Course Introduction

An advanced film theory "workshop" in which we shall avoid reading film theory in favor of a selection of other texts, taken mainly from the domains of art history, philosophy, and literature. Our central question will be: What can filmmakers and film theorists learn from discourses about vision that pre-date the cinema, or that consider the cinema only marginally? We shall approach some of the major topics of contemporary film theory -- narrativity, subject-construction, the relation of words to images -- through the lens of texts that have remained largely outside the network of citations and references we normally associate with the work of professional film theory. We might begin the groundwork for an "opening up" or critique of some of the blind spots of current film theory; at the very least, we shall be reading works that challenge our usual ways of theorizing.

(pls note: I check e-mail approximately once a week)