Term:  

Winter Quarter

Dept Course No and Title Instructor
FLM&MDA (W19)160  ZOMBIESLIU, C.
In this course, we will study zombies in film and media studies. The course will show that while zombie was once a figure of the worker under colonial domination has now evolved into an avatar of exhausted worker in the post-crisis, consumer oriented de-industrializing world. We  will be emphasizing the ways in which zombies represent popular anxieties about racial others, unskilled labor, mass production, terrorism and economic crisis. Students will gain an understanding of genre theories in order to grasp the specificity of zombie narratives as form and structure. From White Zombie, to Night of the Living Dead to Shaun of the Dead and The Walking Dead, we will be looking at the ways in which zombie narratives are intertwined with economic crisis and political anxiety. In addition to gaining an advantage in the event of a zombie apocalypse, students will also master methods of studying and analyzing popular media and political economy in rich historical and social contexts.
FLM&MDA (W19)139W  WRITING ON FILM&MDAMIMURA, G.
139W Between Film Biography and Film Criticism: The Case of Bruce Lee

How might we understand the relationship between a movie star and her films and film roles? How does their shared historical context shape our understanding of each, and how do they in turn specify and illuminate their historical moment? Further, what is the relationship between film biography and film criticism? How might they be mutually informing and obscuring? This course will approach these questions through a case study of martial arts superstar Bruce Lee, his offscreen life and onscreen career and persona. Toward this effort, we will read Matthew Polly’s biography, Bruce Lee: A Life (NY: Simon and Schuster, 2018), as well as writings on star theory, auteur theory, and film criticism of Bruce Lee and the martial arts genre more broadly.

To meet the campus’s upper-division writing requirement, the course is designed to help students develop their skills in critical reading and analytical writing. While the topic will provide a general structure, the course will be participatory and collaborative, with discussion and shorter writing assignments (in-class and take-home), contributing toward an original analytical essay for the final project.
FLM&MDA (W19)139W  WRITING ON FILM&MDAJOHNSON, V.
Writing on Film and Media: Sports Media
How do we write about sports, as Film and Media Studies scholars? What are the key questions we should ask when we write about sports media? What is sports media (generically, textually, socially)? This writing-intensive course allows close examination and application of different approaches to thinking and writing critically about and conducting research regarding sports media.
FLM&MDA (W19)111  THEORY AND PRACTICERONY, F.
Film and Media Studies 111 Theory Practice
This seminar on theory and practice in film takes as its primary focus the issue of realism in film.   In addition to reading theory we will use exercises in digital film production and editing to understand film realism.  We will look at montage, sound, film movement, directing, and mise en scene in order to understand how ideology works in tandem with style.  We will examine films as diverse as early silent film, Soviet montage, classical Hollywood, Third cinema, documentary, and experimental video.   The prerequisites for this course are FLM&MDA 85A-B-C, FLM&MDA 120A, and one course from the FLM&MDA 101 series.

Course Requirements:
Prompt attendance and participation at all classes and screenings, completion of all readings, messageboard writing assignments due every week at 12pm on the day before class, three digital film assignments and three short papers, final digital film project due on the last day of classes.
FLM&MDA (W19)190  STAND UP COMEDYHAGGINS, B.
FLM & MDIA 190 Culture, Identity and Comedians (Stand Up Comedy)

The course focuses upon the way that comedy can speak with particular clarity to the American condition from behind the microphone and, by extension on the big and small screens. By examining how comic conventions, personae and sensibilities in standup respond to change in social and political sensibilities at specific historical moments, we will tease out why comedy, perhaps more than any other genre, can get people to engage (and to think about) a variety of human experiences—often in spite of themselves. Dying is easy, comedy is hard—it can also be considered obscene or profane by some. The comedic visual texts screen (and/ or produced) in the course may describe or depict sex, violence and other acts and ideologies that might be considered immoral or amoral by some standards. When examining comedy as social discourse, one should be prepared to engage texts that test social boundaries. In the spirit of creating a nurturing, open and rigorous learning environment, I would urge you to assess whether this course is appropriate for you.
FLM&MDA (W19)101A  SILENT ERAGLEBOVA, A.
The aesthetic, industrial, and socio-historical developments of cinema in the U.S. and internationally from its invention to the adoption of synchronous sound. Includes early exhibition, developments in narrative and editing, the formation of the studio system, and avant-garde film movements.
FLM&MDA (W19)160  MUSLIM CINEMADAULATZAI, S.
Using film and documentary, theory and criticism, this course will
explore the complex world of Muslim diasporas forged through the
overarching nexus of colonialism, slavery and empire.  In exploring the
captivating diversity of Muslims lives, this course will situate a range
of experiences within the rubrics of race, class, gender, sexuality and
nationhood.  With cinema and visual culture as our guide, our
exploration of Muslim diasporas will provide a platform with which to
interrogate a broad range of issues and debates, including the formation
of national identities, race and the colonial encounter, gender and
imperialism, aesthetics and power, and resistance and immigration.
FLM&MDA (W19)130  LATINAS/OS IN MEDIABENAMOU, C.
The aim of this course is to familiarize students with the historical highlights and some of the current and longstanding debates regarding the access of Latinxs to, and representation in, U.S. film, television, radio and print media. The approach is pan-Latinx in scope, intermedial and multiregional in focus, and it is oriented towards foregrounding the contributions of Latinx creative talent to U.S. audiovisual culture, as well as the advocacy of Latinx organizations on behalf of Latinx talent and underserved communities. During the first few weeks, we will review defining moments in the history of Latinx screen images and performances, emphasizing the impact of hemispheric and interethnic relations on Latinx media portrayals.  We will also assemble a critical toolkit needed to analyze casting, audiovisual aesthetics, screen performances, and viewing practices as they relate to various paradigms and genres of representation. During the second phase, we will consider how television has evolved as a multilingual medium in tandem with the growth and diversification of the Latinx population across the United States.  In our final section, we will consider how several factors – immigration policy, changes in Federal Communications Commission legislation, changing technologies of access and delivery, and transnational media ventures, have been working to reshape the Latinx consumer market and the impact of media on the sociopolitical future of Latinx communities. At every step, an effort will be made to situate audiovisual works within a broader sociopolitical and cultural context. Students will be asked to work on collaborative research projects over the course of the quarter.  A basic understanding of Spanish is helpful, but not required.
FLM&MDA (W19)117A  INTRO SCREENWRITINGCARTIER, M.
117A INTRODUCTION TO SCREENWRITING
Students learn about "the world of the screenwriter" by reading and studying screenplays, and writing parts of them-including the beat outline, treatment and character biography. Assignments include reading, viewing and analyzing selected films; and writing papers that explore facets of the screenplay such as structure, character and theme. The final grade is based on participation/attendance, writing the set-up for an actual feature film and storyboarding a traditional 3-act screenplay. The prerequisite for this course is FLM&MDA 85A.
FLM&MDA (W19)85A  INTRO FILM ANALYSISLIU, C.
No detailed description available.
FLM&MDA (W19)120B  INTERMED PRODUCTIONCANE, E.
Students work on individual and group projects, utilizing skills and insights introduced in Film and Media Studies 120A.

Prerequisite: FLM&MDA 120A
FLM&MDA (W19)120B  INTERMED PRODUCTIONCANE, E.
Students work on individual and group projects, utilizing skills and insights introduced in Film and Media Studies 120A.

Prerequisite: FLM&MDA 120A
FLM&MDA (W19)110  FILM & MEDIA THEORYDAULATZAI, S.
This course will explore the historical relationships between cinema and
empire and the ways in which film has emerged as a site for the
imagining of imperial power and national identity, as well as for
resistance and oppositionality.  In doing so, we will explore key
cinematic and historical texts to examine the formation of imperial
cinema, the emergence of Third Cinema, diasporic cinemas and the
possibilities of a post-national cinema in an era of globalization.
Using the histories and legacies of slavery and colonialism, this course
will interrogate the power matrices that have come to define the
conceptual frameworks around race, class, gender, sexuality, nationhood,
diaspora, national belonging and resistance.
FLM&MDA (W19)110  FILM & MEDIA THEORYKRAPP, P.
An advanced discussion of critical concepts in media theory, in a
disciplinary context in which media raise complex questions about their
transformative role in aesthetics, technology, and society, and digital culture is rapidly
expanding. Media studies concerns the ways in which we use audiovisual technologies
to store, process, and communicate information, from the invention of
writing to stenography and from the printing press to typewriters and copying
machines, from idiosyncratic private collections to computerized databases, from
library catalogs on the backs of playing cards to office machines with punched cards.
More recent media history supplements writing and graphing with moving images, and
of course with the irreducible difference computers make in human culture.
Students will acquire a critical and historical vocabulary in media theory.

Prerequisites: successful completion of both FMS 85A-B-C and one course in the 101 series.
FLM&MDA (W19)144  DEAD MEDIASODERMAN, A.
“Dead Media”

Are you interested in older technologies and media forms that are past their prime? Do you prefer to listen to vinyl records instead of Spotify? Do you ever wonder what life was like without cell phones, when everyone communicated with phones attached to the wall? Do you prefer to play 8-bit, retro video games instead of the latest photorealistic games? Have ever taken a polaroid photograph? This course examines different ideas related to technological obsolescence and media transition while exploring the emergence of “media archaeology,” a method of analysis that unearths and interprets media forms from bygone eras. In this course we will study what the term “new” means in the phrase new media while examining older media when they were actually “new.” We will analyze what we mean when we say that something is “classic” or “outdated.” We will also investigate ideas of retro aesthetics, collecting, emulation and “zombie media” (that is, media forms that will not die). Throughout the course students will have the opportunity to analyze a variety of dead, obsolete, and “undead” media such as VHS tapes and audio cassettes, viewmasters, stereoscopes, magic lanterns, polaroid cameras, The Sony Walkman, laserdiscs, vintage video game systems, landlines, and more.
FLM&MDA (W19)160  CHILDRN/IRAN CINEMAKIAN, S.
Film &Media Studies 160
Children in Post-Revolutionary Iranian Cinema


The emerging representation of children in Iranian movies after the 1979 Islamic revolution was a way to alter social stereotypes and create new ideals.  In that era children began to constitute a significant presence in Iranian cinema. These “children films”, were about children but were made for adults and were identified at international film festivals as belonging to a ‘new wave’ in Iranian cinema. 

Cinema is a powerful medium to engage us not only emotionally but also intellectually in the life of others.  This engagement gives us the ability to mediate between different cultures. Through these films we will examine important cultural and social themes, intellectual and political changes, displacement and exilic experiences.
                                                    
Each week we will preview a film related to one of these topics which will be followed by a discussion in relation to the culture and history of Iran. Our film viewing will be supplemented by appropriate texts to create a critical understanding of Iranian history and culture.  All course materials, lectures, and discussions are in English.
FLM&MDA (W19)85B  BROADCAST MEDIAHAGGINS, B.
This course is designed to provide an overview of American Broadcasting History (from late 1930s to the present). While radio, television, basic and premium cable, streaming, web series and podcasts will be surveyed in terms of genre (sitcoms, dramas, etc.), this course also endeavors to examine these media texts as cultural artifacts, creative endeavors and industrial products. This examination of programming reveals how the aural and visual media reflects, and refracts notions of what it means to be American in popular media and popular consciousness and often elides or erases issues of difference (class, ethnicity, gender, race, sexual identity and/or sexuality).
FLM&MDA (W19)120A  BASIC PRODUCTIONDAUCHAN, D.
This course introduces the fundamentals of film production using digital
video. It is designed for students who have little or no production
experience. Assignments provide hands-on learning of the basic elements
of production. From cinematography, lighting, and sound, to writing a
short script and editing with Final Cut Pro, this class takes students
through the production process, culminating in the completion of a 2 to
5 minute short digital film. Enrollment priority will be given to
graduating seniors who have not completed 117A Introduction to
Screenwriting. Students enrolled in this class may use University owned
equipment and are financially responsible for the University equipment
on loan to them. The prerequisite for this course is FLM&MDA 85A.
FLM&MDA (W19)191  ACT/DIR FOR CAMERADAUCHAN, D.
Designed as an introduction to the fundamentals and interaction of
acting and directing in the creative process of producing a film or
video. Through lecture and workshop students will begin to develop the
craft to create strong performances for camera. Every student will
write, perform in, direct, and record on video a short work. The
prerequisite for this course is FLM&MDA 85A.