Courses / Undergraduate

Spring 2017

  • Film Genre: Film Noir

    108 - 001 | German 182 - 001 | CCN: 15167

    Instructor: Anton Kaes

    This course deals with American crime films of the 1940s made by German filmmakers in Hollywood who were refugees from Nazi persecution. Their “dark” films about urban corruption and moral ambiguity introduced a creative counter-tradition to the... More
  • Film Genre: Gothic Horror

    108 - 002 | Rhetoric 131T | CCN: 15168

    Instructor: Eileen Jones

    Because it is notoriously difficult to define the term “Gothic,” or to describe its complex history as an aesthetic form involving architecture, “high” literature and popular fiction, painting, opera, theater, cinema, television, gaming, and fashion, we will... More
  • Documentary Film

    128 | CCN: 15173

    Instructor: Linda Williams

    This course surveys the history, theory and practice of the documentary, aka “non-fiction,” film and video. We will explore the term and examine the ways its forms and ethics have changed since the beginning of cinema. We... More
  • Special Topics in Film: Sound

    140 - 001 | CCN: 15175

    Instructor: Mark Berger

     This course will explore the nature, evolution, use, and abuse of sound in cinema. From the first silent films, which weren’t presented in silence at all, to current “ride” films, the relation between sound and image... More
  • Special Topics in Film: Color Theory

    140 - 002 | Rhetoric 135T | CCN: 15176

    Instructor: Eileen Jones

     In the introduction to Color: The Film Reader, Brian Price argues that until recently film studies scholars have suffered from “chromophobia,” neglecting to address in any comprehensive way “the centrality of color to the experience and technology... More
  • Special Topics in Film: The Italian Cinema – When Italy Meets America

    140 - 003 | Italian 170 | CCN: 33032

    Instructor: Margherita Ghetti

    Since the very first years of the 20th century, various peoples have migrated between Italian and North-American shores, moving their products, mixing their languages, and bringing about a new word: Italian-American. Cinema lent itself to representing and questioning... More
  • Auteur Theory: Silent Film Comedy – Chaplin and Keaton

    151 - 001 | CCN: 15179

    Instructor: Emily West

    This course seeks to interrogate and re-invigorate the discourse of film authorship by closely examining the work of two artists whose most beloved films preceded the concept of the auteur: Charles Chaplin and Buster Keaton. As... More
  • National Cinema: Soviet Film Style, from Silence to Sound

    160 - 001 | Slavic 138 | CCN: 15183

    Instructor: Anne Nesbet

    This semester we will focus on a number of great Soviet silent filmmakers – Eisenstein, Kozintsev and Trauberg, Kuleshov, and Vertov – and follow the evolution of their film style as they made the transition into sound.... More
  • National Cinema: Anime

    160 - 002 | CCN: 15184

    Instructor: Miryam Sas, Daniel O'Neill

    How does anime create meaning? How has it become a key mode of expression in many cultures today? How does it reveal changes in culture and create new forms for processing powerful feelings? How does the anime... More
  • Beginning Screenwriting

    180 | CCN: 15186

    Instructor: J. Mira Kopell

    Explores the art and craft of writing a feature length, narrative screenplay. Each student pitches three story ideas, chooses one concept to develop into an outline and then completes the first act of the script. The class... More
  • Advanced Screenwriting

    181 | CCN: 33952

    Instructor: J. Mira Kopell

    In a workshop setting students explores the art and craft of writing a feature length narrative screenplay. Writers workshop detailed script outlines and then develop that material into a screenplay. New work is presented weekly. Discussion topics... More
  • Advanced Digital Production: The Narrative Short

    187 | CCN: 15188

    Instructor: J. Mira Kopell

    This hands-on workshop explores the collaborative process of making a narrative short using digital video production. Over the semester, students will write, rewrite, pre-visualize, shoot, direct and edit one project, approximately 12 – 15 minutes... More
  • Film and Media Cultures

    20 | CCN: 31326

    Instructor: Emily West

    This course introduces students to ways of thinking about “film” and “media” – including print media, photography, television, video, and digital media – as cultural objects that not only carry meaning, but that help create the world... More
  • History of Film: Silent-WWII

    25A | CCN: 31328

    Instructor: Emily West

    This course walks students through the history of cinema from an examination of the earliest proto-cinematic optical devices to the first experiments with sound film. As students learn the history of these technological, aesthetic, and narrative developments... More
  • History of Film: WWII-Present

    25B | CCN: 15161

    Instructor: Eileen Jones

    In this introductory survey course we will examine the history of cinema from the impact on national cinemas of the rise of Fascism in 1930s Europe through the international development of film as a transformative technology, art... More
  • Cultural Representations of Sexualities: Queer Visual Culture

    C146B 001 | CCN: 32947

    Instructor: Paola Bacchetta

    Date and Time: TU 2:00pm - 3:29pm

    This course examines modern visual cultures that construct ways of seeing diverse sexualities. Considering Western conventions of representation during the modern period, we will investigate film, television, and video. How and when do “normative” and “queer” sexualities... More
  • The Craft of Writing – Mediaphilia/Mediaphobia Today

    R1A - 001 | CCN: 15139

    Instructor: Renée Pastel and Chi Li

    Do new media technologies bring us together or isolate us from one another? This course attempts to address this question from a variety of standpoints, including economic, cultural, and political. How can such media be seen as... More
  • The Craft of Writing – Stardom and Spectatorship

    R1B - 001 | CCN: 15147

    Instructor: Dolores McElroy and Kelly Norris

    ... More
  • The Craft of Writing – Classic Trash: Media Refuse from Celluloid to VCDs

    R1B - 002 | CCN: 15148

    Instructor: Jennifer Blaylock and Julia Keblinska

    Introduction to cinema courses often draw from a well-established canon to cover a handful of art-house classics. Conversely, this course offers an introduction to global media culture through an exploration of the classic popular and “trashy” material... More
  • The Craft of Writing – Mediating History: The Stories Archives (Don’t) Tell

    R1B - 003 | CCN: 15149

    Instructor: Alex Bush and Diana Ruiz

    This course will examine the relationship between film, history, and archive. Starting with early cinema and the formation of film archives that accompanied it, we will proceed to investigate such sites of historical collection as museums, personal... More
  • The Craft of Writing – Boxing Films

    R1B - 004 | CCN: 15150

    Instructor: Eliot Bessette and Fareed Ben-Youssef

    The Philadelphia Museum of Art, Robert De Niro’s weight gain, "Eye of the Tiger": boxing films have a knack for culturally enshrining and transforming their content. The artists drawn to boxing films read like a Who’s Who... More
  • The Craft of Writing – A History of Shadows: From Noir to Neo-Noir

    R1B - 005 | CCN: 15151

    Instructor: Justin Vaccaro and KC Forcier

    This course fulfills the second part of the Reading and Composition requirement. We will continue to work on writing analytical, argumentative papers but with an added emphasis on research, both doing research – from generating research topics... More