Race and Gender Study Guide

After the wise and profound words of Father Guido, words which are so perfectly comforting during exam crunch times, here is the much agonized for study guide:

Race and Gender Study Guide

Queering Texts: Popular Culture and The Oppositional Gaze

Alexander Doty, "There's Something Queer Here"

Susan Sontag, "On Camp"

Bruce LaBruce, "Pee Wee Herman: The Homosexual Subtext"

Richard Dyer, "Judy Garland and Gay Men"
Richard Dyer, "In Defense of Disco"
bell hooks, "The Oppositional Gaze"

"I'm A Rebel"

"I Know You Are But What Am I?"

Italian Cinema Final Assignment

Final Paper/Take Home Exam Assignment for Italian Cinema here.

LGBTQ+ 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" 

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.

+ as an addition to our discussion regarding The Conformist/Investigation here is some context on the  1970s and the so-called 'anni di piombo' (the 'lead years') marked by political violence and social conflict:
John Foot, "The Strategy of Tension and Terrorism: Piazza Fontana and the 'Moro Case'"
from John Foot's Italy's Divided Memory

Fatal Strategies & Slackers: Withdrawing or Accelerating?

Matthias Leupold, Im Kino / In the Cinema, Part II Berlin GDR, 1983

Baudrillard, "The Masses: The Implosion of the Social in the Media"

Additional Recommended Baudrillard Readings:

Jean Baudrillard, Requiem for the Media
Jean Baudrillard, The Implosion of Meaning in the Media from Simulacra and Simulation

The Foucault Reader, edited by Paul Rabinow.

Please read the section 'Disciplines and Sciences of the Individual' in Part II, particularly the first four segments (from "The Body of the Condemned" to "Panopticism")

Foucault, "The Repressive Hypothesis" from The History of Sexuality, Vol. I

Faster! Faster! Faster!


#Accelerate: Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics (Srnicek & Williams)
Steven Shaviro, "What is Accelerationism?" from No Speed Limit: Three Essays on Accelerationism

Bonus:
Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation (Laboria Cuboniks)

+

What About 'Today'?

Christian Fuchs, "Participatory Web 2.0 as Ideology" from Foundations of Critical Media and Information Studies

McKenzie Wark, The Hacker Manifesto

"Every single commodity you produce is a piece of your own death"
"Withdrawing in disgust is not the same thing as apathy."

Screenings: EPISODE III: ENJOY POVERTY by Renzo Martens in GG1 @7.15pm

Please note the changed day and time of this screening. 
Screening will be on Wednesday, November 15 @7.15pm in GG1.

This is mandatory viewing for all students in both sections of COM 470 Advanced Communication Theory. (For information on the A Ciambra screening see post below)


"Enjoy Poverty: Disclosing the Political Impasse of Contemporary Art" in Art Papers

-an interview with Renzo Martens

Paul O'Kane, "Renzo Martens: Episode III" review in Third Text, 2009

T.J. Demos, "Poverty Pornography, Humanitarianism and Neo-Liberal Globalization: Notes on Some Paradoxes in Contemporary Art"

Bonus Interview from the "Africa is a Country Blog" here.

Bonus Reading:

Susan Sontag, "Looking At War/Regarding the Pain of Others"

SCREENINGS: A Ciambra by Jonas Carpignano. Monday @7pm in Aula Magna

"The electrifying sophomore feature from rising director Jonas Carpignano (Mediterranea). 14-year-old Pio (Pio Amato) wants nothing more than the respect of his older brother, whom he emulates in every way including his career as a petty criminal. When both his father and brother are arrested, Pio is determined to prove that he can step up and be the head of his sprawling Romani family. But a fateful night and a wrenching decision soon test just how ready he is. Steeped in the complex social fabric of Southern Italy where Italians, Romani, and African migrants coexist in uneasy tension A Ciambra is a bracing plunge into a world in which growing up fast is a matter of survival."

A Ciambra (Jonas Carpignano, USA/Italy, 2017) will be introduced and followed with a q&a by the film's producer, Paolo Carpignano. The film, mostly in the local Calabrese dialects, was distributed in Italian cinemas with Italian subtitles. This is a unique opportunity to see it with English subtitles ahead of its US distribution in 2018 when it will also be the official Italian entry to the 2018 Academy Awards.

This is required attendance for CMS 241 Italian Cinema and CMS 360 Race and Gender in Media students. COM 470 students are strongly encourage to attend.

Jonas Carpignano's first feature, Mediterraneo (2016), which is the first film in the projected trilogy (A Ciambra is the second part) is on reserve in the library for those interested.

Surveillance and Time: Power as Pathology

Marcus, Elio Petri's Indagine: Power as Pathology

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

The 'Post' Archipelago: A Brief Intro

Young Jacques Derrida's English Comp Essay
Note the teacher's comments. Do they still apply to Jacques' adult writing? Read 'Différance' below to find out.

Some introductory readings to the various 'posts' that we will be reading in the next weeks. Having just concluded our discussion of structuralism, here is some material to bring us towards the post-structuralist theoretical framework. Remember that a good exercise for us is to read the theories in their original form. As you read get a sense of the language, of the rhetorical processes, of the way the argument proceeds. I am including here, in addition to the Roland Barthes essay on "The Death of the Author" also a brief introduction to poststructuralism, postmodernism and postcolonial studies (the pdf has these entries in alphabetical order but please read them in the order above). I've also included Derrida's 'Différance' --this is a bonus reading but I would urge all of you to tackle it in order to get that sense of the language mentioned above so that we may talk about it in class. Enjoy.

"poststructuralism"; "postmodernism"; "postcolonial studies" entries
from A Dictionary of Cultural and Critical Theory; 2nd Ed. (Wiley-Blackwell)

Roland Barthes, "The Death of the Author" from Image/Music/Text

David Harvey, "Postmodernism" from The Condition of Postmodernity

Jacques Derrida, Différance

Cinema Going as Social Act: Westerns, Giallos and Other Generic 'Trash'

Mario Bava's Blood and Black Lace

Wagstaff, "A Forkful of Westerns: Industry, Audiences and the Italian Western"
from Dyer & Vincendeau, Popular European Cinema (Routledge, 1992)
Koven, "What Is Giallo?" + "Toward an Understanding of Vernacular Cinema"
from Koven, La Dolce Morte: Vernacular Cinema and the Italian Giallo Film (Scarecrow Press, 2006)

Sergio Leone's Fistful of Dollars

Structuralism 101

"Structuralist Theories" from Selden et al. A Reader's Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory, 3rd Edition (Prentice Hall, 1985)

Below are some very basic intro articles on Semiotics and the media for those that need a refresher/recap:

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

The Social Construction of Race, Part Deux

This is the bulk of readings for the 'discourses of race' section of the course as we wade through it this week and next. Please have these articles read in the order posted. Pay particular attention to Zook's article on the Fox Network as it invests that political economic perspective that is so well dramatized in Bamboozled as well as the Means-Coleman article on 'black sitcoms' which is a good example of textual analysis.

Kristal Brent Zook, "The Fox Network and the Revolution in Black Television"
Robin R. Means-Coleman, "Black Sitcom Portrayals"
Herman Gray, "The Politics of Representation in Network Television" from Watching Race: Television and the Struggle for Blackness (University of Minnesota Press, 1995/2004)

Donald Bogle, "Workplace Dramas, Ensemble Casts 1990s Style"
Chyng Fen Sun, "Ling Woo in Historical Context: The New Face of Asian American Stereotypes on Television"

Please watch this 'incomplete sentence' vaudeville routine by Mantan Moreland & Ben Carter from the Charlie Chan movie The Scarlet Clue (Phil Rosen, 1945)

Below is Sarah Jones' 'Your Revolution' (with DJ Vadim) from Def Poetry Jam's Season 1 (2002)

Return to the Real: New Wave Neo-Realism

Anna Magnani as Mamma Roma (Città Aperta)

Antonioni and Fellini, although in very different ways and with different degrees, did share an apparent obliviousness to concrete social issues and a much more evident interest in larger framing questions and issues of form. Pierpaolo Pasolini is one of a handful of filmmakers who mark a return to the concerns of realism --even though if you look at the dates to the films you will realize that all of this is happening in sync with the other more formally oriented films-- and to concrete social investigation. This 'return' however, as we will see, is certainly not a stale or naive re-proposal of neo-realism's outlook and is operating from a modernist perspective.

Viano, Mamma Roma from Pasolini: A Certain Realism
Indiana, Pasolini, Mamma Roma and La Ricotta + Pasolini Interview
Siciliano, La Ricotta + Pasolini Interview
Sitney, "New Wave Neorealism: Pasolini, Olmi and Rosi" from Vital Crises in Italian Cinema

These are some essential readings that are, however, not required. I recommend these to anyone interested in investigating further issues of 'realism', reality and cinema.
Barthes, "The Reality Effect"
McCabe, "Realism and the Cinema: Notes on Some Brechtian Theses"
McCabe, "Theory and Film: Principles of Realism and Pleasure"

Abercrombie, Lash & Longhurst , "Popular Representation: Recasting Realism".