Spring 2017 Courses
AMST 371. LGBTQ Fiction and Film, from 1950 to the present
Michelle Robinson
TR 3:30-4:45
PH 212
This course will explore representations of gay, lesbian, transgender, bisexual and gender-queer identities in American literature and film from 1950 to the present, with a focus on close readings of literary and film texts to gain insight into stylistic choices and representational modes available to lgbtq artists. We will examine how theories about gender and sexual identity have shifted in the last half-century, and consider topics such as sexuality, desire, activism and family. We will also study the impact of specific historical developments on the emergence of a lgtbq literary tradition in the United States. In past semesters, novels have included Trace Elements of Random Tea Parties (2004) by Felicia Lunas Lemus and City of Night (1963) by John Rechy. Additionally, we have read poems, short stories, essays, and excerpts from works by James Baldwin, Sarah Schulman, David Wojnarowicz, Gloria Anzaldúa, Chrystos, Cathy Cohen, Adam Haslett, and others. Films may include The Children’s Hour (dir. William Wyler, 1961); Female Trouble (dir. John Waters, 1974); Mala Noche (dir. Gus Van Sant, 1986); The Watermelon Woman (dir. Cheryl Dunye, 1996); Southern Comfort (dir. Kate Davis, 2001); Pariah (dir. Dee Rees, 2011); and Tangerine (dir. Sean S. Baker, 2015).
ARTH 106. Introduction to Video Production
Sabine Gruffat
M/W 2:30-5:15
AR0012
ARTH 159. The Film Experience: Introduction to the Visual Study of Film. (10880)
Rachel Ozerkevich
T/Th 6:00-7:15
Hanes Art Center 117
A critical and historical introduction to film from a visual arts perspective. The course surveys the history of film from its inception to the present, drawing upon both foreign and American traditions.
ASIA 425/JWST425/PWAD425. Beyond Hostilities: Israeli-Palestinian Exchanges and Collaborations in Cinema, Literature, and Music
Yaron Shemer
T/Th 11:00-12:15
It should come as no surprise that, for most, the mention of Israel and Palestine conjointly conjures up conflict, wars, and hostility. Yet, this course focuses on various collaborations and exchanges between Israelis and Palestinians in the realm of culture. These connections involve literature and language (Israeli-Jewish authors writing in Arabic and Palestinians writers who choose Hebrew as their language of expression), music, filmmaking, and joint educational initiatives. Numerous films and novels feature Palestinian-Israeli love stories. The dilemma “can love win?” in the face of this intractable conflict will reveal not only the patent interference of the public (i.e., politics) with the private sphere of love, but also how desire for the other is aroused by the politics of separation.No knowledge of Hebrew or Arabic is required.
COMM 330. Introduction to Writing for Film and Television
Stephen Neigher
T/Th 11:00-12:15 New East 305 (2870)
T/Th 2-3:15 Murphey 221 (4295)
An introduction to screenwriting for film and television. Enrollment restricted to first year and sophomore students only.
COMM 331 Writing the Short Film (7255).
Richard Coen
MW 11:15-12:30
Murphey 222
Students practice and learn the craft of narrative, short film writing by conceptualizing, outlining, writing, and rewriting three short film scripts. They include one three-minute silent, one five-minute script with dialogue, and one 15-minute script with dialogue. Instructor permission required for non COMM-majors.
COMM 430. History of American Screenwriting (4522).
Michael Acosta
T/Th 5-6:15 Peabody 217
T 7:00-9:00 Swain 001A
This viewing and research-intensive course examines the history of American narrative film through the screenwriter’s experience, using a decade-by-decade approach to examine the political, social, global, psychological, religious, and cultural influences on the art, process, and careers of screenwriters. Non-majors can enroll after November 15th. This course has prerequisite requirements. Permission of the instructor for students lacking the prerequisites.
COMM 547. History of Film II, Transnational Cinema
Richard Cante
T/Th 12:30-1:45
Topic: Transnational art cinema from the late 1960s to the present. Focus on the various modes of globalism that have been involved since then, and on the special importance of “transgressive” filmmakers and works in those terms (roughly from Bertolucci to Lars Von Trier). Required Materials: primarily screenings, 4 feature films per week via the web
Prerequisite: either Art 159, Comm 140, or Engl 142–Juniors and Seniors only
COMM 635. Documentary Production (4299).
Julia Haslett
T/Th 9:30-10:45
Swain 106A
Documentary filmmaking’s currency is real life and its current popularity is in no small part a reflection of our desire to see that life represented accurately and honestly. In a frenetic media-saturated culture, to pay sustained attention to a person, a community, or a social phenomenon can feel like a radical act– an act fueled by moral indignation, by a commitment to expose injustice or simply by a need to understand another human being’s experience. That is what documentary filmmakers do and it’s what you’ll learn to do in this course. Situated somewhere between art and journalism, documentary films reflect a range of approaches from the strictly observational to the reflexive ethnography, from interview-driven expositions to more poetic treatments. In response to readings, screenings, and class discussions, students will make their own short documentaries that reflect some of these approaches. You will learn how to research with an eye to visual storytelling, write treatments, plan shoots, conduct interviews, and shoot and edit documentary material. Other topics will include earning the trust of your subjects, ethical challenges, and how to reach your audience. A significant portion of class time will be devoted to workshopping student films. This course is reserved for COMM majors for the first two weeks of registration. Non-majors can enroll after November 15th. This course has prerequisite requirements. Prerequisites, COMM 130 (grade of C or better) and
Comm 647. Advanced Projects (4300)
Julia Haslett
T/TH 11a–12:15p
Comm 647 provides a structured environment, instructor and peer feedback, and production & postproduction resources with which to complete an advanced media project in narrative, documentary, experimental, or audio-only with a maximum 20-mins run time. The course requires that students have already taken a significant number of media production classes in the department. Interested students must apply with a project to be considered for enrollment. Open only to Seniors. Write the instructor Julia Haslett (jhaslett@unc.edu) for instructions.
Comm 650. Histories and Theories of the Moving-Image: Pasts, Presents, Futures
Richard Cante
T/Th 3:30-4:45
Course Topic: Theories of moving images, and imaging technologies, from the primitive to the not-yet-existing. Concentration on electronic, post-electronic, and intermedia moving-image work in the U.S. since the early 1970s, especially the influence of New York schools (the Kitchen, the Whitney museum affiliates, the East Village, etc.) and California styles (including certain types of full-blown postmodernism) into the era of the Internet. Focus on the issues that these works pose for how to think about what “media” and “images” are and have been, how they work today, and how they might develop in the near and more distant future. Required Materials: outside screenings via the web plus a collection of 20th century critical writings, mostly writings (including the more “para-academic” writings) connected with the above and other avant-garde traditions, such as: Jon Tagg’s work on the advent of photography; Susan Sontag and her legacy in the United States; Bersani and Dutoit’s book Forms of Being: Cinema, Aesthetics, Subjectivity; dialogues between various writers about Warhol’s films; Jean-Philippe Toussaint’s Television: A Novel; and Jacques Derrida’s filmed discussions with Bernard Stiegler around electronic and digital media.
Open to Grads and Undergrads (Juniors and Seniors Only). Prerequisites: Art 159, Comm 140, Engl 142, or Permission of Instructor for Undergraduate Students
COMM 690. Advanced Topics in Communication Studies: Sound for Film and Video (003 5485)
William Brown
M/W 9:05-10:20
Swain 106A
Think about your favorite movie. Now think about that movie with the sound turned off. Would you still want to watch it? This is a class about movie soundtracks. Over the semester, we will explore the aesthetics of sound design. We will watch movies, but more important, we will listen to movies. Through a careful reading of Michel Chion’s classic text, Audio-Vision, as well as a series of weekly production projects, we will consider the elements that constitute a soundtrack. We will focus especially on the relationship between sound and image, and the ways sound finds a home on the screen. Class will meet in Swain 106A.
CMPL 142 Visual Culture II (Renaissance to the Present)
Gregory Flaxman
T/TH 2:30-1:45
Greenlaw 302
This course surveys the history of the visual arts from roughly the Renaissance to the present. In particular, we’ll reckon with how the history of painting and photography anticipate the cinema, no less how the cinema recapitulates older media. Finally, the class will evaluate the digital turn in contemporary culture in order to consider “the future of the image.” Authors will include Alberti, Svetlana Alpers, Hans Belting, Walter Benjamin, Susan Sontag, Erwin Panofsky, Clement Greenberg, Michael Fried, John Szarkoski, Alois Riegl, Joel Snyder, Jacques Rancierre, Vilém Flusser, James Elkins, Francois Laruelle. Painters and photographers of interest will include Leonardo da Vinci, Piero della Francesca, Sofonisba Anguissola, Caravaggio, Vermeer, Vivian Maier, Dorothea Lange, Jeff Wall, among others. Films will include: La Belle Noiseuse (Rivette), Mirror (Tarkovsky), Fitzcarraldo (Herzog), La Jetée (Marker), Rain (Ivens), The Mystery of Picasso (Clouzot).
CMPL 143. History of Global Cinema
Inga Pollmann
T/Thu 12:30-1:45
Howell 115
This course will take you on a journey through the history of global cinema from its origins to the present. We will closely examine several of the most groundbreaking and influential movements in film history, including: German expressionism; Soviet montage; film noir in classical Hollywood; Italian neorealism; “new waves” in post-World War II Europe and beyond; politically militant cinema of Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa; popular and art-house Indian cinema; transnational blockbusters; East Asian martial arts genres; emergent Middle Eastern cinemas; and more. We will undertake a comparative study of these cinematic traditions and contexts, with an eye to exploring their aesthetic, cultural, and political interrelations. *This course meets both the Visual and Performing Arts (VP) and the Global Issues (GL) general education requirements. Students enrolling in CMPL 143 must also enroll in one recitation section numbered CMPL 143-601 through 143-604.
CMPL 280. Film Genres: The Paranoid American Cinema (7487)
Gregory Flaxman
T/Th 12:30-1:45
Greenlaw 304
This course revolves around the emergence and development of conspiracy as staple of Hollywood cinema. We will begin by considering the legacy of detective fiction and film noir before turning in the 50s, 60s, and 70s to the more political and global strains of paranoia. Finally, we’ll shift focus to the more recent strange of conspiracy that responds to the American “security state.” Films will likely include: The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, Kiss Me Deadly, Mickey One, Three Days of the Condor, Night Moves, Klute, The Parallax View, The Matrix, The Outsider, Marathon Man, The Net, Mr. Robot, and The Bourne Identity.
CMPL 379. H Section 001 (12839)
Cowboys, Samurai, Rebels (Crosslisted ASIA 379-001)
Inger Brodey
TR 11:00-12:15
This course deals with cross-cultural definitions of heroism, authority, individualism, and rebellion as portrayed in film, particularly with an eye to how stories have been translated across cultures. The primary “texts” will be a selection of films, many of which were directed by John Ford or Akira Kurosawa. Readings will include political and historical works on individualism, authority, and heroism, as well as short works of fiction from the United States, Japan, and France.
ENG 143. Section 001 Film and Culture (2231)
MWF 11:15-12:05
David Ross
Greenlaw 319
We will view twenty-eight films by some of the world’s most renowned filmmakers (Bergman, Dreyer, Fellini, Kubrick, Tarkovsky, to name only a few). Amid free-flowing classroom discussion, we will attempt to answer the most basic questions: What is film? How does it differ from other arts? What questions does it ask about U. S. culture? What questions does it ask about world culture? What answers does it provide? What futures does it envision? In the attempt to grapple with film at its most ambitious, we will hone the skills of visual and philosophical analysis and deepen our sense of film’s evolution, variety, and sophistication.
ENG 143 (Section 002 5961) Film and Culture
MW 5-6:15
Jordan Schroeder
Greenlaw 302
How does the present consume the past? How does film reshape our past, print-based culture for subsequent audiences? These related questions inform our inquiry into the culture of the British Romantic Period (1780-1840) and its cinematic representations. We will study two historical topics, the British navy and the campaign to abolish slavery, as well as signature authors Lord Byron, Jane Austen, Percy and Mary Shelley, and John Keats. Films include the multiple retellings of Frankenstein, Pride and Prejudice, and the mutiny on the H. M. S. Bounty. Assignments: Daily quizzes; two research projects, presented orally (15 minutes) and in writing (five pages); comprehensive final exam. Print Texts: The Norton Anthology of English Literature, volume D, “The Romantic Period.” Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, ed. Johnson. Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, ed. Macdonald and Scherf.
ENG 143 (Section 003 6958). Film and Culture
T/Th 8:00-9:15
Jennifer Larson
Greenlaw 222
“Film and Culture” examines the ways in which culture and history shape and are shaped by motion pictures. In this course, we will focus specifically on films that highlight race and racial issues. The course emphasizes discussion and a broad range of screenings, as opposed to canonical film studies topics and movies, and uses comparative methods that group related films as well as films and texts. The purpose of this strategy is for students to broaden their perspectives on film by appreciating connections between the past and the present, between established ideas and reinterpretations of those ideas, between texts and their screen adaptations, and between films and filmmakers–all the while interrogating the role that race plays in American film’s history, as well as in related global cinema. By playing the familiar against the unfamiliar, this course encourages students to reexamine what is “familiar” and “normal,” as well to question how the movie screen both influences and reflects audiences’ views about race.
ENGL 150. Introductory Seminar in Literary Studies (001 2239)
Daniel Anderson
MWF 11:15-12:05
Seminar in literary studies considering literature in relation to film and film’s visual and aural (sight and sound) components. Mexicans and Mexican Americans have figured prominently as types of criminality, victim victimizer, and evil in Anglo-American film noir culture even though some of those films complicate and question this characterization of Mexicans and Mexican Americans. One need only think of films such as Edwin L. Marin’s Nocturne (1946), Fritz Lang’s The Secret Beyond the Door (1948), John Farrow’s Where Danger Lives (1950), Phil Karlson’s Kansas City Confidential (1952), Orson Welles’s A Touch of Evil (1958), Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958), or neo-noirs such as Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982), Curtis Hanson’s L.A. Confidential (1997) based on a James Ellroy novel, and David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive (2001). This course examines the way in which Chicana/o literature intervenes in and against U.S. film noir classic stereotypes of Mexican Americans and repurposes the conventions of U.S. film noir to its own ends. Required reading: María DeGuzmán’s Buenas Noches, American Culture: Latina/o Aesthetics of Night, Américo Paredes’s The Shadow (1950s/1998), Oscar “Zeta” Acosta’s Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo (1972), Margarita Cota-Cárdenas’s Puppet (1985, 2000), Cecile Pineda’s Face (1985, republished in 2003), Lucha Corpi’s Eulogy for a Brown Angel (1992), Michael Nava’s The Burning Plain (2000), Carla Trujillo’s What Night Brings (2003), and Manuel Muñoz’s What You See in the Dark
ENGL 381. Literature and Cinema (11882)
Rick Warner
11:15am-12:05pm
MWF Greenlaw 302
Throughout its history, cinema has borrowed extensively from literature for its source material. In this course, we will examine this relationship through a number of different interpretive lenses and with regard to a wide range of genres. We will start by exploring theories of media specificity and the limits they place on understandings of intermedial relations. From there, we will gradually work our way towards a more nuanced view of the cinematic and the literary. We will consider a variety of literary adaptations, but will also take up other kinds of crossings between literary and cinematic expression. Some of the concerns that will guide our discussions are: intertextuality, appropriation versus faithfulness to a source text, literary cinema and cinematic literature, character interiority, documentary vs. fiction, narrative vs. poetry, theatrical performance, the role of the voice and voiceover narration, matters of authorship, and cross-cultural adaptations. We will discuss melodrama, the female Gothic, horror, biography and the biopic, the war film, the samurai film, song lyrics (by Bob Dylan, specifically his album Blood on the Tracks), hardboiled detective fiction, and film noir. Writers we will read include: James Joyce, E. E. Cummings, Charlotte Brontë, Vladimir Nabokov, William Shakespeare, Malcolm X, Daphne du Maurier, Elmore Leonard, Raymond Chandler, Joseph Conrad, and Thomas Pynchon. Films we are likely to watch: Hannah and Her Sisters (Woody Allen, 1986), The Birds (Alfred Hitchcock, 1963), Adaptation (Spike Jonze, 2002), The Dead (John Huston, 1987), Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979), Jane Eyre (Cary Fukunaga, 2011), Lolita (Stanley Kubrick, 1962), Throne of Blood (Akira Kurosawa, 1957), I’m Not There (Todd Haynes, 2007), Malcolm X (Spike Lee, 1992), Jackie Brown (Quentin Tarantino, 1997), Midsummer Night’s Dream (Julie Taymor, 2014), The Long Goodbye (Robert Altman, 1973), The Big Lebowski (the Coen bros., 1998), Inherent Vice (P.T. Anderson, 2014)
ENGL 680. Film Theory (11882) Rick Warner
2:30-3:20pm
MWF Greenlaw 302
This course provides an introduction to critical developments in film theory from the time of the medium’s beginnings in the late nineteenth century to the present day. What is the material of cinema? What makes it a unique form of expression? What is the nature of the film image and what relationship does it bear to the physical world? How do the sounds, images, bodies, and narratives onscreen impact us – politically, emotionally, physically, mentally? How does the film medium compare and contrast with the other, older arts such as literature, music, painting, or architecture, and how does it fit within the current media landscape? Do technological factors, like the advent of sound or the shift from photochemical to digital “film” call for a fundamentally different theory of the medium and its expressive possibilities? Are the classical film theories of André Bazin, Sergei Eisenstein, Sigfried Kracauer, Jean Epstein and others still sufficient with regard to contemporary cinema? Can a film itself put forward a theory of cinema? Can a film be philosophical, not merely in its content but through its form and the kind of thinking it enacts? These are just a few of the main questions we will explore over the course of the semester. We will read a variety of film-theoretical approaches, including but not limited to phenomenology, feminism, psychoanalysis, affect theory, and critical race theory. We will consider matters of authorship, genre, national/transnational cinema, the difference between fiction and documentary, the aesthetics of mood, and 3D cinema. Films we are likely to watch: City Lights (Charles Chaplin, 1931), Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941), Notorious (Alfred Hitchcock, 1946), Bigger than Life (Nicholas Ray, 1956), Pickpocket (Robert Bresson, 1959), La Jetée (Chris Marker, 1962), 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968), Raiders of the Lost Ark (Steven Spielberg, 1981), Lost Highway (David Lynch, 1997), The Thin Red Line (Terrence Malick, 1999), Syndromes and a Century (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2006), Ashes of Time Redux (Wong Kar-wai, 2008), Inside Llewyn Davis (Coen brothers, 2013), Two Days, One Night (Dardenne brothers, 2014), Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller, 2014), Eden (Mia Hansen-Løve, 2014), La Sapienza (Eugène Green, 2014), I Am Not Your Negro (Raoul Peck, 2016) , Waltz with Bashir (Ari Folman, 2008).
****Students pursuing the Global Cinema Major within Comparative Literature can take this course as a substitute for CMPL 240 Film Theory.
****Graduate students with an interest in being a T.A. for film studies courses offered in English and Comparative Literature need to take this course in order to be eligible. It will include an extra pedagogy component for grad students.
GLBL 492H 001. GLOBAL FOOD FILMS (12845)
Inger Brodey
T/Th 2:00-3:15
Genome Sciences 1373
Few aspects of life evoke cultural belonging more than food. Food can define communities by establishing a connection between those who eat at the same table (or mat) and by separating a group from those who are not partaking of the same meal. Through food, cultures can reassert, refresh, challenge, and reform traditional assumptions about many aspects of life. Cultures often use food analogies to describe aspects of themselves, such as their homogeneity or heterogeneity: consider the ¿melting post¿ or ¿salad bowl¿ metaphors for the contemporary United States. The taste (and to a lesser extent appearance) of food is a principal means of evoking memories or a sense of nostalgia for a past time or culture¿memories that the other senses are less able to evoke. In such ways, food can both reflect and shape identity. Not only does food have strong emotional and cultural association, but it can also be a vehicle for societal and political individuation or change. It helps express national, cultural, tribal, and familial values or loyalties and also can be a vehicle for expressing both the power and the limits of transnationalism. Over the past two decades, the film industry in a range of countries has identified the power of food in forming a sub-genre of film called ¿food films¿: these are films that take the preparing, serving, eating, or judging of food as a central theme. These films have taken advantage of the power and Honors Carolina students register online when their registration appointment begins. Non-honors students register beginning November 16. If you are unable to enroll online, submit a wait list request at honorscarolina.unc.edu/waitlist beginning November 16.
GERM 60. First Year Seminar: Avant-Garde Cinema: History, Themes, Textures. (11748)
Richard Langston
TR 9:30 AM – 10:45 AM
The cinema we frequently encounter in theaters and on television is full of stories comprised of discernible beginnings, middles, and (happy) endings. However, conventional narratives are but one approach to making films. For over a century, filmmakers have employed the medium of film to explore and broaden the limits of aural and visual perception, to invent new aesthetic forms in motion, to express emotions and desires, and to intervene critically in cultural politics. Students enrolled in this seminar will uncover the history, techniques, and meanings of non-narrative cinema from the twentieth century. Often called “avant-garde,” “underground,” or “experimental,” the films we will discuss are international in scope and represent major chapters in the century-old history of this “minor cinema.” Seminar participants will develop in the course of the semester a critical vocabulary for making sense of these works and will articulate their own analyses in writing and their own video essays. Readings and class discussions in English; films subtitled in English. Approach: Visual/Performing Arts.
GERM 275. History of German Cinema.(11756)
Priscilla Layne
TR 3:30 PM – 4:45 PM
This course explores the major developments of German cinema from Weimar to contemporary film. Students will be introduced to themes, directors and actors who have made a distinct impact on German film. All films with English subtitles. Readings and discussions in English.
Approach: Visual/Performing Arts.
Connection: North Atlantic World.
CZCH 280. Closely watched trains: Czech Film and Literature. (11738)
Hana Pichova
TR 12:30 PM – 1:45 PM
Film Screenings: W 5:30 PM – 8:30 PM
This course examines Czech film and literature against the backdrop of key historical, political, and cultural events. Readings and screenings will include works covering World War II, the Stalinist Fifties, the thaw of the Sixties, the post-Soviet invasion years, and the post-1989 Velvet Revolution. Some of the films viewed are adaptations of novels, which will be read in their entirety.
Readings and class discussions in English; films subtitled in English.
Approach: Literary Arts.
Connection: Beyond the North Atlantic
HIST 302H. Movies Make History: Films as Primary Sources of American and European Histories
Louise McReynolds
T/Th 2-3:15
Stone Center 209
History teachers often assign novels that capture the essence of the era. When they show movies, however, they tend to prefer filmic recreations on an historical event. These movies illustrate the age in which they were produced better than they do the event in question, so class discussion centers around “accuracy” and “objectivity.” This course takes a different approach, and treats films as primacy sources for studying the historical context in which they were made. Beginning with the development of narrative film in 1908, it will trace change by looking sequentially at those nationally specific genres that had repercussions beyond national borders. The primary historical themes will be the repercussions of two world wars in the United States and its European allies and enemies. Both wars played a pivotal role in the rise of communism as an alternative to the liberal democracies that consistently proved unable to fulfill their utopian aspirations. But nor could communism meet its ideological expectations, and this course ends in 1991, when Frances Fukuyama’s ballyhooed “end of history!” with the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. A course such as this is especially important in this age of mass media, when people must be familiar with film as well as literature to be considered culturally literate. One Honors Carolina students register online when their registration appointment begins. Non-honors students register beginning November 16. If you are unable to enroll online, submit a wait list request at honorscarolina.unc.edu/waitlist beginning November 16.
PHIL 381 001 9461. Philosophy and Film
Alan Nelson
W 12:20-2:50
CW103
An investigation of philosophical themes using films as the primary texts. Topics will include self knowledge and personality, the nature of romantic love, and the relationship between humanist and scientific modes of knowledge. Films by Nolan, Akerman, Soderbergh, Tarkovsky, Von Trier, and others will be studied. Some viewing will be done in class, but students will also need to do some viewing outside class–at the Undergraduate Library’s Media Resource Center, for example. There will also be some short, supplementary readings. Prerequisite: at least 1 PHIL course
FREN 373 (10848). French New Wave Cinema
Hassan Melehy
TuTh 2–3:15 p.m. Film projection: Tu 6–9 p.m.
Bingham 301
In this course, we will study the early films of the French Nouvelle Vague (New Wave). These filmmakers began their careers in the 1950s, in most cases after starting out as journalists for the magazine Cahiers du cinéma. We will see movies by, among others, Claude Chabrol, Jean-Luc Godard, Alain Resnais, Eric Rohmer, François Truffaut, and Agnès Varda. In addition to considering their cinematic and literary influences, we will read their writings about cinema as well as key texts of film theory pertinent to their work. Taught in English; films subtitled. Those taking the course for credit toward the French major or minor will do much of the reading in French, as well as write papers and exams in French.
ITAL 335 001 (5822) Themes in Italian Film
Marisa Escolar
T/Th 2-3:15
Dey 202
This course explores a selection of Italian films related to a topic chosen by the instructor. Previous topics have included immigration, social problems, the films of Roberto Rossellini, and the films of the new millenium. Students consider the reflections these films offer on contemporary Italian society, including the role of the individual, family relationships and gender roles, social problems, politics, war and international relations, and the importance of history and memory. Some of these films invite critical debate on issues that are particular to Italian history and society, while others have themes that are more universal. No previous courses in film OR Italian history are required for this course, just an interest in film and in learning more about Italian culture. This course is traditionally taught in English, and all films are screened in Italian with English subtitles. Students may count this course as an elective credit for the Italian major and minor, provided they write at least two short papers in Italian (2-3 pages).
ITAL 335 fulfills the VP (Visual and Performing Arts) and NA (North Atlantic World) General Education requirements.
ITAL 340 001 (12812). Italian America in Literature and Film
T/Th 11-12:15
Instructor: Staff
The course explores the representation of Italian-American identity and culture in literary and cinematic works of the U.S. during the second half of the twentieth century. Students will explore Italian immigrant culture in America and the ways in which Italian-American identity was conceptualized by nativist America and by Italian-Americans themselves.
ITAL 340 fulfills the LA (Literary Arts), US (US Diversity) and NA (North Atlantic World) General Education requirements.