MA 502 Media: Race, Gender, Class
Pre/co-requisite: MA 500 or MA 501 or MA 800
Offered on occasion, 3 credits
An examination of how race, gender and class are constructed in the visual media and how they interact. Students become versed in the major historical and contemporary arguments and explore how those arguments apply to various media formations, ranging from film noir to the African-American gangster film to the independent feminist film. The course concludes with studies of media conjunctions in which class, race and gender relations are encoded in the same media formation.
MA 503 Creativity: Artist, Industry, Culture
Pre/co-requisite: MA 500 or MA 501 or MA 800
Offered on occasion, 3 credits
An examination of the role of the auteur as artist, including the role of the director, producer, set designer, cinematographer, editor and sound engineer. Contemporary theories of authorship in the visual media are discussed as well as the role of industry as author. How culture writes the work and how certain formations produce changes in artistic direction are also topics of discussion.
MA 504 Indie Sex
Pre/co-requisite: MA 500 or MA 501 or MA 800
Offered on occasion, 3 credits
This course investigates the counter-politics and aesthetic of how sex and gender is represented in the narratives of contemporary (mostly non-American) independent film. Analyzing films through the lens of globalism and its cultural contexts, students study a variety of genres including: documentary, hard-core art, horror, animation and experimental forms.
MA 505 Gaming and Game Theory
Pre/co-requisite: MA 500 or MA 501 or MA 800
Offered on occasion 3 credits
This graduate seminar examines the historical and conceptual framework of gaming and game theory. Constitutive components of the class include an exploration of the transformative cognitive effects of play, an historical overview of video games and rule-based gaming, as well as an investigation of interactive or ergodic processes of dynamic and cybernetic systems. Media illustrations of game theory will be screened including Memento, Dr. Strangelove, Rebel Without a Cause, Wall Street, War Games, A Beautiful Mind and Pi as well as a variety of historic and contemporary games.
MA 508D Jobs in Media
Offered on occasion, 1 credit
This is a two-day, one credit workshop about finding jobs in media arts. Topics include: how to prepare for the transition into the work world and the tools needed to do so; where jobs can be found and how to land them; cover letters and resumes; the differences between freelance and staff positions; the employer’s approach to hiring and positioning to get the best results from a job search; the importance of internships; joining associations, media communities and organizations to increase outreach potential.
MA 510 World Film History I
Pre/co-requisite: MA 500 or MA 501
Offered on occasion, 3 credits
A study of the growth of non-Hollywood cinema and its relation to the dominant cinema from the silent to the end of classical cinema in the 1960s. Topics include surrealism, French cinema of the Popular Front and Italian neo-realism.
MA 511 World Film History II
Pre/co-requisite: MA 500 or MA 501 or MA 800
Offered on occasion, 3 credits
This course focuses on Modernist Cinema and on the emerging cinemas of the newly Independent Asian, African and Latin American countries. The course traces the modernist Influence on non-European cinema as well as that cinemas reexamination of its colonialist heritage. Topics include Brazilian Cinema Novo, African cinema, French New Wave cinema, New German cinema, Iranian cinema, Chinese Fifth and Sixth Generation cinema, and Cuban cinema.
MA 512 American Film History I
Pre/co-requisite: MA 500 or MA 501 or MA 800
Offered on occasion, 3 credits
An outline of the history of American film that examines the complex interpenetration of technological development, narrative and aesthetic achievement within the context of a monopolistic control of the industry beginning in the Silent Era continuing to the Golden Age of the studio system. Topics include D.W. Griffith and the silent screen, Depression era Hollywood, and Film Noir.
MA 513 American Film History II
Pre/co-requisite: MA 500 or MA 501 or MA 800
Offered on occasion, 3 credits
The course covers the American New Wave in the 1960s and 1970s, the emergence of the age of American auteurs, and the consolidation of the industry into a global phenomenon. Topics include
feminism, black liberation and the student movement; Spielberg, Lucas and the Hollywood auteurs; the rise of the blockbuster; and the independent challenge to Hollywood.
MA 514 History of the Still Image
Pre/co-requisite: MA 500 or MA 501 or MA 800
Offered on occasion, 3 credits
This graduate seminar traces the history of the mechanized still image from its earliest chemically-based photographic form to its contemporary numeric and metaphoric equivalent in digital form, a.k.a. the computer graphic image. Aesthetic theories of representation, visualization, veracity and virtual imaging are examined within a dense and compelling history of mediated image creation and technological expression.
MA 515 Class, Crime, & Film Noir
Pre/co-requisite: MA 500 or MA 501 or MA 800
Offered on occasion, 3 credits
This course explores the history of those dark, seedy crime films that came to prominence in the late 1940s in Hollywood (The Maltese Falcon, Blue Dahlia); a style that is nearly dominant in Hollywood today. The course examines noir’s pre-history in the gangster film (Scarface, I Was A Fugitive From a Chain Gang), its development into a full blown validation of the sympathetic male and female fugitive outside the law (Out of the Past, Desperate), its brief flowering in the 70s (Chinatown) and its reemergence under Reagan and Bush (Bad Lieutenant, The Last Seduction). Topics include: femme fatales (Double Indemnity), international noir (Italy’s Bitter Rice), black noir (A Rage in Harlem).
MA 516 History of Photography
Pre/co-requisite: MA 500 or MA 501 or MA 800
Offered on occasion, 3 credits
Designed for the photography student, this course examines many of the major photographers who have made significant contributions to photography as a form of meaningful expression. This survey course covers many of the developmental processes, movements and benchmarks of photographic history from its invention to the present. Special emphasis is placed on the sociological and artistic concepts that shape and inform the medium, such as the act of photographing, the experience of being photographed, and the way the camera has changed our social world
MA 517 History of Documentary
Pre/co-requisite: MA 500 or MA 501 or MA 800
Offered on occasion, 3 credits
A survey of the documentary film from pioneering days to the present. Topics include: the ethnographic film, investigative documentary, news documentary and the wild life film.
MA 518 Globalizing America's Dark Art; Class, Crime and International Noir
Pre/co-requisite: MA 500 or MA 501 or MA 800
Offered on occasion, 3 credits
Film adaptation is a vital skill for filmmakers to develop. Nearly seventy percent of the Academy Awards for Best Picture began as stories in other media, whether novels or plays, operas or Bible parables. This 5-day intensive workshop will focus on how screenwriters adapt literary texts to the movie screen. Students will choose from one of three short texts (plays, short stories) assigned by the professor, and will write a 10-15 film script based on the one of their choice. We will first analyze those texts, exploring character, plot, theme, tone, visual imagery and the adaptive strategies they suggest. What are this text’s strengths and weaknesses as a film, and thus, what are its special challenges for the screenwriter? How do you turn a very “internal” story into an “externalized” movie script where the story must be seen and heard?
MA 520 Artistic and Literary Movements and the Visual Media
Pre/co-requisite: MA 500 or MA 501 or MA 800
Offered on occasion, 3 credits
This course focuses on the aesthetic conventions and philosophical underpinnings of one of many twentieth century movements in the fine arts and literature, including Expressionism, Constructivism, Dada and Surrealism, Literary Modernism, Poetic Realism, Magic Realism, Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art and Structuralism. Visual media artists include Luis Bunuel, Sergei Eisenstein, David Lynch, Fritz Lang, Jean Renoir, and Nam Jun Paik. (This course may be taken more than once for credit.)
MA 521 Social and Political Movements and the Visual Media
Pre/co-requisite: MA 500 or MA 501 or MA 800
Offered on occasion, 3 credits
This course focuses on the interaction of key 20th century social and political movements and their impact on the visual media including: Weimar Visual Culture, the French Popular Front, the 60s Movement, Alter Globalization, Bolivarism. (This course may be taken more than once for credit.)
MA 522 Myth and Media
Pre/co-requisite: MA 500 or MA 501
Offered on occasion, 3 credits
How do humans relate to the great forces of life + death, male + female, light + darkness, creation + destruction? Film and media have embraced myth for storylines, explanations to mysteries and for structure, motifs and style. In this course, students deepen their theoretical understanding of how mythic constructs, belief systems and ideologies function within film narrative. In particular, this course explores how definitions of myth, legend, fairy tale or fable are often conflated within post-modern contemporary film idiom to reveal new meanings. Topics include: pastiche and satire, Magic Realism, science fiction and gender, the eco-disaster movie.
MA 523 Media Women
Pre/co-requisite: MA 500 or MA 501or MA 800
Offered on occasion, 3 credits
An exploration of the work of women film/television directors and writers from America and around the world. Topics include: female subjectivity, the interface of culture and gender, industry access and the feminist aesthetic.
MA 524 The Notion of Motion
Pre/co-requisite: Permission of Instructor
Offered on occasion, 3 credits
An interdisciplinary focus on the interrelationships inherent in the notion of motion: movement as metaphor, how motion relates to the physical sciences, movement as a unit within a musical composition, political movements, motion pictures, the expressive movement of dancer or actor.
MA 525 Celluloid Classroom
Pre/co-requisite: Prerequisite: MA 500 or MA 501 or MA 800
Offered on occasion, 3 credits
This course explores the perception and changing realities of childhood and adolescent development, teaching ideologies and practices, as represented in American and British film over the last 60 years. Following screenings and film analysis, topics for special study include: Youth Culture, theories of human development, and the influence of media culture on educational policy and institutions.
MA 526 Slavery: Roots to Rap
Pre/co-requisite: MA 500 or MA 501 or MA 800
Offered on occasion, 3 credits
A survey of the development of different film treatments of social history by emphasizing both historical films and contemporary films about slavery including those from the 70s blaxploitation and hip-hop eras. The course provides an overview of how filmmakers depict the cultural and political progress (or not) of an American social group. Filmmakers studied will include Gillo Pontecorvo, Steven Spielberg, Spike Lee, Larry Cohen, Jonathan Demme.
MA 527 Women and Technology
Pre/co-requisite: MA 500 or MA 501 or MA 800
Offered on occasion, 3 credits
This graduate seminar explores the historic and contemporary interrelationship between women and technology — how technology has imaged and shaped women’s lives, and likewise — how women have appropriated technology for their own use, such as domestic and reproductive technologies, (often touted as liberators from domestic servitude and biological imperatives); to inherited and appropriated technology, including women media makers (cinematographers, directors, computer graphic artists and technologists), to activists and theorists of cyberfeminism and global feminist blogs such as WIMN: Women in Media & News.
MA 530 Television Theory
Pre/co-requisite: MA 500 or MA 501 or MA 800
Offered on occasion, 3 credits
An exploration of both how established modes of criticism are applied to television (psychoanalytic theory, ideological critique, feminist theory) and how television is serving as a model for various cultural studies theories which stress the media as a set of social formations ranging from post-war consumer capitalism to the global formation of the present.
MA 531 Survey of Contemporary Digital Media Art
Pre/co-requisite: MA 500 or MA 501 or MA 800
Offered on occasion, 3 credits
It is recommended that students following a digital design track take this course. A focus on contemporary examples of digital media art through a survey of digital media in the applied and fine arts, critical theories in support of such emergent media and the new models and archetypes for communication and interaction inherent in such media.
MA 532 Contemporary Documentary
Pre/co-requisite: MA 500 or MA 501 or MA 800
Offered on occasion, 3 credits
This class explores the changing form and style of the documentary in the context of democratization of access to information technologies and globalization. Topics include: the mockumentary, guerilla documentary, the video memoir, experimental and avant-garde documentary.
MA 533 Asian Cinema
Pre/co-requisite: MA 500 or MA 501 or MA 800
Offered on occasion, 3 credits
A focus on cinema as a unique cultural product in which artistic sensibilities are mobilized to address, and thus reflect, significant aspects of contemporary society. Through a range of feature films from the region, this course examines these cultural products as collective expressions of some enduring concerns in modern Asian societies.
MA 534 Latin American Cinema
Pre/co-requisite: MA 500 or MA 501 or MA 800
Offered on occasion, 3 credits
An examination of the parallel developments of contemporary Latin American Cinema focusing on new cinema in Argentina, Brazil, Cuba and Mexico, The course situates these films in relation to historical patterns in both Latin American history, literature and culture, and Latin American cinema itself. Topics include: Magical Realism, Brazilian Cinema Novo, Tropicalism.
MA 535 Global Net Art
Pre/co-requisite: MA 500 or MA 501 or MA 800
Offered on occasion, 3 credits
This course explores the position, the process and the works of cultural producers in the global terrain of digital production and distribution. Investigating the fusion of the private and the local into the global net raises critical questions about the artworks existence in a borderless virtual context, and about the relationship between these artworks and traditional representational spaces. Through lectures, readings and discussions, this course explores the implications of the emerging discourse of universal citizenship, as well as analyzing global cultural artworks.
MA 536 Bessie, Basie, Billy, Bird
Pre/co-requisite: MA 500 or MA 501 or MA 800
Offered on occasion, 3 credits
This class is an exploration of the representations of these jazz artists in novels, plays, biographies, autobiographies and films. Materials covered include: Michael Ondaajte’s book, Coming Through Slaughter (about Buddy Bolden); Edward Albee’s The Death of Bessie Smith; Albert Murray’s biography of Count Basie, Billie Holiday’s autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues; The Benny Goodman Story, starring Steve Allen; and a comparative study of Charlie Parker in two mediums, Bob Reisner’s book, Bird Lives.
MA 537 Comparative Film Directors
Pre/co-requisite: MA 500 or MA 501 or MA 800
Offered on occasion, 3 credits
A focus on the work of either a single director or on a comparative analysis of two directors. Names include Katherine Bigelow, Ousmane Sembene/Djibril Diop Mambetty, Stanley Kubrick, Luis Buneul/David Lynch, Fritz Lang, Spike Lee, Alfred Hitchcock/Claude Chabrol, Douglas Sirk/R.W. Fassbinder. (This course may be taken more than once for credit).
MA 538 All About…
Pre/co-requisite: MA 500 or MA 501 or MA 800
Offered on occasion, 3 credits
This course involves an intense study of a single media object, including the works that led up to it and the works that were subsequently influenced by it. Studies Include: Bonny and Clyde, 2001: A Space Odyssey; Blue Velvet. (This course may be taken more than once for credit.)
MA 539 Wham, Bam, Pow! History of Special Effects
Pre/co-requisite: MA 500 or MA 501 or MA 800
Offered on occasion, 3 credits
This graduate seminar provides a historical and theoretical overview of special effects from their earliest inception in theatrical, photographic and cinematic productions to their current utilization in contemporary media arts. This class surveys the ubiquity of special effects used as either obvious tropes in visualizing the fantastical, or as invisible amplifiers in simulating a more plausible reality. The class also examines the relationship of SFX to both narrative realism, and to the fabrication of the simulacrum, by tracing the semiotic use SFX to both propel a narrative, and to maintain narrative coherence in what might otherwise be impalpable and disjointed exaggerations.
MA 540 Cinema of Australia and New Zealand
Pre/co-requisite: MA 500 or MA 501 or MA 800
Offered on occasion, 3 credits
From The Story of the Kelly Gang in 1906 to the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Australia and New Zealand have made a unique impact on international cinema. This course celebrates the commercially successful narrative feature films produced by these cultures as well as key documentaries, shorts, and independent films. It also invokes issues involving national identity, race, history, and the ability of two small film cultures to survive the economic and cultural threat of Hollywood. Well known films and directors, such as The Year of Living Dangerously (Peter Weir, 1982), The Piano (Jane Campion, 1993), Fellowship of the Ring (Peter Jackson, 2001), and Rabbit Proof Fence (Philip Noyce, 2002), are included with less popular but equally important films and filmmakers, such as Jedda (Charles Chauvel, 1955), They’re a Weird Mob (Michael Powell, 1966), Vigil (Vincent Ward, 1984), and The Goddess of 1967 (Clara Law, 2000).
MA 546 CyberCinema
Pre/co-requisite: MA 500 or MA 501
Offered on occasion, 3 credits
As the moving image continues to morph into numerable meta-forms of digital signals and electronic transmissions, (and is trademarked as cyber-cinema), this graduate seminar explores all things cyber in cinema. Cyber – short for cybernetics – an interdisciplinary study of communications & control systems in animals, humans and machines, connects the fields of robotics, artificial intelligence, evolutionary biology, neuroscience, psychology, etc. and has been a longtime preoccupation in cinema as seen in Metropolis (1927), Frankenstein (1931), 2001; A Space Odyssey (1968), Blade Runner (1982), I, Robot (2004), Avatar (2009), etc. Through screenings, cyber-interactions, readings of cyber Sci-Fi, and discussions, this class probes such topics cybernetics and systems theory.
MA 547 Avatars Cyborgs + Robots
Pre/co-requisite: MA 500 or MA 501 or MA 800
Offered on occasion, 3 credits
Human identity intermixes with technology in increasingly interesting and more intimate ways. This is evident in our latest medical advances in bionic implants and in our science fiction explorations in films, novels, and games. The image of the cyborg, a hybrid human and machine, appears in such films as Blade Runner (1982), Terminator (1984), I, Robot (2004), while reflecting on our cultural ambivalence about technology, its potentialities as well as its dangers we shall explore various identity guises in cyberspace, what it means to be human, have consciousness, etc.
MA 548 Cinema of India
Pre/co-requisite: MA 500 or MA 501 or MA 800
Offered on occasion, 3 credits
The film industry in India releases more films per year than any other country in the world and is rapidly finding a global market, second only to Hollywood. This course will examine the phenomenon by means of in-depth analysis of a wide range of national and regional Indian films. Topics include: The “Merchant/Ivory” effect; Relationship of Indian mythology, literature and art to story construction; “Bollywood” influence on contemporary western movies and audiences: Indian women filmmakers; Regional language cinemas.
MA 564 Road Movies
Pre/co-requisite: MA 500 or MA 501 or MA 800
Offered on occasion, 3 credits
A genre about discovering America, Road Movies surveys social mobility that began in the 1930’s reaching its apex in the 1970’s and still continues today. Students examine differences in American class, race and social experience. Readings frame the films with the philosophical and political positions of John Steinbeck, Ralph Ellison, Jack Kerouac, and the Port Huron Statement, as foundations of discontent with politics, home and stability. This course uncovers the genre’s significance as an exploration of American experience throughout history as echoed in contemporary domestic and international cinema.
MA 569 History of the Recording Industry
Pre/co-requisite: MA 500 or MA 501 or MA 800
Offered on occasion, 3 credits
This introductory course familiarizes students with the history of audio recording as well as the practical aspects of the recording process. Sessions are organized according to a lecture/demonstration format in which students are given hands-on learning experience in a state-of-the-art recording studio.
The first few weeks of the course are devoted to an overview of the historical development of recorded sound in world history and cultures; we also investigate theories of sound and hearing. As the course progresses, students are expected to become more versed in the practical workings of the contemporary recording studio. Topics for class discussion include acoustics, studio design, the audio production console, recording and mix-down processes, basic digital and analog audio, and MIDI, as well as synchronization formats.
MA 610 History of Documentary
Pre/co-requisite: MA 500 or MA 501
Offered on occasion, 3 credits
This course traces the history of the documentary from its silent beginnings to the present, examining such questions as the relation of the documentary to the fiction film, its claims to truth, and its social use in times of peace and war.
MA 583 Art and Commerce
Pre/co-requisite: MA 500 or MA 501 or MA 800
Offered on occasion, 3 credits
This class focuses on a wide range of contemporary art and design enterprises in the metropolitan area. By means of on-site visits, students explore the work of individual artists, photographers, designers, curators and art directors. Discussion topics include the interface between creativity and culture, art and commerce, artifact and economics. Students complete a production assignment or article-length paper as their final project.
MA 601 Fairy Tales, Magic and Media
Pre/co-requisite: MA 500 or MA 501 or MA 800
Offered on occasion, 3 credits
This course examines the ways in which traditional fold and fairy tales such as “Cinderella”, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”, “Sleeping Beauty” and “Beauty and the Beast” have become part of our everyday culture as ubiquitous shapers of our identities and definers of who wer are, or who we should be. Almost universally, such folk tales serve to condition our desires, social expectations and romantic projections to “live the fairy tale dream”. Students surveys a variety of fairy tale motifs, their development from an oral tradition, to literature, and their mediated evolution and rewriting in contemporary film and media. Fairy tales include work by the Brothers Grimm, Charles Perrault and Hans Christian Anderson and Angela Carter.
MA 620 Psychoanalysis and the Media
Pre/co-requisite: MA 500 or MA 501 or MA 800
Offered on occasion, 3 credits
An introduction to basic psychoanalytical theories and the popular use of psychoanalysis for formulating conceptions about how visual media attracts audiences, how certain narrative processes function, and how psychoanalysis classifies individual character traits. Students study how such theories as those of Freud, Lacan and Interpersonal (Object Relations) Theory have been applied to cinema, television, recording media and current virtual media.
MA 621 Philosophy and Media
Pre/co-requisite: MA 500 or MA 501 or MA 800
Offered on occasion, 3 credits
An examination of the ways in which philosophical systems of thought have underpinned both media production and contemporary media theory. The influence of such systems is presented as it is registered in moments in cinema, television, popular recording and the new digital technologies.
MA 622 Globalization and the Media
Pre/co-requisite: MA 500 or MA 501 or MA 800
Offered on occasion, 3 credits
An exploration of globalization as discourse, as a social and economic event and as a contested terrain. Analysis of media conglomeration; changes in local communities as depicted in films, television and popular music; the role of global institutions such as the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank; and the anti-global movement.
MA 624 Media Bodies
Pre/co-requisite: MA 500 or MA 501 MA 800
Offered on occasion, 3 credits
This course in visual culture explores the representation of the body in art, cinema, photography and on stage from the Renaissance to the present. Topics include: history as represented by image and imagination, ways of seeing, ethnographic + gender-based icons, semiotic + aesthetic interpretations.
MA 625 Sex, Gender, Media
Pre/co-requisite: MA 500 or MA 501 or MA 800
Offered on occasion, 3 credits
This course in visual and aural culture explores the representation of sex and sexuality in the media. Through screenings and discussion, students examine the new sexual possibilities, multiple readings, erotic stories and ethical dilemmas brought about by the plethora of new (and old) media available today. Topics include: the music industry, hardcore art film, documentary, cybersex & the Internet, Reality TV and new queer cinema.
MA 626 Crossing Borders
Pre/co-requisite: MA 500 or MA 501or MA 800
Offered on occasion, 3 credits
One of the key questions in contemporary media is the representation of the border, be it physical, social, racial, or sexual. This course explores how visual artists have consistently crossed the borders of their societies and how they have persisted in questioning the notion of the border.
MA 630 Documentary: Fact/Fiction
Pre/co-requisite: MA 500 or MA 501 or MA 800
Offered on occasion, 3 credits
This course is an in-depth consideration of the representation of the “real” through the prism of the non-fiction media. On what basis do we understand narrative and non-narrative fiction and non-fiction? How is our understanding of race, gender, politics and ideology mediated by these new genres? Topics Include: subjunctive documentary, the mockumentary, reality TV, scientific animation and simulation, the memoir-confessional, docu-drama.
MA 631 Global Documentary
Pre/co-requisite: MA 500 or MA 501 or MA 800
Offered on occasion, 3 credits
The complex processes of globalization have occasioned a number of International co-productions of filmmakers Intent on explaining those processes. The course will also study the financing of these documentaries and will consider as well the alter-globalist movement which also works through this medium. The course will in addition consider ‘documentary-like’ fiction films that use these techniques to tell personal stories with a global Impact. The rich treasure trove of documentaries on this process Includes: Argentina’s Social Genocide and The Take, China’s West of the Rails, and Jamaica’s Life and Debt.
MA 632 Topics in Visual Aesthetics
Pre/co-requisite: MA 500 or MA 501or MA 800
Offered on occasion, 3 credits
One of the key questions in contemporary media is the representation of the border, be it physical, social, racial, or sexual. This course explores how visual artists have consistently crossed the borders of their societies and how they have persisted in questioning the notion of the border.
MA 633 Media Genres
Pre/co-requisite: MA 500 or MA 501 or MA 800
Offered on occasion, 3 credits
This course offers intense study in a single media genre. Genres Include: Television Genres, the Post-Modern Musical, Road Movies. (This course may be taken more than once for credit.)
MA 634 Genre Theory
Pre/co-requisite: MA 500 or MA 501 or MA 800
Offered on occasion, 3 credits
A reconstruction of theories of genre as proposed from literary sources followed by an examination of those theories as applied to the cinema and television as well as to the recently theorized field of popular recording. Students explore an analyze the transformations of genres through discussions, short written assignments, a long research paper and a group presentation.
MA 635 Global Cinema
Pre/co-requisite: MA 500 or MA 501 or MA 800
Offered on occasion, 3 credits
This course explores world cinema as an alternative to Hollywood. The modes of production of three different cinemas are spotlighted with careful study of how each local cinema both defines its own aesthetic and interests and those interests in relation and opposition to Hollywood. The modes include: Dogma, begun in Denmark but now a global phenomenon; Iran and its extended use of the long take counters current Hollywood editing strategies; and Africa where cinema production calls attention to questions of a continuing colonialism and the problems of post-colonialism; Franco-Belgium Working Class Cinema; New Argentine Cinema, Chinese Anti-Globalist Cinema.
MA 636 Alternative Media
Pre/co-requisite: MA 500 or MA 501
Offered on occasion, 3 credits
An exploration of different forms of media that exist as an alternative to the dominant corporate media systems. Topics include impact of new technology, access to the information highway, digital images and democracy, underground radio, guerilla video and independent cinema.
MA 637 Aesthetics of Rap and Music Video
Pre/co-requisite: MA 500 or MA 501 or MA 800
Offered on occasion, 3 credits
The art of the short-form music-based film has become a crucial medium for the expression of contemporary social Ideas and aspirations. This course examines music video as a vehicle for the expression of multiple sub-cultural experiences through the various musical genres of hip hop, punk, alt-rock, metal, art-rock) It will also consider the video work of the major Innovators In the field Including: Michael Jackson, Public Enemy, Madonna, Missy Elliot.
MA 639 Cinema of Developing Nations
Pre/co-requisite: MA 500 or MA 501or MA 800
Offered on occasion, 3 credits
This course traces the cinema of the emerging BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China) as that cinema intersects issues of development. The course also necessarily traces the history of the cinema of these countries as it intersects western, first world models of development and of cinema. Throughout the emphasis is on how these countries function as alternatives to the Washington Consensus and how their contemporary cinemas participate in this alternative development path.
MA 640 Survey of Computer Animation
Pre/co-requisite: MA 500 or MA 501 or MA 800
Offered on occasion, 3 credits
This is a comprehensive survey of contemporary computer animation designed to help students develop an understanding of the visual, aesthetic and technical styles employed by this new medium. In addition to regular screenings of animation, the class will also examine the dialog of the cyber arts evolving out of this new medium and the philosophical underpinnings informing this new art form. Screenings include popular Motion Pictures alongside the latest cutting-edge animation projects from international festivals, TV, the web, video games, computer art and electronically mediated performances.