Spring 2023 Undergraduate Courses

Antonia Lant
Tuesdays, 12:30-4:30pm
Room 648
CINE-UT 15 / Class #13907
4 points

This course introduces students to the first three decades of film history. It is designed to provide a foundation for the major, through situating the cinema within a broad cultural, aesthetic, economic, and social context, and through establishing that cinema operated internationally from the start.  This period saw the rise of the studio and star systems in the consolidation of Hollywood; the production and screening of a wealth of non-fiction cinemas; and the formation of an international avant-garde cinema movement. Other topics we will cover include: the wide range of early sources for moving image culture; the earliest forms of cinema; the growth of storytelling through film; film exhibition, film audiences, and film reception; the large impact of women’s film work; film as a central component of modern life; and the development of several national cinemas including German, Japanese, Danish, Russian, and Soviet. Silent filmmaking has never gone away; we will consider how it has persisted, revisited and recycled in later works for the screen.

Recitations
Thursdays
Room 646
                                             Class #      
002:  8:00 – 9:15am                13908
003:  9:30 – 10:45am              13909
004:  11:00am – 12:15pm        13910

Feng-Mei Heberer
Mondays, 12:30-4:30pm
Room 648
CINE-UT 21 / Class #13911
4 points

Who, what, when, where, why, and how is television? This core course moves chronologically through different moments in 20th and 21st century history to negotiate these questions, from the golden age of radio to the rise of the networks, cable TV, and online streaming. Modes of inquiry include the political economy of media institutions; theories of reception and fandom; performance and stardom; and studies of genre. We’ll focus primarily on American television, but will make time to explore programming from outside the U.S., as well as American television in languages other than English.

Recitations
Wednesdays
Room 646
                                             Class #      
002:  8:00 – 9:15am                13912
003:  9:30 – 10:45am              13913
004:  11:00am – 12:15pm        13914

Toby Lee
Mondays, 6:00-10:00pm
Room 652
CINE-UT 700 / Class # 13969
4 points

This course explores some of the ways that cinema has served as catalyst and ground for experiments in radical forms of collectivity, solidarity, and world-making. We think with but also around and beyond films, looking at media organizations and collectives that work across the spectrum of production, distribution, and exhibition — from organizations such as Third World Newsreel, the Filmmakers’ Cooperative, and Appalshop to collectives such as Black Audio Film Collective and SLON, and in particular feminist film collectives such as Cine Mujer, Yugantar, Les Insoumuses, and the New Negress Film Society. Attending as much to organizational histories and practices as to filmic texts, we examine how these groups have imagined and enacted different ways of working, making, and being together around the moving image.

Prerequisite: Film Theory

Permission code required to register. Request a permission code here.

Antonia Lant
Wednesdays, 2:00-4:30pm
Room 635
CINE-UT 705 / Class # 21846
4 points

This class guides you through the development and writing of an article-length research essay. We undertake this in a number of ways. First, during the early weeks of the semester, we will read and deconstruct a series of texts, to understand what makes them effective. Some of these texts address the matter of writing itself: Who are you writing for? In what voice? Others engage key questions of the material we study: How do we write about what is lost? What is the moving image medium’s relation to reality? Reading these texts will suggest ways in which you might conceive, structure, and elaborate your own ideas and research for your own essay for the course, one based on your previously-submitted paper. Second, we will assess the field’s undergraduate, peer-reviewed publication venues, such as Kino, and Film Matters, and meet a journal editor to learn about the article selection journey, and what publishing more generally entails. Thirdly, the class will demystify the process of essay-production itself by emphasizing various techniques scholars have designed to keep reading, research, and regular writing at the forefront of their schedules. We will actively adopt one of these--the weekly accountability meeting--during which you will check in with your peers in the class. This class might particularly interest students aiming to fulfill the honors requirement, those who would like to develop a polished essay for use in an application, as well as those with a broad curiosity about the role literature plays in the field. Student responsibilities will include: attendance; keeping up with the readings and participation in class discussion; peer editing; a very brief in-class presentation; and submission of several assignments (research proposal, bibliography, interim drafts and final draft), each one building towards the submission of your article-length essay at the end of the semester.

By November 10, please submit to Professor Lant (al52@nyu.edu)  a sample of the academic writing that you wish to develop in this class, to be considered for enrollment.

Prerequisite: Film Theory

Permission code required to register. Request a permission code here.

Zhen Zhang
Fridays, 12:30-4:30pm
Room 652
CINE-UT 707 / Class # 14250
4 points

Childhood is a persistent topic of countless films throughout the history of cinema worldwide, with an intended audience not limited to children. The focus of this course is not children’s films per se, but “childhood” in world cinema and in popular culture, discussed from an array of historical and theoretical perspectives. The concerns and topics of the course include: the intimate relationship between early cinema and childhood (and by extension, childhood and modernity); conceptions and representations of childhood in different cinematic (and cultural) traditions and historical periods; ideological critiques and other theoretical models in engaging screen and media portrayals of childhood, including feminism, gender and sexuality studies, child studies. Weekly screenings will feature early actualities, silent narrative film, musical, documentary, animation, and more. Students are expected to actively take part in discussions and presentations, and complete a final research paper.

Prerequisite: Film Theory

Permission code required to register. Request a permission code here.

Chris Straayer
Wednesdays, 12:30-4:30pm
Room 652
CINE-UT 710 / Class # 14194
4 points

The status of film noir, a 1940-50s American film phenomenon named by French critics, remains hotly debated. Was it a genre, a thematic movement, or a stylistic innovation? Was it the product of post war malaise? Was it knowingly existentialist? Was it a voice from society’s underside? Did it admit disrupted gender roles? Was it perverse? Was it American? And, finally, how has it intensified and morphed in more recent filmmaking? We address such topics as international and interdisciplinary influences, philosophical and psychological references, artistic and literary precursors, historical and cultural resonances, war-time and post-war culture, industrial and technical implications, semantic and syntactic elements, adaptation, production economics, genre hybridity, narrative structure, urban locations, racialized space, masculinity in crisis, and the femme fatale. We also examine film noir’s relation to modernist literature, hard-boiled fiction, tabloid and photojournalism, German expressionism, French poetic realism, and surrealism. A tentative list of films includes: Double Indemnity, Crossfire, Detour, The Naked City, Mildred Pierce, Gilda, Kiss Me Deadly, Out of the Past, and Murder, My Sweet.

Prerequisite: Film Theory

Permission code required to register. Request a permission code here.

Feng-Mei Heberer
Mondays, 6:00-10:00pm
Room 674
CINE-UT 112
Cinema Studies majors: Section 001 / Class # 21848
Non-Cinema Studies majors: Section 002 / Class # 21849
4 points

This course surveys Asian media and popular culture with an emphasis on cultural developments from the 1990s onward. The material we explore hails from various parts of Asia and the Asian diaspora, such as East and Southeast Asia, North America, and Europe, for example. Rather than looking for a single meaning of “Asianness,” we examine the transnational flows, fissures, and movements of images, capital, and politics associated with the term (think anime, BTS, fan cultures). Likewise, we scrutinize the “popular” in popular culture, asking how it might signify beyond mass entertainment, as an omnipresent yet invisible infrastructure defining our daily life.

Please note: Students may not join this course if they have missed the first class meeting.

Michael B. Gillespie
Wednesdays, 12:30-4:30pm
Room 670
CINE-UT 407
Cinema Studies majors: Section 001 / Class # 23226
Non-Cinema Studies majors: Section 002 / Class # 23227 points

In the terms of “film blackness,” the class is devoted to a study of the idea of black film. By thinking about film alongside literature, music, art, photography, and new media, students will consider new paradigms for genre, narrative, aesthetics, culture, historiography, and intertextuality. With a focus on American cinema, the class will pose new investments in the idea of black film as art and discourse rather than merely a category, genre, reflection of lived experience, or a matter of positive and negative images. With a shift towards the art of blackness and away from fantasies of authenticity, the course will be informed by Film Studies, Visual Culture Studies, Performance Studies, and Black Studies scholarship. Topics will include the following: experimental/avant-garde cinema, film noir, blaxploitation, speculative fiction, black womanist film, independent cinema, the racial grotesque, hip hop, and queer cinema.

Da Ye Kim
Fridays, 12:30-4:30pm
Room 674
CINE-UT 412
Cinema Studies majors: Section 001 / Class # 21842
Non-Cinema Studies majors: Section 002 / Class # 21843
4 points

This course examines the manifold ideas and applications of virtual reality (VR) in relation to cinema and other visual media. The course questions how the emerging technology/medium of VR can reshape and reorganize the conventional conceptions of cinema and related media. It aims to explore the historical, social, cultural, political, ethical and artistic implications of VR in order to interrogate the popular notion of VR as the “next” cinematic medium or the “meta” technology for the much-anticipated metaverse. In this interdisciplinary theory-practice course, students will not only analyze various examples of VR, but also complete several hands-on activities to create their own version of VR (No prior experience required).

Dominic Clarke
Thursdays, 6:00-10:00pm
Room 674
CINE-UT 430
Cinema Studies majors: Section 001 / Class # 21844
Non-Cinema Studies majors: Section 002 / Class # 21845
4 points

There is not a singular global narrative about LGBTQ people; LGBTQ rights, societal acceptance, and/or LGBTQ existence faces differing constraints based upon location. By examining films from around the globe we can gain insight into the plight of LGBTQ people. The narratives tell us one story while a consideration of the societal, governmental, and/or religious forces the filmmakers contend with in order to make their films will provide us with additional information to process these films.

Jasper Lauderdale
Tuesdays, 6:00-10:00pm
Room 648
CINE-UT 51 / class # 13915
4 points

This course seeks to provide a broad and critical survey of American visual culture from 1960 to today, with balanced emphasis on both dominant (narrative, fiction) film practice and counter-hegemonic, independent, experimental and/or documentary work. We will proceed semi-chronologically from the downfall of the studio system, using generic, thematic and industrial organizing principles (without being beholden to them), and focusing on moments of radical innovation and creative collaboration (e.g., the Film School Generation and the LA Rebellion). This course endeavors also to foreground the contributions made to post-fifties American cinema by women, queer and trans filmmakers, and filmmakers of color, thereby resisting the narrative of a film culture built solely by (and belonging solely to) white heteropatriarchy, and centering considerations of race, gender, sexuality, representation and tokenism alongside those of American masculinity, femininity and violence; authorship, textuality, genre, and mode; celebrity and stardom; American music, politics, and ideology; the individual and the institution; franchising, merchandising, sequelization, and the recycling of existing properties; the blockbuster and the commercial juggernaut; spectatorship, reception, and fandom; and digital media, context collapse, and technological change.

Recitations
Mondays
Room 646
                                            Class #       
002:  8:00-9:15am                  13916
003:  9:30-10:45am                13917
004:  11:00am-12:15pm          13918

This course fulfills the American Cinema requirement.

Anthony Dominguez
Wednesdays, 6:00-10:00pm
Room 648
CINE-UT 56 / class # 13919
4 points

Eschewing an emphasis on the “New Waves” of the 1960s and 1970s,  this course explores international cinema between 1960 to the present by examining how international cinema functions as an allegory for wider socio-economic and political events to demonstrate how our contemporary globalized world came to be. Throughout the semester, we will delve into topics that include cinema’s mobilization as a political tool of resistance (Iraq Year Zero and Kanehsatake), forgotten and shattered histories of women within film canon (Araya and Agatha), and the aesthetic possibilities of cinema to reimage modernity (Hypernormalisation and Slow Business). Together, we will chart the similarities and differences in international cinema to identify how these films imagine new modes of possibilities from the perspective of the “Other.”

Recitations
Tuesdays
Room 646
                                            Class #       
002:  8:00-9:15am                  13920
003:  9:30-10:45am                13921
004:  11:00am-12:15pm          13922

This course fulfills the International Cinema requirement.

CINE-UT 901 / Class # 13923      1-4 points variable
CINE-UT 903 / Class # 13924      1-4 points variable

A student wishing to conduct independent research for credit must obtain approval from a full-time faculty member in the Department of Cinema Studies who will supervise an independent study for up to 4 credits. This semester-long study is a project of special interest to the student who, with the supervising faculty member, agrees on a course of study and requirements. The proposed topic for an Independent Study project should not duplicate topics taught in departmental courses. This is an opportunity to develop or work on a thesis project.

To register, you must submit an Independent Study Form. Once the information from your form is verified by your faculty supervisor, you will receive a permission code.

CINE-UT 950 / Class # 14096      1-4 points variable
CINE-UT 952 / Class # 14097      1-4 points variable

A student wishing to pursue an internship must obtain the internship and submit the Learning Contract before receiving a permission code. All internship grades will be pass/fail.

Zhen Zhang
Wednesdays, 12:30-4:30pm
Room 674
CINE-GT 1136
Section 002 / Class # 22913
4 points

The course offers a historical survey of Chinese-language cinema from the emergence of the new waves in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Mainland China in the 1970s-1980s to the more recent formations around the turn of the new century.  The distinctiveness of the three important Chinese cinemas and their increasing convergences after the Hong Kong handover in 1997, and under the impact of globalization, offer ideal laboratories for reconsidering the premises and usefulness of the concepts of national and transnational cinema.  Along the same axis, we will also probe questions of cultural nationalism, neo-regionalism, a persistent cold war culture within the trans-Asian context, and the tension between the state's cultural policy and film industry, commercial cinema, and art or independent cinema.  Given the massive transformations in media technology and industrial organization in the last two decades, we will also consider the ramifications of new media for film and screen culture, including new documentary movements, amateur and activist film/video practices, and queer and feminist cinema.  Screenings will include festival favorites, commercial blockbusters, and DV works. Students contribute to the course through in-class and online forum discussions, presentations, and final research projects.

This course is open to advanced undergraduate students with permission of the instructor.

Dan Streible
Mondays, 12:30-4:30pm
Room 674
CINE-GT 1806 / Class # 7118
4 points

Please email tisch.preservation@nyu.edu to request an enrollment permission code.

This course embraces a broad conception of curating as the treatment of materials from their discovery, acquisition, archiving, preservation, restoration, and reformatting, through their screening, programming, use, re-use, distribution, exploitation, translation, and interpretation. It  focuses on the practices of film and video exhibition in cinematheques, festivals, museums, archives, web platforms, and other venues. The course examines the goals of public programming, its constituencies, and the curatorial and archival challenges of presenting film, video, and digital media. We study how archives and sister institutions present their work through exhibitions, events, publications, and media productions. We also examine how these presentations activate uses of moving image collections. Specific curatorial practices of festivals, seminars, symposia, and projects will be examined.

Please visit the College Core Curriculum website for a course schedule and description.

Ludovic Cortade
Fridays, 11:00am-1:45pm
Room 670
CINE-UT 126 / Class # 23224
4 points

The course is an introduction to the history of French cinema from the origins to the New Wave through the lens of art and French civilization (history, literature, class, gender, ethnicity). The movements and directors we will be studying include: Early cinema (Lumière brothers, Méliès), Surrealism and the Avant-Garde (Bunuel), Poetic Realism (Renoir, Carné), the «New Wave» (Godard, Truffaut).

This crosslisted section of the course is open to Cinema Studies majors only. Other students should register for FREN-UA 878.

Ludovic Cortade
Fridays, 2:00-4:45pm
Room 670
CINE-UT 239 / Class # 23225
4 points

This course offers an introduction to the history of French and Francophone filmmaking from the latest films of the New Wave (Truffaut, Pialat, Varda) to the present (Ozon, Honoré, Denis, Audiard, Sciamma, Sissako). The emphasis is placed on race, class, national identity, gender and sexuality.

This crosslisted section of the course is open to Cinema Studies majors only. Other students should register for FREN-UA 865.