Courses

• COM CI 460: Masters of Italian Cinema
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: CAS LI 303
  The creative work of Fellini, Visconti, Antonioni, Bertolucci, and De Sica as expressions of a specific cultural perspective on Italian life of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Additional focus on several novels and screen plays that have influenced the work of the directors. Also offered as CAS LI 473.
• COM CI 462: Asian Cinema
  Surveys important and influential films from India, Japan, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and elsewhere in East Asia from the 1950s to the present, including works from Satyajit Ray, Ozu, Mizoguchi, Kurosawa, Zhang Yimou, Tsai Ming- liang, and Wong Kar-wai. Also offered as COM FT 404 and COM FT 708.
• COM CI 465: Modernity/Shakespeare/Film
  Filmed adaptations of Shakespeare in contrasting "Renaissance" and contemporary styles. How is the past imagined? What are the functions of nostalgia? How is modernity represented? Plays read alongside multiple films as well as theories of performance, reception, and visual pleasure. Also offered as CAS EN 465.
• COM CI 490: Special Topics in Cinema and Media Studies
  Topic offered for Fall 2018: Modern Chinese Lit&Film. A seminar on the major works of modern Chinese literature and cinema from the May Fourth period to the present, with a focus on close reading and textual analysis. Students will study changing patterns of creative expression in modern Chinese cultures and learn to analyze the relations between literary experiments and historical contexts. Also offered as CAS CI 490 A1 and CAS LC 470 A1.
• COM CI 493: Cims Internship
  
• COM CI 494: Cims Internship
  
• COM CI 510: Film Theory
  Survey of the writing and thinking of influential theorists and critics. Includes screenings of films relevant to the theoretical discussions, and questions how films offer their own ideas about the nature of film. Also offered as COM FT 536.
• COM CI 521: American Independent Film
  A survey of cinema from the past three decades originating outside of the studio system. Filmmakers to be examined include Elaine May, Barbara Loder, John Comsavetes, Robert Kramer, Mark Rappaport, and Charles Burnett, among others. Also offered as COM FT 533 and COM FT 723.
• COM CI 522: The Documentary
  Examines the history and evolution of documentary or nonfiction film . Considers such movements and genres as the British Documentary Movement, the "city symphony," cinema verite, ethnographic film, American Direct Cinema, and the essay film. Also offered as COM FT 560.
• COM CI 523: Melodrama in Japanese Film
  Uses Japan as case study to examine melodrama film/literature. Considers how genre helps us to better understand a work of art, how linguistic and cultural differences challenge that understanding, and how melodrama explores gender, cultural identity, morality, and sexuality. Also offered as CAS LJ 451 C1.
• COM CI 529: Gangster Films
  Gangster Films explores the genre's roots, such as its depiction of a violent alternative to the American Dream amid the Great Depression. It also examines the genre's evolution, due to censorship forces, social changes and our desire for vicarious violence.
• COM CI 530: Topics in TV Genre Studies
  Two topics are offered for Fall 2018. Students may take one or both for credit. Section A1: TV Genres and Fandom. TV programs have huge fan bases, whether cult audiences, fanboys and fangirls, or X-Philes and Trekkies. Scholarship on reception theory and fan studies is used to explore multiple television genres and their connections to enduring varieties of fandom. Section B1: Broadcasting Horror. Examines the censorship of horror; horror's relation to sound; the aesthetics of TV horror; horror and genre mixing; the serialization of horror; broadcast vs. cable horror; and the violence of horror.
• COM CI 534: Avant Garde Cinema
  Survey of American and international avant-garde film and experimental media from the 1920s to the present. Explores film, video, and digital video as mediums of unadulterated artistic expression resulting in daring, experimental forms and controversial contents. Also offered as COM FT 554.
• COM CI 537: French New Wave
  Studies the great 1960s movement through the films of Resnais, Malle, Truffaut, Godard, Chabrol, Rohmer, Varda, and others, as well as their writings. Also considers the movement's influence and what has developed out of it. Also offered as COM FT 563.
• COM CI 543: Hitchcock
  Survey/analysis of the films of Alfred Hitchcock, one of the most commercially successful, widely identifiable, and popular of all film directors; also one of those most respected for his psychological and metaphysical profundity, sharp social commentary, and artistic perfection. Also offered as COM FT 535.
• COM CI 545: Stanley Kubrick: The Cinema of Dread
  Intensive study of Kubrick's films, from Fear and Desire to Eyes Wide Shut. Readings of pertinent fiction by Nabokov, Burgess, Thackeray, Stephen King, and Arthur C. Clarke. Topics include: black comedy, visionary experience, utopic misanthropy. Weekly screenings. Also offered as CAS EN 593.
• COM CI 548: Studies in Literature and the Arts: Steven Spielberg
  Intensive study of films by Steven Spielberg and some of the novels he adapted for the screen. Topics include: the blockbuster mentality, childhood sentimentalities, and made-to-order visionary experience. Weekly screenings. Also offered as CAS EN 593.
• COM CI 549: Robert Altman and Contemporaries
  Examines a number of Robert Altman's films as well as other directors', considering a vision of America formed in the cultural turmoil of the '70s and how their films projected their understanding of life, people, and the culture at large. Also offered as COM FT 554.
• COM CI 550: Strange Art: Cassavetes and Bresson
  The course focuses on the creative process, the relation of art and life, the differences between artistic and corporate expression, and the sheer strangeness of the work of two of the greatest geniuses of recent film. Also offered as COM FT 554.
• COM CI 551: Topics in Auteur Studies
  : Topic for Fall 2018: Renoir and Bunuel. Surveys the careers of two of cinema's greatest and most admired directors: Jean Renoir and Luis Bunuel. Both directors had long careers, stretching from the late silent era into the 1970s, working in France, Spain, the U.S., Mexico, and India.