Study Guides: Race & Gender + Intro to Cinema

After the wise and profound words of Father Guido here's the much agonized for Study Guides:

Race and Gender
Intro to Cinema

Cinematic Specificity

Pee Wee's Big Adventure, The Greatest Bicycle Thief Homage Produced by Hollywood

Bazin's collection of articles on neo-realism from What Is Cinema?; Vol. II

(Please read only the articles on De Sica and The Bicycle Thief)
Below you will also find, embedded, Bazin's 'The Virtues and Limitations of Montage' from What is Cinema?; Vol I --click on the Google Books logo at the bottom of the frame and a new tab will open with a more comfortable page size for reading.

Vsevolod Pudovkin, "On Editing" from Film Technique
Sergei Eisenstein, "The Cinematographic Principle and the Ideogram" + "A Dialectic Approach to Film Form" from Film Form

The 'Odessa Steps' sequence in Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin (USSR, 1925)

referred to in the "A Dialectic Approach to Film Form" article above.

Emancipatory Uses of the Media

Here are the new readings: Please find below Hans Magnus Enzensberger's "Constituents of a Theory of the Media" together with an article over viewing 'radical media' in Italy and the use of new communication technologies by political movements during the late '60s and '70s. This last article should accompany your viewing of Marco Tullio Giordana's I Cento Passi and provide you with context (both for the film itself and the historical period in which Enzensberger wrote the 'Constituents' article). The Hesmondalgh is an article attempting to define and focus the feature of 'alternative' and 'radical' media.

Something to think about in relation to the film is how Peppino Impastato's attempts at carving out a space for communication and direct political action (a public sphere within the confines of a small community dominated by organized crime) is dramatized in the film --from traditional political rallies to 'free radio', after navigating dadaist street theater, pamphleteering, film screenings and be-ins. Think specifically of the characteristics of RadioAut --programming, control, voice, 'mission', etc. Does the 'network' finally deliver on those expectations?

Enzensberger - Constituents of a Theory of the Media
Downing - Radical Media in Italy

Hesmondalgh - Alternative Media, Alternative Texts?

Extra Readings on Old vs. New Media Conceptions:
Michael Crichton - Mediasaurus (1993)

Jack Schaefer - Reflections on Mediasaurus

New Media: The Internet As Technology

Jeremy G. Butler, "The Internet and the World Wide Web"
P. David Marshall, "The Internet: The Multi-Media Accessible Universe and the User"
Bolter & Grusin, "The World Wide Web" (from Remediation)

Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema: Psychoanalytic Feminist Film Theory

"Woman as image, man as bearer of the look"

Otto Preminger's Laura (1944)

Laura Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema"
You can also find it in html format here.

New Media: Gaming

Pac-Man Skull

These are two articles on videogames and their history. Use them in conjunction with the screening of Game On: The Unauthorized History of Video Games screened in class.

Bolter & Grusin, "Computer Games" (from Remediation)
P. David Marshall, "Playing Game Cultures: Electronic Games"

Super Mario 25th Anniversary

Construction and Performance II: Masculinities

Eminem, Lose Yourself

Jackson Katz, "Advertising and the Construction of Violent White Masculinity: From Eminem to Clinique for Men"
Brian Locke, "Here Come The Judge: The Dancing Itos and the Televisual Construction of the Enemy Asian Male"
Gail Dines, "King Kong and the White Woman: Hustler Magazine and the Demonization of Black Masculinity"

Harold & Kumar

Construction and Performance

Jean Kilbourne, “The More You Subtract, the More You Add: Cutting Girls Down to Size”
Diana Crane, “Gender and Hegemony in Fashion Magazines: Women’s Interpretations of Fashion"
Deborah D. Rogers, “Daze of Our Lives: The Soap Opera as Feminine Text”
Gloria Steinem, “Sex, Lies and Advertising”

Daphne A. Brooks, "Suga Mama, Politicized (on Beyoncé)"
Susan McClary, "Living to Tell: Madonna's Resurrection of the Fleshly"

Cultural Identity & The Interpretation of the World

The Tower of Babel

Samovar, "Culture and the Individual: Cultural Identity"

Samovar, "Shaping Interpretations of Reality: Cultural Values"

from Samovar et al, Communication Between Cultures, 7th Ed: Chapters 4&5

Stuart Hall, "Encoding/Decoding"

Text and Context: Political Economy & Reception

Janice Radway, "Women Read The Romance: The Interaction of Text and Context"

Jan Nederveen Pitersem, "White Negroes"
David Croteau & William Hoynes, "The New Media Giants: Changing Industry Structure"
Sut Jhally, "Image-Based Culture: Advertising and Popular Culture"

EXTRA READING: Stuart Hall, "Encoding-Decoding"

Textuality: Semiotics

To complement the other readings, here are three different discussions of 'semiotics' and semiotic analysis and their use for cultural studies and the analysis of media representations. These are not required readings if you have encountered 'media semiotics' before. I would however suggest, to those of you who are encountering 'semiotics' for the first time, to treat these readings as required readings: your work in class, your ability to grapple with the other required readings and your final project would certainly benefit from a familiarity with the concepts presented here.

Mieke Bal, Semiotics for Beginners
Scott McCloud, from Understading Comics: Chapter 2, Semiotics
Jonathan Bignell, Media Semiotics: Introduction + The Cinema

'New' Media: Impact of Digital Technology on Film and Television

These are the readings for the first weeks of class and discussion. Remember that we are still in the process of investigating the concept of 'new' media and trying to go beyond a mere chronology of now technologies in favor of a more nuanced and specific understanding of the truly 'new' aspects of digital converged media and the social potential/consequences from a politically progressive perspective --the 'what's new for society' question.

The articles here will introduce you to some of the more practical transformations that the appearance of digital technologies have produced in 'old' media like film and television. Please note that as we discussed in class, even in this case, the transformations are both smaller and larger than those one could imagine: on the one hand, the film and televisual experience is for the most part unchanged; on the other, however, the film medium and the specificity of the photo/cinematographic image has been dramatically transformed as it loses its indexicality and the medium goes from a synthetic to an analytic one while television's horizon ceases to be that of a regulated/national context to an open/transnational one.

David Croteau & William Hoynes, "The New Media Giants: Changing Industry Structure"

Sean Cubitt, "Digital Filming and Special Effects"
P. David Marshall, "Rejuvenation: Film in the Digital World"
Anne Friedberg, "CD and DVD"
Janet Wasko, "The Future of Film Distribution and Exhibition"

Michele Hilmes, "Cable, Satellite and Digital Technologies"
P. David Marshall, "Rejuvenation: Television"

Culture & Communication

Introduction: Culture and Communication

Communication and Culture: The Challenge of the Future

Chapter 1 from Samovar et al, Communication Between Cultures
The Deep Structure of Culture: The Roots of Reality

Chapter 2 from Samovar et al, Communication Between Cultures

Extra Article:

James Carey, "A Cultural Approach to Communication"

The two paradigms essay.

What English sounds like to non-English speakers: Prisencolinensinainciusol. Alright.

Cultural Studies and Representation: Race and Gender I

Power, Privilege and Discrimination

Peggy McIntosh, "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack"

Cultural Studies & Representation
Douglas Kellner, "Cultural Studies, Multiculturalism and Media Culture"
Sanjukta Gosh, "'Con-Fusing' Exotica: Producing India in US Advertising"

Ideology and Hegemony

Stuart Hall, "The Whites of Their Eyes: Racing Ideologies and the Media"
James Lull, "Hegemony"

all readings are from Dines and Humez (eds), Gender, Race and Class in Media: A Text-Reader; 2nd Edition(Sage, 2003)

Welcome to Fall 2010