Summer 2016

INSTRUCTOR:  DR. JOSH GUNN

CMS f390P

SUMMER 2016, First Summer Session

TWTH 1-3:30 PM in CMB 2.104

CLASS SIZE = 5

 

This is a course in film theory and history, which is taught from a rhetorical perspective and organized around three themes: 1) the mode of production, or industry; 2) the apparatus, or the technology of cinematic experience; and 3) the "text," or the network of filmic elements (narrative, image, sound). While exploring each theme we will also work through and examine a set of concepts that have become established as the basic interpretive tools available to those studying and analyzing film as a rhetorical artifact: modes of production, the star, the spectator, narration, the gaze, sexual and racial difference within the visual field, the soundtrack, and the disembodied voice.  Our emphasis in the course is not on the appreciation of film art, but rather, on theory about film and film criticism.  In other words, we are concerned principally with what is at stake in a critical or rhetorical reading.

 

TEXTBOOK:

Reading packet from Jenn's Copies.  

OPTIONAL textbook: Hayward, CINEMA STUDIES: THE KEY CONCEPTS, ISBN: 0415367824

 

Restricted to CMS Graduate Students.  All other graduate students must get consent of instructor.