FILM 392 - Research Seminar in Film History and Theory

Semester Offered: Fall and Spring
1 unit(s)

This course is designed as an in-depth exploration of either a given author or a theoretical topic. Students contribute to the class through research projects and oral presentations. Their work culminates in lengthy research papers. Because topics change, students are permitted (encouraged) to take this course more than once. Preference is given to film majors who must take this class during their senior year; junior majors and others admitted if space permits.

Topic for 2015/16a: Comedy. Often ignored in favor of more serious and more easily-theorized fare, comedy deserves study as a significant genre in mass media. This seminar examines comedy and humor in film, television, radio, and digital media. Focusing on questions of genre, it notes the importance of comedy films in the development of certain strains of film theory, and asks why some scholars argue that comedy is the defining genre of both American television and contemporary online culture. Along with the genre of comedy, we also explore associated phenomena like humor, mirth, laughter, and smiling as notable aspects of comedy’s definition and appeal. These discussions explore comedy’s role both defining and upsetting notions of community, the body, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and the abject. Readings may include Jonathan Gray’s Watching With the Simpsons: Television, Parody, and Intertextuality (2005), Kathleen Rowe’s The Unruly Woman: Gender and the Genres of Laughter (1995), and Bambi Haggins’ Laughing Mad: The Black Comic Persona in Post-Soul America (2007), among others. Screenings may include Modern Times (Chaplin, 1936), Def Comedy Jam, and Web Therapy, among others. Mr. Scepanski.

Topic for 2015/16b: American Women Directors. This course starts film history over, this time concentrating only on women directors, whose contributions have generally been elided. We look at silent filmmakers such as Alice Guy, Lois Weber, and Cleo Madison, and at studio era figures, including Dorothy Arzner and Ida Lupino. The second half of the course will focus on women directors working after the sixties feminist movement, including Hollywood filmmakers such as Susan Seidelman, Penny Marshall, Nora Ephron, and Katherine Bigelow, as well as independents such as Barbara Kopple (Harlan County, USA) or Kimberly Peirce (Boys Don’t Cry). We will examine the films’ aesthetics and themes, and the factors that led to only 5% of 2011’s American films being directed by women. Ms. Kozloff.

Prerequisites: FILM 210 /FILM 211 ; two additional units in film history and theory, and permission of the instructor.

One 2-hour period plus outside screenings.