Spring 2021 Courses & Descriptions

SCRN Courses

Please click on the course title link to find more information about the class and its description below.

Electives 

Number	Title	Days	Time	Instructor
AAAS 2410	Black Popular Culture	TBA	TBA	E. Birthwright
ART 2050	Digital Art I	Please refer to the registrar's schedule booklet for information on class time, days, and instructors for specific sections of ART 2050. ​
ART 2230-01	Virtual Space	T/TH	9:00 AM-11:50 AM	A. Burkley
ART 2230-02	Virtual Space	T/TH	3:00 PM-5:50 PM	A. Burkley
ART 4220	Advanced Moving Image	M/W/F	12:30 PM-2:50 PM	F. Ostrenko
ART 4240-01	Video Game Prototype	T/TH	1:00 PM-3:50 PM	M. Aubanel
ART 4240-02	Unity for Video Games	M/W/F	1:00 PM-2:50 PM	K. Wesley
ART 4240-03	Create Art Careers	M/W/F	6:30 PM-9:20 PM	J. Fleig
CMST 2012	Intro to Film	T/TH	10:30 AM-11:50 AM	E. Brown
CMST 2060	Public Speaking	Please refer to the registrar's schedule booklet for information on class time, days, and instructors for specific sections of CMST 2060.
CMST 3012	History of Film	M/W/F	1:30 PM-2:20 PM Screenings: W, 6:00 PM-8:50 PM	P. Suchy
CMST 3107	Rhetoric Contemporary Media	M/W/F	10:30 AM-11:20 AM	J. Butcher
CPLT 7140/ FREN 7960	The Movies Go to the Theatre: World Cinema and Stage Performance	M	3:00 PM-5:50 PM	J. Leichman
CSC 2463	Programming Digital Media	T/TH	1:30 PM-2:50 PM	Q. Wang
ENGL 2005-01	Intro to Writing Short Stories	M/W/F	11:30 AM-12:20 PM	K. Hur
ENGL 2005-02	Intro to Writing Short Stories	T/TH	10:30 AM-11:50 AM	C. Lauder
ENGL 2009-01	Writing Screenplays	M	5:00 PM-7:50 PM	J. Buch
ENGL 2009-02	Writing Screenplays	T	3:30 PM-6:20 PM	J. Leibner
ENGL 2029-01	Drama	TBA	TBA	M. Turner
ENGL 2029-02	Drama	TBA	TBA	M. Turner
ENGL 2231-01	Reading Film	M/W/F	9:30 AM-10:20 AM	L. Nohner
ENGL 2231-02	Reading Film	M/W/F	10:30 AM-11:20 AM	L. Nohner
ENGL 2231-03	Reading Film	T/TH	5:00 PM-7:50 PM	J. Leibner
ENGL 2231-04	Reading Film	T/TH	12:00 PM-1:20 PM	J. Leibner
ENGL 4000	Delta Journal	T/TH	4:30 PM-5:50 PM	R. Thomas
ENGL 4009	Intermediate Screenwriting	T	5:00 PM-7:50 PM	J. Buch
MUS 2745	Intro to Computer Music	M/W/F	10:30 AM-11:20 AM	A. Franklin
THTR 3900	Select Topics in Theatre	Please refer to the registrar's schedule booklet for information on class time, days, and instructors for specific sections of CMST 2060.

Please consult the Screen Arts director and your advisor before scheduling the classes below, as they require special permission for use towards degree requirements:

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Descriptions

SCRN 3001: Comedy in American Cinema
Kalling Heck, T/TH, 12:00 PM-1:20 PM

Comedy has been a fundamental American movie genre since the earliest days of cinema. Despite this, comedic films are often overlooked in discussions of the value, place, and potential of the cinema--particularly when they are first released. This class will seek to correct this oversight by rigorously engaging with comedic films in the hopes of developing a deeper understanding of the role of comedy in the history and theory of the cinema, and indeed in humanistic inquiry more broadly. Through weekly screenings, readings, and responses, this class will consider how and why comedy has played (and continues to play) a central role in cinema's development. This class will be divided into two halves: the first half of the semester will trace the history of American comedy films from the 1920s to the present day; the second half will use contemporary comedies to address theoretical discussions of comedy, humor, and laughter drawn from film theory and philosophy. 

SCRN 3501: Contemporary Maghrebian Cinema
Touria Khannous, M/W/F, 9:30 AM-10:20 AM

This course is an introduction to contemporary Maghrebian cinema covering the period from after the 1960s to the present in countries including Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. Students will gain not only an expanded knowledge of a broad range of international films from the Maghreb, but also an increased understanding of films' aesthetic approaches to a range of issues such as identity, gender, masculinity, and violence. We will particularly focus on body politics and examine where the politics of gendered, raced, disabled, queer, migrant, and colonized bodies intersect and diverge. We will analyze the films in light of theoretical essays on key concepts in film studies. 

SCRN 3503: Intro to Japanese Cinema
Kathryn Barton, W, 4:30 PM-7:20 PM

This course offers an introduction to the study of Japanese cinema. We will pay close attention to the languages and styles of films as well as the film-historical and socio-cultural contexts. An analysis and appreciation of major works and genres such as Jidaigeki (period/samurai films), Anime, and J-Horror will be explored, and directors such as Kurosawa, Ozu, and Kitano will be introduced. Through secondary readings, lectures, and discussions, students will critically examine how Japanese cinema as an institution both responds to and intervenes in the social, cultural, and political history of Japan. 

SCRN 3505: The Zombie Film
June Pulliam, T/TH, 3:00 PM-4:20 PM

The zombie is a relatively new monster in fiction, film, and folklore, but proliferation over the past 140 years is testament to how the creature resonates with audiences as a representation of their worst fears. The zombie figure originated in 19th century Haiti when multinational corporations were beginning to purchase sugar plantations and processing facilities and the residents of this former slave colony began to fear being re-enslaved. For them, the zombie was a horrific representation of the slave--someone who lacked free will and whose only purpose was to be a fleshy piece of agricultural machinery. The figure of the zombie was popularized in the United States beginning with William Seabrook's 1929 book The Magic Island, which recounted Haitian folktales that the author heard during his travels in Haiti, and the 1932 film loosely based on one of these stories, White Zombie. While the figure of the zombie proliferated in horror comics between the 1930s and 1950s, it would not become popular in film until after George Romero's groundbreaking film Night of the Living Dead (1968), where former loved ones rise out of their graves to become mindless, flesh-eating ghouls. Night of the Living Dead also tied the zombie to contagion and pandemic as well as the apocalypse. Later zombie film and television use the figure to consider everything from the savagery of humans, Othering, free will, and the post-human. In this course, The Zombie Film, we will view multiple films and television shows and explore why this creature so fascinates audiences across the world. 

SCRN 4001: Documentary Style and Fieldwork
Zack Godshall, T/TH, 1:30 PM-2:50 PM

This course explores a variety of approaches to documentary filmmaking (portrait, folklore, journalistic, experimental). By studying the work of other filmmakers and creating your own original work, the course will reveal how various approaches to documentary filmmaking inform both a film's style and content as well as our practice.

CMST 3012: History of Film
Patricia Suchy, MWF, 1:30 PM-2:20 PM (Screenings: W, 6:00 PM-8:50 PM)

This course surveys the development of film as a phenomenon of cultural and aesthetic communication as well as a set of technologies and industrial practices. We will screen, study, and contextualize films that are especially significant to selected developments in the history of cinema, focusing on American and European cinemas.

CPLT 7140: The Movies Go to the Theatre: World Cinema and Stage Performance
Jeffrey M. Leichman, M, 3:00 PM-5:50 PM

(Crosslisted as FREN 7960) How does cinema approach the asymptote of the "live" as a tool for exploring the limits of representation? How have major filmmakers used the self-reflexive device of stories about acting for the stage as a vehicle to explore the construction of the real in cinema? This course will complement film screenings with theoretical and theatrical texts around performance, as well as critical assessments of the problematic of representing the stage in narrative cinema. Films may include works by Mizoguchi, Malle, Ribette, Leigh, Szabo, Ichikawa, Hitchcock, Mankiewicz, Pinero, Bergman, Fosse, Assayas, Inarritu, Cassavetes, Almodovar, etc.