Archived: 2021-2022 Undergraduate Course Listings

• PROFESSOR: Marc Furstenau
• DESCRIPTION: This course introduces students to the main terms, concepts, and issues of Film Studies, considering film as an art and as entertainment; analysing the aesthetics of film form; and studying film as a social practice. While there is a historical dimension to the course, we do not follow a strictly historical chronology in the presentation of films or issues.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: There are three kinds of assignments in this course: Formal Analyses (20% each), Exams (20% each), and an Essay (40%). You choose which assignments, or which combination of assignments, to complete.
• READINGS: The textbook for this course is: Timothy Corrigan and Patricia White, The Film Experience: An Introduction. Sixth Edition. Boston and New York: Bedford and St. Martin’s, 2021.

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• PROFESSOR: Marc Furstenau
• DESCRIPTION: This course introduces students to the main terms, concepts, and issues of Film Studies, considering film as an art and as entertainment; analysing the aesthetics of film form; and studying film as a social practice. While there is a historical dimension to the course, we do not follow a strictly historical chronology in the presentation of films or issues.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: There are three kinds of assignments in this course: Formal Analyses (20% each), Exams (20% each), and an Essay (40%). You choose which assignments, or which combination of assignments, to complete.
• READINGS: The textbook for this course is: Timothy Corrigan and Patricia White, The Film Experience: An Introduction. Sixth Edition. Boston and New York: Bedford and St. Martin’s, 2021.

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• 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 film styles.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: Online discussion participation (10%), Quiz (20%), Essay (30%), Final Exam (40%)
• READINGS: The Film Experience: An Introduction (6th edition) by Timothy Corrigan and Patricia White

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• 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 film styles.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: Attendance (10%), Quiz (20%), Essay (40%), Final Exam (30%)
• READINGS: The Film Experience: An Introduction (6th edition) by Timothy Corrigan and Patricia White

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• 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 film styles.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: Attendance (10%), Quiz (20%), Essay (40%), Final Exam (30%)
• READINGS: The Film Experience: An Introduction (6th edition) by Timothy Corrigan and Patricia White

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• PROFESSOR: Tom McSorley
• DESCRIPTION: Following his entire career chronologically, we will investigate the principal thematic preoccupations, stylistic strategies, and broader cultural contexts of Kubrick’s work, while examining the various conditions of production in which that work was made. Theoretical investigations of authorship will be undertaken, but they will not determine our approach to the films. Questions of representation, genre, gender, psychology, technology, alienation, desire, and myth will be raised, as all of Kubrick’s work offers complex and multi-faceted explorations of these ideas.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: Film Analysis (20%); Essay (50%); Exam (30%)
• READINGS: TBA

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• PROFESSOR: Papagena Robbins
• DESCRIPTION: This course traces the psychological thriller from its origins in German Expressionism through Hitchcock, to the Italian “Giallo,” to more recent “mind game movies,” such as Memento. Psychological thrillers are a subgenre of suspense/thrillers that use plot twists and other narrative devices to expose and question the protagonist’s grasp on reality. They often incorporate generic strategies from mystery, drama, and horror. 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 and 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 seminar, meaning that it will be primarily discussion-based rather than lecture-based, and as such, it will have a synchronous live-stream meeting component during which time we will discuss the readings and films; have group presentations; watch full films; and even have small group activities. Students will need to have working microphones and webcams to fully participate in this course.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: The evaluation process will include an asynchronous discussion component, two mid-length papers, a group-led discussion/presentation, and several small assignments.
• READINGS: All course readings will be provided.

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• PROFESSOR: Charles O’Brien
• DESCRIPTION: This course introduces students to various ways of analyzing and interpreting films, with a focus on applying vocabulary, concepts, and issues taken up in Film Studies. The focus is on three overlapping areas of inquiry: film as art, as entertainment, and as a social phenomenon.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: Participation in an online discussion forum; completion of quizzes on the reading assignments; and two take-home exams.
• READINGS: Timothy Corrigan and Patricia White, The Film Experience (Macmillan), Sixth Edition.

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• PROFESSOR: Marc Furstenau
• DESCRIPTION: This course introduces students to the main terms, concepts, and issues of Film Studies, considering film as an art and as entertainment; analysing the aesthetics of film form; and studying film as a social practice. While there is a historical dimension to the course, with films chosen from the entire history of the cinema, since 1895, we do not follow a strictly historical chronology in the presentation of films or issues.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: Students will be asked to write a series of short Formal Analyses of scenes selected from the assigned films, and/or an Essay on a film of their choice, and/or Exams testing knowledge of formal concepts. The specific combination of assignments is optional. All assignments will test your knowledge of information and 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. Fifth Edition (Boston and New York: Bedford and St. Martin’s, 2018). This is available from the Carleton University Bookstore, either as a paper copy or as an eBook.

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• PROFESSOR: Aboubakar Sanogo
• DESCRIPTION: This course will explore the most important ways in which the cinema has been thought about, discussed, analyzed, studied, written about and transmitted. It will examine the multiple ways in which the cinematic world is constructed and experienced as an art form and as a repository, a conveyor as well as a site of experimentation of social, cultural and political imaginaries. While looking at the ways in which the cinema creates meaning through its own language (mise en scene, cinematography, editing, sound, etc.) we will also investigate the numerous ways in which it has been transformed and dispersed in recent years since the advent of the digital (online platforms, VOD, interactivity, etc.), and how it has, in the process, contributed in its own unique way, to reshaping the world and our relationship to it.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: Screening reports; discussion groups; midterm; final exam (tentative)
• READINGS: TBA

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• 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 and as an art form. 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 Exams
• READINGS: The main text for this course is Marc Furstenau, ed. The Film Theory Reader: Debates and Arguments (New York: Routledge, 2010), 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).

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• 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).

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• PROFESSOR: Katherine Morrow
• DESCRIPTION: This course will provide a broad, historical overview of the evolution of documentary form and explore how documetary films present subjects and address viewers. We will begin with conventional definitions of the form, and explore the strategies employed by civically-minded documentary filmmakers to educate viewers and highlight social issues. Then we will focus on issues with and challenges to these conventional approaches: ethnographic misrepresentations, the ethics of intervention, and the epistemological limits of direct representation. Finally, we will look at inventive uses of the form to capture what cannot, or should not, be shown.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: (tentative) Response papers, midterm exam, and final exam
• READINGS: Course readings will be available online.

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• PROFESSOR: Kester Dyer
• DESCRIPTION: This course introduces students to cinema and media by Indigenous directors working in Canada 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: TBA

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• 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 and French-speaking Canada. Our investigations will also explore various recurring themes in our national cinema: technology, alienation, marginality, identity, memory, ethnicity, history, and interiority.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: Mid-term test (20%); Essay (40%); Exam (40%)
• READINGS: TBA

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• PROFESSOR: Tom McSorley
• DESCRIPTION: Following his entire career chronologically, we will investigate the principal thematic preoccupations, stylistic strategies, and broader cultural contexts of Kubrick’s work, while examining the various conditions of production in which that work was made. Theoretical investigations of authorship will be undertaken, but they will not determine our approach to the films. Questions of representation, genre, gender, psychology, technology, alienation, desire, and myth will be raised, as all of Kubrick’s work offers complex and multi-faceted explorations of these ideas.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: Film Analysis (20%); Essay (50%); Exam (30%)
• READINGS: TBA

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• PROFESSOR: Malini Guha
• DESCRIPTION: This course is inspired by an open letter written by a number of Carleton students in 2020, requesting a mandatory anti-racism course be offered at the university. In response to this call, I asked myself how I would teach an ‘anti-racism’ course that took cinema and moving image art as its central focus and one that, at present, would be an elective rather than mandatory course? I decided to frame the course around writer and activist so mayer’s concept of “representational justice’”. What constitutes “representational justice” in a film, media and moving image art context? We will adopt a multi-pronged approach to our discussions and debates around this question. We will engage with aesthetic matters pertaining to style, modes of representation and methods of making while we simultaneously consider the broader political movements to which the works studied in the course refer and/or with which they are engaged. These include Indigenous- led ‘land back’ and language movements, those pertaining to the abolition of prison and policing as well as anti-racism more broadly, to name a few. We will study the work of filmmakers and collectives, including (but not limited to) Garrett Bradley, Thirza Cuthand, Cauleen Smith, Sky Hopinka, Steve McQueen, Isuma Arts Collective, Elle-Máijá Apiniskim Tailfeathers, Brett Story and Kathleen Collins. I adopt a multi-disciplinary approach to the subject of representational justice and as such, there are no prerequisites for this course.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBA
• READINGS: TBA

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• PROFESSOR: Gunnar Iversen
• DESCRIPTION: The course offers an introduction to science fiction cinema. We will explore the definitions of the genre and central themes and issues, such as representations of technology, surveillance, biopolitics, race and gender. We will also discuss the history of science fiction cinema as a genre from the silent period to today
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: Essays
• READINGS: All readings will be available on ARES or on Brightspace

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• PROFESSOR: Papagena 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 seminar, meaning that it will be primarily discussion-based rather than lecture-based.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: Forum discussion/Perusall participation, a mid-length paper, a group-led discussion/presentation, and a final paper.
• READINGS: All course readings will be provided electronically at no cost to students.

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• PROFESSOR: Charles O’Brien
• DESCRIPTION: Offering a survey of the history of the cinema that begins in the late 19th century and continues until World War II, FILM 2606A covers major developments in the history of film from around the world. Through an examination of canonical art films and movements as well as currents in popular cinema, the course examines world cinema relative to a variety of historical events, contexts, and movements.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: Participation in an online discussion forum; completion of quizzes on the reading assignments; and two take-home exams.
• READINGS: Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell, Film History (Macmillan), Fourth Edition.

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• 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). Additional readings will be available on Brightspace

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• PROFESSOR: Laura Taler
• DESCRIPTION: This course is focused on a variety of hands-on projects that will lead students towards a better understanding of the considerations required in the creative process of filmmaking. Students will gain basic skills in shooting images, recording sound, and editing their footage. Students will screen and present their projects in class.  The discussion of these projects is an essential aspect of the course.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: A variety of hands-on creation assignments.
• READINGS: TBA

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• 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 four kinds of assignments: Quizzes, Reading Summaries, Discussions, 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).

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• 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. 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. We will also read secondary texts on issues raised in the manifestos or in the films paired with the manifesto. This course will be run as seminar in which students will have the maximum amount of time possible during class to discuss ideas. Thus, attendance, participation, and keeping up with the readings will be crucial to student success.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: Forum discussion/Perusall participation, three short response papers, group presentations, and a final paper.
• READINGS: All course readings will be provided electronically at no cost to students.

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• PROFESSOR: Kester Dyer
• DESCRIPTION: This course focusses on the intersection of genre and national cinema in the Canadian context. As such, it deploys genre as a lens through which to explore different cultural and political experiences of Canada. In so doing, the course initiates students to works by filmmakers of different backgrounds who have either privileged genre filmmaking or challenged its paradigms. The course is divided into sections that successively examine genres emphasizing fear, discomfort and anxiety; pleasure, laughter, and entertainment; and geographical space and historical time. Considering both important historical developments and specific socio-political contexts, the course thus seeks, via dominant and marginalized perspectives, to reflect on a range of work that engages with and critiques existing models determined by both genre and nation.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBA
• READINGS: TBA

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• PROFESSOR: Golam Rabbani
• DESCRIPTION: This course will explore the film music of the world while focusing on the issues of colonialism, decolonization, diversity, race, gender and sexuality, and nationalism. We will study the film music of Hollywood, Bollywood, and African and East Asian films. Course participants will begin the course learning about film music’s theoretical and stylistic issues and then focus on different social and identity issues expressed through the film music of different continents. Along with weekly readings, watching films, and identifying film music themes, this course will ask participants to be actively involved in classes and activities based on Brightspace. Lectures will primarily focus on examples of film music. Any second-year standing student can enroll in this course. Background in film or music is not required.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: The course will assesses participants’ critical and theoretical thinking through the weekly discussion response, midterm and final paper, presentations, and in class activities.
• READINGS: All readings will be available on ARES and Brightspace. There is no specific course-text for this course.

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• PROFESSOR: Katherine Morrow
• DESCRIPTION: What is Chinese cinema? The course offers survey of filmmaking in the “three Chinas,” namely Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the People’s Republic of China, in order to think about how film has served as a political tool and a form of artistic expression in varying degrees since the mid-20^th century. We will consider films from the Maoist era alongside Hong Kong genre films and examples of Taiwanese “healthy realism.” We will then look at 1980s/1990s new wave cinemas from each location and conclude with contemporary coproductions that blur boundaries and cross borders. Lectures and readings will familiarize students with the films’ historical context and engage with theories of film aesthetics and social meaning. Students will come away with an understanding of the diverse constructions of “Chineseness” across Chinese film history, and be able to compare films’ aesthetic and rhetorical techniques, with an understanding of the historical and cultural context in which they emerged.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: (tentative) Response papers, close analysis essay, final research paper
• READINGS: Course readings will be available online.

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• 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 growth and expansion in recent years. African films are winning major awards at major film festivals. Nollywood is a ubiquitous presence around the world. Netflix 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. There is something akin to 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, film movements, films and institutions, its key debates and challenges as well as its potential futures.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: In-class presentation, term paper, take home exam (Tentative)
• READINGS: TBA

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• PROFESSOR: Tom McSorley
• DESCRIPTION: Film programming is everywhere. From the multiplex movie chains, to the ByTowne Cinema and Mayfair Theatre ‘repertory’ cinemas, to institutions like the Ottawa Film Society and the Canadian Film Institute, to hundreds of film festivals in Ottawa, across Canada and abroad, to online streaming platforms like Netflix, curatorial decisions are being made that will affect what is seen and, equally important, what is not seen. Just what is this cultural practice called film programming? What is its role in contemporary culture, and in what forms does it appear? Who decides what gets shown in the many public presentation contexts of cinematheques, galleries, museums, and film festivals? And, more immediate to the broad intentions of this course, how does it work? How does one actually apply one’s knowledge of and passion for cinema in these various venues? These and many other questions will be discussed and analyzed in this course. While we will certainly incorporate theoretical discussions of taste and critical practice, this workshop-style online course is intended to give students practical experience in four specific areas of film programming: themed film series, retrospectives, national/world cinema programming, and film festivals. Using the instructor’s sample programming as a guide, you will develop a curatorial design for film programmes in each of the three areas (themed, retrospective, national/world cinema); this will include film selection and preparation of program notes. The final section of the course work will be your conceptualization, design, and proposed programming of a film festival, as well as proposed strategies for promotion and public outreach.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: Weekly short writing assigments (30%); four film program proposals (70%)
• READINGS: TBA

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• PROFESSOR: Phillipe Bédard
• DESCRIPTION: This course introduces various approaches to the study of the techniques and technologies of cinema. Topics will include digital cinema, virtual reality, motion capture, special effects, virtual production and more. The goal of this course is to appreciate and evaluate the impact of select technological developments on the “identity of cinema,” however we might choose to define it.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: Evaluations include two at-home exams based on short essay questions, as well as a final paper.
• READINGS: All readings will be provided.
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• PROFESSOR: Gunnar Iversen
• DESCRIPTION: In this course, we will explore a vibrant new field of study in Film and Media Studies and consider the ways in which sound affects our lives and our perception of the world as well as audiovisual media. In this class, we will discuss questions about sound in film and television. What is sound and in what ways does it affect us? What is the relationship between sound and image in audiovisual media? How is sound used to tell stories in fiction films and drama series, and how is sound used to argue about the world in documentaries and factual television? How has technology shaped the representation of sound in film and television? In what ways do sound affect our experience of actual or fictional worlds, characters and narratives? In recent years, sound studies has emerged as a vital area of study and practice at the crossroads of the humanities and sciences, and some even talk about a ”sonic turn” or a ”sonic boom”. However, most studies of audiovisual media still put the emphasis on visual aspects, and only briefly discuss sound in itself, and the interplay between sound and image is not discussed to the extent it should. Together, in this course we will discuss the questions about sound and image, and explore sound as a component of audiovisual media, as a domain of artistic expression, and as a component of perception and cognition crucial to human communication.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: Essays
• READINGS: All readings will be available on ARES or on Brightspace
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• PROFESSOR: Katherine Morrow
• DESCRIPTION: Underground…Banned in China…Independent, these terms, among others, have been used to describe unofficial and unsanctioned production practices and viewing cultures that began to emerge in mainland China in the early 1990s. This course will examine significant examples of such filmmaking, both narrative and documentary, by Wu Wenguang, Zhang Yuan, Jia Zhangke, and Ai Xiaoming among others. In addition to engaging with the films, students will consider what independence means for Chinese cinema through theoretical, historical and sociological lenses.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: (tentative) Response papers, class presentation, final paper.
• READINGS: All readings will be available through ARES and Brightspace.
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• PROFESSOR: Aubrey Anable
• DESCRIPTION: In this course we will use film as a lens through which to understand the history, politics, and aesthetics of the internet, how it has shaped film culture, and the socio-political issues that the internet raises. We will watch films about the internet and we will also consider the internet as a moving image medium in and of itself.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: Participation and Short Essays
• READINGS: No textbook; readings will be available through ARES

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• PROFESSOR: Malini Guha
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  This course introduces students to advanced methods of scholarly research in film studies, with an emphasis on situating cinema within an interdisciplinary as well as cross medial context. Topics to be covered include: the status of film vis-à-vis other forms of media; the history of film studies as a multi-disciplinary field; the nature of cinema in the era of digital convergence, divergence and relocation; recent developments in film theory; theories of intersectionality pertaining to gender, race and sexuality.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBA
• READINGS: All readings and films will be available via Bright Space

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• 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 expose and craft ways to collectively survive colonialism, racial capitalism, and the prison industrial complex? What challenges or paradoxes do audiovisual media pose to trans struggles for self-determination and liberation? How has “trans” changed over time and in different places? What is trans cinema? 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, experimental, and pornography. 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: Writing assignments and an in-class presentation.
• READINGS: All readings are available online through Ares and Brightspace. Readings include works by Kai Cheng Thom, Susan Stryker, Julia Serano, Viviane Namaste, Cáel M. Keegan, Eliza Steinbock, Syrus Marcus Ware, Dean Spade, C. Riley Snorton, Jin Haritaworn, Chelsea Vowell, Kai Pyle, and KJ Rawson.

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• PROFESSOR: Kester Dyer
• DESCRIPTION: This course investigates some of the key historical developments and theoretical debates surrounding the emergence and impact of the National Film Board of Canada’s (NFB’s) renowned “French Team.” Taking the heyday of cinéma direct in the years 1958-1965 as its focal point, the course will engage critically with the influence of anticolonial, nationalist and radical discourse on the intellectual climate of 1960s Québec. Students will look at the relationship between the cinéma direct movement in Québec and parallel documentary traditions in the United States, English-speaking Canada and France, and explore the ideological perspectives and formal approaches of both pioneering filmmakers and more recent generations of documentarians. The course will also consider the socially committed Société nouvelle program, challenges to male-centred cinema through the En tant que femmes series, and the emergence of important voices from other marginalized viewpoints. Overall, students will ponder the profound impact and lasting influence that cinéma direct has come to exercise on both documentary and fiction filmmaking in Québec. 
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBA
• READINGS: TBA

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• PROFESSOR: Tom McSorley
• DESCRIPTION: This course offers a close study of the Italian cinema from the Neo-realist period in the mid-1940s up to the present. In addition to analyses of the films and filmmakers in the course, we will explore the historical, cultural, political, economic, and aesthetic development of post-World War II Italy in the contexts of its own internal history, as well as its role in the European Union specifically, and in the more general transnational influences and pressures of globalization. The course will also investigate theories of nationalism and ‘national’ cinema by way of exploring how national identities are imagined, constructed, and/or challenged in Italian cinema.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: Film Analysis (20%); Seminar Presentation (10%); Essay (40%); Exam (30%)
• READINGS: TBA

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• PROFESSOR: Christopher Rohde
• DESCRIPTION: This course will examine how signs of authorship can be read across the body of work of a group of notable action cinema directors; how authorial interests, directorial trademarks and cinematic style are transmuted by changes in the cultural and sociopolitical landscape over time; how authorship mutates and adapts across national cinema contexts; and tensions between auteurism and the constraints of genre and studio filmmaking.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: 35% oral presentation, 35% essay, 30% final exam
• READINGS: Collection of online readings (book chapters by various authors)

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• PROFESSOR: Kester Dyer
• DESCRIPTION: This course centers on the phenomenon known as Le renouveau du cinema québécois, or the Québec New Wave. Since 2005, observers have described a common set of formal and thematic trends in Québécois auteur cinema, placing this set of films in contrast with the work of previous generations. In this course, we will interrogate the unity of Le renouveau as a film movement by examining the figures associated with it, their precursors, the traditions against which they pit themselves, as well as contemporaneous filmmakers whose work runs parallel with this trend. Throughout this course, students will contemplate a range of film texts, explore contemporary Québec cinema’s engagement with alterity and diversity, and gain an understanding of the social, cultural and ideological concerns that have recently characterized Québec society as exhibited through its cinema.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBA
• READINGS: TBA

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• PROFESSOR: Marc Furstenau
• DESCRIPTION: This course introduces students to the main terms, concepts, and issues of Film Studies, considering film as an art and as entertainment; analysing the aesthetics of film form; and studying film as a social practice. While there is a historical dimension to the course, we do not follow a strictly historical chronology in the presentation of films or issues.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: There are three kinds of assignments in this course: Formal Analyses (20% each), Exams (20% each), and an Essay (40%). You choose which assignments, or which combination of assignments, to complete.
• READINGS: The textbook for this course is: Timothy Corrigan and Patricia White, The Film Experience: An Introduction. Fifth Edition. Boston and New York: Bedford and St. Martin’s, 2018.
• This course will be asynchronous.

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• PROFESSOR: Marc Furstenau
• DESCRIPTION: This course introduces students to the main terms, concepts, and issues of Film Studies, considering film as an art and as entertainment; analysing the aesthetics of film form; and studying film as a social practice. While there is a historical dimension to the course, we do not follow a strictly historical chronology in the presentation of films or issues.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: There are three kinds of assignments in this course: Formal Analyses (20% each), Exams (20% each), and an Essay (40%). You choose which assignments, or which combination of assignments, to complete.
• READINGS: The textbook for this course is: Timothy Corrigan and Patricia White, The Film Experience: An Introduction. Fifth Edition. Boston and New York: Bedford and St. Martin’s, 2018.
• DELIVERY METHOD: Asynchronous

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• PROFESSOR: Christopher Rohde
• DESCRIPTION: 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 participation (10%), Quiz (20%), Essay (30%), Final Exam (40%)
• READINGS: The Film Experience: An Introduction (6th edition) by Timothy Corrigan and Patricia White
• DELIVERY METHOD: Asynchronous
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• 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 participation (10%), Quiz (20%), Essay (30%), Final Exam (40%)
• READINGS: The Film Experience: An Introduction (6th edition) by Timothy Corrigan and Patricia White
• DELIVERY METHOD: Asynchronous
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• 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 participation (10%), Quiz (20%), Essay (30%), Final Exam (40%)
• READINGS: The Film Experience: An Introduction (6th edition) by Timothy Corrigan and Patricia White
• DELIVERY METHOD: Asynchronous
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• PROFESSOR: Thomas McSorley
• DESCRIPTION: This course offers a detailed and thorough examination of the entire body of work by American filmmaker, Stanley Kubrick (1928-1999).  One of the most acclaimed and controversial American film artists, Kubrick’s films were often both critically lauded and commercially successful. Following his entire career chronologically, we will investigate the principal thematic preoccupations, stylistic strategies, and broader cultural contexts of Kubrick’s work, while examining the various conditions of production in which that work was made.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: There are three written assignments: Film Analysis, 500-700 words (20%); Essay, 1500-2000 words (50%); Examination, take-home format (30%).
• READINGS: Online readings will be provided.
• METHOD OF DELIVERY: Asynchronous.
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• PROFESSOR: Papagena Robbins
• DESCRIPTION:This course traces the psychological thriller from its origins in German Expressionism through Hitchcock and Clouzot, to the Italian “Giallo,” to recent “mind game movies,” such as Memento and Abre los Ojos. Psychological thrillers are a subgenre of thrillers that use plot twists and other narrative devices to expose and question the protagonist’s grasp on reality. They often incorporate generic strategies from mystery, drama, and horror. Our broad objective is 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 and 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 seminar, meaning that it will be primarily discussion-based rather than lecture-based, and as such, it will have a synchronous live-stream meeting component during which time we will discuss the readings and films; have group presentations; watch full films; and even have small group activities. Students will need to have working microphones and webcams to fully participate in this course.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: The evaluation process will include an asynchronous discussion component, a mid-length paper, a group-led discussion/presentation, and a final paper.
• READINGS: All course readings will be provided.
• Method of Delivery: Mixed.

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• PROFESSOR: Papagena Robbins
• DESCRIPTION:This course traces the psychological thriller from its origins in German Expressionism through Hitchcock and Clouzot, to the Italian “Giallo,” to recent “mind game movies,” such as Memento and Abre los Ojos. Psychological thrillers are a subgenre of thrillers that use plot twists and other narrative devices to expose and question the protagonist’s grasp on reality. They often incorporate generic strategies from mystery, drama, and horror. Our broad objective is 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 and 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 seminar, meaning that it will be primarily discussion-based rather than lecture-based, and as such, it will have a synchronous live-stream meeting component during which time we will discuss the readings and films; have group presentations; watch full films; and even have small group activities. Students will need to have working microphones and webcams to fully participate in this course.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: The evaluation process will include an asynchronous discussion component, a mid-length paper, a group-led discussion/presentation, and a final paper.
• READINGS: All course readings will be provided.
• Method of Delivery: Mixed.

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• 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 four kinds of assignments: Quizzes, Reading Summaries, Discussions, 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).
• METHOD OF DELIVERY: Mixed (mostly asynchronous)
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