Film Studies

53 Wall, Rm 216, 436.4668
M.Phil., Ph.D.

Co-Chairs
Dudley Andrew
Charles Musser

Director of Graduate Studies
Charles Musser [F] (Rm 217, 53 Wall, charles.musser@yale.edu)
Dudley Andrew [Sp] (Rm 219, 53 Wall, dudley.andrew@yale.edu)

Graduate Committee
Dudley Andrew, Katerina Clark, Aaron Gerow, John MacKay, Thomas Kavanagh, Charles Musser, Brigitte Peucker, Noa Steimatsky, Katie Trumpener

Professors
Ora Avni, David Bromwich, Hazel Carby, Michael Denning, John Mack Faragher, Benjamin Harshav, David Joselit, Christopher L. Miller, Joseph Roach, Michael Roemer, John Szwed, Laura Wexler

Assistant Professors
Seth Fein, Terri Francis, Kristin Phillips-Court

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 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:

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.
   
6. Documentary film and media.
   

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
Interested students must select Film Studies as their program of interest on their application and also 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 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 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 examinations, 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 the Film Studies Graduate 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 Film Studies Graduate Committee and one a 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 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, PO Box 208363, New Haven CT 06520-8363.

Courses

FILM 603a, Historical Methods in Film Study.  Charles Musser.
Th 1.30–3.20
Engages a range of historiographical issues in film studies, including the roles of technology, exhibition, and spectatorship as well as topics such as intermediality and intertextuality. A range of methodological approaches are considered. Particular attention is given to the interaction between scholars and archives. Also AMST 814a.

FILM 621a, French Film: History, Theory, Pedagogy.  Thomas Kavanagh.
M 9.30–11.20
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, Carné, Duvivier, Renoir, Resnais, Godard, Truffaut, Varda, Marker, Zonca, and Leconte as well as at critical and theoretical positions taken by Arnheim, Pudovkin, Eisenstein, Mitry, Bazin, Barthes, Metz, Baudry, and Deleuze. The course is conducted in French. Also CPLT 931a, FREN 753a.

FILM 722bu, American Documentary Film and Photography.  Charles Musser, Laura Wexler.
T 3.30–5.20, screenings M 7 p.m.
Examination of a series of historical moments in which documentary plays a significant cultural role. Topics include the relationship between photographic and cinematic practices and theories generated by makers and critics; filmic constructions of gender, race, class, and national identity in the twentieth century; and changing conceptions of photographic truth. Also AMST 812bu, WGSS 780bu.

FILM 724au, Contemporary Documentary Film and Video.  Charles Musser.
M 7–10.30
Examination of documentary and related nonfiction forms in the last three decades. Issues include film truth, performance, ethics, race and gender, and the filmmaker as participant-observer. Filmmakers include Frederick Wiseman, William Greaves, Chris Choy, Errol Morris, Lourdes Portillo, Trin T. Minh-Ha, Sue Friedrich, and Marlon Riggs. Also AMST 813au.

FILM 731bu, European Cinema in the Wake of Italian Neorealism.Francesco Casetti.
W 3.30–5.20
World War II saw modernism enter cinema via Italian neorealism, leading to New Waves in France, England, Germany, and Eastern Europe. Famous auteurs exploited both the “realism” and the “reflexivity” of the medium. This seminar examines strategies of narration through a cultural approach. Also CPLT 927bu, ITAL 597bu.

FILM 763bu, Nazi Cinema.  Brigitte Peucker.
Th 1.30–3.20
An examination of German film during the Nazi period, including the propaganda film, the entertainment film, and the documentary. Special attention to the expression of ideology through cinema and to the development of a fascist aesthetic, its origins, and its aftermath. Films by Fritz Lang, Leni Riefenstahl, Detlef Sierck (Douglas Sirk), G.W. Pabst, Veidt Harlan, and others. In English; films with subtitles. Also CPLT 930bu, GMAN 795bu.

FILM 769bu, Germany and Eastern Europe: Literature and Film.  Katie Trumpener.
MW 2.30–3.45
Juxtaposing German with selected Polish, Czech, Hungarian, and Russian texts, this course explores the twentieth-century encounter between Central and Eastern Europe, and the ways German expansionism (from imperialism to Nazism) shaped cultural identity in both Europes. Particular focus on divergences in German and Eastern European cultural memory, on postwar German attempts at expiation and “decolonization” (particularly within the shared communist framework of the Warsaw Pact), and on how local cultural and political conditions shaped regional versions of modernism, magical realism, and feminist analysis. All texts available in English translations (although knowledge of relevant languages welcome). Texts by Musil, Roth, Hasek, Döblin, Jiri Weiss, Tadeusz Borowski, Christa Wolf, Miron Bialoszewski, Grass, Bobrowski, Herta Müller. Films by Pudovkin, Munk, Konrad Wolf, Szabo, Jonas Mekas, Egon Günther, Petra Tschörtner. Also CPLT 928bu, E&RS 628bu, GMAN 928b.

FILM 773bu, Russian Film.  John MacKay.
Th 7–8.50 p.m., screenings M 9 p.m.
An historical overview of the development of Russian film with special attention to the classics of directors like Eisenstein and Vertov. Russian film examined in terms both of its contribution to film theory and practice and of the specific historical and cultural contexts of the major films. Also CPLT 916bu, RUSS 744bu, E&RS 692bu.

FILM 801b, Cinema as Art, Institution, Discipline.  Francesco Casetti.
M 3.30–5.20
Because cinema's status as an artform depends on the functions it serves in cultural contexts, it is also an institution with which spectators negotiate in a complex act of rhetorical communication. This seminar studies how cinema disciplined specific forms of viewing which shaped a gaze. This gaze adapted itself to cultural cues (the desire for a “total vision,” the presence of individual perspective, the desire for heightened perception, the requirement of an organized look, etc.). Texts and films from the 1910s to the 1960s are examined. Also CPLT 932b, ITAL 810b.

FILM 828a, Art and Ideology.  Katerina Clark.
W 1.30–3.20
Examination of texts identified as ideological art, focusing on the relationship between the conventions they use and the ideology they seek to advance. Theoretical readings include works by Benjamin, Jameson, Lukacs, Bakhtin, Marx, Althusser, and Judith Butler; literary works by Balzac, Brecht, Tretiakov, Ostrovsky, Orwell, Koestler, and others; films by Eisenstein, Leni Riefenstahl, and others. Also CPLT 527a, RUSS 746a.

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