'This course studies the films of Pedro Almodvar, 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? What happens when plastic surgery and organ transplants become metaphors?

'This seminar offers an interrogation of the ways in which Latinas and Latinos are represented in the cinema. We will explore early portrayals of Latinas and Latinos in film history and then explore contemporary cinema with a focus on race, class, gender and sexuality in these representations. Employing multiple aesthetic and disciplinary approaches we will analyze commercial films alongside independent films with particular attention to the market-driven and political mandates of these projects.

'This course offers an interrogation of overt and embedded narratives of migrants and the migration process in popular and documentary film, paying specific attention to cinematic representations of non-citizen bodies confronting migration, deportation, labor, acculturation, and anti-immigrant hysteria. Film screenings and class discussions comprise the interpretative lens through which students will examine the aesthetic, cultural, economic, gendered, historical, political, racial, and sexual dimensions of cultural texts.

'This seminar examines experimental cinema made by women from the early 1950s, during the earliest years of the movement known as the American Avant-Garde, through the 1990s. While the class will read feminist film theory and see the work of such well-known filmmakers as Yvonne Rainer, Sally Potter, and Chantal Akerman, we will also examine the less familiar but highly influential films of women working in the home movie or diary mode, with particular emphasis on the work of Marie Menken.'

'This course examines contemporary Asian American film and visual culture through the lens of cultural recovery, self-invention, and experimentation. Focusing primarily on film and photography, we will explore issues of race and visuality, Hollywood orientalism, memory and postmemory, and racial impersonation and parody. Students will engage with a variety of theoretical and critical approaches. Artists may include Nikki S. Lee, Margaret Cho, Tseng Kwong Chi, Jin-me Yoon, Justin Lin, Binh Dahn, Richard Fung, Mira Nair, Deepa Mehta, and Alice Wu.'

'In this class, we will take skills and insights gained in introductory production courses and develop them over the length of the semester through the creation of one short documentary project, 10 minutes long. We will explore the ethical questions and ambivalence inherent in this medium, seeking complex answers to difficult questions about representation and the often blurry lines between fiction and non-fiction. We will watch documentaries each week, films that introduce us to new ideas and information both in their content and in their form.

'We will be reading a number of key feminist texts that theorize the construction of sexual difference, and challenge the oppression of women. We will then address queer theory, an offshoot and expansion of feminist theory, and study how it is both embedded in, and redefines, the feminist paradigms. This redefinition occurs roughly at the same time (1980s/90s) when race emerges as one of feminism's prominent blind spots.

An exploration of philosophical issues encountered in the study of film. Why do we need a theory of film? What is a film anyway? Do films have 'authors'? How do films engage our emotions? Can films be socially critical? What can we learn from films? These are examples of the topics to be discussed in this course as we investigate the nature of film and its relation to philosophy. There will be weekly required film screenings.

'This course focuses on cinema from Iran after the revolution in 1979 which brought the current Islamic Republic into being. We look at how this cinema, especially from the last twenty years, approaches and questions family relationships and the love upon which they are generally understood to be based, drawing upon Shi'i and broader Islamic conceptions of appropriate social and gender roles. Students acquire familiarity with ideas of family in contemporary Iran as well as the major directors and actors in contemporary Iranian film.'

'Classic German cinema, 1919-1933, anticipated many present-day gender debates. In educational films, tragedies, travesties, and comedies, many of which were re-made later (Girls in Uniform; Victor Victoria), Weimar Cinema questioned binary definitions of gender, and represented gay and lesbian sexual orientations as standard forms of human sexuality.