CLIT596A SLN 11499

Cinephilia: Cinematic Experience in Historical Context

TTh 3:30-5:20 SAV 168

Class e-mail list (use UW email ID only): clit596a_wi12@uw.edu

Instructor: Yomi Braester (yomi@uw.edu)

COURSE DESCRIPTION
How is our sensorial experience at the movies predicated on historically determined factors? How does the expression of that experience to others change with time? To answer these questions we must investigate the transformation of production and screening technology, the various venues available for opinion sharing and film criticism, and the changing meaning of the public sphere itself. The course focuses on cinephilia as a specific form of experience and criticism and on its different facets through history. The assigned readings emphasize recent scholarship.

ASSIGNMENTS
Attendance of all film screenings and reading all assigned texts.
Reading reports: A personally inflected review of each assigned reading, submitted online by 10pm before the relevant weekly meeting.
Film selection and presentation: For each week, a student will choose a film to accompany the assigned readings. The student will explain in class the significance of the film in the context of the readings.
Research project: A 15-20-page essay, describing the development in film experience and/or criticism in a given place through a decade, based on secondary materials (and possibly film analysis). The essay will be preceded by an in-class presentation.
In-class presentation: A conference-style presentation of 13-15 minutes on the research project.

GRADING COMPONENTS:
Reading reports - mandatory for passing the course, but not graded
Film selection and presentation - 5%
Project outline presentation - 15%
Final paper - 80%

SCHEDULE


WEEK 1

Tuesday seminar: Introduction
Reading:
- Francesco Casetti, “Back to the Motherland: The Film Theatre in the Postmedia Age,” Screen 52.1.

Thursday screening: Chacun son cinéma

WEEK 2

Tuesday screening::

Thursday seminar: Scholarly cinephilia
Readings:
- Christian Keathley, Cinephilia and History, or, The Wind in the Trees
- Jonathan Rosenbaum, “Reply to Cinephilia Survey,” Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media 50.1–2

WEEK 3

Tuesday screening:

Thursday seminar: Toward a sociology of spectatorship
Readings:
- Laurent Jullier, “Philistines and Cinephiles: The New Deal,” Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media 50.1–2
- Janet Staiger, “Introduction”; “Fan and Fan Behaviors,” in Media Reception Studies
- Janet Staiger, Perverse Spectators: The Practices of Film Reception, pp. 1–57

WEEK 4

Tuesday screening:

Thursday: Historical memory and trauma
Readings:
- Thomas Elsaesser, “‘One Train May Be Hiding Another’: Private History, Memory, and National Identity”
- Serge Daney, Postcards from the Cinema

WEEK 5

Tuesday screening:

Thursday seminar:Cinematic experience as event
Readings:
- Jacques Rancière, “Aesthetic Separation, Aesthetic Community,” in The Emancipated Spectator
- Laura Mulvey, “Passing Time,” Screen 45.2
- Robert Burgoyne, “Memory, History, and Digital Imagery in Contemporary Film,” in Paul Grainge, ed., Memory and Popular Film

WEEK 6

Tuesday seminar: Histories of the gaze
Readings:
- Francesco Casetti, Inside the Gaze
- Anne Friedberg, The Virtual Window: From Alberti to Microsoft, pp. 150–239 (see also the interactive website)

Thursday: no class

WEEK 7

Tuesday screening:

Thursday seminar:Cinephilia in the digital age
Readings:
- Barbara Klinger, “The Contemporary Cinephile Film Collecting after the VCR,” in Beyond the Multiplex: Cinema, New Technologies, and the Home
- Thomas Elsaesser, “The New Film History as Media Archaeology,” Cinémas: Journal of Film Studies 14.2–3: 75–117
- Girish Shambu and Zach Campbell, eds., “The Digital Cine-club: Letters on Blogging, Cinephilia and the Internet,” in in Sperb and Balcerzak, eds. Cinephilia in the Age of Digital Reproduction
- Jonathan Sperb, “Sensing an Intellectual Nemesis,” in Sperb and Balcerzak, eds. Cinephilia in the Age of Digital Reproduction
- Jonathan Rosenbaum, “Goodbye Cinema, Hello Cinephilia,” in Goodbye Cinema, Hello Cinephilia: Film Culture in Transition

WEEK 8

Tuesday screening:

Thursday seminar: Ways of seeing (in conjunction with Linda Williams's campus visit)
Reading: Linda Williams, ed., Viewing Positions: Ways of Seeing Film


Week 9

Tuesday screening:

Thursday seminar: Educating audiences
Readings:
- Terry Bolas, Screen Education: From Film Appreciation to Media Studies
- Toby Miller, “Cinema studies doesn’t matter; or, I know what you did last semester,” in Keyframes: Popular Cinema and Cultural Studies