AFRICAAM 49S:
African Futures: Nationalism, Pan-Africanism, and Beyond (HISTORY 49S)
This course examines decolonization and its aftermath in sub-Saharan Africa. With a "wind of change" sweeping the continent, how did Africans imagine their futures together? From W.E.B. Du Bois to Black Panther, this course will engage in historical readings of political essays, speeches, film, and literature to consider how Africans envisioned their communities beyond empire. Topics will include a variety of projects for African unity, from experiments with Pan-Africanism, to religious revivalism, to Afrofuturist art and aesthetics.
Last offered: Autumn 2019
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
AFRICAAM 53S:
Black San Francisco (HISTORY 53S)
For over a century African-Americans have shaped the contours of San Francisco, a globally recognized metropolis, but their histories remain hidden. While endangered, Black San Francisco is still very much alive, and its history is an inextricable piece of the city's social and cultural fabric. This course aims to uncover the often-overlooked history of African-Americans in the city of San Francisco. The history of Black San Francisco unravels the myth of San Francisco liberalism showing how systemic racial oppression greatly limited the social mobility of non-whites well into the 20th century. Conversely, this course will also highlight the rich cultural and artistic legacies of Black San Franciscans with special attention on their ability to create social. Starting with the small, but influential middle and upper classes of African-Americans, who supported abolitionism from the West in the mid-late nineteenth century, to the rapid growth of the black population during WWII and moving through post-war struggles against the forces of Jim Crow and environmental racism. This course will explore: What is Black San Francisco? How did African-Americans shape the culture and politics of San Francisco, and where does the history of Black San Francisco fit into the broader national historical narrative? Conversely, what is unique about San Francisco and similar black communities in the West? How do we reconstruct the past of people going South to West as opposed to South to North? And finally, as raised in the critically acclaimed 2019 film, The Last Black Man in San Francisco and eluded by the late Dr. Martin Luther King, where does black San Franciscans, go from here?
Last offered: Autumn 2021
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
AFRICAAM 101Q:
Black & White Race Relations in American Fiction & Film (AMSTUD 42Q, CSRE 41Q)
Movies and the fiction that inspires them; power dynamics behind production including historical events, artistic vision, politics, and racial stereotypes. What images of black and white does Hollywood produce to forge a national identity? How do films promote equality between the races? What is lost or gained in film adaptations of books? NOTE: Students must attend the first day; admission to the class will be determined based on an in class essay.
Last offered: Winter 2020
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
AFRICAAM 113A:
African American Ecologies (ENGLISH 113A)
African American perspectives on the environment have long been suppressed in mainstream ecological discourse, despite the importance of questions of land, labor, and resource to the historical and ongoing experiences of Black people in the United States. Against this exclusion, this course takes up African American literature as a unique site of ecological knowledge and environmental thought. Drawing on texts, art, music, and film from the late nineteenth century to the present, this course considers planetary problems of ecological catastrophe and climatic change in relation to the everyday structures of U.S.-American racial politics. Through close analyses of texts and films set on plantations and steamships, in gardens and coal mines, students will explore the environmental dimensions of African American literature, and gain a deeper understanding of the real-world histories with which these works engage. Texts will include novels by Zora Neale Hurston, Percival Everett, and Toni Morrison, short stories and essays by Charles Chesnutt, Jamaica Kincaid, Katherine McKittrick, and adrienne marie brown, and films and multimedia works by Julie Dash, Stephanie Dinkins, and Jordan Peele. Important topics will include the ecology of the plantation, black feminist ecological thought, and the significance of water in African American life and culture.
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
AFRICAAM 123:
Introduction to Global Black Diaspora Studies I: Diaspora, Literature, Cosmopolitanism
While centering the Black experience, this course will also take a comparative view of Diaspora Studies to establish modes of confluence and difference between the Black diaspora and other worldwide diasporas. Issues to be discussed will include questions of definition and nomenclature. What is a diaspora and what are its essential features? What are the differences between victim diasporas, labor diasporas, trade diasporas, and ethno-political diasporas? What is the relationship between place and belonging, between territory and memory? How have the experiences of migration and dislocation challenged the modern assumption that the nation-state should be the limit of identification? What effect has the emergence of new communications media had upon the coherence of cultural and political boundaries? How do these questions relate to ideas about cosmopolitanism and its relation to ethical universalism? All of these questions and many more form the subject matter of Global Black Diaspora Studies. The second part of the course will continue to examine the historical and contemporary movements of peoples and the complex issues of identity and experience to which these processes give rise, as well as the creative possibilities that flow from movement and being moved. This will be done through literary examples. Texts to be discussed will include Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad, Nella Larsen, Passing, Dionne Brand, What We All Long For, and NoViolet Bulawayo, We Need New Names. This class focuses on literature but will also include film, non-fiction, and scholarly articles. No experience in literary study is expected, and grades are based on class discussion, short reflection papers, and an extended essay or creative project. There are no exams in this class.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 1-4
AFRICAAM 145B:
Introduction to African Studies I: Africa in the 20th Century (HISTORY 145B)
(AFRICAAM/HISTORY 45B is 3 units; AFRICAAM/HISTORY 145B is 5 units.) CREATIVITY. AGENCY. RESILIENCE. This is the African history with which this course will engage. African scholars and knowledge production of Africa that explicitly engages with theories of race and global Blackness will take center stage. TRADE. RELIGION. CONQUEST. MIGRATION. These are the transformations of the 20th century which we shall interrogate and reposition. Yet these groundbreaking events did not happen in a vacuum. As historians, we also think about the continent's rich traditions and histories prior to the 20th century. FICTION. NONFICTION. FILM. MUSIC. Far from being peripheral to political transformation, African creative arts advanced discourse on gender, technology, and environmental history within the continent and without. We will listen to African creative artists not only as creators, but as agents for change.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, GER:EC-GlobalCom, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
AFRICAAM 149:
African Voices: Literature and Arts in 20th Century South Africa (HISTORY 48S)
How did South African Black intellectuals and artists utilize literature and other artistic forms to articulate their increasingly precarious position in the country's political landscape in the 20th century? What hopes and visions were captured through their works? Engaging with numerous sources ranging from speeches, newspapers, short stories, novels, music, film, paintings to photographs, we will explore what Ntongela Masilela calls "New African modernity"--a movement pioneered by different generations of Black intellectuals and artists. We will grapple with the notion of art as political, and the salience of Black women's works in contexts of double marginalization. This class lies at the intersection of intellectual, cultural, and literary histories.
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
AFRICAAM 189:
Zora Neale Hurston (AMSTUD 187)
An exploration of the life, times, and works of Zora Neale Hurston, who died in obscurity in 1960 despite having published more books than any other African American woman. We will encounter the diversity of Hurston's interests across a range of media - her training as an anthropologist, her work in the folk cultures of the American South and the urban environment of the North, her diasporic interest in Black expression in the US, the Caribbean, and Africa. We will read Hurston's plays, short stories, folklore, essays, anthropology, and novels, and consider her interest in - and contributions to - photography, film, and music."
Last offered: Spring 2023
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE, WAY-EDP
AFRICAAM 244:
Re(positioning) Disability: Historical, Cultural, and Social Lenses (CSRE 143, EDUC 144, PEDS 246D)
This course is designed to introduce undergraduate students of any major to important theoretical and practical concepts regarding special education, disability, and diversity. This course primarily addresses the social construction of disability and its intersection with race and class through the critical examination of history, law, social media, film, and other texts. Students will engage in reflection about their own as well as broader U.S. discourses moving towards deeper understanding of necessary societal and educational changes to address inequities. Successful completion of this course fulfills one requirement for the School of Education minor in Education.
Last offered: Autumn 2021
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP
AFRICAAM 256:
Black Contemporary Filmmakers (AMSTUD 256, FILMEDIA 257)
Despite the systemic inequalities of the Hollywood system, there is a robust, stylistically diverse cohort of African-American writer/directors at work, including Barry Jenkins, Ava DuVernay, and Ryan Coogler. Jenkins' films (Moonlight, If Beale Street Could Talk), are aesthetically lush, intimate, and understated. DuVernay (When They See Us) foregrounds racial history and injustice in her feature films, television, and documentary work. Coogler followed his realist Fruitvale Station with two powerful genre films with black protagonists (Creed, Black Panther - this last the highest-grossing film by a black director).
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
AFRICAAM 291:
Riot: Visualizing Civil Unrest in the 20th and 21st Centuries (AFRICAAM 491, ARTHIST 291, ARTHIST 491, CSRE 290, CSRE 390, FILMEDIA 291, FILMEDIA 491)
This seminar explores the visual legacy of civil unrest in the United States. Focusing on the 1965 Watts Rebellion, 1992 Los Angeles Riots, 2014 Ferguson Uprising, and 2020 George Floyd Uprisings students will closely examine photographs, television broadcasts, newspapers, magazines, and film and video representations of unrest. Additionally, students will visually analyze the works of artists who have responded to instances of police brutality and challenged the systemic racism, xenophobia, and anti-Black violence leading to and surrounding these events.
Last offered: Autumn 2021
| Units: 4-5
AFRICAAM 491:
Riot: Visualizing Civil Unrest in the 20th and 21st Centuries (AFRICAAM 291, ARTHIST 291, ARTHIST 491, CSRE 290, CSRE 390, FILMEDIA 291, FILMEDIA 491)
This seminar explores the visual legacy of civil unrest in the United States. Focusing on the 1965 Watts Rebellion, 1992 Los Angeles Riots, 2014 Ferguson Uprising, and 2020 George Floyd Uprisings students will closely examine photographs, television broadcasts, newspapers, magazines, and film and video representations of unrest. Additionally, students will visually analyze the works of artists who have responded to instances of police brutality and challenged the systemic racism, xenophobia, and anti-Black violence leading to and surrounding these events.
Last offered: Autumn 2021
| Units: 4-5
AMSTUD 1B:
Media, Culture, and Society (COMM 1B)
The institutions and practices of mass media, including television, film, radio, and digital media, and their role in shaping culture and social life. The media's shifting relationships to politics, commerce, and identity.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
AMSTUD 27Q:
Fashion and Photography
Preference to sophomores. Seminar on the history of 20th and 21st century fashion photographs, with a focus on American examples. Topics include: the relationship of fashion and photography to modernity; interplay between mass consumption and luxury; intersection of art and commerce; the role of designers, photographers, editors, and models; studio v. street photography; and the place of mass media, alternative magazines, and online publications. Photographers covered: Edward Steichen, Louise Dahl-Wolfe, Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, Steven Meisel, and others. Readings on American culture, film, photography, and fashion.
Last offered: Winter 2019
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
AMSTUD 42Q:
Black & White Race Relations in American Fiction & Film (AFRICAAM 101Q, CSRE 41Q)
Movies and the fiction that inspires them; power dynamics behind production including historical events, artistic vision, politics, and racial stereotypes. What images of black and white does Hollywood produce to forge a national identity? How do films promote equality between the races? What is lost or gained in film adaptations of books? NOTE: Students must attend the first day; admission to the class will be determined based on an in class essay.
Last offered: Winter 2020
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
AMSTUD 100B:
History of World Cinema II: The Films of Ernst Lubitsch (FILMEDIA 100B, FILMEDIA 300B)
Provides an overview of cinema made around the world between 1930 and 1960, highlighting technical, cultural, political, and economic forces that shaped mid-twentieth-century cinema. We study key film movements and national cinemas towards developing a formal, historical, and theoretical appreciation of a variety of commercial and art film traditions. Specific topics may vary by term/year/instructor. This term's topic: Ernst Lubitsch was: a stage actor in Berlin; a comic actor in early German cinema; Germany's most profitable director in the early 1920s; a director of subtle silent comedies in Hollywood in the later `20s; an innovative director of sound musicals and comedies in the 1930s; head of production for Paramount Pictures; and one of the few directors whose name and likeness were familiar to audiences across America, one famed for what became known as The Lubitsch Touch. The course considers Lubitsch in all these contexts. Charts intersections with collaborators, genre conventions, sexuality and censorship, and studio control. Lubitsch's style depends on performance, so attention will be given to film acting as he came to shape it.
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
AMSTUD 106A:
A.I.: Artificial Intelligence in Fiction
From self-driving cars to bots that alter democratic elections, artificial intelligence is growing increasingly powerful and prevalent in our everyday lives. Literature has long been speculating about the techno-utopia and catastrophe that A.I. could usher in. Indeed, literature itself presents us with a kind of A.I. in the many characters that speak and think in its pages. But how do we classify an intelligence as "artificial" or not? Is there a clear boundary that demarcates bodies from machines? What, if anything, separates the "genre" of technology from that of literature? What classifies literature as "science fiction," "scientific," "futuristic," "psychological," or "dystopian"? And can technology or literature ever overcome the ultimate division between all intelligences - the problem of other minds? This course consists in curated multi-genre combinations of literature, philosophy, film, and television that explore what makes someone - or something - a person in our world today. Special events will include celebrating the current bicentennial of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) in Stanford Special Collections; a possible visit to Stanford's A.I. Laboratory; and chatting with the ELIZA chatbot.
Last offered: Autumn 2018
| Units: 5
AMSTUD 109Q:
American Road Trips (HISTORY 69Q)
"Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road." --Jack Kerouac, On the Road, 1957. From Jack Kerouac's On the Road to Cheryl Strayed's Wild, this course explores epic road trips of the twentieth century. Travel is a fundamental social and cultural practice through which Americans have constructed ideas about the self, the nation, the past, and the future. The open road, as it is often called, offered excitement, great adventure, and the space for family bonding and memory making. But the footloose and fancy-free nature of travel that Jack Kerouac celebrated was available to some travelers but not to all. Engaging historical and literary texts, film, autobiography, memoir, photography, and music, we will consider the ways that travel and road trips have been represented in American culture. This course examines the following questions: How did men and women experience travel differently? How did the motivations for travel change over time? What role did race, ethnicity, class, relationships, and sexuality play in these trips? Students will work together to plan a road trip of their own which the class will take during the quarter.
Last offered: Autumn 2017
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
AMSTUD 120B:
Superhero Theory (ARTHIST 120, ARTHIST 320, FILMEDIA 120, FILMEDIA 320)
With their fantastic powers, mutable bodies, multiple identities, complicated histories, and visual dynamism, the American superhero has been a rich vehicle for fantasies (and anxieties) for 80+ years across multiple media: comics, film, animation, TV, games, toys, apparel. This course centers upon the body of the superhero as it incarnates allegories of race, queerness, hybridity, sexuality, gendered stereotypes/fluidity, politics, vigilantism, masculinity, and monstrosity. They also embody a technological history that encompasses industrial, atomic, electronic, bio-genetic, and digital.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
AMSTUD 124A:
The American West (ARTHIST 152, ENGLISH 124, HISTORY 151, POLISCI 124A)
The American West is characterized by frontier mythology, vast distances, marked aridity, and unique political and economic characteristics. This course integrates several disciplinary perspectives into a comprehensive examination of Western North America: its history, physical geography, climate, literature, art, film, institutions, politics, demography, economy, and continuing policy challenges. Students examine themes fundamental to understanding the region: time, space, water, peoples, and boom and bust cycles.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
AMSTUD 126:
California Dreaming
'A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest,' writes Joan Didion, 'remembers it most obsessively, wrenches it from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves it so radically that he remakes it in his image.' From the Gold Rush to Hollywood to Silicon Valley, Yosemite to the Salton Sea, in this course we'll encounter a series of writers and artists whose work is set in California, or participates in its imagining, and throughout consider how culture and a sense of place are closely related. How does a novel, photograph, or film conjure a landscape or community? When we think of California, whose stories are included, and whose are left out? Possible texts: works by Mary Austin, Cesar Chavez, Mike Davis, the Depression-era Federal Writers Project, Rebecca Solnit, and John Steinbeck; films: Sunset Boulevard, Clueless, and There Will Be Blood; and the art of Carlton Watkins, Dorothea Lange, Richard Misrach, and Chiura Obata. For the final paper, students will write about a California place of their choice.
Last offered: Winter 2022
| Units: 5
AMSTUD 126Q:
California Dreaming
'A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest,' writes Joan Didion, 'remembers it most obsessively, wrenches it from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves it so radically that he remakes it in his image.' From the Gold Rush to Hollywood to Silicon Valley, Yosemite to the Salton Sea, in this course we'll encounter a series of writers and artists whose work is set in California, or participates in its imagining, and throughout consider how culture and a sense of place are closely related. How does a novel, photograph, or film conjure a landscape or community? When we think of California, whose stories are included, and whose are left out? Possible texts: works by Mary Austin, Cesar Chavez, Mike Davis, the Depression-era Federal Writers Project, Rebecca Solnit, and John Steinbeck; films: Sunset Boulevard, Clueless, and There Will Be Blood; and the art of Carlton Watkins, Dorothea Lange, Richard Misrach, and Chiura Obata. For the final paper, students will write about a California place of their choice.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
AMSTUD 129:
Animation and the Animated Film (FILMEDIA 129, FILMEDIA 329, FILMEDIA 429)
The fantasy of an image coming to life is ancient, but not until the cinema was this fantasy actualized. The history of the movies begins with optical toys, and contemporary cinema is dominated by films that rely on computer animation. This course considers the underlying fantasies of animation in art and lit, its phenomenologies, its relation to the uncanny, its status as a pure cinema, and its place in film theory. Different modes of production and style to be explored include realist animation, abstract animation; animistic animation; animated drawings, objects, and puppets; CGI, motion capture, and live/animation hybrids.
Last offered: Autumn 2017
| Units: 3-5
AMSTUD 145:
Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley. The site and source of vibrant economic growth and technological innovation. A disruptive force in social, economic, and political systems. An interface between technology and academia, with the the quirky influence of the counterculture in the background. A surprisingly agile cultural behemoth that has reshaped human relationships and hierarchies of all sorts. A brotopia built on the preferences and predilections of rich, geeky white guys. A location with perpetually sunny skies and easy access to beaches and mountains. This seminar will unpack the myths surrounding Silicon Valley by exploring the people, places, industries, and ideas that have shaped it from post-WWII to the present. It takes an interdisciplinary approach to the subject and considers region's history and development; the products of Silicon Valley, from computers and circuit boards to search algorithms and social networks; and Silicon Valley's depictions in photography, film, television, and literature.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
AMSTUD 146A:
Steinbeck
Introduction to the work of an American writer, beloved by general readers, often reviled by critics, whose career spanned from the Great Depression through World War II to the social upheavals of the 1960s. Focus on the social and political contexts of Steinbeck's major works; his fascination with California and Mexico; his interdisciplinary interest in marine biology and in philosophy; his diverse experiments with literary form, including drama and film.
Last offered: Spring 2023
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
AMSTUD 148:
Los Angeles: A Cultural History (CSRE 148R, HISTORY 148C)
This course traces a cultural history of Los Angeles from the early twentieth century to the present. Approaching popular representations of Los Angeles as our primary source, we discuss the ways that diverse groups of Angelenos have represented their city on the big and small screens, in the press, in the theater, in music, and in popular fiction. We focus in particular on the ways that conceptions of race and gender have informed representations of the city. Possible topics include: fashion and racial violence in the Zoot Suit Riots of the Second World War, Disneyland as a suburban fantasy, cinematic representations of Native American life in Bunker Hill in the 1961 film The Exiles, the independent black cinema of the Los Angeles Rebellion, the Anna Deaver Smith play Twilight Los Angeles about the civil unrest that gripped the city in 1992, and the 2019 film Once Upon a Time¿in Hollywood.
Last offered: Winter 2021
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
AMSTUD 154D:
American Disaster (ENGLISH 154D, SOC 154A)
How do we make sense of catastrophe? Who gets to write or make art about floods, fires, or environmental collapse? How do disaster and its depiction make visible or exacerbate existing social and economic inequalities? Beginning with the Jamestown colony and continuing to the present, this course explores the long history of disaster on the North American continent, and how it has been described by witnesses, writers, and artists. From the 1793 Philadelphia yellow fever epidemic to Hurricane Katrina, the Dust Bowl to contemporary explorations of climate change, this seminar will put in conversation a wide range of primary and secondary materials. Possible texts include writings by Mike Davis, Katherine Anne Porter, Rebecca Solnit, Jesmyn Ward, and Richard Wright; films Wildlife (2018), First Reformed (2017), When the Levees Broke (2006), and Free Willy II (1995); and art by Dorothea Lange, Winslow Homer, and Richard Misrach. For the final paper, students will write a critical essay on a disaster novel, film, or other work or object of their choice, or develop their own creative piece or oral history.
Last offered: Spring 2022
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
AMSTUD 187:
Zora Neale Hurston (AFRICAAM 189)
An exploration of the life, times, and works of Zora Neale Hurston, who died in obscurity in 1960 despite having published more books than any other African American woman. We will encounter the diversity of Hurston's interests across a range of media - her training as an anthropologist, her work in the folk cultures of the American South and the urban environment of the North, her diasporic interest in Black expression in the US, the Caribbean, and Africa. We will read Hurston's plays, short stories, folklore, essays, anthropology, and novels, and consider her interest in - and contributions to - photography, film, and music."
Last offered: Spring 2023
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE, WAY-EDP
AMSTUD 207B:
Biography and History (HISTORY 207, HISTORY 308, JEWISHST 207)
Designed along the lines of the PBS series, "In the Actor's Workshop," students will meet weekly with some of the leading literary biographers writing today. Included this spring will be "New Yorker" staff writer Judith Thurman -- whose biography of Isak Dinesen was made into the film "Out of Africa" -- as well as Shirley Jackson biographer Ruth Franklin, now at work on a book about Anne Frank. Professor Zipperstein will share with the class drafts of the biography of Philip Roth that he is now writing. Critics questioning the value of biography as an historical and literary tool will also be invited to meetings with the class.
Last offered: Spring 2022
| Units: 4-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum
AMSTUD 256:
Black Contemporary Filmmakers (AFRICAAM 256, FILMEDIA 257)
Despite the systemic inequalities of the Hollywood system, there is a robust, stylistically diverse cohort of African-American writer/directors at work, including Barry Jenkins, Ava DuVernay, and Ryan Coogler. Jenkins' films (Moonlight, If Beale Street Could Talk), are aesthetically lush, intimate, and understated. DuVernay (When They See Us) foregrounds racial history and injustice in her feature films, television, and documentary work. Coogler followed his realist Fruitvale Station with two powerful genre films with black protagonists (Creed, Black Panther - this last the highest-grossing film by a black director).
| Units: 5
AMSTUD 290:
Movies and Methods: The Judy Garland Seminar (FILMEDIA 290, FILMEDIA 490)
Acting and performance have been prominent in cinema throughout the medium's history, but have received relatively little attention in film studies. Performance provides a compellingly different way of engaging with a film. The Judy Garland Seminar proposes, first, that we attend to the centrality of performance in film, and, second, that the work Garland produced across three decades demonstrates not only a coherence and consistency, but also a variety and richness, that merits close examination. Judy Garland was one of the most accomplished performers of her time, her seeming naturalism a function of her fierce discipline. Her career straddled multiple media: film, recording, live performance and television. From childhood, her life was lived in the public eye and her personal travails were as well known as the characters she incarnated on screen - in fact, her biography informs some of her later film roles. Garland's work in this period occurs primarily in two genres: musical comedy and melodrama (and what we can call the melodramatic musical). Some of her best films were directed by two of the foremost studio directors - Vincente Minnelli and George Cukor - intersections of star, genre, and director will inform the seminar, as will explorations of Garland's work on television and the concert stage. The seminar will begin with an overview of the writing around film acting and the star text while considering some of Judy's earlier film appearances. Classes will be divided between critical engagement with assigned readings and close readings of Judy Garland performances. The screening list will be supplemented with ample clips from other films, and earlier work will be compared to later performances wherever useful. Both a mainstream star and a gay cult icon, Garland's persona was read differently by different audiences, so the seminar will also consider the reception of Judy Garland and her significance then and now.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 10 units total)
ANTHRO 16:
Native Americans in the 21st Century: Encounters, Identity, and Sovereignty in Contemporary America (ARCHLGY 16, NATIVEAM 16)
What does it mean to be a Native American in the 21st century? Beyond traditional portrayals of military conquests, cultural collapse, and assimilation, the relationships between Native Americans and American society. Focus is on three themes leading to in-class moot court trials: colonial encounters and colonizing discourses; frontiers and boundaries; and sovereignty of self and nation. Topics include gender in native communities, American Indian law, readings by native authors, and Indians in film and popular culture.
Last offered: Spring 2020
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, GER:EC-AmerCul
ANTHRO 20N:
Islam and the Idea of Europe
Policy makers often ask whether Muslims can be integrated into Europe. The question itself presumes, often without justification, that Islam as such is foreign to Europe. This course seeks to challenge this presumption. What if the very idea of Europe was already shaped by the history of Muslim societies? How will we need to revise our basic assumptions about western civilization, especially with respect to its racial and religious foundations? We will explore these questions from a range of sites, from southern Spain, which witnessed eight centuries of Muslim rule, to the efforts of German converts to Islam who are rethinking their understandings of European enlightenment, and finally to those in France who claim belonging both as Europeans and as devout Muslims. Course materials will include readings in Anthropology, as well as several film screenings.
Last offered: Spring 2023
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
ANTHRO 23B:
Race and the War on Drugs: Long Roots and Other Futures (CSRE 23)
Current discussions of the war on drugs reference Richard Nixon's 1971 declaration as a starting point. This class will encourage students instead to see the war on drugs beyond seemingly self-evident margins and imaginaries. In this course, we will explore the racialized and gendered history of coca and cocaine in the Americas, and follow the war on drugs as it targets different aspects of drug production and consumption within and beyond the borders of the United States. In examining how drugs and drug policies have been used as tools of discrimination and exploitation from colonialism through to present systems of mass incarceration, we will analyze racialization as it is constructed and experienced through time and imposed onto nations and bodies. Readings and discussion will emphasize Black and Latinx feminist theories, critical race theory, and decoloniality, drawing on anthropological and interdisciplinary scholarship while incorporating other forms of writing (prose, fiction, poetry) and media (graphic novels, visual art, film clips, documentaries). Students will learn to interrogate the longstanding racialized and gendered roots of the drug war and explore critical calls towards other futures.
Last offered: Winter 2020
| Units: 3-5
ANTHRO 42:
Megacities (URBANST 142)
This class will examine a variety of ways that the city has been represented and understood in anthropology, architecture, literature, film, and journalism in order to better understand how everyday life and experience has been read in conjunction with urban forms. Issues covered will include the co-constitution of space and identities; consumption, spectacle, and economic disparity; transportation and health; colonialism and post-colonialism. Assignments will include writing and drawing projects based on close observation and reading.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
ANTHRO 128B:
MAXIMUM CITY: Post-Colonial Mumbai at the Crossroads of Global and South Asian Culture (URBANST 143)
There are few cities more emblematic of the rapid urbanization of today's global population than Mumbai, India, formerly known as Bombay. With over 20 million residents, Mumbai today stands as the most populous city in one of the world's most populous countries, an ever-expanding metropolis marked by starkclass disparities and a heterogenous collage of religious, ethnic, and caste communities struggling to find space on a narrow peninsula painstakingly reclaimed from the Arabian Sea. The city's glitz, glamour, and diversity have long made it an object of fascination for both Indians and foreigners alike. Not only is Mumbai a major engine of culture and politics within India, but the city also has a long history of furnishing imagery of South Asian life to the wider world, whether as a site for documentaries and novels or through colorful Bollywood films. In this course, students will have the opportunity to use Mumbai as a jumping-off point to explore South Asian culture and society, as well as contemporary themes in global urban studies: How do issues such as gentrification, rural-urban migration, segregation, the globalization of capitalism, and decolonialization play out in a city such as Mumbai? What happens to supposedly timeless identities such as religion, caste, and ethnicity when they are subjected to the pressures of intense urbanization? What kinds of data can we use to answer these questions, and what are their respective strengths and limitations?We will address these questions through a wide range of materials, including film, literature, and academic texts. By the end of the quarter, students should not only find themselves with expanded knowledge of South Asia, Mumbai, and global urbanism, but also with increased confidence regarding the types of data, methodology, and analysis they can employ in their own projects. No prior knowledge of South Asia or urban studies is assumed for this course.
Last offered: Winter 2023
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
ANTHRO 344A:
Multimodal Ethnography
Anthropological research and knowledge production across multiple traditional and new media platforms and practices including film, video, photography, theatre, design, podcast, mobile apps, interactive games, web-based social networking, and augmented reality
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
ANTHRO 361:
Life and Death in Contemporary Latin America: An Anthropological Inquiry
This seminar explores life and death in contemporary Latin America. We will address anthropological understanding of the role of colonialism, migration, violence, urbanization, democratic transition and neoliberalism as they configure the experience of, and threshold between, vital and deadly processes. This is not a standard survey course, covering the region as a whole however. Instead, we will critically engage several recent ethnographies that explore, for example: the politics and practices of memory; border thinking and living; the political economy of death and desire; state violence and social movements; the relationship between the laboring city and body. We will supplement ethnographies with contemporary Latin American critical theory, film, and literary texts. Prerequisite: consent of instructor.
Last offered: Winter 2013
| Units: 5
ARCHLGY 16:
Native Americans in the 21st Century: Encounters, Identity, and Sovereignty in Contemporary America (ANTHRO 16, NATIVEAM 16)
What does it mean to be a Native American in the 21st century? Beyond traditional portrayals of military conquests, cultural collapse, and assimilation, the relationships between Native Americans and American society. Focus is on three themes leading to in-class moot court trials: colonial encounters and colonizing discourses; frontiers and boundaries; and sovereignty of self and nation. Topics include gender in native communities, American Indian law, readings by native authors, and Indians in film and popular culture.
Last offered: Spring 2020
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, GER:EC-AmerCul
ARTHIST 120:
Superhero Theory (AMSTUD 120B, ARTHIST 320, FILMEDIA 120, FILMEDIA 320)
With their fantastic powers, mutable bodies, multiple identities, complicated histories, and visual dynamism, the American superhero has been a rich vehicle for fantasies (and anxieties) for 80+ years across multiple media: comics, film, animation, TV, games, toys, apparel. This course centers upon the body of the superhero as it incarnates allegories of race, queerness, hybridity, sexuality, gendered stereotypes/fluidity, politics, vigilantism, masculinity, and monstrosity. They also embody a technological history that encompasses industrial, atomic, electronic, bio-genetic, and digital.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
ARTHIST 152:
The American West (AMSTUD 124A, ENGLISH 124, HISTORY 151, POLISCI 124A)
The American West is characterized by frontier mythology, vast distances, marked aridity, and unique political and economic characteristics. This course integrates several disciplinary perspectives into a comprehensive examination of Western North America: its history, physical geography, climate, literature, art, film, institutions, politics, demography, economy, and continuing policy challenges. Students examine themes fundamental to understanding the region: time, space, water, peoples, and boom and bust cycles.
Last offered: Spring 2023
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
ARTHIST 162:
Visual Arts Cuba (1959 - 2015) (ARTHIST 362)
The evolution of culture in post-1959 Cuba, with a strong focus on visual arts in all media and film will be introduced in this course. Historical examples will be discussed through lectures, readings and the presentation of audiovisual material. Students will develop their research, critical thinking, and writing through assignments, discussions, and the completion of a final paper. This is a discussion-heavy course, so come prepared to read, write and talk.
Last offered: Spring 2020
| Units: 3-5
ARTHIST 164:
History of World Cinema III: Queer Cinemas around the World (ARTHIST 364, CSRE 102C, CSRE 302C, FEMGEN 100C, FEMGEN 300C, FILMEDIA 100C, FILMEDIA 300C, GLOBAL 193, GLOBAL 390, TAPS 100C, TAPS 300C)
Provides an overview of cinema from around the world since 1960, highlighting the cultural, political, and economic forces that have shaped various film movements over the last six decades. Specific topics may vary by term/year/instructor. This term's topic, Queer Cinemas around the World, engages with a range of queer cinematic forms and queer spectatorial practices in different parts of the world, as well as BIPOC media from North America. Through film and video from Kenya, Malaysia, India, The Dominican Republic, China, Brazil, Palestine, Japan, Morocco, the US etc., we will examine varied narratives about trans experience, same-sex desire, LGBTQI2S+ rights, censorship, precarity, and hopefulness. This course will attune us to regional cultural specificities in queer expression and representation, prompting us to move away from hegemonic and homogenizing understandings of queer life and media. Notes: Screenings will be held on Fridays at 1:30PM in Oshman Hall. Screening times will vary slightly from week to week.
Last offered: Spring 2023
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 10 units total)
ARTHIST 199:
Close Cinematic Analysis - Caste, Sexuality, and Religion in Indian Media (ASNAMST 108, FEMGEN 104, FILMEDIA 101, FILMEDIA 301, TAPS 101F)
(Formerly FILMSTUD101. If you have taken this course before, please reach out to the instructor) India is the world's largest producer of films in over 20 languages, and Bollywood is often its most visible avatar, especially on US university curricula. This course will introduce you to a range of media from the Indian subcontinent across commercial and experimental films, documentaries, streaming media, and online cultures. We will engage in particular with questions of sexuality, gender, caste, religion, and ethnicity in this postcolonial context and across its diasporas, including in the Caribbean. Given this course's emphasis on close cinematic analysis, we will analyze formal aspects of cinematography, editing, mise-en-scene, and performance, and how these generate spectatorial pleasure, star and fan cultures, and particular modes of representation. This course fulfills the WIM requirement for Film and Media Studies majors. Note: Screenings will be held on Thursdays at 5:30 PM. Screening times will vary from week to week and may range from 90 to 180 minutes.
Last offered: Spring 2023
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
ARTHIST 208:
Hagia Sophia (ARTHIST 408, CLASSICS 173, CLASSICS 273)
This seminar uncovers the aesthetic principles and spiritual operations at work in Hagia Sophia, the church dedicated to Holy Wisdom in Constantinople. Rather than a static and inert structure, the Great Church emerges as a material body that comes to life when the morning or evening light resurrects the glitter of its gold mosaics and when the singing of human voices activates the reverberant and enveloping sound of its vast interior. Drawing on art and architectural history, liturgy, musicology, and acoustics, this course explores the Byzantine paradigm of animation arguing that it is manifested in the visual and sonic mirroring, in the chiastic structure of the psalmody, and in the prosody of the sung poetry. Together these elements orchestrate a multi-sensory experience that has the potential to destabilize the divide between real and oneiric, placing the faithful in a space in between terrestrial and celestial. A short film on aesthetics and samples of Byzantine chant digitally imprinted with the acoustics of Hagia Sophia are developed as integral segments of this research; they offer a chance for the student to transcend the limits of textual analysis and experience the temporal dimension of this process of animation of the inert.
Last offered: Winter 2022
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
ARTHIST 217B:
Architectural Design Theory (ARTHIST 417B)
This seminar focuses on the key themes, histories, and methods of architectural theory -- a form of architectural practice that establishes the aims and philosophies of architecture. Architectural theory is primarily written, but it also incorporates drawing, photography, film, and other media. nnOne of the distinctive features of modern and contemporary architecture is its pronounced use of theory to articulate its aims. One might argue that modern architecture is modern because of its incorporation of theory. This course focuses on those early-modern, modern, and late-modern writings that have been and remain entangled with contemporary architectural thought and design practice. nnRather than examine the development of modern architectural theory chronologically, it is explored architectural through thematic topics. These themes enable the student to understand how certain architectural theoretical concepts endure, are transformed, and can be furthered through his/her own explorations.nCEE 32B is a crosslisting of ARTHIST 217B/417B.
Last offered: Spring 2023
| Units: 5
ARTHIST 253:
Aesthetics and Phenomenology (ARTHIST 453, FILMEDIA 253, FILMEDIA 453)
This course explores central topics in aesthetics where aesthetics is understood both in the narrow sense of the philosophy of art and aesthetic judgment, and in a broader sense as it relates to questions of perception, sensation, and various modes of embodied experience. We will engage with both classical and contemporary works in aesthetic theory, while special emphasis will be placed on phenomenological approaches to art and aesthetic experience across a range of media and/or mediums (including painting, sculpture, film, and digital media). PhD students in the Art History program may take the class to fulfill degree requirements in Modern/Contemporary Art or Film & Media Studies, depending on the topic of their seminar paper.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
ARTHIST 272:
Feminist Avant-Garde Art in Germany and Beyond (1968-2019) (ARTHIST 472, FEMGEN 280, GERMAN 280)
In "Woman's Art: A Manifesto" (1972), the artist, performer and filmmaker Valie Export (1940) proposed the transfer of women's experience into an art context and considered the body "a signal bearer of meaning and communication." In reconceptualizing and displaying "the" body (her body) as an aesthetic sign, Export's groundbreaking work paves the way towards questioning the concepts of a "female aesthetic" and a "male gaze" (L. Mulvey). Beginning with Export, we will discuss art informed by and coalescing with feminism(s): the recent revival of the 1970s in all-women group shows, the dialectic of feminist revolution, the breakdown of stable identities and their representations, point(s) of absorption of commodified femininities. Particular attention will be paid to German-language theory and its medial transfer into art works. For students of German Studies, readings and discussions in German are possible. Online discussions will be organized with contemporary artists and curators. Emphasis will be on: the relationship between (female?) aesthetics and (gender) politics, between private and public spheres, between housework and artwork; conceptions of identity (crises) and corporeality in visual culture and mass media; categories of the artist´s self in relation to the use of media (video, photography, film, collage, installation art). This course will be taught by Professor Elena Zanichelli, a Berlin-based art historian, critic, and curator. She is junior professor for Art History and Aesthetic Theory at IKFK (Institute for Art History - Film History - Art Education) at the University of Bremen.
Last offered: Spring 2022
| Units: 3-5
ARTHIST 274:
Wonder: The Event of Art and Literature (ARTHIST 474, JEWISHST 274)
What falls below, or beyond, rational inquiry? How do we write about the awe we feel in front of certain works of art, in reading lines of poetry or philosophy, or watching a scene in a film without ruining the feeling that drove us to write in the first place? In this course, we will focus on a heterogeneous series of texts, artworks, and physical locations to discuss these questions. Potential topics include The Book of Exodus, the poetry of Friedrich Hölderlin and of Elizabeth Bishop, the location of Harriet Tubman's childhood, the poetry and drawings of Else Lasker-Schüler, the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, the art of James Turrell, and the films of Luchino Visconti.
Last offered: Winter 2023
| Units: 5
ARTHIST 274A:
The Art of the Uncanny (ARTHIST 474A)
From murderous dolls to evil doppelgängers, humanoid doubles haunt the Western cultural imagination. Beginning with an in-depth look at the contested concept of the "uncanny", the seminar traces the history of anxiety about non-human humans in the West. An interdisciplinary inquiry, this course draws its sources from art, film, literature, psychology, and science.
Last offered: Spring 2023
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
ARTHIST 291:
Riot: Visualizing Civil Unrest in the 20th and 21st Centuries (AFRICAAM 291, AFRICAAM 491, ARTHIST 491, CSRE 290, CSRE 390, FILMEDIA 291, FILMEDIA 491)
This seminar explores the visual legacy of civil unrest in the United States. Focusing on the 1965 Watts Rebellion, 1992 Los Angeles Riots, 2014 Ferguson Uprising, and 2020 George Floyd Uprisings students will closely examine photographs, television broadcasts, newspapers, magazines, and film and video representations of unrest. Additionally, students will visually analyze the works of artists who have responded to instances of police brutality and challenged the systemic racism, xenophobia, and anti-Black violence leading to and surrounding these events.
Last offered: Spring 2023
| Units: 4-5
ARTHIST 320:
Superhero Theory (AMSTUD 120B, ARTHIST 120, FILMEDIA 120, FILMEDIA 320)
With their fantastic powers, mutable bodies, multiple identities, complicated histories, and visual dynamism, the American superhero has been a rich vehicle for fantasies (and anxieties) for 80+ years across multiple media: comics, film, animation, TV, games, toys, apparel. This course centers upon the body of the superhero as it incarnates allegories of race, queerness, hybridity, sexuality, gendered stereotypes/fluidity, politics, vigilantism, masculinity, and monstrosity. They also embody a technological history that encompasses industrial, atomic, electronic, bio-genetic, and digital.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
ARTHIST 362:
Visual Arts Cuba (1959 - 2015) (ARTHIST 162)
The evolution of culture in post-1959 Cuba, with a strong focus on visual arts in all media and film will be introduced in this course. Historical examples will be discussed through lectures, readings and the presentation of audiovisual material. Students will develop their research, critical thinking, and writing through assignments, discussions, and the completion of a final paper. This is a discussion-heavy course, so come prepared to read, write and talk.
Last offered: Spring 2020
| Units: 3-5
ARTHIST 364:
History of World Cinema III: Queer Cinemas around the World (ARTHIST 164, CSRE 102C, CSRE 302C, FEMGEN 100C, FEMGEN 300C, FILMEDIA 100C, FILMEDIA 300C, GLOBAL 193, GLOBAL 390, TAPS 100C, TAPS 300C)
Provides an overview of cinema from around the world since 1960, highlighting the cultural, political, and economic forces that have shaped various film movements over the last six decades. Specific topics may vary by term/year/instructor. This term's topic, Queer Cinemas around the World, engages with a range of queer cinematic forms and queer spectatorial practices in different parts of the world, as well as BIPOC media from North America. Through film and video from Kenya, Malaysia, India, The Dominican Republic, China, Brazil, Palestine, Japan, Morocco, the US etc., we will examine varied narratives about trans experience, same-sex desire, LGBTQI2S+ rights, censorship, precarity, and hopefulness. This course will attune us to regional cultural specificities in queer expression and representation, prompting us to move away from hegemonic and homogenizing understandings of queer life and media. Notes: Screenings will be held on Fridays at 1:30PM in Oshman Hall. Screening times will vary slightly from week to week.
Last offered: Spring 2023
| Units: 3-5
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 10 units total)
ARTHIST 366:
Blackness/Gender/Sexuality & Dis-ease: HIV/AIDS Art History (ARTHIST 466A, CSRE 366A, FEMGEN 466A)
Since the emergence of Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS), artists have been central to the fight against the state's violence and neglect of those with HIV/AIDS. In this story, however, race and gender are marginalized as frameworks that shape this arts activism. This course takes up black art production that responds to the HIV/AIDS crisis to provide a longer, fuller, and more vital cultural narrative. By centering blackness in this story, we can ask how does dis-ease,referencing both infection and an aesthetically and structurally anxious relation to death,shape black art practices and lives? How have race and gender been used to conceptualize disease? And how do filmmakers, abstract painters, photographers, and poets help us to better comprehend blackness, gender, and sexuality under the threat of disease? After providing an overview of the relation between blackness, sexuality, and dis-ease and the emergence of the AIDS crisis, we will consider canonical works from the height of the crisis produced by filmmaker Marlon Riggs and poet Essex Hemphill. From there, we will move to themes of black art and mourning, black women's under cited activism, the controversial use of documentary photography in the crisis, black masculinity, diasporic responses, and the urgency and erasure of the ongoing crisis. Each week we will focus on a cultural text (film, painting, photograph, poem), a reading to provide historical context, and critical theories that will illuminate the art works' formal qualities and importance for our now.
| Units: 5
ARTHIST 405A:
Graduate Pedagogy
This course is designed for graduate students in Art History and Film Studies preparing to work as teaching assistants in the Department of Art and Art History. The seminar will focus on a range of theoretical and practical concerns pertaining to the successful conceptualization, organization, and execution of class lectures and discussion sections. Students will be exposed to a variety of perspectives and strategies related to quality teaching at the college level.
Last offered: Autumn 2022
| Units: 2
ARTHIST 408:
Hagia Sophia (ARTHIST 208, CLASSICS 173, CLASSICS 273)
This seminar uncovers the aesthetic principles and spiritual operations at work in Hagia Sophia, the church dedicated to Holy Wisdom in Constantinople. Rather than a static and inert structure, the Great Church emerges as a material body that comes to life when the morning or evening light resurrects the glitter of its gold mosaics and when the singing of human voices activates the reverberant and enveloping sound of its vast interior. Drawing on art and architectural history, liturgy, musicology, and acoustics, this course explores the Byzantine paradigm of animation arguing that it is manifested in the visual and sonic mirroring, in the chiastic structure of the psalmody, and in the prosody of the sung poetry. Together these elements orchestrate a multi-sensory experience that has the potential to destabilize the divide between real and oneiric, placing the faithful in a space in between terrestrial and celestial. A short film on aesthetics and samples of Byzantine chant digitally imprinted with the acoustics of Hagia Sophia are developed as integral segments of this research; they offer a chance for the student to transcend the limits of textual analysis and experience the temporal dimension of this process of animation of the inert.
Last offered: Winter 2022
| Units: 5
ARTHIST 417B:
Architectural Design Theory (ARTHIST 217B)
This seminar focuses on the key themes, histories, and methods of architectural theory -- a form of architectural practice that establishes the aims and philosophies of architecture. Architectural theory is primarily written, but it also incorporates drawing, photography, film, and other media. nnOne of the distinctive features of modern and contemporary architecture is its pronounced use of theory to articulate its aims. One might argue that modern architecture is modern because of its incorporation of theory. This course focuses on those early-modern, modern, and late-modern writings that have been and remain entangled with contemporary architectural thought and design practice. nnRather than examine the development of modern architectural theory chronologically, it is explored architectural through thematic topics. These themes enable the student to understand how certain architectural theoretical concepts endure, are transformed, and can be furthered through his/her own explorations.nCEE 32B is a crosslisting of ARTHIST 217B/417B.
Last offered: Spring 2023
| Units: 5
ARTHIST 421:
Art and Visual Culture in Europe: The 1920s and 30s
This seminar focuses attention on European art institutions, exhibitions, journals, and movements, most of which intersected with one another across national borders during the interwar period, including Cubism, De Stijl, Purism, Art Deco, the Bauhaus, and Surrealism. Media include painting, architecture, photography, film, fashion and (graphic) design. We will examine period sources in Stanford library special collections and visit the permanent collection at SFMOMA.
Last offered: Winter 2020
| Units: 5
ARTHIST 448:
The Body in Film and other Media (FILMEDIA 448)
In this seminar, we will consider the body on screen as well as the body before the screen i.e. the spectator but also the profilmic body of the actor to examine corporeal performance and reception. The dancing body, the comic body, dead and live bodies, the monstrous body, the body in pain, the virtual body all raise questions about embodiment, liveness, and performance. We will read the body in audiovisual culture through an engagement with affect theory, focusing on the labor of performance, the construction of stardom, spatial and temporal configurations of the performing body, and the production of affect and sensation in the spectating body. Through a discussion of make-up, fashion, the labor of producing the idealized star body from the meat-and-bones body of the actor, or body genres where the spectator's body is beside itself with sexual pleasure, fear and terror, or overpowering sadness, we will inquire into ideologies of discipline and desire that undergird mediatized bodies. nnNo prior engagement with film studies is required. Students are encouraged to write seminar papers that build on current research interests.nnNOTE: Instructor consent required for undergraduate students (only seniors may enroll). Please contact the instructor for permission to enroll if you're an undergraduate senior.
Last offered: Winter 2020
| Units: 5
ARTHIST 453:
Aesthetics and Phenomenology (ARTHIST 253, FILMEDIA 253, FILMEDIA 453)
This course explores central topics in aesthetics where aesthetics is understood both in the narrow sense of the philosophy of art and aesthetic judgment, and in a broader sense as it relates to questions of perception, sensation, and various modes of embodied experience. We will engage with both classical and contemporary works in aesthetic theory, while special emphasis will be placed on phenomenological approaches to art and aesthetic experience across a range of media and/or mediums (including painting, sculpture, film, and digital media). PhD students in the Art History program may take the class to fulfill degree requirements in Modern/Contemporary Art or Film & Media Studies, depending on the topic of their seminar paper.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
ARTHIST 466A:
Blackness/Gender/Sexuality & Dis-ease: HIV/AIDS Art History (ARTHIST 366, CSRE 366A, FEMGEN 466A)
Since the emergence of Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS), artists have been central to the fight against the state's violence and neglect of those with HIV/AIDS. In this story, however, race and gender are marginalized as frameworks that shape this arts activism. This course takes up black art production that responds to the HIV/AIDS crisis to provide a longer, fuller, and more vital cultural narrative. By centering blackness in this story, we can ask how does dis-ease,referencing both infection and an aesthetically and structurally anxious relation to death,shape black art practices and lives? How have race and gender been used to conceptualize disease? And how do filmmakers, abstract painters, photographers, and poets help us to better comprehend blackness, gender, and sexuality under the threat of disease? After providing an overview of the relation between blackness, sexuality, and dis-ease and the emergence of the AIDS crisis, we will consider canonical works from the height of the crisis produced by filmmaker Marlon Riggs and poet Essex Hemphill. From there, we will move to themes of black art and mourning, black women's under cited activism, the controversial use of documentary photography in the crisis, black masculinity, diasporic responses, and the urgency and erasure of the ongoing crisis. Each week we will focus on a cultural text (film, painting, photograph, poem), a reading to provide historical context, and critical theories that will illuminate the art works' formal qualities and importance for our now.
Last offered: Spring 2023
| Units: 5
ARTHIST 469:
Drugs and the Visual Imagination (FILMEDIA 469)
Drugs have profoundly shaped human culture across space and time, from ancient cave paintings to the psychedelic Sixties and contemporary opioid epidemic. This seminar explores the relationship between visual culture and "drugs," broadly conceived, asking how consciousness-altering substances have been understood and represented in various contexts. We will examine how drugs blur boundaries between nature and culture and describe major symbolic, narrative, and aesthetic structures by considering representations of drug use across media. This interdisciplinary seminar integrates perspectives from art, literature, popular culture, theory, film, philosophy, and science. Topics include perception, subjectivity, addiction, deviancy, capitalism, politics, technology, globalization, and critical approaches to race, class, sexuality, and gender. Limited to graduate students; undergraduates must contact instructor for permission (seniors only).
Last offered: Spring 2021
| Units: 5
ARTHIST 472:
Feminist Avant-Garde Art in Germany and Beyond (1968-2019) (ARTHIST 272, FEMGEN 280, GERMAN 280)
In "Woman's Art: A Manifesto" (1972), the artist, performer and filmmaker Valie Export (1940) proposed the transfer of women's experience into an art context and considered the body "a signal bearer of meaning and communication." In reconceptualizing and displaying "the" body (her body) as an aesthetic sign, Export's groundbreaking work paves the way towards questioning the concepts of a "female aesthetic" and a "male gaze" (L. Mulvey). Beginning with Export, we will discuss art informed by and coalescing with feminism(s): the recent revival of the 1970s in all-women group shows, the dialectic of feminist revolution, the breakdown of stable identities and their representations, point(s) of absorption of commodified femininities. Particular attention will be paid to German-language theory and its medial transfer into art works. For students of German Studies, readings and discussions in German are possible. Online discussions will be organized with contemporary artists and curators. Emphasis will be on: the relationship between (female?) aesthetics and (gender) politics, between private and public spheres, between housework and artwork; conceptions of identity (crises) and corporeality in visual culture and mass media; categories of the artist´s self in relation to the use of media (video, photography, film, collage, installation art). This course will be taught by Professor Elena Zanichelli, a Berlin-based art historian, critic, and curator. She is junior professor for Art History and Aesthetic Theory at IKFK (Institute for Art History - Film History - Art Education) at the University of Bremen.
Last offered: Spring 2022
| Units: 3-5
ARTHIST 474:
Wonder: The Event of Art and Literature (ARTHIST 274, JEWISHST 274)
What falls below, or beyond, rational inquiry? How do we write about the awe we feel in front of certain works of art, in reading lines of poetry or philosophy, or watching a scene in a film without ruining the feeling that drove us to write in the first place? In this course, we will focus on a heterogeneous series of texts, artworks, and physical locations to discuss these questions. Potential topics include The Book of Exodus, the poetry of Friedrich Hölderlin and of Elizabeth Bishop, the location of Harriet Tubman's childhood, the poetry and drawings of Else Lasker-Schüler, the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, the art of James Turrell, and the films of Luchino Visconti.
Last offered: Winter 2023
| Units: 5
ARTHIST 474A:
The Art of the Uncanny (ARTHIST 274A)
From murderous dolls to evil doppelgängers, humanoid doubles haunt the Western cultural imagination. Beginning with an in-depth look at the contested concept of the "uncanny", the seminar traces the history of anxiety about non-human humans in the West. An interdisciplinary inquiry, this course draws its sources from art, film, literature, psychology, and science.
Last offered: Spring 2023
| Units: 5
ARTHIST 491:
Riot: Visualizing Civil Unrest in the 20th and 21st Centuries (AFRICAAM 291, AFRICAAM 491, ARTHIST 291, CSRE 290, CSRE 390, FILMEDIA 291, FILMEDIA 491)
This seminar explores the visual legacy of civil unrest in the United States. Focusing on the 1965 Watts Rebellion, 1992 Los Angeles Riots, 2014 Ferguson Uprising, and 2020 George Floyd Uprisings students will closely examine photographs, television broadcasts, newspapers, magazines, and film and video representations of unrest. Additionally, students will visually analyze the works of artists who have responded to instances of police brutality and challenged the systemic racism, xenophobia, and anti-Black violence leading to and surrounding these events.
Last offered: Spring 2023
| Units: 4-5
ARTHIST 601:
IMBY (In My Backyard): Faculty Scholarship in Art History and Film/Media Studies
This seminar links first- and second-year Ph.D. students to faculty members in Art History and Film/Media Studies at Stanford. On a rotating basis, 5 faculty members in the Department discuss their most recent book or essay, which we will be read in advance. We also read texts that have been important to the visitor in shaping their work.Graduate students in this seminar will grapple with the intellectual, methodological, and political stakes of faculty scholarship "in their own backyard."
Last offered: Spring 2022
| Units: 2
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 4 units total)
ARTSINST 197:
Industry Immersion: Film and Media
This course is designed to give students the opportunity to immerse themselves in the exciting and ever-changing TV, Film, and emerging media industries. The entertainment industry as a whole is facing issues and trends surrounding inclusivity and equity, the democratization of content development, and evolving revenue and distribution models. This course will introduce and explore these topics via readings, lectures, workshops and projects. Eight weeks of the course will include visits to our class by influential industry professionals who will share information about their company and current role, and their perspectives on one or more of the topics above. In addition to the lecture, each class will include a workshop element drawn from everyday efforts to address these issues. Guest lecturers will have a range of experience and viewpoints of the changing landscape of the industry. The course will be 10 weeks long. Priority will be given to Sophomores, Juniors and Seniors interested in careers in TV, Film, and emerging media. Credit will be based on attendance, class participation, assignments and a final presentation.
Last offered: Spring 2021
| Units: 2
ARTSTUDI 160X:
Tele-Reality: Live-Streaming Art
This course examines the field of live-feed media through the lens of art practice, exploring previous experiments and the potential of the medium. Using social media outlets and user-to-user communication platforms¿such as Youtube, FaceTime, Twitch, Instagram, and closed-circuit cameras¿students will create moments for captive audiences using displacement as a medium. By nature, live streaming is a fleeting digital performance that combines television, theater, and film practices with internet platforms and physical venues to present single performances or series of performances, pre-recorded footage, or improvisational scenes. Live-streaming opens an opportunity for borderless expression, to express social change, to share non-mainstream messages, and allows access to massive communication to diverse voices and perspectives.
Last offered: Autumn 2020
| Units: 2
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
ARTSTUDI 170:
Light and Shadow
Through film and dark room instruction, students learn to use a SLR 35-mm camera and to operate manual settings (focus, aperture, shutter speed). They develop an awareness of light and its various properties and possibilities. Students become familiar with black and white darkroom techniques creating contact sheets and to evaluating prints, make corrections and re-print. They acquire essential knowledge of historical and contemporary black and white art photography, including standards of quality and image sequencing. They get a basic sense of aesthetics and of the critical discourse that exists around the cultural significance of images.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
ARTSTUDI 175A:
Video Installation
Video Installation is a hybrid studio critique and seminar class that explores the potential of cinematic arts within the context of spatial dynamics and formal configuration. The emphasis will be on the conceptual and experimental, rather than a conventional application of film narrative as a way to convey meaning, and considers video as a sculptural material. Screenings, lectures, and class projects will focus on installations that transform film and video into sculpture, architecture, and site-specific forms.
Last offered: Spring 2023
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
ARTSTUDI 177M:
DIY Movies
Using a 'do it yourself' approach, we will create short films in response to key concepts in cinema. In this course, we will experiment with unconventional and traditional methods of filmmaking that employ a diverse range of media. Together, we will devise strategies to work around resource limitations and consider how simple technologies can be tools for making thought-provoking cinematic experiences. Through workshops, discussions, and film screenings, we will explore the possibilities and significance of filmmaking in the 21st century.
Last offered: Winter 2022
| Units: 2
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
ARTSTUDI 247:
Collage
Collage has influenced painting and drawing practices, as well as film and photography through juxtaposition, scale shifts, and reappropriation of the found image. Although many iconic works in this medium date to the 20th century, this course focuses on collage as a vibrant, contemporary form. Lectures on artists using collage with new vigor. Studio component focused on experimentation and exploration. Student work is encouraged to speak to personal, aesthetic, or political concerns, using findings from magazines, advertisements, internet, and other sources. Working with Photoshop, scans and with print, we will use collage elements to create new and stunning compositions of contemporary life.Prerequisites: 140, 145, or consent of instructor. (upper level). May be repeated for credit
Terms: Aut
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 8 units total)
ARTSTUDI 271E:
Intermediate Photography: New Landscapes
Students will learn how to use large-format 4x5 view cameras and explore the ways in which large-format photography enables the creation of exceptionally clear images on a par with digital imaging. They will develop sheet film and print black-and-white analog images in the darkroom. Specific attention will be given to mastering perspective control and in-camera manipulation of the image. From a historical point of view, the course will analyze and discuss images created with view cameras by a wide range of artists from the early days of photography to the present. Students will put their skills into practice and pursue their own aesthetic by producing a portfolio of images. Prerequisites: ARTSTUDI 170 and ARTSTUDI 171.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4
ARTSTUDI 278:
Photography II: Black and White
Students are introduced to and provided with medium-format film cameras, which they learn to use with an ongoing emphasis on operating manual settings (focus, aperture, shutter speed). Students are introduced to metering for film using hand-held light meters in a further study of light. They hone their printing skills and learn finer printing techniques using fiber-based paper. They also explore the full range of black and film stocks and get to experiment with alternative techniques like pinhole photography, photograms and Holga cameras. Students gain a deeper insight into and stronger grasp of practices in contemporary black and white photography, with a continuing focus on the importance of photo editing/selection and sequencing, as well as questions around the conceptual and practical implications and limits of photographic images. Prerequisite: ARTSTUDI 170 or equivalent.
Last offered: Spring 2020
| Units: 4
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 8 units total)
ASNAMST 108:
Close Cinematic Analysis - Caste, Sexuality, and Religion in Indian Media (ARTHIST 199, FEMGEN 104, FILMEDIA 101, FILMEDIA 301, TAPS 101F)
(Formerly FILMSTUD101. If you have taken this course before, please reach out to the instructor) India is the world's largest producer of films in over 20 languages, and Bollywood is often its most visible avatar, especially on US university curricula. This course will introduce you to a range of media from the Indian subcontinent across commercial and experimental films, documentaries, streaming media, and online cultures. We will engage in particular with questions of sexuality, gender, caste, religion, and ethnicity in this postcolonial context and across its diasporas, including in the Caribbean. Given this course's emphasis on close cinematic analysis, we will analyze formal aspects of cinematography, editing, mise-en-scene, and performance, and how these generate spectatorial pleasure, star and fan cultures, and particular modes of representation. This course fulfills the WIM requirement for Film and Media Studies majors. Note: Screenings will be held on Thursdays at 5:30 PM. Screening times will vary from week to week and may range from 90 to 180 minutes.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
ASNAMST 169D:
Contemporary Asian American Stories (ENGLISH 169D)
This course will examine the aesthetics and politics of contemporary Asian American storytellers, with an emphasis on work produced within the past five years. We will investigate the pressures historically placed on Asian Americans to tell a certain kind of story e.g. the immigrant story in a realist mode and the ways writers have found to surprise, question, and innovate, moving beyond those boundaries to explore issues of race, sexuality, science, memory, citizenship, and belonging. Course materials will consist of novels, short stories, graphic narrative, and film, and may include work by Ocean Vuong, Mira Jacobs, Gish Jen, Charles Yu, and Adrian Tomine, as well as Lulu Wangs 2019 film The Farewell. This seminar will feature both analytical and creative components, and students will be encouraged to produce both kinds of responses to the material.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
BIO 196A:
Biology Senior Reflection
Capstone course series for seniors. Creative, self-reflective and scientifically relevant projects conceived, produced and exhibited over the course of three quarters. Explore scientific content of personal interest through creative forms including but not limited to writing, music, fine arts, performing arts, photography, film or new media. A written essay on the creative process and scientific significance of the selected topic will accompany the creative work. Completed projects may be included in a creative portfolio. Required enrollment in 196A,B,C. Satisfies WIM in Biology. May be repeat for credit. More information can be found at visit https://web.stanford.edu/~suemcc/TSR/.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 6 units total)
BIO 196B:
Biology Senior Reflection
Capstone course series for seniors. Creative, self-reflective and scientifically relevant projects conceived, produced and exhibited over the course of three quarters. Explore scientific content of personal interest through creative forms including but not limited to writing, music, fine arts, performing arts, photography, film or new media. A written essay on the creative process and scientific significance of the selected topic will accompany the creative work. Completed projects may be included in a creative portfolio. Required enrollment in 196A,B,C. May be repeat for credit. More information can be found at visit https://web.stanford.edu/~suemcc/TSR/.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 6 units total)
BIO 196C:
Biology Senior Reflection
Capstone course series for seniors. Creative, self-reflective and scientifically relevant projects conceived, produced and exhibited over the course of three quarters. Explore scientific content of personal interest through creative forms including but not limited to writing, music, fine arts, performing arts, photography, film or new media. A written essay on the creative process and scientific significance of the selected topic will accompany the creative work. Completed projects may be included in a creative portfolio. Required enrollment in 196A,B,C. May be repeat for credit. More information can be found at visit https://web.stanford.edu/~suemcc/TSR/.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 6 units total)
BIO 199A:
The Independent Capstone in Biology
Seniors in Biology may undertake an independent capstone project through the Independent Capstone in Biology course series, BIO 199 A, B, C. Such projects might involve creative works, research or business internships, travel-based study, teaching, or community service. Examples include the production of a teaching or business plan, a film or podcast, or a public education campaign. The Independent Capstone in Biology is best suited for those students who wish to complete their projects independently, without close peer support and collaboration, while continuing to benefit from project mentorship. Satisfies WIM in Biology.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 4 units total)
BIOS 220:
Fantastical Pathogenesis: Real-world pathogenesis in fictional media
This mini-course will explore fictional representations of pathogenesis. Students will learn about viruses, parasites, bacteria, fungi, and prions, including specific pathogen lifecycles, methods of transmission, and disease states. Students will view examples of pathogenesis in films, stories, and other media examples, and will discuss the representations of real infectious diseases. Classes will consist of film and media viewings and discussions. Additional materials may be distributed to students as appropriate. No prerequisites are required for this course, but students should note that some films and media feature horror themes and may include some scenes that some may find disturbing.
Last offered: Summer 2023
| Units: 1
CEE 32B:
Design Theory
This seminar focuses on the key themes, histories, and methods of architectural theory -- a form of architectural practice that establishes the aims and philosophies of architecture. Architectural theory is primarily written, but it also incorporates drawing, photography, film, and other media. One of the distinctive features of modern and contemporary architecture is its pronounced use of theory to articulate its aims. One might argue that modern architecture is modern because of its incorporation of theory. This course focuses on those early-modern, modern, and late-modern writings that have been and remain entangled with contemporary architectural thought and design practice. Rather than examine the development of modern architectural theory chronologically, it is explored architectural through thematic topics. These themes enable the student to understand how certain architectural theoretical concepts endure, are transformed, and can be furthered through his/her own explorations.CEE 32B is a crosslisting of ARTHIST 217B/417B.
Last offered: Spring 2023
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
CHEMENG 140X:
Micro and Nanoscale Fabrication Engineering (CHEMENG 440)
Survey of fabrication and processing technologies in industrial sectors, such as semiconductor, biotechnology, and energy. Chemistry and transport of electronic and energy device fabrication. Solid state materials, electronic devices and chemical processes including crystal growth, chemical vapor deposition, etching, oxidation, doping, diffusion, thin film deposition, plasma processing. Micro and nanopatterning involving photolithography, unconventional soft lithography and self assembly. Advanced undergraduates register for 140X; graduates register for 440.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3
CHEMENG 440:
Micro and Nanoscale Fabrication Engineering (CHEMENG 140X)
Survey of fabrication and processing technologies in industrial sectors, such as semiconductor, biotechnology, and energy. Chemistry and transport of electronic and energy device fabrication. Solid state materials, electronic devices and chemical processes including crystal growth, chemical vapor deposition, etching, oxidation, doping, diffusion, thin film deposition, plasma processing. Micro and nanopatterning involving photolithography, unconventional soft lithography and self assembly. Advanced undergraduates register for 140X; graduates register for 440.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3
CHILATST 106:
From Disney to Telenovelas: Latin America in Popular Film and TV (ILAC 106)
Popular film and media have represented Latin America in various ways, including as a geographical region, a homogeneous culture, and a form of racialization. In this course, we will investigate these representations to understand how Latin America, its people, and its diaspora imagine themselves and how others have conceptualized the region. We will pay particular attention to the myths and stereotypes that cinema and television have sustained as well as Latin America's history of colonization to examine the prevalence of anti-blackness, anti-indigeneity, and other forms of erasure and social exclusion. Sources include Disney's Saludos Amigos and Encanto, Pixar's Coco, and the telenovela Yo soy Betty la fea, among others. Taught in English. Students are welcome to complete work in Spanish.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3
CHILATST 140:
Migration in 21st Century Latin American Film (ILAC 140)
Focus on how images and narratives of migration are depicted in recent Latin American film. It compares migration as it takes place within Latin America to migration from Latin America to Europe and to the U.S. We will analyze these films, and their making, in the global context of an ever-growing tension between "inside" and "outside"; we consider how these films represent or explore precariousness and exclusion; visibility and invisibility; racial and gender dynamics; national and social boundaries; new subjectivities and cultural practices. Films include: Bolivia, Copacabana, La teta asustada, Norteado, Sin nombre, Migraci¿n, Ulises, among others. Films in Spanish, with English subtitles. Discussions and assignments in Spanish.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
CHINA 111:
Literature in 20th-Century China (CHINA 211)
(Graduate students register for 211.) How modern Chinese culture evolved from tradition to modernity; the century-long drive to build a modern nation state and to carry out social movements and political reforms. How the individual developed modern notions of love, affection, beauty, and moral relations with community and family. Sources include fiction and film clips. WIM course.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 4-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-GlobalCom, WAY-A-II
CHINA 115:
Sex, Gender, and Power in Modern China (CHINA 215, FEMGEN 150, FEMGEN 250)
Investigates how sex, gender, and power are entwined in the Chinese experience of modernity. Topics include anti-footbinding campaigns, free love/free sex, women's mobilization in revolution and war, the new Marriage Law of 1950, Mao's iron girls, postsocialist celebrations of sensuality, and emergent queer politics. Readings range from feminist theory to China-focused historiography, ethnography, memoir, biography, fiction, essay, and film. All course materials are in English.
Last offered: Summer 2021
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-Gender, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
CHINA 151B:
The Nature of Knowledge: Science and Literature in East Asia (CHINA 251B, JAPAN 151B, JAPAN 251B, KOREA 151, KOREA 251)
"The Nature of Knowledge" explores the intersections of science and humanities East Asia. It covers a broad geographic area (China, Japan, and Korea) along a long temporal space (14th century - present) to investigate how historical notions about the natural world, the human body, and social order defied, informed, and constructed our current categories of science and humanities. The course will make use of medical, geographic, and cosmological treatises from premodern East Asia, portrayals and uses of science in modern literature, film, and media, as well as theoretical and historical essays on the relationships between literature, science, and society.As part of its exploration of science and the humanities in conjunction, the course addresses how understandings of nature are mediated through techniques of narrative, rhetoric, visualization, and demonstration. In the meantime, it also examines how the emergence of modern disciplinary "science" influenced the development of literary language, tropes, and techniques of subject development. This class will expose the ways that science has been mobilized for various ideological projects and to serve different interests, and will produce insights into contemporary debates about the sciences and humanities.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 10 units total)
CHINA 211:
Literature in 20th-Century China (CHINA 111)
(Graduate students register for 211.) How modern Chinese culture evolved from tradition to modernity; the century-long drive to build a modern nation state and to carry out social movements and political reforms. How the individual developed modern notions of love, affection, beauty, and moral relations with community and family. Sources include fiction and film clips. WIM course.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 4-5
CHINA 215:
Sex, Gender, and Power in Modern China (CHINA 115, FEMGEN 150, FEMGEN 250)
Investigates how sex, gender, and power are entwined in the Chinese experience of modernity. Topics include anti-footbinding campaigns, free love/free sex, women's mobilization in revolution and war, the new Marriage Law of 1950, Mao's iron girls, postsocialist celebrations of sensuality, and emergent queer politics. Readings range from feminist theory to China-focused historiography, ethnography, memoir, biography, fiction, essay, and film. All course materials are in English.
Last offered: Summer 2021
| Units: 3-5
CHINA 251B:
The Nature of Knowledge: Science and Literature in East Asia (CHINA 151B, JAPAN 151B, JAPAN 251B, KOREA 151, KOREA 251)
"The Nature of Knowledge" explores the intersections of science and humanities East Asia. It covers a broad geographic area (China, Japan, and Korea) along a long temporal space (14th century - present) to investigate how historical notions about the natural world, the human body, and social order defied, informed, and constructed our current categories of science and humanities. The course will make use of medical, geographic, and cosmological treatises from premodern East Asia, portrayals and uses of science in modern literature, film, and media, as well as theoretical and historical essays on the relationships between literature, science, and society.As part of its exploration of science and the humanities in conjunction, the course addresses how understandings of nature are mediated through techniques of narrative, rhetoric, visualization, and demonstration. In the meantime, it also examines how the emergence of modern disciplinary "science" influenced the development of literary language, tropes, and techniques of subject development. This class will expose the ways that science has been mobilized for various ideological projects and to serve different interests, and will produce insights into contemporary debates about the sciences and humanities.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3-5
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 10 units total)
CHINA 279:
For Love of Country: National Narratives in Chinese Literature and Film (CHINA 379)
Explores the nation as it is constructed, deconstructed, and continuously contested in novels, short stories, films, and other media from the second half of the 20th century in mainland China and Taiwan. Asks how the trope of the nation and the ideology of nationalism mediate the relationships between politics and aesthetics. Explores the nation's internal fault lines of gender, ethnicity, geography, language, and citizenship.
Last offered: Spring 2022
| Units: 3-5
CHINA 288:
Modern China Studies: State of the Field (CHINA 388)
This is a survey course designed to acquaint master¿s and doctoral students in East Asian Studies with the latest English-language scholarship on modern China, broadly defined, across the humanities and interpretive social sciences. Each time the course is offered (once every two or three years), the disciplinary/thematic emphasis shifts and the readings are completely different. The course may be repeated up to 3 times. This year, we focus on innovative scholarship in the ¿New Humanities,¿ including environmental humanities, health humanities, and digital humanities. Future topics include sinophone studies, film and visual culture, sensory studies, translation studies, genre fiction, queer studies, animal studies, new media and internet literature, world literature, cognitive approaches, literature (& philosophy, law, anthropology, history, psychology, religion, etc.), and so on.
Last offered: Spring 2023
| Units: 3-5
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 10 units total)
CHINA 371:
Politics, Aesthetics, Critical Ecology: Artworks and the Environment (COMPLIT 371)
Climate change and environmental crises have given rise to critique and reflection. This class will bring together issues of aesthetics, politics, and artworks around environmental issues. The introductory phase will involve students with key issues in ecocritical literature by reading Timothy Clark's Literature and the Environment. Moving on to the critical ecology of the Frankfurt School, the class will study the critiques of anthropocentrism, the Enlightenment, and capitalist production as the source for domination over nature and over other humans. We will explore Marxist critiques of capitalist production and alienation in John Foster and Brett Clark's writings about metabolic rifts, toxic colonialism, and alienation of labor and nature. A look at ecological thoughts in the ancient Chinese tradition will be enriched by an inquiry into contemporary Chinese eco-critical literature and film, including Chen Qiufan's Waste Tide and Jia Zhangke's Still Life. Chinese is not required. PhD students are required to write a term paper of 20-25 pages. MA and undergraduate students will write short essays in response to the questions from readings and discussion.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 2-5
| Repeatable
for credit
CHINA 379:
For Love of Country: National Narratives in Chinese Literature and Film (CHINA 279)
Explores the nation as it is constructed, deconstructed, and continuously contested in novels, short stories, films, and other media from the second half of the 20th century in mainland China and Taiwan. Asks how the trope of the nation and the ideology of nationalism mediate the relationships between politics and aesthetics. Explores the nation's internal fault lines of gender, ethnicity, geography, language, and citizenship.
Last offered: Spring 2022
| Units: 3-5
CHINA 388:
Modern China Studies: State of the Field (CHINA 288)
This is a survey course designed to acquaint master¿s and doctoral students in East Asian Studies with the latest English-language scholarship on modern China, broadly defined, across the humanities and interpretive social sciences. Each time the course is offered (once every two or three years), the disciplinary/thematic emphasis shifts and the readings are completely different. The course may be repeated up to 3 times. This year, we focus on innovative scholarship in the ¿New Humanities,¿ including environmental humanities, health humanities, and digital humanities. Future topics include sinophone studies, film and visual culture, sensory studies, translation studies, genre fiction, queer studies, animal studies, new media and internet literature, world literature, cognitive approaches, literature (& philosophy, law, anthropology, history, psychology, religion, etc.), and so on.
Last offered: Spring 2023
| Units: 3-5
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 10 units total)
CHINLANG 131:
Business Chinese, First Quarter
This is the first course in the Business Chinese series. It focuses on expanding students economic and business-related vocabulary and improving their practical language skills in business communications with Chinese-speaking communities. Students will work on a variety of authentic materials, including newspaper and journal articles, TV news and film clips, as well as commentaries from social media. Prerequisite: CHINLANG 103 or equivalent.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3-4
| UG Reqs: Language
CHINLANG 132:
Business Chinese, Second Quarter
Continuation of CHINLANG131. This is the second course in the Business Chinese series. It focuses on expanding students economic and business-related vocabulary and improving their practical language skills in business communications with Chinese-speaking communities. Students will work on a variety of authentic materials, including newspaper and journal articles, TV news and film clips, as well as commentaries from social media.Prerequisite: Chinlang 131 or consent of instructor
Terms: Win
| Units: 3-4
| UG Reqs: Language
CHINLANG 133:
Business Chinese, Third Quarter
Continuation of CHINLANG132. This is the third course in the Business Chinese series. It focuses on expanding students economic and business-related vocabulary and improving their practical language skills in business communications with Chinese-speaking communities. Students will work on a variety of authentic materials, including newspaper and journal articles, TV news and film clips, as well as commentaries from social media. Prerequisite: CHINLANG 132.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-4
| UG Reqs: Language
CLASSICS 17N:
To Die For: Antigone and Political Dissent (TAPS 12N)
(Formerly CLASSGEN 6N.) Preference to freshmen. Tensions inherent in the democracy of ancient Athens; how the character of Antigone emerges in later drama, film, and political thought as a figure of resistance against illegitimate authority; and her relevance to contemporary struggles for women's and workers' rights and national liberation. Readings and screenings include versions of "Antigone" by Sophocles, Anouilh, Brecht, Fugard/Kani/Ntshona, Paulin, Glowacki, Gurney, and von Trotta.
Last offered: Autumn 2022
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-Gender, WAY-EDP, WAY-ER
CLASSICS 30N:
Making fun of History: Insults, Mockery and Abuse Language in Antiquity
People have mocked one another for as long as there has been language with which to do it, but insults can be difficult to pin down: a word or phrase may seem mocking to one person and funny or friendly to another. Even praise can be insulting, in some situations. Context is key. In this course we will study abusive speech in the context of ancient Greece and Rome. Primary readings will range from Homer and Aristophanes to Plautus and Seneca, as well as vernacular sources such as ancient wall-graffiti and curse tablets. Throughout we will use modern sources such as film, music, and political speeches for comparison. We will also explore different sociological, anthropological, and linguistic models for understanding the social role of insult. Studying the slippery phenomenon of insult reveals a great deal about human communication, human nature, and the Classical tradition. No knowledge of Latin, Greek, or Linguistics is assumed or required for this course.
Last offered: Winter 2022
| Units: 3
CLASSICS 44:
Epic! Life, death, and glory in the Iliad and Odyssey
The two epics attributed to the ancient Greek poet Homer enshrine a vivid world of experience centered on the deeds and misdeeds of warriors and divinities, kings and queens, in the last days and aftermath of the Trojan War. The course examines these remarkable poems in detail, with attention to their political, social, historical and artistic contexts, as well as to their reception in art, literature, film and music over the last two millennia. No prior knowledge of Homer or Greek literature necessary.
Last offered: Autumn 2018
| Units: 4-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
CLASSICS 173:
Hagia Sophia (ARTHIST 208, ARTHIST 408, CLASSICS 273)
This seminar uncovers the aesthetic principles and spiritual operations at work in Hagia Sophia, the church dedicated to Holy Wisdom in Constantinople. Rather than a static and inert structure, the Great Church emerges as a material body that comes to life when the morning or evening light resurrects the glitter of its gold mosaics and when the singing of human voices activates the reverberant and enveloping sound of its vast interior. Drawing on art and architectural history, liturgy, musicology, and acoustics, this course explores the Byzantine paradigm of animation arguing that it is manifested in the visual and sonic mirroring, in the chiastic structure of the psalmody, and in the prosody of the sung poetry. Together these elements orchestrate a multi-sensory experience that has the potential to destabilize the divide between real and oneiric, placing the faithful in a space in between terrestrial and celestial. A short film on aesthetics and samples of Byzantine chant digitally imprinted with the acoustics of Hagia Sophia are developed as integral segments of this research; they offer a chance for the student to transcend the limits of textual analysis and experience the temporal dimension of this process of animation of the inert.
Last offered: Winter 2022
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
CLASSICS 273:
Hagia Sophia (ARTHIST 208, ARTHIST 408, CLASSICS 173)
This seminar uncovers the aesthetic principles and spiritual operations at work in Hagia Sophia, the church dedicated to Holy Wisdom in Constantinople. Rather than a static and inert structure, the Great Church emerges as a material body that comes to life when the morning or evening light resurrects the glitter of its gold mosaics and when the singing of human voices activates the reverberant and enveloping sound of its vast interior. Drawing on art and architectural history, liturgy, musicology, and acoustics, this course explores the Byzantine paradigm of animation arguing that it is manifested in the visual and sonic mirroring, in the chiastic structure of the psalmody, and in the prosody of the sung poetry. Together these elements orchestrate a multi-sensory experience that has the potential to destabilize the divide between real and oneiric, placing the faithful in a space in between terrestrial and celestial. A short film on aesthetics and samples of Byzantine chant digitally imprinted with the acoustics of Hagia Sophia are developed as integral segments of this research; they offer a chance for the student to transcend the limits of textual analysis and experience the temporal dimension of this process of animation of the inert.
Last offered: Winter 2022
| Units: 5
COLLEGE 113:
Utopia, Dystopia, and Technology in Science Fiction
We live immersed in technology but are perplexed by deep uncertainties about where technology is taking us - to a dead end or a better place? Technology has helped create utopian visions of good society while plunging societies into dystopic nightmares. Science and technology have been a universal path for all societies to join the modern world, but different cultures think about them differently. The Enlightenment ofthe West conceives scientific modernity as emancipation from religion and superstition and as a power over nature. In contrast, the traditional Chinese worldviews incorporate technology into a sacred cosmos where humans use science and technology to stay in tune with Heaven and Earth. Today, technoscience discourse has become a dominant power and ideology. Technoscientific agendas are generating class disparity,eroding the social fabric, undermining the humanist traditions, and damaging nature and climate. Science fiction thinks about how science and technology transform human society, values, and everyday experiences in ways good or bad. By projecting both utopia and dystopia, sf reveals and critiques technology-induced social malaises and keeps hopes alive by projecting better futures, testifying to the ceaseless human potential for self-renewal in sustaining civilization on Earth. This course asks the two-fold question: How can humans of diverse cultures harness technoscientific innovations while preserving humanist values and maintain a sustainable economy and civilization? How do narratives of utopia and dystopia depict the anthropocentric domination of nature and the exploitation working classes through themisuse and abuse of technology? Two evening film screenings required.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: College, THINK, WAY-A-II
COMM 1B:
Media, Culture, and Society (AMSTUD 1B)
The institutions and practices of mass media, including television, film, radio, and digital media, and their role in shaping culture and social life. The media's shifting relationships to politics, commerce, and identity.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
COMM 166:
Virtual People (COMM 266)
(Graduate students register for COMM 266. COMM 166 is offered for 5 units, COMM 266 is offered for 4 units.) The concept of virtual people or digital human representations; methods of constructing and using virtual people; methodological approaches to interactions with and among virtual people; and current applications. Viewpoints including popular culture, literature, film, engineering, behavioral science, computer science, and communication. Note for PhD students in programs other than Communication: instructor permission required.
Last offered: Autumn 2022
| Units: 4-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-SI
COMM 172:
Media Psychology (COMM 272)
(Graduate students register for COMM 272. COMM 172 is offered for 5 units, COMM 272 is offered for 4 units.) The literature related to psychological processing and the effects of media. Topics: unconscious processing; picture perception; attention and memory; emotion; the physiology of processing media; person perception; pornography; consumer behavior; advanced film and television systems; and differences among reading, watching, and listening.
Terms: Win
| Units: 4-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, WAY-SI
COMM 266:
Virtual People (COMM 166)
(Graduate students register for COMM 266. COMM 166 is offered for 5 units, COMM 266 is offered for 4 units.) The concept of virtual people or digital human representations; methods of constructing and using virtual people; methodological approaches to interactions with and among virtual people; and current applications. Viewpoints including popular culture, literature, film, engineering, behavioral science, computer science, and communication. Note for PhD students in programs other than Communication: instructor permission required.
Last offered: Autumn 2022
| Units: 4-5
COMM 272:
Media Psychology (COMM 172)
(Graduate students register for COMM 272. COMM 172 is offered for 5 units, COMM 272 is offered for 4 units.) The literature related to psychological processing and the effects of media. Topics: unconscious processing; picture perception; attention and memory; emotion; the physiology of processing media; person perception; pornography; consumer behavior; advanced film and television systems; and differences among reading, watching, and listening.
Terms: Win
| Units: 4-5
COMPLIT 102:
Film Series: Understanding Turkey Through Film (COMPLIT 302)
Join us in our quest to understand the great transformation in Turkey and its impact on its people through cinema. Set against the backdrop of the expansion of capitalism and the fundamental cultural, political and social change in the last decade, the movies in this series tell the uneasy stories of individuals whose lives are affected by this disruptive change. By examining the link between the individual experiences and societal change, the films confront issues such as globalization, gender and racial hierarchies, urban transformation, state repression, male domination, and the women's struggle in Turkey. We will watch eight Turkish films for this course. After introductions by Dr. Alemdaroglu or Dr. Karahan that artistically, historically, and politically contextualize the films we will have a discussion and Q&A session led by instructors or invited guest scholars of Anthropology, Film Studies, Political Science, Women and Gender Studies or film directors themselves. The students and interested Stanford community will be provided with the streaming links for the movies at the beginning of each week to screen them on their own time, and the discussion sessions will be held on the scheduled class time on Thursday. All films will be in Turkish with English subtitles.
Last offered: Autumn 2021
| Units: 1-2
COMPLIT 104N:
Film and Fascism in Europe (FILMEDIA 105N, FRENCH 104N, ITALIAN 104N)
Controlling people's minds through propaganda is an integral part of fascist regimes' totalitarianism. In the interwar, cinema, a relatively recent mass media, was immediately seized upon by fascist regimes to produce aggrandizing national narratives, justify their expansionist and extermination policies, celebrate the myth of the "Leader," and indoctrinate the people. Yet film makers under these regimes (Rossellini, Renoir) or just after their fall, used the same media to explore and expose how they manufactured conformism, obedience, and mass murder and to interrogate fascism. We will watch films produced by or under European fascist regimes (Nazi Germany, Italy under Mussolini, Greece's Regime of the Colonels) but also against them. The seminar introduces key film analysis tools and concepts, while offering insights into the history of propaganda and cinema. Taught in English.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-4
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
COMPLIT 111K:
From Colonialism to K-pop: Race and Gender in South Korean Culture (CSRE 111A, FEMGEN 111A, KOREA 111, KOREA 222)
Some may associate South Korea with the following: BTS, North Korean nukes, Samsung, Hyundai, Squid Games. Some may repeat what South Korea has said about itself: that it is racially homogenous, an ethnic community that can trace their ancestry back 5000 years. Some may wonder how a country that is often perceived as Christian and conservative developed pop culture like K-pop, or queer subcultures, or feminist activism. This class will use South Korea as a case study to think historically and geographically about race and gender through the following topics: when did racial discourses begin to emerge in Korea? What have been South Korea's significant encounters with the figure of the Other in its modern history? How were women implicated in the changing landscape of colonial Korea, the Korean War, Korea's Vietnam War experience, and compressed modernization? How have the influx of migrant labor and North Korean refugees impacted ideas about race in South Korea? And finally, what does K-pop tell us about shifting South Korean views of race and gender? The primary materials that we will analyze will be drawn from Korean fiction, film, and media in translation.
Last offered: Winter 2023
| Units: 4-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
COMPLIT 115:
Vladimir Nabokov: Displacement and the Liberated Eye (COMPLIT 315, SLAVIC 156, SLAVIC 356)
How did the triumphant author of "the great American novel" "Lolita" evolve from the young author writing at white heat for the tiny sad Russian emigration in Berlin? We will read his short stories and the novels "The Luzhin Defense, Invitation to a Beheading, Lolita, Lolita" the film, and "Pale Fire", to see how Nabokov generated his sinister-playful forms as a buoyant answer to the "hypermodern" visual and film culture of pre-WWII Berlin, and then to America's all-pervading postwar "normalcy" in his pathological comic masterpieces "Lolita" and "Pale Fire". Buy texts in translation at the Bookstore; Slavic grad students will supplement with reading and extra sessions in original Russian.
Last offered: Spring 2022
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum
COMPLIT 118:
The Gothic in Literature and Culture (ENGLISH 138E, ENGLISH 238E)
This course introduces students to the major features of Gothic narrative, a form that emerges at the same time as the Enlightenment, and that retains its power into our present. Surveying Gothic novels, as well as novellas and short stories with Gothic elements, we will learn about the defining features of the form and investigate its meaning in the cultural imagination. Gothic narratives, the course will suggest, examine the power of irrational forces in a secular age: forces that range from barbaric human practices, to supernatural activity, to the re-enchantment of modern existence. We will also consider the importance for Gothic authors and readers of the relation among narrative. spectacle and the visual arts. Primary works may include Ann Radcliffe's <e>The Italian, Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey</e>, Victor Hugo's <e>The Hunchback of Notre Dame</e>, E.T.A. Hoffman's <e>The Sandman</e>, Mary Shelly's <e>Frankenstein</e>, and Edgar Allen Poe's <e>The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym</e>. We may also do a section on vampires, including Bram Stoker's <e>Dracula</e>, and its remake in film by F.W. Murnau and Werner Herzog. Critical selections by Edmund Burke, Sigmund Freud, Walter Benjamin, Michel Foucault, and Terry Castle, among others.
Last offered: Spring 2020
| Units: 3-5
COMPLIT 122:
Literature as Performance:
Focus is on the evolution of dramatic literature through some of its great milestones from antiquity to present. Readings include selected plays (alongside video recordings/film adaptations) and secondary works on theater and performance. Through readings, discussion, and written work, students will analyze theater as an embodied genre that moves in time, space and thought. Works by Sophocles, Shakespeare, Chekhov, Beckett, Ibsen, Hansberry, Williams, and Soyinka.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum
COMPLIT 125J:
Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka and Beyond: Place in Modern Japan (JAPAN 125, JAPAN 225)
From the culturally distinct urban centers of Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka to the sharp contrasts between the southernmost and northernmost parts of Japan, modern Japanese literature and film present rich characterizations of place that have shaped Japanese identities at the national, regional, and local levels. This course focuses attention on how these settings operate in key works of literature and film, with an eye toward developing students' understanding of diversity within modern Japan. FOR UNDERGRADS: This course must be taken for a minimum of 3 units and a letter grade to be eligible for Ways credit
| Units: 2-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
COMPLIT 128:
Literature of the former Yugoslavia (REES 128, SLAVIC 128)
What do Slavoj Zizek, Novak Djokovic, Marina Abramovic, Melania Trump, Emir Kusturica, and the captain of the Croatian national football team have in common? All were born in a country that no longer exists, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (1945-1992). This course will introduce masterpieces of Yugoslav literature and film, examining the social and political complexities of a multicultural society that collapsed into civil war (i.e. Bosnia, Kosovo) in the 1990s. In English with material available in Serbo-Croatian and Slovenian.
Last offered: Autumn 2019
| Units: 3-5
COMPLIT 140:
The Pen and the Sword: A Gendered History (FEMGEN 141B, HISTORY 261P, ITALIAN 141)
As weapons, the pen and the sword have been used to wound, punish, and condemn as well as to protect, liberate, and elevate. Historically entangled with ideals of heroism, nobility, and civility, the pen and the sword have been the privileged instruments of men. Yet, throughout history, women have picked up the pen and the sword in defense, despair, and outrage as well as with passion, vision, and inspiration. This course is dedicated to them, and to study of works on love, sex, and power that articulate female experience. In our readings and seminars, we will encounter real and fictive women in their own words and in narrations and depictions by others from classical antiquity to the present, with a special focus on the Renaissance and on the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Touching on such topics as flattery and slander through the study of misogynistic, protofeminist, and feminist works in the early modern and modern periods in various European literary traditions, we will consider questions of truth and falsehood in fiction and in life. Course materials span a variety genres and media, from poetry, letters, dialogues, public lectures, treatises, short stories, and drama to painting, sculpture, music, and film works regarded for their aesthetic, intellectual, religious, social, and political value and impact.
Last offered: Winter 2023
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
COMPLIT 230:
Re-Orienting Modernity: Lepers, Hermits, Mutes
Lepers, hermits, mute dervishes, hallucinating doppelgangers, and the possessed: do these marginal figures stand for the paradoxes of modernity far from the Western center? What does modernity mean for the Global South, in particular the Islamic East? Is there an indigenous modernity, beyond Western influence? In the course, we will look at how key texts and films produced in the run-up to Iran¿s 1979 Islamic Revolution build on a modernist aesthetic while at the same time displacing the West¿s claims to progress and enlightenment. Drawing on postcolonial theories, the recent transnational turn in literary studies, and close analyses of the works themselves, we will examine ideas of center and periphery, power, identity, and selfhood in order to re-orient our understanding of modernity. As a final project, students may choose to submit a critical essay, film, collection of poems, and/or an original work of art. Open to undergraduates and graduates. Taught in English.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
COMPLIT 249B:
Iranian Cinema in Diaspora (GLOBAL 249B)
Despite enormous obstacles, immigrant Iranian filmmakers, within a few decades (after the Iranian Revolution), have created a slow but steady stream of films outside Iran. They were originally started by individual spontaneous attempts from different corners of the world and by now we can identify common lines of interest amongst them. There are also major differences between them. These films have never been allowed to be screened inside Iran, and without any support from the global system of production and distribution, as independent and individual attempts, they have enjoyed little attention. Despite all this, Iranian cinema in exile is in no sense any less important than Iranian cinema inside Iran. In this course we will view one such film, made outside Iran, in each class meeting and expect to reach a common consensus in identifying the general patterns within these works and this movement. Questions such as the ones listed below will be addressed in our meetings each week: What changes in aesthetics and point of view of the filmmaker are caused by the change in his or her work environment? Though unwantedly these films are made outside Iran, how related are they to the known (recognized) cinema within Iran? And in fact, to what extent do these films express things that are left unsaid by the cinema within Iran? NOTE: To satisfy a WAYS requirement, this course must be taken for a minimum 3 units and a letter grade. Please contact your academic advisor for University policy regarding WAYS.
Terms: Aut, Win
| Units: 1-3
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
COMPLIT 302:
Film Series: Understanding Turkey Through Film (COMPLIT 102)
Join us in our quest to understand the great transformation in Turkey and its impact on its people through cinema. Set against the backdrop of the expansion of capitalism and the fundamental cultural, political and social change in the last decade, the movies in this series tell the uneasy stories of individuals whose lives are affected by this disruptive change. By examining the link between the individual experiences and societal change, the films confront issues such as globalization, gender and racial hierarchies, urban transformation, state repression, male domination, and the women's struggle in Turkey. We will watch eight Turkish films for this course. After introductions by Dr. Alemdaroglu or Dr. Karahan that artistically, historically, and politically contextualize the films we will have a discussion and Q&A session led by instructors or invited guest scholars of Anthropology, Film Studies, Political Science, Women and Gender Studies or film directors themselves. The students and interested Stanford community will be provided with the streaming links for the movies at the beginning of each week to screen them on their own time, and the discussion sessions will be held on the scheduled class time on Thursday. All films will be in Turkish with English subtitles.
Last offered: Autumn 2021
| Units: 1-2
COMPLIT 315:
Vladimir Nabokov: Displacement and the Liberated Eye (COMPLIT 115, SLAVIC 156, SLAVIC 356)
How did the triumphant author of "the great American novel" "Lolita" evolve from the young author writing at white heat for the tiny sad Russian emigration in Berlin? We will read his short stories and the novels "The Luzhin Defense, Invitation to a Beheading, Lolita, Lolita" the film, and "Pale Fire", to see how Nabokov generated his sinister-playful forms as a buoyant answer to the "hypermodern" visual and film culture of pre-WWII Berlin, and then to America's all-pervading postwar "normalcy" in his pathological comic masterpieces "Lolita" and "Pale Fire". Buy texts in translation at the Bookstore; Slavic grad students will supplement with reading and extra sessions in original Russian.
Last offered: Spring 2022
| Units: 3-5
COMPLIT 371:
Politics, Aesthetics, Critical Ecology: Artworks and the Environment (CHINA 371)
Climate change and environmental crises have given rise to critique and reflection. This class will bring together issues of aesthetics, politics, and artworks around environmental issues. The introductory phase will involve students with key issues in ecocritical literature by reading Timothy Clark's Literature and the Environment. Moving on to the critical ecology of the Frankfurt School, the class will study the critiques of anthropocentrism, the Enlightenment, and capitalist production as the source for domination over nature and over other humans. We will explore Marxist critiques of capitalist production and alienation in John Foster and Brett Clark's writings about metabolic rifts, toxic colonialism, and alienation of labor and nature. A look at ecological thoughts in the ancient Chinese tradition will be enriched by an inquiry into contemporary Chinese eco-critical literature and film, including Chen Qiufan's Waste Tide and Jia Zhangke's Still Life. Chinese is not required. PhD students are required to write a term paper of 20-25 pages. MA and undergraduate students will write short essays in response to the questions from readings and discussion.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 2-5
| Repeatable
for credit
COMPLIT 374:
Wonder: The Event of Art and Literature (GERMAN 274)
What falls below, or beyond, rational inquiry? How do we write about the awe we feel in front of certain works of art, in reading lines of poetry or philosophy, or watching a scene in a film without ruining the feeling that drove us to write in the first place? In this course, we will focus on a heterogeneous series of texts, artworks, and physical locations to discuss these questions. Potential topics include The Book of Exodus, the poetry of Friedrich Hölderlin and of Elizabeth Bishop, the location of Harriet Tubman's childhood, the poetry and drawings of Else Lasker-Schüler, the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, the art of James Turrell, and the films of Luchino Visconti.
Last offered: Winter 2023
| Units: 3-5
CSRE 23:
Race and the War on Drugs: Long Roots and Other Futures (ANTHRO 23B)
Current discussions of the war on drugs reference Richard Nixon's 1971 declaration as a starting point. This class will encourage students instead to see the war on drugs beyond seemingly self-evident margins and imaginaries. In this course, we will explore the racialized and gendered history of coca and cocaine in the Americas, and follow the war on drugs as it targets different aspects of drug production and consumption within and beyond the borders of the United States. In examining how drugs and drug policies have been used as tools of discrimination and exploitation from colonialism through to present systems of mass incarceration, we will analyze racialization as it is constructed and experienced through time and imposed onto nations and bodies. Readings and discussion will emphasize Black and Latinx feminist theories, critical race theory, and decoloniality, drawing on anthropological and interdisciplinary scholarship while incorporating other forms of writing (prose, fiction, poetry) and media (graphic novels, visual art, film clips, documentaries). Students will learn to interrogate the longstanding racialized and gendered roots of the drug war and explore critical calls towards other futures.
Last offered: Winter 2020
| Units: 3-5
CSRE 41Q:
Black & White Race Relations in American Fiction & Film (AFRICAAM 101Q, AMSTUD 42Q)
Movies and the fiction that inspires them; power dynamics behind production including historical events, artistic vision, politics, and racial stereotypes. What images of black and white does Hollywood produce to forge a national identity? How do films promote equality between the races? What is lost or gained in film adaptations of books? NOTE: Students must attend the first day; admission to the class will be determined based on an in class essay.
Last offered: Winter 2020
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
CSRE 102C:
History of World Cinema III: Queer Cinemas around the World (ARTHIST 164, ARTHIST 364, CSRE 302C, FEMGEN 100C, FEMGEN 300C, FILMEDIA 100C, FILMEDIA 300C, GLOBAL 193, GLOBAL 390, TAPS 100C, TAPS 300C)
Provides an overview of cinema from around the world since 1960, highlighting the cultural, political, and economic forces that have shaped various film movements over the last six decades. Specific topics may vary by term/year/instructor. This term's topic, Queer Cinemas around the World, engages with a range of queer cinematic forms and queer spectatorial practices in different parts of the world, as well as BIPOC media from North America. Through film and video from Kenya, Malaysia, India, The Dominican Republic, China, Brazil, Palestine, Japan, Morocco, the US etc., we will examine varied narratives about trans experience, same-sex desire, LGBTQI2S+ rights, censorship, precarity, and hopefulness. This course will attune us to regional cultural specificities in queer expression and representation, prompting us to move away from hegemonic and homogenizing understandings of queer life and media. Notes: Screenings will be held on Fridays at 1:30PM in Oshman Hall. Screening times will vary slightly from week to week.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 10 units total)
CSRE 111A:
From Colonialism to K-pop: Race and Gender in South Korean Culture (COMPLIT 111K, FEMGEN 111A, KOREA 111, KOREA 222)
Some may associate South Korea with the following: BTS, North Korean nukes, Samsung, Hyundai, Squid Games. Some may repeat what South Korea has said about itself: that it is racially homogenous, an ethnic community that can trace their ancestry back 5000 years. Some may wonder how a country that is often perceived as Christian and conservative developed pop culture like K-pop, or queer subcultures, or feminist activism. This class will use South Korea as a case study to think historically and geographically about race and gender through the following topics: when did racial discourses begin to emerge in Korea? What have been South Korea's significant encounters with the figure of the Other in its modern history? How were women implicated in the changing landscape of colonial Korea, the Korean War, Korea's Vietnam War experience, and compressed modernization? How have the influx of migrant labor and North Korean refugees impacted ideas about race in South Korea? And finally, what does K-pop tell us about shifting South Korean views of race and gender? The primary materials that we will analyze will be drawn from Korean fiction, film, and media in translation.
Last offered: Winter 2023
| Units: 4-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
CSRE 113:
Passing: Hidden Identities Onscreen (FEMGEN 112, JEWISHST 112)
Characters who are Jewish, Black, Latinx, women, and LGBTQ often conceal their identities - or "pass" - in Hollywood film. Our course will trace how Hollywood has depicted"passing" from the early 20th century to the present. Just a few of our films will include Gentleman's Agreement (1947), Imitation of Life (1959), School Ties (1992), White Chicks (2004), and Blackkklansman (2018). Through these films, we will explore the overlaps and differences between antisemitism, racism, misogyny, and queerphobia, both onscreen and in real life. In turn, we will also study the ideological role of passing films: how they thrill audiences by challenging social boundaries and hierarchies, only to reestablish familiar boundaries by the end. With this contradiction, passing films often help audiences to feel enlightened without actually challenging the oppressive status quo. Thus, we will not treat films as accurate depictions of real-world passing, but rather as cultural tools that help audiences to manage ideological contradictions about race, gender, sexuality, and class. Students will finish the course by creating their own short films about passing.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
CSRE 124:
Do I Sound...? Identity, Technology, and Voice in Performance and Media (FEMGEN 124A)
Do I sound: Black? American? Feminine? Queer? Human? In this course we will explore the relationship between identity and technology through the voice - spoken, sung, screamed, and written. We will examine case studies spanning genres (film, popular music, opera, and social media performance) and the globe (France, India, Italy, Japan, and the United States). Grounding these case studies, we will also read theory from the fields of Performance Studies, Film Studies, Critical Musicology, Technology Studies, and Linguistics.
Last offered: Summer 2023
| Units: 4-5
CSRE 143:
Re(positioning) Disability: Historical, Cultural, and Social Lenses (AFRICAAM 244, EDUC 144, PEDS 246D)
This course is designed to introduce undergraduate students of any major to important theoretical and practical concepts regarding special education, disability, and diversity. This course primarily addresses the social construction of disability and its intersection with race and class through the critical examination of history, law, social media, film, and other texts. Students will engage in reflection about their own as well as broader U.S. discourses moving towards deeper understanding of necessary societal and educational changes to address inequities. Successful completion of this course fulfills one requirement for the School of Education minor in Education.
Last offered: Autumn 2021
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP
CSRE 148R:
Los Angeles: A Cultural History (AMSTUD 148, HISTORY 148C)
This course traces a cultural history of Los Angeles from the early twentieth century to the present. Approaching popular representations of Los Angeles as our primary source, we discuss the ways that diverse groups of Angelenos have represented their city on the big and small screens, in the press, in the theater, in music, and in popular fiction. We focus in particular on the ways that conceptions of race and gender have informed representations of the city. Possible topics include: fashion and racial violence in the Zoot Suit Riots of the Second World War, Disneyland as a suburban fantasy, cinematic representations of Native American life in Bunker Hill in the 1961 film The Exiles, the independent black cinema of the Los Angeles Rebellion, the Anna Deaver Smith play Twilight Los Angeles about the civil unrest that gripped the city in 1992, and the 2019 film Once Upon a Time¿in Hollywood.
Last offered: Winter 2021
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
CSRE 163:
Fly Folk in the Buttermilk: A Black Music and Culture Writing Workshop (MUSIC 153C)
This course in honor of the late, great music journalist and thinker, Greg Tate, is designed to introduce popular music writing as a genre to students from all academic backgrounds. From cultural criticism, liner notes, music journalism, and DJ scholarship and more - this course explores the art of music writing with lectures, discussion and ongoing feedback on student writing from Special Guest Artists DJ Lynnée Denise and Daniel Gray-Kontar. Students will also have the opportunity to read and analyze various types of music writing in public and scholarly venues, and if they choose, to build a portfolio of their own working across several possible genres. Nationally and internationally renowned guests will visit with the class regularly to share their journeys as writers and offer their views on craft, aesthetics, and principles for writers to consider as they work on their own craft. These guests will include: Cheo Hodari Coker, journalist at The Source Magazine turned television/film writer of Creed II; Joan Morgan, long-time music and culture writer who coined the phrase Hip-Hop Feminism; Fredara Hadley, ethnomusicology professor at The Juilliard School; Scott Poulsen Bryant, co-founding editor of Vibe Magazine, and others. This spring course is presented by the Institute for Diversity in the Arts, IDA.
Last offered: Spring 2022
| Units: 1-4
CSRE 185B:
Jews in the Contemporary World: Culture, Pop Culture, and Representation (HISTORY 185B, JEWISHST 185B, REES 185B, SLAVIC 183)
(HISTORY 185B is 5 units; HISTORY 85B is 3 units.) From Barbra Streisand to Volodymyr Zelenskyy, from The Dybbuk to Broad City, and from Moscow to LA, this course applies a multicultural perspective on different experiences of Jewishness in the 20th and 21st centuries. The discussion is centered on the ways in which these experiences are represented in various types of media: in literature or on TikTok, in poetry or on Instagram, in film and on television. The themes of the course include (but are not limited to) the interplay of national, religious, ethnic, linguistic, and political identities, intersectionality, the definitions and boundaries of Jewish cultures, Queer and variously gendered experiences of Jewishness, as well as antisemitism and stereotyped representations of Jewishness. The course introduces students to the analysis of a diverse array of media as cultural texts and historical sources. Students are encouraged to apply their new skills to media of their choice.
Last offered: Spring 2023
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-GlobalCom, WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
CSRE 290:
Riot: Visualizing Civil Unrest in the 20th and 21st Centuries (AFRICAAM 291, AFRICAAM 491, ARTHIST 291, ARTHIST 491, CSRE 390, FILMEDIA 291, FILMEDIA 491)
This seminar explores the visual legacy of civil unrest in the United States. Focusing on the 1965 Watts Rebellion, 1992 Los Angeles Riots, 2014 Ferguson Uprising, and 2020 George Floyd Uprisings students will closely examine photographs, television broadcasts, newspapers, magazines, and film and video representations of unrest. Additionally, students will visually analyze the works of artists who have responded to instances of police brutality and challenged the systemic racism, xenophobia, and anti-Black violence leading to and surrounding these events.
| Units: 4-5
CSRE 302C:
History of World Cinema III: Queer Cinemas around the World (ARTHIST 164, ARTHIST 364, CSRE 102C, FEMGEN 100C, FEMGEN 300C, FILMEDIA 100C, FILMEDIA 300C, GLOBAL 193, GLOBAL 390, TAPS 100C, TAPS 300C)
Provides an overview of cinema from around the world since 1960, highlighting the cultural, political, and economic forces that have shaped various film movements over the last six decades. Specific topics may vary by term/year/instructor. This term's topic, Queer Cinemas around the World, engages with a range of queer cinematic forms and queer spectatorial practices in different parts of the world, as well as BIPOC media from North America. Through film and video from Kenya, Malaysia, India, The Dominican Republic, China, Brazil, Palestine, Japan, Morocco, the US etc., we will examine varied narratives about trans experience, same-sex desire, LGBTQI2S+ rights, censorship, precarity, and hopefulness. This course will attune us to regional cultural specificities in queer expression and representation, prompting us to move away from hegemonic and homogenizing understandings of queer life and media. Notes: Screenings will be held on Fridays at 1:30PM in Oshman Hall. Screening times will vary slightly from week to week.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 10 units total)
CSRE 366A:
Blackness/Gender/Sexuality & Dis-ease: HIV/AIDS Art History (ARTHIST 366, ARTHIST 466A, FEMGEN 466A)
Since the emergence of Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS), artists have been central to the fight against the state's violence and neglect of those with HIV/AIDS. In this story, however, race and gender are marginalized as frameworks that shape this arts activism. This course takes up black art production that responds to the HIV/AIDS crisis to provide a longer, fuller, and more vital cultural narrative. By centering blackness in this story, we can ask how does dis-ease,referencing both infection and an aesthetically and structurally anxious relation to death,shape black art practices and lives? How have race and gender been used to conceptualize disease? And how do filmmakers, abstract painters, photographers, and poets help us to better comprehend blackness, gender, and sexuality under the threat of disease? After providing an overview of the relation between blackness, sexuality, and dis-ease and the emergence of the AIDS crisis, we will consider canonical works from the height of the crisis produced by filmmaker Marlon Riggs and poet Essex Hemphill. From there, we will move to themes of black art and mourning, black women's under cited activism, the controversial use of documentary photography in the crisis, black masculinity, diasporic responses, and the urgency and erasure of the ongoing crisis. Each week we will focus on a cultural text (film, painting, photograph, poem), a reading to provide historical context, and critical theories that will illuminate the art works' formal qualities and importance for our now.
Last offered: Spring 2023
| Units: 5
CSRE 390:
Riot: Visualizing Civil Unrest in the 20th and 21st Centuries (AFRICAAM 291, AFRICAAM 491, ARTHIST 291, ARTHIST 491, CSRE 290, FILMEDIA 291, FILMEDIA 491)
This seminar explores the visual legacy of civil unrest in the United States. Focusing on the 1965 Watts Rebellion, 1992 Los Angeles Riots, 2014 Ferguson Uprising, and 2020 George Floyd Uprisings students will closely examine photographs, television broadcasts, newspapers, magazines, and film and video representations of unrest. Additionally, students will visually analyze the works of artists who have responded to instances of police brutality and challenged the systemic racism, xenophobia, and anti-Black violence leading to and surrounding these events.
Last offered: Autumn 2021
| Units: 4-5
DANCE 124:
Danceacution: Performance Practice, Death Row, and the Evolution of Cultural Reform
Danceacution is a unique course in performance practice taught by nationally recognized choreographer Alex Ketley. Creative expression does not exist in a vacuum but is deeply influenced by the societal contexts surrounding it. The class will use the vast breadth of Bill Clark's life experience as the platform to develop their own artwork. Bill Clark is an artist and writer incarcerated on Death Row. This can take the form of writing, film making, dance, music, or theater. Bill is offering some of his most inspiring writing to the class as a foundation for research and will call into the class each week from the prison phone so the students can interact with him directly. Alex Ketley has built theater pieces from numerous creative vantage points and will guide the students in the development of their work. At the end of the quarter there will be a performance that Bill will attend via San Quentin's video conference system where he and Alex will offer feedback to each student. Danceacution is an opportunity for students to engage their creative impulses through the lens of two artists deeply committed to the idea that art has the ability to affect meaningful change in our society. Enrollment is by permission only. Please email the instructor at aketley@stanford.edu to inquire.
Terms: Win
| Units: 2
DLCL 50:
At Home Abroad Seminar: International Film Series (GLOBAL 50)
The At Home Abroad House invites you to challenge your habits of visual culture, fill your ears with less-familiar sounds, and build your own understanding of what it means to live in a global age. Stanford experts from a multitude of cultural disciplines representing multiple geographic regions have selected some of the best of the best of recent film for you to view: come see for yourself and see outside the box with this tailored line-up of contemporary cinema from around the world. Weekly screenings hosted at the At Home Abroad House; class is open to undergrads only and is mandatory for pre-assigned residents of AHA.
Terms: Aut, Win
| Units: 1-2
| Repeatable
9 times
(up to 18 units total)
DLCL 354A:
DLCL Film Series: Rebel With a Cause
This quarter's film series will examine the representation of resistance, rebellion, and revolt in international cinema. Starting with Michael Almereyda's biographical drama Experimenter (2015), we will examine Stanley Milgram's studies on complicity, conformity, and resistance in his famous experiments on following instructions to inflict pain. From there we will move to canonical cinematic representations of acts of resistance like Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's The Lives of Others (2006), Jean-Pierre Melville's Army of Shadows (1969), and Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin (1925) to discuss why these films have been canonized as some of the most suspenseful and powerful films of all time. Viewing Marcel Carné's Children of Paradise (1945), filmed during the Nazi Occupation of France, and Victor Erice's The Spirit of the Beehive (1973), filmed during the Franco regime in Spain, will allow us to discuss the ways that cinema itself is used as a tool of resistance. And discussing Walter Salles' Motorcycle Diaries (2004), Francisco Vargas' The Violin (2005), and Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds (2009) will allow us to explore the ways that resistance in diverse forms from unexpected actors can lead to movements that may or may not change the world. Discussion will focus on analyzing the structures, actors, and acts of resistance, rebellion, and revolt in international film. In particular we will look at who resists and why; how a rebel's identity and social position affects his or her political engagement; and how different forms of resistance can create movements that evolve from grassroots, across governments, and around the globe. In our study of representations of resistance across different schools and cultures of cinema, film technologies, and cinematic history, we will also address the ways that film creates suspense and intrigue, represents cause and effect, and prompts questions of ethics. Screening Schedule: April 4 Experimenter (2015) Michael Almereyda , April 11 Army of Shadows (1969) Jean-Pierre Melville, April 18 Children of Paradise (1946) Marcel Carné , April 25 Battleship Potemkin (1925) Sergei Eisenstein, May 2 The Lives of Others (2006) Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, May 9 Motorcycle Diaries (2004) Walter Salles, May 16 The Violin (2005) Francisco Vargas, May 23 The Battle of Algiers (1966) Gillo Pontecorvo, June 6 The Spirit of the Beehive (1973) Victor Erice , and June 13 Inglourious Basterds (2009) Quentin Tarantino.
Last offered: Spring 2018
| Units: 1
| Repeatable
for credit
EDUC 141A:
Counterstory Practice in Contemporary Literature and Media
This seminar explores Counterstory, a methodology for exposing and challenging dominant cultural narratives about identities, events, and power. We examine counterstories in contemporary literature and media, examine the theory and craft behind them, and create original counterstories. You'll learn the method of counterstory not only to create your own, but also to share it with others in educational and other settings where stories are critical to social change-from journalism and documentary film to health, social justice, and community organizations. Note: this is a companion class to EDUC 141, sharing a number of lectures and activities, but designed for students interested in fulfilling the Writing & Rhetoric 2 requirement. Prerequisite: PWR 1.
Last offered: Spring 2022
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: Writing 2
EDUC 144:
Re(positioning) Disability: Historical, Cultural, and Social Lenses (AFRICAAM 244, CSRE 143, PEDS 246D)
This course is designed to introduce undergraduate students of any major to important theoretical and practical concepts regarding special education, disability, and diversity. This course primarily addresses the social construction of disability and its intersection with race and class through the critical examination of history, law, social media, film, and other texts. Students will engage in reflection about their own as well as broader U.S. discourses moving towards deeper understanding of necessary societal and educational changes to address inequities. Successful completion of this course fulfills one requirement for the School of Education minor in Education.
Last offered: Autumn 2021
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP
EE 237:
Solar Energy Conversion
This course will be an introduction to solar photovoltaics. No prior photovoltaics knowledge is required. Class lectures will be supplemented by guest lectures from distinguished engineers, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists actively engaged in solar industry. Past guest speakers include Richard Swanson (CEO, SunPower), Benjamin Cook (Managing Partner at NextPower Capital) and Shahin Farshchi (Partner, Lux Capital). Topics Include: Economics of solar energy. Solar energy policy. Solar cell device physics: electrical and optical. Different generations of photovoltaic technology: crystalline silicon, thin film, multi-junction solar cells. Perovskite and silicon tandem cells. Advanced energy conversion concepts like photon up-conversion, quantum dot solar cells. Solar system issues including module assembly, inverters, micro-inverters and microgrid. No prior photovoltaics knowledge is required. Recommended: EE116, EE216 or equivalent.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3
EFSLANG 696:
Understanding American Humor
Recognizing rhetorical devices, jokes, and character types common to spoken humor in film and television programs. Crosscultural discussion. Prerequisite: EFSLANG 690B, EFSLANG 693B or consent of the instructor. Repeatable once for credit. Enrollment limited to 14.
Last offered: Autumn 2019
| Units: 1-3
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 6 units total)
ENGLISH 5K:
WISE: The Cult of Jack Kerouac (And Other Stories of Literary Celebrity)
This course explores the rise, stakes, and ironies of literary stardom by focusing on one of the Bay Area's most notorious band of celebrity authors: the Beats. To some, Beat politics, styles, and philosophies have seemed dated for decades; and yet Beat writers maintain a weirdly broad staying power. Even now, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg remain pop-cultural touchstones, outsider-intellectual icons, and essential reading for teens and the highly educated. To get to the root of this phenomenon, we will consider what fame meant to literature and vice versa in the post-World War II era - a time when a rapidly changing media ecology, rising consumerism, and intensifying Cold War nationalism made for curious marriages: between avant-garde art and pop culture, between countercultural ambitions and commercial appropriation. Why did the Beats get famous? How did their fame affect the life and work of contemporaries (like the acclaimed but understudied poet Bernadette Mayer) who wrote in their long shadow? What can these dynamics teach us about celebrity and technology today? In answering these questions, we will examine Beat writers in print, on film and TV, in photographs and advertisements, and in the archive. Students will learn to work with a range of genres and forms including some criticism and theory by authors both inside and outside of the literary 'star system.' (Note: This Writing-Intensive Seminar in English (WISE) course fulfills WIM for English majors. Non-majors are welcome, space permitting. For enrollment permission contact vbeebe@stanford.edu.)
Last offered: Spring 2023
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
ENGLISH 9CF:
Poetry Into Film
This course focuses on the intersection between film and poetry. Students will complete three short films based on both published and student-authored poems. From concept to final cut, students will script, storyboard, soundtrack, and visually design each production before filming, editing, and screening their films for class. As such, the course will serve as an introduction to both poetry and digital filmmaking.nNOTE: Students must attend the first class meeting to retain their roster spot.
Last offered: Spring 2019
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
ENGLISH 9CP:
Writing Off the Page: Songwriting, Film, and Spoken Word
With recent blockbuster films like Patterson and major prizes being awarded to artists like Bob Dylan and Kendrick Lamar, the borders of what constitutes traditional literature are shifting. In this Creative Writing course we will be looking at literature `off the page,' in songwriting, spoken word, multi-media, and visual art. We will be workshopping our own creative projects and exploring the boundaries of contemporary literature. Artists we'll be looking at include Iron and Wine, Lil Wayne, Allen Ginsberg, Beyonce, David Lynch, Patti Smith, Mark Strand, Anne Carson, Danez Smith, Bon Iver, and Lou Reed. For undergraduates only. NOTE: Students must attend the first class meeting to retain their roster spot.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
ENGLISH 9SF:
Fight the Future: Speculative Fiction and Social Justice
Imagining the future has been one of the most important ways humans have assessed their present. In this salon-style seminar we'll focus on modern speculative fiction as social critique, especially of regimes of patriarchy, racism, and capitalism. The course will be devoted to new and established writers of speculative fiction -- broadly defined and across era and geography -- whose work engages with oppression and freedom, sex, love, and other dynamics of power. We will also devote one night per week to film screenings of classic and contemporary films in the genre. Guest lecturers will discuss the work of authors such as Octavia Butler, Samuel R. Delany, Franz Kafka, Philip K. Dick, Ursula LeGuin, and others.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
ENGLISH 83N:
City, Space, Literature (URBANST 83N)
This course presents a literary tour of various cities as a way of thinking about space, representation, and the urban. Using literature and film, the course will explore these from a variety of perspectives. The focus will be thematic rather than chronological, but an attempt will also be made to trace the different ways in which cities have been represented from the late nineteenth century to recent times. Ideas of space, cosmopolitanism, and the urban will be explored through films such as The Bourne Identity and The Lunchbox, as well as in the writings of Arthur Conan Doyle, Walter Mosley, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Fiston Mwanza Mujila, Karen Tei Yamashita, and Mohsin Hamid, among others.
Last offered: Autumn 2022
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
ENGLISH 90AX:
Creative Writing: The Magic of Baseball in Film & Fiction
In 1954, French-American historian and educator Jacques Barzun observed that "Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball." In this creative writing course, we'll examine the role of baseball (whether minuscule or major) in our lives and American culture and history at large by engaging with notable baseball films (The Natural, Field of Dreams, The Sandlot, and Moneyball), baseball literature, and critical essays. Why have scholars suggested "that baseball may be perceived as a sort of mirror in which values, power, politics, fashion, class, economics, and race be viewed in microcosm," as Ronald Briley writes in "Baseball and American Cultural Values"? How has baseball become intertwined with American identity? What is it about the sport that immediately evokes nostalgia on a national level? What do baseball legends have in common with canonical literary heroes? Through our process of discovery, we'll "pitch" baseball as an objective correlative and use it to power our own fiction. In this workshop designed for both rookie and pro writers, the goals and objectives are: to become acquainted with a brief overview of baseball's history and rules in the nineteenth century and beyond; to learn and experiment with the craft elements of fiction: character, POV, plot, and place; to improve upon incorporating research, analysis, and American popular culture into creative work; to deliver and receive collegial feedback about creative work within a supportive community; to hit a baseball (seriously!) and attend a San Francisco Giants game. Baseball, like creative writing, is an art form that takes practice, and every baseball player is part of a team. In the same way, no writer becomes great alone.
Last offered: Summer 2023
| Units: 2
ENGLISH 92VP:
Visual Arts and Poetry
This creative writing workshop will make use of Stanford's own Cantor Arts Center and Anderson Collection to explore the relationship between poetry and visual art. We'll read poets whose work incorporates painting, drawing, printmaking, photography, film, and ekphrasis, and will engage poetically with art on view at Stanford. Each student will produce a mixed media chapbook by the end of the quarter. Readings will include works by Claudia Rankine, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Anne Carson, William Blake, Robin Coste Lewis, Maggie Nelson, Layli Long Soldier, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Etel Adnan. Note: First priority to undergrads. Students must attend the first class meeting to retain their roster spot.
Last offered: Spring 2020
| Units: 5
ENGLISH 110:
The Indian Novel
When we imagine the exemplary global or postcolonial novel, we're likely to think of novels from India. But the current dominance of Indian Anglophone fiction was hardly the tryst with destiny it seems in retrospect. This course offers a perspective on the emergence of the Anglophone novel in India through a conversation with its linguistic and generic others works in the competing modes of short stories, poetry, and film. The course may include writings by Mulk Raj Anand, G.V. Desani, Anita Desai, and Arundhati Roy, as well as selections from the volume A History of the Indian Novel in English.
Last offered: Spring 2023
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
ENGLISH 113A:
African American Ecologies (AFRICAAM 113A)
African American perspectives on the environment have long been suppressed in mainstream ecological discourse, despite the importance of questions of land, labor, and resource to the historical and ongoing experiences of Black people in the United States. Against this exclusion, this course takes up African American literature as a unique site of ecological knowledge and environmental thought. Drawing on texts, art, music, and film from the late nineteenth century to the present, this course considers planetary problems of ecological catastrophe and climatic change in relation to the everyday structures of U.S.-American racial politics. Through close analyses of texts and films set on plantations and steamships, in gardens and coal mines, students will explore the environmental dimensions of African American literature, and gain a deeper understanding of the real-world histories with which these works engage. Texts will include novels by Zora Neale Hurston, Percival Everett, and Toni Morrison, short stories and essays by Charles Chesnutt, Jamaica Kincaid, Katherine McKittrick, and adrienne marie brown, and films and multimedia works by Julie Dash, Stephanie Dinkins, and Jordan Peele. Important topics will include the ecology of the plantation, black feminist ecological thought, and the significance of water in African American life and culture.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
ENGLISH 124:
The American West (AMSTUD 124A, ARTHIST 152, HISTORY 151, POLISCI 124A)
The American West is characterized by frontier mythology, vast distances, marked aridity, and unique political and economic characteristics. This course integrates several disciplinary perspectives into a comprehensive examination of Western North America: its history, physical geography, climate, literature, art, film, institutions, politics, demography, economy, and continuing policy challenges. Students examine themes fundamental to understanding the region: time, space, water, peoples, and boom and bust cycles.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
ENGLISH 138E:
The Gothic in Literature and Culture (COMPLIT 118, ENGLISH 238E)
This course introduces students to the major features of Gothic narrative, a form that emerges at the same time as the Enlightenment, and that retains its power into our present. Surveying Gothic novels, as well as novellas and short stories with Gothic elements, we will learn about the defining features of the form and investigate its meaning in the cultural imagination. Gothic narratives, the course will suggest, examine the power of irrational forces in a secular age: forces that range from barbaric human practices, to supernatural activity, to the re-enchantment of modern existence. We will also consider the importance for Gothic authors and readers of the relation among narrative. spectacle and the visual arts. Primary works may include Ann Radcliffe's <e>The Italian, Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey</e>, Victor Hugo's <e>The Hunchback of Notre Dame</e>, E.T.A. Hoffman's <e>The Sandman</e>, Mary Shelly's <e>Frankenstein</e>, and Edgar Allen Poe's <e>The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym</e>. We may also do a section on vampires, including Bram Stoker's <e>Dracula</e>, and its remake in film by F.W. Murnau and Werner Herzog. Critical selections by Edmund Burke, Sigmund Freud, Walter Benjamin, Michel Foucault, and Terry Castle, among others.
Last offered: Spring 2020
| Units: 3-5
ENGLISH 154D:
American Disaster (AMSTUD 154D, SOC 154A)
How do we make sense of catastrophe? Who gets to write or make art about floods, fires, or environmental collapse? How do disaster and its depiction make visible or exacerbate existing social and economic inequalities? Beginning with the Jamestown colony and continuing to the present, this course explores the long history of disaster on the North American continent, and how it has been described by witnesses, writers, and artists. From the 1793 Philadelphia yellow fever epidemic to Hurricane Katrina, the Dust Bowl to contemporary explorations of climate change, this seminar will put in conversation a wide range of primary and secondary materials. Possible texts include writings by Mike Davis, Katherine Anne Porter, Rebecca Solnit, Jesmyn Ward, and Richard Wright; films Wildlife (2018), First Reformed (2017), When the Levees Broke (2006), and Free Willy II (1995); and art by Dorothea Lange, Winslow Homer, and Richard Misrach. For the final paper, students will write a critical essay on a disaster novel, film, or other work or object of their choice, or develop their own creative piece or oral history.
Last offered: Spring 2022
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
ENGLISH 154F:
Film & Philosophy (FRENCH 154, ITALIAN 154, PHIL 193C)
What makes you the individual you are? Should you plan your life, or make it up as you go along? Is it always good to remember your past? Is it always good to know the truth? When does a machine become a person? What do we owe to other people? Is there always a right way to act? How can we live in a highly imperfect world? And what can film do that other media can't? We'll think about all of these great questions with the help of films that are philosophically stimulating, stylistically intriguing, and, for the most part, gripping to watch: Do The Right Thing (Lee), The Dark Knight (Nolan), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Kaufman), Arrival (Villeneuve), My Dinner with Andr¿ (Malle), Blade Runner (Scott), La Jet¿e (Marker), Fight Club (Fincher), No Country for Old Men (Coen), The Seventh Seal (Bergman), and Memento (Nolan). Attendance at weekly screenings is mandatory; and fun. We will not be using the waitlist on Axess - if you would like to enroll and the course is full/closed please email us to get on the waitlist!
Last offered: Autumn 2022
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
ENGLISH 169D:
Contemporary Asian American Stories (ASNAMST 169D)
This course will examine the aesthetics and politics of contemporary Asian American storytellers, with an emphasis on work produced within the past five years. We will investigate the pressures historically placed on Asian Americans to tell a certain kind of story e.g. the immigrant story in a realist mode and the ways writers have found to surprise, question, and innovate, moving beyond those boundaries to explore issues of race, sexuality, science, memory, citizenship, and belonging. Course materials will consist of novels, short stories, graphic narrative, and film, and may include work by Ocean Vuong, Mira Jacobs, Gish Jen, Charles Yu, and Adrian Tomine, as well as Lulu Wangs 2019 film The Farewell. This seminar will feature both analytical and creative components, and students will be encouraged to produce both kinds of responses to the material.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
ENGLISH 190F:
Fiction into Film
Workshop. For screenwriting students. Story craft, structure, and dialogue. Assignments include short scene creation, character development, and a long story. How fictional works are adapted to screenplays, and how each form uses elements of conflict, time, summary, and scene. Prerequisite: 90.nNOTE: First priority to undergrads. Students must attend the first class meeting to retain their roster spot.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
ENGLISH 190SW:
Screenwriting Intensive
The main requirement for this course is a full length film script. The course explores elements of screenwriting including beat structure, character creation, scene vs. montage, as well as description and dialogue. Students will read four to five screenplays during the first half of the course and then write a 90-page film script in the second half of the course. Students will additionally write synopses, treatments, character sketches, and beat sheets. Designed for any student who has always wanted to write a screenplay
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 5 units total)
ENGLISH 238E:
The Gothic in Literature and Culture (COMPLIT 118, ENGLISH 138E)
This course introduces students to the major features of Gothic narrative, a form that emerges at the same time as the Enlightenment, and that retains its power into our present. Surveying Gothic novels, as well as novellas and short stories with Gothic elements, we will learn about the defining features of the form and investigate its meaning in the cultural imagination. Gothic narratives, the course will suggest, examine the power of irrational forces in a secular age: forces that range from barbaric human practices, to supernatural activity, to the re-enchantment of modern existence. We will also consider the importance for Gothic authors and readers of the relation among narrative. spectacle and the visual arts. Primary works may include Ann Radcliffe's <e>The Italian, Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey</e>, Victor Hugo's <e>The Hunchback of Notre Dame</e>, E.T.A. Hoffman's <e>The Sandman</e>, Mary Shelly's <e>Frankenstein</e>, and Edgar Allen Poe's <e>The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym</e>. We may also do a section on vampires, including Bram Stoker's <e>Dracula</e>, and its remake in film by F.W. Murnau and Werner Herzog. Critical selections by Edmund Burke, Sigmund Freud, Walter Benjamin, Michel Foucault, and Terry Castle, among others.
Last offered: Spring 2023
| Units: 3-5
ENGLISH 283:
The Sublime and the Ugly
Why is it that the aesthetic pleasures resulting from artistic representation so often depart from the "pure" ideal of beauty? Is tainted beauty more, or less, than beautiful? Is there any such thing as a "pure" aesthetic category, after all, or is all experience in relation to the arts hybrid? Pain may enhance pleasure in the case of the sublime, but where does disgust fit in? or does it? And what about ugliness? Campiness? Grotesqueness? The uncanny? This course is designed to put literary, psychoanalytic, sociological, architectural, post structural, and queer theory as well as philosophical and art historical writings in conversation with poetry, narrative fiction, creative nonfiction, and film, in order to develop a critical skill set designed not only to address such questions but, more critically for an active mind, to posit new ones.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
ENGR 110:
Perspectives in Assistive Technology (ENGR 110) (ENGR 210)
Seminar and student project course. Explores the medical, social, ethical, and technical challenges surrounding the design, development, and use of technologies that improve the lives of people with disabilities and older adults. Guest lecturers include engineers, designers, researchers, entrepreneurs, clinicians, and assistive technology users. Special activities include field trips to local facilities, an assistive technology faire, and a film screening. Students from any discipline are welcome to enroll. 3 units for students (juniors, seniors, and graduate students preferred) who pursue a team-based assistive technology project with a community partner - enrollment is limited to 27. 1 unit for seminar attendance only (CR/NC) or individual project (letter grade). Projects can be continued as independent study in Spring Quarter. See course website at http://engr110.stanford.edu. Designated a Cardinal Course by the Haas Center for Public Service.
Terms: Win
| Units: 1-3
ENGR 210:
Perspectives in Assistive Technology (ENGR 110) (ENGR 110)
Seminar and student project course. Explores the medical, social, ethical, and technical challenges surrounding the design, development, and use of technologies that improve the lives of people with disabilities and older adults. Guest lecturers include engineers, designers, researchers, entrepreneurs, clinicians, and assistive technology users. Special activities include field trips to local facilities, an assistive technology faire, and a film screening. Students from any discipline are welcome to enroll. 3 units for students (juniors, seniors, and graduate students preferred) who pursue a team-based assistive technology project with a community partner - enrollment is limited to 27. 1 unit for seminar attendance only (CR/NC) or individual project (letter grade). Projects can be continued as independent study in Spring Quarter. See course website at http://engr110.stanford.edu. Designated a Cardinal Course by the Haas Center for Public Service.
Terms: Win
| Units: 1-3
EPS 30N:
Designing Science Fiction Planets (GEOPHYS 30N)
(Formerly GEOLSCI 30N) Science fiction writers craft entire worlds and physical laws with their minds. While planetary formation in the real world is a little different, we can use fantastical places and environments from film, television, and literature as conversation starters to discuss real discoveries that have been made about how planets form and evolve over time. The class will focus on the following overarching questions: (1) What conditions are required for habitable planets to form? (2) What types of planets may actually exist, including desert worlds, lava planets, ice planets, and ocean worlds? (3) What kids of life could inhabit such diverse worlds? (3) What types of catastrophic events such as supernovas, asteroid impacts, climate changes can nurture or destroy planetary habitability? Change of Department Name: Earth and Planetary Science (Formerly Geologic Sciences).
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-SMA
ESS 14N:
Sustainable Adaptation
How do we adapt to the rapid global environmental changes that are happening around us? How do we do so in a way that is sustainable, enhancing human and environmental wellbeing, now and in the future? In this course, we will explore these questions through an interdisciplinary lens, drawing from the social sciences, engineering, and public health. We will focus on people¿s responses to a range of impacts related to global environmental change from sea level rise to extreme weather events. Example responses include changes in fishing practices, taking protective action during wildfires or hurricanes, and migrating to a new location. Often, we will draw case studies from frontline communities, those who experience the "first and worst" of global environmental changes. Through readings, film, and field trips, we will ask what adaptation to global environmental change is, what does it mean to be sustainable, and how can it be sustained.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3
FEMGEN 100C:
History of World Cinema III: Queer Cinemas around the World (ARTHIST 164, ARTHIST 364, CSRE 102C, CSRE 302C, FEMGEN 300C, FILMEDIA 100C, FILMEDIA 300C, GLOBAL 193, GLOBAL 390, TAPS 100C, TAPS 300C)
Provides an overview of cinema from around the world since 1960, highlighting the cultural, political, and economic forces that have shaped various film movements over the last six decades. Specific topics may vary by term/year/instructor. This term's topic, Queer Cinemas around the World, engages with a range of queer cinematic forms and queer spectatorial practices in different parts of the world, as well as BIPOC media from North America. Through film and video from Kenya, Malaysia, India, The Dominican Republic, China, Brazil, Palestine, Japan, Morocco, the US etc., we will examine varied narratives about trans experience, same-sex desire, LGBTQI2S+ rights, censorship, precarity, and hopefulness. This course will attune us to regional cultural specificities in queer expression and representation, prompting us to move away from hegemonic and homogenizing understandings of queer life and media. Notes: Screenings will be held on Fridays at 1:30PM in Oshman Hall. Screening times will vary slightly from week to week.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 10 units total)
FEMGEN 104:
Close Cinematic Analysis - Caste, Sexuality, and Religion in Indian Media (ARTHIST 199, ASNAMST 108, FILMEDIA 101, FILMEDIA 301, TAPS 101F)
(Formerly FILMSTUD101. If you have taken this course before, please reach out to the instructor) India is the world's largest producer of films in over 20 languages, and Bollywood is often its most visible avatar, especially on US university curricula. This course will introduce you to a range of media from the Indian subcontinent across commercial and experimental films, documentaries, streaming media, and online cultures. We will engage in particular with questions of sexuality, gender, caste, religion, and ethnicity in this postcolonial context and across its diasporas, including in the Caribbean. Given this course's emphasis on close cinematic analysis, we will analyze formal aspects of cinematography, editing, mise-en-scene, and performance, and how these generate spectatorial pleasure, star and fan cultures, and particular modes of representation. This course fulfills the WIM requirement for Film and Media Studies majors. Note: Screenings will be held on Thursdays at 5:30 PM. Screening times will vary from week to week and may range from 90 to 180 minutes.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
FEMGEN 111A:
From Colonialism to K-pop: Race and Gender in South Korean Culture (COMPLIT 111K, CSRE 111A, KOREA 111, KOREA 222)
Some may associate South Korea with the following: BTS, North Korean nukes, Samsung, Hyundai, Squid Games. Some may repeat what South Korea has said about itself: that it is racially homogenous, an ethnic community that can trace their ancestry back 5000 years. Some may wonder how a country that is often perceived as Christian and conservative developed pop culture like K-pop, or queer subcultures, or feminist activism. This class will use South Korea as a case study to think historically and geographically about race and gender through the following topics: when did racial discourses begin to emerge in Korea? What have been South Korea's significant encounters with the figure of the Other in its modern history? How were women implicated in the changing landscape of colonial Korea, the Korean War, Korea's Vietnam War experience, and compressed modernization? How have the influx of migrant labor and North Korean refugees impacted ideas about race in South Korea? And finally, what does K-pop tell us about shifting South Korean views of race and gender? The primary materials that we will analyze will be drawn from Korean fiction, film, and media in translation.
Last offered: Winter 2023
| Units: 4-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
FEMGEN 112:
Passing: Hidden Identities Onscreen (CSRE 113, JEWISHST 112)
Characters who are Jewish, Black, Latinx, women, and LGBTQ often conceal their identities - or "pass" - in Hollywood film. Our course will trace how Hollywood has depicted"passing" from the early 20th century to the present. Just a few of our films will include Gentleman's Agreement (1947), Imitation of Life (1959), School Ties (1992), White Chicks (2004), and Blackkklansman (2018). Through these films, we will explore the overlaps and differences between antisemitism, racism, misogyny, and queerphobia, both onscreen and in real life. In turn, we will also study the ideological role of passing films: how they thrill audiences by challenging social boundaries and hierarchies, only to reestablish familiar boundaries by the end. With this contradiction, passing films often help audiences to feel enlightened without actually challenging the oppressive status quo. Thus, we will not treat films as accurate depictions of real-world passing, but rather as cultural tools that help audiences to manage ideological contradictions about race, gender, sexuality, and class. Students will finish the course by creating their own short films about passing.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
FEMGEN 124A:
Do I Sound...? Identity, Technology, and Voice in Performance and Media (CSRE 124)
Do I sound: Black? American? Feminine? Queer? Human? In this course we will explore the relationship between identity and technology through the voice - spoken, sung, screamed, and written. We will examine case studies spanning genres (film, popular music, opera, and social media performance) and the globe (France, India, Italy, Japan, and the United States). Grounding these case studies, we will also read theory from the fields of Performance Studies, Film Studies, Critical Musicology, Technology Studies, and Linguistics.
Terms: Sum
| Units: 4-5
FEMGEN 140D:
LGBTQ History of the United States (FEMGEN 240D, HISTORY 257C)
An introductory course that explores LGBT/Queer social, cultural, and political history in the United States. By analyzing primary documents that range from personal accounts (private letters, autobiography, early LGBT magazines, and oral history interviews) to popular culture (postcards, art, political posters, lesbian pulp fiction, and film) to medical, military, and legal papers, students will understand how the categories of gender and sexuality have changed over the past 150 years. This class investigates the relationship among queer, straight and transgender identities. Seminar discussions will question how the intersections of race, class, gender, and sexuality influenced the construction of these categories.
Last offered: Spring 2021
| Units: 4-5
| UG Reqs: GER:EC-Gender, WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
FEMGEN 141B:
The Pen and the Sword: A Gendered History (COMPLIT 140, HISTORY 261P, ITALIAN 141)
As weapons, the pen and the sword have been used to wound, punish, and condemn as well as to protect, liberate, and elevate. Historically entangled with ideals of heroism, nobility, and civility, the pen and the sword have been the privileged instruments of men. Yet, throughout history, women have picked up the pen and the sword in defense, despair, and outrage as well as with passion, vision, and inspiration. This course is dedicated to them, and to study of works on love, sex, and power that articulate female experience. In our readings and seminars, we will encounter real and fictive women in their own words and in narrations and depictions by others from classical antiquity to the present, with a special focus on the Renaissance and on the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Touching on such topics as flattery and slander through the study of misogynistic, protofeminist, and feminist works in the early modern and modern periods in various European literary traditions, we will consider questions of truth and falsehood in fiction and in life. Course materials span a variety genres and media, from poetry, letters, dialogues, public lectures, treatises, short stories, and drama to painting, sculpture, music, and film works regarded for their aesthetic, intellectual, religious, social, and political value and impact.
Last offered: Winter 2023
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
FEMGEN 150:
Sex, Gender, and Power in Modern China (CHINA 115, CHINA 215, FEMGEN 250)
Investigates how sex, gender, and power are entwined in the Chinese experience of modernity. Topics include anti-footbinding campaigns, free love/free sex, women's mobilization in revolution and war, the new Marriage Law of 1950, Mao's iron girls, postsocialist celebrations of sensuality, and emergent queer politics. Readings range from feminist theory to China-focused historiography, ethnography, memoir, biography, fiction, essay, and film. All course materials are in English.
Last offered: Summer 2021
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-Gender, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
FEMGEN 192:
Women in Contemporary French Cinema (FILMEDIA 112, FRENCH 192, FRENCH 392)
Women as objects and subjects of the voyeuristic gaze inherent to cinema. The evolution of female characters, roles, actresses, directors in the French film industry from the sexual liberation to #metoo. Women as archetypes, icones, images, or as agents and subjects. Emphasis on filmic analysis: framing, point of view, narrative, camera work as ways to convey meaning. Themes include: sexualization and desire; diversity and intersectionality in films; new theories of the female gaze; gender, ethnicity and class. Filmmakers include Roger Vadim, Agnès Varda, Luis Buñuel, Claude Chabrol, Colline Serreau, Elena Rossi, Tonie Marshall, Houda Benyamina, Eléonore Pourriat, Céline Sciamma. VISIT BY FILM DIRECTORS Elena Rossi and Sciamma (pending).nnFilms in French with subtitles; Discussion in English; 3 units, 4 units or 5 units.
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
FEMGEN 240D:
LGBTQ History of the United States (FEMGEN 140D, HISTORY 257C)
An introductory course that explores LGBT/Queer social, cultural, and political history in the United States. By analyzing primary documents that range from personal accounts (private letters, autobiography, early LGBT magazines, and oral history interviews) to popular culture (postcards, art, political posters, lesbian pulp fiction, and film) to medical, military, and legal papers, students will understand how the categories of gender and sexuality have changed over the past 150 years. This class investigates the relationship among queer, straight and transgender identities. Seminar discussions will question how the intersections of race, class, gender, and sexuality influenced the construction of these categories.
Last offered: Spring 2021
| Units: 4-5
FEMGEN 250:
Sex, Gender, and Power in Modern China (CHINA 115, CHINA 215, FEMGEN 150)
Investigates how sex, gender, and power are entwined in the Chinese experience of modernity. Topics include anti-footbinding campaigns, free love/free sex, women's mobilization in revolution and war, the new Marriage Law of 1950, Mao's iron girls, postsocialist celebrations of sensuality, and emergent queer politics. Readings range from feminist theory to China-focused historiography, ethnography, memoir, biography, fiction, essay, and film. All course materials are in English.
Last offered: Summer 2021
| Units: 3-5
FEMGEN 280:
Feminist Avant-Garde Art in Germany and Beyond (1968-2019) (ARTHIST 272, ARTHIST 472, GERMAN 280)
In "Woman's Art: A Manifesto" (1972), the artist, performer and filmmaker Valie Export (1940) proposed the transfer of women's experience into an art context and considered the body "a signal bearer of meaning and communication." In reconceptualizing and displaying "the" body (her body) as an aesthetic sign, Export's groundbreaking work paves the way towards questioning the concepts of a "female aesthetic" and a "male gaze" (L. Mulvey). Beginning with Export, we will discuss art informed by and coalescing with feminism(s): the recent revival of the 1970s in all-women group shows, the dialectic of feminist revolution, the breakdown of stable identities and their representations, point(s) of absorption of commodified femininities. Particular attention will be paid to German-language theory and its medial transfer into art works. For students of German Studies, readings and discussions in German are possible. Online discussions will be organized with contemporary artists and curators. Emphasis will be on: the relationship between (female?) aesthetics and (gender) politics, between private and public spheres, between housework and artwork; conceptions of identity (crises) and corporeality in visual culture and mass media; categories of the artist´s self in relation to the use of media (video, photography, film, collage, installation art). This course will be taught by Professor Elena Zanichelli, a Berlin-based art historian, critic, and curator. She is junior professor for Art History and Aesthetic Theory at IKFK (Institute for Art History - Film History - Art Education) at the University of Bremen.
Last offered: Spring 2022
| Units: 3-5
FEMGEN 300C:
History of World Cinema III: Queer Cinemas around the World (ARTHIST 164, ARTHIST 364, CSRE 102C, CSRE 302C, FEMGEN 100C, FILMEDIA 100C, FILMEDIA 300C, GLOBAL 193, GLOBAL 390, TAPS 100C, TAPS 300C)
Provides an overview of cinema from around the world since 1960, highlighting the cultural, political, and economic forces that have shaped various film movements over the last six decades. Specific topics may vary by term/year/instructor. This term's topic, Queer Cinemas around the World, engages with a range of queer cinematic forms and queer spectatorial practices in different parts of the world, as well as BIPOC media from North America. Through film and video from Kenya, Malaysia, India, The Dominican Republic, China, Brazil, Palestine, Japan, Morocco, the US etc., we will examine varied narratives about trans experience, same-sex desire, LGBTQI2S+ rights, censorship, precarity, and hopefulness. This course will attune us to regional cultural specificities in queer expression and representation, prompting us to move away from hegemonic and homogenizing understandings of queer life and media. Notes: Screenings will be held on Fridays at 1:30PM in Oshman Hall. Screening times will vary slightly from week to week.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 10 units total)
FEMGEN 466A:
Blackness/Gender/Sexuality & Dis-ease: HIV/AIDS Art History (ARTHIST 366, ARTHIST 466A, CSRE 366A)
Since the emergence of Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS), artists have been central to the fight against the state's violence and neglect of those with HIV/AIDS. In this story, however, race and gender are marginalized as frameworks that shape this arts activism. This course takes up black art production that responds to the HIV/AIDS crisis to provide a longer, fuller, and more vital cultural narrative. By centering blackness in this story, we can ask how does dis-ease,referencing both infection and an aesthetically and structurally anxious relation to death,shape black art practices and lives? How have race and gender been used to conceptualize disease? And how do filmmakers, abstract painters, photographers, and poets help us to better comprehend blackness, gender, and sexuality under the threat of disease? After providing an overview of the relation between blackness, sexuality, and dis-ease and the emergence of the AIDS crisis, we will consider canonical works from the height of the crisis produced by filmmaker Marlon Riggs and poet Essex Hemphill. From there, we will move to themes of black art and mourning, black women's under cited activism, the controversial use of documentary photography in the crisis, black masculinity, diasporic responses, and the urgency and erasure of the ongoing crisis. Each week we will focus on a cultural text (film, painting, photograph, poem), a reading to provide historical context, and critical theories that will illuminate the art works' formal qualities and importance for our now.
Last offered: Spring 2023
| Units: 5
FILMEDIA 4:
Introduction to Film Study
Introduction to Film Study introduces you to film as art, as entertainment, a field of study, and an everyday cultural practice. This course enables you to analyze films in terms of their formal elements, themes, and narrative structures. You learn to 'read' details of cinematic 'language' such as the arrangement of shots (editing), the composition and framing of a shot (cinematography), the overall look of a film (mise-en-scene), and its sound environment. We not only identify such cinematic details, but also consider how they contribute to the overall meaning of a film. Thinking about film and writing about film are intricately linked and inform each other deeply. Learning to write about film with sophistication requires a grasp of the mechanics of writing, familiarity with film terminology, and an understanding of film theory and history. This course helps you develop skills in critical viewing, reading, and writing. We explore basic concepts that have been important to the study of film, such as genre, authorship, and stardom to comprehend how films make meaning within their social, political, cultural, and historical contexts.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 4-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
FILMEDIA 4S:
Language of Film
This course familiarizes students with various elements of film language (cinematography, editing, sound, etc.) and introduces them to a range of approaches to cinematic analysis (authorship, genre, close formal reading, socio-historical considerations). Different types of films (narrative, documentary, and experimental) will be surveyed. Classical narrative cinema will be compared with alternative modes of story-telling.
Terms: Sum
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
FILMEDIA 6:
Media and Mediums (FILMEDIA 306)
What is a medium? This course starts from the assumption that the answer to this question is not as obvious as it might at first appear. Clearly, we know some media when we see them: radio, film, and television are in many ways paradigmatic media of the twentieth century. But what about the computational, networked media of the twenty-first century? Are these still media in the same sense, or has the nature of media changed with the emergence of digital technologies? And what, for that matter, about pre-technical media? Is painting a medium in the same sense that oil or acrylic are media, or in the sense that we speak of mixed media? Is language a medium? Are numbers? Is the body? As we shall see, the question of what a medium is raises a number of other questions of a theoretical or even philosophical nature. How is our experience of the world affected or shaped by media? Are knowledge and perception possible apart from media, or are they always mediated by the apparatuses, instruments, or assemblages of media? What is the relation between the forms and the contents of media, and how does this relation bear on questions of aesthetics, science, technology, or politics? The lecture-based course addresses these and other questions and seeks in this way to introduce a way of thinking about media that goes beyond taken-for-granted ideas and assumptions, and that has a potentially transformative effect on a wide range of theoretical and practical interests.Film & Media Studies majors and minors must enroll for 5 units.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
FILMEDIA 11Q:
Art in the Metropolis (ARTSINST 11Q, ARTSTUDI 11Q, ENGLISH 11Q, MUSIC 11Q, TAPS 11Q)
This seminar is offered in conjunction with the annual "Arts Immersion" trip to New York that takes place over the spring break and is organized by the Stanford Arts Institute (SAI). Enrollment in this course is a requirement for taking part in the spring break trip. The program is designed to provide a group of students with the opportunity to immerse themselves in the cultural life of New York City guided by faculty and SAI staff. Students will experience a broad range and variety of art forms (visual arts, theater, opera, dance, etc.) and will meet with prominent arts administrators and practitioners, some of whom are Stanford alumni. In the seminar, we will prepare for the diverse experiences the trip affords and develop individual projects related to particular works of art, exhibitions, and performances that we'll encounter in person during the stay in New York. Class time will be divided between readings, presentations, and one studio based creative project. The urban setting in which the various forms of art are created, presented, and received will form a special point of focus. A principal aim of the seminar will be to develop aesthetic sensibilities through writing critically about the art that interests and engages us and making art. For further details please visit the Stanford Arts Institute website: https://arts.stanford.edu/for-students/academics/arts-immersion/new-york/
Last offered: Winter 2023
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
FILMEDIA 38:
Comics: More than Words (DLCL 238, ENGLISH 1C)
This research unit looks at Comics from a transnational, cross-cultural, and interdisciplinary perspective. Each quarter we organize a series of lectures, reading sessions, and workshops around a main topic. Some previous topics that we have explored are: Postcolonialism and Decoloniality (Fall 2021), Feminisms (Winter 2022), and Superheroes (Spring 2022). This year we plan on exploring topics such as Mangas (Fall 2022), Computer Science (Winter 2023), and Comic Theory (Spring 2023). We gather three times per quarter on Zoom or in person. To earn the unit, students must attend all events hosted during the quarter, do the readings in advance of the meeting, and participate actively in the discussion.
Last offered: Spring 2023
| Units: 1
| Repeatable
20 times
(up to 20 units total)
FILMEDIA 50Q:
The Video Essay: Writing with Video about Media and Culture
In this seminar, we explore what it means to 'write with video,' and we learn to make effective and engaging video essays. Specifically, we examine strategies for communicating through video, and we conduct hands-on exercises using digital video editing software to construct arguments, analyses, and interpretations of film, television, video games, online media, art, and culture. Compared with traditional text-based arguments, the video essay offers a remarkably direct mode of communicating critical and analytical ideas. Video essayists can simply show their viewers what they want them to see. This does not mean, however, that it is any easier than an essay composed with ink and paper. Like the written essay, the new technology introduces its own challenges and choices, including decisions about organization of space and time, audiovisual materials, onscreen text, voiceover commentary, and visual effects. By taking a hands-on approach, we develop our skills with editing software such as Adobe Premiere Pro and Apple's Final Cut Pro while also cultivating our awareness of the formal and narrative techniques employed in cinema and other moving-image media. Through weekly assignments and group critique sessions, we learn to express ourselves more effectively and creatively in audiovisual media. As a culmination of our efforts, we assemble a group exhibition of our best video essays for public display on campus.nNo previous experience is required, but a willingness to learn new technologies (in particular, video editing software) is important.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
FILMEDIA 69SI:
Blockchain, NFTs, and the Art World (ARTHIST 69SI)
The most expensive artwork sold in 2021 was an NFT (non-fungible token) created by Beeple, an artist previously unknown to the art world, but well respected by NFT collectors. NFTs, made possible by blockchain, are radically redefining the art world's commercial boundaries, social dynamics, and even what constitutes an artwork. How do NFTs work? What lends legitimacy to NFT artworks when digital materials can easily be copied via 'Right Click Save'? How does the blockchain alter and reinforce ideas of scarcity, authenticity, and authorship of artwork? How are artists engaging with and reacting to this new technology? How are museums, galleries, and market forces responding? Through guest lectures and discussions, this student-initiated course will provide a foundational understanding of technologies driving the NFT phenomenon and delve into its implications on contemporary artists and the art world.
Last offered: Spring 2022
| Units: 1
FILMEDIA 87N:
The New Wave: How The French Reinvented Cinema (FRENCH 87N)
When the French New Wave burst onto the stage in 1959, it changed forever the way films are made and the ways we think about cinema. Shooting on location with small crews, light cameras, unknown actors and improvised scripts, a group of young film critics turned filmmakers circumvented the big studios to craft low-budget films that felt fresh, irreverent and utterly modern. In just a few years, the Nouvelle Vague delivered such landmark works as Truffaut's 400 Blows, Godard's Breathless or Resnais' Hiroshima mon amour. Together with Agn¿s Varda, Eric Rohmer and Claude Chabrol, they redefined the essence of cinema as an art form as complex and multi-layered as literature. Yet, after having been hailed as revolutionary, the Nouvelle Vague was soon dismissed as 'rather vague and not all that new. 'Why did these films look so radically fresh? What is their common aesthetics, when each 'auteur' claimed an utterly personal style for him or herself? And what did their immediate success and early fall from grace tell us about France in the early 60s? This survey course will explore a unique moment in French culture and the history of cinema, when radical politics, youth culture, and jazzy aesthetics coalesced into dazzling experiments on the screen that continue to influence world cinema to this day. Focus is on cultural history, aesthetic analysis, and interpretation of narrative, sound and visual forms. Satisfies Ways AII (Aesthetic and Interpretative Inquiry). Films in French with Subtitles. Taught in English.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3-4
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
FILMEDIA 100A:
History of World Cinema I: Silent Film (FILMEDIA 300A)
Provides an overview of cinema made around the globe between its emergence as a mass medium in the late-19th century, and the rise of synchronized sound around 1930. This is a fecund period in which the 'language' of film was at once established, challenged, and expanded. We study key film movements, modes of production, and film theories that emerged in order to develop a formal, historical, and theoretical appreciation of a variety of commercial and art film traditions. Specific topics may vary by term/year/instructor.This term's topic will explore...TBD
Terms: Win
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
FILMEDIA 100B:
History of World Cinema II: The Films of Ernst Lubitsch (AMSTUD 100B, FILMEDIA 300B)
Provides an overview of cinema made around the world between 1930 and 1960, highlighting technical, cultural, political, and economic forces that shaped mid-twentieth-century cinema. We study key film movements and national cinemas towards developing a formal, historical, and theoretical appreciation of a variety of commercial and art film traditions. Specific topics may vary by term/year/instructor. This term's topic: Ernst Lubitsch was: a stage actor in Berlin; a comic actor in early German cinema; Germany's most profitable director in the early 1920s; a director of subtle silent comedies in Hollywood in the later `20s; an innovative director of sound musicals and comedies in the 1930s; head of production for Paramount Pictures; and one of the few directors whose name and likeness were familiar to audiences across America, one famed for what became known as The Lubitsch Touch. The course considers Lubitsch in all these contexts. Charts intersections with collaborators, genre conventions, sexuality and censorship, and studio control. Lubitsch's style depends on performance, so attention will be given to film acting as he came to shape it.
Last offered: Autumn 2022
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
FILMEDIA 100C:
History of World Cinema III: Queer Cinemas around the World (ARTHIST 164, ARTHIST 364, CSRE 102C, CSRE 302C, FEMGEN 100C, FEMGEN 300C, FILMEDIA 300C, GLOBAL 193, GLOBAL 390, TAPS 100C, TAPS 300C)
Provides an overview of cinema from around the world since 1960, highlighting the cultural, political, and economic forces that have shaped various film movements over the last six decades. Specific topics may vary by term/year/instructor. This term's topic, Queer Cinemas around the World, engages with a range of queer cinematic forms and queer spectatorial practices in different parts of the world, as well as BIPOC media from North America. Through film and video from Kenya, Malaysia, India, The Dominican Republic, China, Brazil, Palestine, Japan, Morocco, the US etc., we will examine varied narratives about trans experience, same-sex desire, LGBTQI2S+ rights, censorship, precarity, and hopefulness. This course will attune us to regional cultural specificities in queer expression and representation, prompting us to move away from hegemonic and homogenizing understandings of queer life and media. Notes: Screenings will be held on Fridays at 1:30PM in Oshman Hall. Screening times will vary slightly from week to week.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 10 units total)
FILMEDIA 101:
Close Cinematic Analysis - Caste, Sexuality, and Religion in Indian Media (ARTHIST 199, ASNAMST 108, FEMGEN 104, FILMEDIA 301, TAPS 101F)
(Formerly FILMSTUD101. If you have taken this course before, please reach out to the instructor) India is the world's largest producer of films in over 20 languages, and Bollywood is often its most visible avatar, especially on US university curricula. This course will introduce you to a range of media from the Indian subcontinent across commercial and experimental films, documentaries, streaming media, and online cultures. We will engage in particular with questions of sexuality, gender, caste, religion, and ethnicity in this postcolonial context and across its diasporas, including in the Caribbean. Given this course's emphasis on close cinematic analysis, we will analyze formal aspects of cinematography, editing, mise-en-scene, and performance, and how these generate spectatorial pleasure, star and fan cultures, and particular modes of representation. This course fulfills the WIM requirement for Film and Media Studies majors. Note: Screenings will be held on Thursdays at 5:30 PM. Screening times will vary from week to week and may range from 90 to 180 minutes.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
FILMEDIA 102:
Theories of the Moving Image: The Technologically Mediated Image (FILMEDIA 302)
This course examines influential theories of film and media from the early twentieth century to the present. Prerequisites: FILMEDIA 4.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
FILMEDIA 105N:
Film and Fascism in Europe (COMPLIT 104N, FRENCH 104N, ITALIAN 104N)
Controlling people's minds through propaganda is an integral part of fascist regimes' totalitarianism. In the interwar, cinema, a relatively recent mass media, was immediately seized upon by fascist regimes to produce aggrandizing national narratives, justify their expansionist and extermination policies, celebrate the myth of the "Leader," and indoctrinate the people. Yet film makers under these regimes (Rossellini, Renoir) or just after their fall, used the same media to explore and expose how they manufactured conformism, obedience, and mass murder and to interrogate fascism. We will watch films produced by or under European fascist regimes (Nazi Germany, Italy under Mussolini, Greece's Regime of the Colonels) but also against them. The seminar introduces key film analysis tools and concepts, while offering insights into the history of propaganda and cinema. Taught in English.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-4
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
FILMEDIA 107N:
Documentary Film: Telling it Like it Is?
Documentary films have become a "lingua franca," thanks to ubiquitous streaming services and our devotion to screen time. Offering compelling stories, intriguing "characters," and a lingering resonance, they often function as a Rorschach test that elicits divergent responses. This course decodes the narrative technique, point of view, authorship, and aesthetic approach of nonfiction films that explore scintillating and provocative subject matter. The student develops "visual literacy" skills as we interrogate the inferred relationship between documentary, objectivity, and "truth." In this seminar-style class, we peel back the veneer of the films we watch, examining both form and content.
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
FILMEDIA 110N:
Coming-of-Age Movies
Physical changes, religious rituals, and new legal rights and responsibilities outwardly mark the transition from childhood to adulthood. They imply inward transformation such as loss of innocence and maturation of perspective. This combination of inward and outward change is generative material for cinema. What does cinema bring to these stories, and what do these stories reveal about cinema's capacities as medium and art? What can we take from such movies as we ask what it means to be an adult?
Last offered: Winter 2023
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
FILMEDIA 112:
Women in Contemporary French Cinema (FEMGEN 192, FRENCH 192, FRENCH 392)
Women as objects and subjects of the voyeuristic gaze inherent to cinema. The evolution of female characters, roles, actresses, directors in the French film industry from the sexual liberation to #metoo. Women as archetypes, icones, images, or as agents and subjects. Emphasis on filmic analysis: framing, point of view, narrative, camera work as ways to convey meaning. Themes include: sexualization and desire; diversity and intersectionality in films; new theories of the female gaze; gender, ethnicity and class. Filmmakers include Roger Vadim, Agnès Varda, Luis Buñuel, Claude Chabrol, Colline Serreau, Elena Rossi, Tonie Marshall, Houda Benyamina, Eléonore Pourriat, Céline Sciamma. VISIT BY FILM DIRECTORS Elena Rossi and Sciamma (pending).nnFilms in French with subtitles; Discussion in English; 3 units, 4 units or 5 units.
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
FILMEDIA 114:
Reading Comics (AMSTUD 114X, FILMEDIA 314)
The modern medium of comics throughout its 150 year history (mostly North American). The flexibility of the medium explored through the genres of humorous and dramatic comic strips, superheroes, undergrounds, independents, kids and comics, journalism, and autobiography. Innovative creators including McCay, Kirby, Barry, Ware, and critical writings including McCloud, Eisner, Groenstee. Topics include text/image relations, panel-to-panel relations, the page, caricature, sequence, subjective expression, seriality, realism vs cartoonism, comics in the context of the fine arts, and relations to other media.
Last offered: Winter 2022
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
FILMEDIA 115:
Documentary Issues and Traditions (FILMEDIA 315)
Issues include objectivity/subjectivity, ethics, censorship, representation, reflexivity, responsibility to the audience, and authorial voice. Parallel focus on form and content.
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, WAY-A-II
FILMEDIA 120:
Superhero Theory (AMSTUD 120B, ARTHIST 120, ARTHIST 320, FILMEDIA 320)
With their fantastic powers, mutable bodies, multiple identities, complicated histories, and visual dynamism, the American superhero has been a rich vehicle for fantasies (and anxieties) for 80+ years across multiple media: comics, film, animation, TV, games, toys, apparel. This course centers upon the body of the superhero as it incarnates allegories of race, queerness, hybridity, sexuality, gendered stereotypes/fluidity, politics, vigilantism, masculinity, and monstrosity. They also embody a technological history that encompasses industrial, atomic, electronic, bio-genetic, and digital.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
FILMEDIA 129:
Animation and the Animated Film (AMSTUD 129, FILMEDIA 329, FILMEDIA 429)
The fantasy of an image coming to life is ancient, but not until the cinema was this fantasy actualized. The history of the movies begins with optical toys, and contemporary cinema is dominated by films that rely on computer animation. This course considers the underlying fantasies of animation in art and lit, its phenomenologies, its relation to the uncanny, its status as a pure cinema, and its place in film theory. Different modes of production and style to be explored include realist animation, abstract animation; animistic animation; animated drawings, objects, and puppets; CGI, motion capture, and live/animation hybrids.
| Units: 3-5
FILMEDIA 131A:
Introduction to Queer Theory (CSRE 131A, FEMGEN 131)
What can Queer Theory help us do and undo? Emerging at the intersections of feminist theory, queer activism, and critical race studies in the 1990's, Queer Theory has become a dynamic interdisciplinary field that informs a wide range of cultural and artistic practices. This course will introduce students to the development of queer theory as well as core concepts and controversies in the field. While considering theoretical frames for thinking gender, sexuality, and sex, we will explore the possibilities--and limitations--of queer theory with a focus on doing and undoing identity, knowledge, and power.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
FILMEDIA 132A:
Bollywood and Beyond: An Introduction to Indian Cinema (FILMEDIA 332A)
This course will provide an overview of cinema from India, the world's largest producer of films. We will trace the history of Indian cinema from the silent era, through the studio period, to state-funded art filmmaking to the contemporary production of Bollywood films as well as the more unconventional multiplex cinema. We will examine narrative conventions, stylistic techniques, and film production and consumption practices in popular Hindi language films from the Bombay film industry as well as commercial and art films in other languages. This outline of different cinematic modes will throw light on the social, political, and economic transformations in the nation-state over the last century.
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
FILMEDIA 135:
Around the World in Ten Films (FILMEDIA 335, GLOBAL 135)
This is an introductory-level course about the cinema as a global language. We will undertake a comparative study of select historical and contemporary aspects of international cinema, and explore a range of themes pertaining to the social, cultural, and political diversity of the world. A cross-regional thematic emphasis and inter-textual methods of narrative and aesthetic analysis, will ground our discussion of films from Italy, Japan, United States, India, China, France, Brazil, Nigeria, Russia, Iran, Mexico, and a number of other countries. Particular emphasis will be placed on the multi-cultural character and the regional specificities of the cinema as a "universal language" and an inclusive "relational network."There are no prerequisites for this class. It is open to all students; non-majors welcome.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3-4
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
FILMEDIA 137:
Love in the Time of Cinema (FILMEDIA 337, GLOBAL 110, GLOBAL 211)
Romantic coupling is at the heart of mainstream film narratives around the world. Through a range of film cultures, we will examine cinematic intimacies and our own mediated understandings of love and conjugality formed in dialog with film and other media. We will consider genres, infrastructures, social activities (for example, the drive-in theater, the movie date, the Bollywood wedding musical, 90s queer cinema), and examine film romance in relation to queerness, migration, old age, disability, and body politics more broadly.
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
FILMEDIA 152:
Hollywood/Bollywood: The Musical Two Ways (FILMEDIA 352)
A comparative approach to the musical as Hollywood genre and as fundamental mode in Bollywood (where even horror movies have song-and-dance sequences!). The pleasurable interplay among song, dance, and screen directs us to the interplay of cultural identities (regional, racial, gendered, sexual). Through cinematic travels between America and India, we will examine how the utopian, liberatory energies of musical numbers - physical, emotional, aesthetic, and social - illuminate relations of narrative and spectacle, stardom and performance, gender and space, color and sound.
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
FILMEDIA 153:
Queer Cinema in the World (FILMEDIA 353)
In his manifesto, 'A Queer('s) Cinema,' Manuel Betancourt declares, queer cinema is global cinema, queer cinema is not universal, is intersectional, is an aesthetic sensibility. Through film and video from Kenya, Hong Kong, India, France, The Dominican Republic, Spain, Palestine, the US, Argentina etc., this course engages with a range of queer cinematic forms and queer spectatorial practices in different parts of the world. We examine how queer cinema enables different ways of being in the world and creates different worlds (Galt and Schoonover). Varied narratives about sexual minorities, same-sex desire, LGBTQI+ rights, censorship, precarity, and hopefulness attune us to regional cultural specificities in queer expression and representation, prompting us to move away from hegemonic and homogenizing understandings of queer life and media.
| Units: 3-5
FILMEDIA 153E:
Close Listening: Sound, Media, and Performance (FEMGEN 153D, MUSIC 153E, TAPS 153D)
Are there ways to listen? This new course approaches the question by exploring artist works that have challenged the norms of sonic experience. We will discover that in life, as in the arts, there are practices of listening. We will cover a range of texts on sound media, and we will experience a number of works that reinvent practices of listening. There will be particular attention to the work of feminist sound artists. In conversation with art and theory, we will develop wider awareness for the sounds of everyday life. This course meets once a week, and group listening of select works is part of the class.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
FILMEDIA 165B:
American Style and the Rhetoric of Fashion (AMSTUD 127, ARTHIST 165B)
Focus on the visual culture of fashion, especially in an American context. Topics include: the representation of fashion in different visual media (prints, photographs, films, window displays, and digital images); the relationship of fashion to its historical context and American culture; the interplay between fashion and other modes of discourse, in particular art, but also performance, music, economics; and the use of fashion as an expression of social status, identity, and other attributes of the wearer. Texts by Thorstein Veblen, Roland Barthes, Dick Hebdige, and other theorists of fashion.
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
FILMEDIA 173:
Digital and Interactive Media
This course introduces a variety of ways of thinking about digital and interactive media. As examples, we will think about the impact of algorithmic processes on cinema and other moving-image media; we will consider the relation of narrative to interactivity in video games and related forms; and we will look carefully at the perceptual and embodied relations of human users to computational systems of various sorts. Engaging with a wide range of historical and contemporary media forms (including those used for entertainment, artistic expression, social interaction, politics, work, play, and other things in between), this course hopes to illuminate the transformative roles that digital and interactive media play in our lives.
| Units: 3-5
FILMEDIA 178:
Film and History of Latin American Revolutions and Counterrevolutions (HISTORY 78, HISTORY 178, ILAC 178)
In this course we will watch and critique films made about Latin America's 20th century revolutions focusing on the Cuban, Chilean and Mexican revolutions. We will analyze the films as both social and political commentaries and as aesthetic and cultural works, alongside archivally-based histories of these revolutions.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
FILMEDIA 210A:
Documentary Perspectives: The Essay Film (FILMEDIA 410A)
In this class we will explore the essay film as a distinct genre of documentary filmmaking. The course is organized as an inquiry into the nature of the essay film, its historical and formal development, as well as a survey of the major works that make up this genre. Each student will be an active participant in this investigation through class discussions, readings and writing assignments.
Last offered: Autumn 2022
| Units: 4
| Repeatable
for credit
FILMEDIA 210B:
Documentary Perspectives: Politics of the Subject (FILMEDIA 410B)
This course will introduce students to historical, political, aesthetic, and formal developments of documentary film. Topics we will cover include subjectivity, ethics, censorship, representation, reflexivity, responsibility, and authorial voice. Each student will be an active participant through class discussions, readings and writing assignments. This is a required course for students in the M.F.A. Documentary Film program. Other students with an interest in documentary film are very welcome, and there are no prerequisites to taking this course.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 4
| Repeatable
for credit
FILMEDIA 211N:
Childish Enthusiasms and Perishable Manias
This course has a simple premise: Effective scholarship need not suck the joy from the world. G. K. Chesterton once wrote that 'it is the duty of every poet, and even of every critic, to dance in respectful imitation of the child.' What could it mean to do scholarship that respects a child's playful and exploratory engagement with the world? Such questions will be filtered through such 'unserious' media as amusement parks, comics, cartoons, musicals, and kidlit.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
FILMEDIA 212:
A History of "Hollywood" (FILMEDIA 412)
TBD
| Units: 3-5
FILMEDIA 214:
Decolonial Approaches to African Arts
This 1-credit course will prepare students for the Summer 2024 BOSP Global Seminar, "Decolonizing African Arts in Nairobi." Therefore, enrollment is limited to students who have been accepted to this BOSP Global Seminar.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 1
FILMEDIA 221:
Out of Order
This course explores the rise of nonlinear approaches to storytelling in global narrative cinema in the second half of the twentieth century. We will begin with Rashomon and end somewhere around Inception, also considering examples from Hong Kong, Senegal, France, and Mexico. Readings will touch on film analysis, history and politics, and narrative theory.
| Units: 4
FILMEDIA 223:
How to Watch TV
'How to watch TV' may seem like the most obvious thing in the world. Yet when we look at the historical development of television as a technological, social, and cultural form, we find that people have engaged with it in a variety of different ways. There is not, in other words, a single right way to watch TV. This is because television itself has undergone transformations on all of these levels: Technologically, changes such as those from black-and-white to color, analog to digital, standard to high-definition, and broadcast to cable to interactive all play a role in changing our relation to what 'television' is. Socially, changes in television¿s integration in corporate and industrial structures, its mediation of political realities, and its ability to reflect and shape our interactions with one another all play a role in transforming who 'we' as viewers are. And culturally, varieties of programming including live broadcasting, prerecorded content, and on-demand streaming of news, movies, sit-coms, and prestige dramas series all indicate differences and distinctions in what it means to 'watch' TV. In this course, we will engage with these and other aspects of television as a medium in order to rethink not only how but why we watch TV.
| Units: 3-5
FILMEDIA 224:
Films of Stanley Kubrick (FILMEDIA 424)
This seminar will explore the cinema of Stanley Kubrick, a widely acclaimed film auteur known for works such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, and Barry Lyndon. The seminar will focus on close analysis of practically all of Kubrick's films, from a variety of methodological perspectives (authorship, formal/stylistic analysis, book-to-screen adaptation, and more.nnNOTE: Instructor's permission required before the first day of class.
| Units: 4-5
FILMEDIA 234:
Media Theory and the Sea (GERMAN 234, GERMAN 334)
This seminar serves as an introduction to media theory by turning to the sea as a medium. Designed for third- and fourth-year German majors, the course explores the way the ocean has served as a constant vehicle for poetic and philosophical reflection throughout history, from Homer's Odyssey to Paul Valery's Cemetery by the Sea. Combining theoretical studies of seafaring by Hans Blumenberg and Bernard Siegert with literary writings from Franz Kafka and Friedrich Hölderlin, this course highlights the way nautical activity becomes a theater of political and poetic concerns when our engagement with the ocean is viewed as a metaphor or a cultural technique. In recent years, the sea has also become a flashpoint for environmental concerns due to rising sea levels, leading to calls to take the material status of the ocean itself seriously. The sea, when viewed through the lens of environmental media, continues to serve as a canvas for the projection of human hopes and fears while opening up further questions about the relationship between nature, cultural practices, and theoretical texts. Readings for this course will be in German and English.
Last offered: Winter 2023
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
FILMEDIA 245B:
Eastern European Cinema (FILMEDIA 445B, REES 301B)
From 1945 to the mid-80s, emphasizing Polish, Hungarian, Czech, Slovak, and Yugoslav contexts. The relationship between art and politics; postwar establishment of film industries; and emergence of national film movements such as the Polish school, Czech new wave, and new Yugoslav film. Thematic and aesthetic preoccupations of filmmakers such as Wajda, Jancso, Forman, and Kusturica. Permission of instructor required prior to the first day of classes.
| Units: 5
FILMEDIA 253:
Aesthetics and Phenomenology (ARTHIST 253, ARTHIST 453, FILMEDIA 453)
This course explores central topics in aesthetics where aesthetics is understood both in the narrow sense of the philosophy of art and aesthetic judgment, and in a broader sense as it relates to questions of perception, sensation, and various modes of embodied experience. We will engage with both classical and contemporary works in aesthetic theory, while special emphasis will be placed on phenomenological approaches to art and aesthetic experience across a range of media and/or mediums (including painting, sculpture, film, and digital media). PhD students in the Art History program may take the class to fulfill degree requirements in Modern/Contemporary Art or Film & Media Studies, depending on the topic of their seminar paper.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
FILMEDIA 256Q:
Horror Comics
This seminar will explore the vast array of horror comics. How does horror work in comics, as distinct from prose and cinema? How and why are non-moving images scary? The different narrational strategies of short stories, self-contained works, and continuing series will be explored, as will American, Japanese, and European approaches. Special attention will be given to Frankenstein, in novel, film, illustration, and comics. Example of such sub-genres as literary horror, horrific superheroes, cosmic (Lovecraftian) horror, ecological horror, as well as the horrors of bodies, sexuality, and adolescence will be encountered.Students will read many comics, some comics theory, and will do an in-class presentation on a comic or topic of their choosing. The course is a seminar, so discussion will be continuous and required. Enrollment limited.
Last offered: Winter 2023
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
FILMEDIA 257:
Black Contemporary Filmmakers (AFRICAAM 256, AMSTUD 256)
Despite the systemic inequalities of the Hollywood system, there is a robust, stylistically diverse cohort of African-American writer/directors at work, including Barry Jenkins, Ava DuVernay, and Ryan Coogler. Jenkins' films (Moonlight, If Beale Street Could Talk), are aesthetically lush, intimate, and understated. DuVernay (When They See Us) foregrounds racial history and injustice in her feature films, television, and documentary work. Coogler followed his realist Fruitvale Station with two powerful genre films with black protagonists (Creed, Black Panther - this last the highest-grossing film by a black director).
Last offered: Spring 2023
| Units: 5
FILMEDIA 264B:
Starstuff: Space and the American Imagination (AMSTUD 143X, ARTHIST 264B)
Course on the history of twentieth and twenty-first century American images of space and how they shape conceptions of the universe. Covers representations made by scientists and artists, as well as scientific fiction films, TV, and other forms of popular visual culture. Topics will include the importance of aesthetics to understandings of the cosmos; the influence of media and technology on representations; the social, political, and historical context of the images; and the ways representations of space influence notions of American national identity and of cosmic citizenship.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
FILMEDIA 270:
German Media Theory (FILMEDIA 470, GERMAN 144, GERMAN 344)
In this seminar, we will interrogate major currents in media-theoretical work from the German-speaking world from the 1980s to today. Starting from the surprisingly controversial term 'German media theory' itself, which has been described as 'neither a theory nor really centered on media, [while] its Germanness is a contested issue' - we will consider the characteristics that nevertheless make this a recognizable, if internally heterogeneous, category for thinking about media, mediation, and culture. We will pay special attention to the foundational work of Friedrich Kittler, which ranges across literature, film, philosophy, and computers, before turning to the current differentiation into a technology-focused 'media archaeology' (Wolfgang Ernst) and the differently inflected formation of 'cultural techniques' (Bernhard Siegert), as well as recent articulations of 'media philosophy' and other developments in contemporary theory. We will also examine the often absent and/or fraught role of gender, race, and class in this field, as well as attempts to address these issues by such theorists as Ute Holl, Cornelia Vissman, Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky, Annette Bitsch, and Sybille Krämer. Readings will be in English translation. Knowledge of German is therefore not required, but readers of German will find plenty of research opportunities among the many as yet untranslated texts that make up the field of German media theory.
Last offered: Spring 2022
| Units: 3-5
FILMEDIA 280:
Curricular Practical Training
CPT course required for international students completing degree. Students must obtain a new I-20 with CPT authorization prior to the employment start date. Professional experience in a field related to the cinematic arts (film, television, media) for six to ten weeks. Internships may include work for production companies, producers, studios, networks, films, television series, directors, screenwriters, non-profit organizations, academic publications and related workplaces. Students arrange the internship, provide a confirmation letter from the hosting institution, and must receive consent from the faculty coordinator to enroll in units. Students submit three self-assessments, and evaluations from the student and the supervisor are submitted at the end of the internship. Restricted to declared majors and minors. May be repeated for credit.
Terms: Aut, Win, Sum
| Units: 1-5
| Repeatable
for credit
FILMEDIA 281:
Contemporary Asian Filmmakers (FILMEDIA 481)
Films and moving image works by contemporary filmmakers from Asia, including Hou Hsiao-hsien, Tsai Ming-liang, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Topics include explorations of national and local histories, aesthetics of slowness and duration, and crossings between the movie theater and the gallery.
Last offered: Autumn 2021
| Units: 5
FILMEDIA 290:
Movies and Methods: The Judy Garland Seminar (AMSTUD 290, FILMEDIA 490)
Acting and performance have been prominent in cinema throughout the medium's history, but have received relatively little attention in film studies. Performance provides a compellingly different way of engaging with a film. The Judy Garland Seminar proposes, first, that we attend to the centrality of performance in film, and, second, that the work Garland produced across three decades demonstrates not only a coherence and consistency, but also a variety and richness, that merits close examination. Judy Garland was one of the most accomplished performers of her time, her seeming naturalism a function of her fierce discipline. Her career straddled multiple media: film, recording, live performance and television. From childhood, her life was lived in the public eye and her personal travails were as well known as the characters she incarnated on screen - in fact, her biography informs some of her later film roles. Garland's work in this period occurs primarily in two genres: musical comedy and melodrama (and what we can call the melodramatic musical). Some of her best films were directed by two of the foremost studio directors - Vincente Minnelli and George Cukor - intersections of star, genre, and director will inform the seminar, as will explorations of Garland's work on television and the concert stage. The seminar will begin with an overview of the writing around film acting and the star text while considering some of Judy's earlier film appearances. Classes will be divided between critical engagement with assigned readings and close readings of Judy Garland performances. The screening list will be supplemented with ample clips from other films, and earlier work will be compared to later performances wherever useful. Both a mainstream star and a gay cult icon, Garland's persona was read differently by different audiences, so the seminar will also consider the reception of Judy Garland and her significance then and now.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 10 units total)
FILMEDIA 291:
Riot: Visualizing Civil Unrest in the 20th and 21st Centuries (AFRICAAM 291, AFRICAAM 491, ARTHIST 291, ARTHIST 491, CSRE 290, CSRE 390, FILMEDIA 491)
This seminar explores the visual legacy of civil unrest in the United States. Focusing on the 1965 Watts Rebellion, 1992 Los Angeles Riots, 2014 Ferguson Uprising, and 2020 George Floyd Uprisings students will closely examine photographs, television broadcasts, newspapers, magazines, and film and video representations of unrest. Additionally, students will visually analyze the works of artists who have responded to instances of police brutality and challenged the systemic racism, xenophobia, and anti-Black violence leading to and surrounding these events.
Last offered: Autumn 2021
| Units: 4-5
FILMEDIA 295:
Films & Media Studies Internship
Professional experience in a field related to the cinematic arts (film, television, media) for six to ten weeks. Internships may include work for production companies, producers, studios, networks, films, television series, directors, screenwriters, non-profit organizations, academic publications and related workplaces. Students arrange the internship, provide a confirmation letter from the hosting institution, and must receive consent from the faculty coordinator to enroll in units. Students submit weekly self-assessments, and evaluations from the student and the supervisor are submitted at the end of the internship. Summer internships may be credited in fall quarter. Restricted to declared majors and minors. May be repeated for credit.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr, Sum
| Units: 1-5
| Repeatable
3 times
(up to 10 units total)
FILMEDIA 297:
Honors Thesis Writing
May be repeated for credit.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr
| Units: 2-5
| Repeatable
3 times
(up to 10 units total)
Instructors: ;
Bukatman, S. (PI);
Denson, S. (PI);
Iyer, U. (PI);
Keca, S. (PI);
Krawitz, J. (PI);
Levi, P. (PI);
Ma, J. (PI);
Meltzer, J. (PI);
Oeler, K. (PI);
Tobin, A. (PI)
FILMEDIA 299:
Independent Study: Film and Media Studies
Prerequisite: student must have taken a course with the instructor and/or completed relevant introductory course(s). Instructor consent and completion of the Independent Study Form are required prior to enrollment. All necessary forms and payment are required by the end of Week 2 of each quarter. Please contact the Undergraduate Coordinator in McMurtry 108 for more information. May be repeated for credit.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr, Sum
| Units: 1-5
| Repeatable
for credit
Instructors: ;
Bukatman, S. (PI);
Denson, S. (PI);
Iyer, U. (PI);
Keca, S. (PI);
Krawitz, J. (PI);
Levi, P. (PI);
Ma, J. (PI);
Meltzer, J. (PI);
Oeler, K. (PI);
Tobin, A. (PI)
FILMEDIA 300A:
History of World Cinema I: Silent Film (FILMEDIA 100A)
Provides an overview of cinema made around the globe between its emergence as a mass medium in the late-19th century, and the rise of synchronized sound around 1930. This is a fecund period in which the 'language' of film was at once established, challenged, and expanded. We study key film movements, modes of production, and film theories that emerged in order to develop a formal, historical, and theoretical appreciation of a variety of commercial and art film traditions. Specific topics may vary by term/year/instructor.This term's topic will explore...TBD
| Units: 4
FILMEDIA 300B:
History of World Cinema II: The Films of Ernst Lubitsch (AMSTUD 100B, FILMEDIA 100B)
Provides an overview of cinema made around the world between 1930 and 1960, highlighting technical, cultural, political, and economic forces that shaped mid-twentieth-century cinema. We study key film movements and national cinemas towards developing a formal, historical, and theoretical appreciation of a variety of commercial and art film traditions. Specific topics may vary by term/year/instructor. This term's topic: Ernst Lubitsch was: a stage actor in Berlin; a comic actor in early German cinema; Germany's most profitable director in the early 1920s; a director of subtle silent comedies in Hollywood in the later `20s; an innovative director of sound musicals and comedies in the 1930s; head of production for Paramount Pictures; and one of the few directors whose name and likeness were familiar to audiences across America, one famed for what became known as The Lubitsch Touch. The course considers Lubitsch in all these contexts. Charts intersections with collaborators, genre conventions, sexuality and censorship, and studio control. Lubitsch's style depends on performance, so attention will be given to film acting as he came to shape it.
Last offered: Autumn 2022
| Units: 4
FILMEDIA 300C:
History of World Cinema III: Queer Cinemas around the World (ARTHIST 164, ARTHIST 364, CSRE 102C, CSRE 302C, FEMGEN 100C, FEMGEN 300C, FILMEDIA 100C, GLOBAL 193, GLOBAL 390, TAPS 100C, TAPS 300C)
Provides an overview of cinema from around the world since 1960, highlighting the cultural, political, and economic forces that have shaped various film movements over the last six decades. Specific topics may vary by term/year/instructor. This term's topic, Queer Cinemas around the World, engages with a range of queer cinematic forms and queer spectatorial practices in different parts of the world, as well as BIPOC media from North America. Through film and video from Kenya, Malaysia, India, The Dominican Republic, China, Brazil, Palestine, Japan, Morocco, the US etc., we will examine varied narratives about trans experience, same-sex desire, LGBTQI2S+ rights, censorship, precarity, and hopefulness. This course will attune us to regional cultural specificities in queer expression and representation, prompting us to move away from hegemonic and homogenizing understandings of queer life and media. Notes: Screenings will be held on Fridays at 1:30PM in Oshman Hall. Screening times will vary slightly from week to week.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 10 units total)
FILMEDIA 301:
Close Cinematic Analysis - Caste, Sexuality, and Religion in Indian Media (ARTHIST 199, ASNAMST 108, FEMGEN 104, FILMEDIA 101, TAPS 101F)
(Formerly FILMSTUD101. If you have taken this course before, please reach out to the instructor) India is the world's largest producer of films in over 20 languages, and Bollywood is often its most visible avatar, especially on US university curricula. This course will introduce you to a range of media from the Indian subcontinent across commercial and experimental films, documentaries, streaming media, and online cultures. We will engage in particular with questions of sexuality, gender, caste, religion, and ethnicity in this postcolonial context and across its diasporas, including in the Caribbean. Given this course's emphasis on close cinematic analysis, we will analyze formal aspects of cinematography, editing, mise-en-scene, and performance, and how these generate spectatorial pleasure, star and fan cultures, and particular modes of representation. This course fulfills the WIM requirement for Film and Media Studies majors. Note: Screenings will be held on Thursdays at 5:30 PM. Screening times will vary from week to week and may range from 90 to 180 minutes.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3-5
FILMEDIA 302:
Theories of the Moving Image: The Technologically Mediated Image (FILMEDIA 102)
This course examines influential theories of film and media from the early twentieth century to the present. Prerequisites: FILMEDIA 4.
Last offered: Winter 2023
| Units: 4
FILMEDIA 306:
Media and Mediums (FILMEDIA 6)
What is a medium? This course starts from the assumption that the answer to this question is not as obvious as it might at first appear. Clearly, we know some media when we see them: radio, film, and television are in many ways paradigmatic media of the twentieth century. But what about the computational, networked media of the twenty-first century? Are these still media in the same sense, or has the nature of media changed with the emergence of digital technologies? And what, for that matter, about pre-technical media? Is painting a medium in the same sense that oil or acrylic are media, or in the sense that we speak of mixed media? Is language a medium? Are numbers? Is the body? As we shall see, the question of what a medium is raises a number of other questions of a theoretical or even philosophical nature. How is our experience of the world affected or shaped by media? Are knowledge and perception possible apart from media, or are they always mediated by the apparatuses, instruments, or assemblages of media? What is the relation between the forms and the contents of media, and how does this relation bear on questions of aesthetics, science, technology, or politics? The lecture-based course addresses these and other questions and seeks in this way to introduce a way of thinking about media that goes beyond taken-for-granted ideas and assumptions, and that has a potentially transformative effect on a wide range of theoretical and practical interests.Film & Media Studies majors and minors must enroll for 5 units.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3-5
FILMEDIA 307:
Close Analysis: Film Sound (MUSIC 107)
The close analysis of film, with an emphasis on sound, music, and audio-visuality. Films from various historical periods, national cinemas, directors, and genres. Prerequisite: FILMSTUD 4 or equivalent. Recommended: ARTHIST 1 or FILMSTUD 102. Course can be repeated twice for a max of 8 units. This course fulfills the WIM requirement for Film and Media Studies majors.
| Units: 3-4
| Repeatable
1 times
(up to 4 units total)
FILMEDIA 314:
Reading Comics (AMSTUD 114X, FILMEDIA 114)
The modern medium of comics throughout its 150 year history (mostly North American). The flexibility of the medium explored through the genres of humorous and dramatic comic strips, superheroes, undergrounds, independents, kids and comics, journalism, and autobiography. Innovative creators including McCay, Kirby, Barry, Ware, and critical writings including McCloud, Eisner, Groenstee. Topics include text/image relations, panel-to-panel relations, the page, caricature, sequence, subjective expression, seriality, realism vs cartoonism, comics in the context of the fine arts, and relations to other media.
Last offered: Winter 2022
| Units: 3-5
FILMEDIA 315:
Documentary Issues and Traditions (FILMEDIA 115)
Issues include objectivity/subjectivity, ethics, censorship, representation, reflexivity, responsibility to the audience, and authorial voice. Parallel focus on form and content.
| Units: 4
FILMEDIA 320:
Superhero Theory (AMSTUD 120B, ARTHIST 120, ARTHIST 320, FILMEDIA 120)
With their fantastic powers, mutable bodies, multiple identities, complicated histories, and visual dynamism, the American superhero has been a rich vehicle for fantasies (and anxieties) for 80+ years across multiple media: comics, film, animation, TV, games, toys, apparel. This course centers upon the body of the superhero as it incarnates allegories of race, queerness, hybridity, sexuality, gendered stereotypes/fluidity, politics, vigilantism, masculinity, and monstrosity. They also embody a technological history that encompasses industrial, atomic, electronic, bio-genetic, and digital.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
FILMEDIA 329:
Animation and the Animated Film (AMSTUD 129, FILMEDIA 129, FILMEDIA 429)
The fantasy of an image coming to life is ancient, but not until the cinema was this fantasy actualized. The history of the movies begins with optical toys, and contemporary cinema is dominated by films that rely on computer animation. This course considers the underlying fantasies of animation in art and lit, its phenomenologies, its relation to the uncanny, its status as a pure cinema, and its place in film theory. Different modes of production and style to be explored include realist animation, abstract animation; animistic animation; animated drawings, objects, and puppets; CGI, motion capture, and live/animation hybrids.
| Units: 3-5
FILMEDIA 332A:
Bollywood and Beyond: An Introduction to Indian Cinema (FILMEDIA 132A)
This course will provide an overview of cinema from India, the world's largest producer of films. We will trace the history of Indian cinema from the silent era, through the studio period, to state-funded art filmmaking to the contemporary production of Bollywood films as well as the more unconventional multiplex cinema. We will examine narrative conventions, stylistic techniques, and film production and consumption practices in popular Hindi language films from the Bombay film industry as well as commercial and art films in other languages. This outline of different cinematic modes will throw light on the social, political, and economic transformations in the nation-state over the last century.
| Units: 3-5
FILMEDIA 335:
Around the World in Ten Films (FILMEDIA 135, GLOBAL 135)
This is an introductory-level course about the cinema as a global language. We will undertake a comparative study of select historical and contemporary aspects of international cinema, and explore a range of themes pertaining to the social, cultural, and political diversity of the world. A cross-regional thematic emphasis and inter-textual methods of narrative and aesthetic analysis, will ground our discussion of films from Italy, Japan, United States, India, China, France, Brazil, Nigeria, Russia, Iran, Mexico, and a number of other countries. Particular emphasis will be placed on the multi-cultural character and the regional specificities of the cinema as a "universal language" and an inclusive "relational network."There are no prerequisites for this class. It is open to all students; non-majors welcome.
Last offered: Winter 2023
| Units: 3-4
FILMEDIA 337:
Love in the Time of Cinema (FILMEDIA 137, GLOBAL 110, GLOBAL 211)
Romantic coupling is at the heart of mainstream film narratives around the world. Through a range of film cultures, we will examine cinematic intimacies and our own mediated understandings of love and conjugality formed in dialog with film and other media. We will consider genres, infrastructures, social activities (for example, the drive-in theater, the movie date, the Bollywood wedding musical, 90s queer cinema), and examine film romance in relation to queerness, migration, old age, disability, and body politics more broadly.
| Units: 3-5
FILMEDIA 352:
Hollywood/Bollywood: The Musical Two Ways (FILMEDIA 152)
A comparative approach to the musical as Hollywood genre and as fundamental mode in Bollywood (where even horror movies have song-and-dance sequences!). The pleasurable interplay among song, dance, and screen directs us to the interplay of cultural identities (regional, racial, gendered, sexual). Through cinematic travels between America and India, we will examine how the utopian, liberatory energies of musical numbers - physical, emotional, aesthetic, and social - illuminate relations of narrative and spectacle, stardom and performance, gender and space, color and sound.
| Units: 3-5
FILMEDIA 353:
Queer Cinema in the World (FILMEDIA 153)
In his manifesto, 'A Queer('s) Cinema,' Manuel Betancourt declares, queer cinema is global cinema, queer cinema is not universal, is intersectional, is an aesthetic sensibility. Through film and video from Kenya, Hong Kong, India, France, The Dominican Republic, Spain, Palestine, the US, Argentina etc., this course engages with a range of queer cinematic forms and queer spectatorial practices in different parts of the world. We examine how queer cinema enables different ways of being in the world and creates different worlds (Galt and Schoonover). Varied narratives about sexual minorities, same-sex desire, LGBTQI+ rights, censorship, precarity, and hopefulness attune us to regional cultural specificities in queer expression and representation, prompting us to move away from hegemonic and homogenizing understandings of queer life and media.
| Units: 3-5
FILMEDIA 406:
Montage
Graduate seminar in film aesthetics. Theoretical and practical approaches to editing/montage. Stylistic, semiotic, epistemological, and ideological functions of montage considered in film-historical contexts including: development of the continuity system of editing; flourishing of the Soviet montage school; and achievements of the post-war new waves. Filmmakers include D. W. Griffith, Sergei Eisenstein, Jean-Luc Godard, and Dusan Makavejev.
Last offered: Autumn 2022
| Units: 5
FILMEDIA 408:
Attention
Throughout the twentieth century, cinema has been theorized as a machine that molds the senses and produces new forms of attention. This course delves into debates about the impact of audio-visual media on a history of attention, from the rise of reproductive technologies (bringing concerns about the replacement of contemplation by distraction) to the contemporary landscape (where reactions to a perceived crisis of attention are front and center). Readings will draw from not just film studies, but also art history, music, and literature. Assignments will emphasize presentations that expand the range of case studies and exercise in reflecting on the conditions of the attention we pay as scholars and critics. Permission of instructor required.
Last offered: Autumn 2022
| Units: 5
FILMEDIA 410A:
Documentary Perspectives: The Essay Film (FILMEDIA 210A)
In this class we will explore the essay film as a distinct genre of documentary filmmaking. The course is organized as an inquiry into the nature of the essay film, its historical and formal development, as well as a survey of the major works that make up this genre. Each student will be an active participant in this investigation through class discussions, readings and writing assignments.
Last offered: Autumn 2022
| Units: 4
| Repeatable
for credit
FILMEDIA 410B:
Documentary Perspectives: Politics of the Subject (FILMEDIA 210B)
This course will introduce students to historical, political, aesthetic, and formal developments of documentary film. Topics we will cover include subjectivity, ethics, censorship, representation, reflexivity, responsibility, and authorial voice. Each student will be an active participant through class discussions, readings and writing assignments. This is a required course for students in the M.F.A. Documentary Film program. Other students with an interest in documentary film are very welcome, and there are no prerequisites to taking this course.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 4
| Repeatable
for credit
FILMEDIA 411:
Childish Enthusiasms, Perishable Manias (ARTHIST 411)
Universities are sites of gravitas, but what of levitas -- a lighter, more playful category? Does intellectually credible work depend upon a â¿¿critical distanceâ¿ between scholar and object of study? Can we take something seriously without imposing a seriousness that it may not possess (or want)? How to retain (or recover) the intensely pleasurable relation to objects that we were allowed when younger? The seminar is predicated upon the proposition that effective scholarship need not suck the joy from the world.
| Units: 5
FILMEDIA 412:
A History of "Hollywood" (FILMEDIA 212)
TBD
| Units: 3-5
FILMEDIA 414:
Methods and Theories in Film and Media Studies
This seminar offers an overview of methods in film and media studies. It covers key debates and interventions that have shaped the field, such as the paradigm of classical cinema, historical reception studies, genre and authorship, political modernism, psychoanalytic theories of spectatorship, senses and aesthetics, and industry history. In exploring how these different approaches have expanded the discipline, students will gain a sense of the methodological stakes of their own research.
Last offered: Winter 2022
| Units: 5
FILMEDIA 422:
Sergei Eisenstein: Theory, Practice, Method (SLAVIC 322)
The work of Sergei Eisenstein has been central to the study of film since before his death in 1948, but some of his most significant work was first published only in the new millennium and is generating rich interdisciplinary scholarship. This seminar explores contemporary Eisenstein scholarship together with Eisenstein's more recently published writings. It aims to place the Eisenstein we are coming to know in the twenty-first century in dialogue with longstanding as well as contemporary debates in film and media theory.
Last offered: Autumn 2021
| Units: 5
FILMEDIA 424:
Films of Stanley Kubrick (FILMEDIA 224)
This seminar will explore the cinema of Stanley Kubrick, a widely acclaimed film auteur known for works such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, and Barry Lyndon. The seminar will focus on close analysis of practically all of Kubrick's films, from a variety of methodological perspectives (authorship, formal/stylistic analysis, book-to-screen adaptation, and more.nnNOTE: Instructor's permission required before the first day of class.
| Units: 4-5
FILMEDIA 429:
Animation and the Animated Film (AMSTUD 129, FILMEDIA 129, FILMEDIA 329)
The fantasy of an image coming to life is ancient, but not until the cinema was this fantasy actualized. The history of the movies begins with optical toys, and contemporary cinema is dominated by films that rely on computer animation. This course considers the underlying fantasies of animation in art and lit, its phenomenologies, its relation to the uncanny, its status as a pure cinema, and its place in film theory. Different modes of production and style to be explored include realist animation, abstract animation; animistic animation; animated drawings, objects, and puppets; CGI, motion capture, and live/animation hybrids.
Last offered: Autumn 2021
| Units: 3-5
FILMEDIA 430:
Cinema and Ideology (ARTHIST 430)
The relationship between cinema and ideology from theoretical and historical perspectives, emphasizing Marxist and psychoanalytic approaches. The practice of political filmmaking, and the cinema as an audiovisual apparatus and socio-cultural institution. Topics include: dialectics; revolutionary aesthetics; language and power; commodity fetishism; and nationalism. Filmmakers include Dziga Vertov, Jean-Luc Godard, Bruce Conner, and Marco Ferreri. Theoretical writers include Karl Marx, Sergei Eisenstein, and Slavoj Zizek. Prerequisite: consent of instructor.
| Units: 5
FILMEDIA 444:
Landscape Cinema: Politics and Poetics
TBD
Terms: Aut
| Units: 4-5
FILMEDIA 445B:
Eastern European Cinema (FILMEDIA 245B, REES 301B)
From 1945 to the mid-80s, emphasizing Polish, Hungarian, Czech, Slovak, and Yugoslav contexts. The relationship between art and politics; postwar establishment of film industries; and emergence of national film movements such as the Polish school, Czech new wave, and new Yugoslav film. Thematic and aesthetic preoccupations of filmmakers such as Wajda, Jancso, Forman, and Kusturica. Permission of instructor required prior to the first day of classes.
| Units: 5
FILMEDIA 448:
The Body in Film and other Media (ARTHIST 448)
In this seminar, we will consider the body on screen as well as the body before the screen i.e. the spectator but also the profilmic body of the actor to examine corporeal performance and reception. The dancing body, the comic body, dead and live bodies, the monstrous body, the body in pain, the virtual body all raise questions about embodiment, liveness, and performance. We will read the body in audiovisual culture through an engagement with affect theory, focusing on the labor of performance, the construction of stardom, spatial and temporal configurations of the performing body, and the production of affect and sensation in the spectating body. Through a discussion of make-up, fashion, the labor of producing the idealized star body from the meat-and-bones body of the actor, or body genres where the spectator's body is beside itself with sexual pleasure, fear and terror, or overpowering sadness, we will inquire into ideologies of discipline and desire that undergird mediatized bodies. nnNo prior engagement with film studies is required. Students are encouraged to write seminar papers that build on current research interests.nnNOTE: Instructor consent required for undergraduate students (only seniors may enroll). Please contact the instructor for permission to enroll if you're an undergraduate senior.
| Units: 5
FILMEDIA 450:
Screened Thought
This seminar considers the varied ways film represents thought. What forms of thinking do films enable and forestall? How do particular films, and film genres, activate or elide characters' cognition, interiority, self-consciousness, reflection, etc.? How do formal techniques such as point-of-view, superimposition, flashbacks, framing, and voiceover change the image of thought that cinema inherits from philosophy, literature and other artistic traditions? We'll consider these questions through a range of films and film theory as well as critical and philosophical texts.
| Units: 5
FILMEDIA 453:
Aesthetics and Phenomenology (ARTHIST 253, ARTHIST 453, FILMEDIA 253)
This course explores central topics in aesthetics where aesthetics is understood both in the narrow sense of the philosophy of art and aesthetic judgment, and in a broader sense as it relates to questions of perception, sensation, and various modes of embodied experience. We will engage with both classical and contemporary works in aesthetic theory, while special emphasis will be placed on phenomenological approaches to art and aesthetic experience across a range of media and/or mediums (including painting, sculpture, film, and digital media). PhD students in the Art History program may take the class to fulfill degree requirements in Modern/Contemporary Art or Film & Media Studies, depending on the topic of their seminar paper.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
FILMEDIA 460:
Decolonization and Decoloniality: Theory, Praxis, and Pedagogy (ARTHIST 460, TAPS 460)
In the past few years, campus protests and petitions have brought about a remarkable reckoning with systemic, curricular structures of inequality, underscoring the epistemic violence of the privileging of white, western, cisheteropatriarchal intellectual traditions in the academy. This seminar mobilizes multiple approaches and orientations from anti-colonial, postcolonial, and decolonial traditions to study discourses of race, caste, indigeneity, gender, and sexuality across a variety of regional and cultural contexts. We will engage with a range of materials -- written texts, films, visual and performance art. In addition to theoretical and historical engagements with decolonization and decoloniality, we will begin to explore decolonial praxis through somatic workshops (including basket-weaving and dance) and through radical pedagogy and critical university studies frameworks.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
FILMEDIA 465:
Post War American Avant-Garde Film
Permission of instructor required for enrollment.
Last offered: Spring 2022
| Units: 4-5
FILMEDIA 465A:
Media Technology Theory (ARTHIST 465, COMM 384)
This course surveys major theoretical approaches to the study of media technologies, including Frankfurt School critical theory, media archaeology, actor network theory, science and technology studies, platform studies and theories of critical making. By the end of the course, students should have a rich familiarity with the literature in this area, as well as with exemplary empirical studies conducted within each tradition. Preference to Ph.D. students in Communication and Art and Art History. Consent of instructor required for non-PhD students.
| Units: 3-5
FILMEDIA 469:
Drugs and the Visual Imagination (ARTHIST 469)
Drugs have profoundly shaped human culture across space and time, from ancient cave paintings to the psychedelic Sixties and contemporary opioid epidemic. This seminar explores the relationship between visual culture and "drugs," broadly conceived, asking how consciousness-altering substances have been understood and represented in various contexts. We will examine how drugs blur boundaries between nature and culture and describe major symbolic, narrative, and aesthetic structures by considering representations of drug use across media. This interdisciplinary seminar integrates perspectives from art, literature, popular culture, theory, film, philosophy, and science. Topics include perception, subjectivity, addiction, deviancy, capitalism, politics, technology, globalization, and critical approaches to race, class, sexuality, and gender. Limited to graduate students; undergraduates must contact instructor for permission (seniors only).
| Units: 5
FILMEDIA 470:
German Media Theory (FILMEDIA 270, GERMAN 144, GERMAN 344)
In this seminar, we will interrogate major currents in media-theoretical work from the German-speaking world from the 1980s to today. Starting from the surprisingly controversial term 'German media theory' itself, which has been described as 'neither a theory nor really centered on media, [while] its Germanness is a contested issue' - we will consider the characteristics that nevertheless make this a recognizable, if internally heterogeneous, category for thinking about media, mediation, and culture. We will pay special attention to the foundational work of Friedrich Kittler, which ranges across literature, film, philosophy, and computers, before turning to the current differentiation into a technology-focused 'media archaeology' (Wolfgang Ernst) and the differently inflected formation of 'cultural techniques' (Bernhard Siegert), as well as recent articulations of 'media philosophy' and other developments in contemporary theory. We will also examine the often absent and/or fraught role of gender, race, and class in this field, as well as attempts to address these issues by such theorists as Ute Holl, Cornelia Vissman, Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky, Annette Bitsch, and Sybille Krämer. Readings will be in English translation. Knowledge of German is therefore not required, but readers of German will find plenty of research opportunities among the many as yet untranslated texts that make up the field of German media theory.
Last offered: Spring 2022
| Units: 3-5
FILMEDIA 481:
Contemporary Asian Filmmakers (FILMEDIA 281)
Films and moving image works by contemporary filmmakers from Asia, including Hou Hsiao-hsien, Tsai Ming-liang, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Topics include explorations of national and local histories, aesthetics of slowness and duration, and crossings between the movie theater and the gallery.
Last offered: Autumn 2021
| Units: 5
FILMEDIA 490:
Movies and Methods: The Judy Garland Seminar (AMSTUD 290, FILMEDIA 290)
Acting and performance have been prominent in cinema throughout the medium's history, but have received relatively little attention in film studies. Performance provides a compellingly different way of engaging with a film. The Judy Garland Seminar proposes, first, that we attend to the centrality of performance in film, and, second, that the work Garland produced across three decades demonstrates not only a coherence and consistency, but also a variety and richness, that merits close examination. Judy Garland was one of the most accomplished performers of her time, her seeming naturalism a function of her fierce discipline. Her career straddled multiple media: film, recording, live performance and television. From childhood, her life was lived in the public eye and her personal travails were as well known as the characters she incarnated on screen - in fact, her biography informs some of her later film roles. Garland's work in this period occurs primarily in two genres: musical comedy and melodrama (and what we can call the melodramatic musical). Some of her best films were directed by two of the foremost studio directors - Vincente Minnelli and George Cukor - intersections of star, genre, and director will inform the seminar, as will explorations of Garland's work on television and the concert stage. The seminar will begin with an overview of the writing around film acting and the star text while considering some of Judy's earlier film appearances. Classes will be divided between critical engagement with assigned readings and close readings of Judy Garland performances. The screening list will be supplemented with ample clips from other films, and earlier work will be compared to later performances wherever useful. Both a mainstream star and a gay cult icon, Garland's persona was read differently by different audiences, so the seminar will also consider the reception of Judy Garland and her significance then and now.
| Units: 5
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 10 units total)
FILMEDIA 491:
Riot: Visualizing Civil Unrest in the 20th and 21st Centuries (AFRICAAM 291, AFRICAAM 491, ARTHIST 291, ARTHIST 491, CSRE 290, CSRE 390, FILMEDIA 291)
This seminar explores the visual legacy of civil unrest in the United States. Focusing on the 1965 Watts Rebellion, 1992 Los Angeles Riots, 2014 Ferguson Uprising, and 2020 George Floyd Uprisings students will closely examine photographs, television broadcasts, newspapers, magazines, and film and video representations of unrest. Additionally, students will visually analyze the works of artists who have responded to instances of police brutality and challenged the systemic racism, xenophobia, and anti-Black violence leading to and surrounding these events.
Last offered: Autumn 2021
| Units: 4-5
FILMEDIA 620:
Qualifying Examination Preparation
For Art History Ph.D. candidates. Prerequisite: consent of instructor.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr, Sum
| Units: 5-8
| Repeatable
3 times
(up to 24 units total)
Instructors: ;
Bukatman, S. (PI);
Denson, S. (PI);
Iyer, U. (PI);
Keca, S. (PI);
Krawitz, J. (PI);
Levi, P. (PI);
Ma, J. (PI);
Meltzer, J. (PI);
Oeler, K. (PI);
Tobin, A. (PI)
FILMEDIA 660:
Independent Study
For graduate students only. Approved independent research projects with individual faculty members.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr, Sum
| Units: 1-15
| Repeatable
for credit
FILMEDIA 660E:
Extended Seminar
May be repeated for credit. (Staff)
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr
| Units: 4
| Repeatable
for credit
FILMEDIA 680:
Curricular Practical Training
CPT course required for international students completing degree.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr, Sum
| Units: 1-3
| Repeatable
for credit
FILMPROD 12AX:
Narrative Filmmaking: From Script to Screen
Narrative Filmmaking: From Script to Screen is a hybrid writing/production course that guides students through the process of completing a 2-3 minute narrative film. Students will write scripts for short fiction films, and then, by filming them, learn to apply the fundamentals of digital video production. Initial classwork will include visual writing exercises, DSLR cinematography instruction, script work, and basic fiction film production. Students will continue on in groups of three to develop, film, edit, and critique 2-3 minute narrative films based on a shared class theme or narrative premise. This course is truly INTENSIVE and requires a significant amount of work (including nights and weekends) outside of class and daily deadlines for submission of creative work.
Terms: Sum
| Units: 2
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
FILMPROD 13AX:
Immersive Cinema
In this exploratory workshop, students will use a variety of tools (Audio recorders/360 cameras/Photogrammetry/Volumetric Capture/XR/Unity Programming) to tell immersive, interactive, and spatial stories. The aim of the projects will be to find forgotten and bring these lesser known stories of the past into the present ¿ including but not limited to Stanford's relationship to Indigenous communities, the formation of the Program in African and Afro-American Studies, the founding of Casa Zapata in 1972.<br>Students will use the conceptual framework of documentary media to inform their work, while also pushing toward new artistic languages and experimenting in the still-emerging form of XR storytelling. Over the course of the Arts Intensive, students will work in teams to create a series of short immersive pieces with an emphasis on experimentation. The course is time intensive: requiring some nights and weekends dedicated to production.n<br><b>Example assignments:</b><br><b>Immersive Spatial Audio "Sonic History of Place"</b> Choose a place on campus with a specific history. With a mix of archival sound recordings, sound effects/foley, and newly recorded sounds, create an interactive audio texture that evokes and tells the history of that place via sound textures only. (note: use of a narrator summarizing (parts of) the story is not allowed.)<br><b>Augmented Installation "Make history visible"</b> Choose a place on campus with a specific history. Using Unity programming or Adobe Aero, 3D objects, VR Painting, and sound elements, create an interactive virtual installation that evokes the history of that place on campus.
Last offered: Summer 2023
| Units: 2
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
FILMPROD 101:
Screen Writing I: Visual Writing
A writing workshop that is an exploration of visual storytelling. Beginning with visual literacy, the class progresses from basic cinematic techniques through scene exercises to revisions and ultimately to connecting scenes in order to build sequences of script pages. Open to all majors; may substitute for ENGL 190F prerequisite for FP104.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
FILMPROD 101T:
Writing the Television Pilot (FILMPROD 301T)
A writing workshop in which students are introduced to the basic structures and genre of television pilots and to writing within the screenwriting/television writing form. Students will develop, outline, and workshop their own original pilot episode and series bible. Serves as a prerequisite for FP104 Intermediate Screenwriting. Enrollment by decision of instructor. Limited to 16 students. Priority will be given to film studies majors and minors, then seniors, with extra preference for students who have tried unsuccessfully to take the class in the past. You must attend the first meeting; the class list will be finalized after that first session.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
FILMPROD 102:
Topics in Screenwriting: Inside the Writers' Room
A workshop where Showrunner and Stanford alum Cheo Hodari Coker guides a select group of students through the writers' room process: workshopping a single idea into the first act of a television show while also shaping their individual script ideas as a means of teaching basic television writing structure. Students will read and analyze successful pilots as well as learn how to develop outlines, write scenes and do a weekly "table read" of a scene. Coker will also invite working showrunners, in person and virtually, to talk about their process and answer questions about the fastest growing medium in visual entertainment.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
FILMPROD 104:
Screenwriting II: Intermediate Screenwriting (FILMPROD 304)
Priority to Film and Media Studies majors and minors, and seniors. Craft, form, and approaches to writing for the screen. Students will write, workshop and rewrite the first act of a feature screenplay and create rough outline material for the rest of the film. Prerequisites: FP101, FP101T or ENGL190F and consent of the instructor.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
FILMPROD 105:
Script Analysis (FILMPROD 305)
Analysis of screenplay, film, and television from the writer's perspective, with focus on ideation, structure, and dramatic tension in narrative features. Sources include screenplays and screenings.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 4
FILMPROD 106:
Image and Sound: Filmmaking for the Digital Age
Despite the rise of emerging forms like two-minute YouTube videos, six second Vines, or interactive storytelling modules, many core principles of visual storytelling remain unchanged. In this hands-on film production class students will learn a broad set of filmmaking fundamentals (basic history, theory, and practice) and will apply them creating film projects using tools such as iPhones, consumer cameras and FCPX.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
FILMPROD 106S:
Image and Sound: Filmmaking for the Digital Age
Despite the rise of emerging forms like two-minute YouTube videos, six second Vines, or interactive storytelling modules, many core principles of visual storytelling remain unchanged. In this hands-on film production class students will learn a broad set of filmmaking fundamentals (basic history, theory, and practice) and will apply them creating film projects using tools such as iPhones, consumer cameras and FCPX.
Terms: Sum
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
FILMPROD 107:
Industry Immersion: Film and Media
What is the entertainment industry today? A survey of film and media practice, this course will feature weekly invited guests, including screenwriters, directors, actors, producers, executives, and scholars. Attendance and student participation in Q&A are crucial to the class, along with reflection papers and potential workshop exercises.
Last offered: Spring 2023
| Units: 1-2
FILMPROD 110:
Screen Writing III: Advanced Screenwriting
Advanced writing workshop in which students develop and complete a feature-length screenplay. Prerequisites: FP101 Screenwriting and approval of the instructor. Enrollment is limited.
Last offered: Winter 2022
| Units: 5
FILMPROD 114:
Introduction to Film and Video Production
Hands-on. Techniques of film and video making including conceptualization, visualization, story structure, cinematography, sound recording, and editing. Enrollment limited to 12 students. Priority to junior/senior Film & Media Studies majors. Admission determined on the first day of class.
Terms: Win, Spr
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
FILMPROD 115:
Immersive Cinema: Experiments in Virtual Reality
In this exploratory workshop, students will use a variety of tools (360 video/ VR cameras and binaural sound design, digital video, and traditional sound recorders) to tell immersive "stories". Students will use the conceptual framework of experimental cinema and documentary film to inform their work, while also pushing toward a new artistic language in the still-emerging form of VR storytelling. Over the course of the quarter, students will work in teams to create a series of short immersive pieces with an emphasis on experimentation. The class has no prerequisites and is open to all students.
Last offered: Winter 2021
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
FILMPROD 117:
Filmmaking: Ethno-fictions and Shared Anthropologies
Ethnographic documentary film, just like ethnography itself, began as a colonial practice. It has relied on unacknowledged biases and personal experiences of the filmmakers to create portraits of cultures and communities around the world. To study documentary film today requires recognizing and acknowledging this lens of otherization; it requires grappling with questions around representation. In this course we look at works that turn the lens inward and offer a self-examination of one¿s own culture or the land that the makers belong to. This inversion of gaze is the fulcrum of this course. We work through the convergence of thinking and practice as filmmaking process, with an emphasis on how to work with sound to create portraits. For final projects, students work in groups to make 3-5 minute video portraits of individuals or communities of their choice, exploring in the work itself the place of the personal and the place they are looking from.
Last offered: Spring 2023
| Units: 4
FILMPROD 118:
Remixing the Moving Image
Focusing on the art of editing, and specifically repurposing `found' footage, this hands-on filmmaking course will immerse students in the rich cinematic tradition of appropriating existing footage and remixing it into provocative, personal, and even subversive new work. No prior filmmaking experience required.
Terms: Win
| Units: 4
FILMPROD 119:
Documentary Cinematography
Focusing on the art of non-fiction cinematography, this hands-on filmmaking course will immerse students in a wide variety of traditions and technical approaches to shooting films in the real world. Students will participate in weekly workshops and exercises focused on topics such as framing and lighting interviews, observational storytelling, lens and camera choices, and experimentation. We will also explore less technical topics such as navigating intimacy with participants, on-the-fly decision making, and ethics. . Prior filmmaking experience is not required.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 4
FILMPROD 121:
New York Films
This course will be taught at Stanford in New York in winter quarter.
Last offered: Winter 2020
| Units: 5
FILMPROD 301T:
Writing the Television Pilot (FILMPROD 101T)
A writing workshop in which students are introduced to the basic structures and genre of television pilots and to writing within the screenwriting/television writing form. Students will develop, outline, and workshop their own original pilot episode and series bible. Serves as a prerequisite for FP104 Intermediate Screenwriting. Enrollment by decision of instructor. Limited to 16 students. Priority will be given to film studies majors and minors, then seniors, with extra preference for students who have tried unsuccessfully to take the class in the past. You must attend the first meeting; the class list will be finalized after that first session.
Last offered: Autumn 2022
| Units: 5
FILMPROD 304:
Screenwriting II: Intermediate Screenwriting (FILMPROD 104)
Priority to Film and Media Studies majors and minors, and seniors. Craft, form, and approaches to writing for the screen. Students will write, workshop and rewrite the first act of a feature screenplay and create rough outline material for the rest of the film. Prerequisites: FP101, FP101T or ENGL190F and consent of the instructor.
Last offered: Spring 2022
| Units: 5
FILMPROD 305:
Script Analysis (FILMPROD 105)
Analysis of screenplay, film, and television from the writer's perspective, with focus on ideation, structure, and dramatic tension in narrative features. Sources include screenplays and screenings.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 4
FILMPROD 400:
Film/Video Writing and Directing
Restricted to M.F.A. documentary students. Emphasis is on the development of the research, conceptualization, visualization, and preproduction skills required for nonfiction filmmaking. Prerequisite: consent of instructor.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3
FILMPROD 401:
Nonfiction Film Production
Restricted to M.F.A documentary students. 16mm production techniques and concepts. Multiple short exercises and a final project with multitrack sound design. Enrollment limited to students in MFA Documentary Film Program. Prerequisite: consent of instructor.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3
FILMPROD 402:
Digital Video
Restricted to M.F.A. documentary students. Fundamentals of digital storytelling. Working with small format cameras, interviewing techniques, and nonlinear editing skills. Prerequisite: consent of instructor.
Terms: Win
| Units: 4
FILMPROD 403:
Advanced Documentary Directing
Restricted to M.F.A. documentary students. Further examination of structure, emphasizing writing and directing nonfiction film. Prerequisite: consent of instructor.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3
FILMPROD 404:
Advanced Video Production
Restricted to M.F.A. documentary students. Techniques of visual storytelling and observational shooting. Final quarter of professional training in documentary video production. Prerequisite: consent of instructor.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3
FILMPROD 405:
Producing Practicum: The Non-Fiction Film
Restricted to M.F.A. documentary students. Advanced producing principles through the preproduction of the M.F.A. thesis project, including development of a professional film proposal. Practical training in fundraising. Prerequisite: consent of instructor.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 4
FILMPROD 406A:
Documentary M.F.A. Thesis Seminar I
Restricted to M.F.A. documentary students. Production of film or video project. Focus is on shooting strategies, ethical challenges, and practical production issues. Prerequisite: consent of instructor.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
FILMPROD 406B:
Documentary M.F.A.Thesis Seminar II
Restricted to M.F.A. documentary students. Editing and post-production of film or video project. Emphasis is on aesthetic choices (structure, narration, music), distribution, contracts, and audience. Prerequisite: consent of instructor.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
FILMPROD 450:
INDEPENDENT STUDY
Independent study supervised by Documentary Film faculty; available to DocFilm MFA students only. Permission of instructor required to enroll.
Terms: Win, Spr
| Units: 4-5
FILMPROD 801:
TGR Project
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr, Sum
| Units: 0
| Repeatable
for credit
FRENCH 87N:
The New Wave: How The French Reinvented Cinema (FILMEDIA 87N)
When the French New Wave burst onto the stage in 1959, it changed forever the way films are made and the ways we think about cinema. Shooting on location with small crews, light cameras, unknown actors and improvised scripts, a group of young film critics turned filmmakers circumvented the big studios to craft low-budget films that felt fresh, irreverent and utterly modern. In just a few years, the Nouvelle Vague delivered such landmark works as Truffaut's 400 Blows, Godard's Breathless or Resnais' Hiroshima mon amour. Together with Agn¿s Varda, Eric Rohmer and Claude Chabrol, they redefined the essence of cinema as an art form as complex and multi-layered as literature. Yet, after having been hailed as revolutionary, the Nouvelle Vague was soon dismissed as 'rather vague and not all that new. 'Why did these films look so radically fresh? What is their common aesthetics, when each 'auteur' claimed an utterly personal style for him or herself? And what did their immediate success and early fall from grace tell us about France in the early 60s? This survey course will explore a unique moment in French culture and the history of cinema, when radical politics, youth culture, and jazzy aesthetics coalesced into dazzling experiments on the screen that continue to influence world cinema to this day. Focus is on cultural history, aesthetic analysis, and interpretation of narrative, sound and visual forms. Satisfies Ways AII (Aesthetic and Interpretative Inquiry). Films in French with Subtitles. Taught in English.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3-4
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
FRENCH 104N:
Film and Fascism in Europe (COMPLIT 104N, FILMEDIA 105N, ITALIAN 104N)
Controlling people's minds through propaganda is an integral part of fascist regimes' totalitarianism. In the interwar, cinema, a relatively recent mass media, was immediately seized upon by fascist regimes to produce aggrandizing national narratives, justify their expansionist and extermination policies, celebrate the myth of the "Leader," and indoctrinate the people. Yet film makers under these regimes (Rossellini, Renoir) or just after their fall, used the same media to explore and expose how they manufactured conformism, obedience, and mass murder and to interrogate fascism. We will watch films produced by or under European fascist regimes (Nazi Germany, Italy under Mussolini, Greece's Regime of the Colonels) but also against them. The seminar introduces key film analysis tools and concepts, while offering insights into the history of propaganda and cinema. Taught in English.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-4
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
FRENCH 132:
Literature, Revolutions, and Changes in 19th- and 20th-Century France
This course explores central texts of 19th- and 20th-Century French literature, following the evolution of important literary movements during those centuries of cultural and social transformation. We will study texts in all major genres (prose, poetry, theater, film) related to movements such as Romanticism, Realism, Naturalism, Surrealism, Theater of the Absurd, and the Nouveau Roman. We will regularly relate literature and film to developments in other arts, such as painting and music. Authors and filmmakers include Chateaubriand, Stendhal, Balzac, Flaubert, Maupassant, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Apollinaire, Proust, Ionesco, Varda, Godard, Sarraute, and Ernaux. All readings, discussion, and assignments are in French. Students are highly encouraged to complete FRENLANG 124 or to successfully test above this level through the Language Center.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
FRENCH 154:
Film & Philosophy (ENGLISH 154F, ITALIAN 154, PHIL 193C)
What makes you the individual you are? Should you plan your life, or make it up as you go along? Is it always good to remember your past? Is it always good to know the truth? When does a machine become a person? What do we owe to other people? Is there always a right way to act? How can we live in a highly imperfect world? And what can film do that other media can't? We'll think about all of these great questions with the help of films that are philosophically stimulating, stylistically intriguing, and, for the most part, gripping to watch: Do The Right Thing (Lee), The Dark Knight (Nolan), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Kaufman), Arrival (Villeneuve), My Dinner with Andr¿ (Malle), Blade Runner (Scott), La Jet¿e (Marker), Fight Club (Fincher), No Country for Old Men (Coen), The Seventh Seal (Bergman), and Memento (Nolan). Attendance at weekly screenings is mandatory; and fun. We will not be using the waitlist on Axess - if you would like to enroll and the course is full/closed please email us to get on the waitlist!
Last offered: Autumn 2022
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
FRENCH 154E:
Film & Philosophy CE (ITALIAN 154E, PHIL 193E, PHIL 293E)
Issues of authenticity, morality, personal identity, and the value of truth explored through film; philosophical investigation of the filmic medium itself. Screenings to include Blade Runner (Scott), Do The Right Thing (Lee), The Seventh Seal (Bergman), Fight Club (Fincher), La Jetée (Marker), Memento (Nolan), and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Kaufman). Taught in English. Satisfies the WAY CE.
Last offered: Winter 2019
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
FRENCH 192:
Women in Contemporary French Cinema (FEMGEN 192, FILMEDIA 112, FRENCH 392)
Women as objects and subjects of the voyeuristic gaze inherent to cinema. The evolution of female characters, roles, actresses, directors in the French film industry from the sexual liberation to #metoo. Women as archetypes, icones, images, or as agents and subjects. Emphasis on filmic analysis: framing, point of view, narrative, camera work as ways to convey meaning. Themes include: sexualization and desire; diversity and intersectionality in films; new theories of the female gaze; gender, ethnicity and class. Filmmakers include Roger Vadim, Agnès Varda, Luis Buñuel, Claude Chabrol, Colline Serreau, Elena Rossi, Tonie Marshall, Houda Benyamina, Eléonore Pourriat, Céline Sciamma. VISIT BY FILM DIRECTORS Elena Rossi and Sciamma (pending).nnFilms in French with subtitles; Discussion in English; 3 units, 4 units or 5 units.
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
FRENCH 265:
The Problem of Evil in Literature, Film, and Philosophy (POLISCI 338E)
Conceptions of evil and its nature and source, distinctions between natural and moral evil, and what belongs to God versus to the human race have undergone transformations reflected in literature and film. Sources include Rousseau's response to the 1755 Lisbon earthquake; Hannah Arendt's interpretation of Auschwitz; Günther Anders' reading of Hiroshima; and current reflections on looming climatic and nuclear disasters. Readings from Rousseau, Kant, Dostoevsky, Arendt, Anders, Jonas, Camus, Ricoeur, Houellebeck, Girard. Films by Lang, Bergman, Losey, Hitchcock.
Last offered: Autumn 2021
| Units: 3-5
FRENCH 279:
How the French Reinvented Cinema: The New Wave (FRENCH 379)
Focus on the French New Wave's cinematic revolution of 1959-1962. In a few years, the Nouvelle Vague delivered landmark works such as Truffaut's 400 Blows, Godard's Breathless, Chabrol's The Cousins or Resnais' Hiroshima mon amour, and changed forever the way we make and think about movies. Why did these films look so radically fresh? What do they say about France's youth culture in the early 60s? How is the author's theory behind them still influencing us today? Focus is on cultural history, aesthetic analysis, interpretation of narrative, sound and visual forms. Graduate and Junior/Senior level. Taught in English. NOTE: Class meets Thursday 1:30-4:20pm; film screenings Monday 6:00-8:50pm in room 540-108
Last offered: Autumn 2018
| Units: 3-5
FRENCH 291:
Women in Contemporary French and Francophone Cinema (FRENCH 391)
Women as objects and subjects of the voyeuristic gaze inherent to cinema. The evolution of female characters, roles, actresses, directors in the French film industry from the sexual liberation to #metoo. Women as archetypes, icones, images, or as agents and subjects. Emphasis on filmic analysis: framing, point of view, narrative, camera work as ways to convey meaning. Themes include: sexualization and desire; diversity and intersectionality in films; new theories of the female gaze; gender, ethnicity and class. Filmmakers include Roger Vadim, Agnès Varda, Luis Buñuel, Claude Chabrol, Colline Serreau, Elena Rossi, Tonie Marshall, Houda Benyamina, Eléonore Pourriat, Céline Sciamma, Mati Diop. VISIT BY FILM DIRECTORS Elena Rossi and Sciamma (pending). Films in French with subtitles; discussion in English.
Last offered: Winter 2022
| Units: 3-5
FRENCH 365:
The Problem of Evil in Philosophy, Literature, and Film
This workshop will explore how the existence of evil in the world has been perceived, felt, analyzed, conceptualized, and dealt with over time, from the 1755 Lisbon earthquake and tsunami to our post-Auschwitz, post-Hiroshima era. We'll take it for granted that "the problem of evil is the guiding force of modern thought" (Susan Neiman, Evil in Modern Thought.) We'll ask why this is apparently no longer the case. Such philosophers as Rousseau, Voltaire, Diderot, Leibniz, Kant, Heidegger, Hannah Arendt, Günther Anders, Hans Jonas and Ivan Illich will be our guides. One could argue, however, that theology, metaphysics or moral philosophy are not up to the task of making sense of evil if they are not aided by literature and, today, film. Fiction can often articulate ideas that escape the grasp of philosophy. NOTE: Enrollment is capped and limited to graduate students: To be considered for enrollment in this course, please submit by March 13, 2020 a letter of motivation fleshing out the state of your own research or reflections in this domain. This letter should be sent to the instructor at jpdupuy@stanford.edu
Last offered: Spring 2020
| Units: 5
FRENCH 379:
How the French Reinvented Cinema: The New Wave (FRENCH 279)
Focus on the French New Wave's cinematic revolution of 1959-1962. In a few years, the Nouvelle Vague delivered landmark works such as Truffaut's 400 Blows, Godard's Breathless, Chabrol's The Cousins or Resnais' Hiroshima mon amour, and changed forever the way we make and think about movies. Why did these films look so radically fresh? What do they say about France's youth culture in the early 60s? How is the author's theory behind them still influencing us today? Focus is on cultural history, aesthetic analysis, interpretation of narrative, sound and visual forms. Graduate and Junior/Senior level. Taught in English. NOTE: Class meets Thursday 1:30-4:20pm; film screenings Monday 6:00-8:50pm in room 540-108
Last offered: Autumn 2018
| Units: 3-5
FRENCH 391:
Women in Contemporary French and Francophone Cinema (FRENCH 291)
Women as objects and subjects of the voyeuristic gaze inherent to cinema. The evolution of female characters, roles, actresses, directors in the French film industry from the sexual liberation to #metoo. Women as archetypes, icones, images, or as agents and subjects. Emphasis on filmic analysis: framing, point of view, narrative, camera work as ways to convey meaning. Themes include: sexualization and desire; diversity and intersectionality in films; new theories of the female gaze; gender, ethnicity and class. Filmmakers include Roger Vadim, Agnès Varda, Luis Buñuel, Claude Chabrol, Colline Serreau, Elena Rossi, Tonie Marshall, Houda Benyamina, Eléonore Pourriat, Céline Sciamma, Mati Diop. VISIT BY FILM DIRECTORS Elena Rossi and Sciamma (pending). Films in French with subtitles; discussion in English.
Last offered: Winter 2022
| Units: 3-5
FRENCH 392:
Women in Contemporary French Cinema (FEMGEN 192, FILMEDIA 112, FRENCH 192)
Women as objects and subjects of the voyeuristic gaze inherent to cinema. The evolution of female characters, roles, actresses, directors in the French film industry from the sexual liberation to #metoo. Women as archetypes, icones, images, or as agents and subjects. Emphasis on filmic analysis: framing, point of view, narrative, camera work as ways to convey meaning. Themes include: sexualization and desire; diversity and intersectionality in films; new theories of the female gaze; gender, ethnicity and class. Filmmakers include Roger Vadim, Agnès Varda, Luis Buñuel, Claude Chabrol, Colline Serreau, Elena Rossi, Tonie Marshall, Houda Benyamina, Eléonore Pourriat, Céline Sciamma. VISIT BY FILM DIRECTORS Elena Rossi and Sciamma (pending).nnFilms in French with subtitles; Discussion in English; 3 units, 4 units or 5 units.
| Units: 3-5
FRENLANG 20B:
French Cinema
Second-year French conversation based on films. Intermediate-level speaking skills and advanced-level functions. Themes include: French filmmakers, stars, and trends. Required film viewing in and outside class in French. May be repeated once for credit. Prerequisite: FRENLANG 21C or equivalent.
Last offered: Winter 2018
| Units: 2
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 4 units total)
GEOPHYS 30N:
Designing Science Fiction Planets (EPS 30N)
(Formerly GEOLSCI 30N) Science fiction writers craft entire worlds and physical laws with their minds. While planetary formation in the real world is a little different, we can use fantastical places and environments from film, television, and literature as conversation starters to discuss real discoveries that have been made about how planets form and evolve over time. The class will focus on the following overarching questions: (1) What conditions are required for habitable planets to form? (2) What types of planets may actually exist, including desert worlds, lava planets, ice planets, and ocean worlds? (3) What kids of life could inhabit such diverse worlds? (3) What types of catastrophic events such as supernovas, asteroid impacts, climate changes can nurture or destroy planetary habitability? Change of Department Name: Earth and Planetary Science (Formerly Geologic Sciences).
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-SMA
GERMAN 60N:
German Crime
Crime is as old as humanity, as old as storytelling. Cain's murder of Abel, Antigone's burial of Polynices, Robin Hood's robbing from the rich: all of these testify to the ongoing fascination with crime and criminality, and to literature's role in policing, and probing, the boundaries of social legitimacy. This is a course about murders, break-ins, betrayals, sexual infidelity and violence, and crimes against humanity, and the ways those crimes, sometimes moral, sometimes legal, and sometimes not really even exactly criminal, teach us about German and German literature in recent centuries. Course material will include modern and classical crime fiction (Friedrich Glauser, Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Jakob Arjouni, Thomas Glavinic), crime in novelistic, theatrical and poetic genres (Anna Seghers, Bertolt Brecht, Heinrich von Kleist, Friedrich Schiller), and German-language television and film (Fritz Lang's "M,"Carol Reed's "The Third Man," "Tatort"). nThis course is for students with good knowledge of German. Students without German can participate in a special section with English language material.nGerman Studies Assistant Professor Lea Pao will teach this course.
Last offered: Autumn 2017
| Units: 3
GERMAN 113:
German History Through Cinema
Films create historical imaginaries, while themselves also being historical artifacts. This interdisciplinary course investigates how recent German-language cinema (since c. 2000) has thematized and reimagined 20th- and 21st-century German history. How have filmmakers tackled topics such as World War II, the postwar years, divided Germany, reunification, national identity, social inequality and injustice, the experience of migration, and European unity? Directors' approaches to depicting history are diverse, surprising, and often deeply personal. This class provides you with the opportunity to learn about the past and present in Germany, while reflecting on the relationship between film and history. Possible directors to include: Fatih Akin, Ruth Beckermann, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, Alexander Kluge, Caroline Link, Christian Petzold, Margarethe von Trotta, and Wim Wenders. Taught in German.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3-5
GERMAN 132:
Politics in 20th Century German Literature
Is there a difference between art and propaganda? How do writers express their political values? Who gets to decide what counts as literature? Or who counts as German? This introductory course will focus on these questions and more as we discuss works of prose, poetry, theater, and film from the German-speaking world in the context of 20th century political developments, including the World Wars and the Holocaust, the Cold War and German Reunification, and the rise of multiculturalism. Course materials in the original German include selections from Franz Kafka, Bertolt Brecht, Ingeborg Bachmann, May Ayim, and others. Taught in German. GERLANG 3 or equivalent required.
Last offered: Winter 2023
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
GERMAN 135:
German Conversation (GERMAN 235)
This small, individualized course will offer students the chance to work on their spoken expression and critical thinking, in German. Topics will change each quarter but will span contemporary politics and culture, film, literature, and visual arts. The focus will be on speaking German in small groups, as opposed to formal presentations or written assignments. Students will have the opportunity to pursue topics of personal interest, as well as work collaboratively and individually on projects intended to foster advanced communicative skills.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr
| Units: 3
| Repeatable
for credit
GERMAN 144:
German Media Theory (FILMEDIA 270, FILMEDIA 470, GERMAN 344)
In this seminar, we will interrogate major currents in media-theoretical work from the German-speaking world from the 1980s to today. Starting from the surprisingly controversial term 'German media theory' itself, which has been described as 'neither a theory nor really centered on media, [while] its Germanness is a contested issue' - we will consider the characteristics that nevertheless make this a recognizable, if internally heterogeneous, category for thinking about media, mediation, and culture. We will pay special attention to the foundational work of Friedrich Kittler, which ranges across literature, film, philosophy, and computers, before turning to the current differentiation into a technology-focused 'media archaeology' (Wolfgang Ernst) and the differently inflected formation of 'cultural techniques' (Bernhard Siegert), as well as recent articulations of 'media philosophy' and other developments in contemporary theory. We will also examine the often absent and/or fraught role of gender, race, and class in this field, as well as attempts to address these issues by such theorists as Ute Holl, Cornelia Vissman, Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky, Annette Bitsch, and Sybille Krämer. Readings will be in English translation. Knowledge of German is therefore not required, but readers of German will find plenty of research opportunities among the many as yet untranslated texts that make up the field of German media theory.
Last offered: Spring 2022
| Units: 3-5
GERMAN 149:
Babylon Berlin
Berlin, 1929. A police inspector and his unlikely partner, a typist and aspiring homicide detective, turn up the case of a lifetime: a far-reaching political conspiracy in the capital of a democracy on the edge. Part noir detective thriller, part historical drama, the blockbuster German television series Babylon Berlin (2017) will serve as our springboard to understand the culture, politics, and society of the Weimar Republic (1918,1933), a fifteen-year experiment in democracy that preceded the rise of the Third Reich. From corruption and criminality to sociopolitical upheaval and a remarkable arts scene: Berlin of the Roaring Twenties, a study in contrasts and conflicts, had it all. Does the Netflix hit harbor, almost eerie parallels to the present, as one German newspaper recently suggested? Weekly viewings of the complete seasons one and two will be accompanied by close study of the era's literature, cinema, and visual arts. Readings will include texts by Alfred Döblin, Hans Fallada, Erich Kästner, Mascha Kaléko, Irmgard Keun, Siegfried Kracauer, Gabriele Tergit, and Kurt Tucholsky. Throughout the term we will also pay careful attention to the media-theoretical implications of the series: What is 'quality TV?' How does seriality influence storytelling and viewing? In what ways does Babylon Berlin reflect on film as a medium? What role do montage and collage play? Assessment will be based on active class participation; a series of short viewing and reading reflections; a midterm scene analysis assignment; and a final research project that will delve into specific historical intertexts (figures, sites, objects) taken up in Babylon Berlin.
Last offered: Autumn 2022
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
GERMAN 232:
German Literature 3: Modernity and the Unspeakable (GERMAN 332)
Masterpieces of German literature, drama, and film from the first half of the 20th century. Particular focus on modernism and the crisis of language. What urgent truths (whether psychological, political, spiritual, or sexual) cannot be expressed, and how do art and dreams attempt to speak the unspeakable? Readings and viewings include works by Hofmannsthal, Schnitzler, Freud, Wedekind, Mann, Musil, Kafka, Toller, Höch, Rilke, Schoenberg, Riefensthal, Benjamin, and Brecht. Taught in English.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
| Repeatable
for credit
GERMAN 235:
German Conversation (GERMAN 135)
This small, individualized course will offer students the chance to work on their spoken expression and critical thinking, in German. Topics will change each quarter but will span contemporary politics and culture, film, literature, and visual arts. The focus will be on speaking German in small groups, as opposed to formal presentations or written assignments. Students will have the opportunity to pursue topics of personal interest, as well as work collaboratively and individually on projects intended to foster advanced communicative skills.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr
| Units: 3
| Repeatable
for credit
GERMAN 274:
Wonder: The Event of Art and Literature (COMPLIT 374)
What falls below, or beyond, rational inquiry? How do we write about the awe we feel in front of certain works of art, in reading lines of poetry or philosophy, or watching a scene in a film without ruining the feeling that drove us to write in the first place? In this course, we will focus on a heterogeneous series of texts, artworks, and physical locations to discuss these questions. Potential topics include The Book of Exodus, the poetry of Friedrich Hölderlin and of Elizabeth Bishop, the location of Harriet Tubman's childhood, the poetry and drawings of Else Lasker-Schüler, the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, the art of James Turrell, and the films of Luchino Visconti.
Last offered: Winter 2023
| Units: 3-5
GERMAN 280:
Feminist Avant-Garde Art in Germany and Beyond (1968-2019) (ARTHIST 272, ARTHIST 472, FEMGEN 280)
In "Woman's Art: A Manifesto" (1972), the artist, performer and filmmaker Valie Export (1940) proposed the transfer of women's experience into an art context and considered the body "a signal bearer of meaning and communication." In reconceptualizing and displaying "the" body (her body) as an aesthetic sign, Export's groundbreaking work paves the way towards questioning the concepts of a "female aesthetic" and a "male gaze" (L. Mulvey). Beginning with Export, we will discuss art informed by and coalescing with feminism(s): the recent revival of the 1970s in all-women group shows, the dialectic of feminist revolution, the breakdown of stable identities and their representations, point(s) of absorption of commodified femininities. Particular attention will be paid to German-language theory and its medial transfer into art works. For students of German Studies, readings and discussions in German are possible. Online discussions will be organized with contemporary artists and curators. Emphasis will be on: the relationship between (female?) aesthetics and (gender) politics, between private and public spheres, between housework and artwork; conceptions of identity (crises) and corporeality in visual culture and mass media; categories of the artist´s self in relation to the use of media (video, photography, film, collage, installation art). This course will be taught by Professor Elena Zanichelli, a Berlin-based art historian, critic, and curator. She is junior professor for Art History and Aesthetic Theory at IKFK (Institute for Art History - Film History - Art Education) at the University of Bremen.
Last offered: Spring 2022
| Units: 3-5
GERMAN 332:
German Literature 3: Modernity and the Unspeakable (GERMAN 232)
Masterpieces of German literature, drama, and film from the first half of the 20th century. Particular focus on modernism and the crisis of language. What urgent truths (whether psychological, political, spiritual, or sexual) cannot be expressed, and how do art and dreams attempt to speak the unspeakable? Readings and viewings include works by Hofmannsthal, Schnitzler, Freud, Wedekind, Mann, Musil, Kafka, Toller, Höch, Rilke, Schoenberg, Riefensthal, Benjamin, and Brecht. Taught in English.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
| Repeatable
for credit
GERMAN 344:
German Media Theory (FILMEDIA 270, FILMEDIA 470, GERMAN 144)
In this seminar, we will interrogate major currents in media-theoretical work from the German-speaking world from the 1980s to today. Starting from the surprisingly controversial term 'German media theory' itself, which has been described as 'neither a theory nor really centered on media, [while] its Germanness is a contested issue' - we will consider the characteristics that nevertheless make this a recognizable, if internally heterogeneous, category for thinking about media, mediation, and culture. We will pay special attention to the foundational work of Friedrich Kittler, which ranges across literature, film, philosophy, and computers, before turning to the current differentiation into a technology-focused 'media archaeology' (Wolfgang Ernst) and the differently inflected formation of 'cultural techniques' (Bernhard Siegert), as well as recent articulations of 'media philosophy' and other developments in contemporary theory. We will also examine the often absent and/or fraught role of gender, race, and class in this field, as well as attempts to address these issues by such theorists as Ute Holl, Cornelia Vissman, Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky, Annette Bitsch, and Sybille Krämer. Readings will be in English translation. Knowledge of German is therefore not required, but readers of German will find plenty of research opportunities among the many as yet untranslated texts that make up the field of German media theory.
Last offered: Spring 2022
| Units: 3-5
GLOBAL 41Q:
The Ape Museum: Exploring the Idea of the Ape in Global History, Science, Art and Film (HISTORY 41Q)
This course will explore the idea of "the ape" in global history, science, art, and film. The idea that apes might be humanity's nearest animal relatives is only about 200 years old. From the start, the idea developed in a global context: living fossil apes were found in Africa and Asia, and were immediately embroiled in international controversies about theories of human origins and racial hierarchies. This class will look at how and why "the ape" became a generative and controversial new concept in numerous national and regional contexts. We'll explore some of the many ways humans have looked at, studied, and thought about apes around the world: the "out of Asia" versus "out of Africa" hypothesis for human origins; Nim Chimpsky, the chimpanzee raised as a human child; Koko, the gorilla who may have learned sign language; Congo, the chimpanzee who made "abstract" paintings; films such as King Kong, Planet of the Apes, and 2001: Space Odyssey; the ape in World War II and Cold War propaganda in Japan, the Soviet Union, Germany, and the United States; Jane Goodall's study of chimpanzees "culture" and "personality"; the place of apes in natural history museums and zoos around the world; and Stanford's own fraught history of comparing apes and humans through the archival writings of eugenicist founding president David Starr Jordan. Taught in conjunction with an exhibit on global ape imagery at the Stanford Library curated by Professors Riskin and Winterer in 2024, the course will culminate in students' own miniature exhibits for a class-generated "Ape Museum."
Terms: Win
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
GLOBAL 50:
At Home Abroad Seminar: International Film Series (DLCL 50)
The At Home Abroad House invites you to challenge your habits of visual culture, fill your ears with less-familiar sounds, and build your own understanding of what it means to live in a global age. Stanford experts from a multitude of cultural disciplines representing multiple geographic regions have selected some of the best of the best of recent film for you to view: come see for yourself and see outside the box with this tailored line-up of contemporary cinema from around the world. Weekly screenings hosted at the At Home Abroad House; class is open to undergrads only and is mandatory for pre-assigned residents of AHA.
Terms: Win
| Units: 1-2
| Repeatable
9 times
(up to 18 units total)
GLOBAL 110:
Love in the Time of Cinema (FILMEDIA 137, FILMEDIA 337, GLOBAL 211)
Romantic coupling is at the heart of mainstream film narratives around the world. Through a range of film cultures, we will examine cinematic intimacies and our own mediated understandings of love and conjugality formed in dialog with film and other media. We will consider genres, infrastructures, social activities (for example, the drive-in theater, the movie date, the Bollywood wedding musical, 90s queer cinema), and examine film romance in relation to queerness, migration, old age, disability, and body politics more broadly.
Last offered: Autumn 2019
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
GLOBAL 193:
History of World Cinema III: Queer Cinemas around the World (ARTHIST 164, ARTHIST 364, CSRE 102C, CSRE 302C, FEMGEN 100C, FEMGEN 300C, FILMEDIA 100C, FILMEDIA 300C, GLOBAL 390, TAPS 100C, TAPS 300C)
Provides an overview of cinema from around the world since 1960, highlighting the cultural, political, and economic forces that have shaped various film movements over the last six decades. Specific topics may vary by term/year/instructor. This term's topic, Queer Cinemas around the World, engages with a range of queer cinematic forms and queer spectatorial practices in different parts of the world, as well as BIPOC media from North America. Through film and video from Kenya, Malaysia, India, The Dominican Republic, China, Brazil, Palestine, Japan, Morocco, the US etc., we will examine varied narratives about trans experience, same-sex desire, LGBTQI2S+ rights, censorship, precarity, and hopefulness. This course will attune us to regional cultural specificities in queer expression and representation, prompting us to move away from hegemonic and homogenizing understandings of queer life and media. Notes: Screenings will be held on Fridays at 1:30PM in Oshman Hall. Screening times will vary slightly from week to week.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 10 units total)
GLOBAL 211:
Love in the Time of Cinema (FILMEDIA 137, FILMEDIA 337, GLOBAL 110)
Romantic coupling is at the heart of mainstream film narratives around the world. Through a range of film cultures, we will examine cinematic intimacies and our own mediated understandings of love and conjugality formed in dialog with film and other media. We will consider genres, infrastructures, social activities (for example, the drive-in theater, the movie date, the Bollywood wedding musical, 90s queer cinema), and examine film romance in relation to queerness, migration, old age, disability, and body politics more broadly.
Last offered: Autumn 2019
| Units: 3-5
GLOBAL 249B:
Iranian Cinema in Diaspora (COMPLIT 249B)
Despite enormous obstacles, immigrant Iranian filmmakers, within a few decades (after the Iranian Revolution), have created a slow but steady stream of films outside Iran. They were originally started by individual spontaneous attempts from different corners of the world and by now we can identify common lines of interest amongst them. There are also major differences between them. These films have never been allowed to be screened inside Iran, and without any support from the global system of production and distribution, as independent and individual attempts, they have enjoyed little attention. Despite all this, Iranian cinema in exile is in no sense any less important than Iranian cinema inside Iran. In this course we will view one such film, made outside Iran, in each class meeting and expect to reach a common consensus in identifying the general patterns within these works and this movement. Questions such as the ones listed below will be addressed in our meetings each week: What changes in aesthetics and point of view of the filmmaker are caused by the change in his or her work environment? Though unwantedly these films are made outside Iran, how related are they to the known (recognized) cinema within Iran? And in fact, to what extent do these films express things that are left unsaid by the cinema within Iran? NOTE: To satisfy a WAYS requirement, this course must be taken for a minimum 3 units and a letter grade. Please contact your academic advisor for University policy regarding WAYS.
Terms: Win
| Units: 1-3
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
GLOBAL 390:
History of World Cinema III: Queer Cinemas around the World (ARTHIST 164, ARTHIST 364, CSRE 102C, CSRE 302C, FEMGEN 100C, FEMGEN 300C, FILMEDIA 100C, FILMEDIA 300C, GLOBAL 193, TAPS 100C, TAPS 300C)
Provides an overview of cinema from around the world since 1960, highlighting the cultural, political, and economic forces that have shaped various film movements over the last six decades. Specific topics may vary by term/year/instructor. This term's topic, Queer Cinemas around the World, engages with a range of queer cinematic forms and queer spectatorial practices in different parts of the world, as well as BIPOC media from North America. Through film and video from Kenya, Malaysia, India, The Dominican Republic, China, Brazil, Palestine, Japan, Morocco, the US etc., we will examine varied narratives about trans experience, same-sex desire, LGBTQI2S+ rights, censorship, precarity, and hopefulness. This course will attune us to regional cultural specificities in queer expression and representation, prompting us to move away from hegemonic and homogenizing understandings of queer life and media. Notes: Screenings will be held on Fridays at 1:30PM in Oshman Hall. Screening times will vary slightly from week to week.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 10 units total)
GSBGEN 564:
The Entertainment Industry - An Intersection of Art and Commerce
In this seminar we will explore the intersection of art and commerce in the entertainment industry. We will look at creating films and television programing that are artistically meaningful and/or have the potential for commercial success. The class will also look in depth at the rapidly changing business of entertainment. Films are increasingly used as a tool for social change, and we will examine this power. The entertainment industry is one of enormous importance - both from a business and cultural standpoint, and has influence on virtually every sphere of our society. Sometimes the industry can seem baffling, mercurial, and characterized more by madness than method. But despite its uncertainties, Hollywood does have its own rules, rhythms, methods and strategies - and examining and evaluating them will be a key part of this seminar. This is a time when many existing formulas are being reconsidered, retooled, or jettisoned, and new technologies and expanding markets are having a profound impact on the industry and tracking and analyzing this will be a key part of the course. I will also bring some of my professional experiences into the classroom (including directing, writing, and producing for film and television, etc.), and discuss these experiences through the intersection of the business and creative sides of the industry. We will discuss the entertainment industry's future, and address varied and effective paths for creating entertainment product with artistic and/or commercial merit. Students taking the course will be asked to be part of an in-class group exercise, and also complete a final group project where they will present their work in class.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 2
HISTORY 3N:
Terrorism
Why do we categorize some acts of violence as terrorism? How do the practitioners of such violence legitimize their actions? What are the effects of terror on culture, society, and politics? This course explores these questions around the globe from the nineteenth century to the present. Topics include the Russian populists, Ku Klux Klan, IRA, al Qaida, state terror, and the representation of terrorism in law, journalism, literature, film, and TV.
Last offered: Autumn 2019
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
HISTORY 24N:
Stalin's Terror: Causes, Crimes, Consequences
This course explores the period of Stalin's rule in the Soviet Union from 1928 until 1953 and focuses on what the Russians called "the repressions." This includes, the war against the kulaks, the Ukrainian famine (Holodomor), the operations against the nationalities, the Great Terror, the deportation of the "punished peoples," the expansion of the Gulag (prison camp system), the Leningrad Affair, and the Doctors' Plot. The origins of these events are still controversial, as are their impact on the development of the Soviet Union. Scholars also continue to argue about the numbers of deaths involved. Students will discuss the arguments about Stalin's crimes using newly available documents, memoirs, literary sources, and other materials. We will visit the Hoover Archives, view the poster and film collection there, and discuss the period with archivists. Viewing films and documentaries, we will also reconstruct the lives of the people faced with the daily threat of denunciations and arrest. "Life has become better comrades; living has become happier..." was an often repeated slogan during the period of Stalin's terror. We will examine how that slogan translated into reality.
Last offered: Spring 2023
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-SI
HISTORY 41Q:
The Ape Museum: Exploring the Idea of the Ape in Global History, Science, Art and Film (GLOBAL 41Q)
This course will explore the idea of "the ape" in global history, science, art, and film. The idea that apes might be humanity's nearest animal relatives is only about 200 years old. From the start, the idea developed in a global context: living fossil apes were found in Africa and Asia, and were immediately embroiled in international controversies about theories of human origins and racial hierarchies. This class will look at how and why "the ape" became a generative and controversial new concept in numerous national and regional contexts. We'll explore some of the many ways humans have looked at, studied, and thought about apes around the world: the "out of Asia" versus "out of Africa" hypothesis for human origins; Nim Chimpsky, the chimpanzee raised as a human child; Koko, the gorilla who may have learned sign language; Congo, the chimpanzee who made "abstract" paintings; films such as King Kong, Planet of the Apes, and 2001: Space Odyssey; the ape in World War II and Cold War propaganda in Japan, the Soviet Union, Germany, and the United States; Jane Goodall's study of chimpanzees "culture" and "personality"; the place of apes in natural history museums and zoos around the world; and Stanford's own fraught history of comparing apes and humans through the archival writings of eugenicist founding president David Starr Jordan. Taught in conjunction with an exhibit on global ape imagery at the Stanford Library curated by Professors Riskin and Winterer in 2024, the course will culminate in students' own miniature exhibits for a class-generated "Ape Museum."
Terms: Win
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
HISTORY 45B:
Introduction to African Studies I: Africa in the 20th Century
(AFRICAAM/HISTORY 45B is 3 units; AFRICAAM/HISTORY 145B is 5 units.) CREATIVITY. AGENCY. RESILIENCE. This is the African history with which this course will engage. African scholars and knowledge production of Africa that explicitly engages with theories of race and global Blackness will take center stage. TRADE. RELIGION. CONQUEST. MIGRATION. These are the transformations of the 20th century which we shall interrogate and reposition. Yet these groundbreaking events did not happen in a vacuum. As historians, we also think about the continent's rich traditions and histories prior to the 20th century. FICTION. NONFICTION. FILM. MUSIC. Far from being peripheral to political transformation, African creative arts advanced discourse on gender, technology, and environmental history within the continent and without. We will listen to African creative artists not only as creators, but as agents for change.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, GER:EC-GlobalCom, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
HISTORY 48S:
African Voices: Literature and Arts in 20th Century South Africa (AFRICAAM 149)
How did South African Black intellectuals and artists utilize literature and other artistic forms to articulate their increasingly precarious position in the country's political landscape in the 20th century? What hopes and visions were captured through their works? Engaging with numerous sources ranging from speeches, newspapers, short stories, novels, music, film, paintings to photographs, we will explore what Ntongela Masilela calls "New African modernity"--a movement pioneered by different generations of Black intellectuals and artists. We will grapple with the notion of art as political, and the salience of Black women's works in contexts of double marginalization. This class lies at the intersection of intellectual, cultural, and literary histories.
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
HISTORY 49S:
African Futures: Nationalism, Pan-Africanism, and Beyond (AFRICAAM 49S)
This course examines decolonization and its aftermath in sub-Saharan Africa. With a "wind of change" sweeping the continent, how did Africans imagine their futures together? From W.E.B. Du Bois to Black Panther, this course will engage in historical readings of political essays, speeches, film, and literature to consider how Africans envisioned their communities beyond empire. Topics will include a variety of projects for African unity, from experiments with Pan-Africanism, to religious revivalism, to Afrofuturist art and aesthetics.
Last offered: Autumn 2019
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
HISTORY 53S:
Black San Francisco (AFRICAAM 53S)
For over a century African-Americans have shaped the contours of San Francisco, a globally recognized metropolis, but their histories remain hidden. While endangered, Black San Francisco is still very much alive, and its history is an inextricable piece of the city's social and cultural fabric. This course aims to uncover the often-overlooked history of African-Americans in the city of San Francisco. The history of Black San Francisco unravels the myth of San Francisco liberalism showing how systemic racial oppression greatly limited the social mobility of non-whites well into the 20th century. Conversely, this course will also highlight the rich cultural and artistic legacies of Black San Franciscans with special attention on their ability to create social. Starting with the small, but influential middle and upper classes of African-Americans, who supported abolitionism from the West in the mid-late nineteenth century, to the rapid growth of the black population during WWII and moving through post-war struggles against the forces of Jim Crow and environmental racism. This course will explore: What is Black San Francisco? How did African-Americans shape the culture and politics of San Francisco, and where does the history of Black San Francisco fit into the broader national historical narrative? Conversely, what is unique about San Francisco and similar black communities in the West? How do we reconstruct the past of people going South to West as opposed to South to North? And finally, as raised in the critically acclaimed 2019 film, The Last Black Man in San Francisco and eluded by the late Dr. Martin Luther King, where does black San Franciscans, go from here?
Last offered: Autumn 2021
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
HISTORY 69Q:
American Road Trips (AMSTUD 109Q)
"Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road." --Jack Kerouac, On the Road, 1957. From Jack Kerouac's On the Road to Cheryl Strayed's Wild, this course explores epic road trips of the twentieth century. Travel is a fundamental social and cultural practice through which Americans have constructed ideas about the self, the nation, the past, and the future. The open road, as it is often called, offered excitement, great adventure, and the space for family bonding and memory making. But the footloose and fancy-free nature of travel that Jack Kerouac celebrated was available to some travelers but not to all. Engaging historical and literary texts, film, autobiography, memoir, photography, and music, we will consider the ways that travel and road trips have been represented in American culture. This course examines the following questions: How did men and women experience travel differently? How did the motivations for travel change over time? What role did race, ethnicity, class, relationships, and sexuality play in these trips? Students will work together to plan a road trip of their own which the class will take during the quarter.
Last offered: Autumn 2017
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
HISTORY 74:
Mexico Since 1876: The Road to Ayotzinapa
(History 74 is for 3 units; History 174 is for 5 units.) In September of 2014, 43 students from a Mexican teacher's college in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero were abducted and disappeared via the actions of police and organized crime. This shocking human rights violation, as well as the violence and impunity it represented, were symbolic of the decline of the rule of law embodied by Mexico's drug war. How did the nation arrive at this crossroads? This course is an introduction to the history of Mexico from 1876 to the present. Through lectures, discussions, primary and secondary sources, film and documentaries, and written assignments, students will critically explore the events and people that shaped Mexico for over a century. From the Porfirian dictatorship, to the Revolution, to the PRI's "perfect dictatorship," this course analyzes socioeconomic and racial inequality, foreign intervention, urbanization and industrialization, technological innovation and environmental degradation, education and ideology, modernity and migration, culture and media, and the drug trade.
Last offered: Winter 2021
| Units: 3
HISTORY 78:
Film and History of Latin American Revolutions and Counterrevolutions (FILMEDIA 178, HISTORY 178, ILAC 178)
In this course we will watch and critique films made about Latin America's 20th century revolutions focusing on the Cuban, Chilean and Mexican revolutions. We will analyze the films as both social and political commentaries and as aesthetic and cultural works, alongside archivally-based histories of these revolutions.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
HISTORY 85B:
Jews in the Contemporary World: Culture, Pop Culture, and Representation (JEWISHST 85B, REES 85B)
(HISTORY 85B is 3 units; HISTORY 185B is 5 units.) From Barbra Streisand to Volodymyr Zelenskyy, from The Dybbuk to Broad City, and from Moscow to LA, this course applies a multicultural perspective on different experiences of Jewishness in the 20th and 21st centuries. The discussion is centered on the ways in which these experiences are represented in various types of media: in literature or on TikTok, in poetry or on Instagram, in film and on television. The themes of the course include (but are not limited to) the interplay of national, religious, ethnic, linguistic, and political identities, intersectionality, the definitions and boundaries of Jewish cultures, Queer and variously gendered experiences of Jewishness, as well as antisemitism and stereotyped representations of Jewishness. The course introduces students to the analysis of a diverse array of media as cultural texts and historical sources. Students are encouraged to apply their new skills to media of their choice.
Last offered: Spring 2023
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
HISTORY 116M:
"You Know Nothing, Jon Snow": Representations and Misrepresentations of the Middle Ages in Film
Throughout the history of film, writers, directors and producers have made the Middle Ages one of the most popular settings featured in the medium. Some films attempt to faithfully represent this fascinating period in great historical detail. Other films use a deformed image of the Middle Ages as an inspiration for movies that propagate misleading depictions of this important time. Finally, most films could be placed somewhere on the spectrum between these two extremes. This class will examine eight films and one broad theme (e.g., violence, women, politics, etc.) featured in them. Through examination of primary and secondary sources, students will investigate these themes within the context of medieval history, critique their cinematic representation and discuss medievalism and its proponents.
Last offered: Summer 2020
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
HISTORY 145B:
Introduction to African Studies I: Africa in the 20th Century (AFRICAAM 145B)
(AFRICAAM/HISTORY 45B is 3 units; AFRICAAM/HISTORY 145B is 5 units.) CREATIVITY. AGENCY. RESILIENCE. This is the African history with which this course will engage. African scholars and knowledge production of Africa that explicitly engages with theories of race and global Blackness will take center stage. TRADE. RELIGION. CONQUEST. MIGRATION. These are the transformations of the 20th century which we shall interrogate and reposition. Yet these groundbreaking events did not happen in a vacuum. As historians, we also think about the continent's rich traditions and histories prior to the 20th century. FICTION. NONFICTION. FILM. MUSIC. Far from being peripheral to political transformation, African creative arts advanced discourse on gender, technology, and environmental history within the continent and without. We will listen to African creative artists not only as creators, but as agents for change.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, GER:EC-GlobalCom, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
HISTORY 148C:
Los Angeles: A Cultural History (AMSTUD 148, CSRE 148R)
This course traces a cultural history of Los Angeles from the early twentieth century to the present. Approaching popular representations of Los Angeles as our primary source, we discuss the ways that diverse groups of Angelenos have represented their city on the big and small screens, in the press, in the theater, in music, and in popular fiction. We focus in particular on the ways that conceptions of race and gender have informed representations of the city. Possible topics include: fashion and racial violence in the Zoot Suit Riots of the Second World War, Disneyland as a suburban fantasy, cinematic representations of Native American life in Bunker Hill in the 1961 film The Exiles, the independent black cinema of the Los Angeles Rebellion, the Anna Deaver Smith play Twilight Los Angeles about the civil unrest that gripped the city in 1992, and the 2019 film Once Upon a Time¿in Hollywood.
Last offered: Winter 2021
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
HISTORY 151:
The American West (AMSTUD 124A, ARTHIST 152, ENGLISH 124, POLISCI 124A)
The American West is characterized by frontier mythology, vast distances, marked aridity, and unique political and economic characteristics. This course integrates several disciplinary perspectives into a comprehensive examination of Western North America: its history, physical geography, climate, literature, art, film, institutions, politics, demography, economy, and continuing policy challenges. Students examine themes fundamental to understanding the region: time, space, water, peoples, and boom and bust cycles.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
HISTORY 168:
American History in Film Since World War ll
U.S. society, culture, and politics since WW II through feature films. Topics include: McCarthyism and the Cold War; ethnicity and racial identify; changing sex and gender relationships; the civil rights and anti-war movements; and mass media. Films include: The Best Years of Our Lives, Salt of the Earth, On the Waterfront, Raisin in the Sun, Kramer v Kramer, and Falling Down.
Last offered: Summer 2019
| Units: 3-4
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
HISTORY 174:
Mexico Since 1876: The Road to Ayotzinapa
(History 74 is for 3 units; History 174 is for 5 units.) In September of 2014, 43 students from a Mexican teacher's college in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero were abducted and disappeared via the actions of police and organized crime. This shocking human rights violation, as well as the violence and impunity it represented, were symbolic of the decline of the rule of law embodied by Mexico's drug war. How did the nation arrive at this crossroads? This course is an introduction to the history of Mexico from 1876 to the present. Through lectures, discussions, primary and secondary sources, film and documentaries, and written assignments, students will critically explore the events and people that shaped Mexico for over a century. From the Porfirian dictatorship, to the Revolution, to the PRI's "perfect dictatorship," this course analyzes socioeconomic and racial inequality, foreign intervention, urbanization and industrialization, technological innovation and environmental degradation, education and ideology, modernity and migration, culture and media, and the drug trade.
Last offered: Winter 2021
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP
HISTORY 178:
Film and History of Latin American Revolutions and Counterrevolutions (FILMEDIA 178, HISTORY 78, ILAC 178)
In this course we will watch and critique films made about Latin America's 20th century revolutions focusing on the Cuban, Chilean and Mexican revolutions. We will analyze the films as both social and political commentaries and as aesthetic and cultural works, alongside archivally-based histories of these revolutions.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
HISTORY 185B:
Jews in the Contemporary World: Culture, Pop Culture, and Representation (CSRE 185B, JEWISHST 185B, REES 185B, SLAVIC 183)
(HISTORY 185B is 5 units; HISTORY 85B is 3 units.) From Barbra Streisand to Volodymyr Zelenskyy, from The Dybbuk to Broad City, and from Moscow to LA, this course applies a multicultural perspective on different experiences of Jewishness in the 20th and 21st centuries. The discussion is centered on the ways in which these experiences are represented in various types of media: in literature or on TikTok, in poetry or on Instagram, in film and on television. The themes of the course include (but are not limited to) the interplay of national, religious, ethnic, linguistic, and political identities, intersectionality, the definitions and boundaries of Jewish cultures, Queer and variously gendered experiences of Jewishness, as well as antisemitism and stereotyped representations of Jewishness. The course introduces students to the analysis of a diverse array of media as cultural texts and historical sources. Students are encouraged to apply their new skills to media of their choice.
Last offered: Spring 2023
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-GlobalCom, WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
HISTORY 201D:
History Goes Pop! Songwriting the Past (HISTORY 301D)
Historical research doesn't always take the form of a thesis, an article, or a book. Sometimes, research leads to film, museum exhibits, works of art, or... music. In this class, students will collaborate to write, record, and produce original pop music (perhaps even an entire album) based on original research in Stanford's wealth of archives and Special Collections. Background in music is NOT required.
Last offered: Spring 2020
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
HISTORY 204A:
Reimagining History: A Workshop (HISTORY 304A)
This class explores, through analysis and practice, the ways in which history can be told and experienced through means other than traditional scholarly narratives. Approaches include literary fiction and non-fiction, digital media, graphic arts, maps, exhibitions, and film. A final project will require students to produce their own innovative work of history.
Last offered: Winter 2023
| Units: 4-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
HISTORY 207:
Biography and History (AMSTUD 207B, HISTORY 308, JEWISHST 207)
Designed along the lines of the PBS series, "In the Actor's Workshop," students will meet weekly with some of the leading literary biographers writing today. Included this spring will be "New Yorker" staff writer Judith Thurman -- whose biography of Isak Dinesen was made into the film "Out of Africa" -- as well as Shirley Jackson biographer Ruth Franklin, now at work on a book about Anne Frank. Professor Zipperstein will share with the class drafts of the biography of Philip Roth that he is now writing. Critics questioning the value of biography as an historical and literary tool will also be invited to meetings with the class.
Last offered: Spring 2022
| Units: 4-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum
HISTORY 207B:
The Irish and the World (HISTORY 307B)
"When anyone asks me about the Irish character, I say look at the trees. Maimed, stark and misshapen, but ferociously tenacious." The writer Edna O'Brien's portrait of Irish life encapsulates a history shaped by colonialism, famine, forced migration, and enduring political struggle. This course explores the global story of Ireland, a small land of 4.8 million that since 1800 has produced a diaspora of some 10 million people worldwide. Colonized and colonizers, freedom fighters and slave-owners, the starving and the wealthy, pious and irreverent-- the Irish reveal their past through memoirs, poetry, novels, music, film, and television.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 4-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
HISTORY 226D:
The Holocaust: Insights from New Research (HISTORY 326D, JEWISHST 226E, JEWISHST 326D)
Overview of the history of the Holocaust, the genocide of European Jews. Explores its causes, course, consequences, and memory. Addresses the events themselves, as well as the roles of perpetrators and bystanders, dilemmas faced by victims, collaboration of local populations, and the issue of rescue. Considers how the Holocaust was and is remembered and commemorated by victims and participants alike. Uses different kinds of sources: scholarly work, memoirs, diaries, film, and primary documents.
Terms: Win
| Units: 4-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-SI
HISTORY 227D:
All Quiet on the Eastern Front? East Europe and Russia in the First World War (HISTORY 327D, REES 227, REES 327)
Until recently history has been comparatively quiet about the experience of World War I in the east. Far from being a peripheral theater of war, however, the experiences of war on the Eastern Front were central to shaping the 20th century. Not only was the first shot of the war fired in the east, it was also the site of the most dramatic political revolution. Using scholarly texts, literature and film, this course combines political, military, cultural and social approaches to introduce the causes, conduct and consequences of World War I with a focus on the experiences of soldiers and civilians on the Eastern Front. Topics include: the war of movement, occupation, extreme violence against civilians, the Armenian genocide, population exchanges, the Russian Revolution and civil war, and the disintegration of empires and rise of nation-states.
Last offered: Winter 2018
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-SI
HISTORY 257C:
LGBTQ History of the United States (FEMGEN 140D, FEMGEN 240D)
An introductory course that explores LGBT/Queer social, cultural, and political history in the United States. By analyzing primary documents that range from personal accounts (private letters, autobiography, early LGBT magazines, and oral history interviews) to popular culture (postcards, art, political posters, lesbian pulp fiction, and film) to medical, military, and legal papers, students will understand how the categories of gender and sexuality have changed over the past 150 years. This class investigates the relationship among queer, straight and transgender identities. Seminar discussions will question how the intersections of race, class, gender, and sexuality influenced the construction of these categories.
Last offered: Spring 2021
| Units: 4-5
| UG Reqs: GER:EC-Gender, WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
HISTORY 261P:
The Pen and the Sword: A Gendered History (COMPLIT 140, FEMGEN 141B, ITALIAN 141)
As weapons, the pen and the sword have been used to wound, punish, and condemn as well as to protect, liberate, and elevate. Historically entangled with ideals of heroism, nobility, and civility, the pen and the sword have been the privileged instruments of men. Yet, throughout history, women have picked up the pen and the sword in defense, despair, and outrage as well as with passion, vision, and inspiration. This course is dedicated to them, and to study of works on love, sex, and power that articulate female experience. In our readings and seminars, we will encounter real and fictive women in their own words and in narrations and depictions by others from classical antiquity to the present, with a special focus on the Renaissance and on the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Touching on such topics as flattery and slander through the study of misogynistic, protofeminist, and feminist works in the early modern and modern periods in various European literary traditions, we will consider questions of truth and falsehood in fiction and in life. Course materials span a variety genres and media, from poetry, letters, dialogues, public lectures, treatises, short stories, and drama to painting, sculpture, music, and film works regarded for their aesthetic, intellectual, religious, social, and political value and impact.
Last offered: Winter 2023
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
HISTORY 273E:
Revolution and Intervention in Central America and the Caribbean
This course examines key instances of revolution, reaction, and intervention in select Central American and Caribbean nations during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Students will explore how various forms of imperialism/neocolonialism intensified class, racial, ethnic, and gender inequalities that produced poverty, dictatorship, and armed uprisings in these culturally diverse regions of the Americas. Through primary and secondary sources, film, music, media, popular art and literature students will gain insight into the political, social, and economic trends that made Central America and the Caribbean epicenters of social struggle as well as home to the Western Hemisphere's poorest countries.
| Units: 5
HISTORY 285E:
Counterinsurgency and Torture: Algeria, Vietnam, and Iraq
This course covers the post-WWII history of counterinsurgency, a type of warfare in which a powerful, state-backed military is pitted against guerrilla fighters, or insurgents. In the context of decolonization (the dissolution of European overseas empires) and the United States' growing role on the world stage, we will examine four counterinsurgency campaigns: the French in Indochina (1946-1954) and Algeria (1954-1962); and the Americans in Vietnam (1964-1973) and Iraq (2003-2011). Using a combination of secondary and primary sources, including declassified government documents, maps, photography, film, music, news broadcasts, and recorded tapes of presidential phone calls, we will ask four overarching questions: 1) How did military planners and politicians learn from prior counterinsurgencies, and what are the strengths and pitfalls of an approach to warfare that applies historical "lessons learned" to contemporary problems? 2) Are torture and violence against civilians the results of mishandled counterinsurgency, or are they inherent to the doctrine? 3) Why have counterinsurgency strategies persisted despite long-term failures and public criticism? 4) How does historical thinking allow us to participate more effectively in debates about counterinsurgency and torture in America today? Throughout, we will explore how counterinsurgency and torture have traveled across space and time, intertwining historical trajectories in Southeast Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East.
Last offered: Winter 2021
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-SI
HISTORY 291K:
Korean History and Culture before 1900 (HISTORY 391K, KOREA 158, KOREA 258)
This course serves as an introduction to Korean culture, society, and history before the modern period. It begins with a discussion of early Korea and controversies over Korean origins; the bulk of the course will be devoted to the Chos'n period (1392-1910), that from the end of medieval Korea to the modern period. Topics to be covered include: Korean national and ethnic origins, the role of religious and intellectual traditions such as Buddhism and Confucianism, popular and indigenous religious practices, the traditional Korean family and social order, state and society during the Chos'n dynasty, vernacular prose literature, Korean's relations with its neighbors in East Asia, and changing conceptions of Korean identity.nThe course will be conducted through the reading and discussion of primary texts in English translation alongside scholarly research. As such, it will emphasize the interpretation of historical sources, which include personal letters, memoirs, and diaries, traditional histories, diplomatic and political documents, along with religious texts and works of art. Scholarly work will help contextualize these materials, while the class discussions will introduce students to existing scholarly debates about the Korean past. Students will be asked also to examine the premodern past with an eye to contemporary reception. The final project for the class is a film study, where a modern Korean film portraying premodern Korea will be analyzed as a case study of how the past works in public historical memory in contemporary Korea, both North and South. An open-ended research paper is also possible, pending instructor approval.
Last offered: Winter 2018
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 10 units total)
HISTORY 298E:
Chinese Pop Culture: A History
This discussion course examines the evolution of popular culture in the Chinese-speaking world and diaspora from the late imperial era to the present. Analyzing myth, literature, medicine, music, art, film, fashion, and internet culture will help students understand the revolutionary social and political changes that have transformed modern East Asia.
Last offered: Summer 2021
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
HISTORY 301D:
History Goes Pop! Songwriting the Past (HISTORY 201D)
Historical research doesn't always take the form of a thesis, an article, or a book. Sometimes, research leads to film, museum exhibits, works of art, or... music. In this class, students will collaborate to write, record, and produce original pop music (perhaps even an entire album) based on original research in Stanford's wealth of archives and Special Collections. Background in music is NOT required.
Last offered: Spring 2020
| Units: 3
HISTORY 304A:
Reimagining History: A Workshop (HISTORY 204A)
This class explores, through analysis and practice, the ways in which history can be told and experienced through means other than traditional scholarly narratives. Approaches include literary fiction and non-fiction, digital media, graphic arts, maps, exhibitions, and film. A final project will require students to produce their own innovative work of history.
Last offered: Winter 2023
| Units: 4-5
HISTORY 307B:
The Irish and the World (HISTORY 207B)
"When anyone asks me about the Irish character, I say look at the trees. Maimed, stark and misshapen, but ferociously tenacious." The writer Edna O'Brien's portrait of Irish life encapsulates a history shaped by colonialism, famine, forced migration, and enduring political struggle. This course explores the global story of Ireland, a small land of 4.8 million that since 1800 has produced a diaspora of some 10 million people worldwide. Colonized and colonizers, freedom fighters and slave-owners, the starving and the wealthy, pious and irreverent-- the Irish reveal their past through memoirs, poetry, novels, music, film, and television.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 4-5
HISTORY 308:
Biography and History (AMSTUD 207B, HISTORY 207, JEWISHST 207)
Designed along the lines of the PBS series, "In the Actor's Workshop," students will meet weekly with some of the leading literary biographers writing today. Included this spring will be "New Yorker" staff writer Judith Thurman -- whose biography of Isak Dinesen was made into the film "Out of Africa" -- as well as Shirley Jackson biographer Ruth Franklin, now at work on a book about Anne Frank. Professor Zipperstein will share with the class drafts of the biography of Philip Roth that he is now writing. Critics questioning the value of biography as an historical and literary tool will also be invited to meetings with the class.
Last offered: Spring 2022
| Units: 4-5
HISTORY 326D:
The Holocaust: Insights from New Research (HISTORY 226D, JEWISHST 226E, JEWISHST 326D)
Overview of the history of the Holocaust, the genocide of European Jews. Explores its causes, course, consequences, and memory. Addresses the events themselves, as well as the roles of perpetrators and bystanders, dilemmas faced by victims, collaboration of local populations, and the issue of rescue. Considers how the Holocaust was and is remembered and commemorated by victims and participants alike. Uses different kinds of sources: scholarly work, memoirs, diaries, film, and primary documents.
Terms: Win
| Units: 4-5
HISTORY 327D:
All Quiet on the Eastern Front? East Europe and Russia in the First World War (HISTORY 227D, REES 227, REES 327)
Until recently history has been comparatively quiet about the experience of World War I in the east. Far from being a peripheral theater of war, however, the experiences of war on the Eastern Front were central to shaping the 20th century. Not only was the first shot of the war fired in the east, it was also the site of the most dramatic political revolution. Using scholarly texts, literature and film, this course combines political, military, cultural and social approaches to introduce the causes, conduct and consequences of World War I with a focus on the experiences of soldiers and civilians on the Eastern Front. Topics include: the war of movement, occupation, extreme violence against civilians, the Armenian genocide, population exchanges, the Russian Revolution and civil war, and the disintegration of empires and rise of nation-states.
Last offered: Winter 2018
| Units: 3-5
HISTORY 391K:
Korean History and Culture before 1900 (HISTORY 291K, KOREA 158, KOREA 258)
This course serves as an introduction to Korean culture, society, and history before the modern period. It begins with a discussion of early Korea and controversies over Korean origins; the bulk of the course will be devoted to the Chos'n period (1392-1910), that from the end of medieval Korea to the modern period. Topics to be covered include: Korean national and ethnic origins, the role of religious and intellectual traditions such as Buddhism and Confucianism, popular and indigenous religious practices, the traditional Korean family and social order, state and society during the Chos'n dynasty, vernacular prose literature, Korean's relations with its neighbors in East Asia, and changing conceptions of Korean identity.nThe course will be conducted through the reading and discussion of primary texts in English translation alongside scholarly research. As such, it will emphasize the interpretation of historical sources, which include personal letters, memoirs, and diaries, traditional histories, diplomatic and political documents, along with religious texts and works of art. Scholarly work will help contextualize these materials, while the class discussions will introduce students to existing scholarly debates about the Korean past. Students will be asked also to examine the premodern past with an eye to contemporary reception. The final project for the class is a film study, where a modern Korean film portraying premodern Korea will be analyzed as a case study of how the past works in public historical memory in contemporary Korea, both North and South. An open-ended research paper is also possible, pending instructor approval.
Last offered: Winter 2018
| Units: 3-5
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 10 units total)
HISTORY 398E:
Chinese Pop Culture: A History
This discussion course examines the evolution of popular culture in the Chinese-speaking world and diaspora from the late imperial era to the present. Analyzing myth, literature, medicine, music, art, film, fashion, and internet culture will help students understand the revolutionary social and political changes that have transformed modern East Asia.
Last offered: Summer 2021
| Units: 4-5
HUMBIO 171E:
Modern Ethical Challenges in Neuroscience and Organ Transplantation
Today we face unprecedented innovations in neuroscience and medicine. While these advances offer new hope, they also challenge medical, legal, and ethical paradigms. We will explore the ethical constructs surrounding topics including brain death, brain-computer interfaces and other adaptive technologies, and organ transplantation. The course material will include clinical and legal cases, scientific literature, film and popular culture, and experiential learning at Stanford Hospital. We will also focus on cultural comparisons between the US and Japan, where brain death is not widely accepted and deceased donor organ donation is rare. Course evaluation will be based on participation, written work, and team projects.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-ER
ILAC 104:
The Female Gaze: 20th-21st Century Iberian Literature and Visual Culture
What is gazing in Literature, Photography, and Film? Is there such a thing as a "female gaze"? In this course, we will explore the concept of "the gaze" in Modern and Contemporary Iberian Literature and Visual Culture from a gender perspective and a multimedia approach. We will examine narrative, photographic, and cinematic works produced in Spain and Portugal from the 1930s to today by major authors such as Mercè Rodoreda, Lídia Jorge, "Colita", Icíar Bollaín, or Carlos Saura, among others. We will pay attention to perspective and positionality to explore how women gaze and are gazed as new technologies and ways of seeing evolve. Students will learn to visually analyze cultural artifacts and to compare how different media and forms question notions of gender and (in)visibility. Students will improve their interpretative and communication skills in Spanish. Taught in Spanish. Non-majors may write in English.
Last offered: Autumn 2022
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
ILAC 106:
From Disney to Telenovelas: Latin America in Popular Film and TV (CHILATST 106)
Popular film and media have represented Latin America in various ways, including as a geographical region, a homogeneous culture, and a form of racialization. In this course, we will investigate these representations to understand how Latin America, its people, and its diaspora imagine themselves and how others have conceptualized the region. We will pay particular attention to the myths and stereotypes that cinema and television have sustained as well as Latin America's history of colonization to examine the prevalence of anti-blackness, anti-indigeneity, and other forms of erasure and social exclusion. Sources include Disney's Saludos Amigos and Encanto, Pixar's Coco, and the telenovela Yo soy Betty la fea, among others. Taught in English. Students are welcome to complete work in Spanish.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3
ILAC 107N:
History in Images: Scenes from the Franco Dictatorship in Spanish Cinema
A restrospective of films from the 1950s to the early 21st century dealing with the troubled representation of the Spanish Civil War and the postwar "iron years". The seminar will analyze the distortion of the past through both censorship and individual recollection under conditions of personal and collective trauma, while exploring the relation between history and film. We will also discuss the ways in which objective images can be used to explore subjectivity. Outstanding films by Luis Garc¿a Berlanga, Luis Bu¿uel, Carlos Saura, V¿ctor Erice, Pilar Mir¿, Julio Medem, Pedro Almod¿var, Guillermo del Toro, Agust¿ Villaronga and Alejandro Amen¿bar. Spanish comprehension is necessary for the required class films.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3
ILAC 116Q:
Not Quite White?: Whiteness in and Across the Americas
Is Brazilian model Gisele Bundchen a woman of color? Does the answer to that question change whether she is in Brazil or in the United States? Why was there a backlash in the Mexican entertainment industry to the stardom of visibly and proudly indigenous actors Yalitza Aparicio (the star of the film Roma) and Tenoch Huerta (Wakanda Forever)? Would a white-presenting person with one Black grandmother be eligible for university admissions through Brazil¿s socioeconomic and racial quotas? In this seminar style IntroSem, we will explore these questions through an investigation of whiteness and white supremacy in the Americas, with a focus on Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, the Southern Cone, and the US and the Latinx community. Through in-class discussions and collaborative curation projects, we will analyze historical documents, current events, films, and, yes, Twitter debates, to think critically about whiteness in Latin America, how it relates to discourses of racial democracy, and how its ambiguity perpetuates national and regional identities founded on anti-Indigenous and anti-Black racism. You will engage with a wide range of methodological approaches to studying whiteness, including ethnography and psychology, as well as theoretical traditions like Black feminism and decoloniality. Your multidisciplinary final projects will showcase the skills you develop in using historical and cultural analysis as an entry point to examine and compare the different ways in which whiteness works throughout the Americas. Taught in English.
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
ILAC 119:
The Memory of the Eye: Iberian Cinema from Buñuel to Almodóvar
An introduction to Spanish, Portuguese, Basque, and Catalan cinema through films from the 1920s and 30s to the present. How film uses a visual grammar of the image to tackle social questions and construct a collective memory. This course will consider the problems of individual recollection under conditions of collective trauma and distortion of the past, exploring the relation between film and history. The course will also focus on how images can be used to explore subjectivity and the passions. We will be watching outstanding films by Luis Buñuel, Carlos Saura, Víctor Erice, Bigas Luna, Pedro Almodóvar, Miguel Gomes, Julio Medem, Ventura Pons, Iciar Bollaín, and Isabel Coixet. Students will be responsible for watching all the films, engaging in lively discussion, in preparation for which, they will be asked to consider certain issues in writing before each class. Each student will present on one of the films for about fifteen minutes. There will be one short midterm essay and one final paper "on a different film."
Last offered: Spring 2020
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
ILAC 132E:
Introduction to Global Portuguese: Cultural Perspectives
Portuguese is the sixth most-spoken language in the world (roughly 250 million speakers now, with expected growth to 400 million by 2050) and the most-spoken language south of the Equator. It is the official language of nation-states on four continents, making it truly global in scope. Beyond Brazil, there are tens of millions of Portuguese speakers in Africa and Europe as well as smaller communities in Asia and North America. In this course, students will learn about the cultures and communities that make up the Portuguese-speaking world, even as they learn to critique the idea of linking these communities by means of a language that became global (like Spanish and English) through violent colonial expansion. Topics include art and music, film, poetry, short story, post-colonialism, indigeneity, crioulismo, empire, diaspora, semi-peripherality, modernism. Course taught in English with optional Portuguese section.
Last offered: Spring 2018
| Units: 3-5
ILAC 140:
Migration in 21st Century Latin American Film (CHILATST 140)
Focus on how images and narratives of migration are depicted in recent Latin American film. It compares migration as it takes place within Latin America to migration from Latin America to Europe and to the U.S. We will analyze these films, and their making, in the global context of an ever-growing tension between "inside" and "outside"; we consider how these films represent or explore precariousness and exclusion; visibility and invisibility; racial and gender dynamics; national and social boundaries; new subjectivities and cultural practices. Films include: Bolivia, Copacabana, La teta asustada, Norteado, Sin nombre, Migraci¿n, Ulises, among others. Films in Spanish, with English subtitles. Discussions and assignments in Spanish.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
ILAC 151:
Cuban Literature and Film: Imagination, Revolt, and Melancholia.
Since the late nineteenth century, the island of Cuba has been at the center of a number of key epochal disputes: between colonialism and independence, racism and racial justice, neocolonialism and revolution, liberalism and socialism, isolationism and globalization. In the arts, the turn of the century launched a period of great aesthetic invention. Considering the singular place of Cuba in Latin America, the Caribbean, and the globe, this course addresses some of the most representative works of Cuban literature and film since independence until the present time. Special attention will be given to Afrocubanismo, ethnographic literature, the avant-garde aesthetics of the group Orígenes, Marvelous Realism, testimony, revolution, socialist experimental film, diaspora, the Special Period, and post-Soviet life. Taught in Spanish.
Last offered: Spring 2022
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
ILAC 178:
Film and History of Latin American Revolutions and Counterrevolutions (FILMEDIA 178, HISTORY 78, HISTORY 178)
In this course we will watch and critique films made about Latin America's 20th century revolutions focusing on the Cuban, Chilean and Mexican revolutions. We will analyze the films as both social and political commentaries and as aesthetic and cultural works, alongside archivally-based histories of these revolutions.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
ILAC 182:
Mexican Cinema in the Era of Globalization
In this course we focus on the polemic quality of Mexican contemporary cinema, as we study this cinema in relation to the scholarship on globalization. We study how contemporary Mexican films and directors participate in coding, creating and reformulating images of Mexico and the world into the screen. Rather than concentrating on how contemporary films represent Mexican identity through a selection of films, we discuss rather how these films point to a situated `global' film making.
Last offered: Winter 2022
| Units: 3-5
ILAC 202:
Revolution and Dictatorship in Latin American Literature and Film
TBD
| Units: 3-5
ILAC 236:
Gender and Feminist Debates in Latin America
This interdisciplinary, 10 hour, 1-unit course, explores gender politics and representation in contemporary Latin American film, theory, and social movements. Seminar format, open to undergraduate and graduate students. Works may include: film: Señorita María (2017) by Rubén Mendoza (Colombia); studies by Marta Lamas (Mexico), Ana Amado (Argentina), and Sonia Corrêa (Brazil), among others. The course will be taught in Spanish at Bolivar House, 582 Alvarado Row. Schedule: The course dates are Monday, April 23 to Wednesday April, 25, 6:00-9:00pm. Instructor: Professor Moira Fradinger (Yale University), hosted by Professor Héctor Hoyos. NOTE: Professor Fradinger will also give a talk on "Antígonas: A Latin American Tradition," on Friday, April 27th, in the CLAS noon lecture series.
Last offered: Spring 2018
| Units: 1
ILAC 249:
Women and Wolves in Film and Literature (ILAC 355)
This course deconstructs the foundational narrative that corrals women into capitalist patriarchy, together with animals. Paying close attention to interspecies bonds between canidae and homo sapiens, we study novels and films where women, wolves and dogs resist the male gaze. Ever heard of Little Red Riding Hood? What if there could be a liberating alliance between her and the wolf? Taught in Spanish.
Last offered: Spring 2023
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
ILAC 256A:
Landscapes in Latin American Cinema
From Patagonia to the US/Mexico border, this course examines diverse cinematic visions of the Latin American continent through documentaries, fiction films, stories, and essays. We will consider different regions and time periods, including representations of dictatorship/violence, the drug trade, and cities to explore how land, nature, and humanity interact in film and to what effect. Areas of focus are the Southern Cone, Brazil, and the US/Mexico/Central America borderlands, and students will gain a solid critical understanding of how to read film.
Last offered: Spring 2018
| Units: 3-5
ILAC 263:
Visions of the Andes
Themes like "people," "revolt," "community," "utopia" and "landscape" are central to 20th century Andean narrative and its accompanying critical apparatus. The course reviews major works of Andean literature to reconsider the aesthetic and intellectual legacy of modernity and modernization in the region. We discuss changes in recent literature and film. Special attention is payed to post-conflict Peru and Evo Morales' Bolivia.
Last offered: Autumn 2018
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
ILAC 272:
New Brazilian Cinema
This course studies cinema from Brazil with a focus on films from the last decade. We will consider how to effectively talk and write about film, particularly according to Brazil's specific historical and cultural context and from a perspective of social realism. Numerous readings and discussions will bolster our viewings of fiction films and documentaries. Directors include Kleber Mendonça Filho, Anna Muylaert, Gabriel Mascaro, Karim Aïnouz, Aly Muritiba, and Petra Costa. Taught in English; films shown with English subtitles.
Last offered: Winter 2020
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
ILAC 355:
Women and Wolves in Film and Literature (ILAC 249)
This course deconstructs the foundational narrative that corrals women into capitalist patriarchy, together with animals. Paying close attention to interspecies bonds between canidae and homo sapiens, we study novels and films where women, wolves and dogs resist the male gaze. Ever heard of Little Red Riding Hood? What if there could be a liberating alliance between her and the wolf? Taught in Spanish.
Last offered: Spring 2023
| Units: 3-5
INDE 212:
Medical Humanities and the Arts
The interdisciplinary field of medical humanities: the use of the arts and humanities to examine medicine in personal, social, and cultural contexts. Topics include the doctor/patient relationship, the patient perspective, the meaning of doctoring, and the meaning of illness. Sources include visual and performing arts, film, and literary genres such as poetry, fiction, and scholarly writing. Designed for medical students in the Biomedical Ethics and Medical Humanities Scholarly Concentration, but all students are welcome.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 2
INTNLREL 25:
War, Revolution, and Peace: The View from Hoover Tower
The collections of the Hoover Institution Library & Archives document the wars, revolutions, political and social movements, and the struggles for peace around the globe in the 20th and 21st centuries. The course will introduce students to the origins and evolution of this unique institution, highlight its rare collections, and reveal how it collects, preserves, and makes available to researchers an enormous and ever-expanding array of primary-source material, including personal archives, photographs and film, posters, rare books and periodicals, artworks, and digital records. Students will gain insight into the operations of a special collections research center, including the role of conservation, the digitizing of collections, and how public exhibitions make the history that emerges from the collections available to a broader public. Speakers will include Hoover's curators and members of the Research Services, Digital Services, Preservation, Exhibitions, and Research and Education teams. Historian, Hoover Research Fellow, and IR Lecturer Bertrand Patenaude (Stanford MA '79, PhD '87), will introduce the course and coordinate the individual sessions.
Terms: Win
| Units: 1
INTNLREL 65Q:
Soft Power and Geopolitics: The Art of Influence
How do countries convince each other to cooperate? What are the nonviolent ways that nation states engage in political and social change? What is Soft Power and how have countries wielded it over time? Joseph Nye famously stated that "the best propaganda is not propaganda." This class defines the different aspects of Power, demonstrating the role of culture in shaping policy and public opinion. Analyzing cases from antiquity, to the Cold War, and through the modern era - this course delves into the myriad of ways countries engage in diplomacy, in everyday life. Class activities range from analyzing Soviet propaganda posters, to reading Japanese Manga, to tracing the impact of Ethiopian Orthodoxy. Students will gain an interdisciplinary understanding of critical geopolitics through the lenses of education, public health, social policy, and the arts. This class will also take field trips within the Bay Area, including a visit to the Silicon Valley African Film Festival.
| Units: 3
ITALIAN 104N:
Film and Fascism in Europe (COMPLIT 104N, FILMEDIA 105N, FRENCH 104N)
Controlling people's minds through propaganda is an integral part of fascist regimes' totalitarianism. In the interwar, cinema, a relatively recent mass media, was immediately seized upon by fascist regimes to produce aggrandizing national narratives, justify their expansionist and extermination policies, celebrate the myth of the "Leader," and indoctrinate the people. Yet film makers under these regimes (Rossellini, Renoir) or just after their fall, used the same media to explore and expose how they manufactured conformism, obedience, and mass murder and to interrogate fascism. We will watch films produced by or under European fascist regimes (Nazi Germany, Italy under Mussolini, Greece's Regime of the Colonels) but also against them. The seminar introduces key film analysis tools and concepts, while offering insights into the history of propaganda and cinema. Taught in English.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-4
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
ITALIAN 141:
The Pen and the Sword: A Gendered History (COMPLIT 140, FEMGEN 141B, HISTORY 261P)
As weapons, the pen and the sword have been used to wound, punish, and condemn as well as to protect, liberate, and elevate. Historically entangled with ideals of heroism, nobility, and civility, the pen and the sword have been the privileged instruments of men. Yet, throughout history, women have picked up the pen and the sword in defense, despair, and outrage as well as with passion, vision, and inspiration. This course is dedicated to them, and to study of works on love, sex, and power that articulate female experience. In our readings and seminars, we will encounter real and fictive women in their own words and in narrations and depictions by others from classical antiquity to the present, with a special focus on the Renaissance and on the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Touching on such topics as flattery and slander through the study of misogynistic, protofeminist, and feminist works in the early modern and modern periods in various European literary traditions, we will consider questions of truth and falsehood in fiction and in life. Course materials span a variety genres and media, from poetry, letters, dialogues, public lectures, treatises, short stories, and drama to painting, sculpture, music, and film works regarded for their aesthetic, intellectual, religious, social, and political value and impact.
Last offered: Winter 2023
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
ITALIAN 154:
Film & Philosophy (ENGLISH 154F, FRENCH 154, PHIL 193C)
What makes you the individual you are? Should you plan your life, or make it up as you go along? Is it always good to remember your past? Is it always good to know the truth? When does a machine become a person? What do we owe to other people? Is there always a right way to act? How can we live in a highly imperfect world? And what can film do that other media can't? We'll think about all of these great questions with the help of films that are philosophically stimulating, stylistically intriguing, and, for the most part, gripping to watch: Do The Right Thing (Lee), The Dark Knight (Nolan), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Kaufman), Arrival (Villeneuve), My Dinner with Andr¿ (Malle), Blade Runner (Scott), La Jet¿e (Marker), Fight Club (Fincher), No Country for Old Men (Coen), The Seventh Seal (Bergman), and Memento (Nolan). Attendance at weekly screenings is mandatory; and fun. We will not be using the waitlist on Axess - if you would like to enroll and the course is full/closed please email us to get on the waitlist!
Last offered: Autumn 2022
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
ITALIAN 154E:
Film & Philosophy CE (FRENCH 154E, PHIL 193E, PHIL 293E)
Issues of authenticity, morality, personal identity, and the value of truth explored through film; philosophical investigation of the filmic medium itself. Screenings to include Blade Runner (Scott), Do The Right Thing (Lee), The Seventh Seal (Bergman), Fight Club (Fincher), La Jetée (Marker), Memento (Nolan), and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Kaufman). Taught in English. Satisfies the WAY CE.
Last offered: Winter 2019
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
ITALIAN 155:
The Mafia in Society, Film, and Fiction
The mafia has become a global problem through its infiltration of international business, and its model of organized crime has spread all over the world from its origins in Sicily. At the same time, film and fiction remain fascinated by a romantic, heroic vision of the mafia. Compares both Italian and American fantasies of the Mafia to its history and impact on Italian and global culture. Taught in English.
Last offered: Spring 2021
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
ITALIAN 190:
The Celluloid Gaze: Gender, Identity and Sexuality in Cinema
This course examines femininity and gender representation in cinema. The rich tradition of film theory, from the key semiotic approaches of the 1970s-1990s until the current and equally influential methodologies, will provide the framework for an informed analysis of the films. Topics: the question of the gaze, the power of looking, of being looked at, and of looking back; women as disruption in the patriarchal/cultural text; maternity both as a sign of normalcy as well as a locus for obsession and manic concerns; the woman¿s body as a place of illness and sexuality. Our main object of investigation will be Italian cinema but we will also analyze a few Hollywood films which have inspired much feminist debate; we will focus as well on recent cinematic re-conceptualizations of gender and sexuality. Students will become familiar with key theoretical concepts such as the gaze, desire, intersectionality, masochism and masquerade, as well as modes of feminist resistance to traditional gender hierarchies. Taught in English.
Last offered: Spring 2020
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
ITALIAN 213:
Trauma and Disenchantment in Post-War Italy
Italian Neorealism was a flourishing literary and film movement in post-war Italy. The first half ofthis course will deal with some of its major novels, including Italo Calvino's "The Path to the Nest of Spiders", Beppe Fenoglio's "A Private Matter", and Primo Levi's "Survival in Auschwitz". Through these novels we will seek to understand Italy's experience of World War II and the complexities of the altered social and psychological conditions of everyday life during this time. The second half of the course will focus on neorealist film as a response to the trauma of the war. We will explore how the cinematic medium both reflects on and reacts to tragedy. Movies such as "Bicycle Thief" [Vittorio de Sica], "Rome, Open City" [Roberto Rossellini], "La Dolce Vita" [Federico Fellini], and "La Terra Trema" [Luchino Visconti] will be considered.
Last offered: Winter 2023
| Units: 3-5
ITALLANG 21:
Second Year Italian, First Quarter
Continuation of 3 or Italian 2A . Second-Year Italian, First Quarter - Sequence integrating culture and language in the development of socioculturally appropriate discourse. Authentic materials include news and film clips, video and audio files, and short stories. Reading, writing, listening, and speaking competence based on cross cultural understanding. Prerequisite: Placement Test, ITALLANG 3.
Last offered: Winter 2019
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: Language
ITALLANG 22:
Second-Year Italian, Second Quarter
Continuation of ITALLANG 21. Sequence integrating culture and language in the development of socioculturally appropriate discourse. Authentic materials include news and film clips, video and audio files, and excerpts from short stories. Reading, writing, listening, and speaking competence based on cross-cultural understanding. Prerequisite: Placement Test, ITALLANG 21 or equivalent.
Last offered: Winter 2019
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: Language
ITALLANG 23:
Second-Year Italian, Third Quarter
Continuation of ITALLANG 22. Sequence integrating culture and language in the development of socioculturally appropriate discourse. Authentic materials include news and film clips, video and audio files, and short stories. Reading, writing, listening, and speaking competence based on cross cultural understanding. Prerequisite: Placement Test, ITALLANG 22 or equivalent. Satisfies the foreign language requirement for International Relations majors.
Last offered: Spring 2016
| Units: 3-4
| UG Reqs: Language
ITALLANG 102:
Advanced Oral Communication: Modern Cinema
For Florence returnees or those who have completed second-year Italian. Use of movies by Italian film directors such as Benigni, Moretti, Salvatores, Soldini, and Tornatore to improve communication skills and review language functions. Emphasis is on presentation, conversation, and debate. Prerequisite: placement test, 101.
| Units: 3
ITALLANG 126:
Italy and Italians Today
An introduction to Italian culture for residents of La Casa Italiana. Past topics have included: Italian Comedy; Contemporary Italy through Film; Italian Food Culture; Eight Great Italians; Regional Italy; European Italy. Enrollment restricted to residents of La Casa Italiana except with prior approval of the instructor. Taught in English. May be repeated for credit.
Last offered: Spring 2020
| Units: 1-2
| Repeatable
for credit
JAPAN 125:
Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka and Beyond: Place in Modern Japan (COMPLIT 125J, JAPAN 225)
From the culturally distinct urban centers of Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka to the sharp contrasts between the southernmost and northernmost parts of Japan, modern Japanese literature and film present rich characterizations of place that have shaped Japanese identities at the national, regional, and local levels. This course focuses attention on how these settings operate in key works of literature and film, with an eye toward developing students' understanding of diversity within modern Japan. FOR UNDERGRADS: This course must be taken for a minimum of 3 units and a letter grade to be eligible for Ways credit
Terms: Spr
| Units: 2-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
JAPAN 151B:
The Nature of Knowledge: Science and Literature in East Asia (CHINA 151B, CHINA 251B, JAPAN 251B, KOREA 151, KOREA 251)
"The Nature of Knowledge" explores the intersections of science and humanities East Asia. It covers a broad geographic area (China, Japan, and Korea) along a long temporal space (14th century - present) to investigate how historical notions about the natural world, the human body, and social order defied, informed, and constructed our current categories of science and humanities. The course will make use of medical, geographic, and cosmological treatises from premodern East Asia, portrayals and uses of science in modern literature, film, and media, as well as theoretical and historical essays on the relationships between literature, science, and society.As part of its exploration of science and the humanities in conjunction, the course addresses how understandings of nature are mediated through techniques of narrative, rhetoric, visualization, and demonstration. In the meantime, it also examines how the emergence of modern disciplinary "science" influenced the development of literary language, tropes, and techniques of subject development. This class will expose the ways that science has been mobilized for various ideological projects and to serve different interests, and will produce insights into contemporary debates about the sciences and humanities.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 10 units total)
JAPAN 225:
Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka and Beyond: Place in Modern Japan (COMPLIT 125J, JAPAN 125)
From the culturally distinct urban centers of Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka to the sharp contrasts between the southernmost and northernmost parts of Japan, modern Japanese literature and film present rich characterizations of place that have shaped Japanese identities at the national, regional, and local levels. This course focuses attention on how these settings operate in key works of literature and film, with an eye toward developing students' understanding of diversity within modern Japan. FOR UNDERGRADS: This course must be taken for a minimum of 3 units and a letter grade to be eligible for Ways credit
Terms: Spr
| Units: 2-5
JAPAN 251B:
The Nature of Knowledge: Science and Literature in East Asia (CHINA 151B, CHINA 251B, JAPAN 151B, KOREA 151, KOREA 251)
"The Nature of Knowledge" explores the intersections of science and humanities East Asia. It covers a broad geographic area (China, Japan, and Korea) along a long temporal space (14th century - present) to investigate how historical notions about the natural world, the human body, and social order defied, informed, and constructed our current categories of science and humanities. The course will make use of medical, geographic, and cosmological treatises from premodern East Asia, portrayals and uses of science in modern literature, film, and media, as well as theoretical and historical essays on the relationships between literature, science, and society.As part of its exploration of science and the humanities in conjunction, the course addresses how understandings of nature are mediated through techniques of narrative, rhetoric, visualization, and demonstration. In the meantime, it also examines how the emergence of modern disciplinary "science" influenced the development of literary language, tropes, and techniques of subject development. This class will expose the ways that science has been mobilized for various ideological projects and to serve different interests, and will produce insights into contemporary debates about the sciences and humanities.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3-5
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 10 units total)
JAPANLNG 113F:
Japanese Through Film, First Quarter
Contemporary Japanese culture through Japanese films, documentaries, TV dramas, and anime. Structured for students with a strong desire to advance their Japanese language skills and who have limited class preparation time. Students will engage in in-depth discussion and exploration of social and cultural issues, expand the repertoire of vocabulary, and practice on advanced language skills. Topics may vary depending on student interests. Prerequisite: JAPANLNG 23. See http://japanese.stanford.edu/
Last offered: Autumn 2020
| Units: 3
JAPANLNG 114F:
Japanese Through Film, Second Quarter
Contemporary Japanese culture through Japanese films, documentaries, TV dramas, and anime. Structured for students with a strong desire to advance their Japanese language skills and who have limited class preparation time. Students will engage in in-depth discussion and exploration of social and cultural issues, expand the repertoire of vocabulary, and practice on advanced language skills. Topics may vary depending on student interests. Prerequisite: JAPANLNG 23. See http://japanese.stanford.edu/
Last offered: Winter 2021
| Units: 3
JAPANLNG 115F:
Japanese Through Film,Third Quarter
Contemporary Japanese culture through Japanese films, documentaries, TV dramas, and anime. Structured for students with a strong desire to advance their Japanese language skills and who have limited class preparation time. Students will engage in in-depth discussion and exploration of social and cultural issues, expand the repertoire of vocabulary, and practice on advanced language skills. Topics may vary depending on student interests. Prerequisite: JAPANLNG 23.
Last offered: Spring 2021
| Units: 2-4
JEWISHST 85B:
Jews in the Contemporary World: Culture, Pop Culture, and Representation (HISTORY 85B, REES 85B)
(HISTORY 85B is 3 units; HISTORY 185B is 5 units.) From Barbra Streisand to Volodymyr Zelenskyy, from The Dybbuk to Broad City, and from Moscow to LA, this course applies a multicultural perspective on different experiences of Jewishness in the 20th and 21st centuries. The discussion is centered on the ways in which these experiences are represented in various types of media: in literature or on TikTok, in poetry or on Instagram, in film and on television. The themes of the course include (but are not limited to) the interplay of national, religious, ethnic, linguistic, and political identities, intersectionality, the definitions and boundaries of Jewish cultures, Queer and variously gendered experiences of Jewishness, as well as antisemitism and stereotyped representations of Jewishness. The course introduces students to the analysis of a diverse array of media as cultural texts and historical sources. Students are encouraged to apply their new skills to media of their choice.
Last offered: Spring 2023
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
JEWISHST 112:
Passing: Hidden Identities Onscreen (CSRE 113, FEMGEN 112)
Characters who are Jewish, Black, Latinx, women, and LGBTQ often conceal their identities - or "pass" - in Hollywood film. Our course will trace how Hollywood has depicted"passing" from the early 20th century to the present. Just a few of our films will include Gentleman's Agreement (1947), Imitation of Life (1959), School Ties (1992), White Chicks (2004), and Blackkklansman (2018). Through these films, we will explore the overlaps and differences between antisemitism, racism, misogyny, and queerphobia, both onscreen and in real life. In turn, we will also study the ideological role of passing films: how they thrill audiences by challenging social boundaries and hierarchies, only to reestablish familiar boundaries by the end. With this contradiction, passing films often help audiences to feel enlightened without actually challenging the oppressive status quo. Thus, we will not treat films as accurate depictions of real-world passing, but rather as cultural tools that help audiences to manage ideological contradictions about race, gender, sexuality, and class. Students will finish the course by creating their own short films about passing.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
JEWISHST 185B:
Jews in the Contemporary World: Culture, Pop Culture, and Representation (CSRE 185B, HISTORY 185B, REES 185B, SLAVIC 183)
(HISTORY 185B is 5 units; HISTORY 85B is 3 units.) From Barbra Streisand to Volodymyr Zelenskyy, from The Dybbuk to Broad City, and from Moscow to LA, this course applies a multicultural perspective on different experiences of Jewishness in the 20th and 21st centuries. The discussion is centered on the ways in which these experiences are represented in various types of media: in literature or on TikTok, in poetry or on Instagram, in film and on television. The themes of the course include (but are not limited to) the interplay of national, religious, ethnic, linguistic, and political identities, intersectionality, the definitions and boundaries of Jewish cultures, Queer and variously gendered experiences of Jewishness, as well as antisemitism and stereotyped representations of Jewishness. The course introduces students to the analysis of a diverse array of media as cultural texts and historical sources. Students are encouraged to apply their new skills to media of their choice.
Last offered: Spring 2023
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-GlobalCom, WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
JEWISHST 207:
Biography and History (AMSTUD 207B, HISTORY 207, HISTORY 308)
Designed along the lines of the PBS series, "In the Actor's Workshop," students will meet weekly with some of the leading literary biographers writing today. Included this spring will be "New Yorker" staff writer Judith Thurman -- whose biography of Isak Dinesen was made into the film "Out of Africa" -- as well as Shirley Jackson biographer Ruth Franklin, now at work on a book about Anne Frank. Professor Zipperstein will share with the class drafts of the biography of Philip Roth that he is now writing. Critics questioning the value of biography as an historical and literary tool will also be invited to meetings with the class.
Last offered: Spring 2022
| Units: 4-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum
JEWISHST 226E:
The Holocaust: Insights from New Research (HISTORY 226D, HISTORY 326D, JEWISHST 326D)
Overview of the history of the Holocaust, the genocide of European Jews. Explores its causes, course, consequences, and memory. Addresses the events themselves, as well as the roles of perpetrators and bystanders, dilemmas faced by victims, collaboration of local populations, and the issue of rescue. Considers how the Holocaust was and is remembered and commemorated by victims and participants alike. Uses different kinds of sources: scholarly work, memoirs, diaries, film, and primary documents.
Terms: Win
| Units: 4-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-SI
JEWISHST 274:
Wonder: The Event of Art and Literature (ARTHIST 274, ARTHIST 474)
What falls below, or beyond, rational inquiry? How do we write about the awe we feel in front of certain works of art, in reading lines of poetry or philosophy, or watching a scene in a film without ruining the feeling that drove us to write in the first place? In this course, we will focus on a heterogeneous series of texts, artworks, and physical locations to discuss these questions. Potential topics include The Book of Exodus, the poetry of Friedrich Hölderlin and of Elizabeth Bishop, the location of Harriet Tubman's childhood, the poetry and drawings of Else Lasker-Schüler, the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, the art of James Turrell, and the films of Luchino Visconti.
Last offered: Winter 2023
| Units: 5
JEWISHST 326D:
The Holocaust: Insights from New Research (HISTORY 226D, HISTORY 326D, JEWISHST 226E)
Overview of the history of the Holocaust, the genocide of European Jews. Explores its causes, course, consequences, and memory. Addresses the events themselves, as well as the roles of perpetrators and bystanders, dilemmas faced by victims, collaboration of local populations, and the issue of rescue. Considers how the Holocaust was and is remembered and commemorated by victims and participants alike. Uses different kinds of sources: scholarly work, memoirs, diaries, film, and primary documents.
Terms: Win
| Units: 4-5
KOREA 111:
From Colonialism to K-pop: Race and Gender in South Korean Culture (COMPLIT 111K, CSRE 111A, FEMGEN 111A, KOREA 222)
Some may associate South Korea with the following: BTS, North Korean nukes, Samsung, Hyundai, Squid Games. Some may repeat what South Korea has said about itself: that it is racially homogenous, an ethnic community that can trace their ancestry back 5000 years. Some may wonder how a country that is often perceived as Christian and conservative developed pop culture like K-pop, or queer subcultures, or feminist activism. This class will use South Korea as a case study to think historically and geographically about race and gender through the following topics: when did racial discourses begin to emerge in Korea? What have been South Korea's significant encounters with the figure of the Other in its modern history? How were women implicated in the changing landscape of colonial Korea, the Korean War, Korea's Vietnam War experience, and compressed modernization? How have the influx of migrant labor and North Korean refugees impacted ideas about race in South Korea? And finally, what does K-pop tell us about shifting South Korean views of race and gender? The primary materials that we will analyze will be drawn from Korean fiction, film, and media in translation.
Last offered: Winter 2023
| Units: 4-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
KOREA 121:
Doing the Right Thing: Ethical Dilemmas in Korean Film (KOREA 221)
Ethics and violence seem to be contradictory terms, yet much of Korean film and literature in the past five decades has demonstrated that they are an intricate and in many ways justifiable part of the fabric of contemporary existence. Film exposes time and again the complex ways in which the supposed vanguards of morality, religious institutions, family, schools, and the state are sites of condoned transgression, wherein spiritual and physical violation is inflicted relentlessly. This class will explore the ways in which questions about Truth and the origins of good and evil are mediated through film in the particular context of the political, social, and economic development of postwar South Korea. Tuesday classes will include a brief introduction followed by a film screening that will last on average for two hours; students that are unable to stay until 5 pm will be required to watch the rest of the film on their own.
| Units: 3-4
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-ER
KOREA 151:
The Nature of Knowledge: Science and Literature in East Asia (CHINA 151B, CHINA 251B, JAPAN 151B, JAPAN 251B, KOREA 251)
"The Nature of Knowledge" explores the intersections of science and humanities East Asia. It covers a broad geographic area (China, Japan, and Korea) along a long temporal space (14th century - present) to investigate how historical notions about the natural world, the human body, and social order defied, informed, and constructed our current categories of science and humanities. The course will make use of medical, geographic, and cosmological treatises from premodern East Asia, portrayals and uses of science in modern literature, film, and media, as well as theoretical and historical essays on the relationships between literature, science, and society.As part of its exploration of science and the humanities in conjunction, the course addresses how understandings of nature are mediated through techniques of narrative, rhetoric, visualization, and demonstration. In the meantime, it also examines how the emergence of modern disciplinary "science" influenced the development of literary language, tropes, and techniques of subject development. This class will expose the ways that science has been mobilized for various ideological projects and to serve different interests, and will produce insights into contemporary debates about the sciences and humanities.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 10 units total)
KOREA 158:
Korean History and Culture before 1900 (HISTORY 291K, HISTORY 391K, KOREA 258)
This course serves as an introduction to Korean culture, society, and history before the modern period. It begins with a discussion of early Korea and controversies over Korean origins; the bulk of the course will be devoted to the Chos'n period (1392-1910), that from the end of medieval Korea to the modern period. Topics to be covered include: Korean national and ethnic origins, the role of religious and intellectual traditions such as Buddhism and Confucianism, popular and indigenous religious practices, the traditional Korean family and social order, state and society during the Chos'n dynasty, vernacular prose literature, Korean's relations with its neighbors in East Asia, and changing conceptions of Korean identity.nThe course will be conducted through the reading and discussion of primary texts in English translation alongside scholarly research. As such, it will emphasize the interpretation of historical sources, which include personal letters, memoirs, and diaries, traditional histories, diplomatic and political documents, along with religious texts and works of art. Scholarly work will help contextualize these materials, while the class discussions will introduce students to existing scholarly debates about the Korean past. Students will be asked also to examine the premodern past with an eye to contemporary reception. The final project for the class is a film study, where a modern Korean film portraying premodern Korea will be analyzed as a case study of how the past works in public historical memory in contemporary Korea, both North and South. An open-ended research paper is also possible, pending instructor approval.
Last offered: Winter 2018
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 10 units total)
KOREA 221:
Doing the Right Thing: Ethical Dilemmas in Korean Film (KOREA 121)
Ethics and violence seem to be contradictory terms, yet much of Korean film and literature in the past five decades has demonstrated that they are an intricate and in many ways justifiable part of the fabric of contemporary existence. Film exposes time and again the complex ways in which the supposed vanguards of morality, religious institutions, family, schools, and the state are sites of condoned transgression, wherein spiritual and physical violation is inflicted relentlessly. This class will explore the ways in which questions about Truth and the origins of good and evil are mediated through film in the particular context of the political, social, and economic development of postwar South Korea. Tuesday classes will include a brief introduction followed by a film screening that will last on average for two hours; students that are unable to stay until 5 pm will be required to watch the rest of the film on their own.
| Units: 3-4
KOREA 222:
From Colonialism to K-pop: Race and Gender in South Korean Culture (COMPLIT 111K, CSRE 111A, FEMGEN 111A, KOREA 111)
Some may associate South Korea with the following: BTS, North Korean nukes, Samsung, Hyundai, Squid Games. Some may repeat what South Korea has said about itself: that it is racially homogenous, an ethnic community that can trace their ancestry back 5000 years. Some may wonder how a country that is often perceived as Christian and conservative developed pop culture like K-pop, or queer subcultures, or feminist activism. This class will use South Korea as a case study to think historically and geographically about race and gender through the following topics: when did racial discourses begin to emerge in Korea? What have been South Korea's significant encounters with the figure of the Other in its modern history? How were women implicated in the changing landscape of colonial Korea, the Korean War, Korea's Vietnam War experience, and compressed modernization? How have the influx of migrant labor and North Korean refugees impacted ideas about race in South Korea? And finally, what does K-pop tell us about shifting South Korean views of race and gender? The primary materials that we will analyze will be drawn from Korean fiction, film, and media in translation.
Last offered: Winter 2023
| Units: 4-5
KOREA 251:
The Nature of Knowledge: Science and Literature in East Asia (CHINA 151B, CHINA 251B, JAPAN 151B, JAPAN 251B, KOREA 151)
"The Nature of Knowledge" explores the intersections of science and humanities East Asia. It covers a broad geographic area (China, Japan, and Korea) along a long temporal space (14th century - present) to investigate how historical notions about the natural world, the human body, and social order defied, informed, and constructed our current categories of science and humanities. The course will make use of medical, geographic, and cosmological treatises from premodern East Asia, portrayals and uses of science in modern literature, film, and media, as well as theoretical and historical essays on the relationships between literature, science, and society.As part of its exploration of science and the humanities in conjunction, the course addresses how understandings of nature are mediated through techniques of narrative, rhetoric, visualization, and demonstration. In the meantime, it also examines how the emergence of modern disciplinary "science" influenced the development of literary language, tropes, and techniques of subject development. This class will expose the ways that science has been mobilized for various ideological projects and to serve different interests, and will produce insights into contemporary debates about the sciences and humanities.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3-5
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 10 units total)
KOREA 258:
Korean History and Culture before 1900 (HISTORY 291K, HISTORY 391K, KOREA 158)
This course serves as an introduction to Korean culture, society, and history before the modern period. It begins with a discussion of early Korea and controversies over Korean origins; the bulk of the course will be devoted to the Chos'n period (1392-1910), that from the end of medieval Korea to the modern period. Topics to be covered include: Korean national and ethnic origins, the role of religious and intellectual traditions such as Buddhism and Confucianism, popular and indigenous religious practices, the traditional Korean family and social order, state and society during the Chos'n dynasty, vernacular prose literature, Korean's relations with its neighbors in East Asia, and changing conceptions of Korean identity.nThe course will be conducted through the reading and discussion of primary texts in English translation alongside scholarly research. As such, it will emphasize the interpretation of historical sources, which include personal letters, memoirs, and diaries, traditional histories, diplomatic and political documents, along with religious texts and works of art. Scholarly work will help contextualize these materials, while the class discussions will introduce students to existing scholarly debates about the Korean past. Students will be asked also to examine the premodern past with an eye to contemporary reception. The final project for the class is a film study, where a modern Korean film portraying premodern Korea will be analyzed as a case study of how the past works in public historical memory in contemporary Korea, both North and South. An open-ended research paper is also possible, pending instructor approval.
Last offered: Winter 2018
| Units: 3-5
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 10 units total)
LAW 808S:
Policy Practicum: Reducing Copyright Barriers to Creativity: The Problem of Orphan Works
Orphan works--copyrighted works that have no readily identifiable owner--represent the single greatest legal hurdle to creativity today. A film maker wants to make a documentary about the portrayal of minority groups in 1950s motion pictures, but cannot track down the present copyright owners of the dozens of film clips that must be licensed to complete the project. A video game producer has found just the right sound recordings to sample in its latest release, but cannot locate their copyright owners to negotiate a license. The examples can be multiplied across all forms of creative commerce. The copyright doctrine of fair use will excuse some, but far from all, of these uses, and the doctrine's application is at best unpredictable. Legislative fixes for the orphan works problem have been attempted both in the US and abroad, but with little success. Following two years of hearings, Congress in 2008 came close to passing an orphan works bill proposed by the US Copyright Office, but ultimately stepped away from the effort. This policy lab will evaluate the prospects for an alternative--but so far untested--solution to the problem of orphan works: private insurance products that will underwrite the legal and economic risk of using copyrighted works in situations where transaction costs make the negotiation of a license impracticable. Participants in the lab will interview stakeholders to investigate the feasibility of private insurance covering the use of orphan works. Among the stakeholders interviewed will be insurers and other insurance industry institutions; content owners across a range of industries and content users across a range of institutions. Experts from the US Copyright Office will also participate in a teaching capacity, on a periodic basis, to provide context for the challenge of orphan works and the work the Office has done on this issue. Elements used in grading: Attendance, Class Participation, Written Assignments, Final Paper. CONSENT APPLICATION: To apply for this course, students must complete and submit a Consent Application Form available at https://registrar.law.stanford.edu/. Interested students should apply by September 16, 2022 at 5:00 PM.
Last offered: Autumn 2022
| Units: 3
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 6 units total)
LAW 2018:
Wrongful Convictions: Causes, Preventions and Remedies
Over the course of the past two decades there has been increasing recognition that, despite its commitment to the concept of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, our criminal justice system yields a steady stream of wrongful convictions. This Seminar will focus on some causes, preventions and potential remedies for this phenomenon. Subjects to be addressed include eyewitness identification, interrogations and confessions, jailhouse informant testimony, forensic evidence, the psychology of tunnel vision and confirmation bias, the role of appellate review and habeas corpus, the role of clemency, the impact of the problem on the death penalty, and issues around compensation of those who have been wrongly convicted. As we study these subjects, we will also reflect on whether taking some reforms too far will impair on the efficacy of legitimate law enforcement. The class will meet for two hours each week. In addition, there will be three additional evening or weekend sessions (to be scheduled at the convenience of the participants). During each of these additional sessions, students will watch a film involving a wrongful conviction and will engage in conversation about the particular case involved. Each student will be responsible for preparing a paper on an appropriate topic to be chosen in consultation with the instructor. Consent Instructions: After the term begins, students accepted into the course can transfer from section (01) into section (02), which meets the R requirement, with consent of the instructor. Elements used in grading: Class participation; Paper.
Last offered: Winter 2020
| Units: 3
LAW 3511:
Writing Workshop: Law and Creativity
Practicing law is very much a creative enterprise. Effective advocates and counselors provide innovative and thoughtful solutions to complex problems. But there often isn't enough attention devoted in law school either to thinking creatively or to reflecting in a creative way on the issues students confront inside and outside the classroom. This course will respond to this gap by building a bridge between law and the arts, with the goal of helping students hone their ability to think creatively and use disciplined imagination. Law & Creativity will meet twice a week and have dual components designed to inform one another. The first session will be structured as a seminar in which students gather to examine and discuss creative treatments of legal and professional issues in a variety of media (including film, fiction, and nonfiction). The second session will follow the creative-writing workshop model in which students submit their own fiction and creative nonfiction pieces for group discussion. Through the workshop process, students will develop the skills necessary to constructively critique and workshop one another's work, and learn a variety of techniques for improving their own creative writing. Elements used in grading: Class attendance, participation and final paper.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3
LAW 4018:
Intellectual Property: International and Comparative Copyright Law
Copyright today is global, and copyright counselling, litigation and licensing increasingly require a general understanding of foreign copyright law and of the international copyright system. This course will focus on the exploitation of US-based music, film, literature, software and other copyrighted works in foreign markets, and of foreign works in US markets, through licensing, litigation, or both. The course will survey the principal legal systems and international treaty arrangements for the protection of copyrighted works as well as the procedural questions that lie at the threshold of protection. There are no prerequisites for the class. Elements used in grading: two problem sets, one mid-course and the other at the end of the course, class participation.
Terms: Win
| Units: 2
LIFE 125:
The Stillness of the Dunes
An advanced writing course in nonfiction craft, drawing, and contemplative practice. a significant portion of each class meeting will focus on the development and sharpening of writing craft, especially of the essay, in a hybrid form both scholarly and personal. We will also explore writing as meditative practice, through examples and through short exercises. We will deepen our cultural understanding of the desert and its impact, through art, literature, philosophy, film, and contemplative practice, and the course will build toward a four-day camping trip to the dunes of Death Valley, six weeks into the quarter.
Last offered: Winter 2020
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
MATSCI 152:
Electronic Materials Engineering
Materials science and engineering for electronic device applications. Kinetic molecular theory and thermally activated processes; band structure; electrical conductivity of metals and semiconductors; intrinsic and extrinsic semiconductors; elementary p-n junction theory; operating principles of light emitting diodes, solar cells, thermoelectric coolers, and transistors. Semiconductor processing including crystal growth, ion implantation, thin film deposition, etching, lithography, and nanomaterials synthesis.
Terms: Win
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-EngrAppSci, WAY-SMA
MATSCI 312:
New Methods in Thin Film Synthesis
Materials base for engineering new classes of coatings and devices. Techniques to grow thin films at atomic scale and to fabricate multilayers/superlattices at nanoscale. Vacuum growth techniques including evaporation, molecular beam epitaxy (MBE), sputtering, ion beam assisted deposition, laser ablation, chemical vapor deposition (CVD), and electroplating. Future direction of material synthesis such as nanocluster deposition and nanoparticles self-assembly. Relationships between deposition parameters and film properties. Applications of thin film synthesis in microelectronics, nanotechnology, and biology. SCPD offering.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3
MATSCI 358:
Fracture and Fatigue of Materials and Thin Film Structures (ME 258)
Linear-elastic and elastic-plastic fracture mechanics from a materials science perspective, emphasizing microstructure and the micromechanisms of fracture. Plane strain fracture toughness and resistance curve behavior. Mechanisms of failure associated with cohesion and adhesion in bulk materials, composites, and thin film structures. Fracture mechanics approaches to toughening and subcritical crack-growth processes, with examples and applications involving cyclic fatigue and environmentally assisted subcritical crack growth. Prerequisite: 151/251, 198/208, or equivalent. SCPD offering.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3
ME 236:
Tales to Design Cars By
Students learn to tell personal narratives and prototype connections between popular and historic media using the automobile. Explores the meaning and impact of personal and preserved car histories. Storytelling techniques serve to make sense of car experiences through engineering design principles and social learning, Replay memories, examine engagement and understand user interviews, to design for the mobility experience of the future. This course celebrates car fascination, and leads the student through finding and telling a car story through the REVS photographic archives, ethnographic research, interviews, and diverse individual and collaborative narrative methods-verbal, non-verbal, and film. Methods draw from socio-cognitive psychology design thinking, and fine art; applied to car storytelling. Course culminates in a final story presentation and showcase. Restricted to co-term and graduate students. Class Size limited to 16.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 1-3
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 6 units total)
ME 258:
Fracture and Fatigue of Materials and Thin Film Structures (MATSCI 358)
Linear-elastic and elastic-plastic fracture mechanics from a materials science perspective, emphasizing microstructure and the micromechanisms of fracture. Plane strain fracture toughness and resistance curve behavior. Mechanisms of failure associated with cohesion and adhesion in bulk materials, composites, and thin film structures. Fracture mechanics approaches to toughening and subcritical crack-growth processes, with examples and applications involving cyclic fatigue and environmentally assisted subcritical crack growth. Prerequisite: 151/251, 198/208, or equivalent. SCPD offering.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3
MLA 201P:
MLA Practicum: Film Form, Politics, and Analysis
This is a crash course in film analysis, intended to introduce students both to the key elements of film language (mise-en-scene, editing, cinematography, etc.) and to the socio-cultural and political functions of cinema. Emphasis will be placed on methods of close reading of film style and form, and dynamic intersections of aesthetic and ideological concerns in the register of the moving image. Narrative, documentary, and experimental films from around the world will be screened and discussed in class.
Terms: Win
| Units: 1
Last offered: Summer 2020
| Units: 4
MLA 378:
The Sublime and the Ugly
This course is designed to put literary, psychoanalytic, sociological, architectural, post-structural, and queer theory as well as philosophical and art historical writings in conversation with poetry, narrative fiction, creative nonfiction, and film, in order to develop a critical skill set designed not only to address such questions but, more critically for an active mind, to posit new ones.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4
MTL 334B:
Concepts of Modernity II: Aesthetics and Phenomenology
This course explores central topics in aesthetics where aesthetics is understood both in the narrow sense of the philosophy of art and aesthetic judgment, and in a broader sense as it relates to questions of perception, sensation, and various modes of embodied experience. We will engage with both classical and contemporary works in aesthetic theory, while special emphasis will be placed on phenomenological approaches to art and aesthetic experience across a range of media and/or mediums (including painting, sculpture, film, and digital media). Note: This course satisfies the Concepts of Modernity II requirement in the interdisciplinary graduate program in Modern Thought and Literature.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
MUSIC 18AX:
Audiovisual Performance
The unification of music and visual arts has been attempted throughout history, opera being one example. In the 20th Century, sounds and moving images have been syncretized in various art forms, such as film or video art, as well as in popular culture (television, music video, the Internet, etc.). Today, with fast technological developments and the convenience of hardware/software tools, media artists employ both sonic and visual elements in their performance practice. What are the interrelations between music, video, and themselves as performers. Students will perform with music and video in synergy. The course explores various theories and practices of engaging audiovisual media in the context of stage performance. Examples come from the scenes of experimental music and multimedia performance. Other audiovisual categories to be approached: avant-garde film, visual music, video art, music video, etc. Readings, listening-viewings, discussions, and analyses of relevant works will provide a conceptual framework. Labs and assignments will give students hands-on experience in crafting and performing their own audiovisual works. The course culminates with a public show.
Terms: Sum
| Units: 2
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
MUSIC 34N:
Performing America: The Broadway Musical
Musical theater and the representation of American identities in the twentieth century to the present. Issues of class, race, gender, and sexuality; intersections with jazz, rock, and pop; roles of lyricist, composer, director, choreographer, producer, performers. Individual shows (Showboat, Oklahoma, West Side Story, Company, Les Mis¿rables, Into the Woods, Wicked, Hamilton, Dear Evan Hansen, Heathers); musical theater "song types" across eras; show tunes in popular culture at large; musicals on film, television, and social media. Opportunities for performance and attending local productions.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
MUSIC 107:
Close Analysis: Film Sound (FILMEDIA 307)
The close analysis of film, with an emphasis on sound, music, and audio-visuality. Films from various historical periods, national cinemas, directors, and genres. Prerequisite: FILMSTUD 4 or equivalent. Recommended: ARTHIST 1 or FILMSTUD 102. Course can be repeated twice for a max of 8 units. This course fulfills the WIM requirement for Film and Media Studies majors.
| Units: 3-4
| Repeatable
1 times
(up to 4 units total)
MUSIC 112:
Film Scoring
Through analysis and technical exercises that involve click tracks, spotting, scoring under dialogue and picture, and the creative use of overlap cues, among others, students will learn how to develop and synchronize an engaging music score that supports visual events. Prerequisite: The students will be expected to: Know how to read and write music; Know how to create scores using a music editor such as Finale, Sibelius, among others; Be familiar with MIDI sequencing; and, Be familiar with DAW such as Logic Pro X, Pro Tools, among others.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
MUSIC 127B:
Advanced Orchestration
Through analysis and writing exercises, students develop proficiency in advanced orchestration practices. The course covers techniques currently used in film scoring as well as form basis for new experimental orchestral composition.
Last offered: Spring 2023
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
MUSIC 153C:
Fly Folk in the Buttermilk: A Black Music and Culture Writing Workshop (CSRE 163)
This course in honor of the late, great music journalist and thinker, Greg Tate, is designed to introduce popular music writing as a genre to students from all academic backgrounds. From cultural criticism, liner notes, music journalism, and DJ scholarship and more - this course explores the art of music writing with lectures, discussion and ongoing feedback on student writing from Special Guest Artists DJ Lynnée Denise and Daniel Gray-Kontar. Students will also have the opportunity to read and analyze various types of music writing in public and scholarly venues, and if they choose, to build a portfolio of their own working across several possible genres. Nationally and internationally renowned guests will visit with the class regularly to share their journeys as writers and offer their views on craft, aesthetics, and principles for writers to consider as they work on their own craft. These guests will include: Cheo Hodari Coker, journalist at The Source Magazine turned television/film writer of Creed II; Joan Morgan, long-time music and culture writer who coined the phrase Hip-Hop Feminism; Fredara Hadley, ethnomusicology professor at The Juilliard School; Scott Poulsen Bryant, co-founding editor of Vibe Magazine, and others. This spring course is presented by the Institute for Diversity in the Arts, IDA.
Last offered: Spring 2023
| Units: 1-4
MUSIC 422:
Perceptual Audio Coding
History and basic principles: development of psychoacoustics-based data-compression techniques; perceptual-audio-coder applications (radio, television, film, multimedia/internet audio, DVD, EMD). In-class demonstrations: state-of-the-art audio coder implementations (such as AC-3, MPEG) at varying data rates; programming simple coders. Topics: audio signals representation; quantization; time to frequency mapping; introduction to psychoacoustics; bit allocation and basic building blocks of an audio codec; perceptual audio codecs evaluation; overview of MPEG-1, 2, 4 audio coding and other coding standards (such asAC-3). Prerequisites: knowledge of digital audio principles, familiarity with C programming. Recommended: 320, EE 261. See http://ccrma.stanford.edu/.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3
NATIVEAM 14:
Indigenous Peoples in Film and Visual Media: Reframing Narratives of Race, Gender and Personhood
This class explores the multiple valences of Indigenous Peoples within the genre of visual media and film with articular attention to race and gender as reflective and reflexive categories. Using the lenses of, anthropology, postcolonial, Indigenous and Gender Studies this course will examine the ways in which the imagery of indigenous peoples has been woven into Western narratives, appropriated as projections of Western masculinity and in more recent years reclaimed by indigenous filmmakers and documentarians. The format of the class will involve a "flipped classroom" pedagogy, weekly screenings and closely supervised student presentations on topics related to the course. Weekly screenings of films, lectures and discussions will require mandatory attendance at every class meeting and within working groups. Students will develop skills to identify visual media referents, related to contemporary and digital contexts while gaining appreciation for indigenous identity history and sovereignty weekly reflection papers are required. No previous film studies experience is necessary.
Last offered: Spring 2020
| Units: 2
NATIVEAM 16:
Native Americans in the 21st Century: Encounters, Identity, and Sovereignty in Contemporary America (ANTHRO 16, ARCHLGY 16)
What does it mean to be a Native American in the 21st century? Beyond traditional portrayals of military conquests, cultural collapse, and assimilation, the relationships between Native Americans and American society. Focus is on three themes leading to in-class moot court trials: colonial encounters and colonizing discourses; frontiers and boundaries; and sovereignty of self and nation. Topics include gender in native communities, American Indian law, readings by native authors, and Indians in film and popular culture.
Last offered: Spring 2020
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-SocSci, GER:EC-AmerCul
ORALCOMM 129:
Sound Stories
This seminar is designed for students interested in creating audio stories for radio, podcast, and other forms of sonic narrative. Students will examine the craft elements of the audio form, popularized by programs such as This American Life, Radiolab, and Serial including skills for interviewing, scoring, and audio editing, and will then produce their own documentary, memoir, or investigative story. This is a hybrid class, equal parts classic seminar and creative workshop. Students will work in small groups, learning how to develop material, choose an effective structure, blend dramatization and reflection, ground insights in concrete scenes, create a strong narrative arc, and manage elements such as characterization, description, and dialogue in order to create engaging stories with social impact. Recommended for students interested not only in podcasting but also creative nonfiction, documentary, film, and sound art. No prior experience with story craft or media required. Cardinal Course certified by the Haas Center for Public Service. If interested please fill out this form: https://forms.gle/jEiidRfbLG97wU7Z8
Terms: Win
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE, Writing 2
OSPBER 17:
Split Images: A Century of Cinema
20th-century German culture through film. The silent era, Weimar, and the instrumentalization of film in the Third Reich. The postwar era: ideological and aesthetic codes of DEFA, new German cinema, and post-Wende filmmaking including: Run Lola Run and Goodbye Lenin. Aesthetic aspects of the films including image composition, camera and editing techniques, and relation between sound and image.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-GlobalCom, WAY-A-II
OSPBER 64:
Film and Writing
German culture through film. Sensitivity for film structure through creative writing tutorials and screening workshops. Composition and narrative structure (storyline, suspense, character development). Screen-writing exercises.
Last offered: Winter 2021
| Units: 3
OSPCPTWN 42:
White South-African Writers
I would be thrilled to work with students on an independent study that addressed the work of white South-African writers whose fiction (and in some cases their political activism) challenged the South African apartheid government. I would imagine a directed reading of white South-African novelists ¿Alan Paton, Nadinne Gordimer, and J.M. Coetzee¿whose work (and in some cases whose lives) constituted resistance to apartheid. The many possibilities include Alan Paton's Cry, The Beloved Country(a new film adaptation, starring Mark Rylance and Johnny Depp, is set to be released this year) and Ah, but Your Land is Beautiful; Nadinee Gordimer's The Conservationist, Occasion for Loving, The Burgher's Daughter, Get a Life, and The Pickup(2001); J.M. Coetzee Waiting for the Barbarians,Disgrace, The Life & Times of Michael K, and essays from White Writing. Interested students could undertake reading and discussing works by a single author, or a combination of the titles listed above by different writers.
Last offered: Winter 2022
| Units: 1-3
| Repeatable
10 times
(up to 30 units total)
OSPFLOR 11:
Film, Food and the Italian Identity
Food in Italian cinema staged as an allegory of Italy's social, political and cultural milieu. Intersections between food, history and culture as they are reflected in and shaped by Italian cinema from the early 1900s until today. Topics include: farmer's tradition during Fascism; lack of food during WWII and its aftermath; the Economic Miracle; food and the Americanization of Italy; La Dolce Vita; the Italian family; ethnicity, globalization and the re-discovery of regional culinary identity in contemporary Italy. Impact of cinema in both reflecting and defining the relationship between food and culture.
Last offered: Spring 2023
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-GlobalCom, WAY-A-II
OSPFLOR 21:
"Oh no - the Turks!": Italy and the Islamic Mediterranean
Passed down through popular lore, the phrase "mamma li turchi!" is still known to Italians today. This course explores the history, culture, and contemporary politics of Italy through the lens of the country's relations with Muslims and Islamic societies in the Mediterranean region. We begin in the first millennium of the common era, when Muslims ruled over large parts of Europe, including Iberia and Sicily. We then move into the Renaissance period to cover Italy's extensive relations with Islamic empires such as the Mamluks of Egypt and the Ottomans of the eastern Mediterranean and North Africa (often simply called, "the Turks"). Moving into the modern period, we will then examine how Italian national identity was moulded in contrast to an imagined Muslim counterpart, tracing how these ideas informed Italian colonialism in North Africa. The last part of the course focuses on contemporary issues: over the past several decades and still today, Italy has maintained particularly close relations with Muslim countries in the region. Nonetheless, immigration and the supposed menace of Islam have come to play a large role in Italian politics today. We will study these topics using a range of sources including first-hand accounts (in translation), art, and film. Key themes in the course include conquest, coexistence, conversion, migration & immigration, trade, colonialism, national identity formation, the Cold War, and global political movements.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
OSPFLOR 29:
The People Amid the Monuments
From both chronological and thematic approaches, examine the efforts of English-speaking writers (and, latterly, film-makers) to get to grips with Italy and the Italians. Beginning in the England of Queen Elizabeth and ending at the present day, cover a variety of themes such as Italy's historical role as a haven for the LGBT community and the modern interest in neglected southern Italy. Illustrative multimedia content with visits to sites of relevance in Florence.
Last offered: Spring 2021
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
OSPFLOR 30F:
Italy through the Eye of the Camera
This course is ambitious in its aim and scope. It has two main objectives. One, to analyze and discuss Italian cinema and its history; two, to develop your skills in cinematic formal analysis and in film theory. We will start with the cinema in the Fascist years (1922-1945), we will then focus on the revolutionary and heavily politicized practice by the Neorealists (Zavattini, Rossellini, De Sica), in the aftermath of WWII (1945-1949). We will turn to the great Italian auteurs such as Federico Fellini; Michelangelo Antonioni, and Bernardo Bertolucci. Further, we will analyze the so called "comedy Italian style," the "spaghetti westerns" as well as the politically committed films of the 1980s and 90s. Finally, we will explore the "new Italian cinema," with its many and sometimes contradictory forms. Studying and enjoying Italian cinema will help us to uncover the socio-political, economic and cultural developments in Italian life during the 20th and 21st century (the family, otherness, gender roles, politics, etc.).
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
OSPFLOR 49:
On-Screen Battles: Filmic Portrayals of Fascism and World War II
Structural and ideological attributes of narrative cinema, and theories of visual and cinematic representation. How film directors have translated history into stories, and war journals into visual images. Topics: the role of fascism in the development of Italian cinema and its phenomenology in film texts; cinema as a way of producing and reproducing constructions of history; film narratives as fictive metaphors of Italian cultural identity; film image, ideology, and politics of style.
Last offered: Winter 2021
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
OSPFLOR 55A:
Italy through the Eye of the Camera
This course is ambitious in its aim and scope. It has two main objectives. One, to analyze and discuss Italian cinema and its history; two, to develop your skills in cinematic formal analysis and in film theory. We will start with the cinema in the Fascist years (1922-1945), we will then focus on the revolutionary and heavily politicized practice by the Neorealists (Zavattini, Rossellini, De Sica), in the aftermath of WWII (1945-1949). We will turn to the great Italian auteurs such as Federico Fellini; Michelangelo Antonioni, and Bernardo Bertolucci. Further, we will analyze the so called ¿comedy Italian style,¿ the ¿spaghetti westerns¿ as well as the politically committed films of the 1980s and 90s. Finally, we will explore the ¿new Italian cinema,¿ with its many and sometimes contradictory forms. Studying and enjoying Italian cinema will help us to uncover the socio-political, economic and cultural developments in Italian life during the 20th and 21st century (the family, otherness, gender roles, politics, etc.).
| Units: 3
OSPFLOR 67:
Women in Film
This course examines femininity and gender representation in Italian cinema. Feminist film theory, from the 1970 until the current and equally influential methodologies, will provide the framework for an informed analysis of the films. Topics covered will include: the question of the gaze, the power of looking, of being looked at, and of looking back; women as disruption in the patriarchal/cultural text; maternity; the woman?s body as a place of illness and sexuality; the family and domesticity.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-Gender, WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
OSPGEN 64:
Decolonizing African Arts in Nairobi
This course will introduce students to an East African country ? Kenya ? whose artists and scholars have been at the forefront of decolonial theory. Heeding the call of the esteemed Kenyan author, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, whose literary manifesto Decolonizing the Mind calls on readers to reject colonial impositions and celebrate the vitality of African literature and theater, the course will teach students about decolonial literary, visual, and performance practices in Nairobi, Kenya. The course is highly interactive and structured around field trips to literary hubs, museums, performances and film screenings, as well as interactive workshops in creative writing, storytelling, filmmaking, and musical production.
Terms: Sum
| Units: 2
OSPHONGK 26:
East Asian Film Genres in a Globalizing World
Connections between different cinemas within East Asia and between East Asia and the rest of the world explored from a genre perspective. Hong Kong and Korean gangster movies, Chinese swordplay and Japanese samurai films, and horror films from Japan and Thailand as examples of the transnational circulation of genres, involving processes of both localization and globalization. Focus on three interrelated genres: the martial arts film, the Eastern Western and the film noir/crime film. Explore Hollywood-centered genre theory, trace complex webs of creative influences, and appreciate the sameness and difference that characterizes both genre films and our globalizing world. Make a short "genre film" for screening at the end of the term
Last offered: Autumn 2020
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
OSPHONGK 47:
China on Screen
Many 20th-century Chinese films were concerned with issues of nationhood, identity, trauma, and a national past. In recent years, however, while some directors have continued to focus on the nation's past, others have chosen to look at the present and the effects of globalization on Chinese society and culture. This course asks that students begin to understand Chinese cinema(s) as transnational, a triangular composite of Mainland, Taiwan, and Hong Kong cinema that has also been influenced by Hollywood, Japanese and Korean cinema, amongst others. Students will be introduced to Chinese film history and criticism via an examination of a number of films directed by some of Greater China's most skilled directors. CUHK Course code: CHES3101, Enrollment limited.
Last offered: Autumn 2021
| Units: 4
OSPHONGK 78:
A Screen of One's Own: Women and Films
This course examines the rich tradition of feminist film theory and provides students with an understanding of its main concerns and debates. Topics will include the key semiotic and psychoanalytic approaches of the 1970s-1990s, classic films which have inspired feminist debate, avant-garde cinema, local cinema, independent cinema, and postmodern cinema, as well as recent cinematic re-conceptualizations and exploration of gender and sexuality local and abroad. In systems of representation from fine art to mainstream cinema to advertising, women have been constructed and existed as spectacle or passive object "to-be-looked-at", ? in Laura Mulvey's now often quoted words. Following her trail, feminist critics turned their attention to mainstream films and popular media addressed to female spectators and exposed the contradictions within and between the notion of "women's pictures" and the diversity of female experience. Local cinemas and independent creators also tell their own unique stories of women's lives in dramatically different cultural contexts. Critics from other fields further complicate these images by examining them through lens including race, class, ability, queerness, and more. Mulvey's groundbreaking analysis of gendered looking relations in classical Hollywood cinema has since generated numerous analyses of the place of women as spectacle or passive object in films "cut to the measure of [male] desire." Critics around the world showed how different groups of women attempt to take control of their positioning through viewing or using texts in their own ways, and by creating their own. What happens when female-identified artists, audiences, and theorists look back, and seek to rebel against such cinematic traditions by experimenting with alternative visual languages and narrative tools? This course starts with the paradigm of narrative film analysis that Mulvey outlined in the 1970s and move on to explore a wider range of questions in feminist film studies, including spectatorship, authorship, popular culture, character stereotypes in genre films, self-representation, (g)local cinema, and new feminist media. Students would be introduced to trailblazing works by female filmmakers worldwide, special focus will be placed onto important works in Hong Kong cinema for critical examination and comparative studies. Through critical reflections on notions such as gender stereotypes, representation, power, diversity, and equality, the course engages directly with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015 by engaging directly with the SDGs 5 (Gender Equality) and 10 (Reduced Inequalities). Also enroll in CUHK course#GDRS3026. Enrollment limited.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 4
OSPISTAN 79:
Introduction to Turkish-German Film and Literature
In this course we will study the emergence and development of Turkish culture in Germany. How do Turkish-German authors and filmmakers address the discourses on migration, Heimat, integration, intercultural dialogue and multiculturalism? What do they have to say about German history? What is the relevance of their works for the discourses on refugees today? Throughout the course we will explore the intricate relations of aesthetics, political representation and memory across a variety of genres and media. Readings are in Turkish and English.KU course # LITR 353
Last offered: Autumn 2022
| Units: 4
OSPKYOTO 41:
Queer Culture and Life in Japan
Exploration of queer lives and cultural practices in Japan through diverse materials from film, literature, theater, art, as well as newspapers and personal testimonies. What it means to be queer in Japan and how it might signify differently from a US context. Looking at each text, examine how gender norms and sexual politics intersect and operate in Japanese society.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
OSPKYOTO 43:
Music and Marginalized Communities in Japan
This course provides a platform for students to explore the relevance of music activities for marginalized communities in Japan who struggle for self-expression and human rights. Particular attention will be paid to the Okinawan, Buraku and Zainichi Korean communities. Class lectures are combined with film screenings, and active participation in class discussion will be vital. Field visits to the communities will also be an important component of the class: students attend musical performances, interact directly with members of the respective community, and learn how they use musical expression as a tangible force in their social and political movements.
Last offered: Spring 2023
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP
OSPMADRD 84:
Madrid Through My Eyes: A Theoreticl/Practical Documentary Film Workshop
Theoretical and practical view of Spanish language documentary cinema; potential of this type of film making as a form of personal expression. Tools for understanding and analyzing this type of cinema. Creative and analytical reflection on student 's Madrid experience; develop individual visual discourse to portray life in the city by filming a short documentary.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
OSPOXFRD 10:
Conditions of England
This course will examine how writers and artists have imagined and represented British society in fiction and film from 1848 to the present. The "condition of England" novels of the mid-nineteenth-century famously advanced the idea that a work of literature could aim to capture the nature of society as a whole, and, in particular, to convey the relationship between different social classes within England. Is it possible for a single novel, or film, or painting to represent society as a whole, or to show a nation to itself? What are the opportunities, and the pitfalls, of this kind of artistic project? We'll look at how this kind of project develops across two hundred years of British culture, from Victorian realism to contemporary multicultural fiction and film. Possible authors include Elizabeth Gaskell, Charles Dickens, George Orwell, Virginia Woolf, Mike Leigh, Stephen Frears, Zadie Smith.
Last offered: Spring 2023
| Units: 4-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
OSPOXFRD 52:
Shakespeare and Performance
This class is designed to enhance students' understanding of Shakespeare's place in the UK performance (and political landscape) through analysis of landmark productions on British stages and screens. We will apply range of scholarly approaches to these works and their lives on film and in the theatre, including close reading, performance studies, critical race studies, queer studies, and gender studies. Students will be introduced to these methodological frameworks early in the course, and are free to apply any of them in their assignments. Throughout our exploration of these canonical works, we will consider how today's theatre and film makers, as well as their audiences, engage with these plays to make new meanings and interventions in contemporary culture. Central to our discussion will be an interrogation of the place of Shakespeare in contemporary British culture, chiefly through analysis of performances of his plays and those of his contemporaries in major national institutions: Shakespeare's Globe, the National Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company, the BBC, and the mainstream film industry. At the same time, however, we will be equally concerned with how marginalised groups, including minority ethnic and queer artists, have turned to Shakespeare's plays in order to reposition his works, and themselves, on the global and political stage. These in-class discussions, supported by study-group preparation, will prepare students for the written assignments, which are designed to allow students to interpret these plays and their theatrical/filmic afterlives, with a particular focus on the social and political implications of staging and screening these plays in today's diverse British society. Each week, students will be expected to have read the set text (a play by either Shakespeare or his contemporaries) and, in one of three 'study groups,' to have engaged with a critical or interpretative response to that text based on assigned reading or viewing (usually a scholarly reading, or a film or theatrical adaptation).
Terms: Sum
| Units: 4-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
OSPPARIS 2:
Paris through the lens of your Smartphone
The aim of this course is to allow students to conceive, produce, direct and edit a short film that explores their experience in Paris using the basic smartphone technology. They will be introduced to the fundamentals of visual storytelling and basic technics of filmmaking and be encouraged to apply those techniques through a variety of practical exercises and training seminars. At the end of the trimester, the students will have acquired basic notions of visual storytelling and directed a short movie allowing them to express their own idiosyncratic vision of the world and their personal experience in a foreign city. Primary language: French
Terms: Aut, Win
| Units: 2
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
OSPPARIS 52:
French Media and Film Workshop
The workshop will give students the opportunity to learn about France through the prism of its television and documentary production. This comparative approach to media and film will encourage students to analyze the ethical stakes surrounding creative and editorial decisions in France and the United States. Through visits to television sets and control rooms, interviews with producers and directors, and screenings of documentaries and films, students will learn to decipher French culture through the specific storytelling techniques used in news reports, series, documentaries and films. Each class session will focus on a television program, news broadcast, documentary or fiction film. Industry professionals working in television and film will be invited to class to share their expertise and interact with students. With more than 373 movie theaters located throughout 20 arrondissements, Paris, is truly the world capital of Cinema. Approximately a hundred theaters are considered independent movie houses, some of which are classified as historical monuments. This unique situation will allow students to learn about the origins of cinema and the importance of film to French culture during class field trips. The professor will provide technical guidance about news reporting and film production in general and how to make a short documentary. As a final project each student will create a personal 2-3 minute short film using their smart phone about a theme relating to their time in Paris. Class time will be spent on finding a story idea, creating an outline, and filming and editing their film. Language of Instruction: French, Prerequisites: none
Last offered: Autumn 2022
| Units: 3
OSPPARIS 95:
Women in Contemporary French Cinema
Women as objects and subjects of the voyeuristic gaze inherent to cinema. The evolution of female characters, roles, actresses, directors in the French film industry from the sexual liberation to #metoo. Women as archetypes, icones, images, or as agents and subjects. Emphasis on filmic analysis: framing, point of view, narrative, camera work as ways to convey meaning. Themes include: sexualization and desire; diversity and intersectionality in films; new theories of the female gaze; gender, ethnicity and class. Filmmakers include Roger Vadim, Agnès Varda, Luis Buñuel, Claude Chabrol, Colline Serreau, Elena Rossi, Tonie Marshall, Houda Benyamina, Eléonore Pourriat, Céline Sciamma, Mati Diop. VISIT BY FILM DIRECTORS Elena Rossi and Sciamma (pending). Films in French with subtitles; discussion in English.
Last offered: Autumn 2022
| Units: 3-4
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
OSPSANTG 67:
Patagonia in Literature and Film: Indigenous peoples and clash of cultures at the end of the world
The course will explore the cultures and histories of Patagonia through literature and film, including historical documents, travel literature, poetry, historical and contemporary short stories and novels, narrative and documentary films to help students become acquainted with the unique geography, heritage and contemporary life of the region. The familiarization with ¿and open discussions around¿ these materials will complement instruction in situ during an extensive visit to Patagonia.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
PEDS 232:
Bioethics, Film and Advocacy
This course will examine narrative films, documentaries, and shorts on bioethics. We will focus both on the content of the films, in terms of ethics and advocacy, as well the filmic and narrative techniques they employ. We will explore how these films promote engagement and advocacy for those individuals and groups most impacted by disease, illness and disability in the world. During class we will screen films and employ open discussion, critical analysis, as well as reflective writing. The students will also be asked to work in teams to create an original media product and present these at end of term.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 2
PEDS 246D:
Re(positioning) Disability: Historical, Cultural, and Social Lenses (AFRICAAM 244, CSRE 143, EDUC 144)
This course is designed to introduce undergraduate students of any major to important theoretical and practical concepts regarding special education, disability, and diversity. This course primarily addresses the social construction of disability and its intersection with race and class through the critical examination of history, law, social media, film, and other texts. Students will engage in reflection about their own as well as broader U.S. discourses moving towards deeper understanding of necessary societal and educational changes to address inequities. Successful completion of this course fulfills one requirement for the School of Education minor in Education.
Last offered: Autumn 2021
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP
PHIL 193C:
Film & Philosophy (ENGLISH 154F, FRENCH 154, ITALIAN 154)
What makes you the individual you are? Should you plan your life, or make it up as you go along? Is it always good to remember your past? Is it always good to know the truth? When does a machine become a person? What do we owe to other people? Is there always a right way to act? How can we live in a highly imperfect world? And what can film do that other media can't? We'll think about all of these great questions with the help of films that are philosophically stimulating, stylistically intriguing, and, for the most part, gripping to watch: Do The Right Thing (Lee), The Dark Knight (Nolan), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Kaufman), Arrival (Villeneuve), My Dinner with Andr¿ (Malle), Blade Runner (Scott), La Jet¿e (Marker), Fight Club (Fincher), No Country for Old Men (Coen), The Seventh Seal (Bergman), and Memento (Nolan). Attendance at weekly screenings is mandatory; and fun. We will not be using the waitlist on Axess - if you would like to enroll and the course is full/closed please email us to get on the waitlist!
Last offered: Autumn 2022
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
PHIL 193E:
Film & Philosophy CE (FRENCH 154E, ITALIAN 154E, PHIL 293E)
Issues of authenticity, morality, personal identity, and the value of truth explored through film; philosophical investigation of the filmic medium itself. Screenings to include Blade Runner (Scott), Do The Right Thing (Lee), The Seventh Seal (Bergman), Fight Club (Fincher), La Jetée (Marker), Memento (Nolan), and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Kaufman). Taught in English. Satisfies the WAY CE.
Last offered: Winter 2019
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
PHIL 194G:
Capstone Seminar: Visual Representation and Visual Narrative
Capstone seminar for senior Philosophy majors. This seminar examines the meaning of visual signs, through the lens of philosophy and cognitive science. In the first half, we'll focus on the meanings of pictures and maps, and their relationship to perception, geometry, knowledge, truth, and power. In the second half, we'll explore the ways that pictures are put together in comics and film to form visual narratives, with an emphasis on viewpoint, temporal order, character, and coherence.
Last offered: Spring 2023
| Units: 4
PHIL 293E:
Film & Philosophy CE (FRENCH 154E, ITALIAN 154E, PHIL 193E)
Issues of authenticity, morality, personal identity, and the value of truth explored through film; philosophical investigation of the filmic medium itself. Screenings to include Blade Runner (Scott), Do The Right Thing (Lee), The Seventh Seal (Bergman), Fight Club (Fincher), La Jetée (Marker), Memento (Nolan), and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Kaufman). Taught in English. Satisfies the WAY CE.
Last offered: Winter 2019
| Units: 3
PHIL 363A:
Seminar in History and Philosophy of Science: Democratic Science - of the Climate, Races, H2O
Is the Earth's climate real? Does it exist beyond experimental data, computer simulation, and scientists' writings? This seminar considers philosophical, historical, and anthropological perspectives on the reality of scientific entities. It asks how these metaphysical questions are connected to our democratic societies and our position as scholars. We will ask whether Homo sapiens is sub-divided into races and ethnicities in the manner of a census form. And how genetics should interact with our social understanding of human diversity. Further, can the answers to these questions stand alone as isolated academic questions, or must they be tied together with our political philosophy and social norms? If democratic pluralism leads to metaphysical pluralism, what becomes of long-discarded scientific entities, such as phlogiston? Some argue that pluralism upsets our most basic scientific facts, like: water is H2O. nnThis graduate seminar examines these scientific entities - the climate, races, phlogiston - from perspectives in Philosophy, Anthropology, and History of Science. The course topics illustrate recent trends toward metaphysics in the humanistic study of science. Students will develop their ability to compare positions and arguments between disciplines. Class time will emphasize inter-disciplinary discussion. The major writing assignment is an essay with multiple drafts. This is designed to prepare students for writing and revising dissertation chapters and peer-reviewed articles. Activities may include a film screening and visit to a scientific laboratory. Students from all programs are welcome. (Advanced undergraduates by permission.)
Last offered: Autumn 2017
| Units: 4
POLISCI 124A:
The American West (AMSTUD 124A, ARTHIST 152, ENGLISH 124, HISTORY 151)
The American West is characterized by frontier mythology, vast distances, marked aridity, and unique political and economic characteristics. This course integrates several disciplinary perspectives into a comprehensive examination of Western North America: its history, physical geography, climate, literature, art, film, institutions, politics, demography, economy, and continuing policy challenges. Students examine themes fundamental to understanding the region: time, space, water, peoples, and boom and bust cycles.
Terms: Win
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-AmerCul, WAY-A-II, WAY-SI
POLISCI 338E:
The Problem of Evil in Literature, Film, and Philosophy (FRENCH 265)
Conceptions of evil and its nature and source, distinctions between natural and moral evil, and what belongs to God versus to the human race have undergone transformations reflected in literature and film. Sources include Rousseau's response to the 1755 Lisbon earthquake; Hannah Arendt's interpretation of Auschwitz; Günther Anders' reading of Hiroshima; and current reflections on looming climatic and nuclear disasters. Readings from Rousseau, Kant, Dostoevsky, Arendt, Anders, Jonas, Camus, Ricoeur, Houellebeck, Girard. Films by Lang, Bergman, Losey, Hitchcock.
Last offered: Autumn 2021
| Units: 3-5
PWR 1D:
Writing Academic Arguments: The Art of the Essay
Offered only to high school students enrolled in Summer Sessions. How can you write college-level essays that hook readers and sustain their interest over the course of a well-researched argument? In this course you'll learn how to craft good research questions, conduct ethical scholarly research, engage counterarguments, and write and revise academic essays. You will write a rhetorical analysis of a work that interests you, such as an essay, film, song, painting, etc. and develop a persuasive, research-based essay exploring a topic you feel passionate about. Does not meet the Stanford first-year writing requirement.
Terms: Sum
| Units: 3
PWR 1EI:
Writing & Rhetoric 1: Watch Now: Rhetorics of Film and Television
PWR 1 courses focus on developing writing and revision strategies for rhetorical analysis and research-based arguments that draw on multiple sources. In this course we will explore how through the intentional use of stories, images, sound and language, our film and television industries shape and reflect back to us the impressions that we come to have of ourselves, our societies and our universe. For full course description and video see https://pwrcourses.stanford.edu/pwr1/pwr1ei. For PWR 1 catalog visit https://pwrcourses.stanford.edu/pwr-1. Enrollment is handled by the PWR office.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: Writing 1
PWR 1SM:
Writing & Rhetoric 1: The Elephant, the Tiger, and the Cellphone: Rhetoric of India and Indian Film
Rhetorical and contextual analysis of readings; research; and argument. Focus is on development of a substantive research-based argument using multiple sources. Individual conferences with instructor. Study of the rhetoric of the India of the new millennium, including issues of gender, caste, class, religion, sexuality, nationalism, diaspora, outsourcing, and globalization. Service Learning Course (certified by Haas Center). See http://www.stanford.edu/dept/undergrad/cgi-bin/drupal_ual/AP_univ_req_PWR_Courses.html.
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: Writing 1
PWR 2AG:
Writing & Rhetoric 2: The Rhetoric of Film Criticism
PWR 2 courses focus on developing strategies for presenting research-based arguments in both written and oral/multimedia genres. In this course we'll analyze specific films and touch on a range of important frameworks, including genre studies, feminist film theory, and documentary ethics. For course video and full description, see https://pwrcourses.stanford.edu/pwr2/pwr2ag For the PWR 2 catalog visit https://pwrcourses.stanford.edu/pwr-2. Enrollment is handled by the PWR office. Prerequisite: PWR 1.
Terms: Aut, Spr
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: Writing 2
PWR 2BRC:
Writing & Rhetoric 2: Re-Make It Anew: The Rhetoric of Adapting, Rebooting, and Remaking
PWR 2 courses focus on developing strategies for presenting research-based arguments in both written and oral/multimedia genres. For PWR 2 catalog see https://pwrcourses.stanford.edu/pwr-2. In this course we¿ll question what¿s at stake in cultural recyclings and ask what can adaptations and remakes tell us about cultural and political moments? We¿ll draw on work in adaptation, film, and music studies, and on theories of remixing, remediating, and translating. For video and full description visit https://pwrcourses.stanford.edu/pwr2/pwr2brc. Enrollment is handled by the PWR office. Prerequisite: PWR 1.
Terms: Win, Spr
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: Writing 2
PWR 2WG:
Writing & Rhetoric 2: All That Jazz: The Rhetoric of American Musical Theater
Prerequisite: PWR 1. Building on a series of written assignments and oral presentations that culminate in a major research project, we'll explore the conventions and strategies that define the genre of American musical theater, analyzing how contemporary musicals mirror, revise, and even subvert these traditional rules. Watching musicals on film, reading reviews by theater critics, and attending a local production, we'll examine a range of cultural arguments made by American musicals. For more information about PWR 2, see https://undergrad.stanford.edu/programs/pwr/courses/pwr-2. For full course descriptions, see https://vcapwr-catalog.stanford.edu. Enrollment is handled by the PWR office.
Last offered: Spring 2021
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: Writing 2
REES 85B:
Jews in the Contemporary World: Culture, Pop Culture, and Representation (HISTORY 85B, JEWISHST 85B)
(HISTORY 85B is 3 units; HISTORY 185B is 5 units.) From Barbra Streisand to Volodymyr Zelenskyy, from The Dybbuk to Broad City, and from Moscow to LA, this course applies a multicultural perspective on different experiences of Jewishness in the 20th and 21st centuries. The discussion is centered on the ways in which these experiences are represented in various types of media: in literature or on TikTok, in poetry or on Instagram, in film and on television. The themes of the course include (but are not limited to) the interplay of national, religious, ethnic, linguistic, and political identities, intersectionality, the definitions and boundaries of Jewish cultures, Queer and variously gendered experiences of Jewishness, as well as antisemitism and stereotyped representations of Jewishness. The course introduces students to the analysis of a diverse array of media as cultural texts and historical sources. Students are encouraged to apply their new skills to media of their choice.
Last offered: Spring 2023
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
REES 128:
Literature of the former Yugoslavia (COMPLIT 128, SLAVIC 128)
What do Slavoj Zizek, Novak Djokovic, Marina Abramovic, Melania Trump, Emir Kusturica, and the captain of the Croatian national football team have in common? All were born in a country that no longer exists, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (1945-1992). This course will introduce masterpieces of Yugoslav literature and film, examining the social and political complexities of a multicultural society that collapsed into civil war (i.e. Bosnia, Kosovo) in the 1990s. In English with material available in Serbo-Croatian and Slovenian.
Last offered: Autumn 2019
| Units: 3-5
REES 185B:
Jews in the Contemporary World: Culture, Pop Culture, and Representation (CSRE 185B, HISTORY 185B, JEWISHST 185B, SLAVIC 183)
(HISTORY 185B is 5 units; HISTORY 85B is 3 units.) From Barbra Streisand to Volodymyr Zelenskyy, from The Dybbuk to Broad City, and from Moscow to LA, this course applies a multicultural perspective on different experiences of Jewishness in the 20th and 21st centuries. The discussion is centered on the ways in which these experiences are represented in various types of media: in literature or on TikTok, in poetry or on Instagram, in film and on television. The themes of the course include (but are not limited to) the interplay of national, religious, ethnic, linguistic, and political identities, intersectionality, the definitions and boundaries of Jewish cultures, Queer and variously gendered experiences of Jewishness, as well as antisemitism and stereotyped representations of Jewishness. The course introduces students to the analysis of a diverse array of media as cultural texts and historical sources. Students are encouraged to apply their new skills to media of their choice.
Last offered: Spring 2023
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-GlobalCom, WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
REES 227:
All Quiet on the Eastern Front? East Europe and Russia in the First World War (HISTORY 227D, HISTORY 327D, REES 327)
Until recently history has been comparatively quiet about the experience of World War I in the east. Far from being a peripheral theater of war, however, the experiences of war on the Eastern Front were central to shaping the 20th century. Not only was the first shot of the war fired in the east, it was also the site of the most dramatic political revolution. Using scholarly texts, literature and film, this course combines political, military, cultural and social approaches to introduce the causes, conduct and consequences of World War I with a focus on the experiences of soldiers and civilians on the Eastern Front. Topics include: the war of movement, occupation, extreme violence against civilians, the Armenian genocide, population exchanges, the Russian Revolution and civil war, and the disintegration of empires and rise of nation-states.
Last offered: Winter 2018
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-SI
REES 301B:
Eastern European Cinema (FILMEDIA 245B, FILMEDIA 445B)
From 1945 to the mid-80s, emphasizing Polish, Hungarian, Czech, Slovak, and Yugoslav contexts. The relationship between art and politics; postwar establishment of film industries; and emergence of national film movements such as the Polish school, Czech new wave, and new Yugoslav film. Thematic and aesthetic preoccupations of filmmakers such as Wajda, Jancso, Forman, and Kusturica. Permission of instructor required prior to the first day of classes.
Last offered: Autumn 2018
| Units: 5
REES 326:
The Russian Revolution: Politics, Society, Culture
The centennial of the Russian Revolution of 1917 serves as the occasion for this course, which surveys the political, social, and cultural upheavals that transformed Russia under the last Tsars and the first Soviet commissars. The course will be offered in conjunction with the exhibition "The Crown under the Hammer: Russia, Romanovs & Revolution," jointly sponsored by the Hoover Institution and the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford and opening at both venues on October 18, 2017. Several class sessions will be held at the Hoover Institution, where students will be invited to examine archival documents, rare books and periodicals, and the visual arts, including propaganda posters, photographs, motion picture film, and paintings in the collections of the Hoover Institution Library & Archives. One class session will be held at the Cantor Arts Center. The course is open to undergraduate and graduate students.
Last offered: Autumn 2017
| Units: 3-5
REES 327:
All Quiet on the Eastern Front? East Europe and Russia in the First World War (HISTORY 227D, HISTORY 327D, REES 227)
Until recently history has been comparatively quiet about the experience of World War I in the east. Far from being a peripheral theater of war, however, the experiences of war on the Eastern Front were central to shaping the 20th century. Not only was the first shot of the war fired in the east, it was also the site of the most dramatic political revolution. Using scholarly texts, literature and film, this course combines political, military, cultural and social approaches to introduce the causes, conduct and consequences of World War I with a focus on the experiences of soldiers and civilians on the Eastern Front. Topics include: the war of movement, occupation, extreme violence against civilians, the Armenian genocide, population exchanges, the Russian Revolution and civil war, and the disintegration of empires and rise of nation-states.
Last offered: Winter 2018
| Units: 3-5
REES 348:
Slavic Literature and Culture since the Death of Stalin (SLAVIC 148, SLAVIC 348)
The course offers a survey of Soviet and post-Soviet literary texts and films created by Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian artists and marginalized or repressed by the Soviet regime. The first part of the course will focus on the topics of opposition and dissent, generational conflict, modernization, Soviet everyday life, gender, citizenship and national identity, state-published and samizdat literature, "village" and "cosmopolitan" culture, etc. The second part of it will be devoted to the postmodernist aesthetics and ideology in the dismantlement of totalitarian society, as well in the process of shaping post-Soviet identities. The reading materials range from the fictional, poetic, and publicistic works written by Noble-prize (Solzhenitsyn, Brodsky, Alexievich) and other major writers of the period to the drama, film, and popular culture.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
SINY 142:
Documenting New York
Documenting New York is a film studies course (with a small video production component) exploring the rich history and many cultures of New York through the classic documentary films that have been produced throughout the city¿s past hundred years.Through the lens of documentary films that feature New York City as a landscape and central subject, students will gain a greater understanding of the documentary film form itself, considering aesthetic and formal issues, as well as ethical issues related to the politics of representation.
Last offered: Spring 2018
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
SINY 146:
Imaging Change: Art & Politics
This course will examine some of the people, collectives, and organizations working globally that use the realm of the visual to address and advocate for human rights and social justice. Students will learn about practitioners in socially engaged art, concerned photography, cultural organizing, public art, interactive film, and more. The class will include regular visits to (or guests from) artists¿ and photographers¿ studios, and the esteemed foundations and organizations supporting this work. A final paper will be required.
Terms: Aut, Spr
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
SINY 152:
Film: The City as Muse
Has a film ever challenged your beliefs, transformed your understanding of an issue, left an emotional aftershock, or motivated you to act? Was that the intention of the filmmaker or an unanticipated consequence? Since the inception of the motion picture, the urban landscape and its inhabitants have served as a rich and diverse palette for filmmakers. This course will provide an overview of documentary, experimental, and hybrid films that proffer an unexpected and sometimes disturbing perspective on cities, both here and abroad. We will examine films that privilege artistic expression and expand the conventions of the film form, analyzing how filmmakers distill an issue, situation, or environment through a particular formal style and point-of-view.nnThrough a consideration of iconic historic films, the student will gain a rich understanding of how cities have inspired filmmakers who work outside the traditional fiction genre. In addition to written assignments, students will distill their own experience of the city through photo essays that explore the eclectic geographic, social, and cultural life of New York. Local ¿field trips¿ will include attendance at the annual Margaret Mead Film Festival in October and DocNYC in November. Course readings and discussion will provide an incisive inquiry into the artistic ¿voice¿ of the filmmaker in an analysis of both form and content.
Last offered: Autumn 2018
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-CE
SINY 164:
New York Stories on Screen
Taxi Driver, All About Eve, Do the Right Thing, Sex and the City ¿ the list goes on and on. From the beginning of film New York has starred as a complex, shifting arena for iconic and personal stories. This course will investigate feature films and television episodes filmed in and around New York to examine the structure and mechanisms of narrative on the screen, the ¿engineering¿ of filmic story. Each week features one assigned film or episode followed by lecture and discussion revealing the hidden mechanisms at work. We begin with the ¿standard model¿ of three-act structure and progress to more dynamic variations in storytelling.
Last offered: Winter 2021
| Units: 3-4
SLAVIC 111:
Russia and Her Conflicts: History, Literature, and Film
Winston Churchill famously characterized Russia as a "riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma." As war rages on in Ukraine, many are left wondering: why is Russia so hostile to her neighbors and the West? This course examines the origins of Russia's foreign and domestic conflicts - from Ivan the Terrible to Vladimir Putin - by examining a wide variety of literature, autobiography, film, art, and historical documents. Topics include: Russian imperialism in Europe, the Caucuses, and Siberia, the Russian Revolution, World War II, the Gulag, and the war in Ukraine. Course and all readings are in English.
Last offered: Summer 2023
| Units: 3
SLAVIC 128:
Literature of the former Yugoslavia (COMPLIT 128, REES 128)
What do Slavoj Zizek, Novak Djokovic, Marina Abramovic, Melania Trump, Emir Kusturica, and the captain of the Croatian national football team have in common? All were born in a country that no longer exists, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (1945-1992). This course will introduce masterpieces of Yugoslav literature and film, examining the social and political complexities of a multicultural society that collapsed into civil war (i.e. Bosnia, Kosovo) in the 1990s. In English with material available in Serbo-Croatian and Slovenian.
Last offered: Autumn 2019
| Units: 3-5
SLAVIC 140:
The Other Europe: Literature from East Central Europe (SLAVIC 340A)
East Central Europe, both despite and because of its history of shape-shifting borders, has long been the locus of extraordinarily diverse humanity. There are few other regions where so many ethnicities, languages, and religions exist side by side -- or even closer than that -- with one another. It is also a region carved and re-carved into subject pieces by empires: Ottoman, Habsburg and Russian before World War I, violently torn between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union during World War II, and forcibly coerced into a Bloc until the last decade of the 20th century. Polish poet and Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz asserted that "the most striking feature in Central European literature is its awareness of history": of history's somehow coexistent inexorability and caprice, and of its capacity for a full spectrum of absurdity, from tragic to banal to comic. This course will introduce works in translation by 20th- and 21st-century East Central European writers (Tokarczuk, Ugresic, Kassabova, Knezevic, and others) -- supplemented with selections from film, visual art, and music -- and consider how these creative works respond to the complexities of the region¿s history, cultural diversity, and individual and collective identities.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3-5
SLAVIC 147:
Modern Russian Literature and Culture: The Age of War and Revolution (SLAVIC 347)
What makes Russian modernism special? Or is there anything special about Russian modernism? And how did modernist poets, prose writers, and filmmakers respond to the turbulent events of the first half of the 20th century, when Russia was shaken by revolution and war? This course aims to answer these questions through close readings of works by authors like Vladimir Mayakovsky, Isaac Babel, Osip Mandelstam, Mikhail Zoshchenko, Andrei Platonov, Yuri Olesha, and Mikhail Bulgakov, as well as early Soviet film. Aesthetic issues such as hero, plot, language, and poetic and narrative devices will be addressed with the aid of contemporaneous literary theory (e.g., Shklovsky, Tynianov, Eikhenbaum, Bakhtin). Novels and theory will be read in English. NOTE: This course must be taken for a minimum of 3 units and a letter grade to be eligible for Ways credit.
Last offered: Spring 2023
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-GlobalCom, WAY-A-II
SLAVIC 148:
Slavic Literature and Culture since the Death of Stalin (REES 348, SLAVIC 348)
The course offers a survey of Soviet and post-Soviet literary texts and films created by Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian artists and marginalized or repressed by the Soviet regime. The first part of the course will focus on the topics of opposition and dissent, generational conflict, modernization, Soviet everyday life, gender, citizenship and national identity, state-published and samizdat literature, "village" and "cosmopolitan" culture, etc. The second part of it will be devoted to the postmodernist aesthetics and ideology in the dismantlement of totalitarian society, as well in the process of shaping post-Soviet identities. The reading materials range from the fictional, poetic, and publicistic works written by Noble-prize (Solzhenitsyn, Brodsky, Alexievich) and other major writers of the period to the drama, film, and popular culture.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
SLAVIC 156:
Vladimir Nabokov: Displacement and the Liberated Eye (COMPLIT 115, COMPLIT 315, SLAVIC 356)
How did the triumphant author of "the great American novel" "Lolita" evolve from the young author writing at white heat for the tiny sad Russian emigration in Berlin? We will read his short stories and the novels "The Luzhin Defense, Invitation to a Beheading, Lolita, Lolita" the film, and "Pale Fire", to see how Nabokov generated his sinister-playful forms as a buoyant answer to the "hypermodern" visual and film culture of pre-WWII Berlin, and then to America's all-pervading postwar "normalcy" in his pathological comic masterpieces "Lolita" and "Pale Fire". Buy texts in translation at the Bookstore; Slavic grad students will supplement with reading and extra sessions in original Russian.
Last offered: Spring 2022
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum
SLAVIC 173:
Children's Literature: Russia, Eastern Europe, and Beyond (SLAVIC 373)
This course traverses the world of Russian and Eastern European literature for children. In our look at a wide variety of children's cultural artifacts (from text to film), we will analyze the ways in which stories for children, and stories about children, form the foundation for literacy and cultural education. We will be transported by the magic of fairy tales as we compare the Brothers Grimm to Russian folk tales. We will analyze pedagogical and artistic methods in illustrated primers, picture books, and magazines made for American and Soviet youth. We will examine the media and politics that shape the adaptation of oral storytelling to the animation of the silver screen. Through these and many other sites of comparison between Russia, Eastern Europe and world traditions, we seek to understand the specific cultural codes of childhood in its historical development, as well as what might constitute a universal notion of being a child. No knowledge of Russian is required.
Last offered: Spring 2022
| Units: 3-5
SLAVIC 183:
Jews in the Contemporary World: Culture, Pop Culture, and Representation (CSRE 185B, HISTORY 185B, JEWISHST 185B, REES 185B)
(HISTORY 185B is 5 units; HISTORY 85B is 3 units.) From Barbra Streisand to Volodymyr Zelenskyy, from The Dybbuk to Broad City, and from Moscow to LA, this course applies a multicultural perspective on different experiences of Jewishness in the 20th and 21st centuries. The discussion is centered on the ways in which these experiences are represented in various types of media: in literature or on TikTok, in poetry or on Instagram, in film and on television. The themes of the course include (but are not limited to) the interplay of national, religious, ethnic, linguistic, and political identities, intersectionality, the definitions and boundaries of Jewish cultures, Queer and variously gendered experiences of Jewishness, as well as antisemitism and stereotyped representations of Jewishness. The course introduces students to the analysis of a diverse array of media as cultural texts and historical sources. Students are encouraged to apply their new skills to media of their choice.
Last offered: Spring 2023
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-GlobalCom, WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
SLAVIC 267:
Film and Theater
The course on contemporary Ukrainian film and theater introduces students to the Ukrainian cinematographic tradition of the Soviet period through the present day. During the study of Ukrainian cinema of the Soviet period, we will analyze the work of iconic Ukrainian film directors, such as Alexander Dovzhenko, Sergey Paradzhanov, Roman Baloyan, and Kira Muratova. We will trace the reflection in their films of the Soviet reality in which the dissident artists lived and worked. We will also consider the impact of their films on democratization of Soviet society. In the second half of the quarter students examine the themes and trends of the Ukrainian cinema from 1991 to the present day, as they resonate in the films of Valentyn Vasyanovych, Sergei Loznitsa, Antonio Lukich, Dmitry Tomashpolsky, and Nadiya Parfan and discuss the relationship between cinematography and society in times of crisis. We will consider how changes in priorities and values in Ukrainian society resulting from the current conflict have affected the repertoire of Ukrainian theaters, particularly that of the Lesya Ukrainka Theater (formerly the Russian Drama Theatre), Theater-on-Podil, and the Ivan Franko National Theatre.
Last offered: Spring 2023
| Units: 3-5
SLAVIC 322:
Sergei Eisenstein: Theory, Practice, Method (FILMEDIA 422)
The work of Sergei Eisenstein has been central to the study of film since before his death in 1948, but some of his most significant work was first published only in the new millennium and is generating rich interdisciplinary scholarship. This seminar explores contemporary Eisenstein scholarship together with Eisenstein's more recently published writings. It aims to place the Eisenstein we are coming to know in the twenty-first century in dialogue with longstanding as well as contemporary debates in film and media theory.
Last offered: Autumn 2021
| Units: 5
SLAVIC 340A:
The Other Europe: Literature from East Central Europe (SLAVIC 140)
East Central Europe, both despite and because of its history of shape-shifting borders, has long been the locus of extraordinarily diverse humanity. There are few other regions where so many ethnicities, languages, and religions exist side by side -- or even closer than that -- with one another. It is also a region carved and re-carved into subject pieces by empires: Ottoman, Habsburg and Russian before World War I, violently torn between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union during World War II, and forcibly coerced into a Bloc until the last decade of the 20th century. Polish poet and Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz asserted that "the most striking feature in Central European literature is its awareness of history": of history's somehow coexistent inexorability and caprice, and of its capacity for a full spectrum of absurdity, from tragic to banal to comic. This course will introduce works in translation by 20th- and 21st-century East Central European writers (Tokarczuk, Ugresic, Kassabova, Knezevic, and others) -- supplemented with selections from film, visual art, and music -- and consider how these creative works respond to the complexities of the region¿s history, cultural diversity, and individual and collective identities.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3-5
SLAVIC 347:
Modern Russian Literature and Culture: The Age of War and Revolution (SLAVIC 147)
What makes Russian modernism special? Or is there anything special about Russian modernism? And how did modernist poets, prose writers, and filmmakers respond to the turbulent events of the first half of the 20th century, when Russia was shaken by revolution and war? This course aims to answer these questions through close readings of works by authors like Vladimir Mayakovsky, Isaac Babel, Osip Mandelstam, Mikhail Zoshchenko, Andrei Platonov, Yuri Olesha, and Mikhail Bulgakov, as well as early Soviet film. Aesthetic issues such as hero, plot, language, and poetic and narrative devices will be addressed with the aid of contemporaneous literary theory (e.g., Shklovsky, Tynianov, Eikhenbaum, Bakhtin). Novels and theory will be read in English. NOTE: This course must be taken for a minimum of 3 units and a letter grade to be eligible for Ways credit.
Last offered: Spring 2023
| Units: 3-5
SLAVIC 348:
Slavic Literature and Culture since the Death of Stalin (REES 348, SLAVIC 148)
The course offers a survey of Soviet and post-Soviet literary texts and films created by Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian artists and marginalized or repressed by the Soviet regime. The first part of the course will focus on the topics of opposition and dissent, generational conflict, modernization, Soviet everyday life, gender, citizenship and national identity, state-published and samizdat literature, "village" and "cosmopolitan" culture, etc. The second part of it will be devoted to the postmodernist aesthetics and ideology in the dismantlement of totalitarian society, as well in the process of shaping post-Soviet identities. The reading materials range from the fictional, poetic, and publicistic works written by Noble-prize (Solzhenitsyn, Brodsky, Alexievich) and other major writers of the period to the drama, film, and popular culture.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
SLAVIC 356:
Vladimir Nabokov: Displacement and the Liberated Eye (COMPLIT 115, COMPLIT 315, SLAVIC 156)
How did the triumphant author of "the great American novel" "Lolita" evolve from the young author writing at white heat for the tiny sad Russian emigration in Berlin? We will read his short stories and the novels "The Luzhin Defense, Invitation to a Beheading, Lolita, Lolita" the film, and "Pale Fire", to see how Nabokov generated his sinister-playful forms as a buoyant answer to the "hypermodern" visual and film culture of pre-WWII Berlin, and then to America's all-pervading postwar "normalcy" in his pathological comic masterpieces "Lolita" and "Pale Fire". Buy texts in translation at the Bookstore; Slavic grad students will supplement with reading and extra sessions in original Russian.
Last offered: Spring 2022
| Units: 3-5
SLAVIC 373:
Children's Literature: Russia, Eastern Europe, and Beyond (SLAVIC 173)
This course traverses the world of Russian and Eastern European literature for children. In our look at a wide variety of children's cultural artifacts (from text to film), we will analyze the ways in which stories for children, and stories about children, form the foundation for literacy and cultural education. We will be transported by the magic of fairy tales as we compare the Brothers Grimm to Russian folk tales. We will analyze pedagogical and artistic methods in illustrated primers, picture books, and magazines made for American and Soviet youth. We will examine the media and politics that shape the adaptation of oral storytelling to the animation of the silver screen. Through these and many other sites of comparison between Russia, Eastern Europe and world traditions, we seek to understand the specific cultural codes of childhood in its historical development, as well as what might constitute a universal notion of being a child. No knowledge of Russian is required.
Last offered: Spring 2022
| Units: 3-5
SLE 91:
Structured Liberal Education
Focusing on great works of philosophy, religion, literature, painting, and film drawn largely from the Western tradition, the SLE curriculum places particular emphasis on artists and intellectuals who brought new ways of thinking and new ways of creating into the world, often overthrowing prior traditions in the process. These are the works that redefined beauty, challenged the authority of conventional wisdom, raised questions of continuing importance to us today, and - for good or ill - created the world we still live in. Texts may include: Homer, Sappho, Greek tragedy, Plato, Aristotle, Zhuangzi, Confucius, the Heart Sutra, Hebrew Bible, New Testament, and the Aeneid.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 8
| UG Reqs: College, GER:DB-Hum, GER:IHUM-1, THINK, WAY-A-II, Writing SLE
SLE 92:
Structured Liberal Education
Focusing on great works of philosophy, religion, literature, painting, and film drawn largely from the Western tradition, the SLE curriculum places particular emphasis on artists and intellectuals who brought new ways of thinking and new ways of creating into the world, often overthrowing prior traditions in the process. These are the works that redefined beauty, challenged the authority of conventional wisdom, raised questions of continuing importance to us today, and - for good or ill - created the world we still live in. Texts may include: Augustine, the Qur'an, Dante, Rumi, Machiavelli, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Las Casas, Descartes, Locke, Mill, Schleiermacher, and Flaubert.
Terms: Win
| Units: 8
| UG Reqs: College, GER:DB-Hum, GER:IHUM-2, THINK, WAY-A-II, WAY-ER, Writing SLE
SLE 93:
Structured Liberal Education
Focusing on great works of philosophy, religion, literature, painting, and film drawn largely from the Western tradition, the SLE curriculum places particular emphasis on artists and intellectuals who brought new ways of thinking and new ways of creating into the world, often overthrowing prior traditions in the process. These are the works that redefined beauty, challenged the authority of conventional wisdom, raised questions of continuing importance to us today, and - for good or ill - created the world we still live in. Texts may include: Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Du Bois, Eliot, Woolf, Kafka, Brecht, Vertov, Beauvoir, Sartre, Fanon, Gandhi, and Morrison.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 8
| UG Reqs: College, GER:DB-Hum, GER:IHUM-3, THINK, WAY-EDP, Writing 2, Writing SLE
SOC 154A:
American Disaster (AMSTUD 154D, ENGLISH 154D)
How do we make sense of catastrophe? Who gets to write or make art about floods, fires, or environmental collapse? How do disaster and its depiction make visible or exacerbate existing social and economic inequalities? Beginning with the Jamestown colony and continuing to the present, this course explores the long history of disaster on the North American continent, and how it has been described by witnesses, writers, and artists. From the 1793 Philadelphia yellow fever epidemic to Hurricane Katrina, the Dust Bowl to contemporary explorations of climate change, this seminar will put in conversation a wide range of primary and secondary materials. Possible texts include writings by Mike Davis, Katherine Anne Porter, Rebecca Solnit, Jesmyn Ward, and Richard Wright; films Wildlife (2018), First Reformed (2017), When the Levees Broke (2006), and Free Willy II (1995); and art by Dorothea Lange, Winslow Homer, and Richard Misrach. For the final paper, students will write a critical essay on a disaster novel, film, or other work or object of their choice, or develop their own creative piece or oral history.
Last offered: Spring 2022
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
TAPS 12N:
To Die For: Antigone and Political Dissent (CLASSICS 17N)
(Formerly CLASSGEN 6N.) Preference to freshmen. Tensions inherent in the democracy of ancient Athens; how the character of Antigone emerges in later drama, film, and political thought as a figure of resistance against illegitimate authority; and her relevance to contemporary struggles for women's and workers' rights and national liberation. Readings and screenings include versions of "Antigone" by Sophocles, Anouilh, Brecht, Fugard/Kani/Ntshona, Paulin, Glowacki, Gurney, and von Trotta.
Last offered: Autumn 2022
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-Gender, WAY-EDP, WAY-ER
TAPS 100C:
History of World Cinema III: Queer Cinemas around the World (ARTHIST 164, ARTHIST 364, CSRE 102C, CSRE 302C, FEMGEN 100C, FEMGEN 300C, FILMEDIA 100C, FILMEDIA 300C, GLOBAL 193, GLOBAL 390, TAPS 300C)
Provides an overview of cinema from around the world since 1960, highlighting the cultural, political, and economic forces that have shaped various film movements over the last six decades. Specific topics may vary by term/year/instructor. This term's topic, Queer Cinemas around the World, engages with a range of queer cinematic forms and queer spectatorial practices in different parts of the world, as well as BIPOC media from North America. Through film and video from Kenya, Malaysia, India, The Dominican Republic, China, Brazil, Palestine, Japan, Morocco, the US etc., we will examine varied narratives about trans experience, same-sex desire, LGBTQI2S+ rights, censorship, precarity, and hopefulness. This course will attune us to regional cultural specificities in queer expression and representation, prompting us to move away from hegemonic and homogenizing understandings of queer life and media. Notes: Screenings will be held on Fridays at 1:30PM in Oshman Hall. Screening times will vary slightly from week to week.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 10 units total)
TAPS 101F:
Close Cinematic Analysis - Caste, Sexuality, and Religion in Indian Media (ARTHIST 199, ASNAMST 108, FEMGEN 104, FILMEDIA 101, FILMEDIA 301)
(Formerly FILMSTUD101. If you have taken this course before, please reach out to the instructor) India is the world's largest producer of films in over 20 languages, and Bollywood is often its most visible avatar, especially on US university curricula. This course will introduce you to a range of media from the Indian subcontinent across commercial and experimental films, documentaries, streaming media, and online cultures. We will engage in particular with questions of sexuality, gender, caste, religion, and ethnicity in this postcolonial context and across its diasporas, including in the Caribbean. Given this course's emphasis on close cinematic analysis, we will analyze formal aspects of cinematography, editing, mise-en-scene, and performance, and how these generate spectatorial pleasure, star and fan cultures, and particular modes of representation. This course fulfills the WIM requirement for Film and Media Studies majors. Note: Screenings will be held on Thursdays at 5:30 PM. Screening times will vary from week to week and may range from 90 to 180 minutes.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
TAPS 119M:
Special Topics: Building the Digital Body: Decoding Live Video in Performance
TAPS 119M Special Topics courses feature the annual Mohr Visiting Artist. The Mohr Visiting Artist program brings acclaimed and emerging artists to campus for a one-term period to teach a credited course and provide a presentation, exhibition or performance for the Stanford community and the public. The 21-22 Mohr Visiting Artist is Mikeah Jennings.nn"Real Time Film" is a conceptual model conflating performance, television, and movies. It's a live movie that examines the use of the image in entertainment, how we experience the image versus its manufacture, the split between surface and interior, and the different layers of truth. (Caden Manson, Big Art Group)nnThis Special Topics course is a collaborative workshop, introducing the digital performance style known as Real Time Film. Students will learn fundamental techniques to build upon their performance knowledge while engaging with live-feed cameras, and projections, on stage in real time. This workshop will focus particular attention on the actor in performance, ensemble building, company engagement, and an investigation of the dramaturgy and production techniques of contemporary performance companies utilizing live camera feeds and video projection onstage. Students will explore the works of contemporary companies like The Builders Association, The Wooster Group, Big Art Group, Jay Scheib, as well as international companies like The Gob Squad (UK), Katie Mitchell (UK) and others. The workshop interweaves principles of stage acting, on camera performance, and generative work to help the actor develop the skills that are being used more and more in virtual and mediated performances. Workshop sessions will be supplemented by readings, screenings and professional examples.
Last offered: Autumn 2021
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 6 units total)
TAPS 120M:
Audition and Monologue
Auditioning is an essential part of being an actor. This class will demystify the process, so that students develop the skill and confidence to prepare an effective audition. Cold reading and making committed clear acting choices in scenes and monologues will be covered. Students will learn how to choose exciting and suitable monologues that reveal the actor's individuality and skill. In the class, students will practice addressing stage fright through preparation, warmup, and breathing to focus nerves into performance vitality and ease. Several guest speakers from the theater and film industry may be featured. Students will complete the class with at least two dynamic contrasting monologues that will serve them in auditions. This class is ideal for students auditioning for theater productions, recorded media, or for acting conservatories and graduate schools. Enrollment preference given to TAPS majors and minors. Prerequisite: Fundamentals of Acting (TAPS 120A), or approval of the instructor.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
TAPS 128:
Acting Intensive: On Camera Acting Technique
In this workshop we will explore film scripts and research iconic performances to introduce the beginning film actor to this exciting genre. nnThe class will begin with familiarization of performance skills to relax and relate to the camera. Students will then choose one scene and one monologue from online scripts provided by the instructor, or though their own research. Scripts will range from contemporary film to the ¿Golden Age of Black and White¿-- from screwball comedy to film noir. nnThe actors will learn on camera technique, utilization of action, specificity of language, personalization, and emotional truth. nnSTUDENTS ARE ENCOURAGED TO BRING THEIR OWN SUGGESTIONS. (Isn't there a role you've always wanted to play?)
Last offered: Winter 2021
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
TAPS 132F:
Costume in Film
Costume in Film will explore the process of costume design from the page to the screen. This course will discuss a range of period and contemporary films in order to discover how character development, storytelling and iconography relates to clothing and costume. In addition to film analysis, there will be assignments where students will explore the practical process of design and how it relates to film.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 4
TAPS 132S:
Shopping, Styling, and the Culture of Costume
This course will examine the practical world of costume and clothing. We will discuss the practice and techniques of shopping for TV, film and theatre, and how to use shopping as a tool for design. We will also explore the ways culture influences how we see clothes in relation to character. Practical projects will include script analysis, visual research, shopping, and exploring closets and costume stocks. We will talk to professional shoppers and stylists to understand better what it is like to work in these fields. The final project will allow students to show their ingenuity and explore design in this very practical, but very creative way!
Last offered: Autumn 2021
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
TAPS 134D:
Drawing and Storyboarding for Theater and Film
Explores drawing as a fundamental component of the design process. Uses physical (pencil, charcoal, ink) and digital media to focus on developing the hand-to-eye relationship and pre-visualization skills essential to any designer. This class will explore sketching, storyboarding, and basic drafting to convey design ideas, progression of story, and presentation quality rendering. Students create a portfolio of projects and in class exercises.
Last offered: Autumn 2022
| Units: 2
TAPS 134S:
Dressing the Set: Property Design for Stage and Screen
This course is a hands-on, maker-style, introduction to property design for both theatre and film. The definition of a prop is very broad and can be anything from an upholstered chair to a dagger to a severed hand. The objects on set are clues to the characters in the story and we will learn how to research, select, and create these special objects. Students will complete a variety of projects that will develop a wide array of skills. These include light construction, painting, mold making, sewing, foam carving, 3D printing and laser cutting, and special effects (blood) to name a few. We will discuss the role of a prop master as it relates to both theatre and film and learn tricks and methods for success on a tight timeline and budget.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 2
TAPS 135M:
Introduction to Multimedia Production
Students will learn filmmaking basics and apply them by creating a number of short multimedia projects to be shown and discussed in class. Hands-on practical instruction will cover the fundamentals of story, cinematography, sound recording, picture and sound editing, directing for camera, and producing. Critical analysis will focus on a variety of uses of prerecorded sound and video in theater productions, podcasts, web series and other digital media, as well as film and television.
Terms: Win
| Units: 3-4
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
TAPS 150W:
Computers & Performance
From elaborately costumed avatars in virtual worlds, to professional live-streamers working 12-hour shifts, to digitally animated celebrities existing only through their social media accounts, the computer has become a creative engine not of literature or film, but of performance -- a genre traditionally thought to depend on the presence of a body. This seminar asks: why performance? We will adopt methods of performance research and direct them at MMORPGs, hacktivists, YouTube lip-synchers, Instagram feeds, Fortnite dances, and even a few plays. Students will discuss the various utopian affordances and dystopian structures of digital life, and study how conversations about computing have changed over history. They will learn how performances highlight the degree to which contemporary digital culture is constituted by, and further entrenches, race and gender. Ultimately, they will develop their own artworks (games, websites, dances, videos, podcasts) that will embody and question the fraught intersection between computers and performance.
Last offered: Spring 2020
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
TAPS 160C:
Palestinian Theater, Film, and Performance (TAPS 360C)
Traditionally, courses on Palestinians focus on political histories and narratives of two nationalisms vying for uncontested statehood in the Levant. Humanists, artists, and social scientists have explored the political, military, sociological, and religious roots of the modern Middle East from many worthy perspectives that can be found in landmark texts by prolific scholars. However, most of these scholars and the majority of university level courses on the subject of the Palestinians have not paid significant attention to their contributions in the arena of cultural production, particularly in theatre and film. This seminar explores cultural artifacts produced by, for, and on behalf of Palestinians. Throughout the quarter, students will be exposed to foundational texts in the area as well as a number of key films and theatrical plays. The selected works sometimes correspond to historical events, but not always. On occasion, the works function as witness accounts by presenting multiple viewpoints and rich artistically created contexts. The class offers students the opportunity to engage with Palestinians while simultaneously considering foundational relevant concepts in the areas of nationalism, race studies, and postcolonialism. We will aspire to ask useful questions that may help us better understand how and why Palestinians produce performance cultures.
Last offered: Winter 2022
| Units: 4
TAPS 170A:
The Director's Craft (TAPS 370A)
Are you interested in directing as a career, or would like to more about directing in order to direct a show on campus? This workshop class leads students into becoming directors of theater, musicals, and even film/media project. The course will cover a wide range of topics from investigating the big ideas of a story, to working with actors and designers, and include many opportunities to direct short scenes, as well as a final culminating directing project. Particular emphasis will be on building up the world of the story through design, character work and visual composition. Over the quarter we will look at casting actors, working with designers and creating safe, efficient and fun rehearsals as well as pathways to the industry. No previous directing experience in necessary.
Last offered: Spring 2022
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-CE
TAPS 300C:
History of World Cinema III: Queer Cinemas around the World (ARTHIST 164, ARTHIST 364, CSRE 102C, CSRE 302C, FEMGEN 100C, FEMGEN 300C, FILMEDIA 100C, FILMEDIA 300C, GLOBAL 193, GLOBAL 390, TAPS 100C)
Provides an overview of cinema from around the world since 1960, highlighting the cultural, political, and economic forces that have shaped various film movements over the last six decades. Specific topics may vary by term/year/instructor. This term's topic, Queer Cinemas around the World, engages with a range of queer cinematic forms and queer spectatorial practices in different parts of the world, as well as BIPOC media from North America. Through film and video from Kenya, Malaysia, India, The Dominican Republic, China, Brazil, Palestine, Japan, Morocco, the US etc., we will examine varied narratives about trans experience, same-sex desire, LGBTQI2S+ rights, censorship, precarity, and hopefulness. This course will attune us to regional cultural specificities in queer expression and representation, prompting us to move away from hegemonic and homogenizing understandings of queer life and media. Notes: Screenings will be held on Fridays at 1:30PM in Oshman Hall. Screening times will vary slightly from week to week.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 3-5
| Repeatable
2 times
(up to 10 units total)
TAPS 360C:
Palestinian Theater, Film, and Performance (TAPS 160C)
Traditionally, courses on Palestinians focus on political histories and narratives of two nationalisms vying for uncontested statehood in the Levant. Humanists, artists, and social scientists have explored the political, military, sociological, and religious roots of the modern Middle East from many worthy perspectives that can be found in landmark texts by prolific scholars. However, most of these scholars and the majority of university level courses on the subject of the Palestinians have not paid significant attention to their contributions in the arena of cultural production, particularly in theatre and film. This seminar explores cultural artifacts produced by, for, and on behalf of Palestinians. Throughout the quarter, students will be exposed to foundational texts in the area as well as a number of key films and theatrical plays. The selected works sometimes correspond to historical events, but not always. On occasion, the works function as witness accounts by presenting multiple viewpoints and rich artistically created contexts. The class offers students the opportunity to engage with Palestinians while simultaneously considering foundational relevant concepts in the areas of nationalism, race studies, and postcolonialism. We will aspire to ask useful questions that may help us better understand how and why Palestinians produce performance cultures.
Last offered: Winter 2022
| Units: 4
TAPS 370A:
The Director's Craft (TAPS 170A)
Are you interested in directing as a career, or would like to more about directing in order to direct a show on campus? This workshop class leads students into becoming directors of theater, musicals, and even film/media project. The course will cover a wide range of topics from investigating the big ideas of a story, to working with actors and designers, and include many opportunities to direct short scenes, as well as a final culminating directing project. Particular emphasis will be on building up the world of the story through design, character work and visual composition. Over the quarter we will look at casting actors, working with designers and creating safe, efficient and fun rehearsals as well as pathways to the industry. No previous directing experience in necessary.
Last offered: Spring 2022
| Units: 4
THINK 64:
Healing, Illness, Stories
This course focuses on multiple genres of narratives about illness and recovery: memoirs, graphic novels, poetry, fiction, essay, and documentary film. It asks what the power, if any, of narrative is in healing. Drawing upon the fields of literature and the practice of medicine, students will begin to grapple with the power of stories in illuminating the experience of illness and disability and in offering the possibilities for (self) transformation.
Last offered: Spring 2020
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: College, THINK, WAY-A-II
URBANST 83N:
City, Space, Literature (ENGLISH 83N)
This course presents a literary tour of various cities as a way of thinking about space, representation, and the urban. Using literature and film, the course will explore these from a variety of perspectives. The focus will be thematic rather than chronological, but an attempt will also be made to trace the different ways in which cities have been represented from the late nineteenth century to recent times. Ideas of space, cosmopolitanism, and the urban will be explored through films such as The Bourne Identity and The Lunchbox, as well as in the writings of Arthur Conan Doyle, Walter Mosley, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Fiston Mwanza Mujila, Karen Tei Yamashita, and Mohsin Hamid, among others.
Last offered: Autumn 2022
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
URBANST 142:
Megacities (ANTHRO 42)
This class will examine a variety of ways that the city has been represented and understood in anthropology, architecture, literature, film, and journalism in order to better understand how everyday life and experience has been read in conjunction with urban forms. Issues covered will include the co-constitution of space and identities; consumption, spectacle, and economic disparity; transportation and health; colonialism and post-colonialism. Assignments will include writing and drawing projects based on close observation and reading.
Terms: Spr
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
URBANST 143:
MAXIMUM CITY: Post-Colonial Mumbai at the Crossroads of Global and South Asian Culture (ANTHRO 128B)
There are few cities more emblematic of the rapid urbanization of today's global population than Mumbai, India, formerly known as Bombay. With over 20 million residents, Mumbai today stands as the most populous city in one of the world's most populous countries, an ever-expanding metropolis marked by starkclass disparities and a heterogenous collage of religious, ethnic, and caste communities struggling to find space on a narrow peninsula painstakingly reclaimed from the Arabian Sea. The city's glitz, glamour, and diversity have long made it an object of fascination for both Indians and foreigners alike. Not only is Mumbai a major engine of culture and politics within India, but the city also has a long history of furnishing imagery of South Asian life to the wider world, whether as a site for documentaries and novels or through colorful Bollywood films. In this course, students will have the opportunity to use Mumbai as a jumping-off point to explore South Asian culture and society, as well as contemporary themes in global urban studies: How do issues such as gentrification, rural-urban migration, segregation, the globalization of capitalism, and decolonialization play out in a city such as Mumbai? What happens to supposedly timeless identities such as religion, caste, and ethnicity when they are subjected to the pressures of intense urbanization? What kinds of data can we use to answer these questions, and what are their respective strengths and limitations?We will address these questions through a wide range of materials, including film, literature, and academic texts. By the end of the quarter, students should not only find themselves with expanded knowledge of South Asia, Mumbai, and global urbanism, but also with increased confidence regarding the types of data, methodology, and analysis they can employ in their own projects. No prior knowledge of South Asia or urban studies is assumed for this course.
Last offered: Winter 2023
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: WAY-EDP, WAY-SI
