Popular Cinema (Summer 2016)
Popular cinema escapes attention with the claim that much of it is meant as “entertainment.” It alludes theoretical and critical attention in part because of its association with market profits and profile and association with popular culture. This course examines popular cinema as embodiments of our cultural conflicts, social and political mores, ideological vessels and libidinal investments. We will focus on the frameworks of remakes and nostalgia; race, gender and multiculturalism; violence, technological visions and projections; remaking of history and popular memory; and political theater. Extensive readings in critical theory, media and cultural studies are required.
Film and TV after 9-11 (Summer 2016)
This course is an extensive examination of how the events of September 11, 2001 in the U. S. changed the aesthetics and the politics of film and television. We will examine representations of terrorism as much as narrative structure that attempts to capture the urgency of the moment. Some of the films on terrorism before 9-11 are as important as those produced since the events of that day. Films include: 11’09”01-September 11 (2002), Paradise Now (2005), The Great New Wonderful (2005), The Battle of Algiers (1966), The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum (1975) and Born in Flames (1983), World Trade Center (2006), Flight 93 (2006), and Kandahar (2001). TV shows 24 (six seasons) and Sleeper Cell (two seasons) are also included.
Bond and Beyond (Summer 2016)
A critical examination of one of the most popular phenomenon in film and popular culture around the world. The films of James Bond, all twenty three of them, are known for the adventures of the MI6 secret agent 007, his romances, gadgets, exotic scenarios and sets and fast paced films that have retained popularity over the decades. These narratives have also offered stark representations of global misogyny, sexual objectification, colonial gaze, adaptations to political and social crises and international relations. Bond films produced over decades offer one of the most important documents of our culture. The films have sustained fan followers from around the globe, challenging theoretical and critical paradigms to understand how images and narratives have worked before and after globalization, in colonial and post-colonial frameworks. The course involves close study of these films, along with readings in cultural studies on textuality, representation, visual culture, and critical paradigms.
Short Story and Photography: A University Seminar (Summer 2016)
Short story and photography came of age during mid-Nineteenth Century in the moments of the birth of modernism. Since then, the two forms have attracted the imagination of writers across the world. A number of short stories about photography have allowed us to explore, question and understand photography as a medium and as a practice. This course will examine that relationship through a close reading of several short stories (by Julio Cortázar, Italo Calvino, John Updike, Raymond Carver, Cynthia Ozick, William Faulkner, Bing Xin, Dorris Dörrie, E. Annie Proulx and others). We will proceed with the thesis that the relationship between short story and photography arises out of one of the fundamental paradoxes of photography: photographs are borne as “moments in time” but their survival depends on the irresistible and inevitable narratives they generate. With that in mind, the course will also include exercises in writing short stories as responses to existing and new photographs. As an exercise in cross-disciplinary thinking, the course spans across cultures and historical periods. Students will present their critiques and blog entries.
Global Blockbusters (Fall 2016)
Films that make a lot of money at the box office, create a lot of noise, and attract large audiences are called blockbusters. No surprise the term is derived from military lingo! A blockbuster is a film that “blows away” the competition. Hollywood invented the blockbusters and made them global. Each year, we are treated to a galaxy of superheroes, flood of animated extravaganzas, and hit with sci-fi fantasies competing for our attention. In ways unimaginable, they smash the competition and take the oxygen (and money) out of our lives for two hours of ear-busting, eye-popping and jaw-dropping fun.
But blockbusters are no longer just the Hollywood creations. Cinemas around the world have pursued their own formulae for producing blockbusters. Some of them mimic Hollywood, while some adapt the formula to their own cultures. Their budgets are smaller compared to those of Hollywood but their ambitions are just as global. Increasingly, blockbuster films from Korea, China, Japan, and India are challenging the dominance of Hollywood. These films are rooted in local cultures and aesthetic traditions. Their variety over the past two decades is nothing short of impressive.
This course involves watching blockbuster films from around the world to examine their ambitions and their reach. We will cover a number of film genres, from action films to sci-fi adventures, and from historical epics to superhero films. Our aim is to witness the diversity and examine the causes/the reasons behind their rise, popularity and in some cases, limited visibility. We will also study the economics and logistics of exhibition of blockbusters. Exercises involve short essays, responses to film screenings and readings.
Walking: A University Seminar (Fall 2016)
The art of walking reveals the space around us. Walking is a physical exercise, a natural ability of the able-bodied. It is also a contemplative strategy for writers, a reflective posture for philosophers, an act of resistance for protestors, a test of empathy for urban and suburban planners, an act of spatial struggle for pedestrians, a burden for the workers, a strategy of strolling to read the work of culture, and an act that begs representation in visual, literary and poetic languages. One can define the humane maturity of our spaces through the freedoms and constrains placed on “walkability.” Walking is an index of our modernity; the marker of how much space and freedom we have surrendered in the name of progress. Walking must be at the center of our attempts to find a place in an increasingly restrictive, mechanized world.
For this semester, we will “learn to walk” in our thinking, in the spaces around us and in the two cities near us: Philadelphia and New York City. We will learn from Jean-Jacques Rousseau how to become advocates for walking for contemplation. We will follow Walter Benjamin’s path as flâneurs in the spaces around us. This course explores the philosophy and the politics of walking. In addition to essays, philosophical works, travelogues, maps of our living spaces, and films, we will reflect on one of the most urgent philosophical and political issues of our time. Exercises will include essays, group symposia, walking diaries, and examining the relationship between walking and representation in film.
Visual Cultures (Fall 2016)
Critical examination of vision and visually in contemporary global cultures. This is a foundational theoretical course in media and communication. In our examination of visual cultures, we will focus on the cultural dominants of the male gaze, the gaze of orientalism, conceptions of the other and their burden on our social and cultural relationships. We will examine our ways of seeing and modes of visual thinking through photography, film, television, the new media in their global contexts. Everyday life is the terrain of our examination as much as the discourses, the institutions and the relationships of bio-power. Emphasis on methodical reading of critical texts, analyzing images and writing and visual thinking.
Silence A University Seminar (Spring 2016)
Our culture values sound, voice, music and noise. Unaware of our own senses in the midst of modern life, we have lost the meaning of silence. Silence is always defined in negative terms, as absence of sound, as a void and as a gap to be filled. We are not comfortable with silence. This course examines the philosophical meaning of silence across cultural and religious traditions. We will ask a number of questions: What is silence? How other cultures understand silence? What is the place of silence in Buddhism, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity and Islam? Are paintings silent? Are images silent? Is there a place for silence in architecture? Can/Must we travel far away in search of silence? Is it possible to find/seek silence? How do we understand silence on its own terms? Did sound technology destroy silence? Is silence an environmental issue? Is Death an experience of silence? How did modernism change our understanding and experience of silence?
World Cinema (Fall 2015)
This course provides an introduction to the versatility of world cinema. Film remains the richest medium around the world, as each culture and each country develops for itself a unique mode of expression in cinema. Film has achieved a distinctly cinematic ingenuity putting it par with the greatest achievements of other art forms. World cinema has grown through interactions and shared influences among filmmakers, film styles and traditions in various parts of the world. This heuristic quality makes it a rich medium for study. We will study world cinema as a polycentric, polymorphic and polyvalent formation, where various cinemas in the world share the stage, existing in different formats and allowing for varied interpretations from the viewers located in different cultures. This semester, we will study world cinema through four genres of films, each of which displaying varied manifestations in different cultures. Following William W. Costanzo’s book, World Cinema Through Global Genres (Wiley-Blackwell, 2014), we will examine films in the genres of “wedding film,” horror film,” “wedding film” and “warrior hero film” from around the world. The course involves readings in world cinema, film analysis, class discussions and research in film styles and traditions. We will focus on select films that simultaneously share shifting perspectives on common themes.
Short Film (Spring 2014)
Short film is an undefined but highly ubiquitous category in world cinema. It is often measured for its length but its brevity makes it a distinct form of film. Contemporary world cinema, with its reconfigurations through technologies of production and distribution the rise of the “new media,” the reorientation of spectatorship and the age of dispersion, short film remains a prolific and challenging form for filmmakers. In its diversity and richness, made without regard to national boundaries or budget constraints, short films are redefining world cinema. This course is a thorough examination of short films in various forms- as called IDs, artistic challenges, activist interventions, creative experiments and as forces of dispersion in cinema. Our broad survey includes classic works, the Academy Award winning films, achievements of European cinema, various new formats within short film (anthology film, DVD compilations, etc.), and the forceful re-emergence of this art form on the Internet. The course includes extensive viewing, comprehensive journal entries, research and writing on films.
Bollywood (Summer 2013)
Applauded as one of the largest film industries in the world, cinema in India has become a major cultural staple for a nation of nearly a billion people. Despite its recent recognition in world cinema as a vastly important area of popular culture, a dazzling kaleidoscope of bright images and exotic aesthetic, Indian cinema is generally mistaken to be Bollywood cinema. Meant to imitate the monolithic cultural imprint of Hollywood, and the nerve center of its Los Angeles-like filmmaking capital of Bombay, Bollywood started as a pejorative term only to become accepted as the cinema of India. In fact, Bollywood merely represents a part of India’s diverse cinema. Vibrant and creative in many dimensions, there are fascinating cinemas in India, struggling for recognition next to the homogenizing influence of Bollywood. This course is an introduction to the diversity of Indian cinema. We will study popular Bollywood films along with noteworthy creations in regional cinemas. At once a puzzle and challenge to the students of world cinema, Bollywood represents a daunting paradigm in negotiating various forces for recognition, stereotyping, and cinema’s role in national psyche. Bollywood is a gateway to understanding the emerging constellations of world cinema.
Death: A University Seminar (Fall 2014)
It is a once in a lifetime experience! It is an occasion of grief, mourning and sadness, as it is a matter of belief systems, mythology, superstition, religious faith, rituals, spirituality and rational thought. Death concerns us in matter of social policy and moral issues —death penalty, end-of-life issues, mercy killing, suicide, etc. Death is also a profit-industry as commercial culture sells real estate and hikes in costs of rituals. Cultures invent metaphors, allegories and complex symbolic systems to come to terms with death. Rituals of mourning and the meaning of death vary from one part of the world to another. We think is reincarnation, salvation, the idea of “going home,” “being” one with the gods, or simply moving on to a new state of being. Science and neuroscience grapple with death. Death preoccupies us in philosophy, literature, music, poetry and the arts. And, let us not forget the role of humor in thinking of death. Philosophy, Plato said, is a preparation for death.
This course covers cultural, religious, philosophical, poetic, literary notions of death, with explorations in poetry, songs, film, humor, short essays, visual exercises and other media. Visual thinking and writing will be at the center of our thinking and expressions. We will examine the multiple, unsettled, unsettling but fascinating conceptions of death and mourning from around the world. This is a course to think through different cultures and traditions, from various expressions and languages, on a central topic of death.
Lies, Damn Lies and Photography: A University Seminar (Fall 2011)
Photography embodies an elementary ethic of our times. Its paradoxical relationship to reality and truth haunts our culture. At once signifying a likeness to its object and a radical break from its existential status, photographs are both, a realistic representation of reality and an instrument for its manipulation. This course presents the many paradoxes of photography and reflects on its abilities to hide the truth and also to manufacture a discourse that defies it. From the earliest days of photographic manipulation, photography has now entered its age of digital control. From the clever, clandestine changes in its images to the brazen acceptance of software, images are now ‘photoshopped’ into our consciousness. With questions from history, sociology, anthropology, politics and popular culture, this course explores challenges to the relationship between truth and photography from the beginning of its birth to the days of photoshop and instagram.
Going Home: First Year Seminar
This course explores the idea of “home” in multitude of human experiences and forms. “Home” has been an abstraction for some, utopian image for others while it is a terrain of political battles for some and a cherished or tarnished memory for others. The very conception of “home” has acquired multitude of meanings through modernity and has haunted humanity in the age of displacement, migration and globalization. It has attracted gospel and blues music as it has beckoned the imagination of poets and writers. Home continues to one of the mainstays of figural thinking for human beings. The course explores various meanings of the “home” and allows us to examine then through our own capabilities and narrativization of experiences. Creative and reflective writing assignments are important.
Trash Films (Summer 2012)
Though a fluid category in itself and a broadly counter-posed against the classical or canonical films of high taste, trash films have been defined by their popular, often inexplicable appeal to diverse segments of audiences. Reception of these films poses challenges to aesthetic theory and to accepted norms of film studies. Trash films have become an enduring feature of the society of consumption where taste is dictated by formation of cults and formations of sub-culture which allow audiences different sets of trajectories to invest their desires. We will examine some of the noted examples of trash cinema, from John Waters’s (work to Mondo films through aesthetic theories from Kant to Kristeva. Films include: Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958), Mondo Cane (1962), Carnival of Souls (1962), Sins of the Fleshpoids (1965), Another Day, Another Man (1966), Pink Flamingos (1972), Die, Mommie Die (2003), The Room (2003), Idiocracy (2006) and, Mutant Girls Squad (2010).
Eros, Cinema (Summer 2012)
Beginning with a widely accepted premise that the viewer’s primary relationship with the cinematic screen is erotic, this course examines various perspectives on how this relationship has shaped some of our most fundamental perceptions of cinema as well as some of the dominant representational practices. The course examines the erotics of the cinematic apparatus and how it shapes narrative form. We will also explore manifestations of this relationship in cinemas of Hollywood, Bollywood and European cinema as much as films from Asian cultures. We will question various meanings of the term “pornography” of images in relation to films from around the world, each setting up a distinct transgressive limit on representation.
Romantic Comedy; First Year Seminar (Fall 2010)
Romantic Comedies have formed a formidable genre of popular cinema. From the much discussed screwball comedies to the pejoratively termed ‘chick flicks’ romantic comedies shape and are shaped by the imagination of relationships in films. There is more to “love” beyond the traditional, fantasized romances and courtship of the youngsters and beyond the pursuit of conventional sexual connotations. Relationships are diverse, complex and yet romanticized in many of their dimensions. We will examine relationships and the ideas of romance in a number of films, dominant here and abroad. Some of the films include: City Lights (1931), It happened One Night (1934), Roman Holiday (1953) , Harold and Maude ( 1971), Annie Hall (1977), Roxanne (1987), When Harry Met Sally (1989), I Love You to Death (1992), As Good as it Gets (1997), 10 things I hate about You (1999), Sweet Home Alabama (2000), Chocolat (2000), and The Notebook (2004) among others. Assignments include a film viewing journal, brief essays in visual and written form on the idea of love and films and other creative projects.
MediaMovies (Summer 2009)
What happens when the media see themselves in the mirror? This question is the premise of the course. In other words, we will see how films have become MediaMovies, a unique but powerful formation that is critical of the media culture. This is a unique body of films which make us think of the media culture. This self-critique, it turns out, is a healthy preoccupation of quite a few films, which embody the philosophical crises in our media culture, and which reflect thoughtfully on the nature of our lives, the structure of our values and the spirit of our culture. This course is not about films that represent the media effects or films that use media mainly as a backdrop for narratives about other issues. We will juxtapose some of the key readings in cultural studies with films such as Talk Radio (1988), The Paper (1994),Network (1976), Wag the Dog (1997), The Truman Show (1998), Medium Cool (1969), State and Main (2000), Being There (1979), S1m0ne (2002), and Blow Up (1967).
