ford s Young Mr. Lincoln, (orig pub 1970) from Screen 1972 (39 pp) Jean-Luc Comolli and Jean Narboni, Cinema/Ideology/Criticism (orig pub 1969) in Movies and Methods, Vol. 1. (UC Press, 1976) (9 pp) Recommended: Louis Althusser, Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (orig pub 1970) from Lenin and Philosophy (New Left Books, 1971) (60 pp) View for Class: Young Mr. Lincoln (1939) John Ford (100 m) 10/17: WEEK 8: GRADUATE STUDENT FILM STUDIES CONFERENCE NO CLASS 10/24: WEEK 9: PSYCHOANALYSIS, SUBJECTS, AND FEMINIST ANALYSIS Robert Stam, From Linguistics to Psychoanalysis Film Theory: An Introduction (Blackwell, 2000) (11 pp)

4 Laura Mulvey, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (orig pub 1975) in Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology (Columbia Univ. Press, 1986) (12 pp) Barbara Creed, Kristeva, Femininity, Abjection in The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 1993) (8 pp) Recommended: Sigmund Freud, The Dreamwork excerpted from The Interpretation of Dreams (34 pp) Christian Metz, Excerpts from The Imaginary Signifier (orig pub 1977) in Critical Visions in Film Theory (Bedford/St Martins, 2011) (17 pp) SHORT PAPER DUE 10/31: WEEK 10: THE POSTSTRUCTURALIST TURN Roland Barthes, From Work to Text (orig pub 1971) from Image/Music/Text (Hill & Wang, 1977) (10 pp) Roland Barthes, The Third Meaning (orig pub 1970) from Image/Music/Text (Hill & Wang, 1977) (16 pp) Jacques Derrida, Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of Human Sciences (orig pub 1967) in Writing and Difference (1978) (17 pp) Recommended: Luce Irigaray, The Mechanics of Fluids (orig pub 1984) from This Sex Which Is Not One (Cornell UP, 1977) (13 pp) 11/7: WEEK 11: CULTURAL STUDIES, POSTMODERNISM Robert Stam, The Rise of Cultural Studies and The Birth of the Spectator Film Theory: An Introduction (Blackwell, 2000) (12 pp) Stuart Hall, Encoding/Decoding (orig pub 1973, revised 1980) in Critical Visions in Film Theory (Bedford/St Martins, 2011) (12 pp) Dick Hebdige, From Culture to Hegemony from Subculture: The Meaning of Style (Metheun, 1979) (15 pp) Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism and Consumer Society (orig pub 1983) in Critical Visions in Film Theory (Bedford/St Martins, 2011) (11 pp) 11/14: WEEK 12: RETURN TO HISTORY AND SCIENCE Robert Stam, Interpretation and Its Discontents in Film Theory: An Introduction (Blackwell, 2000) (9 pp) David Bordwell, Excerpted from Historical Poetics of Cinema in The Cinematic Text: Methods and Approaches (AMS Press, 1989) (8 pp) Tom Gunning, Cinema of Attractions: Early Film, Its Spectator and the Avant- Garde (orig pub 1986) in Critical Visions in Film Theory (Bedford/St Martins, 2011) (8 pp) Robert Stam, Cognitive and Analytic Theory Film Theory: An Introduction (Blackwell, 2000) (13 pp) Recommended: Robert B. Ray, The Bordwell Regime and the Stakes of Knowledge (orig pub 1988) in How a Film Theory Got Lost (Indiana UP, 2001) (35 pp) 11/21: WEEK 13: POST-THEORIES CONTINUED: DELEUZE, THE POSTCOLONIAL

5 Claire Colebrook, Cinema, Thought and Time, from Colebrook, Deleuze: A Guide for the Perplexed (Continuum, 2006) (20 pp) Robert Stam, Film and the Postcolonial in Film Theory: An Introduction (Blackwell, 2000) (7 pp) Recommended: Jacques Ranciére, From One Image to Another? Deleuze and the Ages of Cinema in Film Fables (Bloomsbury 2006) (17 pp) Optional: Gilles Deleuze, Conclusions from Cinema 2: The Time-Image (orig pub 1985) (26 pp) 11/28: WEEK 14: FALL RECESS No University Classes, Campus Open 12/5: WEEK 15: BODIES, GENDERS, AFFECTS Linda Williams, Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess (orig pub 1991) in Film Theory and Criticism (1999) (15 pp) Judith Butler, Introduction from Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex (Routledge, 1993) (29 pp) Grogory J. Seigworth & Melissa Gregg, An Inventory of Shimmers (Introduction to The Affect Theory Reader) (Duke UP, 2010) (24 pp) Recommended: Vivian Sobchack, Phenomenology and Film Experience (orig pub 1992) in Critical Visions in Film Theory (Bedford/St Martins, 2011) (7 pp) 12/12: WEEK 16: CINEMA AND THE DIGITAL Lev Manovich, What is Digital Cinema? (orig pub 2002) in Critical Visions in Film Theory (Bedford/St Martins, 2011) (12 pp) Henry Jenkins, Introduction: Worship at the Altar of Convergence from Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (New York UP, 2006) (24 pp) Recommended: Lisa Nakamura, The Social Optics of Race and Networked Interfaces in The Matrix Trilogy and Minority Report (orig pub 2008) in Critical Visions in Film Theory (Bedford/St Martins, 2011) (18 pp) 12/19: FINALS WEEK No Class FINAL PAPER DUE R. L. Rutsky, 2014