This course is designed as an introduction to methodologies in contemporary film studies, with a focus on the debates of modern film theory. We will begin with the inception of “academic” film studies in the late 1960s, paying special attention to the influential models of structural linguistics, Marxism, psychoanalysis and feminism and will survey the resulting model of spectatorship (often called "gaze theory") that emerged and flourished in the 1970s. Gaze theory taught us much about the workings of power and pleasure in images, but the hegemony of that model has since been challenged by a range of diverse positions, not only of various “identity” positions, but also by questions of historicity, genericity and referentiality. The majority of our time will be spent reading debates of the past ten years, including the return to work of mass cultural theorists like Benjamin and Kracauer, that question the orthodoxies of a classical spectatorship without abandoning the fundamental insight that there is something to be gained by theorizing the relationship between moving picture viewers, narrative cinematic structures, and the textual field of vision.

The majority of films viewed in the course will be American (“popular,” “mainstream,” or “Hollywood”) productions, ranging from the slapstick antics of Charlie Chaplin, through studio-era genre films of the 1930s and 1940s, to more contemporary products. In other words, in order to fully assess the range of film theoretical concepts, we will also consider—and question--the film historical cannon produced as a result. In addition, we will consider the problems resulting from theories of pleasure based on American cinema, and will discuss the possible parameters of alternative national, political and aesthetic movements in film historical discourse.

Friday sessions for this course are designated as film screening sessions. Monday and Wednesday times are for class meetings.