Film Studies

53 Wall, Rm 216, 436.4668
www.yale.edu/filmstudiesprogram/
M.Phil., Ph.D.

Chair
John MacKay

Director of Graduate Studies
Dudley Andrew (Rm 219, 53 Wall, dudley.andrew@yale.edu)

Professors Dudley Andrew,* Ora Avni, David Bromwich, Hazel Carby, Francesco Casetti (Visiting [F]), Katerina Clark,* Michael Denning, Thomas Elsaesser (Visiting [Sp]), John Mack Faragher, Benjamin Harshav, David Joselit, Thomas Kavanagh,* John MacKay,* Millicent Marcus,* Christopher L. Miller, Charles Musser,* Alexander Nemerov, Brigitte Peucker,* Joseph Roach, Michael Roemer, Katie Trumpener,* Laura Wexler

Assistant Professors Seth Fein,* Moira Fradinger, Terri Francis,* Aaron Gerow,* Karen Nakamura

Senior Lecturer Ronald Gregg*

* Member of the Graduate Committee

Fields of Study

Film Studies is an interdisciplinary field drawing on the study of the history of art, national cultures and literatures, literary theory, philosophy, anthropology, and other areas. Film Studies offers a combined Ph.D. with a number of other departments and programs, currently including African American Studies, American Studies, Comparative Literature, East Asian Languages and Literatures, French, German, History of Art, Italian, and Slavic Languages and Literatures. In addition to acquiring a firm grounding in the methods and core material of both film studies and another discipline, the candidate is advised to coordinate a plan of study involving comprehensive knowledge of one or more areas of specialization. Such areas include:

Historiography, including archival history, history of technology, silent film.
Aesthetics: theories of the image, adaptation, film/philosophy, avant-garde film.
European film: British, French, German, Italian, Slavic.
American culture: Hollywood, independent film, African American cinema.
World film: global image exchange; cinema in Asia, Latin America, and Africa.
Documentary as an aesthetic, cultural, and ideological practice.

Through course work, examinations, and the dissertation, the candidate links a film specialty with material and methods coming from the participating discipline. Directors of graduate studies from both programs monitor the candidate’s plans and progress.

Special Admissions Requirements

Combined-program applicants should familiarize themselves fully not only with the Film Studies entrance requirements but with those of the other graduate program as well. Since combined-program applicants must be admitted by both Film Studies and the other department, candidates should make sure that the material they submit with the application clearly addresses the requirements and mission of both graduate programs.

The application for Film Studies is administered by the Office of Graduate Admissions. All applications are to be completed online and can be accessed by visiting its Web site at www.yale.edu/graduateschool/admissions/. In the “Programs of Study” section of the application, the applicant should do the following: Applicants should choose Film Studies in Step 1 and the combined department in Step 3. All applications including writing samples are read by the admissions committees in both units.

Special Requirements for the Ph.D. Degree

Every student selected for the combined program is subject to the supervision of the Film Studies program and the relevant participating department. A written protocol between each department and Film Studies outlines the requirements and schedule to be borne in mind as a plan of study is worked out in consultation with the director of graduate studies of Film Studies and the director of graduate studies of the participating department. In all cases, students are required to take two core seminars in Film Studies (FILM 601 and FILM 603) as well as at least four additional Film Studies seminars. Course requirements vary for participating departments but comprise a total of sixteen courses (fourteen for American Studies, fifteen for History of Art). A student advances to candidacy by completing a qualifying examination and a dissertation prospectus.

Qualifying examinations follow the regulations of the participating department with at least one member of the Film Studies Graduate Committee participating.
The dissertation prospectus is presented to a faculty committee consisting of at least one member of the Film Studies Graduate Committee and one member of the participating department who is not also on the Film Studies Graduate Committee. Once the student and dissertation adviser deem the dissertation finished or near completion, a defense shall be held involving at least one member of the Film Studies Graduate Committee and one member of the participating department who is not on that committee.

The faculty in Film Studies considers participation in the Teaching Fellows Program to be essential to the professional preparation of graduate students. Students normally teach in years three and four. Every student is required to serve as a teaching fellow in two film courses such as Introduction to Film; Film Theory; World Cinema.

Master’s Degree

M.Phil. See Degree Requirements.

Courses

FILM 603a/AMST 814a, Historical Methods in Film Study Charles Musser
A range of historiographic issues in film studies, including the roles of technology, exhibition, and spectatorship. Topics include intermediality and intertextuality. Consideration of a range of methodological approaches through a focus on American cinema up until 1920. Particular attention to the interaction between scholars and archives. Th 1:30–3:20, screenings W 7 p.m.

FILM 641a^u/ANTH 602a^u, Visual Anthropology and Ethnographic Filmmaking Karen Nakamura
Intensive seminar workshop on visual anthropology production and analysis. We read core texts in the analysis of visual culture as well as visual anthropology field methods. Students produce a short ethnographic film, ethnophotographic essay, or article on visual culture. TTh 2:30–3:45

FILM 725a^u, World Documentary Charles Musser
A survey of international documentaries that have emerged since the end of the Cold War. We explore the new political alignments, moving image technologies, and exhibition practices that have made possible a new phase in documentary practice. Filmmakers studied include Chris Marker, Wu Wenguang, Agnès Varda, Anand Patwardhan, and Jean-Marie Teno. T 1:30–3:20, screenings M 7 p.m.

FILM 727b^u/AMST 821b^u, D.A. Pennebaker and Contemporary Documentary Charles Musser
Exploring the work of one of America’s foremost documentary filmmakers, spanning a period of more than fifty years. Extensive viewing and analysis of his films and those of his collaborators, including Shirley Clarke, Robert Drew, James Lipscomb, Richard Leacock, Jean-Luc Godard, Nick Doob, Frazer Pennebaker, and Chris Hegedus. Films include Day Break Express, Skyscraper, Jane, Don’t Look Back, Monterey Pops, One P.M., Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, The War Room, Startup.com, and Al Franken: God Spoke. T 1:30–3:20, screenings M 7 p.m.

FILM 751a^u/CPLT 933a/ENGL 928a, British Cinema Katie Trumpener
Key films and topics in British cinema. Special attention to the overlaps between literary and visual modernism; attempts to build on the British literary and dramatic tradition; role of cinema (especially documentary) in the war effort and in redefining national identity; postwar auteur and experimental filmmaking; “heritage” films and alternative approaches to tradition. Accompanying readings in British film theorists, film sociology (including Mass Observation) and cultural studies’ accounts of film spectatorship and memories. Films by Maurice Elwey, Anthony Asquith, Len Lye, John Grierson, Alfred Hitchcock, Alberto Cavalcanti, Humphry Jennings, Michael Powell, Carol Reed, David Lean, Karel Reisz, Lindsay Anderson, Richard Lester, Peter Watkins, Stanley Kubrick, Laura Mulvey, Mike Leigh, Terence Davies, Terry Gilliam, Peter Greenaway, Michael Winterbottom, Patrick Keillor. M 1:30–3:20, screenings Su 7 p.m.

FILM 756a^u/CPLT 936a/FREN 754a, Real French Film: Renoir, Bazin, Rohmer Dudley Andrew
Fifty years ago André Bazin died just as the New Wave began. This seminar examines his famous essays and discovers scores of his unknown articles. His ideas matured in dialogue with certain auteurs, chiefly Jean Renoir. We look at the Renoir Bazin grew up with (films of the 1930s) and the one he befriended (the ’50s) to trace a profoundly realist strain of French film aesthetics. Eric Rohmer co-edited Cahiers du Cinema with Bazin and likewise championed Renoir. Rohmer’s own filmmaking career took off just as Bazin died and Renoir ceased directing. These three figures maintained a singularly important conversation whose legacy can be felt in France right up to the film Rohmer completed last year. The words “real” and “French” raise a host of fertile problems to be explored in an international conference at Yale at the end of the term. Attendance at the conference, as well as at our weekly screenings, is obligatory. Reading knowledge of French. Th 9:25–11:15, screenings M 8:30 p.m.

FILM 763b^u/GMAN 720b^u, The Films of Fassbinder, Herzog, and Wenders Brigitte Peucker
Close study of the three major directors of the New German Cinema. Topics include questions of authorship, cultural politics, intermediality, and postmodernism. Readings in English; conducted in English. T 3:30–5:20, screenings M 7 p.m.

FILM 775a/RUSS 696a, Post-Stalin Literature and Film Katerina Clark
The main developments in Russian and Soviet literature and film from Stalin’s death in 1953 to the present. W 1.30–3.20, screenings T 7 p.m.

FILM 781b/AFAM 857b, Blackspace and Cinema Terri Francis
Critical perspectives on relationship among films, audiences, filmmakers as components of the cinema’s social and aesthetic circuitry. We examine terms such as whiteness, colonial gaze, an Africanist presence, and blackspace through African diaspora and other motion picture networks in order to consider how constructions of visual pleasure around or through spectacles of racialized differences function or are imagined in the cinema. W 3:30–5:20, screenings T 7 p.m.

FILM 822a/CPLT 919a/RUSS 747a, Eisenstein, Pudovkin, Vertov John MacKay
An examination of all the major cinematic and theoretical works of Sergei Eisenstein, Vsevolod Pudovkin, and Dziga Vertov, centering on the period 1925–1945. We consider the films in light of the theories, the filmmakers in light of one another, and Soviet film and theory in light of contemporary developments. Attention is also paid to the international legacy of these filmmakers, and particularly their reception during the 1960s and 1970s (Godard, Marker, Barthes). No knowledge of Russian required. Th 7–8:50 p.m., screenings Su 7 p.m.

FILM 830a/CPLT 916a/ITAL 590a, Literature into Film Millicent Marcus
This course undertakes a series of twelve case studies of films adapted from literary works, identifying the challenges that specific texts present to filmmakers in their attempts to transform verbal fictions into mass media spectacles. W 3:30–5:20, screenings M 7–10 p.m.

FILM 831a/CPLT 944a, Media, Semiotics, Hermeneutics Francesco Casetti
Media texts are openly characterized by their capability of displaying their own linguistic operations (reflexivity), by their aptitude in re-working previous texts for a new use (forms of rewriting), and by their capability of creating a direct—even if “mediatized”—access to the real (transparency, authenticity). These three topics on one hand may underline some of the most important—and controversial—trends in media culture, and on the other hand may highlight the way in which semiotics and hermeneutics confront each other in the field of media studies. The seminar explores these three topics with the help of some examples (films, photos, TV programs, comics), as well as with references to some theoretical debates (especially discussions about enunciation—Christian Metz, adaptation—Umberto Eco, Gérard Genette, and experience—Maurice Merleau Ponty, Stanley Cavell). T 1:30–3:20, screenings Su 7 p.m.

FILM 832b, Trends in International Cinema Thomas Elsaesser
An examination of significant trends in world cinema over the past two decades, giving due weight to political changes (the end of the Cold War, globalization) and technological innovations (digitization, new delivery systems), but focusing primarily on the films and filmmakers. The emphasis is on developing skills of close reading for often challenging works, spanning the spectrum from “realist” films to “fantasy” subjects. Sharing surprisingly similar concerns with image worlds as autonomous realities, the films selected signal representative trends from many of the world’s major film cultures: the United States (Hollywood mainstream as well as independent productions), Western Europe, Asian cinema, the Near East, as well as Central and Eastern Europe. W 1:30–3:20

FILM 863b/FREN 932b, The German Occupation in Film and Fiction Ora Avni
An examination of the evolving representations of the German Occupation over the last sixty years. The course has a strong historical component (the years immediately preceding the war, the shift in public opinion after the defeat, the politics of the Vichy regime, the cleansing after the liberation, etc.). Film and fictions are viewed for their intrinsic value as well as for the ways in which they illustrate and problematize national memory, writing (and rewriting) history, cultural and political legacies, and the relationship of the arts and the realities they purport to depict. Tentative reading list includes Henry Russo, De Gaulle, Pétain, Modiano, Céline, Drieu la Rochelle, Sartre, Duras, Morand, Pagnol, Calaferte. Films: Nuit et Brouillard, Le chagrin et la pitié, Au revoir les enfants, M. Klein, Lacombe Lucien, Les violins du bal, Une histoire de femmes, Un héros très ordinaire, L’Oeil de Vichy, La Guerre des boutons. T 1:30–3:20

FILM 900, Directed Reading Faculty

FILM 901, Individual Research Faculty

FILM 921b/JAPN 874b, Research in Film History Aaron Gerow
An intensive seminar investigating methodologies for researching Japanese film history. Students develop their own research projects throughout the course, but the question of the nation in Japanese cinema serves as a continuous case study in class. M 1:30–3:20

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