TR 9:40 - 11:10 a.m. OLRI 270

This course introduces students to the intellectual roots and contemporary applications of cultural studies, including critical media studies, focusing on the theoretical bases for analyses of power and meaning in production, texts, and reception. It includes primary readings in anti-racist, feminist, modern, postmodern, and queer cultural and social theory, and compares them to traditional approaches to the humanities. Designed as preparation for intermediate and advanced work grounded in cultural studies, the course is writing intensive, with special emphasis on developing skills in critical thinking and scholarly argumentation and documentation. Completion of or enrollment in HMCS 110 is the prerequisite for majoring in humanities and media and cultural studies. (4 credits)

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128-01: Film Analysis And Visual Culture

TR 1:20 - 3:30 p.m. HUM 401

First Year Course only; first day attendance required; mandatory film screenings TBA.

This course explores the nature of visual representation, building from a focus on the formal analysis of cinema (the basic features of film form and style) and developing tools of visual textual analysis applicable to all visual media (photography, television, digital and graphic representations of all kinds). We start by concentrating on the basic features of cinematic form: narrative and non-narrative structure, the shot, editing, sound, and the construction of film style. Students will gain a familiarity with cinematic elements and vocabulary, and practice in formalist critical analysis. Students will also make an abstract video. Following an introduction to cultural studies, we will apply the tools and insights of film analysis to various studies of visual representation, in film and other forms of visual culture, including: television, photography, journalism, advertising, and art. The primary goal of the course is to develop a set of analytical tools that can be used to illuminate all forms of visual representation and their aesthetic, cultural, and social implications. (4 credits)

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210: Video as Activist Medium

F 1:10-4:10 HUM 401

First day attendance required.

This class focuses on overtly political possibilities of video-as intervention, propaganda, prank, advocacy technique, educational tool, act of witness, and legal or physical defense strategy. We will examine the politics of access, alternative and underground means of production and distribution, and strategies for collective process. Through screenings, readings and discussion we'll trace a history of activist video, from the initial use of the Porta-pak in the 1960's through the development of video collectives, the establishment of public access television, the influence of feminist, queer, and race theories, the advent of home video technology, and recent web-video developments. Students will choose a political or social issue (at any scale of local to global, and from diverse political perspectives), and employ video in a large project in their chosen area of action. (4 credits.) To waitlist contact professor.

211: Activist Video Practicum

W 12:00-2:10 HUM 401

First day attendance required.

This practicum class focuses on video production in the context of activist video and tactical media. Through exercises, group and individual video production projects, critique, and community involvement, we will investigate strategies for politically motivated media production. Basic video shooting, lighting, sound recording, and editing will be taught, with an emphasis on sharpening criticality and utilizing technology for maximum political or social efficacy. As their final projects, students will choose a political or social issue at any scale of local to global, and employ video as an activist strategy. No production experience is necessary. Concurrent enrollment in HMCS 210:01, Video as Activist Medium, or permission of instructor required. (2 credits.) To waitlist contact professor.

212: Experimental and Artists' Video

M 7:00-10:00 HUM 402

First day attendance required.

This course will integrate history, theory, and practice in a critical examination of experimental and artists’ video as an art form, political tool, and social process. The course will be structured around various key issues, including portraiture and autobiography, appropriation and collage, assertions or representations of identity, the presence of the maker and reflexivity, and conceptual, feminist, performative, and structuralist approaches. Art video’s relationships to experimental film, gallery and museum exhibition, and television will be considered. Coursework will include readings, screenings, writing, critique, and visual analysis. Video installation & other work not available in the classroom will be viewed in gallery & museum contexts around the Twin Cities. To be taken concurrently with HMCS 213:01, Experimental Video Practicum. (4 credits.) To waitlist contact professor.

213: Experimental Video Practicum

W 2:20-4:30 HUM 402

First day attendance required.

This practicum class focuses on video production in the context of artists' and experimental video. Through individual video production projects and extensive critique each student will develop their own individual media production proces. Basic video shooting, lighting, sound recording, and editing will be taught, with the emphasis being on developing aesthetic, analytic, critical, and conceptual acuity through an integration of practice and theory. No production experience is necessary. Concurrent enrollment in HMCS 212:01, Experimental and Artists’ Video, or permission of instructor required. (2 credits.) To waitlist contact professor.

248: History of Film Since 1941

MW 7:00 -10:00 p.m. HUM 401

This course provides an overview of the history of film from the early 1940s, examining aesthetic, industrial, social, and theoretical topics in a variety of national and cultural contexts. Discussions, lectures, and screenings emphasize international commercial and alternative styles and their determinants. Why and how did alternative styles develop against and within the Hollywood system? The course explores issues of racism and gender as well as connections between the history of film and postwar transformations, with particular attention to the effects on filmmaking of the Cold War in the United States and of post colonial struggles in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Several papers are required. Prerequisite: sophomore status or permission of instructor. Humanities and Media and Cultural Studies 248, Film History, 1894–1941, is not a prerequisite, but students who have completed that course will be encouraged to engage in independent research. Alternate years. (4 credits)

334: Cultural Studies and the Media

MWF 12:00 -1:00 p.m. HUM 113

An overview of contemporary approaches to media as culture, a determining as well as determined sphere in which people make sense of the world, particularly in terms of ethnicity, gender, identity, and social inequality. Students develop tools for analyzing media texts and accounts of audience responses derived from the international field of cultural studies and from the social theory on which it draws. Analysis emphasizes specificity of media texts, including advertisements, films, news reports, and television shows. Experience in cooperative discussion, research, and publication. Every year. (4 credits)

354: Blackness in the Media

MWF 9:40 -10:40 a.m. OLRI 370

This course examines mainstream and alternative systems of African American representation in the media from the 1820s to the 1960s, including race records, race movies, the Black press, Black video, and Black appeal radio. It also examines the way Blackness is constructed in the media today, including the role of new media (such as cable and the Internet); new corporate formations (such as FOX, UPN, and BET), and new forms of representation (such as representations that reject the Black-White binary). Prerequisite: one of the following: an introduction to African American studies course, or Texts and Power: Foundations of Cultural Studies (Humanities and Media and Cultural Studies 110), or permission of instructor. Every year. (4 credits)

357: Advanced Journalism: Electronic

TR 1:00 -2:30 p.m. HUM 217

Writing and production of news, feature, and documentary stories for radio, television, and news media. The course stresses effective script writing and the development of a strong sense of journalistic ethics in an electronic environment. Emphasis is placed on frequent visits with practicing journalists and policy makers, on-site visits to electronic newsrooms, and field news assignments on campus and throughout the Twin Cities. Students will produce video, audio, and Internet stories. The course also examines the changing role of the media and the impact of electronic media and broadcast journalists on politics, government, education, and the legal system. Taught by a 20-year veteran print and broadcast journalist and former U.S. Senate press secretary. Prerequisite: News Reporting and Writing (114) or permission of instructor. Alternate years. (4 credits)

394: Gender, Sexuality, Film

TR 3:00 -4:30 p.m. HUM 402

Feminist film theory and criticism has been one of the most vital areas of film studies since the 1970s, even as concepts from feminist film studies (e.g., the gaze and psychoanalytic theories of spectatorship) have informed feminist scholarship in other fields. This course explores the history of the contributions of feminist film theory and criticism to studies in representation, from critiques of images of women through psychoanalytic poststructural approaches, cultural studies, and work in antiracist, postcolonial, and queer studies. It analyzes women's alternative film- and video-making as well as mainstream commercial films directed by women and men. Papers emphasizing close analysis of film texts will be required, with possibilities for work in video-making, along with one test covering basic film terms. Prerequisite: sophomore standing and one of the following: Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies 100, 105, 110, 200, or permission of instructor. (4 credits)

410: Art, Ideas in French Culture

MWF 2:20-3:20 p.m. HUM 112

The course studies the arts of France (art, architecture, music and literature) in their historical and intellectual settings. Topics and historical periods studied vary by semester. Prerequisite: a 300 level course or permission of instructor.

488: Advanced Topics Seminar: Advanced Film Analysis

W 1:00 - 4:00 p.m. HUM 136

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