WRIT 025: CINEMA STUDIES (CIMS)
Spring 2022 Courses
WRIT 025 301
TR 12:00 PM - 1:30 PM
Trench
Reel Truth: Documentary Film
Fulfills the Writing Requirement
From filmstrips to Netflix series, from daguerreotypes to iPhone selfies, the camera has been a tool for self-representation and documentation. Cameras promise to show us the "truth," allowing us to create, or contest, collective and individual narratives. The documentary tradition builds on older practices of portraiture, cultural exhibition, and historical documentation. At present, this tradition spans from sweeping historical narratives, to forensics-obsessed true crime series, to guilty-pleasure reality television. In this course, we will examine the visual and verbal rhetoric of these documentaries: How does the popular, documentary version of the "truth"? compare with its scholarly counterpart? How do these stories shape identities? How do scholars interpret the truths documentaries present to us? We will also work on constructing our own new scholarly and personal narratives, through a variety of writing genres.
WRIT 025 302
TR 12:00 PM - 1:30 PM
Paeth
Reality TV and Gender
Fulfills the Writing Requirement
The Bachelor and The Bachelorette (ABC), Top Chef, Real Housewives (Bravo), Keeping Up with the Kardashians (E!), Queer Eye and Bling Empire (Netflix). Love it or hate it -- Gary Oldman once called reality television a "museum of social decay" -- reality television has enormous influence in American entertainment, accounting for half of all programming on broadcast and cable. Part of the attraction of reality TV is that it is "unscripted." But in this course, we will examine the powerful cultural scripts that reality TV programming helps to create around identity, especially identities related to gender and race. Using Rachel Dubrofsky's scholarly monograph The Surveillance of Women on Reality TV: Watching The Bachelor and The Bachelorette as a starting point, we will consider how gender, race, sexual orientation, and class are represented in reality television. What does the new Netflix series Bling Empire tell its audience about Asian American identity; how does Queer Eye represent queer male friendship? What about representations of (dis)ability in Love on the Spectrum? How do these representations impact gendered and racialized bodies? How does reality TV reflect, but also influence, our lived realities?
WRIT 025 304
TR 3:30 PM - 5:00 PM
Friedman
Star Wars Music
Fulfills the Writing Requirement
Star Wars. Harry Potter. Jurassic Park. Jaws. Some movies are defined as much by their sound worlds as their plots and characters. Hear the piercing first notes of the Star Wars fanfare, the noble melody welcoming us to Jurassic Park, the menacing motif of a lurking, murderous shark, and you are transported. In this course we will discuss the unique role music plays in film. A focus on John Williams, whose 50-plus Academy Award nominations are second to only Walt Disney, will guide our exploration of this special artistic dimension. Watching a variety of clips from beloved films along the way, we will learn how music drives and transcends the movie experience.
WRIT 025 305
TR 1:45 PM - 3:15 PM
Friedman
Star Wars Music
Fulfills the Writing Requirement
Star Wars. Harry Potter. Jurassic Park. Jaws. Some movies are defined as much by their sound worlds as their plots and characters. Hear the piercing first notes of the Star Wars fanfare, the noble melody welcoming us to Jurassic Park, the menacing motif of a lurking, murderous shark, and you are transported. In this course we will discuss the unique role music plays in film. A focus on John Williams, whose 50-plus Academy Award nominations are second to only Walt Disney, will guide our exploration of this special artistic dimension. Watching a variety of clips from beloved films along the way, we will learn how music drives and transcends the movie experience.