Syllabus

Part I: SIGNIFICATION, STRUCTURE, EXCESS

• Introduction to MC11

Week 2: Signs and Signifying Systems

• outline

• Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, trans. Wade Boskin (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966), pp. 1-23, 65-134.

• Young Mr. Lincoln (John Ford, U.S.A., 1939. 100 minutes).

• Roland Barthes, Mythologies, pp. 26-28, 34-5, 41-43, 50-52, 84-87, 94-96, 100-102, 109-159. [book]

• Cahiers du Cinema editors, "John Ford's Young Mr. Lincoln" in Movies and Methods, ed. Bill Nichols (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), pp. 493-529.

• Written On The Wind (Douglas Sirk, U.S.A., 1956, 99 minutes.)

• Claude Levi-Strauss, "The Principles of Kinship" in The Elementary Structures of Kinship (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), pp. 478-497.
• ---, "The Effectiveness of Symbols" in Structural Anthropology (New York: Basic Books, 1963), pp. 186-204.

• Jacques Derrida, "Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences" in Writing and Difference (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1978), pp. 278-293, 339.

• Emile Benveniste, "Subjectivity in Language" in Problems in General Linguistics, trans. Mary Elizabeth Meeks (Coral Gables, FL: University of Miami Press, 1971), pp. 223-230.
• Jacques Derrida "Signature Event, Context" in Limited, Inc. (Evanston IL: Northwestern University Press, 1988), pp. 1-23.

• Sigmund Freud, excerpts from "Part II. Dreams" in Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, trans. James Strachey (New York: Avon, 1965), pp. 122-153. 167-182, 209-226, 264-282.
• Emile Benveniste, "Remarks on the Function of Language in Freudian Theory" in Problems in General Linguistics, pp. 65-75.

• Dottie Gets Spanked (Todd Haynes, U.S.A., 1993, 27 minutes).

• Judith Butler, "Imitation and Gender Insubordination: Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories" in Inside/Out, ed. Diana Fuss (New York and London: Routledge, 1991), pp. 13-31.

• UNIVERSITY HOLIDAY!

• Sigmund Freud, Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria. [book]

Week 7: Regulating Subjectivity and Sexual Difference(s)

• outline

• Alan Sheridan, "Translator's Note" in Ecrits: A Selection, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: W. W. Norton, 1977), pps. vii-xii.
• Jacques Lacan, "The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I" + "The Signification of the Phallus" in Ecrits, pp. 1-7. 281-291.

• Splash (Ron Howard, U.S.A., 1984, 111 minutes).

• Laura Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" in Visual and Other Pleasures (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989), pp. 14-26.
• Luce Irigaray, "This Sex Which is Not One" + "Commodities among Themselves" in This Sex Which Is Not One, trans. Catherine Porter (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1985) pp. 23-33, 192-197.

• Frantz Fanon "Algeria Unveiled" in A Dying Colonialism, trans. Haakon Chevalier (New York: Grove Press, 1965), pp. 35-67.
• Frantz Fanon "Concerning Violence" in Wretched of the Earth, trans. Constance Farrington (New York: Grove Press, 1963), pp. 35-106.

• My Beautiful Laundrette (Stephen Freers, U.K., 1985, 93 minutes).

• Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, "Introduction: Axiomatic" in Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), pp. 1-63.

• outline

• Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, "Idealism and Materialism" + "The Illusion of the Epoch" in The German Ideology (New York: International Publishers, 1947), pp. 37-68.

• It's a Wonderful Life (Frank Capra, U.S.A., 1946, 130 minutes).

• Louis Althusser, "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes Towards an Investigation)" in Lenin and Philosophy and other essays, trans. Ben Brewster (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1971), pp. 127-186.

• Pierre Bourdieu, "The Production and Reproduction of Legitimate Language," "Authorized Language," "Rites of Institution," "Description and Prescription" + in Language and Symbolic Power. pp. 43-65, 107-136.

****Paper #2 due***

• Reversal of Fortune (Barbett Schroeder, U.S.A., 1990, 111 minutes.)

• Stuart Hall, "The Problem of Ideology: Marxism Without Guarantees" in Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies, eds. David Morley and Kuan-Hsing Chen (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), pp. 25-46.
• Stuart Hall , "New Ethnicities," in Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies, pp. 441-449.
• Wahneema Lubiano, "Like Being Mugged by a Metaphor: Multiculturalism and State Narratives" in Mapping Multiculturalism, eds.Avery Gordon and Chris Newfield (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), pp. 64-75.

• Michel Foucault, "Panopticism" in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (NY: Vintage. 1979), pp. 195-228.
• ---, "We 'Other Victorians'" + "Scientia Sexualis" in The History of Sexuality vol. 1 (NY: Vintage, 1978), pp.3-13, 53-73.

• A Question of Silence/Stilte rond Christine M., De (Marleen Gorris, Netherlands, 1983, 92 minutes).
• That Rush! (Isaac Julien, U.S.A., 1995, 6 minutes).

• Patricia Williams, "Fire and Ice," "The Pain of Word Bondage," + Mirrors and Windows," in The Alchemy of Race and Rights (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), pp. 133-178.

• Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" in Illuminations, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Schocken Books, 1968), pp. 217-251.
• Jean Baudrillard, excerpt from "Simulacra and Simulations" in Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings ed. by Mark Poster (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988), pp. 166-184.

• eXistenZ (David Cronenburg, U.S.A., 1999, 97 minutes).

• U.S. THANKSGIVING HOLIDAY!

Week 13: New, Live, and Improved

• outline

• Jane Feuer, "The Concept of Live Television: Ontology as Ideology" in Regarding Television: Critical Approaches--An Anthology, ed. E. Ann Kaplan (Frederick, MD: University Publications of America, 1983), pp. 12-22.
• Mimi White, "Crossing Wavelengths: The Diegetic and Referential Imaginary of American Commercial Television," in Cinema Journal 25L2 (Winter 1986), pp. 51-64.
• Ien Ang, "In the Realm of Uncertainty: The Global Village and Capitalist Postmodernity," in Living Room Wars: Rethinking Media Audiences for a Postmodern World (NY: Routledge, 1996), pp. 162-180 and 187-188.

• TV screenings, TBA

• Saskia Sassen, "Electronic Space and Power" in Globalization and Its Discontents (New York: The New Press, 1998) pp. 177-194.
• Lev Manovich, "Principles of New Media" + "Navigable Space" in The Language of New Media (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001), pp. 27-48, 244-285.

• Donna Haraway, "A Manifesto for Cyborgs," in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York: Routledge, 1991), pp. 149-181.
• Rey Chow, TBA

• Conclusion

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