Meeting Time
T 2:00-4:45

Film Screening
M 4:00-6:00

Requirements
Faithful attendance at every meeting , prepared for discussion--that is, having seen that week's film, done the reading, and completed that week's journal entries (10%).
A reading and viewing journal (20%). Due each week is a 1-2 page (typed) entry on the weekly reading assignment and an entry of equal length on the weekly film.
A 12-15 page essay (50%) and a major (global) revision of that essay (20%).

Required Texts
David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, Film Art: An Introduction (McGraw-Hill, 5th ed.)
Pam Cook and Philip Dodd, Women and Film: A Sight and Sound Reader (Temple)
Patricia Erens, Issues in Feminist Film Theory (Indiana)
bell hooks, Reel to Real: Sex and Class at the Movies (Routledge)
Judith Mayne, The Woman at the Keyhole: Feminism and Women's Cinema (Indiana)
Recommended Texts
Joseph Childers and Gary Hentzi, The Columbia Dictionary of Modern Literary and Cultural Criticism (Columbia)
Jane Campion, The Piano (Miramax Publishing)
Lucy Fischer, Imitation of Life (Rutgers)
Robyn Warhol and Diane Price Herndl, Feminisms (Rutgers)

Syllabus
Week 1--August 22
Films: Frank Powell, A Fool There Was (1915); Lois Weber, "How Men Propose" (1913)
Reading: Bordwell and Thompson, Film Art, Chapter 1

Week 2--August 29
Film: Oscar Micheaux, Within Our Gates (1919); Excerpts from D.W. Griffith, The Birth of a Nation (1915)
Readings: Jane Gaines, "White Privilege and Looking Relations: Race and Gender in Feminist Film Theory" (Erens, 197)
Bordwell and Thompson, Film Art, Chapter 2

Week 3--September 5
Film: Louise Weber, Too Wise Wives (1921)
Reading: Kay Sloan, "Sexual Politics: Public Solutions to Private Problems," from The Loud Silents

Week 4--September 12
Film: George Melford (June Mathis, script) The Sheik (1921)
Reading: Miriam Hansen, "Pleasure, Ambivalence, Identification: Valentino and Female Spectatorship"

Week 5--September 19
Film: Lowell Sherman (Mae West, screenplay) She Done Him Wrong (1933)
Readings: Laura Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" (Erens, 28)
Bordwell and Thompson, Film Art, Chapter 3

Week 6--September 26
Film: King Vidor: Stella Dallas (1937)
Readings: E. Ann Kaplan, "The Case of the Missing Mother: Maternal Issues in Vidor's Stella Dallas"
Linda Williams, "`Something Else Besides a Mother': Stella Dallas and the Maternal Melodrama."

Week 7--October 3
Film: Dorothy Arzner, Craig's Wife (1936)
Reading: Judith Mayne, "Female Authorship Reconsidered," from The Woman at the Keyhole: Feminism and Women's Cinema

Week 8--October 10
Film: Alfred Hitchcock, Rebecca (1940)
Reading: Mary Anne Doane, "The `Women's Film': Possession and Address," from Christine Gledhill, Home is Where the Heart Is: Studies in Melodrama and the Woman's Film
Tania Modleski, "Woman and the Labyrinth: Rebecca" (from The Women Who Knew Too Much)

Week 9--October 17
Nicholas Ray, Johnny Guitar (1956)
Reading: Marjorie Garber, "From Dietrich to Madonna: Cross-Gender Icons" (Cook , 16)
Elizabeth Wilson, "Audrey Hepburn: Fashion, Film and the 50s" (Cook, 36)

Week 10--October 24
Film: Jane Campion, The Piano (1993)
Readings: Stella Bruzzi, "Jane Campion: Costume Drama and Reclaiming Women's Past" (Cook, 232)
Kaja Silverman, "Disembodying the Female Voice" (Erens, 309)

Week 11--October 31
Film: Douglas Sirk, Imitation of Life (1959)
Reading: Sandy Flitterman-Lewis, "Imitation(s) of Life: The Black Woman's Double Determination as Troubling 'Other'"
Essay Due

Week 12--November 7
Films: Barbara Kopple, American Dream (1990)*and Julia Reichert and Miles Mogulescu's Union Maids (1976)
Readings: Julia Lesage, "The Political Aesthetics of the Feminist Documentary Film"
Sonya Michel, "Feminism, Film, and Public History"

Week 13--November 14
Film: Jenny Livingston, Paris is Burning (1991)
Readings: Amy Taubin, "Queer Male Cinema and Feminism" (Cook, 176)
bell hooks, "is paris burning?"

Week 14 Thanksgiving Holiday

Week 15--November 28
Film: Allison Anders, Mi Vida Loca (1993)
Reading: Annette Kuhn, "Textual Politics"
Journal Due

Week 16--December 5
Film: Gurinder Chadha, Bhaji at the Beach (1994)
Jane Gaines, "Women and Representation: Can We Enjoy Alternative Pleasure?" (Erens, 75)
Journal Due