Welcome to Spring 2014

"I want to be awake when we reach New York": Lamerica, Migration and 'Bare Life'

Gianni Amelio's Lamerica, various articles.
Manuela Gieri, "The New Italian Cinema: Restoration or Subversion?"
Michela Ardizzoni, "Redrawing The Boundaries of Italiannes: Televised Identities in the Age of Globalization"

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Reporting, Adapting, Translating and Internationalizing Comics

Amy Kiste Nyberg, "Comics Journalism: Drawing on Words to Picture the Past in Safe Area Goradze" from Duncan& Smith (eds.), Critical Approaches To Comics: Theories and Methods

Pascal Lefèvre, "Incompatible Visual Ontologies?": The Problematic Adaptation of Drawn Images" from Gordon, Jancovich & McAllister (eds), Film and Comic Books

Kick-Ass directed by Matthew Vaughn

Kick-Ass by Mark Millar and John Romita, Jr.

Roger Sabin, "International Influences" from Comics, Comix and Graphic Novels (nb. This is a large file because of the hi-res scan and many images it contains)

Diabolik n.1 (1962) by Angela and Luciana Giussani

Rank Xerox by Tamburini and Liberatore

Cinema, Postmodernism and Television

Nichetti's 'Ladri di Saponette' being broadcast on the Canale5 network: a film about the impact of commercial television as it airs on Italy's preeminent commercial network owned by Silvio Berlusconi's Fininvest/Mediaset.

Millicent Marcus, "From Conscience to Hyperconsciousness: Maurizio Nichetti's The Icicle Thief"

Umberto Eco, "Make Your Own Movie"

Fredric Jameson, "Postmodernism and Consumer Society"

For context:

Umberto Eco, "A Guide to the Neo-Television of the 1980s"

Paul Ginsborg, "The Making of a Television Empire"

The clips below are from Videocracy (2009), a documentary by Erik Gandini.

Queering Texts: Popular Culture and The Oppositional Gaze

Susan Sontag, "On Camp"

Richard Dyer, "In Defense of Disco"
Richard Dyer, "Judy Garland and Gay Men"

bell hooks, "The Oppositional Gaze"

Alexander Doty, "There's Something Queer Here"
Bruce LaBruce, "Pee Wee Herman: The Homosexual Subtext"

Joli Jenson, "Fandom as Pathology

"I'm A Rebel"

"I Know You Are But What Am I?"

Comics and Narrative Theory

from Glyn Dillon's The Nao of Brown

Ann Miller, Narrative Theory and Bande Dessinée from Reading Bande Dessinée: Critical Approaches to French-Language Comic Strip (Intellect, 2008)
Hillary Chute, "'The Shadow of a Past Time': History and Graphic Representation in Maus"

nb. The Groensteen and Hatfield from the last post are also invaluable for thinking around your papers.

History, Memory, Terror: The Strategy of Tension

The 'angel of history' in the Taviani's Night of San Lorenzo

Some context on the 'anni di piombo' (the 'lead years'):
John Foot, "The Strategy of Tension and Terrorism: Piazza Fontana and the 'Moro Case'"
from John Foot's Italy's Divided Memory

Millicent Marcus,"The Taviani Brothers's Night of the Shooting Stars: Fascism and War Reconsidered"

For a philosophical and critical reflection on history:
Walter Benjamin, "Theses on the Philosophy of History"

The image above is Klee's Angelus Novus the inspiration for Benjamin's image of the 'angel of history': "There is a painting by Klee called Angelus Novus. An angel is depicted there who looks as though he were about to distance himself from something which he is staring at. His eyes are opened wide, his mouth stands open and his wings are outstretched. The Angel of History must look just so. His face is turned towards the past. Where we see the appearance of a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe, which unceasingly piles rubble on top of rubble and hurls it before his feet. He would like to pause for a moment so fair [verweilen: a reference to Goethe’s Faust], to awaken the dead and to piece together what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise, it has caught itself up in his wings and is so strong that the Angel can no longer close them. The storm drives him irresistibly into the future, to which his back is turned, while the rubble-heap before him grows sky-high. That which we call progress, is this storm."

+ Theodor Adorno, "What Does Coming To Terms With the Past Mean?"

Medium Specificity and Representation

 Lily Allen, "Hard Out Here"

Keith Negus, "Popular Music: Between Celebration and Despair" 
Van Zoonen, "Gender, Representation and the Media"
Corea, "Racism and the American Way of Media"

Desjardins, "Cinema and Communication"
Thomas, "Myths in and About TV"
*Articles are from Downing et al (eds), Questioning The Media: A Critical Introduction (Sage, 1996)

Defined Lines, the Blurred Lines parody

Project-Unbreakable by Photographer Grace Brown 

Article on the parallels between the Blurred Lines lyrics and Project-Unbreakable here.

An Art of Tensions: Reading (*Now Improved with Paper Guideline)

Here are some articles that you are warmly advised to integrate in your papers:

Groensteen, "The Impossible Definition"
Hatfield, "An Art of Tensions"
Beaty, "Autobiography as Authenticity"

Two sample analyses of comic art and auteurs:

Hignite, "Jamie Hernandez's LOCAS"
Kannenberg, "The Comics of Chris Ware"

à la Queneau...Excercises in Style:
Madden, Excerpts from "99 Ways To Tell A Story"

from Jason, Lost Cat

Here is the prompt for your final paper and presentation.
You will find all the links as hyperlinks in the document for easy access.

Surveillance and Time: Power as Pathology

Marcus, Elio Petri's Indagine: Power as Pathology

Comics News

There's a new Marvel superhero and she's a shapeshifting Muslim teen from Jersey City.

Kamala will face struggles outside her own head, including conflicts close to home. “Her brother is extremely conservative,” Ms. Amanat said. “Her mom is paranoid that she’s going to touch a boy and get pregnant. Her father wants her to concentrate on her studies and become a doctor.” Next to those challenges, fighting supervillains may be a welcome respite.
New York Times here.

"Superhero stories are often about people who bridge two worlds, due to the trope of a “secret identity,” but Kamala’s character, as described, gives Wilson a great opportunity to tackle the “two worlds” tropes from a different angle"
The Mary Sue here.

Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis

Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis

Three excerpts from the graphic novel: Kim Wilde, The Soup and The MakeUp

The Conformist: Coming To Terms With The Past

Readings for Bertolucci's The Conformist.

Marcus, "Bertolucci's The Conformist: A Morals Charge"
Walker, "Style and Narrative in Bertolucci's The Conformist" from Cineaction #41, 1996

How To Read Comics I

 "To say that Nancy is a simple gag strip about a simple-minded snot-nosed kid is to miss the point completely. Nancy only appears to be simple at a casual glance. Like architect Mies Van Der Rohe, the simplicity is a carefully designed function of a complex amalgam of formal rules laid out by the designer. To look at Bushmiller as an architect is entirely appropriate, for Nancy is, in a sense, a blue print for a comic strip. Walls, floors, rocks, trees, ice-cream cones, motion lines, midgets and principals are carefully positioned with no need for further embellishment. And they are laid out with one purpose in mind - to get the gag across. Minimalist? Formalist? Structuralist? Cartoonist!"

Nancy 're-mixes' by James Benning.

How To Read Nancy by Mark Newgarden and Paul Karasik.
Ernie Bushmiller, Selected Nancy Sunday Strips

Please keep up with the readings in the Duncan&Smith Power of Comics and start working your way through the rest of Understanding Comics. Finish Watchmen and Jimmy Corrigan.

GLBT Representation in Film and Television

Kylo-Patrick R. Hart, "Representing Gay Men on American Television"
Diane Raymond, "Popular Culture and Queer Representation: A Critical Perspective"

Susan J. Hubert, "What's Wrong With This Picture: The Politics of Ellen's Coming Out Party"
Fred Fejes, "Advertising and the Political Economy of Lesbian/Gay Identity"

Alexander Doty, "Modern Family, Glee, and the Limits of Television Liberalism"