VES 173t. Contemporary Film Theory Instructor: Professor David Rodowick Office hours: Tuesday and Wednesday 3-4 pm or by appointment M-06 Sever Hall (4th floor) Phone: 617-496-6076 Email: [email protected] Meeting times. Wednesdays 1-3 pm in CCVA B-04 (location may change) Course website: http://isites.harvard.edu/k8590 Course description This course provides a critical and historical survey of the major questions, concepts, and trends in film theory since 1968. Organized broadly around questions of film, ideology, and spectatorship, weekly readings, films, and discussion will examine how the study of film in the last thirty years has been influenced by semiology, psychoanalysis, Marxism, postmodernism, feminism, critical race studies, gay and lesbian criticism, and post-colonial theory. Enrollment and registration Enrollment in this course may be limited. Students will be selected for the course on the basis of applications explaining their reasons for taking the class. Preference is given to VES concentrators, then, in order, freshmen, seniors and others graduating in the coming June, juniors, and sophomores. Cross-registration. Students from other Harvard schools, M.I.T., or Tufts must cross-register through the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (not the Graduate School of Design). Prerequisite. LA B-11 (VES 170), The Art of Film or permission of instructor. Please note that this course may not be taken Pass/Fail. Student responsibilities Seminar participation and discussion. Your first and most important responsibility is to keep up with the assigned readings and screenings and to think about them seriously. Class attendance is mandatory and will count as a portion of your final grade. It is imperative that you read carefully all assigned weekly readings and watch assigned films or videos before coming to class. You should take careful notes on the readings and be prepared to discuss them thoroughly in class. A good strategy is to always come to class prepared with three or four written questions. Each student will also be responsible for leading weekly discussion as part of a small group. This does not mean a formal presentation. Rather, in the second half of each seminar there will be a group of students who will together prepare a set of questions and topics around the weekly readings and films that they wish to discuss with the class. Each group may also want to select clips from the weekly films as platforms for discussion. Also, each group should meet with me before their assigned seminar. Online discussions. The individual members of each group must also initiate discussion on the course bulletin board by posting responses to the readings in the form of questions and commentary. First postings must be made by midnight on the Sunday before the Wednesday seminar. In addition, each student in the class must contribute at least one message each week, posted by 10 am on Wednesday.2 Written work. There will be no exams in this course. Instead you are expected to complete three short papers (approx. 6-8 pages @ 350 words per page). Papers should consist of reports or reviews of the readings. The main idea of each paper is to compare and/or contrast the readings, or to address in detail some idea or question raised by one of the authors in relation to the films screened for the course. Some suggested topics are available from the course web site. This list is dynamic and will change in the course of the semester in response to our readings and discussions. You are also free, and encouraged, to create your own topics and questions in consultation with the instructor. Your final grade will be calculated on the following basis: class participation and discussion (10%); the three papers will each count 30%. My criteria for evaluating and grading your papers are also available from the course web site. The first paper is due at the beginning of class February 28; the second paper is due at the beginning of class April 4; the final paper is due at noon, Friday May 11 in my box at the Carpenter Center Main Office. I do not accept late work except in the case of medical or family emergencies—you will need a note either from UHS or your Senior Tutor. The pressures of other exams, papers, or extracurricular activities is not an acceptable excuse for lateness. Please note: one-half letter grade will be deducted for each day an assigned paper is late. This policy includes graduate as well as undergraduate students. Plan now to structure your time wisely, thinking about and working on your papers in advance of the due dates. Graduate students, please note that I will give no “incompletes” for this course. Required screenings. VHS and/or DVD copies of required and recommended films are available for individual viewing at both the Film Study Library on the 4th floor of Sever Hall and in the Lamont library. (Some items may only be available at the Film Study Library.) If enough students are interested, I will try to set up a regular weekly video screening time. You may want to obtain copies of the course videos for your own use and your own video collection. Many can be found used online. Required texts (available at the Harvard Co-op or on reserve at Lamont) Lapsley, Robert and Michael Westlake. Film Theory: An Introduction. Second Edition Rosen, Philip, ed. Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology Stam, Robert and Toby Miller, eds. Film and Theory: An Anthology In addition, a number of required articles are available online from the course web site. These are indicated on the syllabus with an asterix “*”. Most of these texts are in the Adobe Acrobat PDF file format. You may obtain a copy of the Acrobat Reader for free at: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readermain.html. Please note that the Required Readings folder is protected. In the first three weeks of class, any student with a Harvard id and net access should be able to download the articles. After the third week of classes, only students registered for the class will have access to the Required Readings folder. Please be advised that you alone are responsible for obtaining copies of the required articles. You may print them out at home, at campus computer stations, or simply read them on reserve. Like the required videos, many of the source books for the required readings may be found used online, often very cheaply. Film Studies and VES