|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Course Criteria
Add courses to your favorites to save, share, and find your best transfer school.
-
2.00 Credits
Through a critical analysis of key comedy films, this course will explore the ongoing legacy of this genre in contemporary American filmmaking. While some might label comedy films as apolitical, in fact, from its early roots during the Great Depression, the genre has displayed a deep concern over issues relating to the oppression of the working classes, the unlawful treatment of racial and religious minorities, and how gender and sexuality stereotypes promote structural inequality. This course will explore how societal issues are being tackled by directors using the comedy genre in order to elucidate contemporary struggles in America. Films may include profanity, violence, and/or sexually explicit images.
-
2.00 Credits
Through a critical analysis of key films portraying historic and current social justice struggles, this course will explore the representation of oppositional activism, methods of and calls to resistance, and decolonial liberation movements as represented in contemporary world cinema. Examples will include feature length films as well as documentaries in order to problematize how points of view and specific mediums affect narratives and how political commitments are manifest in artistic productions. Of special interest will be the portrayal of ongoing activist struggles amidst structural inequality and violence, how individual state actors are perceived as either facilitating or suppressing these, civil societal responses to these confrontations within the individual cinematic narratives, the ongoing legacy of colonialism, and the interventionist practices through which developed nations influence governance, human and civil rights, and economic decisions in the developing world. Texts and discussions will particularly address issues of race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, and other markers of identity informing global movements and activism. Films may include profanity, violence, and/or sexually explicit images.
-
2.00 Credits
A majority of individuals play games in one form or another. This class examines how to capture the imagination of gamers through introducing concepts of game design as explained from a psychological lens. Applying theories of psychology with fundamentals of game design, students will ultimately create an analog game of their own.
-
2.00 Credits
Using both fictional and documentary films as our primary subject matter, we explore the ethical and economic aspects of the phenomenon of making money by investing money in the stock market. We will look at the history of the stock market as a prelude to engaging in close analysis of the motives of investors, the ethical and economic consequences of investing, the political dimensions of the market and the social significance of market capitalism.
-
2.00 Credits
Walt Whitman has written: "The real war will never get in the books." What about the movies? Do war movies reflect war 'truths' or maybe half-truths? Propaganda? What audiences want to see - versus need to see? The course will examine how several wars have been communicated on the big screen (or via Netflix and YouTube). A semi-panoramic approach will be taken -- major conflicts explored through U.S. and non-U.S. productions. Examples include: Grave of the Fireflies (Japan); The Fog of War (U.S.); The Battle of Algiers (Italy/Algeria); A War (Denmark); American Sniper (U.S.); various episodes from Ken Burns' documentaries (PBS); among other selections. Students will be expected to watch most of the films/documentaries outside of class, though some will be viewed in class. Soldiers' war journals and civilian frontline eyewitness ("I") accounts of their wartime experiences will be assigned as primary reading. A final essay will allow students to assess which movies, documentaries, and journals moved, challenged, educated, or perhaps aggravated or unsettled them most, and why.
-
4.00 Credits
This course aims to study the evolution of sex in mainstream films through a selection of U.S. films from the late 1920s to our present time. We begin with the pre-code Hollywood era. These films were made between the introduction of sound and the adoption and enforcement of the Motion Picture Guidelines, better known as the Hayes Code, which censored overt depictions of sex, illegal drug use and extreme violence. The films chosen from this period explore strong female characters whose sexuality and violent behavior are seen as heroic. This course then moves on to the sexploitation films of the 1960s. Filled with gratuitous nudity and outrageous plots, these films both embrace and abuse the ideology of the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 70s. Although emerging at around the same time as Sexploitation films, the Golden Age of Porn depicts non-simulated sex acts on film. These films were shown across the U.S. in regular movie theaters. Norman Mailer described this period in American film as "living in a world between crime and art." This brief, and some would argue, magical moment in the American film industry lasted from 1972 until 1975 when the US Supreme Court began to effectively crack down on "obscene films". With the law hot on their tracks and the mass-market effect of the VCR, non-simulated sex films went underground. This course ends with the recent turn towards non-simulated sex on films of the last ten years. The films selected for this section of the course bring together the fearless approach to sexuality of the pre-code era, the fun, and, in some cases, exploitative nature of Sexploitation and the graphic depiction of the Golden Age of Porn. One of the goals of this course is to explore what sex on film can teach us about social conventions in relationship to law, science, politics and religion. The pedagogical and theoretical approach of this course is through a feminist perspective and looks at how feminists discuss sex on film. Some feminists take a militant stance that sex on film-regardless of its artistic qualities-are always misogynistic. But there are other feminists who believe that there is value (and dare I say virtue) in depicting simulated and non-simulated sex on films. This point of conflict-what is the social/artistic/political worth/meaning of sex-will fuel many of our conversations. Please note that most of these films have been banned (at one time or another) and, in some cases, the filmmakers and actresses/actors arrested due to obscenity laws in the U.S. and abroad.
-
2.00 Credits
"Sex isn't for the squeamish. Sex is an exchange a semen, shit, sweat, microbes, bacteria. Or there is no sex. If it's just tenderness and ethereal spirituality, then it can never be more than a sterile parody of the real act" #NAME? With the release and subsequent popularity of Gerard Damiano's Deep Throat, the US film industry entered into a period of a new aesthetic development that created a bridge between mainstream and pornographic films. Actresses such as Linda Lovelace and Marilyn Chambers became household names after performing in films depicting graphic sexual acts (not simulated penetration). Norman Mailer describe this period in American film as "living in a world between crime and art." This brief, and some would argue, magical moment in the American film industry lasted from 1972 until1975 when the US Supreme Court began to effectively crack down on "obscene films." We will begin slightly before the release of Deep Throat and explore some of the sexploitation films from the 1960s, which simulated penetration, up until the envelope pushing films of the last couple of years, which demonstrate graphic sexual acts. This course has been designed to explore what pornography teach us about social conventions in relationship to law, science, politics and religion. The aim of this course is to learn how to critically engage various aspects of pornography such as censorship, obscenity, heteronormative sexuality, desire, race, gender identity and LGBTQ sexualities. WARNING: Many of the films we will watch in class have previously been banned because they depict graphic images of sexual acts.
-
4.00 Credits
Many critics regard D. W. Griffith's film The Birth of a Nation (1915) as the single most important achievement in early narrative cinema. In addition to being a magnificent movie, The Birth of a Nation is a virulently racist one: the black people in the film are less "human" than the white characters are. These differences are absolutely essential to the narrative, and they are, sadly, part of the film's achievement. This course begins with the idea that, at least in films, the category "human" is very complex. It explores some of the ways that certain films have depicted the "humanness" of people, animals, and even objects. It also considers how the inhuman has operated in cinema-for example, in films that depict monsters. As the example above shows, at the heart of these questions are the issues that shape identity in everyday human experience: race, gender, sexuality, and bodily constitution (body type, sex role conformity, "ability," etc.).
-
4.00 Credits
class will explore the nature of cinema as a visual medium. How do images mean? What problems of interpretation are raised by images? What insights are available exclusively through images, and what are the limitations of images? How is a moving image different from a still one? How have historical and technological factors (including the emergence of digital culture) effected our consumption of moving images? In order to answer these questions, we will read closely selected theoreticians of images and film, such as Plato, Walter Benjamin, C.S. Peirce, Andre Bazin, and others. We will analyze how selected films exemplify answers to these questions, but also how selected films such as Blowup and Mulholland Drive attempt to understand their own nature as visual artifacts. The class, therefore, will also address the issue of meta-cinema, cinema about cinema. Films may include profanity, violence, and/or sexually explicit images.
-
3.00 Credits
A course that focuses on writing film scripts, stressing effective narrative, dialogue and character development. Coursework includes viewing films as well as writing and analyzing scripts. Same as ENGL 323.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Privacy Statement
|
Terms of Use
|
Institutional Membership Information
|
About AcademyOne
Copyright 2006 - 2024 AcademyOne, Inc.
|
|
|