This course provides a broad overview and introduction to media. We will cover histories of different types of media (internet, radio, audio recordings, television, cable, film, journalism, magazines, advertising, public relations, etc.) as well as various theories and approaches to studying media. No prior knowledge is necessary, but a real interest and willingness to explore a variety of media will come in handy. Occasional outside screenings will be required (but if you cannot attend the scheduled screenings, you may watch the films on your own time through the Multimedia Center reserves.) Students will be evaluated based on assigned writing, classroom discussion leading, participation, short quizzes, midterm exam and final exam.

Location

Wegmans Room 1400 (TR 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

This course introduces the basic aesthetic and technical elements of video production. Emphasis is on the creative use and understanding of the video medium while learning to use the video camera, video editing processes and the fundamental procedures of planning video projects. Strategies for the use of video as an art-making tool will be explored. Works by artists and directors critically exploring media of film and video will be viewed and discussed. Video techniques will be studied through screenings, group discussions, readings, practice sessions and presentations of original video projects made during the course. Sophomores and Juniors with officially declared FMS and SA majors are given priority registration; followed by sophomores and juniors with officially declared FMS and SA minors. Studio arts supplies fee: $50.

Location

Online Room 16 (ASE) (MW 9:00AM - 11:40AM)

This course merges contemporary art production with technologies and social interventions. Students will combine historical, inter-media approaches with new, evolving trends in social practice. This course offering uses cyberpunk, a subgenre of science fiction, as a framework for examining contemporary art and media production in both theory and practice. Students will deploy introductory level techniques to create new works at the intersection of art, design, and technology with underlying themes of environmental and social justice. Not open to seniors. $50 Studio Fee. If the course fills and you would like to be added to the waitlist, fill out the form found at this link: https://www.sageart.center/resources.

Location

Online Room 8 (ASE) (TR 4:50PM - 7:30PM)

This course offers 1) a comprehensive grass roots? study of anime as film form and cultural phenomenon; and 2) a more specific and guided investigation of the work of Hayao Miyazaki and the world view and visual sensibilities of his creation, Studio Ghibli. We begin by investigating where anime comes from: historical precedence, significant sources, defining influences and routes of cultural exchange. We then focus on Miyazakis work and the Ghibli corpus in order to examine the specifics of animated cinematic construction that distinguish his work (e.g., iconography, visual landscape, character design, narrative tropes, music); methods of adaptation, influence, and genre variation; reception and fan culture; and animes potential for providing unique perspectives on race, gender, landscape, identity, and Japan's historical and mythological past.

Location

Online Room 17 (ASE) (TR 11:05AM - 12:20PM)

As Disney’s recent disclaimer of “outdated cultural depictions” that accompanies racist portrayals in its classical animation suggests, the relationship between race and animation has often been vexed. This course will explore—through both historical and formal approaches—the roles race and racism perform in animated cultural expressions—cinema, television, and video games. With a commitment to intersectionality, this course explores and interrogates gender, sexuality, and class in tandem with race. Topics will include minstrelsy and early animation; racial grotesqueness and independent animation; African-American culture in anime; blackness and kinetic economies; censorship and television cartoons; video game avatars and gendered embodiment. 

Location

Online Room 4 (ASE) (TR 9:40AM - 10:55AM)

Location

Online Room 11 (ASE) (TR 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

Course examines the image of Napoleon at the intersection of myth and history. Literary portrayals, paintings, and films. Conducted in English.

Location

Dewey Room 2162 (TR 4:50PM - 6:05PM)

This course considers men's behavior in society with special attention to their use of force as individuals and in groups. Men's groups in every part of society—religious, political, commercial, athletic, government, and other zones form bonds and separate themselves from domestic contexts and public places that are multigendered. Several psychological studies and sixteen films are on the reading list. Some films show explicit violence including rape and murder.

Location

Online Room 19 (ASE) (TR 9:40AM - 10:55AM)

This course will explore various concepts of mobility and encounters within ethnographic films and texts. Questions we will investigate include: How does one represent a culture? What notions of race, gender, sexuality and national identities are reinforced and challenged in these works? Who speaks for whom and what are the consequences? What kinds of power relationships are hidden or made visible in these films and texts?

Location

Online Room 15 (ASE) (TR 3:25PM - 4:40PM)

The objective of this course is to provide the necessary tools to enable critical reflection on the respective values and mutual relationships of comics, art and film. The first weeks will be spent acquiring the technical and historical context that will enable us to begin to recognize the breadth and depth of word/image narrative practices. After developing a core vocabulary for thinking about comics as a medium we will then look at how artists and directors have drawn on that vocabulary in a range of different contexts. Retaining a sense of the specificity of both comics and film as artistic mediums, we will closely consider topics ranging from cross-cultural translation, ontologies of otherness, and modes of mediated history. Course requirements include class participation, an autobiographical comic, weekly wordless posts, a vocabulary quiz and a final paper/project.  

Location

Online Room 2 (ASE) (TR 11:05AM - 12:20PM)

A good science fiction story, Frederik Pohl proposes, 'should be able to predict not the automobile, but the traffic jam.' This course considers the 'traffic jams' the far-flung possible worlds imagined in Japanese science fiction from the 1920s to the present. Genres covered include the short story, short short story, novel, manga, anime, and film. Japanese science fiction is considered in planetary perspective: Japanese works are considered alongside pertinent works from other national traditions of science fiction. This course is interested ultimately in explorations of a futuristic approach to the study of literature: it is interested in what our readings today might tell us about what tomorrow might bring. All readings are done in English translation; all viewing have English subtitling.

Location

Lechase Room 161 (WF 3:25PM - 4:40PM)

Italian Neorealist films of the 1940s and 1950s constituted Italian cinema’s greatest contribution to filmmaking worldwide and to the history of cinema. This course will provide students with a solid understanding of Neorealist themes and style through the exploration of its three principal directors: Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio De Sica and Luchino Visconti. Discussion topics will range from the Nazi occupation of Italy and the Partisan Resistance, to southern Italy and postwar living conditions. Films include: Rome Open City, Paisan, Bicycle Thieves, Umberto D., The Earth Trembles and Bellissima. Assignments include: historical and critical readings, film screenings, short papers and a final essay. Readings will be in English and films will be shown with English subtitles. 

Location

Meliora Room 224 (MW 2:00PM - 3:15PM)

This course examines the role of art in shaping and influencing the relationship between people and the natural environment through a close look at the ecological and aesthetic history of American

Landscapes. Students will be responding to the course content by creating their own projects in a variety of media including moving image, sound, and mixed reality.  Permission of instructor required. Not open to seniors. $50 Studio Fee.

Location

(TR 9:40AM - 12:20PM)

"It’s not climate change—it’s everything change," novelist Margaret Atwood has said. This course

uses video and moving image to examine the deep intertwined and intersectional roots of the

Ecological crisis, from viral pandemics and racial justice to the disruption of our climate and all the

other apocalyptic scenarios we currently find ourselves in. To guide our development of Eco cinematic

consciousness, we will study French philosopher Félix Guattari's foundational text, “The

Three Ecologies”, to understand how ecologies of mind, media, and environment are interrelated and

to complicate our understandings of "nature." Student Projects will involve installation, single channel,

sound, and networked-based approaches. Works will be examined within a critical

environmental arts framework through readings, critiques, viewings and discussions.

Permission of instructor. $50 studio fee.

Location

Online Room 6 (ASE) (MW 2:00PM - 4:40PM)

An introduction to the three-act film structure. Students will read and view numerous screenplays and films, and develop their own film treatment into a full-length script.

Location

Online Room 21 (ASE) (W 10:25AM - 1:05PM)

This course will trace the history of music in film from the inception of silent motion pictures in the late 19th century to present-day productions. Will consider how the aural and visual aspects of the medium interact dramatically and how the music can enhance or otherwise influence interpretation of what is happening on the screen.

Location

Online Room 16 (ASE) (TR 2:00PM - 3:15PM)

An intensive study of the films of Akira Kurosawa, Japans most durable and visible auteur. Thanks to Kurosawas prolific output during his fifty-year career, from his debut in the 1940s to his recent work in the 1990s, an analysis of his films also offers the opportunity to examine some of the major cultural, political, and social issues and events that have left an imprint on the theory and production of film in Japan. We will also consider the work of many individuals (for example, the screenwriter Shinobu Hashimoto) who made important contributions to creating the Kurosawa opus, and whose careers are closely associated with Kurosawa. In addition to Kurosawas recent films, (screenings will include his well-known period films as well as less familiar contemporary dramas), students are responsible for assigned readings and are required to attend screenings.

Location

Online Room 24 (ASE) (TR 2:00PM - 3:15PM)

Are we experiencing the end of the world? Popular culture and the media cycle broadcast endless news of developments devastating for the sustainability of human civilization: infertility crises, weather disasters, GMO monsters, class warfare, mass extinction, and infectious diseases, even zombies. Scientists have recognized the irreparable impact that the human species have had on the earth’s ecological processes by naming a new geologic epoch, the Anthropocene. This course investigates representations of environmental apocalypse and the new geological era of the Anthropocene in order to understand the cultural politics and history of anxiety about end-times and the meaning of nature, planet, and ecology in our lives. We will read fiction by Cormac McCarthy​, Octavia Butler, and Indra Sinha; screen the films Mad Max: Fury Road, 28 Days Later, World War Z, and Snowpiercer; examine Arcade Fire’s album The Suburbs; and study recent environmental theory. We will also travel off campus to the Skä•noñh Great Law of Peace Center in Syracuse, NY, for an all-day workshop the history of the Onondaga Nation. Prior course work in EHUM or related field required. 

Location

Online Room 7 (ASE) (MW 3:25PM - 4:40PM)

Go Local, Go Organic, Farm to Table. What do these trendy slogans really mean? This course takes a humanities approach to contemporary eating practices and consumer trends by tracing how industrial, political, and ecological processes, across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, construct how food appears on our plates–as well as how our understandings of food are constructed and channeled through neoliberal and biopolitical discourses. In order to understand the politics, economics, and history of contemporary food industry and culture, we will cover well-known but little-understood topics, such as biotech, chemical inputs, fast/processed food, GMOs, superbugs, as well as critical theories that illuminate the cultural frameworks that shape our perception, including modernity/modernization, neoliberal economics, narrative theory, post-humanism, microbiological science, celebrity and media culture, and critical race and class studies. Outside-the-classroom elements of this class include a fermentation workshop, a Rochester Food Tour, a behind-the-scenes UofR Dining Services Tour, and a trip to Farm Sanctuary in Watkins Glen.

Not Open to Seniors

Location

Online Room 3 (ASE) (MW 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

This course will focus on the work of four influential filmmaking collectives from across the global African diaspora: the LA Rebellion (US), the Nest Collective (Kenya), the Black Audio Film Collective (Britain), and Sankofa Film and Video (Britain). What does it mean for black filmmakers to create, in sustained collaboration, a body of politically engaged, experimental work? This will be our guiding question as we study the range of these collectives’ representations, as well as the convergences and divergences among them. Topics will include: the afterlives of slavery and empire; police brutality and black uprisings; migration, memory, and belonging; LGBTQ desire and experience; and Afrofuturism and speculative histories. Our archive will be capacious, spanning narrative films, essay films, anthology films, and web series produced from the 1970s to the 2010s, all of which will be contextualized with interviews, production notes, historical essays, and criticism. We will also devote some time to the foundations of visual analysis to ensure we have a shared vocabulary for discussing the films. 

Location

Online Room 22 (ASE) (TR 11:05AM - 12:20PM)

The 21st century has seen an exciting array of fiction and film emerge from the African continent, a development that contributes vitally to global black culture. Mainstays of this new generation of narrative include sci-fi, fantasy, and horror; themes of climate change, transnational migration, and the space of LGBTQ life; as well as a proliferation of generic and formal experiments across media and platforms. In this course, we’ll study novels, short stories, narrative films, and web film series by artists from Nigeria, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Morocco and elsewhere to understand how artists from the continent imagine the relationship between culture and history, hope and anxiety, home and world. Writers and filmmakers will include Chimamanda Adichie, Wanuri Kahiu, NoViolet Bulawayo, Dilman Dila, Nnedi Okorafor, Andrew Dosunmu, among others.

Location

Online Room 12 (ASE) (TR 3:25PM - 4:40PM)

This introductory course uses film and the film industry to understand several trends and elements central to Latin American society and culture in the twentieth century. Specifically, the class will be structured around five main themes: Latin America and the United States; Class, Race and Gender; Revolution and Repression; Underdevelopment and Informality; and (Im)migration. By the end of the course, students will have a strong introduction to modern Latin American history.

Location

Morey Room 321 (MW 11:50AM - 1:05PM)

Registration for Independent Study courses needs to be completed thru the instructions for online independent study registration.

Registration for Independent Study courses needs to be completed thru the instructions for online independent study registration.

Registration for Independent Study courses needs to be completed thru the instructions for online independent study registration.

Registration for Independent Study courses needs to be completed thru the instructions for online independent study registration.

This course offers 1) a comprehensive grass roots? study of anime as film form and cultural phenomenon; and 2) a more specific and guided investigation of the work of Hayao Miyazaki and the world view and visual sensibilities of his creation, Studio Ghibli. We begin by investigating where anime comes from: historical precedence, significant sources, defining influences and routes of cultural exchange. We then focus on Miyazakis work and the Ghibli corpus in order to examine the specifics of animated cinematic construction that distinguish his work (e.g., iconography, visual landscape, character design, narrative tropes, music); methods of adaptation, influence, and genre variation; reception and fan culture; and animes potential for providing unique perspectives on race, gender, landscape, identity, and Japan's historical and mythological past.

Location

Online Room 17 (ASE) (TR 11:05AM - 12:20PM)

An intensive study of the films of Akira Kurosawa, Japans most durable and visible auteur. Thanks to Kurosawas prolific output during his fifty-year career, from his debut in the 1940s to his recent work in the 1990s, an analysis of his films also offers the opportunity to examine some of the major cultural, political, and social issues and events that have left an imprint on the theory and production of film in Japan. We will also consider the work of many individuals (for example, the screenwriter Shinobu Hashimoto) who made important contributions to creating the Kurosawa opus, and whose careers are closely associated with Kurosawa. In addition to Kurosawas recent films, (screenings will include his well-known period films as well as less familiar contemporary dramas), students are responsible for assigned readings and are required to attend screenings.

Location

Online Room 24 (ASE) (TR 2:00PM - 3:15PM)