Film Studies

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

Co-Chairs
Dudley Andrew
Charles Musser

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

Professors
Dudley Andrew,* Ora Avni, David Bromwich, Scott Bukatman (Visiting [Sp]), Hazel Carby, 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, John Szwed,* Katie Trumpener,* Laura Wexler

Associate Professor
Noa Steimatsky*

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

* 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, sociology, 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, early cinema.
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 601a, Films and Their Study. Dudley Andrew.
T 1.30–3.20, screenings Su 7 P.M.
Films and Their Study sets in place some undergirding for graduate students who want to anchor their film interest to something like the “professional discourse” of this field. A coordinated set of topics in film theory is interrupted first by the often discordant voice of history and second by the obtuseness of the films examined each week. As the title of this seminar is meant to convey, films themselves take the lead in our discussions. Also CPLT 917a.

FILM 621b, French Film: History, Theory, Pedagogy. Thomas Kavanagh.
M 9.25–11.15
This seminar focuses on three related topics: the history of French cinema, how film theory conceptualizes and inflects that history, and the role of film studies in a French Studies curriculum. Neither strictly historical nor strictly theoretical, this course approaches the films we study through groupings of secondary texts (criticism, theory, literary works) that raise issues concerning the use of film in the broader study of French culture. We look at films by such directors as Lumière, Méliès, Vigo, Buñuel, Léger, Carné, Duvivier, Renoir, Resnais, Godard, Truffaut, Marker, Varda, Tavernier, Leconte, and Teno as well as at critical and theoretical positions taken by Arnheim, Bazin, Andrew, Burch, Benjamin, Eisenstein, Robbe-Grillet, Barthes, Metz, Lacan, Kavanagh, Rodowick, Baudry, Deleuze, Ukadike, and Thackway. The course is conducted in French. Also CPLT 931b, FREN 753b.

FILM 623a, International Film Theory—Italian Film Practice. Millicent Marcus.
W 3.30–5.20, screenings M 7 P.M.
As the “new” art form of the twentieth century, film immediately and continuously invited theoretical attempts to define its nature and function. This course involves a study of the major theoretical approaches to film study, including, but not limited to, psychoanalysis, feminism and gender, genre theory, formalism, realism, auteurism, inter-arts adaptation, semiotics, ideological critique, and postmodernism. Our study of each theoretical approach is grounded in a specific film. My choice of the Italian case reflects, of course, my own career-long research experience. In-depth analysis of exemplary films within a certain cultural context allows us to apply theoretical paradigms in the most informed possible way. Our exercises in applied theory aim at exploring the limitations as well as the strengths of a given model. We screen a film each Monday and dedicate Wednesday’s seminar to both an examination of a particular approach through the writi! ngs of theorists and their critical commentators, and then to an analysis of the film in the light of this paradigm. Also ITAL 782a.

FILM 723a^u,Masters of Documentary: Errol Morris. Charles Musser.
W 2.30–4.20, screenings T 7 P.M.
Focuses on the work of one of America’s foremost documentary filmmakers, with a systematic viewing and analysis of his films. Situating his work in relationship to contemporary filmmakers whose work he evokes as exemplary. Also AMST 818a^u.

FILM 725b^u,World Documentary. Charles Musser.
Th 1.30–3.20, screenings W 7 P.M.
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, Annie Goldson, and Raoul Peck.

FILM 762b^u,Weimar Cinema. Brigitte Peucker.
T 3.30–5.20, screenings M 7 P.M.
The German cinema, 1919–1930. Expressionist films and films of the New Objectivity. The pressures of technology, psychoanalysis, and the other arts—especially painting—on cinema; issues of spectatorship, visual pleasure, and distraction in the context of a national cinema. Readings by Simmel, Kracauer, Benjamin, and others. Films by Murnau,Lang, Pabst, Brecht, von Sternberg, and others. Conducted in English, with readings in English. Also GMAN 633b^u.

FILM 805b, Cinematic Spectacle. Scott Bukatman.
T 9.25–11.15, screenings Su 7 P.M.
From the first projection of moving pictures on a screen through the digitally animated legions of Orcs in The Lord of the Rings, cinema has always been associated with “spectacle”—an impressive, unusual, or disturbing phenomenon or event that is seen or witnessed. This course explores the concept of “spectacle” by examining the very different ways that cinema has depended on sensationalist display throughout its history. New technologies have been mediated through cinematic spectacle; spectacle has been marshalled in the service of pedagogy and propaganda; the image of women in American film has been theorized as a form of spectacular excess. The course also explores the function of spectacle in experimental cinema, as well as the deconstructions of spectacle by Godard and others in the wake of Guy Debord’s writing. Also HSAR 710b.

FILM 822a, Eisenstein, Pudovkin, Vertov. John MacKay.
Th 7–8.50 P.M., screenings HTBA
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. Also CPLT 919a, RUSS 747a.

FILM 828b, Art and Ideology. Katerina Clark.
W 9.25–11.15, screenings T 7 P.M.
Examination of texts identified as ideological art, focusing on the relationship between the conventions they use and the ideology they seek to advance. Consideration of theoretical works by Benjamin, Jameson, Lukacs, Bakhtin, Marx, Althusser, and Judith Butler; literary works by Brecht, Tretiakov, Ostrovsky, Orwell, Koestler, and others; films by Eisenstein, Leni Riefenstahl, and others. Also CPLT 527b, RUSS 746b.

FILM 850b, Teleology, Epistemology, Ontology in the Screen Arts. Thomas Elsaesser.
W 1.30–3.20
One of the lasting legacies of André Bazin’s question “What is cinema?” is to have put forward a teleology of cinema, while at the same time calling it into question, on both historical and ontological grounds. Subsequent generations of film scholars have been more concerned with epistemological issues (of knowledge/ideology and truth/illusion) than with the cinema’s ontology, which has once more come to prominence in the writings of Gilles Deleuze, as well as through the revival of phenomenology. The seminar examines the various philosophical options arising from such “turns,” asking whether, fifty years after Bazin, we can sketch a similarly nuanced account for the screen arts in the digital age. Also CPLT 944b.

FILM 871b, Readings in Japanese Film Theory. Aaron Gerow.
T 1.30–3.20, screenings W 7 p.m.
Theorizations of film and culture in Japan from the 1910s to the present. Through readings in the works of a variety of authors, the course explores both the articulations of cinema in Japanese intellectual discourse and how this embodies the shifting position of film in Japanese popular cultural history. Also JAPN 871b.

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