1

9/2

Introduction:

What is “Women’s Cinema”?

1. Introduction to the course


2. Course requirements and assignments

Screening:

The Consequences of Feminism (Alice Guy, 1906), 7 min

Suspense (Lois Weber, 1913), 10 min

La Souriante Madame Beudet (Germaine Dulac, 1923), 38 min

2

9/9

Female Pioneers: Erased Presences

1. Mayne, Judith. “The Women at the Keyhole: Women’s Cinema and Feminist Criticism.” New German Critique, no. 23( 1981): 27-43.


2. Alison Butler, “Introduction: From Counter-Cinema to Minor Cinema,” in Women’s Cinema: The Contested Screen. Wallflower Press, 2003.


3. GAINES, JANE M. “WHAT HAPPENED TO WOMEN IN THE SILENT U.S. FILM INDUSTRY?” In Pink-Slipped: What Happened to Women in the Silent Film Industries?, 16–32. University of Illinois Press, 2018.


4. GAINES, JANE M. “MORE FICTIONS: Did Alice Guy Blaché Make La Fée Aux Choux (The Cabbage Fairy)?” In Pink-Slipped: What Happened to Women in the Silent Film Industries?, 51–70. University of Illinois Press, 2018.

Website: Women Film Pioneers Project https://wfpp.columbia.edu

Screening:

Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché (Pamela B. Green, 2018)

“A History of Silence: Cinema of Lois Weber” (8 min)

3

9/16

Women’s Picture:

Classic Hollywood and Female Audience

1. Stacey, Jackie. 2 FROM THE MALE GAZE TO THE FEMALE SPECTATOR, Star Gazing: Hollywood Cinema and Female Spectatorship. London and New York: Routledge, 1994.


2. Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen 16.3 (1975): 6-18.


3. *Williams, Linda. “Melodrama Revised.” Refiguring American Film Genres, 42-88.

Screening:

The Women (George Cukor, 1939), 133 min

4

9/23

Women and Modernity:

The “Modern Girls”

1. Zhang, Zhen. “Fighting over the Modern Gril” in An Amorous History of the Silver Screen: Shanghai Cinema, 1896-1937, U of Chicago Press, 2005.


2. Wada-Marciano, Mitsuyo, 'Imaging Modern Girls in the Japanese Woman’s Film', Nippon Modern: Japanese Cinema of the 1920s and 1930s (Honolulu, HI, 2008; online edn, Hawai'i Scholarship Online, 17 Nov. 2016).


3. *Kelleter, Frank; Mayer, Ruth (2007):"The Melodramatic Mode Revisited: An Introduction." Melodrama! The Mode of Excess from Early America to Hollywood. Eds. Kelleter, Frank; Krah, Barbara; Mayer, Ruth. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter. 7-17. American Studies – A Monograph Series 145.

Screening:

Center Stage (1991)

Burden of Life (Heinosuke Gosho, 1936), 66 min (clip)

Woman of Tokyo (Yasujiro Ozu,1933), 45 min (clip)

5

9/30

Women and Modernity:

Female Subjectivity

1. González-López, Irene, and Hide Murakawa. ""Film Director Tanaka Kinuyo": The Challenges of Female Authorship." JCMS: Journal of Cinema and Media Studies 62, no. 4 (2023): 130-154.


2. González-López, Irene, and Ashida Mayu. “The First Female Gaze at Post-War Japanese Women: Tanaka Kinuyo, Film Director.” In Tanaka Kinuyo: Nation, Stardom and Female Subjectivity, edited by Irene González-López and Michael Smith, 104–25. Edinburgh University Press, 2018.


3. Saito, Ayako. “Kinuyo and Sumie: When Women Write and Direct.” In Tanaka Kinuyo: Nation, Stardom and Female Subjectivity, edited by Irene González-López and Michael Smith, 126–54. Edinburgh University Press, 2018.

Screening:

Eternal Breasts (Kinuyo Tanaka, 1955)

6

10/7

Body and Genre: Exploitation

1. Williams, Linda. “Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess.” Film Quarterly 44, no. 4 (1991): 2–13. https://doi.org/10.2307/1212758.


2. Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, “The Rape-Revenge Film Canon” in Rape-Revenge Films: A Critical Study, Jefferson NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2011.

Screening:

Lady Snowblood (Fujita Toshiya, 1973), Female Prisoner #701 (Ito Shunya, 1972),

clip

*Revenge (Coralie Fargeat, 2017), 108 min

7

10/14

Body and Genre: From Abject to Monstrous Feminine

1. Creed, Barbara, “Alien and the Monstrous-Feminine,” in The Gendered Cyborg, Routledge, 2000.


2. KRISTEVA, JULIA, and Leon S. Roudiez.”POWERS OF HORROR.” In Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, 213-16. Columbia University Press, 2024.


3. Creed, Barbara, “Vampires, Feminism & Ethnicity: A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night,” in Return of the Monstrous-Feminine: Feminist New Wave Cinema, Routledge, 2022.

Screening:

Rosemary’s Baby (Roman Polanski, 1968)

Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979)

* Jennifer’s Body (Karyn Kusama, 2009)

Teeth (Mitchell Lichtenstein, 2007)

*A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (Ana Lily Amirpour, 2014)

TBA

8

10/21

Guest Lecture:

Curating Women’s Film/Media

TBA

9

10/28

WMW group discussion

After participating in at least one of the events of the WMW film festical, students will come back with reviews/analysis of, or thought on the festival activities or screenings.

10

11/4

Body and Genre: Time, Space, and Subjectivity

1. INCE, KATE. “Feminist Phenomenology and the Film World of Agnès Varda.” Hypatia 28, no. 3 (2013): 602–17.


2. Hayward, Susan. “Beyond the Gaze and into Femme-Filmécriture: Agnès Varda’s Sans Toit Ni Loi.” French Film: Texts and Contexts, 2nd ed., Routledge, 2006, pp. 269–280.


3. DePaul, B. A.. “Temporality, Spatiality and Looking in Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) and Agnès Varda's Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962).” (2018).

Screening:

Vagabond (Agnès Varda, 1985), 105 min

11

11/11

Posthuman:

Cyborgs to Technosexuality—a Male Fantasy?

1. HARAWAY, Donna. “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century.” In Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. Routledge.


2. Saaranen, Linnéa. (2020). The Perfect Woman: Scarlett Johansson as a cyborg in 'Under the Skin' (2013), 'Her' (2013) and 'Ghost in the Shell' (2017).


3. Carl Silvio. “Refiguring the Radical Cyborg in Mamoru Oshii’s ‘Ghost in the Shell.’” Science Fiction Studies 26, no. 1 (1999): 54–72.


4. Molloy, Missy, 'From Cyborg Theory to Posthuman Mothers', Screening the Posthuman (New York, 2023; online edn, Oxford Academic, 22 June 2023.


5. Nilima Chaudhary, “Rewriting Femborgian Narratives: Transgression and Subversion of the Female Cyborg in Her and Ex Machina,” Rupkatha Journal, vol. 16, Issue 1, 2024.


6. Genevieve Liveley, “Changing the Story of Human-Machine Relationships,” Digital Societies, January 25, 2020.

https://reurl.cc/yD13Ay

Screening:

Ghost in the Shell (Mamoru Oshii, 1995)

Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (Mamoru Oshii, 2004)

Ghost in the Shell (Rupert Sanders, 2017)

Her (Spike Jonze, 2013)

Ex Machina (Alexander Medawar, 2015)

Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve, 2017)

12

11/18

Guest Lecture: Gender and Interactive Design

TBA

13

11/25

Witches and Games: Women’s Experimental Cinema

1. Keller, Sarah. “Done and Undone: Meshes of the Afternoon and Witch’s Cradle.” In Maya Deren: Incomplete Control, 31–80. Columbia University Press, 2015.


2. WEES. William C. “Peggy’s Playhouse: Contesting the Modernist Paradigm.” In Women’s Experimental Cinema: Critical Frameworks. Ed. Robin Blaetz, Duke University Press, 2007.


3. “Love and Theft: Peggy Ahwesh and Sondera Perry Play Video Games.” Eai.org. https://reurl.cc/6jVz3b


4. Brown, W. (2015) ‘Destroy Visual Pleasure: Cinema, Attention, and the Digital Female Body (Or, Angelina Jolie Is a Cyborg)’, in A. Backman Rogers and L. Mulvey (eds) Feminisms. Netherlands: Amsterdam University Press.

Screening:

Meshes of the Afternoon (Maya Deren, 1943), 14 min.

Witch’s Cradle (Maya Deren, 1943), 13 min.

She Puppet (Peggy Ahwesh, 2001), 15 min.

14

12/2

Witches and Games:

Gamer Trouble

1. Phillips, Amanda. “Of Dickwolves and Killjoys: Feminism and Interpretative Violence in Gaming Communities.” In Gamer Trouble: Feminist Confrontations in Digital Culture, 27–65. NYU Press, 2020.


2. Phillips, Amanda. “Gender, Power, and the Gamic Gaze: Re-Viewing Portal and Bayonetta.” In Gamer Trouble: Feminist Confrontations in Digital Culture, 99–136. NYU Press, 2020.

Screening:

CTFO (Shannon Sun-Higginson, 2015), 76 min

15

12/9

Presentation of Research Project

5-10 min presentation of the final research project.

16

12/16

Presentation of Research Project

5-10 min presentation of the final research project.