UCSC/FILM + DIGITAL MEDIA DEPARTMENT
FILM 165C LESBIAN/GAY/QUEER FILM and VIDEO
WINTER 2008

Tuesday + Thursday/ 4:00-6:45pm/ Communications Studio C
         
 

Professor: Irene Gustafson
[831] 459 1498 / Comm 125
click here to email
Office Hours: Thursday 2:30pm-4pm and by appointment

 

 
         
 

[syllabus last updated: March 112008]

      

 


  What makes a film “gay”, “lesbian”, or “queer”? Indeed, what do the terms “gay”, lesbian”, and “queer” signify? How do historical, national, and cultural conditions shape potential answers to these questions? This course will examine these issues from a number of different vantage points. Beginning with a selective number of US and European canonical feature films from 1914 to 1948, we will examine how these films both “represent” non-normative sexual desire and “produced” sexual identities. Remaining within a US and European context, the latter half of the class will address questions of queer authorship and examine the ways in which film/video artists have forged their own representational strategies to enunciate the interdeterminancy of gender and sexuality. We will consider sexual identity not in isolation, but in relation to history and to other constituting experiences of race, class, gender, 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 15%
  • Paper 1 30%
  • Paper 2 30%
  • Final [take home] 25%
   
  REQUIRED READING
  REQUIRED: available at the Bay Tree Bookstore
  Queer Theory: An Introduction by AnnaMarie Jagose [ISBN 0-8147-4234-3]
  Course Reader [CR] available at the Bay Tree Bookstore and on reserve at McHenry Library
   
  SCHEDULE
    jump to week:
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1.

......T January 8th
Introductions, Expectations, Goals
Methodologies
Historicizing: “coming out,” “visibility,” “positive images,” “experience,” “queering,” “politics”
Screening: Ellen—Coming Out Episode (USA, May 1997, ABC/DVD4262 v.3)


......TH January 10th
Screening: The Celluloid Closet (USA, Epstein & Friedman, 1996, 102 min./VT 4616)
Reading Due:

Jagose, ”CH.1-Introduction” and “CH.2-Theorising Same-Sex Desire”

 
     
   

2.

......T January 15th
Screening: A Florida Enchantment (USA, Sidney Drew, 1914, 50 min./ VT 3307/ DVD3113)
Reading due:

[CR] Sommerville, ”Queering the Color Line”

......TH January 17th
Screening: Mädchen in Uniform (Germany, Leontine Sagan, 1931, 86 min./ VT 7731)
Reading due:

[CR] Rich, “From Repressive Tolerance to Erotic Liberation”
[CR] text of the Hays Code 1933
[CR] The Repressive Hypothesis” excerpt from Foucault from Beginners

 

     
 

 

 

 

3.

......T January 22nd
Screening: The Uninvited (USA, Allen Lewis, 1944, 99 min./VT 7490)
Reading due:

[CR] White, “Reading the Codes”
[CR] Foucault, “We ‘Other Victorians’” and “The Repressive Hypothesis”


......T H January 24th
Screening: Rope (USA, Alfred Hitchcock, 1948, 81 min./ VT 785/ DVD1045)
Reading due:

[CR] Wood, “The Murderous Gays: Hitchcock’s Homophobia”
[CR] Probyn, ”Michel Foucault and the Uses of Sexuality”

..
     
   

4.

......T January 29th
Screening: Un Chant d’Amour (France, Jean Genet, 1950, 20 min./ VT 8249/ DVD5172)
Reading due:

[CR] Dyer, “Shades of Genet”

......TH January 31st
Screening: The Pirate (USA, Vincent Minnelli, 1948, 102 min./VT 1206/ DVD5559)
Reading due:

[CR] Babuscio, ”The Cinema of Camp (AKA Camp and the Gay Sensibility)”
[CR] Tinkcom, ”Working Like a Homosexual: Camp Visual Codes and the Labor of Gay Subjects in the MGM Freed Unit”

     
   

5.

......T February 5th

PAPER #1 DUE at the beginning of class

http://ic.ucsc.edu/~ahastie/film/tips.html


Screening: Kustom Kar Kommandos (USA, Kenneth Anger, 1965, 3 min./ VT742)
Reading due:

Jagose, ”CH.3-The Homophile Movement”
[CR] D’Emilio, ”Capitalism and Gay Identity”

......TH February 7th
Screening: Portrait of Jason (USA, Shirley Clarke, 1967, 105 min./VT 1082/ DVD3774)
Reading due:

[CR] Butt, “’Stop That Acting’: Performance and Authenticity in Shirley Clarke’s Portrait of Jason”
     
   

6.

......T February 12th
Screening: Boys in the Band (USA, William Friedkin, 1970, 100 min./VT 471/VID 90)
Reading due:

Jagose, ”CH.4- Gay Liberation”
[CR] Dyer, ”Underground and After”

......TH February 14th
Screening: Born in Flames (USA, Lizzie Borden, 1983, 80 min./VT 6359/ DVD5178)
Reading due:

Jagose,”CH. 5- Lesbian Feminism”
[CR] Lorde, “The Masters Tools”

 

     
   

7.

......T February 19th
Screening: Female Trouble (USA, John Waters, 1974, 95 min./DVD 608)
Reading due:

[CR] Waters, “Why I Love Violence” and ”Female Trouble”
Jagose,”CH 6- Limits of Identity

......TH February 21st
Screening: The Boys of San Francisco (USA, William Higgins, 1980, excerpts)
Chinese Characters (Canada, Richard Fung, 1986, 22 min.)


Reading due:

[CR] Delany, excerpts from ”Times Square Blue”
[CR] Fung, “Shortcomings: Questions about Pornography as Pedagogy”

 
     
   

8.

......T February 26th
Screening: Swoon (USA, Tom Kalin, 1992, 95 min./DVD 2521)
Reading due:

Jagose,” CH 7- Queer”
[CR] Rich, “New Queer Cinema”
[CR] Munoz, “Dead White”


......TH February 28th
Screening: Looking for Langston (UK, Isaac Julien, 1989, 45 min./VT 2078)
Reading due:

Jagose,”CH. 8- Contestations of Queer”
[CR] Mercer, “Dark and Lovely Too: Black Gay Men in Independent Film”
[CR] Julien and hooks, “States of Desire: Isaac Julien in conversation with bell hooks”
     
   

9.

......T March 4th
PAPER #2 DUE at the beginning of class


......TH March 6th
Screening: Tongues Untied (USA, Marlon Riggs, 1990, 55 min./ DVD4801)
Reading due:

[CR] Wojnarowicz, ”Living Close to the Knives”
[CR] Bordowitz, “The AIDS Crisis is Ridiculous”

 
     
   

10.

......T March 11th
Screening: Carmelita Tropicana: your kunst is your waffen (USA, Ela Troyano, 1993,
28 min./ VT 5832)
Reading due:

[CR] Muñoz,”Sister Acts: Ela Troyano and Carmelita Tropicana”
Jagose, “Afterword”


TH March 13th
WRAPUP

FINAL EXAM handout

 
     
   

 

FINAL EXAM—due to the Film and Digital Media Department by Thursday March 20th at 4pm.

 
     
   

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/
   

 

A note on mobile technologies and classroom decorum:

Laptops can be a useful tool in the service of teaching and learning, however, I ask that you use them productively and respectfully.
A few common sense rules:


1. Always set up your laptop computer before the beginning of class. Setting up the computer and booting it up can take a few minutes depending on what applications are set to open at startup. Turn off all other mobile devices before lecture begins
2. Disable sound
3. During lecture and classroom discussion, you should not be connected to network resources. To do so invites many distractions - web surfing, email, chats, etc. Chatting or emailing during class is no more acceptable than talking on a cell phone during class time. Additionally, your networked screens are distracting to those sitting near and behind you


If you are found to be doing anything other than note-taking (or sanctioned network activity) you will be asked to leave the class immediately and will be marked as absent for that day.
I reserve the right to further legislate laptop use in their classes. For example, you may be asked to close your computer during screenings or be asked to sit in the first two rows of the class if you are actively using your laptop.