Fall 2019 Graduate Courses

William Simon
Wednesdays / 6:00-10:00pm / Room 648
4 points
CINE-GT 1010 / Class # 7358

The purpose of this course is to introduce students to central concepts in film form and style as well as film narrative. The course is structured to suggest a constant but expanding series of models for textual analysis of audio-visual works, with emphasis on the “cinematic signifier." The course will also deal with issues of the interpretation of audio-visual works in relation to textual analysis. Part One of the course will have a strong formal emphasis: introducing concepts such as shot structure, editing, mise-en-scene, camera movement and sound in relation to their function in the structuring of film narrative. Part Two will formulate these concepts more thoroughly in terms of parameters of film narrative (e.g. focalization and its implications for the representation of gender and race). Parts Three and Four will further expand the conceptualization of these issues by dealing with the relationship of film narrative to: (1) genre, understood in terms of its social and ideological implications; and (2) cultural history, understood in terms of the social relations between cultural discourses and the specificity of film narrative.

This course is only open to Cinema Studies MA students.

Anna McCarthy
Mondays / 6:00–10:00pm / Room 648
4 points
CINE-GT 1026 / Class # 7598

This M.A. core course examines the background, context, and history of television with an initial emphasis on broadcast and digital eras in the U.S., then expansion into case studies of international television. The approach is comparative, with a focus on television as cultural, social, and aesthetic formation. Topics include histories of technology, economics of media institutions, local and networked intersectional politics, audiences and reception, and questions of representation. We will also pay particular attention to methods and modes of historiography, especially in light of emerging opportunities for online access and digital research tools.  

This course is only open to Cinema Studies MA students.

Toby Lee
Fridays / 12:00-3:00pm / Room 635
4 points
CINE-GT 2601 / Class # 7492

This course examines a range of activities entailed in being in the Cinema Studies doctoral program and preparing for a career in cinema and media studies. Most class meetings will include a guest speaker, as most of the full-time faculty in the Department of Cinema Studies will discuss their own research methodologies and careers. The class will also read two recent influential books in the field.  The professional activities to be examined include things such as participating in professional organizations, answering a call for papers, giving a conference presentation, “dissertating,” book reviewing, teaching, and publishing one’s research. We will consider the process of choosing a research focus for a scholarly project and tackling its research problems. We will study protocols followed for research in specific locations, and also consider techniques of conducting and organizing research, with emphasis on database research and use of NYU Libraries resources. Among the practical exercises that may be assigned are: evaluating journals, presses, and websites associated with cinema and media studies; reporting on libraries, archives, and research resources; attending professional talks and special events; and delivering a short scholarly talk. Students will be required to compose (1) a book review (ca. 1,500 words), (2) one report or blog entry on a cinema studies or other event you attend, and (3) a paper based on the talk or a research portfolio.

This course is open only to Cinema Studies PhD students.

Feng-Mei Heberer
Thursdays / 6:00-10:00pm / Room 635
4 points

CINE-GT 1025
Section 001 class # 7623
Section 002 class # 7624

This course explores film and other visual media through the lens of migrancy and diaspora, asking what it would mean if we placed histories of movement and border-crossings at the center of our analysis? To do so, we will combine studies of representation, or how experiences of migration and (un)belonging are told on screen, with inquiries into media infrastructures and practices, i.e. how works are made, circulated, and received beyond national and regional boundaries. Readings from cultural studies, media industry studies, and ethnic studies will define our theoretical framework. Case studies include auteur and popular film, personal documentaries, and television shows as well as media piracy and fan-based online practices.

Chris Straayer
Tuesdays / 12:30-4:30pm / Room 652
4 points

CINE-GT 1780
Section 001 class # 22938
Section 002 class # 22939

From a social-activist perspective, passing is often criticized as a willful act of deception for the purpose of personal gain.  Such an understanding invests in both “truth” and visibility politics, and assumes that allpassing is both voluntary and upwardly mobile.  This seminar seeks to complicate the discussion by analyzing passing in relation to supporting structures (e.g. compulsory heterosexuality, the binary sex system, constructions of race, stereotypes, and assimilation) and processes (e.g., transing, masquerade, infiltration, interpellation, performativity, appropriation, identification, imitation, simulacrum, stealth).  Enabled by conventional semiotics, passing exploits a dominant gaze, unseeing in its assumed omnipresence.  At the same time, passing requires complex engagements with identity and presence, trespass and ambiguity.  The passer’s passage is not simply a camouflaged identity, but a counter existence.  By addressing a number of passing sites (e.g. race, gender, sexuality, class) while considering that passing always involves more than one vector, the seminar encourages student projects on passing that entail a wider variety of situations (e.g. ethnicity, age, migration, wellness).

William Simon
Mondays / 12:30-4:30pm / Room 652
4 points

CINE-GT 2205
Section 001 class # 22931
Section 002 class # 22932

This seminar will investigate the narrative conception and dynamics of Jean Renoir’s films with two major points of emphasis: 1.Their continuity with the visual culture of France of the 19^th century (suggested by the fact that his father was a great painter in the Impressionist tradition); and 2. The development of Renoir’s narrational style (especially the use of long takes) in relation to social, cultural, and political discourses of the period in which he was working. This seminar will concentrate on the Popular Front films of the 1930s, but will also consider shifts in the styles and contexts of the films during his American and Post-World War 2 periods. Class presentations, papers, readings required.

Marina Hassapopoulou
Thursdays / 12:30-4:30pm / Room 652
4 points
CINE-GT 2600 / Class # 22937

Interactive cinema broadly refers to a cluster of interrelated filmic practices that incorporate the audience into the construction of the work (e.g. through voting polls, motion sensors, and live performance) in order to create a participatory multimedia experience. This course will analyze the development and reception contexts of interactive films, ranging from early cinema and avant-garde experiments in Expanded Cinema to recent digital projects in software-generated films and virtual reality. A diverse spectrum of interactive genres will be discussed, including choose-your-own-adventure films, hypertexts, art installations, video games, virtual and augmented reality, mobile cinema, and web-based narratives. Through interactive screenings, media analysis, selected readings, discussions, presentations, and event visits, the course will establish connections between interactive cinema and canonical approaches to Film and Media Studies, while also indicating its relevance to current topics in the Digital Humanities. The course additionally aims to provide students with an alternative historiography that takes into account experimental practices that have not been fully incorporated into the field of Film and Media Studies, and to productively expand and interrogate the notion of cinema. The class will also work towards actively contributing to the expansion of the field of Film and Media Studies through group presentations related to media archeology, and through collaborative blogging for the Interactive Media Archive. Themes and key concepts include: cinema in the gallery/museum, intermediality, prosumption, narrative and authorship in the digital age, object oriented ontology, digital democracy, remix and appropriation, participatory culture, media convergence, hybridity, remediation, digital divides, and the ethics of interactivity. 

Space is limited for this seminar. Interested students must email the professor (mh193@nyu.edu) as soon as possible (preferably before April 14th) to apply for enrollment. In your application, briefly explain why you are interested in taking this course and how it relates to your research interests. 

Permission code required to register. All students should register for Section 001.

Zhen Zhang
Thursdays / 12:30-4:30pm / Room 635
4 points

CINE-GT 3105
Section 001 class # 21243
Section 002 class # 21244

The new Chinese documentary as an independent film practice emerged around 1989.  Prior to that, documentary film in China was exclusively produced and distributed within a state-controlled media system.  Paralleling and bearing witness to nearly three decades of rapid and large-scale economic and social transformations in China, the new documentary has also transformed itself into a multifaceted social movement involving filmmakers, critics, curators, and publics on a variety of platforms including the internet, and has caught the attention of both domestic and international film and arts festivals. Thus an integral aspect of the course will inquire into issues of technology, distribution, exhibition and reception.  

The seminar has three interconnected components: 1) Tracing a historical trajectory of the movement and to explore conceptual frameworks for understanding the dynamic relationships between aesthetic experimentations, socio-political exigencies and ethical responsibilities in the Chinese independent documentary;  2) Placing the evolving phenomenon in the Mainland within a broader Sinophone context and regional globalization, the course will bring in parallels or examples in Taiwan, analyzing their connections and divergences; 3) the 9th Reel China Biennial at NYU in November 2019 is an integral part of the course. 

Ed Guerrero
Thursdays / 6:00-10:00pm / Room 674
4 points

CINE-GT 1317
Section 001 class # 22928
Section 002 class # 22929

This course explores the rise and fall of Hollywood's "Blaxploitation" period and genre. As well we will look at the genre's continuing influence on American commercial cinema and popular culture. We will locate the fifty-odd films of the period in the cultural, political, ‘black identity and liberation' contexts at the end of the Civil Rights Movement, and at the rise of the Black Power and Black Aesthetics movements of the mid-‘70s. Also, we will explore what Blaxploitation was ‘saying' to (and about) its audience; how Blaxploitation draws upon black literary convention; the black crime novel; and black music and film noir. We will also examine Blaxploitation's niche in, and contribution to, Hollywood's political economy, and how Blaxploitation's aesthetic and cultural conventions, and formula have crossed over to address a broad popular audience in a number of popular contemporary films and popular cultural expressions.

Antonia Lant
Wednesdays / 12:30-4:30pm / Room 674
4 points

CINE-GT 1325
Section 001 class # 22925
Section 002 class # 22926

This course surveys the film musical genre from the coming of sound to the present, engaging the rich critical literature it has engendered. We examine the musical’s relation to technological changes (the use of optical sound, dubbing, widescreen, motion capture) and also to social and economic transformations (the rise of teen audiences, the Depression, shifting factors in casting decisions). By paying close attention to editing, cinematography, lighting and other aesthetic elements as well as to the multiple techniques of performance that build the musical’s milieu, we uncover both its utopian and its grittier sides.  The course pays attention to: the history of classical Hollywood musicals of the 1930s-1950s (with Maurice Chevalier, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse for example); a range of genre appropriations and deconstructions by non-Hollywood and often non-American filmmakers (Julie Dash, Chantal Akerman, Jacques Demy, Baz Luhrman, and Lars von Trier); and weighs more recent musical titles within this history (La La Land, et al).  Coursework: class participation, a short mid-term paper, a presentation and final paper. 

Howard Besser
Wednesdays / 12:30-4:30pm / Room 648
4 points

CINE-GT 1611
Section 001 class # 21605
Section 002 class # 21606

At the root of "Free Culture" and "Open Access" lies the idea that aesthetic and informational works, once shared with the public, become public resources that should be further shared, built upon, and incorporated into new creative works. This interdisciplinary class examines both ideas from a variety of perspectives: aesthetics, politics, law, and social movements. It pays particular attention to the relationship between these ideas and the rise of new forms of media that allow age-old concepts like "The Commons" to flourish. It also situates these ideas within longstanding practices of scholarship, librarianship, and artistic practice. The course places a focus on contemporary and very recent activities, and will also examine closely related ideas and movements such as "Information Wants to be Free", Illegal Art, Culture Jamming, Appropriation, Remix, Fair Use, Free Software/Open-Source, CopyLeft, and "Access to Knowledge". Prominent public figures will make presentations to the class. Guests (either in person or online) include: authors Siva Vaidhyanathan and David Bollier, Media Artists Craig Baldwin and Marshall Reese, Copyright attorney (and librarian and policy activist) Laura Quilter, and Renaissance man Rick Prelinger.

Dana Polan
Tuesdays / 6:00-10:00pm / 19 University Place, Room 102
4 points

CINE-GT 2123
Section 001 class # 21658
Section 002 class # 21659

This course offers a broad survey of American cinema from its beginnings (and even its pre-history) up to 1960.  While the emphasis will be on the dominant, narrative fiction film, there will be attention to other modes of American cinema such as experimental film, animation, shorts, and non-fiction film.  The course will look closely at films themselves -- how do their styles and narrative structures change over time? -- but also at contexts:  how do films reflect their times?  how does the film industry develop? what are the key institutions that had impact on American film over its history?  We will also attend to the role of key figures in film's history:  from creative personnel (for example, the director or the screenwriter) to industrialists and administrators, to censors to critics and to audiences themselves.  The goal will be to provide an overall understanding of one of the most consequential of modern popular art forms and of its particular contributions to the art and culture of our modernity.

Josslyn Luckett
Wednesdays / 12:30-4:30pm / Room 670
4 points

CINE-GT 2707
Section 001 class # 7614
Section 002 class # 7615

In the face of #OscarSoWhite, a staggering four out of five of the Academy Award nominated feature documentaries in 2017 were helmed by black directors. How does this fact shape our consideration of the placement of these four very different projects--I Am Not Your Negro, O.J.: Made in America, 13th, and Life, Animated--within a category called The Black Documentary Tradition? In other words, what is it about this cinematic tradition that makes (or does not make) these films black? In this course we will explore the history, politics, creative practices and distribution/exhibition legacies of this tradition in the US and across the diaspora, with particular focus on the activist impulse of much of the feminist and LGBTQ+ themed work of past two decades. Work by Thomas Allen Harris, Damani Baker, Aishah Shahidah Simmons, Ramadan Suleman & Bhekizizwe Peterson, will be put in conversation with the films of earlier veterans such as William Greaves, Camille Billops, Isaac Julien, Marlon Riggs and Michelle Parkerson.

Laura Harris
Thursdays / 12:30-4:30pm / Room 670
4 points

CINE-GT 3135
Section 001 class # 22934
Section 002 class # 22935

For this course, we will view moving pictures as part of a general theoretical exploration of bodies and their movement in the context of the industrial revolution, when moving pictures were invented, and in the broader context of modern racial capitalism and heteropatriarchy.  How is the movement of bodies registered and understood within these contexts?  How is the movement of bodies—both on and in front of the screen—also shaped by film practices and to what end?  We will consider, among other things:  posture, gesture and ambulation; the tension between the movement of bodies at work and the movement of the bodies in dance; and the tension between the individuation of bodies and their enmeshment with other bodies and/or the background/environment/plenum, etc.  We will draw on writing within film studies, but also performance studies and social and scientific theory in order to address the aesthetic and political dimensions of the various kinds of movement films and film practices bring into focus.

Richard Porton
Thursdays / 6:00-10:00pm / Room 652
4 points
CINE-GT 1141 / Class # 7473

This course will combine an in-depth examination of selected topics in the history of film criticism with an emphasis on assisting students to write their own reviews and critical essays. We will focus on distinctions between film criticism and theory, the relationship of cinephilia to the history of criticism, the importance of the essayistic tradition, the role of criticism in the age of the Internet, and the symbiosis between contemporary criticism and the festival circuit. Various modes of critical practice—auteurist, genre, formalist, political, feminist etc.—will be assessed. The challenges of reviewing mainstream films, as well as art cinema and avant-garde work, will be explored. Course readings will include seminal essays by, among others, Bazin, Agee, Kael, Sarris, Farber, Haskell, Macdonald, Daney, Durgnat, Rosenbaum, Hoberman, Mekas, and Adrian Martin. Students will be expected to write at least 1,000 words a week evaluating films screening in the New York City area.

This course is open only to Cinema Studies graduate students.

1-4 points variable
CINE-GT 2900 / Class # 7365
CINE-GT 2902 / Class # 7366

A student wishing to conduct independent research for credit must obtain approval from a faculty member 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 present a signed “Independent Study Form” at the department office when you register.  This form must be completely filled out, detailing your independent study project.  It must have your faculty sponsor’s signature (whomever you have chosen to work with - this is not necessarily your advisor) indicating their approval. 

1-4 points variable
CINE-GT 2950 / Class # 7513
CINE-GT 2952 / Class # 7514

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

4 points
CINE-GT 3907 / Class # 7371

Juana Suarez
Mondays / 12:30-4:30pm / Room 674
4 points
CINE-GT 1800 / Class # 7361

This course introduces all aspects of the field, contextualizes them, and shows how they fit together. It will discuss the media themselves (including the technology, history, and contextualization within culture, politics, and economics) Topics include: conservation and preservation principles, organization and access, daily practice with physical artifacts, restoration, curatorship and programming, legal issues and copyright, and new media issues. Students will learn the importance of other types of materials (manuscripts, correspondence, stills, posters, scripts, etc.). Theories of collecting and organizing (as well as their social meanings) will be introduced.

Gregory Cram
Thursdays / 6:30-9:30pm / Room 670
4 points
CINE-GT 1804 / Class # 7363

With the advent of new technologies, film producers and distributors and managers of film and video collections are faced with a myriad of legal and ethical issues concerning the use of their works or the works found in various collections. The answers to legal questions are not always apparent and can be complex, particularly where different types of media are encompassed in one production. When the law remains unclear, a risk assessment, often fraught with ethical considerations, is required to determine whether a production can be reproduced, distributed or exhibited without infringing the rights of others. What are the various legal rights that may encumber moving image material? What are the complex layers of rights and who holds them?Does one have to clear before attempting to preserve or restore a work? How do these rights affect downstream exhibition and distribution of a preserved work? And finally, what steps can be taken in managing moving image collections so that decisions affecting copyrights can be taken consistently? This course will help students make intelligent decisions and develop appropriate policies for their institution.

David Bagnall
Mondays / 6:20-9:00pm / Room 017
4 points
CINE-GT 1400 / Class # 7359

This course examines documentary principles, methods, and styles.  Both the function and the significance of the documentary in the social setting, and the ethics of the documentary are considered.

Faye Ginsburg
Tuesdays / 6:00-9:00pm / 25 Waverly Place, Kriser Room
4 points
CINE-GT 1402 / Class # 7360

This course explores the history and evolution of the genre of ethnographic film (and related experimental projects)  and the broad issues of cross-cultural representation that have emerged in the works and debates around it , from the early 20th century to the contemporary moment within the wider project of the representation of cultural lives.    We will consider the key works that have defined the genre, and the conceptual and formal innovations associated with them, addressing questions concerning documentary, realism, andsocial theory as well as the institutional structures through which they are funded, distributed, and seen by various audiences.  Throughout the course we will keep in mind the properties of film as a signifying practice, its status as a form of anthropological knowledge, and the ethical and political concerns raised by cross-cultural representation. Films are placed in the context of an evolving discursive field, shaped by concerns of the time and responses to critiques. What have the theoretical, political and cinematic responses been to efforts to create screen representations of culture, from the early romantic constructions of Robert Flaherty to current work in feature film, to the scientific cinema of the American post-war periods, to the experimental reflexivity of Jean Rouch and others, to the development of television and video on the part of indigenous people throughout the world over the last two decades, to recent experiments in sensory ethnography?

For approved Culture & Media students only. Other students must request permission of instructor.

Pegi Vail
Tuesdays / 11:00am-1:45pm / 25 Waverly Place, Room 502
4 points
CINE-GT 1995 / Class # 7364

Kenneth Dancyger
Thursdays / 3:30-6:10pm / Room 109
4 points
CINE-GT 1997 / Class # 7472

This class is designed to help the students analyze a film script. Premise, character population, plot and genre, dialogue, foreground, background, and story will all be examined. Using feature films, we will highlight these script elements rather than the integrated experience of the script, performance, directing, and editing elements of the film. Assignments will include three script analyses.

This course is open only to Cinema Studies graduate students. Limited seats available.