How and when do media become digital? What does digitization afford and what is lost as television and cinema become digitized? As lots of things around us turn digital, have we started telling stories, sharing experiences, and replaying memories differently? What has happened to television and life after New Media? How have television audiences been transformed by algorithmic cultures of Netflix and Hulu? How have (social) media transformed socialities as ephemeral snaps and swiped intimacies become part of the “new” digital/phone cultures? This is an introductory survey course, and we discuss a wide variety of media technologies and phenomena that include: cloud computing, Internet of Things, trolls, distribution platforms, optical fiber cables, surveillance tactics, social media, and race in cyberspace. We also examine emerging mobile phone cultures in the Global South and the environmental impact of digitization. Course activities include Tumblr blog posts and Instagram curations. The final project could take the form of either a critical essay (of 2000 words) or a media project.

This course explores literature that resists normative categories of gender and sexuality. By focusing on figures writing from the margins, we will explore how radical approaches to narrative form and subject-matter invite us to think in new ways about desire and identity. We will read texts that blur the boundaries between fact and fiction, hybridizing the genres of poetry, drama, and autobiography to produce new forms of expression, such as the graphic novel, auto-fiction, and prose poetry. From Viriginia Woolf's gender-bending epic, Orlando, to Tony Kushner's Angels in America, this course traces how non-normative desire is produced and policed by social and literary contexts - and how those contexts can be re-imagined and transformed.

Focusing on movies made after 1945, this course allows students to learn and to sharpen methods, terminologies, and tools needed for the critical analysis of film. Beginning with the cinematic revolution signaled by the Italian Neo-Realism, we will examine the emergence of various new wave movements and cinematic trends from around the globe, from the French New Wave, New American Cinema, Hong Kong cinema, to the Taiwanese New Wave, and from puzzle films to observational documentary. There will be precise attention paid to formal and stylistic techniques in editing, mise-en-scene, and sound, as well as to the narrative, non-narrative, and generic organizations of film. At the same time, those formal features will be closely linked to historical and cultural distinctions and changes, ranging from the Paramount Decision of 1948 to the digital convergences that are defining screen culture today. There are no perquisites. Requirements will include readings in film history and film analysis, an analytical essay, weekly Canvas postings, and a final exam.

Focusing on movies made after 1945, this course allows students to learn and to sharpen methods, terminologies, and tools needed for the critical analysis of film. Beginning with the cinematic revolution signaled by the Italian Neo-Realism, we will examine the emergence of various new wave movements and cinematic trends from around the globe, from the French New Wave, New American Cinema, Hong Kong cinema, to the Taiwanese New Wave, and from puzzle films to observational documentary. There will be precise attention paid to formal and stylistic techniques in editing, mise-en-scene, and sound, as well as to the narrative, non-narrative, and generic organizations of film. At the same time, those formal features will be closely linked to historical and cultural distinctions and changes, ranging from the Paramount Decision of 1948 to the digital convergences that are defining screen culture today. There are no perquisites. Requirements will include readings in film history and film analysis, an analytical essay, weekly Canvas postings, and a final exam.

This course surveys the history of world film from cinema's precursors to 1945. We will develop methods for analyzing film while examining the growth of film as an art, an industry, a technology, and a political instrument. Topics include the emergence of film technology and early film audiences, the rise of narrative film and birth of Hollywood, national film industries and movements, African-American independent film, the emergence of the genre film (the western, film noir, and romantic comedies), ethnographic and documentary film, animated films, censorship, the MPPDA and Hays Code, and the introduction of sound. We will conclude with the transformation of several film industries into propaganda tools during World War II (including the Nazi, Soviet, and US film industries). In addition to contemporary theories that investigate the development of cinema and visual culture during the first half of the 20th century, we will read key texts that contributed to the emergence of film theory. There are no prerequisites. Students are required to attend screenings or watch films on their own.

This course surveys the history of world film from cinema's precursors to 1945. We will develop methods for analyzing film while examining the growth of film as an art, an industry, a technology, and a political instrument. Topics include the emergence of film technology and early film audiences, the rise of narrative film and birth of Hollywood, national film industries and movements, African-American independent film, the emergence of the genre film (the western, film noir, and romantic comedies), ethnographic and documentary film, animated films, censorship, the MPPDA and Hays Code, and the introduction of sound. We will conclude with the transformation of several film industries into propaganda tools during World War II (including the Nazi, Soviet, and US film industries). In addition to contemporary theories that investigate the development of cinema and visual culture during the first half of the 20th century, we will read key texts that contributed to the emergence of film theory. There are no prerequisites. Students are required to attend screenings or watch films on their own.

When one writes about music what does one write about? Sound? Culture? Feeling (is feeling historical)? Technologies? Art? How can one approach the power of any of the above through writing, writing about record labels, cities, bands, musicians? Doing away with the presumption that “words don’t go there,” a statement that posits the incompatibility of sound and language and paradoxically positions music as more than words, we will listen to change our writing, and write to alter our ways of listening — to record being with music. Readings include music criticism, fiction, poetry, musicology and writings of musicians. Musically, in addition to your own selections, I will assign songs and/or records for group listening each week, to which everyone will respond in writing on a weekly basis. We’ll spend (a lot of) time working with rap, notoriously confounding for writers, and a wide range of other music including reggae/dub, raga, Berber music, and experimental/art music (jazz, classical, rock and noise). Requirements Weekly response posts (3 graded); one special project/presentation on one of a selection of autobiographies or cultural histories; final take-home exam (an annotated playlist). Possible readings include: Amit Chauduri, Finding the Raga dream hampton, selected essays Greg Tate, Flyboy in the Buttermilk (1&2) Michael Veal, Dub: Soundscapes and Shattered Songs in Reggae Two Fingas & James Kirk, Junglist Jace Clayton, Uproot! Anthony Braxton, Tri-axium Writings & Graham Lock, Anthony Braxton and The Meta-reality of Creative Music (selections) Dan Charnas, Dilla Time Nathaniel Mackey, Bedouin Hornbook Margo Glantz, The Wake.

In the fourteenth century, the short story was all the rage, and Geoffrey Chaucer was a master of the form. In this course, we will read his most famous work, The Canterbury Tales—these pathbreaking tales feature some memorable narrators and range from raunchy to preachy, from fable to romance, and from comedy to horror. They ask us to consider whether stories that entertain us can also make us better humans, how we should react when stories offend us; what power short stories have to challenge hierarchies and inequalities, and finally, how adapting and critiquing old stories can fashion communities of readers and writers across time. We will read Chaucer alongside his own favorite tales by Italian and classical authors as well as read modern authors inspired by Chaucer, such as Gloria Naylor, Patience Agbabi, Caroline Bergvall, and Zadie Smith. Finally, we will try our hands at writing like, with, and against Chaucer. We will translate and annotate his tales, and experiment with his language and meter. Our final project will be to assemble an anthology of tales to which students will be asked to contribute either a critical or a creative piece. In the past, students have translated Chaucer into Spanish and Chinese, written an entirely new tale, created comics and animations, and even composed operas (really!). Other assignments will include short weekly writing pieces and an oral presentation. No knowledge of medieval literature is required. Students from all disciplines are welcome.

This seminar explores Iranian culture, art, history and politics through film in the contemporary era. We will examine a variety of works that represent the social, political, economic and cultural circumstances of post-revolutionary Iran. Along the way, we will discuss issues pertaining to gender, religion, nationialism, ethnicity, and the function of cinema in present day Iranian society. Films to be discussed will be by internationally acclaimed filmmakers, such as Abbas Kiarostami, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, Tahmineh Milani, Jafar Panahi, Bahman Ghobadi, among others.

This is a course on the history of literary theory, a survey of major debates about literature, poetics, and ideas about what literary texts should do, from ancient Greece to examples of modern thought. The first half of the course will focus on early periods: Greek and Roman antiquity, especially Plato and Aristotle; the medieval period (including St. Augustine, Al-Farabi, and Boccaccio); and the early modern period (including Giambattista Vico). In the second half of the course we will turn to modern concerns by looking at the literary (or “art”) theories of some major philosophers and theorists: Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Walter Benjamin, and Franz Fanon. We end the course in the later twentieth century with readings from cultural theorists such as Edward Said and Paul Gilroy. The purpose driving this course is to consider closely how this tradition generated questions that are still with us, such as: What is the act of interpretation? Whose interpretation matters? What is the “aesthetic”? What is representation or mimesis? When does an author’s intention matter, and how are we to know it?