Current Undergraduate Courses

• PROFESSOR: Papagena Robbins
• DESCRIPTION: This introduction to film studies course approaches the study of film from the perspective of its cultural contexts, formal composition, organizational structure, and critical perspectives. Focus will be placed on learning the vocabulary of film forms, the impact of film’s extratextual realities, and how to analyze its components. Films to be watched will be selected from the 125 years of film history, but they will be presented in terms of that day’s topic, not chronologically. The delivery will be mixed synchronous and asynchronous: students will receive PowerPoint “lectures”, and instructions to watch particular films and do targeted readings every week on their own, and we will use our Zoom meetings to discuss films, lectures, and readings as well as other activities. Students must plan to attend Zoom meetings having already completed the asynchronous course work, with questions and notes on all components of the asynchronous material in hand, so that we can spend our collective time together building on these components.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: Asynchronous forum participation; synchronous class participation; a short, focused, film analysis; a midterm exam; and a final exam.
• READINGS: Timothy Corrigan and Patricia White, The Film Experience: An Introduction. Sixth Edition. Boston and New York: Bedford and St. Martin’s, 2021. The textbook is available for purchase at the Carleton Bookstore as a paperback, loose-leaf, and digital edition.

• PROFESSOR: Papagena Robbins
• DESCRIPTION: This introduction to film studies course approaches the study of film from the perspective of its cultural contexts, formal composition, organizational structure, and critical perspectives. Focus will be placed on learning the vocabulary of film forms, the impact of film’s extratextual realities, and how to analyze its components. Films to be watched will be selected from the 125 years of film history, but they will be presented in terms of that day’s topic, not chronologically. The delivery will be mixed synchronous and asynchronous: students will receive PowerPoint “lectures”, and instructions to watch particular films and do targeted readings every week on their own, and we will use our Zoom meetings to discuss films, lectures, and readings as well as other activities. Students must plan to attend Zoom meetings having already completed the asynchronous course work, with questions and notes on all components of the asynchronous material in hand, so that we can spend our collective time together building on these components.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: Asynchronous forum participation; synchronous class participation; a short, focused, film analysis; a midterm exam; and a final exam.
• READINGS: Timothy Corrigan and Patricia White, The Film Experience: An Introduction. Sixth Edition. Boston and New York: Bedford and St. Martin’s, 2021. The textbook is available for purchase at the Carleton Bookstore as a paperback, loose-leaf, and digital edition.

• PROFESSOR: Christopher Rohde
• DESCRIPTION: This course will examine the history, theory and criticism that forms the basis of the academic study of film. Topics covered will include: the historical, technical and artistic development of film images and sounds, interpreting the audiovisual language of cinema, film spectatorship and narrative structure.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: Online discussion period attendance (15%), Midterm exam (35%), Written report (15%), Final exam (35%)
• READINGS: The Film Experience: An Introduction, 6th edition, plus assorted online readings

• PROFESSOR: Papagena Robbins
• DESCRIPTION: Psychological thrillers are a subgenre of suspense thrillers that use plot twists and other narrative devices to expose, disturb, and interrogate the protagonist’s grasp on reality, often provoking fascinating philosophical, cultural, and psychological questions. This course traces the psychological thriller from its origins in European cinema through Hitchcock, to domestic noir, to technological nightmares, and to the more narratively complex “mind game movies”. Our broad objectives are 1. to understand the concept of genre along with its history in film studies, 2. to learn how to define and recognize a particular genre (the suspense thriller) and one of its subgenres (the psychological thriller) and 3. to analyze how individual films inhabit this (sub)genre by embracing their conventions and/or contesting them. This course will be run as a partial seminar, meaning that it will be largely discussion-based with a lecture component, and as such, it will be held synchronously on Zoom, during which time we will discuss the readings and films, participate in student-led panel discussions, watch full films, and engage in small group activities. Students must have working microphones and webcams to participate in this course. Regular preparation for, attendance of, and engagement in classes is expected of all students.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: The evaluation process will include an asynchronous discussion component, one exam and one paper, a group-led discussion/presentation, and several small assignments.
• READINGS: All required readings will be available on the free external annotation site Perusall.

• PROFESSOR: Aubrey Anable
• DESCRIPTION: This course is an introduction to the study of video games as a popular media form, an emerging aesthetic, and a social and cultural practice. Topics include: the history of video games, game form, narrative and meaning, art and design, and theories of play.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: Assessment in this course will follow a “choose your own adventure” format, with a simplified point-based grading scheme. There are three kinds of assignments: Quizzes, Forum Posts, and Short Essays. You will choose which assignments, or which combination of assignments, to complete.
• READINGS: The textbook for this course is: Understanding Video Games: The Essential Introduction Fourth Edition by Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen, Jonas Heide Smith, and Susana Parajes Tosca (Routledge, 2019).

• PROFESSOR: Charles O’Brien
• DESCRIPTION: What is cinema? How does it reflect and condition our social world? How do films tell stories with images and sounds? Such questions are essential to this course, which introduces students to methods of analyzing and interpreting films through vocabulary, concepts, and issues taken up in the discipline of Film Studies. The focus is on three overlapping areas of inquiry: film as art and entertainment, film aesthetics, and film as a cultural and social practice. The course has a historical dimension but does not follow a strict historical chronology in the presentation of films or issues. The coverage progresses through basic concepts relating to cinema as an artistic and communicative form; questions relating to the social and cultural aspects of filmic representation; and different approaches to storytelling in cinema, and how these have inflected specific film genres and styles.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: Participation in an online discussion forum; completion of quizzes on the reading assignments; take-home midterm and final exams.
• READINGS: Timothy Corrigan and Patricia White, The Film Experience (Macmillan), Sixth Edition.

• PROFESSOR: Marc Furstenau
• DESCRIPTION: This course introduces students to the main terms and concepts of Film Studies, considering film as an art and as entertainment, analysing the aesthetics of film form, and studying the cinema as a social practice. We will watch films from the entire history of the cinema, since its invention in about 1895, as examples of film styles and genres from around the world, while addressing the central critical issues in the study of the cinema.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: Students will be asked to write a series of short Formal Analyses of scenes selected from the assigned films and/or complete a series of Exams. The specific combination of assignments is optional. All assignments will test your knowledge of the basic analytical terms and formal and critical concepts from the assigned textbook. Full details on assignments and grading will be provided in the syllabus.
• READINGS: Timothy Corrigan and Patricia White, The Film Experience: An Introduction. Sixth Edition (Boston and New York: Bedford and St. Martin’s, 2021). This is available from the Carleton University Bookstore, either as a paper copy or as an eBook.

• PROFESSOR: Gunnar Iversen
• DESCRIPTION: This seminar course is an introduction to Film Studies. We will look at film as a popular entertainment form, an art and a social phenomenon. In the course we will discuss different ways of interpreting and analyzing films, and the course will also introduce students to important concepts, ideas, issues and the vocabulary in Film Studies. This course is recommended for Film majors
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: Essays
• READINGS: Textbook: Timothy Corrigan and Patricia White, The Film Experience – An Introduction, Sixth Edition (Macmillan).

• PROFESSOR: Marc Furstenau
• DESCRIPTION: The objective of this course is to introduce students to the main theories and methods of analysis that have been developed for the study of film. As we trace the history of film theory, we will consider a wide range of significant examples of film analysis and interpretation, as well as broader accounts of the cinema as a medium. We will view films chosen from the history of the cinema, representing various genres, styles, and national contexts.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: Reading Reports, Essay, Exams
• READINGS: Textbook: Marc Furstenau, ed. The Film Theory Reader: Debates and Arguments (New York: Routledge, 2010). Additional readings: available through the on-line reserve system of the Carleton University library (ARES).

• PROFESSOR: Marc Furstenau
• DESCRIPTION: The objective of this course is to further explore the main theories and methods of analysis that have been developed for the study of film. Building on FILM 2001, students will explore specific theories of film in more depth. We will consider some of the more significant theoretical debates in the history of film theory, and more recent film and media theory. We will analyse a range of significant films, in relation to the specific theoretical issues we will be considering. We will view films chosen from throughout the history of the cinema, representing various genres, styles, and national contexts.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: Reading Reports, Essay and/or Take-Home Exam
• READINGS: The main texts for this course are Marc Furstenau, ed. The Film Theory Reader: Debates and Arguments (New York: Routledge, 2010), and Irving Singer, Reality Transformed: Film as Meaning and Technique (MIT Press, 2001), which will be available at Carleton University Bookstore. Additional readings will be available through the on-line reserve system of the Carleton University library (ARES).

• PROFESSOR: Bryce Sage
• DESCRIPTION: This lecture-based course focuses on organization of the production, distribution and exhibition practices of various film and television industries. The film will involve screenings of contemporary films with discussion of behind-the-scenes practices and film-making challenges. Topics discussed will include the stages of production, locations and casting, budgets, distribution and the writers room in discussion of the television industry.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBA
• READINGS: TBA

• PROFESSOR: Papagena Robbins
• DESCRIPTION: This survey course focuses on the major movements and methods that mark the progression of non-fiction film from proto-cinema to the present. Topics to be addressed: early motion studies, actualities, ethnography, city symphonies, direct cinema/cinema verité, compilation film, activist film, autobiographical film, essay film, and more. Students will learn to analyze documentary films in terms of their strategies of representation, their ethics, their theoretical links, and their cultural and historical contexts.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBA. Attendance of at least three-quarters of the classes is mandatory.
• READINGS: All required readings will be made available on the free external annotation site Perusall.

• PROFESSOR: Christopher Rohde
• DESCRIPTION: This course is a survey of historical and contemporary trends in experimental film and video in Canada, with an emphasis on the development of artistic movements and sub-genres, such as animation, performance, documentary, travelogue, narrative, and autobiography. Topics covered will also include: how media artists adapt to and innovate with new technologies, how their work reflects and responds to events happening in the cultural, social and political spheres, and the role of experimental media in feminist, LGBTQ+, diasporic and transcultural modes of expression.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: Attendance 10%, Midterm exam 35%, Short essay 20%, Final exam 35%
• READINGS: Online readings

• PROFESSOR: Kester Dyer
• DESCRIPTION: This course introduces students to cinema and media by Indigenous directors working in Turtle Island and globally. Drawing on Indigenous scholarship, it reflects on how Indigenous filmmakers have countered dominant misrepresentations, assumptions, and ideologies, and how their work continues to challenge colonialism in various forms and contexts. The course addresses prevalent themes and socio-political concerns, important innovations in genre, key filmmakers, stylistic and methodological approaches, and theoretical concepts that have marked the vibrant expansion of Indigenous cinema and media.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBA.
• READINGS: All readings will be supplied free of charge and made available in Brightspace.

• PROFESSOR: Tom McSorley
• DESCRIPTION: Largely unfamiliar to most Canadians, the Canadian cinema is famously described by film scholar Peter Harcourt as “the invisible cinema: a cinema that exists but is not seen.” This course is intended to illuminate the historical, cultural, and critical outlines of filmmaking in this country. More than simply making apparent the ‘invisible,’ however, the course will also investigate the backgrounds and contexts of film production in Canada from the silent era right up to the 21st century.We will identify and explore the evolution of two major streams of film practice in Canada: documentary and experimental. In addition, the course will examine the troubled, tentative evolution of feature fiction filmmaking in both English, French, and Indigenous-speaking Canada. Our investigations will also explore various recurring themes in our multifaceted, multicultural national cinema: technology, alienation, marginality, identity, Indigeneity, memory, ethnicity, gender, and history.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBA
• READINGS: TBA

• PROFESSOR: Tom McSorley
• DESCRIPTION: This course offers a detailed and thorough examination of the major works of two directors: Spain’s Luis Buñuel (1900-1983) and Canada’s Atom Egoyan (b.1960). Two of the most acclaimed and controversial film artists in cinema, Buñuel and Egoyan offer skeptical, often ferociously critical investigations of the ideological and moral underpinnings and assumptions of the prevailing social and political orders of their respective eras and cultures. Following their careers chronologically, we will investigate the principal thematic preoccupations, stylistic strategies, and broader cultural contexts of their work, examining as well as the various conditions of production in which that work was made.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBA
• READINGS: TBA

• PROFESSOR: Papagena W Robbins
• DESCRIPTION: Biopics are fictionalized depictions of the life of a historical person—artists, athletes, politicians, activists, scientists, thinkers, and ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. They often incorporate strategies from other genres that aim to help the popular imagination reflect upon what makes life valuable and meaningful. They may also carry political implications or simply try to entertain. In this course, we will consider a wide range of biopics from global film history to discover what conventions, narratives, iconographies, characters, settings, and performances biopics may have in common. Our broad objectives are 1. to understand the concept of genre along with its history in film studies, 2. to learn how to define and recognize a particular genre or subgenre, and 3. to analyze how individual films deal with genres by embracing their conventions and/or contesting them. This course will be run as a partial seminar, meaning that it will strive to be primarily discussion-based with minimal lecturing.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: Small assignments (10%), forum discussion participation (10%), Perusall participation (10%), a paper (20%), a group-led discussion/presentation (20%), and a final (30%). Attendance of at least three-quarters of the classes is mandatory.
• READINGS: All course readings will be provided electronically on Perusall at no cost to students.

• PROFESSOR: LauraHorak
• DESCRIPTION: In this course, we will learn about the Romantic Comedy as a film genre and as a lens into the workings of gender, sexuality, and society in North American and other cultures. The course will explore changing understandings of love and the conventions and expectations of the romantic comedy genre in different times and places. We will also investigate romantic comedies as a form of gender pedagogy, a way of thinking about class, and a part of the transnational wedding-industrial complex. We will consider how tropes operate in this genre and compare different versions of the “friends to lovers” trope. We will watch films made in the US, China, South Africa, and India, from the silent era to the present day.Students are not required to purchase textbooks or other learning materials for this course.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION:By the end of this term, students will be able to:
  • Give a nuanced account of gender and sexuality that takes into account the culturally specific nature of love and relationships.
  • Notice the narrative and formal elements of an audiovisual text (e.g. mise-en-scene, editing, cinematography, and sound) and use these elements to sustain an argument about a media text in conversation with existing scholarship.
  • Analyze the core elements of the Romantic Comedy genre.
  • Bring scholarship on Romantic Comedies into conversation with example films from the genre.
• READINGS: TBA
• Cross-Listed With: WGST 2812

• PROFESSOR: Gunnar Iversen
• DESCRIPTION: The objective of this course is to provide a historical survey of the evolution of cinema around the globe, beginning with the invention of the medium in the late 19th century until 1945. As the title of the course suggests, we will study the most significant film movements from around the world in an effort to explore the development of cinematic cultures from both a national as well as a transnational perspective. As many have argued, world cinema must be examined as a set of complex and overlapping circulatory practices that often remain grounded within a national context while also exceeding the nation state as a result of the global nature of film production, distribution and exhibition. We will pay careful attention the development of film form and style in this course as it pertains to a variety of film movements and categorizations such as the ‘cinema of attractions’, Soviet Montage, German Expressionism, French Poetic Realism and Japanese studio filmmaking. We will also study the most significant technological shifts of this historical period, including the coming of sound and colour
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: Essays
• READINGS: Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell, Film History: An Introduction, Fifth Edition. (Macmillan). Additional readings will be available on Brightspace
• Cross-listed with: ENGL2600A

• PROFESSOR: Gunnar Iversen
• DESCRIPTION: In this course, we will study some of the most salient developments in the history of world cinema from 1945 to the present day. More specifically, we will examine cinematic practices from around the world as a set of complex and overlapping circulatory practices that often remain grounded within a national context while also exceeding the nation state as a result of the global nature of film production, distribution and exhibition. As such, we will consider a number of the most influential film movements of the time period, including Italian neo-realism, the French New Wave, postcolonial cinema, and ‘slow cinema’, among others. We will also explore global accounts of popular usages of narration and style, such as ‘network narratives’ and ‘intensified continuity’ as well as some of the most significant technological innovations of the era, including the rise of lightweight film technology in the post-war period and the more recent dawn of digital cinema
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: Essays
• READINGS: Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell, Film History: An Introduction, Fifth Edition. (Macmillan). Additional readings will be available on Brightspace

• PROFESSOR: Bryce Sage
• DESCRIPTION: This is a workshop-based introduction to the basic principles of filmmaking that focuses on narrative storytelling techniques. Students will learn basic skills in telling and producing film stories, from concept to finished project. This includes pitching short films, writing narrative scripts, cinematography, recording sound as well as post-production and editing. Students will have the opportunity to screen and present their projects in class, which will involve peer review.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: Short Film Pitch/Proposal (15%), 1 Minute Film Trailer (15%), Short Film Script (25%), 5-Minute Short Film (25%), Participation and Peer Review (20%)
• READINGS: No Required Text Book, but recommended:
  Writing Short Films, 2nd Edition by Linda J. Cowgill
  The Filmmaker’s Handbook by Steven Ascher

• PROFESSOR: Aubrey Anable
• DESCRIPTION: This course is an introduction to the study of video games as a popular media form, an emerging aesthetic, and a social and cultural practice. Topics include: the history of video games, game form, narrative and meaning, art and design, and theories of play.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBA
• READINGS: Required Textbook: Understanding Video Games: The Essential Introduction, Fourth Edition by Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen, Jonas Heide Smith, and Susana Parajes Tosca (Routledge, 2019).

• PROFESSOR: Papagena Robbins
• DESCRIPTION: This course will look at questions of documentary practice through documentary manifestos written throughout film history. Manifestos have been written by filmmakers, film scholars, film festival curators, archivists, and other members of film communities from all corners of the globe, therefore, they represent a wide range of perspectives and present many different kinds of problems and resolutions around documentary film practices. This course will be run as a partial seminar, requiring students to come prepared to discuss the week’s readings and screenings. Each week we will confront a different documentary film paradigm, untangling the theoretical, ethical, technological, social, political, and economic issues at its centre to understand how problems of documentary practice have been conceived, critiqued, and resolved in different eras and social/cultural environments. We will learn to analyze the manifestos as primary texts that expose historically and culturally specific views on documentary film representational strategies. We will also read secondary texts on issues raised in the manifestos or in the films paired with the manifesto.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBA. Attendance of at least three-quarters of the classes is mandatory.
• READINGS: All required readings will be made available on the free external annotation site Perusall.

• PROFESSOR: Ryan Conrad
• DESCRIPTION: This course exposes students to a wide variety of AIDS film and video from European and American directors. The selection of films accompanying this course varies not just in content, but form, genre and each raises unique questions about desire, the body, trauma, loss, and survival. This selection of film and video ranges from the nearly forgotten no-budget/low-budget activist documentary videos of the early 1980s to sleek multi-million dollar award winning Hollywood features. It is necessary to focus on this diverse range of AIDS films and videos from the beginning of the epidemic through present day in order to learn how formal strategies, aesthetic choices, intended audiences, affective structures, and visual representations of people living with AIDS have changed along with the epidemic over the last forty years of film and video production. Critically engaging with this corpus illuminates how contemporary societies have, and continue to witness, frame, and make meaning of the ongoing epidemic through film and video.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: • ATTENDANCE / PARTICIPATION (15%)
  • IN CLASS MIDTERM (20%)
  • FILM REVIEW (15%)
  • RESEARCH PROPOSAL (20%)
  • RESEARCH PAPER or RESEARCH CREATION IN LIEU OF RESEARCH PAPER (25%)
  • SUGGESTED SYLLABUS REVISION (5%)
• READINGS: Online Readings

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• METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBA
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• PROFESSOR: Matthew Poulter
• DESCRIPTION: Fandoms and Fan Cultures have become integral to popular culture itself. Whether it’s fans petitioning studios to bring their favourite movies and television shows back, making sure their artist of choice hits the top of the charts through repeated listens, or encouraging companies to bring overseas phenomenon to their own country, the efforts of fans have shaped the world of mass media.Students in this course will study the history of fandoms and from where they originate, examine the mentality that goes into being a fan, and get a glimpse of the ways in which fandom has shaped our current world, for better and for worse.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBA
• READINGS: Textbook – Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide by Henry Jenkins (2008) (Available for free digitally via the Carleton Library)

• PROFESSOR: Aboubakar Sanogo
• DESCRIPTION: There has seldom been a better time to study African cinema. Indeed, cinema and media practices across the continent have been experiencing a tremendous growth and expansion in recent years. African films are winning major awards at major film festivals (Cannes, Berlinale, Venice, Toronto, FESPACO, etc.). Nollywood is now a ubiquitous presence around the world, securing 3rd place on Netflix global charts with over 20 million views across the world. The streamer is actively courting African filmmakers across the continent and across linguistic lines, creating its “Made in Africa Collection” with the tagline “Made in Africa, Streaming to the World.” The Criterion Collection has been releasing restored classics of African cinema through its partnership with Martin Scorsese’s The Film Foundation and the African Film Heritage Project. African banks and African States are increasingly investing seriously in film and media. According to a recent UNESCO report, the African film industry is worth at least 5 billion dollars. In short, there is something akin to a profound reconfiguration and renaissance in African cinema in the present moment.
  The project of this course is to seek to understand and explain these contemporary transformations by introducing students to African cinema through its history, some of its major and emerging filmmakers, its film movements, films and institutions, its political economy, its ecology, its key debates and challenges as well as its potential futures.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBA.
• READINGS: TBA
• Cross-listed with: AFRI 3609

• PROFESSOR: Matthew Poulter
• DESCRIPTION: Japanese Animation, or Anime, has been a fascinating cultural phenomenon in the West for decades; eminently visible, and yet often misunderstood or outright disregarded by non-fans. Despite this, it has persisted through a dedicated fanbase that keeps the medium alive in territories outside of Japan thanks to sales, community efforts such as conventions and cosplay, and a persistent interest in all things Japanese.Students will explore the history of the medium of anime, examine genres and styles unique to the medium, and examine why, thanks to fan efforts, anime is bigger than ever.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: Participation (5%), Attendance (10%), Short Reading Response (20%), Midterm (25%), Final Project Proposal (10%), Final Project (30%)
• READINGS: Textbook: Anime: From Akira to Howl’s Moving Castle – Updated Edition by Susan J. Napier (2005).

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• PROFESSOR: Paul Jasen
• DESCRIPTION: This course is designed for emerging arts (and design) professionals in any field. Our focus is on developing fundamental skills in digital media production that will be of use to students planning careers in the arts sector or related industries. Through lessons, case studies, workshopping and collaborative production sessions, students will gain experience in the following areas: website design and development, image editing, audio recording and podcasting, digital photography, streaming video, designing for print, social media integration and writing for the web. Students will leave this course having developed a multi-faceted portfolio project related to their field, as well as confidence and demonstrated proficiency using current media production tools and platforms.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: In-class workshopping activities; small, skills-building assignments; production of a multi-part media project on a topic related to your field or creative practice.
• READINGS AND TECHNOLOGY: TBA
• CROSS-LISTING: This course is cross-listed as MUSI 3201 and ARTH 3809D.

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• PROFESSOR: Kester Dyer
• DESCRIPTION: In this course, students will learn about a range of different methodological approaches in film studies. They will critically examine individual methods, identify their particular advantages and limitations, and consider how the deployment of different methods yields different research outcomes. Students will revisit close formal analysis as a way of reading and writing about film and reflect on the possible combination of complementary entry points into a subject. Other approaches discussed in this course include auteurism, historical analysis, exhibition and reception, socio-politically-driven readings, ideology critique, industry-based analyses, as well as critical standpoints focussed on race, gender, and decoloniality. Throughout the course, students will learn to deploy various methods in their own work and hone their skills in scholarly research, communication, and writing about film.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBA
• READINGS: All readings will be provided free of charge via Brightspace.

• PROFESSOR: Laura Horak
• DESCRIPTION: This course explores the widely varied and inventive world of film and media created by trans, Two Spirit, nonbinary, intersex, and gender-nonconforming people in the United States and Canada. How have trans people used audiovisual media to create new forms of community, identity, and desire? How have Black trans and Indigenous Two-Spirit people used film to craft ways to collectively survive colonialism, racial capitalism, and the prison industrial complex? What challenges do audiovisual media pose to trans struggles for self-determination and liberation?This class will analyze a variety of trans-made feature films, shorts, television shows, YouTube videos, and web series that span modes and genres, including drama, sci-fi, comedy, documentary, and experimental film. We will also compare trans-made media to mainstream representations of trans people. Students will have the opportunity to conduct close analyses of trans-made audiovisual media informed by the latest scholarship in the burgeoning field of Transgender Studies
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: Tentative: Attendance (20%), Screening responses (20%), Presentation (20%), Final essay (40%)
• READINGS: Online Readings
• CROSS-LISTED WITH: FILM 5506F

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• PROFESSOR: Kester Dyer
• DESCRIPTION: This course examines the history of debates and more recent discursive tendencies that have characterized the scholarly assessment of cinema in Canada. It looks at constructions of nationhood that have taken place through debates on what Canadian cinema is and what it should be, developments in canon formation, the influence of key institutions such as the NFB, innovative programs like Challenge for Change/Société nouvelle, notable film movements, predominant genres, and policies impacting the Canadian film industry. Considering influential approaches like auteurism, feminism, and queer theory, and emphasizing attempts to move beyond the “two founding cultures” binary in Canadian film studies, the course stresses local contexts as well as the diversity of film cultures across Canada, notably the dynamism of Indigenous and diasporic filmmaking in this context. Overall, the course adopts a decolonial perspective that interrogates the extent to which approaches to Canadian film studies depart from Eurocentric paradigms.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBA
• READINGS: All readings will be provided free of charge via Brightspace.

• PROFESSOR: Aboubakar Sanogo
• DESCRIPTION: Possibly more than studios, producers and film artists, film festivals are increasingly seen as the most important institutions through which debates, ideas and practices around what counts as cinema, how cinema is circulated, accessed, seen and discussed, get negotiated. Indeed, it has been argued that film festivals have become something akin to a “government of the cinema” as such.This course will examine and interrogate the veracity of such statements by exploring the vibrant sub-field within film studies known as film festival studies, which takes the film festival as its object of inquiry. We will thoroughly interrogate this object, its place and status, its formative and transformative role in the discourses, institutions, production, exhibition and circulation practices as well ecologies and economies of world cinema. Among other things, we will perform close readings of film festival theory, study the politics and economics of film festivals, as well as analyze curatorial, programming and award policies of various festivals through weekly case studies of such events as Cannes, Berlin, Venice, TIFF, Sundance, FESPACO, Journées Cinématographiques de Carthage, Busan, etc.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBA
• READINGS: TBA

• PROFESSOR: Malini Guha
• DESCRIPTION: This fourth year seminar serves as an introduction to the topic of cinema and mobility, with the aim to expose students to a variety of scholarly methods by which one can conceptualize the relationship between film and movement in addition to exposing students to a range of films from across the globe. Topics to be examined in the course include: representations of mobile perception; considerations of journey narratives in relationship to broader notions of tourism and to the production of alternative forms of knowledge; motifs of mobility, including the significance of the road, landscapes, vehicles of travel, and other visual as well as auditory motifs; figures that one finds across some of these films including the traveler or tourist, the migrant, and the flâneuse; films on the subject of social movements; protest cinema.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBA
• READINGS: Online Readings

• PROFESSOR: TBD
• DESCRIPTION: In rare cases, students may design a course of reading that they complete independently, with the supervision of a faculty member. A final essay is the usual assignment.In order to qualify for an independent study, students must have a CGPA of 10.00 or higher in Film Studies and fourth-year standing. To apply, students must meet with their proposed supervisor well in advance of the start of term and agree on a topic. The student must then write a proposal that includes: a description of the topic including key research questions, a list of proposed readings and films, a description of all assignments with deadlines, and the name of the proposed supervisor.The proposal must be sent to the Undergraduate Supervisor at least 2 weeks before the start of term so that it can be reviewed and approved by the Program Committee. Students will not be permitted to register for this course until their proposal is approved.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBD
• READINGS: TBD

• PROFESSOR: TBD
• DESCRIPTION: In rare cases, students may design a course of reading that they complete independently, with the supervision of a faculty member. A final essay is the usual assignment.In order to qualify for an independent study, students must have a CGPA of 10.00 or higher in Film Studies and fourth-year standing. To apply, students must meet with their proposed supervisor well in advance of the start of term and agree on a topic. The student must then write a proposal that includes: a description of the topic including key research questions, a list of proposed readings and films, a description of all assignments with deadlines, and the name of the proposed supervisor.The proposal must be sent to the Undergraduate Supervisor at least 2 weeks before the start of term so that it can be reviewed and approved by the Program Committee. Students will not be permitted to register for this course until their proposal is approved.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBD
• READINGS: TBD