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Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Syllabus: Cinema of Colonialism (intermediate version)
HIST419W (Soon HIST312)
Cinema and Colonialism: 2009: Race, War, and Expansion (3 credits) Grade Method: REG/P-F/AUD.
Paul Landau
MM, 12:30 to 1:45, Hornbake NPM: Mon.: J Projection Room; Wed.: Rm. 0108.
books to purchase right now:
Marylin Young, Vietnam
Siegfried Kracauer, Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality Oxford University Press (December 14, 2005) ISBN: 0195007212
Roland Barthes, Mythologies
Jeanine Basinger, The World War Two Combat Film
Optional book to buy: Paul Virilio, War and Cinema
The course focuses on the relationship between cinema(s) and modern colonial expansions and occupations. The course is also about how to watch movies critically.
We will look at a dozen major motion pictures—almost all are Hollywood productions—and we will read in various areas as a companion activity.
We will consider the films from the point of view of historical accuracy and integrity, but this will not be our main concern. Films use and reuse historical cliches and images to satisfy expectations and yet surprise the viewer, all in service of accelerating to a climax in three acts. Cinematic works, historical and fictive, bear varied but categorizable relationships to the time they were made, and so to the periods and phenomena they depict, but accuracy is never a big cinematic concern.
We will use the listed films to give pace and focus to our investigation of the following colonial events and processes: Vietnam; the American West; exploration and conquest in Africa; the French Foreign Legion; European settlerdom in Tasmania, Australia and South Africa; and then, World War II films, which stimulated an anti-imperialist critique of the Fascist enemy, and/or pointed to "our own" (the Allies') embrace of racism (and even Fascism) in spite of the struggle. Finally, we will scope out the repetition of visual images and scenes throughout different filmic genres, heightening and informing our historical and cultural literacy, with the aid of Siegfried Kracauer, Slavoj Zizek, and King Kong director Merian Cooper; Roland Barthes, Walter Benjamin, Paul Virilio, — and Osa Johnson, the filmic Annie Oakley of the 1920s’ African savannah.
You will get to express yourself in written form, in two (2) five-page (5-pp.) “bridge” papers (film – reading), done for the weeks you choose, one paper from each half of the course, i.e. wks. 1-7, 8-15. There will be no longer research paper, and no reading beyond that which is on the syllabus.
The two papers should treat the film of the week and pair it with the optional films and readings listed as well as the required ones, so papers demand a bit of time. Four to six of you will be doing this in a given week, and there is only one copy of the film at Hornbake. Major motion pictures cannot be placed on "dial-up." Plan ahead for eventualities . . .
For this course, you must pledge to do four more things besides this planning and the papers. You must
Required FILMS are at Hornbake’s Nonprint Media library reserved for the class, but this is irrelevant because it is your classmates who will be watching them. If you get together in groups you can see films in the projection rooms. You select three weeks on which to see the paired companion film, read further, and build a contextual, historical analysis of the production or consumption of filmic tropes, and the prof. will notify you of your co-paper-writers.
We are intended to gain via our common experience, our directed consumption of familiar and unfamiliar visual and written material. Your full and willing participation is required in order to be in this course.
Exam make-up policy: Students who intend to miss the midterm or final exam because of unalterable plans (sports, personal) should speak to the professor in advance about a make-up exam. Students with a bona fide emergency causing them to miss an exam should contact the professor to provide satisfactory proof and to reschedule a time to take the exam as soon as possible. In all other cases, you are expected to be present at the exam.
No tape recording or filming of the professor of discussions in the class is permitted, without prior permission from the professor.
University Policies:
1. Students with disabilities should contact the instructor at the beginning of the semester to discuss any accommodation for this course.
2. The University has approved a Code of Academic Integrity which prohibits students from cheating on exams, plagiarizing papers, submitting the same paper for credit in two courses without authorization, buying papers, submitting fraudulent documents, and forging signatures.
Plagiarism policy: all quotations taken from other authors, including from the Internet, must be indicated by quotation marks and referenced. Your professor however requires this sort of reference to be to a specific individual writing, and to a piece of information existing at one point on actual paper, in addition to any other information in web-site-address-sourcing.
Paraphrasing must be referenced as well. The following University of Maryland Honor Pledge has been proposed by the Council and approved by the University Senate: “pledge on my honor that I have not given or received any unauthorized assistance on this assignment/examination.” This pledge should be handwritten and signed on the front page of all papers, projects or other academic assignments submitted for evaluation in this course.
3. Religious observance : Please inform your instructor of any intended absences for religious observance in advance.
4. This syllabus may be subject to change. Students will be notified in advance of important changes that could affect grading, assignments, etc.
readings:
ELMS
or otherwise linked in the syllabus to JSTOR or other University portal readings.
partial filmography drawn upon or shown in class:
schedule
Week 1. Jan. 26-28.
M: “J” room: Film structure: The Verdict (Lumet, 1982); introduction to concept of class, syllabus on-line.
Read Poe’s Purloined Letter, available HERE, and Lacan’s analysis, “Seminar on The Purloined Letter,” reprinted in Ecrits (Norton, 2005), on ELMS (as of Tuesday at noon. Sorry for the delay). Read Poe, then Lacan pp. 7–21 on Monday evening (i.e. when it is available, see above), and Lacan 21-33 on Tuesday evening.
W: 0108: Topics: Narrative, psychology, the language of others as the unconcious: protagonist as the self. Understanding critical analysis as an art form.
Week 2: Feb. 2–4. Understanding colonialism in film
Marilyn Young, The Vietnam Wars, 1945–1990.
M: “J” room: Apocalypse Now (Coppola, 1979). Do not bother with the “Director’s Cut.”
Wed., room 0108: Discussion.
Week 3: Feb. 9–11: Western frontier
M: “J” room: The Searchers (Curtis LeMay, John Ford, dir., 1957). (Watch new print of VCR or DVD, not old print, if possible.) If you choose this week to write a paper, the first paper, as a benefit to you, The Searchers may be paired with Apocalypse Now, and one reading added: Conrad's Heart of Darkness.
Read: 1893 Frederick Jackson Turner: Frontier Hypothesis
ELMS: James Brooks, “Violence, Justice, and State Power in the New Mexican Borderlands, 1780-1880,” in Power and Place in the North American West ed. by Richard White, John M. Findlay (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999), pp. 23-60. ISBN: 0295977736
ELMS: James Brooks, “That Don’t Make You Kin!”: Borderlands History and Culture in The Searchers,” in The Searchers: Essays and Reflections on John Ford's Classic Western, ed. Arthur M. Eckstein and Peter Lehman; and glance at Eckstein, “Incest and Miscegenation,” and Douglas Pye, “Double Vision: Miscegenation and Point of View,” also in the same volume.
W: 0108, Discussion. Paper presentation.
Week 4: Feb. 16–18: Colonial self representation in film
Read: Kipling, "The Story of Muhammad Din" (Project Gutenberg)
Week 12: Platoon movies.
M: Ap. 20: Starship Troopers (Verhoven, 1997): Paper: pair with Bataan (1943), Sahara (Z. Korda, 1943) and Platoon (Stone, 1986)
Jeanine Basinger, The World War II Combat Film, rest of book
W. Discussion and papers, by Nic Price, Justin Simon, Matt Drews, Adam Shaked, Alan Wierdek, Samantha Fowler, Brian Phipps.
Week 13: Race and postcolonial reverse migrations (Triumph of the Will is the FOLLOWING week (Prof. Landau's error in class was to say otherwise.)
Monday, April 27th: Sapphire (1959) IS NOT AVAILABLE. We will see Village of the Damned (1960), based on The Midwitch Cuckoos, a novel: this is a SciFi "colonization" film; and a bit of Red Dawn (a reverse colonization film). In this context of "reverse" colonization, look at: My Beautiful Launderette (Frears, 1985), for the subject as a colonial in Western colonizing society.
ELMS: The Caribbean in Europe, ed. Colin Brock, esp. ch. 3, Paul Rich, and ch. 4, Ceri Peach -- IS NOT AVAILABLE. We will use:
Wed: Ap. 29th: Papers and discussion. Presenters: Natalia Senatore, Zimare Bekele, Natalie Ramirez, Chaeli Cantwell, Alejandro Satiesteban, Allison Bogsted.
Week 14: May 4th, 6th: Naziism and Race
Monday: Triumph of the Will (Riefenstahl, 1936); pair with Holy Mountain (1927) and/or other Riefenstahl
Reading: Sontag, Fascinating Fascism available on-line reproduced from the New York Review of Books. Locate this essay.
ELMS: Jeffrey Richards, “Imperial Heroes for a Post-Imperial Age,” in British Culture and the End of Empire, ed. Stuart Ward, pp. 128–43 (sorry about absent footnotes).
Wednesday, May 6th: Papers, discussion, including by Julie Gilbert, Richard Wood, Betsy Daniller, Joey Whelan, Kyle Irion, Laura Mengraj
Week 15: Pastiche
Monday, May 11th: Star Trek . . . Star Wars. Film showing and q&a.
Cinema and Colonialism: 2009: Race, War, and Expansion (3 credits) Grade Method: REG/P-F/AUD.
Paul Landau
MM, 12:30 to 1:45, Hornbake NPM: Mon.: J Projection Room; Wed.: Rm. 0108.
books to purchase right now:
Marylin Young, Vietnam
Siegfried Kracauer, Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality Oxford University Press (December 14, 2005) ISBN: 0195007212
Roland Barthes, Mythologies
Jeanine Basinger, The World War Two Combat Film
Optional book to buy: Paul Virilio, War and Cinema
The course focuses on the relationship between cinema(s) and modern colonial expansions and occupations. The course is also about how to watch movies critically.
We will look at a dozen major motion pictures—almost all are Hollywood productions—and we will read in various areas as a companion activity.
We will consider the films from the point of view of historical accuracy and integrity, but this will not be our main concern. Films use and reuse historical cliches and images to satisfy expectations and yet surprise the viewer, all in service of accelerating to a climax in three acts. Cinematic works, historical and fictive, bear varied but categorizable relationships to the time they were made, and so to the periods and phenomena they depict, but accuracy is never a big cinematic concern.
We will use the listed films to give pace and focus to our investigation of the following colonial events and processes: Vietnam; the American West; exploration and conquest in Africa; the French Foreign Legion; European settlerdom in Tasmania, Australia and South Africa; and then, World War II films, which stimulated an anti-imperialist critique of the Fascist enemy, and/or pointed to "our own" (the Allies') embrace of racism (and even Fascism) in spite of the struggle. Finally, we will scope out the repetition of visual images and scenes throughout different filmic genres, heightening and informing our historical and cultural literacy, with the aid of Siegfried Kracauer, Slavoj Zizek, and King Kong director Merian Cooper; Roland Barthes, Walter Benjamin, Paul Virilio, — and Osa Johnson, the filmic Annie Oakley of the 1920s’ African savannah.
You will get to express yourself in written form, in two (2) five-page (5-pp.) “bridge” papers (film – reading), done for the weeks you choose, one paper from each half of the course, i.e. wks. 1-7, 8-15. There will be no longer research paper, and no reading beyond that which is on the syllabus.
The two papers should treat the film of the week and pair it with the optional films and readings listed as well as the required ones, so papers demand a bit of time. Four to six of you will be doing this in a given week, and there is only one copy of the film at Hornbake. Major motion pictures cannot be placed on "dial-up." Plan ahead for eventualities . . .
For this course, you must pledge to do four more things besides this planning and the papers. You must
a. come to class both in the reading discussions and mini-lectures, and at Hornbake Nonprint Media, for our screenings. I may stop the screening at any point and dilate upon a theme, so you must
b. commit to seeing bits of movies to round out your viewings, during the week, especially if you have not yet seen the movie being shown in recent years.
And finally,
c. you must have read the assignment for particular class periods, and come prepared with a paragraph of notes, two plausible discussion questions, and an intervention. This must be on paper. Your prof. reserves the right to collect it in paper form and weigh them in compiling your grade.
d. take a brief midterm exam and a final exam devoted to the written material and presentations as well as the films.
Breakdown: Midterm 15, final 20 (35); papers: 20 pts. each (40); 25 pts. for attendance, contribution, preparedness, notes, and c. above.
General course plan:
Required FILMS are at Hornbake’s Nonprint Media library reserved for the class, but this is irrelevant because it is your classmates who will be watching them. If you get together in groups you can see films in the projection rooms. You select three weeks on which to see the paired companion film, read further, and build a contextual, historical analysis of the production or consumption of filmic tropes, and the prof. will notify you of your co-paper-writers.
We are intended to gain via our common experience, our directed consumption of familiar and unfamiliar visual and written material. Your full and willing participation is required in order to be in this course.
Exam make-up policy: Students who intend to miss the midterm or final exam because of unalterable plans (sports, personal) should speak to the professor in advance about a make-up exam. Students with a bona fide emergency causing them to miss an exam should contact the professor to provide satisfactory proof and to reschedule a time to take the exam as soon as possible. In all other cases, you are expected to be present at the exam.
No tape recording or filming of the professor of discussions in the class is permitted, without prior permission from the professor.
University Policies:
1. Students with disabilities should contact the instructor at the beginning of the semester to discuss any accommodation for this course.
2. The University has approved a Code of Academic Integrity which prohibits students from cheating on exams, plagiarizing papers, submitting the same paper for credit in two courses without authorization, buying papers, submitting fraudulent documents, and forging signatures.
Plagiarism policy: all quotations taken from other authors, including from the Internet, must be indicated by quotation marks and referenced. Your professor however requires this sort of reference to be to a specific individual writing, and to a piece of information existing at one point on actual paper, in addition to any other information in web-site-address-sourcing.
Paraphrasing must be referenced as well. The following University of Maryland Honor Pledge has been proposed by the Council and approved by the University Senate: “pledge on my honor that I have not given or received any unauthorized assistance on this assignment/examination.” This pledge should be handwritten and signed on the front page of all papers, projects or other academic assignments submitted for evaluation in this course.
3. Religious observance : Please inform your instructor of any intended absences for religious observance in advance.
4. This syllabus may be subject to change. Students will be notified in advance of important changes that could affect grading, assignments, etc.
readings:
ELMS
or otherwise linked in the syllabus to JSTOR or other University portal readings.
partial filmography drawn upon or shown in class:
North by Northwest (Hitchcock, 1959)
The Searchers (LeMay/Ford, 1957)
Morocco (von Stroheim, 1930)
King Kong (M. Cooper, 1933)
Tarzan (W.S. van Dyke, 1932)
Animal Crackers (Marx Bros. - V. Heerman, 1930)
Breaker Morant (Bruce Beresford, 1980)
Crocodile Dundee (Peter Faiman, 1986)
Simba (Johnson - MNH, 1927)
Baboona (Johnson - MNH, 1935)
Congorilla (Johnson- MNH, 1932)
The Thin Red Line (Terrence Malick, 1998)
The Four Feathers (Zoltan Korda, 1939)
Sanders of the River (Zoltan Korda, 1935)
Planet of the Apes (Franklin Schaffner, 1968)
Beau Geste (Wm. Wellman, 1939)
A Passage to India (J. Ivory, 1988)
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (Spielberg, 1984)
Gunga Din (George Stevens, 1939)
The Verdict (S. Lumet, 1982)
Once Upon a Time in China (Hark Tsui, 1991)
Apocalypse Now (Coppola, 1979)
King Solomon’s Mines (C. Bennet, 1956)
The Man Who Would Be King (Niven, 1975)
The Gods Must Be Crazy (Uys, 1980)
Zulu (Cy Enfield, 1964)
Red Dawn (Milius, 1980)
Village of the Damned (Wyndam, 1960)
Triumph of the Will (Riefenstahl, 1936)
Star Wars (Lucas, 1979)
schedule
Week 1. Jan. 26-28.
M: “J” room: Film structure: The Verdict (Lumet, 1982); introduction to concept of class, syllabus on-line.
Read Poe’s Purloined Letter, available HERE, and Lacan’s analysis, “Seminar on The Purloined Letter,” reprinted in Ecrits (Norton, 2005), on ELMS (as of Tuesday at noon. Sorry for the delay). Read Poe, then Lacan pp. 7–21 on Monday evening (i.e. when it is available, see above), and Lacan 21-33 on Tuesday evening.
W: 0108: Topics: Narrative, psychology, the language of others as the unconcious: protagonist as the self. Understanding critical analysis as an art form.
Week 2: Feb. 2–4. Understanding colonialism in film
Marilyn Young, The Vietnam Wars, 1945–1990.
M: “J” room: Apocalypse Now (Coppola, 1979). Do not bother with the “Director’s Cut.”
Wed., room 0108: Discussion.
Week 3: Feb. 9–11: Western frontier
M: “J” room: The Searchers (Curtis LeMay, John Ford, dir., 1957). (Watch new print of VCR or DVD, not old print, if possible.) If you choose this week to write a paper, the first paper, as a benefit to you, The Searchers may be paired with Apocalypse Now, and one reading added: Conrad's Heart of Darkness.
Read: 1893 Frederick Jackson Turner: Frontier Hypothesis
ELMS: James Brooks, “Violence, Justice, and State Power in the New Mexican Borderlands, 1780-1880,” in Power and Place in the North American West ed. by Richard White, John M. Findlay (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999), pp. 23-60. ISBN: 0295977736
ELMS: James Brooks, “That Don’t Make You Kin!”: Borderlands History and Culture in The Searchers,” in The Searchers: Essays and Reflections on John Ford's Classic Western, ed. Arthur M. Eckstein and Peter Lehman; and glance at Eckstein, “Incest and Miscegenation,” and Douglas Pye, “Double Vision: Miscegenation and Point of View,” also in the same volume.
W: 0108, Discussion. Paper presentation.
Week 4: Feb. 16–18: Colonial self representation in film
Read: Kipling, "The Story of Muhammad Din" (Project Gutenberg)
Read: Wren, "Gentleman of Colour" (Aus. Gutenberg)
ELMS: David Cannadine, Ornamentalism: How the British Saw their Empire (Oxford: OUP, 2001); read the intro and ch. 4., and then pt. 3 in its entirety at the very least. This reading is up on ELMS now.
ELMS: Alice Conklin, A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire – France and West Africa, 1895-1930 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), pp. 1–37. This title is being belatedly processed by McKeldin Reserves and should be on ELMS on Monday evening.
PAPER: also read ELMS: Homi K. Bhabha, “Sitting under a tree in New Delhi in 1817,” Critical Inquiry, vol 12, issue 1. First log in to JSTOR from your terminal, and then link here.
Ted Martens, Betsy Daniller, Brian Phipps offer papers.
M: Four Feathers. PAPER: pair with Gunga Din or Beau Geste and Indiana Jones and the Temple . . .
Wed., 0108: Discussion. Group paper presentations.
Week 5: Feb. 23–25: Conjunctures: Wildlife photography, colonialism, and show business
M: “J” room: era cartoon shorts; King Kong (M. Cooper, 1933). PAPER: pair with Simba (Martin Johnson and the Museum of Natural History; 1927), which must be watched twice. Papers: This film is on laserdisc and must be viewed as a group.
Read Kracauer, Theory of Film, 41-102. Scan conclusion, also, “Redemption of Physical Reality”
GOOGLE BOOKS: M. Johnson, “The Bravest Animal in Africa,” from Camera Trails (88-109).
PAPER: Consult Pascal Imperato, They Married Adventure, and leave it back in its proper location on the shelf. This is important to your four colleagues who also would like to see it . . . And, Osa Johnson, I Married Adventure, or any other book by Osa and Martin Johnson about their travels, including Camera Trails. Also leave back on shelf. BTW used bookstores love Osa and Martin's books . . .
Wed., room 0108, Discussion of Kracauer. Group paper presentations: Alejandro Sanhestebar, Julie Gilbert, Dave Vitz, Alison Bogstead, Adam Shaked, Chris Fauei.
Week 6: Mar. 2–4. White settlers.
James Boyce, Van Diemen’s Land: A History (Melbourne: Black, 2008), esp. chap. 14. This is on its way . . . but unfortunately not yet here.
Nigel Penn, The Forgotten Frontier, 108-133
PAPER: Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore (Vantage, 1988).
PAPER: or, if you can get it, Greg Dening, Island and Beaches: Discourse on a Silent Land: Marquesas, 1774-1880 . . . this is up to you to find (Library of Congress . . . )
M. Breaker Morant (1980). Paper: Reality and image: white frontier settlers in the British Empire? Pair with that film, Man . . . King, and Crocodile Dundee.
W: Discussion and paper presentations, from Justin Simon, Nicholas Price, Samantha Fowler, Natalie Senatore, Ted Yegan.
Week 7: Mar. 9–11: An animalized other?
Mon.: Planet of the Apes, for the paper, paired with Tarzan (1932)
ELMS: Franz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, “Concerning Violence,” 35–top of 62. NOTE: Ignore "Excerpt, "On Violence."
Class reading: Donna Haraway, “Teddy Bear Patriarchy and the Garden of Eden,” an article in Social Text, reprinted in Primate Visions. You may log on to any University portal. Google Haraway Teddy Bear, find the issue of Critical Inquiry on the Library Web portal, log in again if necessary, and push the "Find It" button, and you can go to JSTOR, and read it. This is your mission, your assignment . . .
You may log in also and hit this LINK.
You can download the PDF and print it out.
PAPER: Read the novel, TARZAN, by E R B in full.
PAPER: Read and/or review Kracauer, Theory of Film, 71-82; mid 106-9; and chap. 13.
W: Discussion and papers by: Adam Fried, Lauren Mengarat, Kyle Irion, Andy Ashburn . . . AND OTHERS.
Mar. 16–18, Spring Break.
Read: Roland Barthes, Mythologies, all. Esp. “Wrestling,” “Margerine,” “Guides Bleus,” and “Mythologies.”
Week 8: Mar. 23-25. Dioramas.
Mon: The Gods Must Be Crazy (Jaime Uys, 1980), part one.
WED: room 0108: Midterm exam.
Week 9: Mar. 30, Ap. 1: Real victims of a cinematic cliche?
M: Gods Must Be Crazy (cf. Sanders of the River). PAPER: Pair with Marshall, A Kalahari Family (six hours in length).
eReserve: Bernard Cohn, Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1996), ch. 5, pp. 107-62!
Re-read: Roland Barthes, Mythologies, all. Esp. “Wrestling,” “Margerine,” “Guides Bleus,” and “Mythologies.”
PAPER: Robert Gordon, The Bushman Myth (Boulder: Westview, 2000).
Week 10: April 6th, Ap. 8th: “Boy’s own stories,” remembered; Rider Haggard, and the “lost city”
Reading On-line: Farini, In Search of the Lost City, via http://www.history.umd.edu/Faculty/Landau/Fall_2003.html
Reprise (re papers) Conrad, Heart of Darkness
TO BE ON ELMS: Jan Vansina, How Societies are Born, 108 ff., on Feti ruins;
ELMS: David Cannadine, Ornamentalism: How the British Saw their Empire (Oxford: OUP, 2001); read the intro and ch. 4., and then pt. 3 in its entirety at the very least. This reading is up on ELMS now.
ELMS: Alice Conklin, A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire – France and West Africa, 1895-1930 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), pp. 1–37. This title is being belatedly processed by McKeldin Reserves and should be on ELMS on Monday evening.
PAPER: also read ELMS: Homi K. Bhabha, “Sitting under a tree in New Delhi in 1817,” Critical Inquiry, vol 12, issue 1. First log in to JSTOR from your terminal, and then link here.
Ted Martens, Betsy Daniller, Brian Phipps offer papers.
M: Four Feathers. PAPER: pair with Gunga Din or Beau Geste and Indiana Jones and the Temple . . .
Wed., 0108: Discussion. Group paper presentations.
Week 5: Feb. 23–25: Conjunctures: Wildlife photography, colonialism, and show business
M: “J” room: era cartoon shorts; King Kong (M. Cooper, 1933). PAPER: pair with Simba (Martin Johnson and the Museum of Natural History; 1927), which must be watched twice. Papers: This film is on laserdisc and must be viewed as a group.
Read Kracauer, Theory of Film, 41-102. Scan conclusion, also, “Redemption of Physical Reality”
GOOGLE BOOKS: M. Johnson, “The Bravest Animal in Africa,” from Camera Trails (88-109).
PAPER: Consult Pascal Imperato, They Married Adventure, and leave it back in its proper location on the shelf. This is important to your four colleagues who also would like to see it . . . And, Osa Johnson, I Married Adventure, or any other book by Osa and Martin Johnson about their travels, including Camera Trails. Also leave back on shelf. BTW used bookstores love Osa and Martin's books . . .
Wed., room 0108, Discussion of Kracauer. Group paper presentations: Alejandro Sanhestebar, Julie Gilbert, Dave Vitz, Alison Bogstead, Adam Shaked, Chris Fauei.
Week 6: Mar. 2–4. White settlers.
James Boyce, Van Diemen’s Land: A History (Melbourne: Black, 2008), esp. chap. 14. This is on its way . . . but unfortunately not yet here.
Nigel Penn, The Forgotten Frontier, 108-133
PAPER: Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore (Vantage, 1988).
PAPER: or, if you can get it, Greg Dening, Island and Beaches: Discourse on a Silent Land: Marquesas, 1774-1880 . . . this is up to you to find (Library of Congress . . . )
M. Breaker Morant (1980). Paper: Reality and image: white frontier settlers in the British Empire? Pair with that film, Man . . . King, and Crocodile Dundee.
W: Discussion and paper presentations, from Justin Simon, Nicholas Price, Samantha Fowler, Natalie Senatore, Ted Yegan.
Week 7: Mar. 9–11: An animalized other?
Mon.: Planet of the Apes, for the paper, paired with Tarzan (1932)
ELMS: Franz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, “Concerning Violence,” 35–top of 62. NOTE: Ignore "Excerpt, "On Violence."
Class reading: Donna Haraway, “Teddy Bear Patriarchy and the Garden of Eden,” an article in Social Text, reprinted in Primate Visions. You may log on to any University portal. Google Haraway Teddy Bear, find the issue of Critical Inquiry on the Library Web portal, log in again if necessary, and push the "Find It" button, and you can go to JSTOR, and read it. This is your mission, your assignment . . .
You may log in also and hit this LINK.
You can download the PDF and print it out.
PAPER: Read the novel, TARZAN, by E R B in full.
PAPER: Read and/or review Kracauer, Theory of Film, 71-82; mid 106-9; and chap. 13.
W: Discussion and papers by: Adam Fried, Lauren Mengarat, Kyle Irion, Andy Ashburn . . . AND OTHERS.
Mar. 16–18, Spring Break.
Read: Roland Barthes, Mythologies, all. Esp. “Wrestling,” “Margerine,” “Guides Bleus,” and “Mythologies.”
Week 8: Mar. 23-25. Dioramas.
Mon: The Gods Must Be Crazy (Jaime Uys, 1980), part one.
WED: room 0108: Midterm exam.
Week 9: Mar. 30, Ap. 1: Real victims of a cinematic cliche?
M: Gods Must Be Crazy (cf. Sanders of the River). PAPER: Pair with Marshall, A Kalahari Family (six hours in length).
eReserve: Bernard Cohn, Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1996), ch. 5, pp. 107-62!
Re-read: Roland Barthes, Mythologies, all. Esp. “Wrestling,” “Margerine,” “Guides Bleus,” and “Mythologies.”
PAPER: Robert Gordon, The Bushman Myth (Boulder: Westview, 2000).
Week 10: April 6th, Ap. 8th: “Boy’s own stories,” remembered; Rider Haggard, and the “lost city”
Reading On-line: Farini, In Search of the Lost City, via http://www.history.umd.edu/Faculty/Landau/Fall_2003.html
Reprise (re papers) Conrad, Heart of Darkness
TO BE ON ELMS: Jan Vansina, How Societies are Born, 108 ff., on Feti ruins;
For PAPER: J. Cretien, 2000 Years of Great Lakes History, selected pages on Rwanda, Burton and Speke.
Monday: King Solomon’s Mines (1956; 1933 only if 1956 unavailable) paired with Blood Diamond (2007) (again, for the PAPER).
Monday: King Solomon’s Mines (1956; 1933 only if 1956 unavailable) paired with Blood Diamond (2007) (again, for the PAPER).
Ted Mertens, Jennifer Benade, this week.
W: Papers; lost places and races; Kimba (1966).
Week 11: Men at War: April 13, 15
Jeanine Basinger, The World War II Combat Film, first three chapters
PAPER: Paul Virilio, War and Cinema, all. Or Speed and Politics, all. You may buy either book at the Bookstore next week or on line.
Monday: Ap. 13: The Thin Red Line, paired with Zulu (Cy Enfield, 1964)
Wed., Ap. 15: A Walk in the Sun (1945); Papers, presentation by Chris Fauci, Ted Yegan, Erin Dawson, and Michael Peitzmeier, and Amanda Green; discussion
W: Papers; lost places and races; Kimba (1966).
Week 11: Men at War: April 13, 15
Jeanine Basinger, The World War II Combat Film, first three chapters
PAPER: Paul Virilio, War and Cinema, all. Or Speed and Politics, all. You may buy either book at the Bookstore next week or on line.
Monday: Ap. 13: The Thin Red Line, paired with Zulu (Cy Enfield, 1964)
Wed., Ap. 15: A Walk in the Sun (1945); Papers, presentation by Chris Fauci, Ted Yegan, Erin Dawson, and Michael Peitzmeier, and Amanda Green; discussion
Week 12: Platoon movies.
M: Ap. 20: Starship Troopers (Verhoven, 1997): Paper: pair with Bataan (1943), Sahara (Z. Korda, 1943) and Platoon (Stone, 1986)
Jeanine Basinger, The World War II Combat Film, rest of book
W. Discussion and papers, by Nic Price, Justin Simon, Matt Drews, Adam Shaked, Alan Wierdek, Samantha Fowler, Brian Phipps.
Week 13: Race and postcolonial reverse migrations (Triumph of the Will is the FOLLOWING week (Prof. Landau's error in class was to say otherwise.)
Monday, April 27th: Sapphire (1959) IS NOT AVAILABLE. We will see Village of the Damned (1960), based on The Midwitch Cuckoos, a novel: this is a SciFi "colonization" film; and a bit of Red Dawn (a reverse colonization film). In this context of "reverse" colonization, look at: My Beautiful Launderette (Frears, 1985), for the subject as a colonial in Western colonizing society.
ELMS: The Caribbean in Europe, ed. Colin Brock, esp. ch. 3, Paul Rich, and ch. 4, Ceri Peach -- IS NOT AVAILABLE. We will use:
ELMS:
Caribbean Migration to Western Europe and the United States: Essays on Incorporation, Identity, and Citizenship . . . Nina Glick Schiller's essay, and Michael Giraud's essay.
Wed: Ap. 29th: Papers and discussion. Presenters: Natalia Senatore, Zimare Bekele, Natalie Ramirez, Chaeli Cantwell, Alejandro Satiesteban, Allison Bogsted.
Week 14: May 4th, 6th: Naziism and Race
Monday: Triumph of the Will (Riefenstahl, 1936); pair with Holy Mountain (1927) and/or other Riefenstahl
Reading: Sontag, Fascinating Fascism available on-line reproduced from the New York Review of Books. Locate this essay.
ELMS: Jeffrey Richards, “Imperial Heroes for a Post-Imperial Age,” in British Culture and the End of Empire, ed. Stuart Ward, pp. 128–43 (sorry about absent footnotes).
Wednesday, May 6th: Papers, discussion, including by Julie Gilbert, Richard Wood, Betsy Daniller, Joey Whelan, Kyle Irion, Laura Mengraj
Week 15: Pastiche
Monday, May 11th: Star Trek . . . Star Wars. Film showing and q&a.
Previous weeks
Click HERE for syllabus.
Four Feathers / Wren
I was delighted that our conversation encompassed the idea of "blackface" in cinema, but would just note that there is a great deal more to say here. For anyone interested, Michael Rogin has written an admirable book about the topic, and we will continue with it as we go along.
Just to note: the ultimate journey for the protagonist involves the doubling and redoubling of the stakes, so that the climax is more exciting. In many films about white men among "natives," blackface becomes the visible emblem of his investment in this conflict: now the battle is within himself as well as outside himself.
But for general purposes, blackface recalls to us that "the natives" never seem to be able to register independent emotions, narrative, or personhood. Many "natives" especially the leading baddies are played by whites. Only whites underneath, so to speak, seem invested in these films with the full range of options familiar to the moviegoer. Gunga Din was a blackface character no matter who played him: he was a parody of a soldier who only attained his apotheosis by acting more like a British soldier than most British soldiers. Like Harry Faversham.
Lacan / Poe:
I was heartened to see how many of you actually read the short story and Lacan's admittedly difficult ideas stemming from it.
Some concluding thoughts drawn from class that I think are directly applicable to the virtual "worlds" created by every movie:
First: a message — any utterance, sign, piece of meaning — can never be read for meaning in and of itself. "It itself" is meaningless. Instead, its meaning — the meaning of any message — is created by the circumstances surrounding it.
Yet messages persist and entrain people upon them, as in Poe's story. And this meaning ("the signifier") inhabits the recesses of our selves.
People's selves, the "unconcious" mind, is inhabited and even composed of these messages. (Or rather, consists in signifiers provided by others — by "others' discourse.")
Finally: make a note that messages with unintentional effects and unintended recipients (who nonetheless complete their circuit) are a staple of cinematic narrative. And then move on to Marilyn Young's tale of the United States and Vietnam . . .
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