Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Bulletin of Yale University
 
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Film Studies

53 Wall, 432.0152, Rm 216, 436.4668

Co-Chairs
Dudley Andrew
Charles Musser

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

Graduate Committee
Dudley Andrew, Katerina Clark (on leave), John MacKay (on leave), Charles Musser, Brigitte Peucker (on leave), Noa Steimatsky, Katie Trumpener

Professors
Ora Avni, David Bromwich, Hazel Carby, Francesco Casetti (Visiting [Sp]), Michael Denning, John Mack Faragher, Shoshana Felman, Benjamin Harshav, Thomas Kavanaugh, Christopher L. Miller, Joseph Roach, Michael Roemer, John Szwed, Paolo Valesio, Laura Wexler

Associate Professor
Susan Weiner

Assistant Professors
Seth Fein, Mia Mask (Visiting [Sp]), Kristin Philips

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 joint Ph.D. with a number of other departments and programs, currently including American Studies, Comparative Literature, East Asian Languages and Literatures, German, 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 will be advised to coordinate a plan of study involving comprehensive knowledge of one or more areas of specialization. Such areas include:

1. Historiography, including archival history, history of technology, early cinema.

2. Aesthetics: theories of the image, adaptation, film/philosophy.

3. European film: British, French, German, Italian, Slavic.

4. American culture: Hollywood, independent film, African American cinema.

5. World Film: global image exchange; cinema in Asia, Latin America, and Africa; documentary.

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

Special Admissions Requirements
Interested students must check the joint Ph.D. in Film Studies box on their applications and indicate the participating department they plan to work within in combination with Film Studies.

Special Requirements for the Ph.D. Degree
Every student selected for the combined program will be subject to the combined 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 courses. Course requirements vary for participating departments but comprise a total of sixteen courses (fourteen for American Studies). A student advances to candidacy by completing a number of formal procedures by the end of the sixth semester:

1. One-hour oral examination covering basic primary and secondary texts in Film Studies and administered by two members of the Film Studies graduate committee.

2. Qualifying examination, following the regulations of the participating department with at least one member of the Film Studies graduate committee participating.

3. The dissertation prospectus 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 that Film Studies committee. Once the student and dissertation adviser deem the dissertation finished, a public defense of the completed work shall be held. At least one examiner of the dissertation must be a member of the graduate Film Studies committee and one a member of the participating department who is not also on the Film Studies 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 for the degree to serve as a teaching fellow in two of the following courses: Introduction to Film; Film Theory; World Cinema.

Master's Degree
M.Phil. See Graduate School requirements.

Program materials are available upon request to the Director of Graduate Studies, Yale Film Studies Program, Yale University, P.O. Box 200174, New Haven CT 06520-0174.

Courses
FILM 601a, Films and Their Study. Dudley Andrew. T 10.30–12.20
"Films and their Study" sets in place some undergirding for graduate students in various disciplines who plan to develop a subspecialty or who want to anchor their particular film interest to something like the "professional discourse" of this field. Providing a coordinated set of topics under the rubrics of (a) spectacle, (b) narrative, (c) realism, and (d) signification, the flow of this survey is interrupted first by the often discordant relation of history to theory 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 603, Problems in Film History.]

FILM 721bu, Spatial Dimensions in Cinema. Dudley Andrew. W 3.30–5.20; screenings HTBA
Investigation of how cinema orients its spectators, how nations orient their citizens through cinema, and how businessmen and bureaucrats map the territories that images reach and affect. Methods used by scholars to parse the films of the world to account for their variable power. Examination of both films and the distribution patterns of cinema.

FILM 731bu, Classical Hollywood Cinema. Charles Musser. W 1.30–3.20
Examination of American cinema in the period from 1925 to 1950 through a focus on the Hollywood studio system, with Warner Brothers as a case study. Consideration of the ways in which Warner Brothers and Hollywood affected American culture, as well as the ways their films were shaped by Wall Street financing, the introduction of recorded sound, the production code, and such larger social and cultural forces as radio and the Great Depression. Also AMST 811bu.

FILM 736bu, Contemporary Documentary Film and Video. Charles Musser. M 6.30–10
Examination of documentary and related nonfiction forms in the last three decades. Explores such issues as film truth, performance, ethics, race and gender or multi-culturalism, and the filmmaker as participant-observer. Filmmakers studied include Frederick Wiseman, William Greaves, Chris Choy, Errol Morris, Lourdes Portilla, Trin T, Minh-Ha, Sue Friedrich, and Marlon Riggs. Also AMST 813bu.

[FILM 737, American Documentary Film and Photography.]

[FILM 763, The Films of Fassbinder, Herzog, and Wenders.]

FILM 811a, Cinematic Landscapes in Postwar Europe. Noa Steimatsky. T 11.30–3 (film screenings included)
This seminar traces a trajectory of postwar European film production that privileges actual locations, the landscape of the everyday, as arenas where realist and modernist discourses converge. Focus on the work of Antonioni, Rossellini, Bresson, Godard, Straub-Huillet, and Akerman, among others. Discussion of the periodizing of film history, new articulations of cinematic space and temporality, the tracing of action and affect, the restoration of identity in the quotidian landscape. Also HSAR 715a.

[FILM 822, Eisenstein, Pudovkin, Vertov.]

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