Field 1: Contemporary Film Theory: History of Vision and Perception
Description:
This area will address recent (post-1980) theoretical developments in the study of the moving image as well as the evolving perceptual mechanisms that influenced and were influenced by the rise of cinema at the turn of the twentieth century. Reflecting I especially intend to develop depth in phenomenological writings in contemporary film theory, their philosophical foundations (e.g. Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Gaston Bachelard) and relevant perspectives from visual culture. Major philosophers (among others) have become central to this field because they have repeatedly turned to perception and nature as contentious but fruitful critical categories for understanding the cultural production and reception of the moving image. I will also focus on theories that address the transposition, evolution and continuities between different media and aesthetics both contemporarily and historically, by including material that provides a theoretical basis as to how best to associate motifs and meanings produced in earlier forms of visual culture with equivalent ones occurring in the moving image. Therefore, especially pertinent are theses of a comparatist bent within Art History like Aby Warburgs iconology of survival (for film studies cf Philippe-Alain Michaud, Georges Didi-Huberman) and within Cultural Studies like Raymond Williams' residual and emergent cultural forms that will be brought in dialogue with contemporary debates around reception and meaning in cinema as an art among the others (cf Vivian Sobchack, Angela Dalle Vacche, Giuliana Bruno). Both of these dimensions, the phenomenological and the comparative reflect proliferating tendencies in contemporary apparatus theory, reception studies, comparative aesthetics, media theory, cultural history and theorizations of vision (ex. Crary, Jay) and so relevant texts from each of these fields that adopt or engage with the two above methodologies will be included here.
Courses Completed: 18 s.h.
Transfer Credits: 6 s.h. SP09 7AAQS565 French Cinema: History, Ideology, Aesthetics (King's College London) 3 s.h. Paper submitted: After the Death: The Figure of the Author in Contemporary French Film Theory SP10 7AAQS660 Master's Thesis (King's College London) 3 s.h. Between White Cubes and Dark Rooms: Authorial consistency in the gallery installation and cinema work of five contemporary filmmakers
To be published in part as: "Between White Cubes and Dark Rooms: Authoring Space across Films and Installations," October, Winter 2013, Issue 143. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
UI Seminars: 12 s.h. FA10 048:273 Advanced Film Theory 3 s.h. Topic: Contemporary Film Theory Corey Creekmur Dimitrios Latsis Plan of Study FA10 008:440 Seminar: Studies in 20 th Century 3 s.h. Topic: Joyce, Kittler and Everyday Life Cheryl Herr Paper Submitted: God becomes man becomes fish becomes barnacle goose Joycean re-productions of modernity in adaptations across media FA11 008:461 Seminar: Literary Criticism and Theory 3 s.h. Topic: Nietzsche and Heidegger: Metaphysics of Critique David Wittenberg SP12 08:260 Modes of Critical Analysis 3 s.h. Topic: Sensory Perception Kevin Kopelson Future Course to be Completed: FA12 048:273 Advanced Film Theory 3 s.h. Topic: The Afterlives of Classical Film Theory Corey Creekmur Total Hours: 21 s.h.
Field 2:American Cinema in Cultural Context: Pre-Cinema to 19 Description:
This area will be dedicated to the study of American cinema (from its roots to the early Hollywood studio system) in an intermedial, cultural context. I will focus on texts concerning the history of the development and deployment of the various technologies of representation that precede, intersect with or follow the institutionalization of cinema as a form of entertainment, culture and art. Early and silent cinema histories that focus on nation, narrative and aesthetics will be prominently represented in this area, as will studies dealing with genre (documentary, westerns), technique (sets, sound, projection) and modes of production (itinerant, amateur, commissioned, institutional). Texts chosen will reflect a dual focus on ideology and social context on the one hand and aesthetics on the other. Finally, an equal mix of history and theory of the cinema and more generally the visual culture of the period is to be included.
Courses Completed: 15 s.h.
Transfer Credits: 3 s.h.
FA08 7AAQS515 Art Cinema (King's College London) Dimitrios Latsis Plan of Study
Paper submitted: "Europeans in Early Hollywood: Sjstrm, Murnau, and the rate of an American Art Cinema Tradition
UI Seminars: 12 s.h. FA10 045:300 American Film and American Culture 3 s.h. Topic: Early American Cinema Lauren Rabinovitz SP11 048:275 Advanced Film History 3 s.h. Topic: Histories of Experimental Cinema Corey Creekmur FA11 01H:366 Seminar: Problems in American Art 3 s.h. Topic: Landscape in American Art Joni Kinsey Paper submitted: "The Moving Wind in the Trees: Motif and Stylistic Revivals of Landscape across Art and Cinema" focuses on early American film travelogues
SP12 048:277 Studies in Sound and Image 3 s.h. Topic: Hollywood Standardizes Sound Rick Altman Future Courses to be Completed: FA12 045:100 Independent Study 2 s.h. Topic: Early US Cinema & Visual Cultures Lauren Rabinovitz SP13 01H:170 Modernism and Early Twentieth-Century American Art Joni Kinsey 3 s.h.
Total Hours: 20 s.h.
Field 3: Landscape in American Cinema
Description:
Since cinema's origins and indeed from its precedents to the conclusion of New Deal-era artistic and cultural programs (many of which adopted regionalist and naturalist aesthetics), American movies have disseminated and render the natural landscape into narratives for a national and international audience. This area encompasses the political, hermeneutic and historical parameters of this phenomenon. This area is primarily concerned with specific filmic modes and genres: early westerns, travelogues, early documentaries, government-sponsored films, films by foreign filmmakers mostly set in US landscapes, non-theatrical films (e.g. as part of amusements or other attractions), as well as set design of artificial landscapes. In addition, the thematic mode of landscape will be extended to adaptations and exchanges between film and photography, paintings, postcards, panoramas, and stereography and other forms of contemporaneous visual culture. What unifies this area is the framing of the land to express concerns like nationhood, mobility, and the narrative of empire. Understood as an inter-medial corpus, landscape in American moving images is an integral parameter of the national artistic Dimitrios Latsis Plan of Study tradition of the United States. The contents of the area will be informed by all three fields (Film Studies, American Studies and Art History) and the periodization will (primarily, but not exclusively) extend from the rich period of increased intermedial interaction in visual culture during the years of pre-cinema in the nineteenth century to the end of WWII, both for pragmatic reasons and because of the changes that the War brought, on a practical and aesthetic level to the figuration of the land on screen, at home and abroad. Natural landscape here is not meant as a flat, two-dimensional projection, a surface or background of decorative valence, void of meaning, history or context. Contrary to such a conception, the present area will include material that approaches landscape as a four- dimensional (adding the horizon of time), wholly rounded and enveloping spatial category that is worked and reworked within culture and whose production and reception can reveal a lot about a societys self-image and ideology.
Courses Completed: 12 s.h. Transfer Credits: 3 s.h. SP10 7AAQS560 Media Aesthetics (King's College London) 3 s.h. Paper submitted: Rosy-Fingered Dawn: Natural Sublime in the Landscapes of Terrence Malick UI Seminars: 9 s.h. SP11 008:452 Seminar in American Literature: Walt WhitmanEd Folsom 3 s.h. Paper Submitted: A Soul Sown in Soil: Natural Landscape in the Poetry of Walt Whitman SP 11 048: 273 Advanced Film Theory 3 s.h. Topic: Phenomenologies of Sound and ImageSteve Choe Paper submitted: Dwelling, Seeing, Meaning: Cinema Landscapes and Merleau- Pontys Late Thought on Nature FA11 048:112 Proseminar in Cinema and Culture 1 s.h. Topic: Environmental Cinema Kyle Stine SP12 01H:194 Independent Study in Art History Topic: Landscape and the Moving Image Joni Kinsey 2 s.h.
Future Courses to be Completed: FA12 045: 250 Seminar: Topics in American Studies 3 s.h. Topic: The Culture of Nature Technologies of Landscape Laura Rigal
Total Hours: 15 s.h. Dimitrios Latsis Plan of Study Research Skill: Professionalization, Research and Pedagogy Transfer Credits: 3 s.h. FA 08 7AAQS500 Formations Of Film Studies (King's College London) 3 s.h. KCL Description: An advanced introduction to contemporary approaches to film studies. In this course, students will critically examine a range of contemporary approaches to the study of a particular aspect of film: from a consideration of the cultural-historical factors that bear upon the formation of the field itself, to an examination of the historical and theoretical issues raised by the study of film style and its relationship to spectatorship. UI Seminars: 6 s.h. SU211 008N:340 Writing for Learned Journals 3 s.h. SU12 007P:217 Seminar in College Teaching 3 s.h.
Relevant Translations: (forthcoming) An Original Translation of Martin Heideggers 'The Provenance of Art and the Destination of Thought' Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, Vol 43, No 3 (October 2012) (ISSN: 0164-0771) Dimitrios Latsis Plan of Study Relevant Research & Publications Addendum
-Publications:
Rosy-Fingered Dawn: The Natural Sublime in the work of Terrence Malick Refractory: A Journal of Entertainment Media (ISSN: 1447-4905), Vol 17, 2010. Melbourne, University of Melbourne, Australia.
God becomes man becomes fish becomes barnacle goose : Joycean re-productions of modernity in adaptations across media. Intermedialits (ISSN: 1705-8546) no 5 Thatralizer, 2011 (ed Jean-Marc Larrue), Montral, QC: Universit de Montral.
Between White Cubes and Dark Rooms: Authoring Space across Films and Installations October (ISSN 0162-2870), Winter 2013, Issue 143. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
(forthcoming) Nature's Nation on the Screen: Discursive Functions of the Natural Landscape in Early American Films Amerikastudien/American Studies (ISSN: 0340-2827) Deutsche Gesellschaft fr Amerikastudien (DGfA) / German Association for American Studies, Winter Verlag Heidelberg.
(forthcoming) Review of Roll Away the Reel World: James Joyce and Cinema (ed John McCourt), University of Cork Press The Irish Review (ISSN:0790-7850), Issue 45, Cork, Ireland, University of Cork Press.
-Under Review:
Expanding Cinema: Perception and Genealogies of Para-Cinematic Screen Practices in American Avant-Garde Cinema Moving Image Review & Art Journal (ISSN: 2045-6301) submitted Mar 2012
Genealogy of the Image in Histoire(s) du Cinema: Godard, Warburg and the iconology of the interstice Third Text (ISSN: 0952-8822) submitted July 2012
-Recent Conference Presentations: Dwelling, Seeing, Meaning: A Phenomenological Reflection on Cinematic Landscapes European Studies Group Annual Conference, University of Iowa (December 2011, Iowa City, IA)
Cinematic Landscapes and Merleau-Pontys Late Thought on Nature American Philosophical Association Central Division Annual Conference Society for the Philosophical Study of the Contemporary Visual Arts (February 2012, Chicago, IL) Dimitrios Latsis Plan of Study Expanding Cinema: Genealogies of the Para-cinematic within American Avant-Garde Cinema (paper) Expanded Cinema in Four Dimensions: Origins, Senses, Interactivity, Publicness (Panel Chair) 2012 Conference of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies(March 2012, Boston, MA)
The Moving Wind in the Trees: Motivic and Stylistic Revivals of Landscape Across Art and Cinema Mimesis Now, University of Rochester (April 2012, Rochester, NY)
Utopian Landscapes and Sci-fi Autobiography: An Iconological Approach to Terrence Malicks The Tree of Life (2011) 8th Annual Religion, Literature, and the Arts Conference at the University of Iowa Futures and Illusions: Hope and the Longing for Utopia 24-26 August 2012
-Qualification Exams: Theory Area: Film Theory 1990-Present History Area:US Cinema, Origins to 1930
-Professional Memberships: Society for Cinema and Media Studies American Philosophical Association Society for the Philosophical Study of the Contemporary Visual Arts Interdisciplinary Coalition of North American Phenomenologists Merleau-Ponty Circle