L53 Film 500 Independent Study

This course is intended for students who wish to pursue areas of study not available within the standard curriculum. In order to enroll for this course, students must have a faculty adviser and submit a contract outlining the work for the course to the Film and Media Studies office. Please consult the Program guidelines governing independent study work. Opportunities for Independent Study are available to all undergraduate and graduate students working toward a degree in Arts and Sciences. Registration in an Independent Study requires sponsorship by a faculty member and approval of the Program Director. An Independent Study Proposal form can be obtained from the Film and Media Studies Office. All proposals for Film 500 have to be submitted to the FMS main office no later than November 1 for spring semester enrollment and April 1 for Film 500 to be taken in the fall semester. Approval is not automatic.

Credit variable, maximum 3 units.

L53 Film 5000 Independent Study

This course is intended for students who wish to pursue areas of study not available within the standard curriculum. In order to enroll for this course, students must have a faculty adviser and submit a contract outlining the work for the course to the Film and Media Studies office. Please consult the Program guidelines governing independent study work. Opportunities for Independent Study are available to all undergraduate and graduate students working toward a degree in Arts and Sciences. Registration in an Independent Study requires sponsorship by a faculty member and approval of the Program Director. An Independent Study Proposal form can be obtained from the Film and Media Studies Office. All proposals for Film 500 have to be submitted to the FMS main office no later than November 1 for spring semester enrollment and April 1 for Film 500 to be taken in the fall semester. Approval is not automatic.
Same as L53 Film 500

Credit variable, maximum 3 units.

L53 Film 501 Advanced Moving Image Analysis and Criticism

This course will explore the analytical tools that have served as the foundation for cinematic and televisual academic criticism. The variety of texts, visual and aural, that comprise moving image production will be considered with the aim of determining how textual strategies structure perception. The aim of the course is two-fold: to have students develop analytical skills for dealing with film and video texts, but also to see how these have been deployed in a multiplicity of approaches/applications offered by academic film criticism. There will be regular screenings to provide the material for analysis, as well as readings to offer a variety of critical models. REQUIRED SCREENINGS:

Credit 3 units.

L53 Film 505 Travel in Space: Contemporary Cinemas of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and China

The recent phase of intensive urbanization, industrialization, and globalization in Chinese regions has also mobilized multi-directional flows of migrants, tourists, workers and entrepreneurs across geographical boundaries. Moving through space, the voyagers offer changing perspectives to the cinematic mapping of socio-political relationships, histories, and cultures that constitute the identities of places. This course explores contemporary Chinese-language films that imagine trajectories between distant spaces as well as the experiences of "new comers" in "foreign" places. We will examine the current wave of travel films in Taiwan, the representation of drifters in Chinese urban films, as well as the imagination of migration in Hong Kong cinema. We will also explore theories that draw connections between movement, space, and cinema. REQUIRED SCREENINGS: TBA

Credit 3 units.

L53 Film 507 The 007 Saga: James Bond and The Modern Media Franchise

What is a franchise, and what approaches have scholars used to study the franchise as a modern cultural and commercial form? This course explores the phenomenon of the modern media franchise in light of the "007 saga": the stories of James Bond as they have proliferated in various media since the 1950s, including the Ian Fleming novels, television, comics, film, games, and young adult and fan fiction (including slash fiction). The 007 saga presents an opportunity to re-examine available ways of conceiving the franchise, from transmedia storytelling to media mixing, and it emphasizes the importance of scholarly models that can account for a decentralized creative labor. Throughout the history of Bond fiction, authorized and unauthorized writers have generated what now amounts to a threaded storytelling experience with pleasures that overlap with -- but are distinct from -- those of centrally planned media phenomena, like the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Note: Admission by waitlist only. Graduate students and advanced undergraduate majors in Film and Media Studies will have priority. Required screenings.

Credit 3 units.

L53 Film 510 Graduate Practicum in Film & Media Studies

The practicum in Film & Media Studies seeks to make our graduate students more competitive in the job market. It consists of professional experience that brings to bear academic knowledge and skills associated with the graduate study of moving image media (film, television, digital). The practicum may take a number of forms, but in every case, the experience must be planned in a way that contributes to the student's professional development. It might consist of work curating films for a screening or mini-festival accompanied by screening notes or other activities that enhance the academic value of the event. The student might organize a reading group or a scholarly symposium or lecture series to further the understanding of a particular aspect of the moving image on campus. The practicum may also consist of archival, or curatorial work in forms of the moving image at an archive, museum, or other non-profit organization (such as the St. Louis International Film Festival). The student might also pursue a film/media-centered oral history project or develop a film/media-centered blog or engage in other forms of writing that have a public presence. Students may initiate other projects, but any practicum requires a faculty mentor and in circumstances in which there is a collaborating organization, a letter of endorsement of the practicum from the student's on-site supervisor. Every student presents a written proposal/plan for any practicum to the DGS and to the faculty mentor/advisor. Both faculty must give permission to the plan and determine the appropriate number of credit hours (variable 1 to 3). Students may sign up for the practicum more than once to satisfy the 3 credits required in this area for the FMS master's degree; however, only one practicum should be pursued in a given semester. If there is a site supervisor, she/he must provide a letter upon completion of the practicum detailing the student's work and its quality. The student must provide a brief narrative (2 to 5 pages) detailing how the practicum served as a learning experience. The faculty advisor will award the grade for the practicum.

Credit variable, maximum 3 units.

L53 Film 527 Seminar in the 20th Century: Queer German Cinema

Same as L21 German 527

Credit 3 units.

L53 Film 5419 Theories of Mass Media

This course explores theories of the mass media with an emphasis on television as well as its convergences with other media and computer technologies. It starts by examining theories that posit the media as instruments of societal maintenance or transformation and then examines the ways in which various theorists have refined or rejected elements of these theories in a quest for both specificity and complexity. In particular, the course examines media and cultural studies' attempts to synthesize critical paradigms ranging from political economy to semiotics to feminism. The course concludes with an examination of the challenges and opportunities posed to theorizations of the mass media by contemporary circumstances such as media conglomeration, niche marketing and micro-casting, and global flows of information, capital, and people. REQUIRED SCREENING: [day, time].
Same as L53 Film 419

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM BU: BA EN: H

L53 Film 5420 Film Theory

This course is an introduction to both classical and contemporary film theory. Beginning with the earliest attempts to treat cinema as a new and unique art form, the course will initially review the various ways in which film theory attempted to define cinema in terms of its most essential properties. The course will then examine more contemporary developments within film theory, more specifically its attempt to incorporate the insights of other critical and analytical paradigms, such as semiotics, psychoanalysis, feminism, queer theory, and postmodernism. Throughout the course, we will consider questions regarding the ontology of cinema, its relation to spectators, and the various ways in which its formal properties create meaning. Readings for the course will include the major works of Sergei Eisenstein, Andre Bazin, Christian Metz, Laura Mulvey, and Fredric Jameson. Required screenings.
Same as L53 Film 420

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, WI Arch: HUM Art: HUM EN: H

L53 Film 5421 Film Historiography

This course is a seminar on the writing of film history for advanced students. Through an engagement with the historiographical writings of scholars, such as Dominic LaCapra, Hayden White, and Michel Foucault, students will gain an understanding of various genres of film historical writing, an appreciation for the kinds of research that film historians do, and a familiarity with the ways in which film historians delimit their field of study, form research questions, and develop hypotheses. In addition to reading and classroom discussions, students will be expected to write a fairly lengthy paper (17-20 pages) that involves original historical research and the close examination of trade press, professional journals, fan magazines, and news articles. As preparatory assignments leading up to the final project, students will also prepare project descriptions, bibliographies, and outlines that will be shared and discussed in a workshop format.
Same as L53 Film 421

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: HUM EN: H

L53 Film 5422 Film Stardom, Performance, and Fan Culture

This course focuses the Hollywood star system. We will explore stars in relation to celebrity and consumerism, especially how "stardom" is created by a system that seeks to create effects in film viewers whether conceived as audiences, fans, or spectators. We will examine the performance element of stardom and its relationship to genre, style, and changing film technology. Also of concern will be how stars and the discursive construction of stardom intersect with gender representation, race, ideology, sexuality, age, disability, nationality, and other points of theoretical interest to and historical inquiry in contemporary film studies. While emphasis will be placed on mainstream commercial U.S. cinema, students are encouraged to pursue questions beyond this framework within their own research. REQUIRED SCREENING: [day, time].
Same as L53 Film 422

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: BA EN: H

L53 Film 5423 Histories of Media Convergence

Entertainment and communications forms combine and blend, and they have done so across millennia. However, the phenomenon of media convergence has taken on a special salience over the last one-and-a-half-centuries, as exemplified by the growing intermixture of film, radio, television, gaming, and the internet. In particular, critics, consumers, politicians, and producers used convergence as structuring principle in understanding, regulating, and planning for the future of media culture. This course engages with contemporary worries and enthusiasms about convergence by considering the specific conditions in which the phenomenon has been understood and practiced. Tracing a historical arc though the Twentieth Century, we will first examine convergences of radio and film, film and music publishing, television and film exhibition, and disparate corporate entities as basis for understanding more recent media combinations. Building on that foundation, the majority of the course will consist of case studies of media convergence since 1980, considering it in terms of industry, technology, regulation, and audiences. These case studies will also provide students with a survey of and inquiry into questions of historiographic theory and method. Note: This course satisfies the history & historiography requirement for the FMS Graduate Certificate. Required Screenings.
Same as L53 Film 423

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: HUM EN: H

L53 Film 5425 Seminar in Video Games: Video Games, Gender and Sexuality

This seminar considers different topics that illuminate the relationship of video games to culture. Topics vary by semester. The course may have a variety of analytical frames: gender and sexuality, interactivity and reception, narrative and aesthetic theory, industrial or technological history. Prerequisite is graduate status or completion of a 300-level FMS or WGSS course and permission of the instructor. Credit 3 units. REQUIRED LAB/SCREENING TIME weekly.
Same as L53 Film 425

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: HUM EN: H

L53 Film 5429 Mass Culture and Modern Media: Fantasylands: Cinema, Spectatorship, and the Spatial Imagination

This course provides an introduction to cultural theories that are pertinent to the study of cinema, mass culture, and modernity. Rotating topics will highlight different aspects of cinema's relationship to popular culture, urbanism, modern technology, capitalism, and mass media. Students will encounter key theorists for understanding modern life and subjectivity, such as Marx, Freud, Foucault, Benjamin, and Raymond Williams. In addition, the course introduces core readings in the history and cultural theory of early cinema, which may include work by Miriam Hansen, Anne Friedberg, Tom Gunning, Charles Musser, Giuliana Bruno, Jacqueline Stewart, and others. Topics may include cinema and modernity, cinema and mass culture, cinema and leisure, cinema and urbanism, and cinema and consumer culture.
Same as L53 Film 429

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: CPSC, HUM BU: HUM EN: H

L53 Film 5430 Topics in Chinese Media Culture: Charting Identity in the Digital Age

Topics course in Chinese media culture. Subject matter varies by semester; consult current semester listings for topic.
Same as L81 EALC 430

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: LCD BU: IS EN: H

L53 Film 5431 Renegades and Radicals: The Japanese New Wave

In 1960, the major studio Shochiku promoted a new crop of directors as the "Japanese New Wave" in response to declining theater attendance, a booming youth culture, and the international success of the French Nouvelle Vague. This course provides an introduction to those iconoclastic filmmakers, who went on to break with major studios and revolutionize oppositional filmmaking in Japan. We will analyze the challenging politics and aesthetics of these confrontational films for what they tell us about Japan's modern history and cinema. The films provoke as well as entertain, providing trenchant (sometimes absurd) commentaries on postwar Japanese society and its transformations. Themes include: the legacy of WWII and Japanese imperialism; the student movement; juvenile delinquency; sexual liberation; and Tokyo subcultures. Directors include: Oshima Nagisa, Shinoda Masahiro, Terayama Shuji, Masumura Yasuzo, Suzuki Seijun, Matsumoto Toshio, and others. No knowledge of Japanese necessary. Credit 3 units. Mandatory weekly screening:
Same as L53 Film 431

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: HUM, IS EN: H

L53 Film 5432 Global Art Cinema

How do art films tell stories? The dominant storytelling genre of the contemporary festival circuit, the art film has since World War Two combined "realist" and "modernist" impulses. Influenced by Italian neorealism, art films grant priority to characters from working class, sexual, and other exploited and imperiled minorities. Drawing on the fine arts, literature and music, art films also experiment with modernist themes and formal principles, such as subjectivity, duration, serial structure, denotative ambiguity and reflexivity. This course explores art cinema from a variety of national contexts, analyzing storytelling techniques and themes that challenge the "economical" and diverting forms associated with mainstream commercial filmmaking. Required Screenings.
Same as L53 Film 432

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: IS EN: H

L53 Film 5439 Clown Princes

"Dying is easy, comedy is hard," runs an old theatrical adage. Nevertheless, some of the most popular actors in American film have chosen the hard path by typecasting themselves in comedy, playing repeated variations on the same character. "Comedian comedy," representing films that showcase the distinctive skills of great clown-actors, is the central concern of this course. We will analyze how individual comedians rework performance traditions through the distinctive concerns of their time and culture to create idiosyncratic comic personae. We will look at films starring Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, Laurel and Hardy, the Marx Brothers, Jack Benny, Peter Sellers, Jim Carey and Eddie Murphy. Work for the course will require reading in comic theory and analytical essays. Required screenings.
Same as L53 Film 430

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: HUM EN: H

L53 Film 5443 Memory, Tears and Longing: East Asian Melodrama Film

Excessive emotion, unreasonable sacrifice, hidden truth, untimely knowledge, and forbidden desire-the power of melodrama and its moving representations have fueled the popularity of hundreds, if not thousands, of books, plays, and films. Melodrama has variously been defined as a genre, a logic, an affect, and a mode, applied to diverse media, divergent cultural traditions, and different historical contexts. The course provides a survey of East Asian melodrama films-as well as films that challenge conventional definitions of melodrama-by pairing Japanese, Korean, and Chinese-language productions with key critical texts in melodrama studies. We will see classics such as Tokyo Story, Two Stage Sisters, and The Housemaid. We will examine melodrama's complex ties to modernity, tradition, and cultural transformation in East Asia; special emphasis will be placed on representations of the family, historical change, gender, and sexuality. In addition to historical background and film studies concepts, we will also consider a range of approaches for thinking about the aesthetics and politics of emotion. No prerequisites. No prior knowledge of East Asian culture or language necessary. Mandatory weekly scheduled screening.
Same as L53 Film 443

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD EN: H

L53 Film 5445 Horror in Japanese Media

Elements of the macabre and horrific have been present in Japanese culture and media since time immemorial. The 11th-century work The Tale of Genji, for example, features an elite lady's "living ghost" killing off her main rivals for the prince's affections. Tales of ghosts, demons, and the supernatural entities known as yokai continued to appear in collections of Buddhist didactic and folktale literature of the following centuries, finding renewed popularity in the 17th-19th centuries in the form of kaidan or "strange tales" which were enjoyed as printed works, parlor games, and stage plays. Some of the very first films made at the turn of the 20th century in Japan were about the popular ghosts of yore. Building on this long legacy of fearsome creatures in popular media of times now past, this course will consider selections of Japanese horror media (film, literature, anime, manga, and video games) from the mid-20th to early 21st centuries, highlighting the intertextuality that different media within the horror genre has and how the horror genre itself even bleeds into other genres. Analyzing major figures and themes in each work, this course will explore how Japanese horror -the strange realm home to ghosts with a grudge, misunderstood monsters, and merciless murderers-can function not only as thrilling entertainment but can also reflect Japanese societal and cultural anxieties present in the real world, ranging from the problems that technology may create in a changing world to the threats posed by shifts in traditional family dynamics. Although this course will focus on horror media in the Japanese context, understanding how horror can function to highlight such anxieties will prepare students to consider the deeper possibilities of horror media in their own respective cultural contexts. All readings will be in English, and visual media will be in Japanese with English subtitles. Required Screenings
Same as L53 Film 445

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Arch: HUM Art: HUM EN: H

L53 Film 5446 The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Through Cinema

The Israeli-Palestinian "conflict" is often considered the longest-running national conflict in the world. The "dispute," which started in the early 20th century, attracts much attention more than a hundred year later, stirring intense passions and generating controversial headlines. This course explores the Israeli-Palestinian conflict though Palestinian and Israeli cinema. We examine the ways in which cinema depicts the conflict in the Middle East, starting from the British Mandate to the present day. Adopting a relational history reading, the course examines the "treatment," the influences, and the representation of major historical and political events in the region - Israeli independence/Palestinian Nakba (1948), the Six-Day War/Arab Naksa (1967), the Yum Kippur war (1973), the Lebanon War I (1982), the Palestinian uprising Intifada I (1987), the Oslo accords (1993), Intifada II (2000) - in both Israeli and Palestinian films. The course examines the social and historical processes which shape Palestinian and Israeli cinematic narratives, self-representation, the representation of the Other, the relationship to the land, diaspora, national narratives, collective memory, and trauma. This course offers a dialectical cinematic and historic journey from national films to transnational modernist and experimental films, from the collective to the individual, and from hope to despair. Required Screenings:
Same as L53 Film 446

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Arch: HUM Art: HUM EN: H

L53 Film 5450 American Film Genres

By close examination of three or four specific types of film narratives, this course will explore how genre has functioned in the Hollywood mode of production. Students will gain an understanding of genre both as a critical construct as well as a form created by practical economic concerns, a means of creating extratextual communication between film artist/producers and audience/consumers. Genres for study will be chosen from the western, the gangster film, the horror movie, the musical, screwball comedy, science fiction, the family melodrama, the woman's film, and others. In addition to film showings, there will be readings in genre theory as well as genre analyses of individual films. Required screenings
Same as L53 Film 450

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: HUM EN: H

L53 Film 5451 American Television Genres

Questions of genre are central to any exploration of television's texts, whether they are being analyzed as craft, commerce, or cultural phenomenon. Genre has been used by critics and historians to ascribe "social functions" to groups of programs and to diagnose cultural preoccupations, while genre has been used industrially to manage expectations among audiences, advertisers, programmers, producers, and creative professionals. Investigating genres ranging from the soap opera to the western, workplace situation comedies to sports, and game shows to cop shows, this course will explore the role of genre in the production, distribution, and reception of American television. Students will gain a critical understanding of genre theory and key arguments about the form and function of television texts and will develop a set of tools for analysis of televisual narrative and style, the social uses and meanings of genre, the institutional practices and presumptions of the American television industry, and the persistence of textual forms and audience formations in the face of structural changes such as deregulation, media convergence, and globalization. Required Screenings.
Same as L53 Film 451

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM BU: BA EN: H

L53 Film 5452 Advanced Screenwriting

This course is intended for students who have already taken Film Studies 352, "Introduction to Screenwriting." Building on past writing experiences, students will explore the demands of writing feature-length screenplays, adaptations, and experimental forms. Particular attention will be paid to the task of rewriting.
Same as L53 Film 452

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: HUM EN: H

L53 Film 5453 Experiential Design for Immersive Media

The term "metaverse" (originally coined by novelist Neal Stephenson) has recently come into vogue to describe a loose constellation of emerging technologies related to immersive media-particularly virtual, augmented, and mixed reality. In this course, we will explore new forms of creative practice enabled by this ecosystem. Students will analyze a variety of immersive experiences, ranging from 360 films and animations to interactive room scale experiences to multisensory installations, to understand the creative opportunities and challenges offered by these media. Students will then develop their own creative proposals and prototype an XR experience using a combination of 360 camera systems, digital production software, head-mounted displays, and physical and spatial computing elements.
Same as L53 Film 453

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: HUM, VC EN: H

L53 Film 5454 American Film Melodrama and the Gothic

American film melodrama has been considered both the genre of suffering protagonists, incredible coincidences, and weeping spectators as well as a mode of action, suspense, and in-the-nick-of-time rescues. In this course, we will examine American film melodrama as a dialectic of sentiment and sensation which draws heavily on Gothic tropes of terror, live burial, and haunted internal states. We will trace the origins of film melodrama and the cinematic Gothic to their literary antecedents, the horrors of the French Revolution, and classical and sensational stage melodramas of the nineteenth century. In addition to the 1940s Gothic woman's film cycle, we will excavate the Gothic in the maternal melodrama, the suspense thriller, film noir, domestic melodrama, the slasher film, and the supernatural horror film. Required screenings.
Same as L53 Film 454

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM EN: H

L53 Film 5457 From Vitaphone to YouTube: Popular Music and the Moving Image

This course considers American popular music as represented in audiovisual media from 1926 to the present. The relationship between the popular music industry (a commercial sphere oriented primarily towards the selling of sheet music and audio recordings) and audiovisual technologies (various screens and formats encountered in changing social and commercial contexts) will be explored along two complementary tracks: popular music performers as presented in performance-centered media and popular music as a narrative topic or resource in feature films. Three related analytical frames will shape our discussions: industrial and technological history (the material conditions for the making and distribution of popular music and moving images) the question of "liveness" in recorded audiovisual media aesthetics of various popular music styles as translated into audiovisual forms and contexts The course is in seminar format. The ability to read music is not required but students with music reading or transcription skills will be encouraged to draw upon these tools. Pre-requisites: graduate status or completion of a 300-level FMS or Music course and permission of the instructor
Same as L53 Film 457

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: HUM EN: H

L53 Film 5458 Major Film Directors

What does the film director do? In the earliest movies, film directors modeled themselves on their theatrical counterparts: they chiefly focused on how to stage an action in a confined space for a stationary camera that represented an ideal member of the audience. As the camera began to be used to direct audience attention, first through cutting, then through actual movement, the film director evolved from a stager of events to a narrator. By analyzing the work of one or more major film directors, this course will explore the art of film direction. We will learn how film directors may use the camera to narrate a scene, to provide their own distinctive view of the actions playing out on the movie screen. May be repeated for credit with permission of the instructor. REQUIRED SCREENING: [day, time].
Same as L53 Film 458

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: HUM EN: H

L53 Film 5460 Taboo: Contesting Race, Sexuality and Violence in American

Pushing the envelope or going too far? What is the boundary between films that challenge us and films that offend us? This is a course about films that crossed that boundary, most often by presenting images of race, sexuality and violence, images that could attract audiences as much as they offended moral guardians and courted legal sanctions. Because they were denied the First Amendment protection of free speech by a 1915 Supreme Court decision, movies more than any prior art form were repeatedly subject to various attempts at regulating content by government at federal, state, and even municipal levels. Trying to stave off government control, Hollywood instituted forms of self-regulation, first in a rigid regime of censorship and subsequently in the Ratings system still in use. Because taboo content often means commercial success, Hollywood could nonetheless produce films that pushed the envelope and occasionally crossed over into more transgressive territory. While control of content is a top-down attempt to impose moral norms and standards of behavior on a diverse audience, it also reflects changing standards of acceptable public discourse. That topics once barred from dramatic representation by the Production Code - miscegenation, homosexuality and "lower forms of sexuality," abortion, drug addiction - could eventually find a place in American movies speaks to changes in the culture at large. In trying to understand these cultural changes, this course will explore films that challenged taboos, defied censorship, and caused outrage, ranging from films in the early 20th Century that brought on the first attempts to control film content through to films released under the Ratings system, which has exerted subtler forms of control. REQUIRED SCREENING:
Same as L53 Film 460

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, SC, SD Art: CPSC EN: H

L53 Film 5465 Theory and Practice of Experimental Film

Filmmaker Stan Brakhage famously wrote the following: "Imagine an eye unruled by man-made laws of perspective, an eye unprejudiced by compositional logic, an eye which does not respond to the name of everything but which must know each object encountered in life through an adventure of perception." In this course, we will embark upon our own adventures of perception, examining and producing works of art that challenge our preconceptions of what cinema is or can be. From city symphonies to pop collages, portraiture to handcrafted animation, and ethnography to gender studies, we will explore the multifaceted and transformative avant-garde cinema through the work of its greatest practitioners, contextualize films in relation to aesthetic aspirations (e.g., formalism, opposition, reflexivity, transcendence) and movements in art and cultural theory (e.g., Dadaism, Abstract Expressionism, Pop, Performance Art, Minimalism), and acquire the digital production skills needed to make our own experimental videos. Each week, we will mix the classic with the contemporary to demonstrate the ongoing vitality of -- and make our own contributions to -- this often misunderstood cinematic tradition. Required screenings.
Same as L53 Film 465

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: HUM EN: H

L53 Film 5475 Screening the Holocaust

This course surveys the history of Holocaust representation on film, examining a wide range of documentary and fictional works from 1945 to the present day. Discussions will consider a number of key questions, including: What challenges does the Holocaust pose to cinematic representation, and how have filmmakers grappled with them? How have directors worked within and against notions of the Holocaust as unrepresentable, and how have they confronted the challenge of its association with a limited set of highly iconic images? What are the more general ethical and political dimensions of representing the Holocaust onscreen -- its victims as well as its perpetrators, the systematic genocidal violence that characterized it, and the sheer absence of so many dead? We will also probe the changing significance of cinematic representation of the Holocaust, exploring the medium's increasingly memorial function for audiences ever further removed from the historical moment of its occurrence. Screenings may include The Last Stage; Distant Journey; Night and Fog; Judgment at Nuremberg; Shoah; Europa, Europa; Schindler's List; Train of Life; The Specialist; Photographer; A Film Unfinished. Critical readings by figures such as Giorgio Agamben, Jean Amery, Shoshana Felman, Geoffrey Hartman, Marianne Hirsch, Sidra Israhi, Dominick LaCapra, Alison Landsberg, Berel Lang, Michael Rothberg, and James Young. Required screenings
Same as L53 Film 475

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD EN: H

L53 Film 5478 Topics in Transmedia Franchises

This variable topics course for advanced undergraduate and graduate students is an interdisciplinary seminar on transmedia franchises. In particular, it is recommended for those seeking to understand transmedia storytelling as an artistic, industrial, and cultural practice. As such, this course will bring into conversation various methodologies and perspectives, including film and media scholarship as well as other fields of study in the humanities and social sciences. The goal of this interdisciplinary approach is to illuminate how transmedia franchises have developed since the early 20th century to become the dominant product of the American -- and, increasingly, global -- cultural industries. Foci of this course may include such topics as individual franchises; global transmedia history; the franchise strategies of individual cultural industries (e.g., the Japanese media mix); or representation within franchise texts, production cultures, and fan communities. This course serves as a capstone for Film & Media Studies majors. Weekly or bi-weekly screenings or hands-on media labs are required.
Same as L53 Film 478

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: HUM EN: H

L53 Film 5479 Seminar in Interdisciplinary Approaches

This variable topics course is an interdisciplinary seminar on film/media designed for advanced undergraduate and graduate students. In particular, it is recommended for those seeking to understand film/media as a lived experience that takes place within cultural frameworks. As such, this course will bring into conversation various methodologies and perspectives, including film/media scholarship, as well as ones drawn from other fields of study in the humanities, sciences, or social sciences. The goal of this interdisciplinary approach is to illuminate how film/media both elicits and represents human response. The foci of this course may include such topics as violence and film/media, the body and film/media, the cognitive impact of film/media viewing, the relationship of environment to experiencing film/media, or the relationship of culturally specific events or trends to film/media production and reception. This course serves as a capstone for Film & Media Studies majors. Weekly or biweekly screenings or hands-on media labs required.
Same as L53 Film 479

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: HUM EN: H

L53 Film 5485 Visualizing Orientalism: Art, Cinema and the Imaginary East 1850-2000

This seminar examines film and modern art within the framework of "Orientalism" Reading foundational texts by Said, and incorporating theory and historical discourse concerned with race, nationalism, and colonialism, we explore artistic practice in European photography, painting, and decorative arts from 1850 to recent times and European and Hollywood Film. We study how power and desire have been inscribed in western visual culture across the bodies of nations and peoples through conventions such as the harem, the odalisque, the desert, and the mysteries of ancient Egypt. To that end, we will look at artists such as Delacroix, Ingres, Gérôme, Beardsley, and Matisse and will screen films such as _The Sheik_, _The Mummy_, _Salome_, _Cleopatra_, _Pepe le Moko_, _Naked Lunch_, _Shanghai Gesture, Thief of Bagdad, Princess Tam Tam_ and _The Sheltering Sky_. Subjects include the representaion of gender, sexuality, desire, race, and identity as well as the cultural impact of stereotype and "exotic" spectacle. Students will study methods of visual analysis in film studies and art history. All students must attend film screenings. 3 credits
Same as L53 Film 485

Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD, SD EN: H

L53 Film 5501 Advanced Moving Image Analysis and Criticism

This course will explore the analytical tools that have served as the foundation for cinematic and televisual academic criticism. The variety of texts, visual and aural, that comprise moving image production will be considered with the aim of determining how textual strategies structure perception. The aim of the course is two-fold: to have students develop analytical skills for dealing with film and video texts, but also to see how these have been deployed in a multiplicity of approaches/applications offered by academic film criticism. There will be regular screenings to provide the material for analysis, as well as readings to offer a variety of critical models. REQUIRED SCREENINGS:
Same as L53 Film 501

Credit 3 units.

L53 Film 5505 Travel in Space: Contemporary Cinemas of Taiwan, Hong Kong and China

The recent phase of intensive urbanization, industrialization, and globalization in Chinese regions has also mobilized multi-directional flows of migrants, tourists, workers and entrepreneurs across geographical boundaries. Moving through space, the voyagers offer changing perspectives to the cinematic mapping of socio-political relationships, histories, and cultures that constitute the identities of places. This course explores contemporary Chinese-language films that imagine trajectories between distant spaces as well as the experiences of "new comers" in "foreign" places. We will examine the current wave of travel films in Taiwan, the representation of drifters in Chinese urban films, as well as the imagination of migration in Hong Kong cinema. We will also explore theories that draw connections between movement, space, and cinema. REQUIRED SCREENINGS: TBA
Same as L53 Film 505

Credit 3 units.

L53 Film 5507 The 007 Saga: James Bond and the Modern Media Franchise

What is a franchise, and what approaches have scholars used to study the franchise as a modern cultural and commercial form? This course explores the phenomenon of the modern media franchise in light of the "007 saga": the stories of James Bond as they have proliferated in various media since the 1950s, including the Ian Fleming novels, television, comics, film, games, and young adult and fan fiction (including slash fiction). The 007 saga presents an opportunity to re-examine available ways of conceiving the franchise, from transmedia storytelling to media mixing, and it emphasizes the importance of scholarly models that can account for a decentralized creative labor. Throughout the history of Bond fiction, authorized and unauthorized writers have generated what now amounts to a threaded storytelling experience with pleasures that overlap with -- but are distinct from -- those of centrally planned media phenomena, like the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Note: Admission by waitlist only. Graduate students and advanced undergraduate majors in Film and Media Studies will have priority. Required screenings.
Same as L53 Film 507

Credit 3 units.

L53 Film 5510 Graduate Practicum in Film & Media Studies

The practicum in Film & Media Studies seeks to make our graduate students more competitive in the job market. It consists of professional experience that brings to bear academic knowledge and skills associated with the graduate study of moving image media (film, television, digital). The practicum may take a number of forms, but in every case, the experience must be planned in a way that contributes to the student's professional development. It might consist of work curating films for a screening or mini-festival accompanied by screening notes or other activities that enhance the academic value of the event. The student might organize a reading group or a scholarly symposium or lecture series to further the understanding of a particular aspect of the moving image on campus. The practicum may also consist of archival, or curatorial work in forms of the moving image at an archive, museum, or other non-profit organization (such as the St. Louis International Film Festival). The student might also pursue a film/media-centered oral history project or develop a film/media-centered blog or engage in other forms of writing that have a public presence. Students may initiate other projects, but any practicum requires a faculty mentor and in circumstances in which there is a collaborating organization, a letter of endorsement of the practicum from the student's on-site supervisor. Every student presents a written proposal/plan for any practicum to the DGS and to the faculty mentor/advisor. Both faculty must give permission to the plan and determine the appropriate number of credit hours (variable 1 to 3). Students may sign up for the practicum more than once to satisfy the 3 credits required in this area for the FMS master's degree; however, only one practicum should be pursued in a given semester. If there is a site supervisor, she/he must provide a letter upon completion of the practicum detailing the student's work and its quality. The student must provide a brief narrative (2 to 5 pages) detailing how the practicum served as a learning experience. The faculty advisor will award the grade for the practicum.
Same as L53 Film 510

Credit variable, maximum 3 units.