Week 1. Introduction: How Cinematic is Politics? How Political is Cinema?
Screen:
Wang Ping and Li Enjie, The East Is Red (1965).
Reading (excerpt):
Giorgio Agamben, ‘Appendix. The Supreme Music: Music and Politics,’ What Is Philosophy?, (Stanford University Press, 2018), 97-107.
Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political (University of Chicago Press, 2008).
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Week 2. Visual politics in Antiquity
Screen:
Akira Kurosawa, Dreams (1990).
Arthur Hiller, Man of La Mancha (1972)
Reading (excerpt):
Plato, ‘Book 4’ and ‘Book 7,’ The Republic (Cambridge University Press, 2000).
Aristotle, Poetics (Oxford University Press, 2013).
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Week 3. Image and Sound
Screening:
Dziga Vertov, The Man with the Movie Camera (1929)
Francis Ford Coppola, The Conversation (1974)
Mark Herman, Brassed Off (1996).
Reading (excerpt):
Walter Benjamin, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,’ Illuminations (Random House, 2015), 211-244.
Andrei Tarkovsky, ‘Chapter III: Imprinted Time,’ Sculpting in Time: Reflections on the Cinema (University of Texas Press, 1989), 57-81.
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Week 4. Mise-en-scène, Action, and Speeches
Screening:
Michael Curtiz, Casablanca (1942).
Alfred Hitchcock, North by Northwest (1959).
Reading (excerpt):
André Bazin, ‘De Sica: Metteur en Scene,’ What Is Cinema, Vol. II (University of California Press, 1971), 61-78.
Francois Truffaut, Hitchcock (Simon & Schuster, 1985).
Amos Vogel, Film as a Subversive Art (CT Editions, 2005).
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Week 5. Montage and Narrative
Screening:
David Lynch, Mulholland Drive (2001).
Sergei Eisenstein, Battleship Potemkin (1925).
Reading (excerpt):
Sergei Eisenstein, ‘The Montage of Attraction,’ The Eisenstein Reader (Bloomsbury, 2019).
Suzanne Speidel, ‘Film form and Narrative,’ Jill Nelmes ed., Introduction to Film Studies (Taylor & Francis, 2011).
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Week 6. Genre, Propaganda, and Censorship
Screening:
François Truffaut, Fahrenheit 451 (1966).
Gillo Pontecorvo, The Battle of Algiers (1966).
Ernst Lubitsch, Ninotchka (1939).
Reading (excerpt):
Matthew D. Johnson, ‘Propaganda and Censorship in Chinese Cinema,’ in Yingjin Zhang ed., A Companion to Chinese Cinema (Wiley Blackwell, 2012), 151-178.
Megan Boler and Selena Nemorin, ‘Dissent, Truthiness, and Scepticism in the Global Media Landscape: Twenty-first Century Propaganda in Times of War,’ Jonathan Auerbach and Russ Castronovo eds., The Oxford Handbook of Propaganda Studies (Oxford University Press, 2013), 395-417.
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Week 7. Stars, Audience, and Auteur
Screening:
Coralie Fargeat, The Substance (2024).
Joseph Leo Mankiewicz, All about Eve (1950).
Federico Fellini, 8½ (1963).
Reading (excerpt):
Richard Dyer, ‘2 Production: Consumption’ and ‘3 Ideology,’ Stars (Bloomsbury, 2019), 9-32.
Michel Foucault, ‘What Is an Author?,’ Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology: Essential Works of Foucault 1954-1984 (Penguin, 2019).
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Week 8. Documentary and Political Action
Screening:
Joshua Oppenheimer, Jagal (The Act of Killing, 2015).
Jehane Noujaim, The Square (2013).
Reading (excerpt):
Godmillow, Jill and Shapiro, Anne-Louise. “How Real is the Reality in Documentary Film?” History and Theory 36, 4 (1997), pp. 80-101.
Christensen, Terry (1987). “You Provide the Prose Poems,” “Power Is Not a Toy,” Reel Politics: American Political Movies from Birth of a Nation to Platoon (), pp. 55-62, 111-24.
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Week 9. From Text to Discourse
Screening:
Bob Fosse, All That Jazz (1979)
Jiang Wen, Gone with the Bullets (2014).
Reading (excerpt):
Jason Dittmer and Daniel Bos, ‘3. Methodologies: Researching Popular Geopolitics,’ Popular Culture, Geopolitics, and Identity (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019), 45-67.
Kevin C. Dunn and Iver B. Neumann, ’26. Discourse Analysis,’ Xavier Guillaume and Pinar Bilgin eds., Routledge Handbook of International Political Sociology (Routledge, 2017), 262-271.
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Week 10. From Psychology to Ideology
Screening:
Stanley Kubrick, A Clockwork Orange (1971).
David Fincher, Fight Club (1999).
Jiang Wen, In the Heat of the Sun (1993).
Reading (excerpt):
Louis Althusser, ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatus,’ On the Reproduction of Capitalism (Verso, 2014).
Jean-Louis Baudry, ‘Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematographic Apparatus,’ Film Quarterly, 28(2):Winter, 1974-1975, 39-47.
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Week 11. History, Fiction, and Adaptation
Screening:
Nemes László, Saul fia [Son of Saul] (2015)
James Ivory, The Remains of the Day (1993).
Joe Wright, Darkest Hour (2017)
Reading (excerpt):
Carl Boggs and Pollard Tom, ‘Chapter 3. War and Cinema: The Historical Legacy,’ The Hollywood War Machine: U.S. Militarism and Popular Culture (Taylor & Francis, 2017).
Jutta Weldes, ‘1. Popular Culture, Science Fiction, and World Politics: Exploring Intertextual Relations,’ in Jutta Weldes ed., To Seek Out New Worlds: Science Fiction and World Politics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 1-29.
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Week 12. Nation, Civilization, and Cinema
Screening:
Alexander Nikolayevich Sokurov, Russian Ark (2002).
Roland Joffé, The Mission (1986).
Reading (excerpt):
de Vitoria, Francisco, Political Writings (Cambridge University Press, 1991).
Carl Schmitt, The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum (Telos, 2003).
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Week 13. Gender, Class, and Cinema
Screening:
Huang Ji and Ryuji Otsuka, Stonewalling (2022)
Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin, City Lights (1931)
Reading (excerpt):
Laura Mulvey, ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,’ Screen, 16(3):1975, 6–18.
Cowie, Elizabeth, ‘Women as Sign,’ Feminism and Film, E. Ann Kaplan ed. (Oxford University Press, 2000), 48-65.
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Week 14. War, Peace, and Cinema
Screening:
Andrzej Witold Wajda, Katyn (207).
Jiang Wen, Devils on the Doorstep (2000).
Reading (excerpt):
Paul Virilio, War and Cinema: The Logistics of Perception (Verso, 1989).
Aquinas, Saint Thomas. Aquinas: Political Writings. R. W. Dyson trans. (Cambridge University Press, 2002).
Immanuel Kant, Toward Perpetual Peace and Other Writings on Politics, Peace, and History (Yale University Press, 2006), 67-109.
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Week 15. The Future of Cinema and Politics
Screening:
Jafar Panahi, Taxi (2015)
Lou Ye, An Unfinished Film (2024)
Reading (excerpt):
Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (Grove Press, 1963).
Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (University of Chicago Press, 1953).
Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political (University of Chicago Press, 2008).
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Week 16. Debates
- Zhang Yimou’s Hero vs. S. Rajamouli’s RRR: Roudram Ranam Rudhiram.
- Hajime Isayama’s Attack on Titan vs. Edward Zwick’s Defiance
- Guo Zen’s Ten Years vs. Bahman Ghobadi’s No One Knows About Persian Cats
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Giorgio Agamben, ‘Appendix. The Supreme Music: Music and Politics,’ What Is Philosophy?, (Stanford University Press, 2018).
Louis Althusser, ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatus,’ On the Reproduction of Capitalism (Verso, 2014).
Aristotle, Poetics (Oxford University Press, 2013).
Aquinas, Saint Thomas. Aquinas: Political Writings. R. W. Dyson trans. (Cambridge University Press, 2002).
André Bazin, ‘De Sica: Metteur en Scene,’ What Is Cinema, Vol. II (University of California Press, 1971)
Jean-Louis Baudry, ‘Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematographic Apparatus,’ Film Quarterly, 28(2):Winter, 1974-1975, 39-47.
Walter Benjamin, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,’ Illuminations (Random House, 2015), 211-244.
Carl Boggs and Pollard Tom, The Hollywood War Machine: U.S. Militarism and Popular Culture (Taylor & Francis, 2017).
Megan Boler and Selena Nemorin, ‘Dissent, Truthiness, and Skepticism in the Global Media Landscape: Twenty-first Century Propaganda in Times of War,’ Jonathan Auerbach and Russ Castronovo eds., The Oxford Handbook of Propaganda Studies (Oxford University Press, 2013), 395-417.
Elizabeth Cowie, ‘Women as Sign,’ Feminism and Film, E. Ann Kaplan ed. (Oxford University Press, 2000), 48-65.
Terry Christensen, (1987). “You Provide the Prose Poems,” “Power Is Not a Toy,” Reel Politics: American Political Movies from Birth of a Nation to Platoon (), pp. 55-62, 111-24.
Jason Dittmer and Daniel Bos, ‘3. Methodologies: Researching Popular Geopolitics,’ Popular Culture, Geopolitics, and Identity (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019), 45-67.
Kevin C. Dunn and Iver B. Neumann, ’26. Discourse Analysis,’ Xavier Guillaume and Pinar Bilgin eds., Routledge Handbook of International Political Sociology (Routledge, 2017), 262-271.
Richard Dyer, ‘2 Production: Consumption’ and ‘3 Ideology,’ Stars (Bloomsbury, 2019), 9-32.
Sergei Eisenstein, ‘The Montage of Attraction,’ The Eisenstein Reader (Bloomsbury, 2019).
Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (Grove Press, 1963).
Michel Foucault, ‘What Is an Author?’ Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology: Essential Works of Foucault 1954-1984 (Penguin, 2019).
Jill Godmillow and Anne-Louise Shapiro, “How Real is the Reality in Documentary Film?” History and Theory 36, 4 (1997), pp. 80-101.
Immanuel Kant, Toward Perpetual Peace and Other Writings on Politics, Peace, and History (Yale University Press, 2006), 67-109.
Matthew D. Johnson, ‘Propaganda and Censorship in Chinese Cinema,’ in Yingjin Zhang ed., A Companion to Chinese Cinema (Wiley Blackwell, 2012), 151-178.
Laura Mulvey, ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,’ Screen, 16(3):1975, 6–18.
Plato, The Republic (Cambridge University Press, 2000).
Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political (University of Chicago Press, 2008).
Carl Schmitt, The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum (Telos, 2003).
Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (University of Chicago Press, 1953).
Suzanne Speidel, ‘Film form and Narrative,’ Jill Nelmes ed., Introduction to Film Studies (Taylor & Francis, 2011).
Andrei Tarkovsky, ‘Chapter III: Imprinted Time,’ Sculpting in Time: Reflections on the Cinema (University of Texas Press, 1989), 57-81.
Paul Virilio, War and Cinema: The Logistics of Perception (Verso, 1989).
de Vitoria, Francisco, Political Writings (Cambridge University Press, 1991).
Amos Vogel, Film as a Subversive Art (CT Editions, 2005).
Jutta Weldes, ‘1. Popular Culture, Science Fiction, and World Politics: Exploring Intertextual Relations,’ in Jutta Weldes ed., To Seek Out New Worlds: Science Fiction and World Politics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 1-29.
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