FMST 800/3 - Archiveology: Theorizing the Moving Image Archive
This is the first half of a six-credit course. In this semester we will investigate theories of the archive, the culture of image recycling, and practices of image collection, storage and retrieval. Selected readings on the archive will be explored alongside the study of filmmaking practices that draw on the moving image archive.
FMST 600/3 - Methods in Film Studies or, Ways of Writing/Thinking about Film
This is the only mandatory course in the MA in Film Studies. It is designed to help students develop research, writing and presentation skills appropriate to the discipline of film studies. In addition to technical and practical matters, the course is about developing the questions that guide film studies research, and to facilitate an esprit de corps within the M.A. class. The screenings and readings will provide the ground for an analysis of the tools and methods of film studies. We will analyse the ways that film history, criticism and textual analysis has been and can be written. We will also explore some of the theories underpinning these methods, and get a sense of the variety of ways of seeing, interpreting and understanding cinema.
The screenings for this course have been chosen to complement the assigned articles, and to provide a chronological survey of film history. One theme that runs throughout the films is that of cities and cinematic representations of urban space. We will discuss how this theme informs different film practices and critical methods, and it will provide some links between an otherwise diverse corpus of films.
HUMA 889 - Winter 2003: Walter Benjamin
Although Walter Benjamin’s writing was not fully appreciated in his own time, in recent years scholars and critics from many disciplines have been drawn to his work. An extremely unconventional theorist, Benjamin’s writing is poetic and fragmentary, and has spawned many competing interpretations and applications. The focus of this course will be on Benjamin’s own writing, a great deal of which has only recently been translated and published in English. Secondary sources will be recommended and discussed, but we will concentrate on the primary sources.
Benjamin wrote about a plethora of cultural artefacts, including literature, poetry, theatre, architecture, fashion, children’s toys, film and photography, in addition to subjects of philosophy and history. He also wrote several substantial autobiographical and diaristic essays reflecting on his travels throughout Europe and his childhood in Berlin. Given the diversity of themes and topics within Benjamin’s oeuvre, it seems particularly appropriate to an interdisciplinary graduate programme. Students from every branch of the humanities should be able to find a foothold within his writing. Moreover, one could argue that he practised a certain kind of interdisciplinarity himself, moving constantly between political theory, philosophy, historiography, literary criticism and cultural analysis. Insofar as Benjamin’s own methods of theory and criticism are highly unorthodox (and partially responsible for the delay in his scholarly recognition), the course will also provide a context for discussion of the conventions and possibilities of humanities methodologies.
The period in which Benjamin produced his major works, between 1925 and 1940 is highly significant to his notions of modernity, history and culture. Benjamin was essentially a freelance writer in Europe between the two world wars, constantly on the move from Germany through Switzerland, Italy, France and Scandinavia and his theory was intimately related to the political and cultural shifts of the period.
FMST 409/4 - Seminar in Women and Film (Winter 2000)
This course is an advanced seminar that follows the lecture course FMST 329, Women and Film. It concerns issues in feminist film theory and criticism, as well as independent filmmaking by women. The focus of the course is on both the screenings and the readings, which cover a wide range of positions and strategies of feminist film theory and practice. We will explore the ways that feminist film theory, criticism and practice has evolved since the 1970s; how issues such as psychoanalysis, spectatorship, race, genre and sexual orientation have informed discussions of women and film. We will also explore some of the ways that feminist film criticism has provoked a re-examination of American film history, and investigate some of the more recent methodologies employed by feminist film scholars, including costume, pornography, star system and consumerism.
FMST 411D/4 - Topics in Film Genres: The Western (Winter 1999)
This seminar examines the "decline" of the Western, a time when its persistent and yet paradoxical power to both create and subvert myth is most readily apparent. The seminar begins in 1955 with Anthony Mann's The Far Country and ends in 1996 with Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man.