Film and Media Studies

(Offered as GERM 368, ARCH 368, EUST 368, and FAMS 380) This research seminar will explore conceptions of space as they have informed and influenced thought and creativity in the fields of cultural studies, literature, architecture, urban studies, performance, and the visual, electronic, and time-based arts. Students will select and pursue a major semester-long research project early in the semester in consultation with the professor, and present their research in its various stages of development throughout the semester, in a variety of media formats (writing, performance, video, electronic art/interactive media, installation, online and networked events, architectural/design drawings/renderings), along with oral presentations of readings and other materials. Readings and visual materials will be drawn from the fields of literature and philosophy; architectural, art, and film theory and history; performance studies and performance theory; and theories of technology and the natural and built environment. Emphasis on developing research, writing, and presentation skills is a core of this seminar.

Preference given to German majors and European Studies majors, as well as to students interested in architecture/design, performance, film/video, interactive installation, and/or the environment. Conducted in English. German majors will select a research project focused on a German Studies context, and will do a substantial portion of the readings in German. 

Limited to 18 students. Enrollment requires attendance at the first class meeting. Spring semester. Professor Gilpin.

(Offered as ARHA 221 and FAMS 221) This introductory course is designed for students with no prior experience in video production. The aim is both technical and creative. We will begin with the literal foundation of the moving image—the frame—before moving through shot and scene construction, lighting, sound-image concepts, and final edit. In addition to instruction in production equipment and facilities, the course will also explore cinematic form and structure through weekly readings, screenings and discussion. Each student will work on a series of production exercises and a final video assignment.

(Offered as ARHA 335 and FAMS 335) This intermediate production course surveys the outer limits of cinematic expression and provides an overview of creative 16mm film production. We will begin by making cameraless projects through drawing, painting and scratching directly onto the film strip before further exploring the fundamentals of 16mm technology, including cameras, editing and hand-processing. While remaining aware of our creative choices, we will invite chance into our process and risk failure, as every experiment inevitably must.

Through screenings of original film prints, assigned readings and discussion, the course will consider a number of experimental filmmakers and then conclude with a review of exhibition and distribution strategies for moving image art. All students will complete a number of short assignments on film and one final project on either film or video, each of which is to be presented for class critique. One three-hour class and one film screening per week.

Requisite: One 200-level production course or relevant experience (to be discussed with the instructor in advance of the first class). Limited to 12 students. Spring semester. Professor Levine.

(Offered as ARHA 444 and FAMS 412) Essay filmmaking is a dynamic form with many commonly cited attributes—the presence of an authorial voice, an emphasis on broad themes, an eclectic approach to genre, and the tendency to digress or draw unexpected connections. Yet, true to its nature, the precise definition of the essay film is in constant flux. It can be both personal and political, individual and collective, noble and mischievous. Essay filmmakers themselves are equally diverse, ranging from established film auteurs to Third Cinema activists and contemporary video artists.

If we entertain the notion that the processes of cinema closely resemble the mechanics of human thought, then the essay film may be the medium’s purest expression. To watch or make such a film, we must give ourselves over to a compulsive, restless energy that delights in chasing a subject down any number of rabbit holes and blind alleys, often stopping to admire the scenery on the way. As with thought, there is no end product, no clear boundaries, no goal but the activity itself.

The term "essay" finds its origins in the French essayer, meaning “to attempt” or to try.” In this advanced production workshop, we will read, screen and discuss examples of the essayistic mode in literature and cinema while making several such attempts of our own. Students will complete a series of writing assignments and video projects informed by class materials and group discussion.

Limited to 12 students. Spring semester. Professor Levine.

Requisite: One 200-level production course or relevant experience (to be discussed with the instructor in advance of the first class). 

(Offered as ASLC 327, EUST 327, and FAMS 327) The relationships among media, the state, and civil society are complex.  This course aims to address these relationships by examining cinema—the art form of the twentieth century—in Japan and Spain during different but overlapping eras of tumult: the 1930s to the 1980s. Putting these two national cinemas in a comparative framework will allow us to address issues such as: the interest in film by authoritarian regimes; the way cinema is harnessed to wartime goals by the state; the nature of censorship and self-censorship in war and peace; the potential of image, sound, and narrative to give expression to propaganda and democratic ideals; the cathartic release following the end of an authoritarian regime or occupation. The course, taught in English, does not assume prior knowledge of either country, nor of film studies. All films have English subtitles.

Spring semester. Professors Brenneis and Van Compernolle.

(Offered as ENGL 280 and FAMS 210) An introduction to cinema studies through consideration of key critical terms, together with a selection of various films (classic and contemporary, foreign and American, popular and avant-garde) for illustration and discussion. The terms for discussion may include, among others: modernity, montage, realism, visual pleasure, ethnography, choreography, streaming, and consumption. Two class meetings and one screening per week.

Limited to 35 students. Spring semester. Professor Guilford.

(Offered as ENGL 284 and FAMS 216) What do we mean when we talk about “the media”? Coming to Terms: Media will parse this question, approaching the media not as a shadowy monolith but as a complex and changing environment comprised of varied technologies, formats, practices, devices, and platforms (e.g.: photography, gramophone records, online dating, smartphones, Netflix). The course will introduce key terms and critical approaches for the study of modern media in their specificity in an era of digital mediation. We will ask questions such as: What are the formal and technical features of different media? How do they construct us as spectators or users, and shape our perception of the world we inhabit? How do our media practices produce experiences of space, time, and community? And crucially, what are the ideological impacts of these perceptions, constructions, and practices when it comes to race, sex, identity, and the circulation of power and capital?

Each week students will encounter important works of twentieth- and twenty-first-century media and cultural theory and will encounter concrete examples to flesh out the abstract concepts in the readings and engage in ample class participation. Assignments will encourage students to enter into a conversation with these texts as a way of exploring and constructing arguments about contemporary media. The course will provide a strong foundation for advanced work in film and media studies, and related disciplines.

This course has no prerequisites, but it is best suited to students who have completed a 100-level course dealing with the analysis of literature or film. Limited to 25 students. Spring semester. Professor Rangan.

(Offered as ENGL 374 and FAMS 374) Gothic fictions are known for their ability to send shivers down the spine, evoking sensations of discomfort, fear, and horror. This interdisciplinary course will explore the genre of the Gothic from its roots in the late eighteenth century through the present, moving among literature, film, television, and digital media forms. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein will be a key text; we will explore intermedial texts like Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Bram Stoker’s Dracula; and the course will end with twenty-first century incarnations of the Gothic (Get Out, Penny Dreadful). Throughout, we will discuss the tangled relationship between sexuality, race, and power that characterizes the genre. Students will  develop a creative project, whether a piece of short fiction or a visual/digital exploration of Gothic themes, keep a weekly reading/viewing journal of their responses to the assigned texts, and facilitate discussion on a given text. In addition, students will write a 3- to 5-page close textual analysis, with a mandatory peer review workshop and revision, and a final research paper (10-12 pages) or creative project. Students will gain a familiarity with key literary and film/media studies terms and approaches; an understanding of major works in the Gothic and horror genres; an ability to think and write critically about Gothic literature and related media, in terms of aesthetics, historical development, and cultural context; confidence in reading critical/theoretical essays in literary studies, cultural studies, and film and media studies; and proficiency in various aspects of project-based work, including identifying a research topic, building arguments, using evidence, and working with and appropriately citing a variety of sources.

Requisite: A 200-level foundations course in English or Film & Media Studies, or equivalent. Open to sophomores, juniors, and seniors. Limited to 25 students. Spring semester. Visiting Professor Sanders.

(Offered as ENGL 378 and FAMS 382)

Calls to defund the police may have helped to cancel the notorious reality program COPS, but crime scenes, courtrooms, cops, lawyers, victims, and vigilantes dominate our media and our imaginations. This course asks what needs to be abolished—not just canceled—in our media environment in order for us to imagine a world without prisons. Abolition is, at its core, a transformative project that aims to change the very social relations, conditions, and logics that produce the harms for which police and prisons seem to serve as solutions. A project that once took on the seemingly impossible challenge of ending slavery, abolition has become a movement of interlinked struggles against systemic oppression. We will examine a range of media, historical and contemporary, cinematic and televisual, fictional and documentary, global and local, through the lens of abolition, deconstructing carceral scenarios and affects, and discovering and imagining transformative approaches to narrative, healing, and justice. Students enrolling in this course should be prepared to take on a range of activities including and beyond weekly readings, film/media viewing, and analytical writing, such as independent and collaborative research, site-based field work (if public health guidelines permit), and optional creative media assignments.

Open to sophomores, juniors, and seniors, and to first-year students with consent of the instructor. Spring semester. Professor Rangan.

(Offered as ENGL 383 and FAMS 360] What’s intimate about cinema? And what, if anything, is cinematic about intimacy? Since its invention, cinema has been closely associated with intimate experience, though understandings of this association have shifted over time. For classical film theorists, cinema’s intimate devices (the close-up, the kiss, etc.) were often invested with revolutionary potential, though more recent cultural theorists have issued strong rejoinders to such claims. Isn’t intimacy crucial to the workings of modern power? Doesn’t cinema structure intimate relations in accordance with normative ideologies? Examining a range of intimate film cultures–from early cinema to surrealism, classical Hollywood, Black British film, and queer world cinema–this course will explore the intimate dimensions of filmic representation and reception, and the reasons cinema’s intimacy has been both celebrated and denounced. Assignments include in-class presentations, critical essays, and weekly entries in personal film journals.

Requisite: One 200-level ENGL or FAMS course, or consent of the instructor. Not open to first-year students. Limited to 25 students. Spring semester. Professor Guilford.

(Offered as ENGL 475 and FAMS 431) Fashion has long been associated with frivolity, ephemerality, and triviality. Yet trends in clothing and design are irrevocably linked to politics, technology, society, and cultural change–from hats to hemlines to heels, fashion can reveal the transformations of an era. How has fashion evolved in the modern age, and what is its relationship to literature, film, and other media forms? What can fashion teach us about our past, present, and future? This advanced seminar will delve into the interdisciplinary field of fashion studies to examine the vicissitudes of fashion from the nineteenth century onward, focusing on Britain, Europe, and the United States, with an eye toward the role of imperialism, Orientalism, and cultural appropriation in shaping fashion’s tangled histories. Students will study literary texts; film and television; print, visual, and digital media; and material culture. Potential case studies include the dandy, the New Woman, and the flapper; wartime fashions; subcultural style; the wedding gown; the sneaker; among other topics. Students will do independent research, culminating in a written research project and/or curated digital exhibit; keep a weekly reading/viewing journal recording their critical responses to the assigned texts; and facilitate discussion on a given topic. Students can expect to gain: a familiarity with key terms and approaches in fashion studies, media studies, and cultural studies; an ability to think and write critically about fashion and fashion media, in terms of aesthetics, historical development, and cultural context; confidence in reading critical/theoretical essays; and proficiency in various aspects of project-based work, including identifying a research topic, building arguments, using evidence, and working with and appropriately citing a variety of sources.

Requisite: At least one 200-level foundations course in English, Film & Media Studies, Art & the History of Art, History, Theater and Dance, and/or Sexuality, Women’s & Gender Studies. Upper-level coursework in one or more of these fields is strongly recommended. Open to juniors and seniors. Limited to 18 students. Spring semester. Visiting Professor Sanders.

(Offered as ASLC 327, EUST 327, and FAMS 327) The relationships among media, the state, and civil society are complex.  This course aims to address these relationships by examining cinema—the art form of the twentieth century—in Japan and Spain during different but overlapping eras of tumult: the 1930s to the 1980s. Putting these two national cinemas in a comparative framework will allow us to address issues such as: the interest in film by authoritarian regimes; the way cinema is harnessed to wartime goals by the state; the nature of censorship and self-censorship in war and peace; the potential of image, sound, and narrative to give expression to propaganda and democratic ideals; the cathartic release following the end of an authoritarian regime or occupation. The course, taught in English, does not assume prior knowledge of either country, nor of film studies. All films have English subtitles.

Spring semester. Professors Brenneis and Van Compernolle.

(Offered as GERM 368, ARCH 368, EUST 368, and FAMS 380) This research seminar will explore conceptions of space as they have informed and influenced thought and creativity in the fields of cultural studies, literature, architecture, urban studies, performance, and the visual, electronic, and time-based arts. Students will select and pursue a major semester-long research project early in the semester in consultation with the professor, and present their research in its various stages of development throughout the semester, in a variety of media formats (writing, performance, video, electronic art/interactive media, installation, online and networked events, architectural/design drawings/renderings), along with oral presentations of readings and other materials. Readings and visual materials will be drawn from the fields of literature and philosophy; architectural, art, and film theory and history; performance studies and performance theory; and theories of technology and the natural and built environment. Emphasis on developing research, writing, and presentation skills is a core of this seminar.

Preference given to German majors and European Studies majors, as well as to students interested in architecture/design, performance, film/video, interactive installation, and/or the environment. Conducted in English. German majors will select a research project focused on a German Studies context, and will do a substantial portion of the readings in German. 

Limited to 18 students. Enrollment requires attendance at the first class meeting. Spring semester. Professor Gilpin.

(Offered as ENGL 280 and FAMS 210) An introduction to cinema studies through consideration of key critical terms, together with a selection of various films (classic and contemporary, foreign and American, popular and avant-garde) for illustration and discussion. The terms for discussion may include, among others: modernity, montage, realism, visual pleasure, ethnography, choreography, streaming, and consumption. Two class meetings and one screening per week.

Limited to 35 students. Spring semester. Professor Guilford.

(Offered as ENGL 284 and FAMS 216) What do we mean when we talk about “the media”? Coming to Terms: Media will parse this question, approaching the media not as a shadowy monolith but as a complex and changing environment comprised of varied technologies, formats, practices, devices, and platforms (e.g.: photography, gramophone records, online dating, smartphones, Netflix). The course will introduce key terms and critical approaches for the study of modern media in their specificity in an era of digital mediation. We will ask questions such as: What are the formal and technical features of different media? How do they construct us as spectators or users, and shape our perception of the world we inhabit? How do our media practices produce experiences of space, time, and community? And crucially, what are the ideological impacts of these perceptions, constructions, and practices when it comes to race, sex, identity, and the circulation of power and capital?

Each week students will encounter important works of twentieth- and twenty-first-century media and cultural theory and will encounter concrete examples to flesh out the abstract concepts in the readings and engage in ample class participation. Assignments will encourage students to enter into a conversation with these texts as a way of exploring and constructing arguments about contemporary media. The course will provide a strong foundation for advanced work in film and media studies, and related disciplines.

This course has no prerequisites, but it is best suited to students who have completed a 100-level course dealing with the analysis of literature or film. Limited to 25 students. Spring semester. Professor Rangan.

(Offered as ARHA 221 and FAMS 221) This introductory course is designed for students with no prior experience in video production. The aim is both technical and creative. We will begin with the literal foundation of the moving image—the frame—before moving through shot and scene construction, lighting, sound-image concepts, and final edit. In addition to instruction in production equipment and facilities, the course will also explore cinematic form and structure through weekly readings, screenings and discussion. Each student will work on a series of production exercises and a final video assignment.

(Offered as MUSI 238, ANTH 239 and FAMS 312) This course is about exploring, participating in, and documenting the musical communities and acoustic terrain of the Connecticut River Valley. The first part of the course will focus on local histories and music scenes, ethnographic methods and technologies, and different techniques of documentary representation. The second part of the course will involve intensive, sustained engagement with musicians and sounds in the Amherst vicinity (and beyond). Course participants will give weekly updates about their fieldwork projects and are expected to become well-versed in the musics they are studying. There will be a significant amount of work and travel outside of class meetings. The course will culminate in contributions to a web-based documentary archive of soundscapes projects. We will also benefit from visits and interaction with local musicians. Two class meetings per week. Visit http://www.valleysoundscapes.org/ for more information.

Limited to 12 students. Spring semester. Professor Engelhardt.

(Offered as ASLC 327, EUST 327, and FAMS 327) The relationships among media, the state, and civil society are complex.  This course aims to address these relationships by examining cinema—the art form of the twentieth century—in Japan and Spain during different but overlapping eras of tumult: the 1930s to the 1980s. Putting these two national cinemas in a comparative framework will allow us to address issues such as: the interest in film by authoritarian regimes; the way cinema is harnessed to wartime goals by the state; the nature of censorship and self-censorship in war and peace; the potential of image, sound, and narrative to give expression to propaganda and democratic ideals; the cathartic release following the end of an authoritarian regime or occupation. The course, taught in English, does not assume prior knowledge of either country, nor of film studies. All films have English subtitles.

Spring semester. Professors Brenneis and Van Compernolle.

(Offered as ARHA 335 and FAMS 335) This intermediate production course surveys the outer limits of cinematic expression and provides an overview of creative 16mm film production. We will begin by making cameraless projects through drawing, painting and scratching directly onto the film strip before further exploring the fundamentals of 16mm technology, including cameras, editing and hand-processing. While remaining aware of our creative choices, we will invite chance into our process and risk failure, as every experiment inevitably must.

Through screenings of original film prints, assigned readings and discussion, the course will consider a number of experimental filmmakers and then conclude with a review of exhibition and distribution strategies for moving image art. All students will complete a number of short assignments on film and one final project on either film or video, each of which is to be presented for class critique. One three-hour class and one film screening per week.

Requisite: One 200-level production course or relevant experience (to be discussed with the instructor in advance of the first class). Limited to 12 students. Spring semester. Professor Levine.

(Offered as ENGL 383 and FAMS 360] What’s intimate about cinema? And what, if anything, is cinematic about intimacy? Since its invention, cinema has been closely associated with intimate experience, though understandings of this association have shifted over time. For classical film theorists, cinema’s intimate devices (the close-up, the kiss, etc.) were often invested with revolutionary potential, though more recent cultural theorists have issued strong rejoinders to such claims. Isn’t intimacy crucial to the workings of modern power? Doesn’t cinema structure intimate relations in accordance with normative ideologies? Examining a range of intimate film cultures–from early cinema to surrealism, classical Hollywood, Black British film, and queer world cinema–this course will explore the intimate dimensions of filmic representation and reception, and the reasons cinema’s intimacy has been both celebrated and denounced. Assignments include in-class presentations, critical essays, and weekly entries in personal film journals.

Requisite: One 200-level ENGL or FAMS course, or consent of the instructor. Not open to first-year students. Limited to 25 students. Spring semester. Professor Guilford.

(Offered as ENGL 374 and FAMS 374) Gothic fictions are known for their ability to send shivers down the spine, evoking sensations of discomfort, fear, and horror. This interdisciplinary course will explore the genre of the Gothic from its roots in the late eighteenth century through the present, moving among literature, film, television, and digital media forms. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein will be a key text; we will explore intermedial texts like Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Bram Stoker’s Dracula; and the course will end with twenty-first century incarnations of the Gothic (Get Out, Penny Dreadful). Throughout, we will discuss the tangled relationship between sexuality, race, and power that characterizes the genre. Students will  develop a creative project, whether a piece of short fiction or a visual/digital exploration of Gothic themes, keep a weekly reading/viewing journal of their responses to the assigned texts, and facilitate discussion on a given text. In addition, students will write a 3- to 5-page close textual analysis, with a mandatory peer review workshop and revision, and a final research paper (10-12 pages) or creative project. Students will gain a familiarity with key literary and film/media studies terms and approaches; an understanding of major works in the Gothic and horror genres; an ability to think and write critically about Gothic literature and related media, in terms of aesthetics, historical development, and cultural context; confidence in reading critical/theoretical essays in literary studies, cultural studies, and film and media studies; and proficiency in various aspects of project-based work, including identifying a research topic, building arguments, using evidence, and working with and appropriately citing a variety of sources.

Requisite: A 200-level foundations course in English or Film & Media Studies, or equivalent. Open to sophomores, juniors, and seniors. Limited to 25 students. Spring semester. Visiting Professor Sanders.

(Offered as GERM 368, ARCH 368, EUST 368, and FAMS 380) This research seminar will explore conceptions of space as they have informed and influenced thought and creativity in the fields of cultural studies, literature, architecture, urban studies, performance, and the visual, electronic, and time-based arts. Students will select and pursue a major semester-long research project early in the semester in consultation with the professor, and present their research in its various stages of development throughout the semester, in a variety of media formats (writing, performance, video, electronic art/interactive media, installation, online and networked events, architectural/design drawings/renderings), along with oral presentations of readings and other materials. Readings and visual materials will be drawn from the fields of literature and philosophy; architectural, art, and film theory and history; performance studies and performance theory; and theories of technology and the natural and built environment. Emphasis on developing research, writing, and presentation skills is a core of this seminar.

Preference given to German majors and European Studies majors, as well as to students interested in architecture/design, performance, film/video, interactive installation, and/or the environment. Conducted in English. German majors will select a research project focused on a German Studies context, and will do a substantial portion of the readings in German. 

Limited to 18 students. Enrollment requires attendance at the first class meeting. Spring semester. Professor Gilpin.

(Offered as ENGL 378 and FAMS 382)

Calls to defund the police may have helped to cancel the notorious reality program COPS, but crime scenes, courtrooms, cops, lawyers, victims, and vigilantes dominate our media and our imaginations. This course asks what needs to be abolished—not just canceled—in our media environment in order for us to imagine a world without prisons. Abolition is, at its core, a transformative project that aims to change the very social relations, conditions, and logics that produce the harms for which police and prisons seem to serve as solutions. A project that once took on the seemingly impossible challenge of ending slavery, abolition has become a movement of interlinked struggles against systemic oppression. We will examine a range of media, historical and contemporary, cinematic and televisual, fictional and documentary, global and local, through the lens of abolition, deconstructing carceral scenarios and affects, and discovering and imagining transformative approaches to narrative, healing, and justice. Students enrolling in this course should be prepared to take on a range of activities including and beyond weekly readings, film/media viewing, and analytical writing, such as independent and collaborative research, site-based field work (if public health guidelines permit), and optional creative media assignments.

Open to sophomores, juniors, and seniors, and to first-year students with consent of the instructor. Spring semester. Professor Rangan.

(Offered as ARHA 444 and FAMS 412) Essay filmmaking is a dynamic form with many commonly cited attributes—the presence of an authorial voice, an emphasis on broad themes, an eclectic approach to genre, and the tendency to digress or draw unexpected connections. Yet, true to its nature, the precise definition of the essay film is in constant flux. It can be both personal and political, individual and collective, noble and mischievous. Essay filmmakers themselves are equally diverse, ranging from established film auteurs to Third Cinema activists and contemporary video artists.

If we entertain the notion that the processes of cinema closely resemble the mechanics of human thought, then the essay film may be the medium’s purest expression. To watch or make such a film, we must give ourselves over to a compulsive, restless energy that delights in chasing a subject down any number of rabbit holes and blind alleys, often stopping to admire the scenery on the way. As with thought, there is no end product, no clear boundaries, no goal but the activity itself.

The term "essay" finds its origins in the French essayer, meaning “to attempt” or to try.” In this advanced production workshop, we will read, screen and discuss examples of the essayistic mode in literature and cinema while making several such attempts of our own. Students will complete a series of writing assignments and video projects informed by class materials and group discussion.

Limited to 12 students. Spring semester. Professor Levine.

Requisite: One 200-level production course or relevant experience (to be discussed with the instructor in advance of the first class). 

(Offered as ENGL 475 and FAMS 431) Fashion has long been associated with frivolity, ephemerality, and triviality. Yet trends in clothing and design are irrevocably linked to politics, technology, society, and cultural change–from hats to hemlines to heels, fashion can reveal the transformations of an era. How has fashion evolved in the modern age, and what is its relationship to literature, film, and other media forms? What can fashion teach us about our past, present, and future? This advanced seminar will delve into the interdisciplinary field of fashion studies to examine the vicissitudes of fashion from the nineteenth century onward, focusing on Britain, Europe, and the United States, with an eye toward the role of imperialism, Orientalism, and cultural appropriation in shaping fashion’s tangled histories. Students will study literary texts; film and television; print, visual, and digital media; and material culture. Potential case studies include the dandy, the New Woman, and the flapper; wartime fashions; subcultural style; the wedding gown; the sneaker; among other topics. Students will do independent research, culminating in a written research project and/or curated digital exhibit; keep a weekly reading/viewing journal recording their critical responses to the assigned texts; and facilitate discussion on a given topic. Students can expect to gain: a familiarity with key terms and approaches in fashion studies, media studies, and cultural studies; an ability to think and write critically about fashion and fashion media, in terms of aesthetics, historical development, and cultural context; confidence in reading critical/theoretical essays; and proficiency in various aspects of project-based work, including identifying a research topic, building arguments, using evidence, and working with and appropriately citing a variety of sources.

Requisite: At least one 200-level foundations course in English, Film & Media Studies, Art & the History of Art, History, Theater and Dance, and/or Sexuality, Women’s & Gender Studies. Upper-level coursework in one or more of these fields is strongly recommended. Open to juniors and seniors. Limited to 18 students. Spring semester. Visiting Professor Sanders.

(Offered as GERM 368, ARCH 368, EUST 368, and FAMS 380) This research seminar will explore conceptions of space as they have informed and influenced thought and creativity in the fields of cultural studies, literature, architecture, urban studies, performance, and the visual, electronic, and time-based arts. Students will select and pursue a major semester-long research project early in the semester in consultation with the professor, and present their research in its various stages of development throughout the semester, in a variety of media formats (writing, performance, video, electronic art/interactive media, installation, online and networked events, architectural/design drawings/renderings), along with oral presentations of readings and other materials. Readings and visual materials will be drawn from the fields of literature and philosophy; architectural, art, and film theory and history; performance studies and performance theory; and theories of technology and the natural and built environment. Emphasis on developing research, writing, and presentation skills is a core of this seminar.

Preference given to German majors and European Studies majors, as well as to students interested in architecture/design, performance, film/video, interactive installation, and/or the environment. Conducted in English. German majors will select a research project focused on a German Studies context, and will do a substantial portion of the readings in German. 

Limited to 18 students. Enrollment requires attendance at the first class meeting. Spring semester. Professor Gilpin.

(Offered as MUSI 238, ANTH 239 and FAMS 312) This course is about exploring, participating in, and documenting the musical communities and acoustic terrain of the Connecticut River Valley. The first part of the course will focus on local histories and music scenes, ethnographic methods and technologies, and different techniques of documentary representation. The second part of the course will involve intensive, sustained engagement with musicians and sounds in the Amherst vicinity (and beyond). Course participants will give weekly updates about their fieldwork projects and are expected to become well-versed in the musics they are studying. There will be a significant amount of work and travel outside of class meetings. The course will culminate in contributions to a web-based documentary archive of soundscapes projects. We will also benefit from visits and interaction with local musicians. Two class meetings per week. Visit http://www.valleysoundscapes.org/ for more information.

Limited to 12 students. Spring semester. Professor Engelhardt.