Seats available in CMCL Courses

CMCL C392 Media Genres Section  32741 Topic: Queer Cinemas and Beyond
MW 4:00-5:15 pm

The rubric of queer cinema incorporates a diverse range of films. While largely focused on films made "by and for" lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) audiences, in recent years queer cinema has come to encapsulate more broadly films and videos that challenge viewers' notions of social and cultural norms, particularly in terms of sex and gender. This introductory course offers students an in-depth survey of queer cinema and queer writing on cinema from the early twentieth century to the present.  Spanning a wide range of genres, modes and styles - from thriller to documentary, sex education film to popular "indie" film, and classic melodrama to home movie -  students explore the complex relationship between queer cinema and the many cultural and industrial contexts that have shaped and been shaped by it. Areas of study include: the censorship-challenging films of sixties underground filmmakers such as Andy Warhol and Lloyd Reckford, pre-Stonewall home movies made within LGBT cultures, liberationist cinema in the 1970s, lesbian documentary, New Queer Cinema, recent queer world cinema, and self-representation in the made-for-YouTube video (such as the "It Gets Better" Project).

This course carries CASE A & H Breadth of Inquiry Credit.

 

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CMCL C445 Media, Culture and Politics Section 32742 TOPIC:  American Independent Cinema

MW 1:00-2:15pm

 

This course examines independent cinema in the USA from the mid-twentieth century to the present. Through a combination of weekly lectures, seminars, film screenings and assigned reading, this course introduces students to key films and directors from this period through an exploration of the aesthetic characteristics and the social and institutional contexts which mark this form of filmmaking and cinema-going. A central question this course asks is how we can identify "independent" filmmaking today when each of the major Hollywood studios has developed independent subsidiaries. Complicating matters further, what value does the term "independent" currently have, and is it even an applicable term, in the case of big-budget "indies" that receive widespread recognition and economic success, even claiming Academy Awards? With this in mind, an overall concern of the class will be whether the term "independent" is anything more than a form of branding within the context of commercial feature film production, with its own system of stars, auteurs, and producers, or if the circumstances of independent production, distribution, and exhibition are more varied and complex than we might initially think.