This graduate seminar introduces central issues in film studies. Students familiar and unfamiliar with the discipline alike are invited to think how core questions can expand scholarly research and public interest. The seminar pays attention to writing strategies, as practiced by the scholars we read and by the seminar participants. Students will write a weekly 2-page response to the readings as well as a 4-page close reading of a film scene on most weeks.<\/p>\n
TENTATIVE SYLLABUS (will be modifies in consultation with the seminar participants)
\n1. Ontology:
\nBazin, \u201cLe Journal d\u2019un cure de campagne and the Stylistics of Robert Bresson\u201d
\nMulvey, \u201cPassing Time: Reflections on Cinema from a New Technological Age\u201d
\nFilm: Diary of a Country Priest
\n2. Material history \/ history of ideas:
\nKaes, \u201cTales from the Asylum\u201d
\nAmad, \u201cThe Counter-Archive of Cinematic Memory: Bergsonism, la Dur\u00e9e, and the Everyday\u201d
\nFilms: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
\n3. Vernacular modernism:
\nHansen, \u201cRising Stars, New Horizons: Shanghai Silent Film as Vernacular Modernism\u201d
\nZhang, \u201cTeahouse, Shadowplay, and Laborer\u2019s Love\u201d
\nFilms: Laborer\u2019s Love, Daybreak
\n4. Audiences:
\nSnead, \u201cSpectatorship and Capture in King Kong: The Guilty Look\u201d
\nStewart, \u201c\u2019Negroes Laughing at Themselves\u2019? Black Spectatorship and the Performance of Urban Modernity\u201d
\nKlinger, \u201cThe Contemporary Cinephile: Film Collecting after the VCR\u201d
\nFilm: King Kong
\n5. Phenomenology \/ cinephilia:
\nSobchack, \u201cWhat My Fingers Knew: The Cinesthetic Subject, or Vision in the Flesh\u201d
\nSperb, \u201cSensing an Intellectual Nemesis\u201d
\nFilm: The Piano
\n6. Trauma:
\nFelman, \u201cIn an Era of Testimony: Claude Lanzmann\u2019s Shoah\u201d
\nFilm: Shoah (part I)
\n7. Genre:
\nAltman, \u201dWhat is Generally Understood by the Notion of Film Genre?\u201d
\nGillespie, \u201cVoices Inside (Everything Is Everything): Deep Cover and Modalities of Noir Blackness\u201d
\nFilm: Deep Cover
\n8. Apparatus \/ gaze:
\nMulvey, \u201cVisual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”
\nBraester, \u201cCinephiliac Engagement and the Disengaged Gaze in In the Mood for Love\u201c
\nFilm: In the Mood for Love
\n9. The dispositif:
\nTom Gunning, \u201cAn Aesthetic of Astonishment: Early Film and the (In)Credulous Spectator\u201d
\nBao, \u201cA Culture of Resonance: Hypnotism, Wireless Cinema, and the Invention of Intermedial Spectatorship\u201d
\nFilm: Goodbye, Dragon Inn!
\n10. Circulation \/ nation \/ festivals:
\nYoshimoto, \u201cA Future of Comparative Film Studies\u201d
\n\u201cVenice to Go: Cultural In\/Difference and the Digital Ecology of Film\u201d
\nFilms: The Seven Samurai, The Magnificent Seven
\nMedia Archaeology:
\n\u201c(Un)walking at the Fair: About Mobile Visualities at the Paris Universal Exposition of 1900\u201d
\nCasetti, \u201cBack to the Motherland: The Film Theatre in the Postmedia Age\u201d
\nFilms: Artaud Double Bill; Jeanne D\u2019arc<\/p>\n","protected":false},"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","categories":[47],"class_list":["post-1147","course","type-course","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive-courses"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-16 19:26:29","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/uwcps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/course\/1147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/uwcps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/course"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/uwcps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/course"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/uwcps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/uwcps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}