Spring 2010 Courses

CIS 224, Engendering Chinese Cinema
Reg for CHI 207
TR, 1:00-2:15 pm
Vivian Shen
Room TBD

CIS 322, Memory & Film
Reg for GER 336
TR 11:30-12:45 pm
Maggie McCarthy
Chambers 3198 - Tentative
U, 7:30-10:00 pm
Hance Auditorium

This course will examine memory as a frequent theme in film, film as a form of memory, how filmic structures represent memory, and the extent to which memory counters the official stories of history and nation. Besides attending weekly film screenings, students will write short essays and create a larger memory project which can take written or filmic form. Films include Memento, Blade Runner, Pulp Fiction, Paris, Texas, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Winter Sleepers, The Sweet Hereafter, All About My Mother, Gods and Monsters, Mein Krieg, Good Bye, Lenin, The Edge of Heaven, La Jetee and Twelve Monkies.

MUS 228, Film Music
TR 1:00, Sloan B011
Weekly screenings on Wednesday evenings

Music mediates and manipulates our perceptions of the visual. This course will develop both the eye and ear, using a number of (mostly) Hollywood films as our principle texts as we carefully consider the role music plays in cinematic narratives. The first part of the term will be spent learning a critical vocabulary for both music and cinema. We will then give careful scrutiny to a number of complex films and film scores that span the history of sound film and that cover a number of different twentieth-century musical styles, all in the service of tracing the numerous musical codes found in Hollywood film.

Fall 2009 Courses

CIS 220, Introduction to Film and Media Studies
David Pettersen          

An introduction to film history and analysis, with an equal emphasis on film language (cinematic means of expression) and thematics. Viewing and discussion of films from a wide variety of national traditions and genres, supplemented by discussion of analytical and theoretical texts. Required course for fulfilling the Film and Media Studies concentration.

Eng 293, Film as Narrative Art
TR , 2:30-3:45 pm, Chambers 2164.  Screening  T   7:00 – 9:00 pm, Hance
Paul Miller

This course explores the relationship between film and other narrative media, with emphasis on authorship, genre, and the relationship of verbal and visual languages.

CIS 321, Interactive Digital Narratives       
TR 1pm, Sloan B011
Neil Lerner

A close study of selected video games using an interdisciplinary blend of methodologies culled from cultural studies, film and media studies theory, literary criticism, and history. 

Prerequisites: CIS 220 or Eng 293.

Eng 493, Film Art:  A Seminar in Filmmaking
R, 1-3:45, Screening W 7-9:30 pm
Zoran Kuzmanovich

Advanced topics in visual storytelling, film aesthetics, and production.  This course will serve as the capstone course for Film Studies concentrators who need a 400-level seminar.  12 slots are available.

Prerequisites:  CIS 220 or English 293 or English 393
Permission:  Required

Ger 440/CIS 421, Berlin Films (in translation)
M, 1:30-4:20 pm, Chambers 3209
Maggie McCarthy

This course examines both imaginary and historical images of Berlin in films dating from the Weimar Republic to the present.  Via documentaries, canonical, art house and feature films, we will gain a sense of Berlin in its various 20th century guises.  Special attention will be paid to the new phenomenon of the “Berlin School” of filmmaking, which has drawn attention in recent years from critics and academics.

This course does not count as the 400-level capstone course for Film and Media Studies concentrators.

Purposes of course:  to develop critical knowledge of a substantial body of Spanish film from the Fifties into the new century:  artistic directions, currents, innovations, risks and discrepancies. directorial trajectories; to develop an understanding of film as a unique art and medium; to develop and increasingly employ a knowledge of film theory and the terminology of film analysis; to enhance knowledge and understanding of the complex matrix that is twentieth-century and turn-of-the-century Spain through the study of its cinematic production, and the role of serious Spanish film in the (re)construction of national and multi-national Spanish identity: the inscription and reinscription of war; exile, cultural memory; gender and the patriarchy; sexuality; internationalization; the encounter with collective guilt, childhood, trauma, and dictatorship.  A textbook of film theory, terminology, and Spanish film history is employed along with the study of the primary texts, 14 films.