This intermediate topical course of varying emphases focuses on representations of difference, while underscoring the connections between race, class, gender, and sexual identity. Through screenings, and key texts from film and media studies, cultural studies, gender studies, and visual culture studies, students will learn critical methodologies for analyzing a range of media forms and the complex relationship between authors and spectators. Topics courses may be repeated with a different topic for credit. Note: specific topics may fulfill distinct core requirements.
Asian American Film and Media
All Orientals Look the Same (1987) is a seminal video art work created by Valerie Soe, in which the statement, "all Orientals look the same," is repeated monotonously, as the full diversity of Asian people flash across the screen. In this course, we will examine not only pioneering media works like Soe's, which struggled at the time to find recognition and validation from Western audiences, but more recent successes of Asian American cinema and media. We will engage in a variety of issues in regards to representations of race by analyzing works made for and by Asian American film and media makers. We will also consider historical portrayals and stereotypes of Asians in the media and ask to what extent they have carried through to this day. Our critical investigations will be conducted through projects and presentations alongside weekly screenings, readings, and discussions.
Additional Core Requirement Met: Global Connections
The Female in Japanese Film and Media
The course will consider the role of the female in Japanese film in front of and behind the camera. In the current climate of the #metoo and #timesup campaigns and revelations of sexual harassment in the Hollywood film industry, where does the Japanese film industry stand? This course will look at Japanese cinematic history whose roots are embedded in the studio system in Kyoto and consider how the role of women in film has been shaped by a changing society’s values and norms. The contributions from Japanese female film directors such as the pioneers Sakane Tazuko and actress-director Tanaka Kinuyo to their contemporary counterparts such as award-winning Kawase Naomi, the pink films of Hamano Sachi, relationship driven films of Mishima Yukiko, to the fashionable flair of Ninagawa Mika. We will look at emerging female filmmakers such as Oda Kaori, Endo Maiko, and media artist Sputniko! who are using the format of the moving image to engage Japanese audiences in global issues. In addition to looking closely at works from female film directors, the course will examine tropes and representations of iconic actresses within Japanese cinematic history to appropriation of Japanese culture in pop music videos.
Additional Core Requirement Met: Regional Focus. Fulfills GWSS Minor.
Cultures of Protest
The English word protest– “to declare publicly” – derives from a Latin verb meaning “to testify, give witness.” In this course we will explore a variety of films from different geopolitical regions and of different genres and different historical contexts that might be interpreted as speaking to all kinds of modalities of protest: protests against nationalisms, against ethnic cleansings, against xenophobia, racism, and homophobia, against national violence and against gender purity. We will engage with different understandings of the concept of protest and focus on its relation to migration, foreignness, national identity, racial, gender, and sexual politics, border politics, globalization, and various philosophical discussions (about difference, multiculturalism and diversity). The course is discussion-based, encouraging critical thinking, writing, and presentation skills. Expect theoretical readings and that will guide our explorations.
Additional Core Requirement Met: Global Connections
From Cyborgs to Siri: Gender, Technology and Media
In this course, we will examine the humanoid robots, cyborgs, and AIs imagined in film, television, and advertising, as well as the dialogue between these fictional creations and their real-life counterparts, from historical automata to the current development of robotic and virtual assistants and companions. How does techno-fantasy inform material reality, and vice versa, in the construction of these figures? What roles do we ask them to play in both realms? What social, cultural and historical conditions give rise to, and shape, their appearance? What cultural hopes and fears do they reveal? In answering these questions, we will examine issues around gender, sexuality, and race, while drawing from a wide range of critical discourses, including technoculture studies, cyborg feminism, post-humanism, and afrofuturism.
Feminist Provocations: Migrant Justice in the US Cinema
In this course, students will be introduced to diverse representations of fights for migrant justice and migrant rights through an exploration of contemporary feminist transnational cinema in the United States. Taking an intersectional, historical, and multidimensional theoretical approach, we will engage films highlighting a variety of communities such as African, African American, Arab, Asian, and Latinx, allowing us to develop nuanced perspectives. The select case studies -- including, Amreeka, Dirt, Entre Nos, Daughters of the Dust, Maid in America, Mississippi Masala, Nanny -- will push us to consider complex questions around citizenship, belonging, national legitimacy, and what I call ‘alienhood’ – discursive modes of stigmatizing those who are deemed ‘foreign.’ Yet, we will also analyze diverse representations of provocation in cinema: calls for subverting various systems of oppression that perpetuate patriarchal domination, xenophobia, and national exclusion while studying theories of transnationality, feminist visuality, film theory, queer theory, and theories of difference. In a historical moment when border walls and refugee camps are once again proliferating, ethnonationalism and white supremacy are on the rise, and women’s rights, queer rights, and immigrant rights are being violated, such feminist provocations can serve as a guide for our own social justice interventions. Complementing course work, students will engage in creative projects, take field trips to local immigration museums, learn from filmmakers, and collaborate with local organizations.
This course is part of the Humanities for Just Communities curriculum. Additional Core Requirement Met: US Diversity.