courses@JLR

FILMSTUD 250A

Stanford - Spring 2010

F 12:50-3:30 - Meyer 147

Th 7-9:30pm (screening)

 

According to the discourses of identity politics, minority visibility and positive representations are instrumental to the fight for civil rights.  Post-structuralist theory, by contrast, teaches us that visible identities and meanings are highly constructed and contingent, positioning transparency as politically suspect.  This course counterpoises these viewpoints, exploring the questions entangled in negotiating a politics of representation.  Can media images show how things really are?  Who is seen and who isn't?  Can interpretation go beyond stereotypes?  Does visibility work as a political tactic?  How are we situated as media content and consumers?

 

Focusing primarily on gender, race, sexuality, and their intersections, we will analyze specific articulations of a politics of representation drawn from film, television, and cyberculture.  Texts presenting opposing perspectives by theorists, critics, and activists will scaffold each example.  Overall, we will ask how different media forms and their intersections open or close possibilities for progressive representation, reception, and political change.

 

 

CLASS

 

This is a small and highly collaborative seminar.  You will be expected to complete five substantial readings per week.  To facilitate an active and productive discussion, you will also write a weekly response to an article, and give one presentation on independent research expanding the case study of your choice.

 

CourseWork will be the repository for student work and digital copies of the readings (please bring printed copies to class).

 

Screenings on Thursday nights are required, but accommodations to watch the materials on your own may be possible.

 

Attendance at all class meetings is required.  If you have a conflict or illness that causes you to miss class, contact the professor in advance.  More than one absence, even if excused, will necessitate grade penalties.

 

Late work is discouraged.  Most assignments are integrated with class activities and thus do not accommodate lateness.  If you are facing extenuating circumstances and need an extension, contact the professor in advance.  Grade penalties will be imposed for unexcused late work.

 

Plagiarism will not be tolerated.  For more information on avoiding plagiarism and the rest of Stanford's Honor Code, see http://stanford.edu/dept/vpsa/judicialaffairs/avoiding/guide.htm

 

Students who have a disability which may necessitate an academic accommodation or the use of auxiliary aids and services in a class, must initiate the request with the Student Disability Resource Center (SDRC), located within the Office of Accessible Education (OAE).  The SDRC will evaluate the request with required documentation, recommend appropriate accommodations, and prepare a verification letter dated in the current academic term in which the request is being made.  Please contact the SDRC as soon as possible; timely notice is needed to arrange for appropriate accommodations.  The Office of Accessible Education is located at 563 Salvatierra Walk (phone; 723-1066; TDD: 725-1067).

 

 

ASSIGNMENTS

 

Each student will pick a letter according to the desired presentation topic.  Other assignments follow that letter on the syllabus.  

 

weekly response (due Wednesday by midnight)

 

Each week (except your presentation week) you will write a 1-2 page ( < 500 words) reading response to one article.  Responses should synthesize key points and offer comments, questions, and/or connections to other texts.

 

Here are some approaches you could consider:

o  what is the author’s argument?

o  how does the author make this argument?

o  do you find these claims convincing, and why?

o  what aspects were difficult to understand?

o  how did it relate to another text from this or previous weeks?

o  what interpretation did it suggest of the screening materials?

 

Post your response to the CourseWork Forum.  Before seminar, you should read your classmates’ responses as well as the presenter’s essay.

 

project presentation (essay due Thursday by 10pm)

 

For your chosen week, you will expand our case study through independent research into popular discourses and debates.  First, you should identify an object or nexus linked to the screening materials that has produced significant controversies among scholars, activists, and/or audiences.  You can search blogs and other Internet sources, news and periodicals, visual media, and journals (see http://library.stanford.edu/catdb/). 

 

You will compose an informal 3-4 page ( <1000 words) seminar paper analyzing the week's artifact to share with the class.  Focus on one element of the representation and compare the surrounding conversation with theoretical perspectives.   

 

Consider these questions:

o  how does the media text encode ideas about race, gender, and/or sexuality?

o  what aspects of this have been praised or criticized, and why?

o  how does this debate itself encode ideas about race, gender, and/or sexuality?

o  what are the correspondences or tensions between this vernacular rendition of a politics of representation and the theories espoused in the course readings?

 

Due to length, you don't need to cover more than one media text, one outside source, and one assigned article in your essay.  Post your paper to the CourseWork Forum by Thursday night so we can read it before seminar.

 

In class, you'll have the opportunity to teach us more about the issues our case study has raised.  Plan to speak for 10-15 minutes about your findings and interpretation.  You can bring in clips or examples to illustrate your points.

 

You are encouraged to meet with the professor after class the week before your project to discuss a preliminary game plan.  Grades are based half on your essay and half on your seminar presentation.

 

group case study (May 21 or May 28)

 

The final two weeks of seminar are reserved for student-defined case studies.  Working in groups, you will brainstorm, select, and research a topic for the class to examine.  One week before, your list of assigned reading and screening materials is due.  On May 21 or May 28, you will present the important concepts and questions in seminar and lead our discussion.

 

 

final paper (due June 7 by midnight)

 

To synthesize your independent case study, you will write a 7-8 page essay that makes an argument about a politics of representation as manifested by your chosen artifact.  Alternately, you may expand your earlier seminar paper if you prefer.

 

evaluation

 

Overall, evaluation is based on three criteria:

o  understanding of course material

o  persuasiveness and originality of analysis

o  quality of presentation

 

Work is graded on a 9-point scale: 9/8 = A range 7/6 = B range 5/4 = C range < 4 = unsatisfactory

Final grades will be weighted as follows: 9 points - each response 18 points - project presentation 18 points - group case study 18 points - final paper

 

 

[A] April 9

 

Screening ◊ femmes fatales

o  The Sheik (1921)

o  Gilda (1946)

 

Reading ◊ spectatorship

B.   bell hooks. "The Oppositional Gaze" and "Representation of Whiteness." Black Looks: Race and Representation. South End Press, 1999. (115-132; 165-178)

C.   Richard Dyer. "White." Screen Vol. 29, No. 4 (Autumn 1988): (44-64)

D.  Jane Gaines. "White Privilege and Looking Relations: Race and Gender in Feminist Film Theory." Cultural Critique No. 4 (Autumn 1986): (59-79)

E.    Mary Ann Doane. "Gilda: Epistemology as Striptease." Femmes Fatales: Feminism, Film Theory, Psychoanalysis. Routledge, 1991. (99-118)

F.    Miriam Hansen. "Patterns of Vision, Scenarios of Identification." Babel and Babylon: Spectatorship in American Silent Film. Harvard University Press, 1994. (269-294)

 

[B] April 16

 

Screening ◊ "reality" TV

o  All in the Family

o  The Cosby Show

o  COPS

o  The Real World

o  Black/White

 

Reading ◊ positive/negative images

C.   Patricia Hill Collins. "Mammies, Matriarchs, and Other Controlling Images." Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. Routledge, 1990. (69-98)

D.  Angela Y. Davis. "Rape, Racism, and the Myth of the Black Rapist." Women, Race, and Class. Vintage, 1983. (172-201)

E.    Sasha Torres. "Introduction" and "King TV." Black, White, and in Color: Television and Black Civil Rights. Princeton University Press, 2003. (1-12; 48-69)

F.    Phillip Brian Harper. "Extra-Special Effects: Televisual Representation and the Claims of the 'Black Experience.'" Living Color: Race and Television in the United States. Duke University Press, 1988. (62-81)

A.  Kirsten Marthe Lentz. "Quality versus Relevance: Feminism, Race, and the Politics of the Sign in 1970s Television." Camera Obscura 43 (2000): (45-93)

 

[C] April 23

 

Screening ◊ Disney

o  The Lion King (1994)

o  The Princess and the Frog (2009)

 

Reading ◊ intersectionality

D.  Stuart Hall. "New Ethnicities" and "Cultural Identity and Cinematic Representation." Black British Cultural Studies: A Reader. University of Chicago Press, 1996. (163-172; 210-222)

E.    Homi Bhabha. "The Other Question: The Stereotype and Colonial Discourse." Screen Vol. 24, No. 6 (Winter 1983): (18-36)

F.    Chela Sandoval. "The Rhetoric of Supremacism as Revealed by the Ethical Technology: Democratics." Methodology of the Oppressed. University of Minnesota Press, 2000. (116- 135)

A.  Gloria Anzaldua. "Movimientos de rebeldia y las culturas que traicionan" and "La conciencia de la mestiza / Towards a New Consciousness." Borderlands / La Frontera. Aunt Lute Books, 1987/2007. (37-45; 99-113)

B.  Gutierrez, Gabriel. "Deconstructing Disney: Chicano/a Children and Critical Race Theory." Aztlan Vol. 25, No. 1 (2000): (7-46)

 

[D] April 30

ABC begin identifying area of interest

 

Screening ◊ TV coming out

o  Ellen (coming out episode)

o  Ellen Show (wedding episode)

o  Law & Order: SVU ("The Closet")

o  Coming Out Stories (Logo)

o  I'm the One That I Want (Margaret Cho) [excerpts]

 

Reading ◊ closets

E.  Marlon B. Ross. "Beyond the Closet as Raceless Paradigm." Black Queer Studies. Duke, 2007. (161-189)

F.  David L. Eng. "Out Here and Over There: Queerness and Diaspora in Asian American Studies." Racial Castration. Duke, 2001. (204-228)

A.  Dana Y. Takagi. "Maiden Voyage: Excursion Into Sexuality and Identity Politics in Asian America." The Columbia Reader on Lesbians and Gay Men in Media, Society, and Politics. Columbia, 1999. (96-104)

B.  Lynne Joyrich, "Epistemology of the Console," Critical Inquiry Vol. 27, No. 3 (2001): 439-67.

C.  Candace Moore. "Resisting, Reiterating, and Dancing Through: The Swinging Closet Doors of Ellen DeGeneres's Televised Personalities." Televising Queer Women. Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. (17-32)

 

[E] May 7

ABC research case study materials

DEF begin identifying area of interest

 

Screening ◊ pornography [excerpts]

o  Behind the Green Door

o  Let Me Tell 'Ya Bout White Chicks

o  Fortune Nookie

o  Sugar High Glitter City

 

 

Reading ◊ power and pleasure

F.  Zabet Patterson. "Going On-Line: Consuming Pornography in the Digital Era." Porn Studies. Duke, 2004. (104-123)

A.   Judith Butler. "The Force of Fantasy: Feminism, Mapplethorpe, and Discursive Excess." Feminism and Pornography. Oxford, 2000. (487-508)

B.   Linda Williams. "Skin Flicks on the Racial Border: Pornography, Exploitation, and Interracial Lust." Porn Studies. Duke, 2004. (271-308)

C.   Nguyen Tan Hoang. "The Resurrection of Brandon Lee: The Making of a Gay Asian American Porn Star." Porn Studies. Duke, 2004. (223-270)

D.  Becki L. Ross. "'It's Merely Designed for Sexual Arousal': Interrogating the Indefensibility of Lesbian Smut." Feminism and Pornography. Oxford, 2000. (264-317)

 

[F] May 14

ABC list of materials due

DEF research case study materials

 

Screening ◊ World of Warcraft (demo and machinima)

 

Reading ◊ indexical vs. virtual

A.   Allan Sekula. "The Body and the Archive." The Contest of Meaning: Critical Histories of Photography. The MIT Press, 1992. (343-389)

B.   Nicholas Mirzoeff. "The Shadow and the Substance: Race, Photography, and the Index." Only Skin Deep. Abrams, 2003. (111-126)

C.   Jennifer Gonzales. "Morphologies: Race as a Visual Technology." Only Skin Deep. Abrams, 2003. (379-393)

D.  Lisa Nakamura. "Cybertyping and the Work of Race in the Age of Digital Reproduction." New Media, Old Media. Routledge, 2006. (317-333)

E.    Tanner Higgin. "Blackless Fantasy: The Disappearance of Race in Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games." Games and Culture Vol. 4, No. 1 (January 2009): (3-26)

 

May 21 ◊  ABC group case study

DEF list of materials due

 

May 28 ◊  DEF group case study

 

June 7 ◊  final papers due by midnight (email)