Course Timeline >> Fall

Fall

Part I:  Culture and Ideology in Film

Week 1 (Aug. 27-31):  Introduction
Reader (see required text on syllabus)
1.  Simmons, “Ideology and Multicultural Film”
2.  Lippman, “Stereotypes,” “Codes & their Enemies”

Lecture  (note: all lectures will open in a separate browser window)
Hi bandwidth (56K or higher); Lo bandwidth (28.8K or lower)

In Class  Possible selections from The Great Primitives and Battle at Elderbush Gulch.

Edison Kinetoscope Films: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/edhtml/edmvchrn.html

Battle at Elderbush Gulch: http://video1.xoom.com/ramgen/BattleatElderbrush.rm 

Excerpts of D.W. Griffith Films: http://www.uno.edu/~drcom/Griffith/home.html

 
Week 2 (Sept. 4-7):  Film Language/Technique
Reader
Sept. 3, 2001 Labor Day – No Classes
1. Belton, “Classical Hollywood Style”
2. Bordwell, Thompson, “Style in CITIZEN KANE”

Lecture
Hi band; Lo band

Assigned Film
Citizen Kane

 
Week 3 (Sept. 10-14):  Ideology
Reader
1. Austin, “Marxist Criticism”
2. Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses”
3. Kavanaugh (optional)

Lecture
Hi band; Lo band

Assigned  Film
The Truman Show

Part II.  Intersectionalities and Various Approaches to Film Criticism

Week 4 (Sept. 17-21):  Ideology and Race
Reader
1. Omi and Winant, “Racial Formation”
2. McIntosh, Peggy. “White Privilege”
3. Dyer, White, Chapters VI (optional)
4. Snead, “Spectatorship . . . “ (optional)
5. Hooks, “Oppositional Gaze” (optional)

Lecture
Hi band; Lo band

Assigned Film
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner
 

Week 5 (Sept. 24-28):  Psychoanalysis and Gender
Reader
1. Gail Houston, “Psychoanalytic Criticism”
2. Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”
3. Freud, “On Fetishism” (optional)
4. Merck “Psychoanalysis and Subjectivity” (optional)
5. McKahan, Rethinking the Gaze (optional)

Lecture
Hi band; Lo band

Assigned Film
Marnie

Week 6 (Oct. 1-5):  Sexuality, Gender, Ideology

Oct. 3-4: Fall Break, no classes

Reader
1. Rubin, “Thinking Sex”
2. Weber, “A Conceptual Framework for Understanding Race, Class, Gender & Sexuality”
3. Rubin, “Trafficking in Women” (optional)
4. Benshoff, Chapter I (optional)

Lecture
6A: Hi band; Lo band
6B: Hi band; Lo band

In Class  Selections from Celluloid Closet.

Assigned Film
Cabaret

DRAFT DUE
 

Week 7 (Oct. 8-12):  Love and Ideology
Reader
1. Belton, “Genre and the Genre System”
2. Wright, “Genre Films and the Status Quo”
3. Cooper, “Love, Danger and the Professional Ideology of Hollywood Cinema”
4. Wood, "Ideology, Genre, Auteur (1976)" Note: Because this article in the reader has errors, free copies will be provided in class, or will be scanned for access online. Refer to the Blackboard shell.

Lecture
Hi band; Lo band

Assigned Film
Titanic
 

Week 8 (Oct. 15-19):  Film Noir, Action/Adventure Films, Masculinity and Femininity
Reader
1. Belton, “Film Noir:  Somewhere in the Night”
2. Thompson, “We Should Reject Traditional Masculinity”
3. Place, “Women in the Film Noir” (optional)

Lecture
Hi band; Lo band

Assigned Film
Double Indemnity
 

Week 9 (Oct. 22-26):  Independent Films
Reader
1. Simmons
2. Belton, “Counterculture Strikes Back”

Lecture
Hi band; Lo band

Assigned Film
Being John Malkovich
 

Week 10 (Oct. 29- Nov. 2):  MIDTERMS

Nov. 9: Homecoming - No classes after 1:10 p.m

Part III.  Case Study:  The Evolution of Frankenstein Films

Week 11 (Nov. 5-9):  The Politics of the Gaze: Anxieties of Gender & Technology in Frankenstein Films
Reader
1. Picart, Chapter I, The Cinematic Rebirths of Frankenstein
2. Picart, Chapter II, Section II, on Whale’s Frankenstein, and Section IV, on Son of Frankenstein

Lecture
11A:  Hi band; Lo band
11B:  Hi band; Lo band

Assigned Film
Frankenstein (1931)

Nov. 12: Veteran’s Day – No Classes
 

Week 12 (Nov. 13-16):  Monstrosity, Sex and Gender
Reader
1. Picart, The Cinematic Rebirths of Frankenstein, Chapter II, Section III, on “Bride of Frankenstein”
2. Picart, The Cinematic Rebirths of Frankenstein, Chapter III, Section IV, on “Frankenstein Created Woman”

Lecture
Hi band; Lo band

Assigned Film
Bride of Frankenstein

Nov. 22-23: Thanksgiving – No Classes
 

Week 13 (Nov. 19-21):  Class, Race and the Horror Film
Reader
1. Bordwell/Thompson, “The Horror Film”
2. Picart, The Cinematic Rebirths of Frankenstein, Chapter III, Section IV, on “Evil of Frankenstein”
3. Picart, The Cinematic Rebirths of Frankenstein, Chapter III, Section VII, on “Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell”

Lecture
Hi band; Lo band

Assigned Film
Evil of Frankenstein
 

Week 14 (Nov. 26-30):  Masculinities and Femininities in Frankenstein Films
Reader
1. Picart, The Cinematic Rebirths of Frankenstein, Chapter III, Section VI, on “Frankenstein Must be Destroyed”
2. Picart, The Cinematic Rebirths of Frankenstein, Chapter II, Section VII, on “House of Frankenstein”

Lecture
Hi band; Lo band

Assigned Film
Frankenstein Must be Destroyed OR House of Frankenstein
 

Week 15 (Dec. 3-7):  Contemporary Renditions of the Frankenstein Myth
Reader
1. Picart, The Cinematic Rebirths of Frankenstein, Chapter IV, Section II, on “Frankenstein 1970”
2. Picart, The Cinematic Rebirths of Frankenstein, Chapter IV, Section III, on “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein”

Lecture
Hi band; Lo band

Assigned Film
Frankenstein 1970
 

Week 16 (Dec. 10-14):  Final Exam Week

FINAL PAPERS ARE REQUIRED