UCSC/FILM + DIGITAL MEDIA DEPARTMENT
FILM 165A FILM/VIDEO/GENDER
WINTER 2007

Tuesday + Thursday/ 6:30-9:00pm/ Communications Studio C
         
 

Professor: Irene Gustafson
[831] 459 1498 / Comm 125
click here to email
Office Hours: Wednesday 3-5pm and by appointment

 

 
         
 

[syllabus last updated: 21 February 2007]

      

 


  What is gender and what is its relationship to cultural texts? This class explores the construction of and representation of gender through close examination of various film, video, and written works. We will consider gender identity not in isolation, but in relation to history and to other constituting experiences of race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, and nationality.
   
  Our class time will typically include:
• Two weekly screenings and lectures
• Each class period will begin with a lecture that contextualizes the week’s screenings and readings.
• We’ll take 10 minutes after each screening to reflect and write notes individually about the film. As this course does not include a separately scheduled discussion section, this is an opportunity for you to: voice your thoughts, ask questions, and demonstrate your engagement with course materials. This does not preclude note-taking during screenings. In fact, you are strongly encouraged to take notes during films.
   
  REQUIREMENTS FOR RECEIVING CREDIT
   
  • Attendance is mandatory; punctuality is required. Three unexcused absences, excessive lateness,and/or excessive absences at screenings will result in a NO PASS.
  • You are expected to inform the Instructor of any emergency situations that require your absence from class, and you are strongly encouraged to keep in touch with the Instructor about any absences.
  • Late papers WILL affect your grade.
  • In order to receive credit for the class, students must turn in all assignments
   
  Grade Breakdown:
  • Attendance + Participation 20%
  • Paper 1 35%
  • Paper 2 45%
   
  REQUIRED READING
  REQUIRED:
  Course Reader [CR] available at the Bay Tree Bookstore and on reserve at McHenry Library
   
  SCHEDULE
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1.

......Thursday January 4
Introduction and Admissions
What is “gender”? what is “film/video”?
     
   

2.

......Tuesday January 9
Methodologies and Approaches

Screening: Pumping Iron II [USA, 1985, George Butler, 107 min.] VT7274
Reading due:

[CR] Rick Altman, ”General Introduction: Cinema as Event”


......Thursday January 11
Screening: scenes from Pumping Iron II
Reading due:

[CR] Teresa de Lauretis, “The Technology of Gender”

 

     
 

 

 

 

3.

......Tuesday January 16
Screening: White Chicks [USA, Keenen Ivory Wayans, 2004, 109 min.] DVD4224
Reading due:

[CR] Anne Fausto-Sterling, “Dueling Dualisms”
[CR] Kate Bornstein, “Welcome to your Gender Workbook”


......Thursday January 18
Screening: scenes from White Chicks
Reading due:

[CR] Anne Fausto-Sterling, “Gender Systems”
[CR] Kate Bornstein, “Solving the Gender Puzzle” and “Who’s on Top?”

..
     
   

4.

......Tuesday January 23
Screening: The Circle [Iran, 2000, Jafar Panahi, 91 min.] DVD758

Reading due:

[CR] interview with Jafar Panahi


......Thursday January 25
Screening: scenes from The Circle
Reading due:


[CR] Anne Fausto-Sterling, “That Sexe Which Prevaileth”
     
   

5.

......Tuesday January 30

Screening: Deliverance [USA, 1972, John Boorman, 109 min.] DVD1010, VT274
Reading due:

[CR] Carol Clover, ”Getting Even”

[CR] Jonathan Rosenbaum, “Some Vagaries of Distribution and Exhibition”

......Thursday February 1
Screening: scenes from Deliverance
Reading due:

• PAPER 1 DUE [at the beginning of class]
     
   

6.

......Tuesday February 6
Screening: Beau Travail [France, 1999, Claire Denis, 90 min.] DVD1363
Reading due:

[CR] Richard Dyer, “The White Man’s Muscles”
[CR] Jonathan Rosenbaum, “Isolationism as a Control System”

......Thursday February 8
Screening: scenes from Beau Travail
Reading due:

[CR] Eve Sedgwick, “Introduction” from Between Men

 

     
   

7.

......Tuesday February 13
Screening: Boys Don’t Cry [USA, 1999, Kimberly Pierce, 116min.] DVD126, VT255
Reading due:

Boys Don't Cry-- Screen "reports and debates" [pdf file]

......Thursday February 15
Screening: scenes from Boys Don’t Cry
Reading due:

[CR] Jacob Hale, “Consuming the Living, Dis[re]membering the Dead in the Butch/FTM Borderlands

 
     
   

8.

......Tuesday February 20
Screening: Music Videos: Michael Jackson
Reading due:

[CR] Kobena Mercer, “Monster Metaphors: Michael Jackson’s Thriller”

......Thursday February 22
Screening: Music Videos: David Bowie, Outkast, etc DVD1351
Reading due:

[CR] Marjorie Garber, “The Transvestite Continuum: Liberace-Valentino-Elvis”
     
   

9.

......Tuesday February 27

GUEST: Michael Shaowanasi/ Director of Iron Pussy [Thailand, 2003, 90 min.]
Reading Due:

Chris Vargas, "Lost in Trans-lation" [pdf file]


......Thursday March 1
Screening: Paris is Burning [USA, 1992, Jennie Livingston, 76 min.] VT2081
Reading due:

[CR] bell hooks,”Is Paris Burning?”
[CR] Judith Butler,”Gender is Burning: Questions of Appropriation and Subversion”

 
     
   

10.

......Tuesday March 6
Screening: clips from music videos, Paris is Burning
Reading Due:

[CR] Coco Fusco,”Who’s Doin’ The Twist: Notes Towards a Politics of Appropriation”
[CR] Philip Brian Harper,”’The Subversive Edge’: Paris is Burning, Social Critique, and the Limits of Subversive Agency”


......Thursday March 8
Screening: Border Stasis [USA, Guillermo Gomez-Peña 1998, 26 min.] VT6771
Reading due:

[CR] Jose Munoz, “Performing Disidentifications”

 
     
   

11

......Tuesday March 13
Screening: Southern Comfort [USA, Kate Davis, 2000, 90 min.] DVD 3003

 

......Thursday March 15

• PAPER 2 DUE [at the beginning of class]
Screening: Pumping Iron [USA, 1976, George Butler, 85 min.]

 
     
   

A note on academic integrity, plagiarism, and intellectual work:


At the university we are continually engaged with other people’s ideas: we read them in books, hear them in lecture, discuss them with our friends, engage with them on a personal level, and incorporate them into our own writing. As a result, it is very easy to blur the lines between our own intellectual work and the work of others. But, it is important that we give credit where it is due. Plagiarism is using others’ ideas and words without clearly acknowledging the source of that information.


To avoid plagiarism, you must give credit whenever you use
• another person’s idea, opinion, or theory;
• any facts, statistics, graphs, drawings—any pieces of information—that are not common knowledge;
• quotations of another person’s actual written words and/or spoken words; or
• paraphrase of another person’s spoken or written words.


The UCSC “Official University Policy on Academic Integrity for Undergraduate Students” can be found at:
http://www.ucsc.edu/academics/academic_integrity/undergraduate_students/