This course studies the films of Pedro Almodóvar, European cinema's favorite bad boy turned acclaimed auteur. On the one hand, students learn to situate films within the context of contemporary Spanish history (the transition to democracy, the advent of globalization, etc.) in order to consider the local contours of postmodern aesthetics. On the other hand, the films provide a springboard to reflect on larger theoretical and ethical debates. For instance, what can a weeping transvestite teach us about desire?

This seminar will address questions of literary censorship in France in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. We will read literary texts banned at various moments in history, situate the moments of both their publication and censoring in a historical and literary historical context, and attempt to answer the following fundamental questions: who bans what, when and why? We will examine the explicitly political, religious, and/or sexual thematic content of the texts. We will try to establish distinctions between more textual taboos and those which would appear to be universal.

Component course for Film Studies. In this course we go behind the scenes and behind the screens of anthropological films, museum exhibitions, 'small media' events such as television, and publications such as National Geographic Magazine, to explore the social contexts of image production, distribution, and interpretation. Focusing on visual activism and ethics, we consider how popular portrayals of our own society and of others' both shape and are shaped by hierarchies of value in the material world.

An examination of classic and contemporary works in two important film genres, melodrama and horror. Topics of particular interest: affinities as well as contrasts between genres; feminist analyses and uses of genre; normative and alternative representations of sexualities; genre and the representations of race; spectatorship and the production of affect - tears and screams - by these genres. Extensive readings in film studies and cultural theory. Directors may include Almodóvar, Cronenberg, Curtiz, DePalma, Hitchcock, Kent, Lee, Onwurah, Polanski, Ray, Romero, Sirk, Vidor, and Whale.

Born in 1923 in Senegal, the writer/filmmaker Ousmane Sembène is one of the rare witnesses of the three key periods of contemporary African history: the colonial period; the period of struggle for political and economic independence; and the period of effort to eliminate neocolonialism through the rehabilitation of African cultures. This course is entirely devoted to the works of Ousmane Sembène and will explore the key moments of his life, his activism in European leftist organizations, his discovery of writing, and most of all the dominant features of his film work.

We will learn by making work as well as by researching, reading, and watching films related to our projects. We will begin with brainstorming, research, script or documentary proposal writing, and pre-production. Each student will develop a script or in-depth proposal to begin. As we move into production, we will review and deepen our knowledge of camera, lighting, sound, and editing principles and techniques.

A study of representative films from Germany's Golden Age such as Wiene's Expressionist film noir, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari; Lang's sci-fi classic, Metropolis, and psycho-thriller, M.; Murnau's Dracula film, Nosferatu; Lubitsch's The Doll; Oswald's first gay film, Different from Others; and Winsloe's first lesbian film, Girls in Uniform.

Travel literature has always been a precious source for the study of culture, politics, arts and, last but not least, people. From Tacitus to Marco Polo, from Stendhal to Camilo Jose Cela, we will read and discuss authors who traveled for political, personal, and recreational reasons. We will also pay special attention to tales of emigration and immigration in the third millennium.

This course offers an historical survey of the cinema as a developing art form and a means of communication. We will examine the history of this international medium from its 19th-century beginnings through the mid-20th century. The national and thematic focus of the course shifts through the semester. For example, we will focus on U.S. film in studying the earliest developments in film technology and narrative, and on Soviet and French films to study the formal and social experimentation of the 1920s.

Hugo's epic masterpiece, written in exile, has everything: ceaseless adventures, crimes and punishments, love, hate, obsession, heroes, villains, the battle of Waterloo, and civil war. The sympathetic everyman, Jean Valjean, condemned to hard labor for stealing bread and relentlessly pursued by the pitiless policeman Javert, encounters unforgettable characters. We will examine how Hugo situates Valjean's escapes within a framework of social injustice and good triumphing over evil, balancing his political and romantic ideas. Reading, discussion, film screenings.