David Scott Diffrient
Colorado State University, Communication Studies, Faculty Member
- Film Studies, Film Theory, Television Studies, Media Studies, Korean cinema, East Asian Cinema, and 39 moreScreen Comedy, Horror Film, Human Rights, Film Analysis, Film History, Television History, U.S. Television Studies, Fandom, French Cinema, Critical Theory, Comics and Graphic Novels, Football (soccer), Film, Popular Culture, Science Fiction, Fan Cultures, Omnibus Films, Comics Studies, Cult Film, Cult television, Kitsch, Camp, and Trash Film, Exploitation Cinema, Fan Studies, Board Games, Communication Studies, Postmodernism, Comics, Graphic Novels, Classical Hollywood, Hollywood, Horror films, Horror Studies, Horror, Animation, Cultural Studies, Media and Cultural Studies, Gender Studies, Racial and Ethnic Politics, and Breath - Body - Voiceedit
- David Scott Diffrient is the former William E. Morgan Endowed Chair of Liberal Arts and Professor of Film and Media S... moreDavid Scott Diffrient is the former William E. Morgan Endowed Chair of Liberal Arts and Professor of Film and Media Studies in the Department of Communication Studies at Colorado State University. His articles have been published in Cinema Journal, Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television, Journal of Fandom Studies, Journal of Film and Video, Journal of Popular Film and Television, New Review of Film and Television Studies, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, Post Script, and Velvet Light Trap, as well as in several edited collections about film and television topics. He is the editor of Screwball Television: Critical Perspectives on Gilmore Girls (Syracuse University Press, 2010) and coeditor of East Asian Film Remakes (Edinburgh University Press, 2023), as well as the author of M*A*S*H (Wayne State University Press, 2008), Omnibus Films: Theorizing Transauthorial Cinema (Edinburgh University Press, 2014), Comic Drunks, Crazy Cults, and Lovable Monsters: Bad Behavior on American Television (Syracuse University Press, 2022), Body Genre: Anatomy of the Horror Film (University Press of Mississippi, 2023), and (with Hye Seung Chung) Movie Migrations: Transnational Genre Flows and South Korean Cinema (Rutgers University Press, 2015), as well as a follow-up to the latter book entitled Movie Minorities: Transnational Rights Advocacy and South Korean Cinema. He is the former co-editor of the Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema.edit
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Research Interests: Japanese Studies, Film Studies, Chinese Studies, Literature and cinema, Korean Studies, and 15 moreFilm Adaptation, East Asian Studies, Taiwan Studies, China, Hong Kong Cinema, Mainland Chinese Film, East Asian Cinema, Japan, Film Remakes, Cinema, Chinese Cinema, Hong Kong, East Asian Languages and Cultures, Korean popular culture, and Remakes
Research Interests: History, Modern History, Japanese Studies, Korean Studies, Japanese Cinema, and 11 moreFilm Adaptation, East Asian Studies, Korean History, East Asian Cinema, Korean Literature and Culture, Korean film, Korean cinema, Film Remakes, East Asian Film and Visual Studies, East-Asian Popular Culture, and Japan-Korea relations
Research Interests: Film Studies, Cross-Cultural Studies, Asian Film, Hong Kong Cinema, Mainland Chinese Film, and 12 moreMedia, East Asian Cinema, Film Remakes, Cinema, Asian Cinema, Cinema Studies, Chinese film study, East Asian Film and Visual Studies, Shanghai, Macau, Modern Chinese Literature and Film, and Adaptations
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This article examines some of the formal properties, stylistic motifs and thematic preoccupations of classic and contemporary South Korean horror films. As a genre that has enormous box-office appeal and crossover potential for western... more
This article examines some of the formal properties, stylistic motifs and thematic preoccupations of classic and contemporary South Korean horror films. As a genre that has enormous box-office appeal and crossover potential for western audiences, horror might seem to be little more than a commercial platform for young film-makers to exploit popular tastes and cash in on derivative stories offering scant insight into the social conditions faced by modern-day Koreans. However, even the most cliché-ridden, shock-filled slasher films and ghost tales reveal the often-contradictory cultural attitudes of a populace that, over the past three generations, has weathered literally divisive transformations at the national and ideological levels. As such, the genre deserves scrutiny as a repository of previously pent-up, suddenly unleashed libidinal energies, consumerist desires and historical traumas , as well as a barometer of public opinion about such issues as class warfare, gender inequality and sexual identity. Specifically, I explore some of the most salient features of Korean horror cinema, including filmmakers' tendency to adopt narrative analepsis -- typically rendered as flashbacks -- in the course of plotting out scenarios that, though far-fetched, are rooted in unsettled (and unsettling) real-world problems. Historical return, I argue, truly is a horrifying prospect, especially for anyone old enough to remember, or to have experienced firsthand, the brutality of a military dictatorship or an ongoing abuse of presidential power resulting in severe rights violations (e.g. the Park Chung-hee [1961–79]) and Chun Doo-hwan [1980–88] administrations). But historical return simply must be dramatized as part of the regurgitative ‘purging’ for which the genre has been singled out by theorists who recognize horror’s socially productive function.
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In the Foreword to the second edition of his 2012 profile of former North Korean prisoner Shin Dong-hyuk, whose harrowing escape from Kaechon internment camp drew the attention of human rights organizations around the world, American... more
In the Foreword to the second edition of his 2012 profile of former North Korean prisoner Shin Dong-hyuk, whose harrowing escape from Kaechon internment camp drew the attention of human rights organizations around the world, American journalist Blaine Harden addresses recent revelations (made public three years after the publication of his book) that his subject had stretched the truth and misrepresented his actual experiences as the only known person to have been born in—and to have escaped from—such a place. Those admissions on the part of an ex-prisoner who still bears the physical and emotional scars of his past were made public in 2015, three years after the release of a feature-length documentary based on Harden’s book. That film, Camp 14: Total Control Zone, is less skeptical of Shin’s testimony than Harden’s revised text, which nevertheless maintains that his subject’s life “is not fiction” while foregrounding the ethical dilemmas that he and other journalists face when trying to report facts that simply cannot be checked. However, in combining seemingly straightforward talking-head interviews and poetically rendered animated sequences showing the life he led under a repressive military regime, the film adopts a hybridized form in which the line between history and fiction is blurred. This chapter reveals how Camp 14: Total Control Zone distinguishes itself from other animated documentaries by dramatizing the life of a prisoner for whom escape was not only a survival tactic but also a captivating “plot point.”
Research Interests: Film Studies, Animation, Human Rights, Film Analysis, Documentary (Film Studies), and 14 moreKorean Studies, Political Prisoners, Korean cinema, Cinema, Film and social change, Documentary Film, Film and Media Studies, Prisons, North Korea (politics and society), North Korea, North Korean human rights, Prison Films, North Korean Refugees, and Forced labor camps
Comedy has long been thought of as a genre that does not ‘travel’ well, owing to the fact that humour is often tied to culturally specific (or ‘local’) references that might be lost on audiences outside a text’s originating context. In... more
Comedy has long been thought of as a genre that does not ‘travel’ well, owing to the fact that humour is often tied to culturally specific (or ‘local’) references that might be lost on audiences outside a text’s originating context. In recent years, however, a few globally recognized comedians, such as Simon Pegg, have suggested that the jokes that pepper British comedies can be easily understood by non-British audiences. This article critically interrogates both premises and questions whether the intertextual incompetence of viewers might exacerbate feelings of literal and figurative distance while solidifying an insider/outsider binary that resembles the inclusionary and exclusionary rhetoric at the heart of nationalistic discourse. Drawing upon the insights of comedy and language theorists, the author adopts an autoethnographic approach that foregrounds his own (frequently failed) attempts to disentangle culturally specific references in British sitcoms. Such an approach reveals how, to varying degrees, class, distinction and the cultural capital or taste presumably needed to discern the value and meaning of something all impinge on the connective yet distancing act of transnational TV spectatorship.
Research Interests: Cultural Studies, Media Studies, Media and Cultural Studies, Television Studies, Comedy, and 14 moreHumor, Genre, Audience and Reception Studies, Autoethnography, Intertextuality, Spectatorship, Television, Situation Comedies, Humour Studies, Sitcoms, Film and Television Comedy, TV Series, British Humour, and TV Comedy
Research Interests: Film Studies, Digital Media, Literature and cinema, Film Analysis, Film Adaptation, and 14 moreKorean Literature and Culture, Korean film, Korean cinema, Auteur Theory, Cinema, Art and Independent Cinema, Film Aesthetics, Video Analysis, Cinema Studies, Blu Ray, International Cinema, Cinematic Realism, Lee Chang-dong, and Criterion Collection
Research Interests: Film Studies, Animal Studies, Film Analysis, Social Activism, Film History, and 15 moreKorean Literature and Culture, Korean film, Korean cinema, Cinema, Philosophy Of Animals, Animals in Culture, Animal Rights, Film and Media Studies, Cinema Studies, Animals, East Asian Film and Visual Studies, Korean popular culture, Speciesism, Philosophy and Sociology of Human/animal Relations, and Animals In Film
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This article explores Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips’ recycling of film noir images and tropes in The Fade Out, a twelve-issue comic book series that borrows heavily from photographic and cinematic materials (including publicity stills and... more
This article explores Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips’ recycling of film noir images and tropes in The Fade Out, a twelve-issue comic book series that borrows heavily from photographic and cinematic materials (including publicity stills and actors’ head shots) to craft a ‘remediated’ vision of old Hollywood that is simultaneously deceptive and truthful about the harsh realities of working in an industry popularly known as the ‘Dream Factory’. The nightmares that haunt the narrative’s protagonist, Charlie Parish, tied to his military past as well as to his relationship to a dead starlet named Valeria Sommers, are referred to by the narrator as ‘half-remembered images’, a fitting description of the way in which Phillips’ own drawings – his nearly ‘perfect’ reproductions of earlier photos and movie scenes – are actually incomplete without the kind of historical contextualization that this series demands. By juxtaposing panels from the comic book with those original images, the author reveals how, beneath the nostalgic surface of The Fade Out, a deeper message about cultural memory and historical archiving is being articulated. Mixing real-world figures (e.g. screen icons such as Humphrey Bogart, Bette Davis, Clark Gable) and fictional characters who nevertheless call to mind actual people from Hollywood’s past, this comic book series invites us to speculate on the demands of the star system as well as on the possibility that our own fading memory might make such distinctions (e.g. between ‘real’ and ‘fake’) less clear in the years to come.
Research Interests: Film Studies, Comics Studies, Comic Book Studies, Comics, Comics/Sequential Art, and 15 moreGraphic Novels, Film Noir, Film History, Cinema, Graphic Novels Study, Classical Hollywood, Comics and Graphic Novels, Noir Fiction, Neo-Noir, Hollywood, Comic books, Classical Hollywood Cinema, Blacklisting in Entertainment, The Hollywood Blacklist, and Studio System
Set in the world of Madison Avenue advertising during the 1960s, a century after the earliest construction of vertical lifts in New York City, Matthew Weiner’s Mad Men illustrates how central the elevator has become to the urban spatial... more
Set in the world of Madison Avenue advertising during the 1960s, a century after the earliest construction of vertical lifts in New York City, Matthew Weiner’s Mad Men illustrates how central the elevator has become to the urban spatial imaginary, perpetuated in part through such cultural productions as Billy Wilder’s 1960 film The Apartment (a source of inspiration for Weiner). Like Wilder’s classic comedy, Mad Men stages several interpersonal encounters inside the cramped spaces of elevator cars, which are private zones of physical and verbal intimacy as well as public areas where individuals from different social classes come together, if only momentarily. Inspired by the work of Andreas Bernard (author of Lifted, which focuses on literary and cinematic representations of elevators), I explore the contradictory aspects of this prominent yet overlooked type of human conveyance, looking at the fleeting personal exchanges that take place inside vertical lifts on Mad Men as well as on other television programs. As Bernard states, because it combines ‘freedom of access while stopped and hermetically sealed impenetrability while in motion’, the elevator cab is ripe for interpretation as a means through which to tell the story of the modern metropolis and its demographically diverse inhabitants.
Research Interests: Gender Studies, Media Studies, Racial and Ethnic Politics, Television Studies, Space and Place, and 17 moreRace and Racism, Gender and Sexuality, Race and Ethnicity, Gender, Gender Equality, Urban Studies, Masculinity, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Gender and Race, Public Space, Television, Spatial demography, Mad Men, Elevator, American Quality Television, Architecture and Public Spaces, and Quality TV
This article builds upon Davina Quinlivan’s pioneering work on cinematic breathing by considering the conspicuous but often-overlooked place of breath in horror films. The author focuses specifically on the way still-breathing bodies –... more
This article builds upon Davina Quinlivan’s pioneering work on cinematic breathing by considering the conspicuous but often-overlooked place of breath in horror films. The author focuses specifically on the way still-breathing bodies – i.e. those of actors pretending to be deceased on screen – prick our senses and draw our attention to one of the genre’s unavoidable paradoxes. Stated simply, what all but the most metatextual or parodic horror films wish to hide – to keep concealed inside their own literal and figurative ‘basements’ – is the inherent artifice of fictional death, which has traditionally been represented by way of living actors who must mask their breathing in order to sustain the feeling of dread on which the genre is affectively reliant. Taking the title and premise of the recent U.S. theatrical release Don’t Breathe (2016) as a leaping-off point, but expanding the scope of this essay to include a representative cross section of international productions and trashy exploitation cinema, the author hopes to contribute to a better understanding of the genre’s unique respiratory tendencies as well as the risible yet significant textual ruptures that occur when bodies continue breathing after they have stopped living.
Research Interests: Film Studies, Breath - Body - Voice, Film Analysis, Horror Film, Exploitation Cinema, and 14 moreHorror Cinema, Cinema, Film and Media Studies, Movies, Cult Cinema, Cinema Studies, Horror films, Horror Studies, Horror, Paracinema, Watching movies, Watching film, Breathing, and Cult, Experimental and Avant Garde Film
Research Interests: Film Studies, Genre studies, Literature and cinema, Film Analysis, National Cinemas, and 18 moreFilm Genre, Horror Film, Hong Kong Cinema, Film History, East Asian Cinema, Horror Cinema, Cinema, Hong Kong, Film and Media Studies, Cinema Studies, Horror Literature, Kung Fu Film, Horror films, Horror Studies, Horror, Hong Kong studies, Literary hands, and Fingers
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For decades, dating back to the medium’s origins as a commercially viable form of mass communication in the postwar years, US television programs have contributed to the many paradoxes of masculinity, revealing but also obscuring the... more
For decades, dating back to the medium’s origins as a commercially viable form of mass communication in the postwar years, US television programs have contributed to the many paradoxes of masculinity, revealing but also obscuring the normativizing function of cultural representations through the use of generic encoding and the compositional “logic” of male (visual) dominance. One visual motif in particular—the shot of two men sitting at a table, their hands temporarily locked as part of an arm wrestling contest—is noteworthy, given the frequency of its recurrence in a variety of fictional programming (All in the Family, The Odd Couple, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Taxi, etc.) as well as for its literal staging of masculinity as spectacle, as an object of spectatorial contemplation vis-à-vis the televisual construction of “toughness” as an inherently male attribute. If television and toughness can be said to go “hand in hand,” then the actual sight of two men joined together in a physical contest hints at the idea that intimacy is at much a part of such ritualized representations as intimidation is. Indeed, what several of the episodes discussed in this article (selected from representative television programs of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s) reveal is that a man is sometimes at his most unguarded—his most forthcoming and honest—when seated opposite another man during an arm wrestling match, a moment that is deserving of consideration as a symptomatic illustration of masculinity’s paradoxes. Inspired by the early writings of Roland Barthes, in particular the French philosopher’s essay “The World of Wrestling” (published as part of his 1957 book Mythologies), I ultimately hope to reveal how seemingly innocuous images are “invested with ideological meanings,” unwittingly revealing what they often seek to conceal.
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The article examines three feature-length films produced in South Korea—director Hwang Dong-hyeok’s Silenced (2011), Song Il-gon’s Always (2011), and An Sang-hun’s Blind (2011)—that highlight a problem in contemporary disability rights... more
The article examines three feature-length films produced in South Korea—director Hwang Dong-hyeok’s Silenced (2011), Song Il-gon’s Always (2011), and An Sang-hun’s Blind (2011)—that highlight a problem in contemporary disability rights cinema. While privileging individuals and groups that challenge normative understandings of character-based drama or documentary filmmaking, these motion pictures reflect an infantilizing tendency in popular culture more generally. The representations align with the standard medical approach to the topic, which sees disability as a sickness, a childlike helplessness (regardless of the person’s age) that results from an inability, a marked deficit in one’s physical or mental performance. However, it is argued that Silenced, a film that provoked legislative changes strengthening the protection of minors in South Korea, at least gestures toward the social model of disability.
Research Interests: Social Change, Film Studies, Disability Studies, Human Rights, Critical Disability Studies, and 11 moreLiterature and cinema, Film Analysis, Korean Studies, Disability Theory, Korean Literature and Culture, Korean film, South Korean Cinema, Cinema, Disability, Disability Rights, and Korean popular culture
This essay explores Morgan Neville's 2013 documentary 20 Feet from Stardom, which, despite the filmmaker's honorable intentions, reproduces the asymmetrical power relations that it sets out to challenge. The film spotlights previously... more
This essay explores Morgan Neville's 2013 documentary 20 Feet from Stardom, which, despite the filmmaker's honorable intentions, reproduces the asymmetrical power relations that it sets out to challenge. The film spotlights previously marginalized members of rock music ensembles; namely, backup singers such as Merry Clayton, Lisa Fischer, and Darlene Love, whose overlapping careers span a roughly sixty-year period (1950s–2010s). But in attempting to resituate these and other vocalists as figures of nearly peerless artistry and historical consequence, demonstrating in the process how racist ideologies were staged for millions of music fans over the past half-century, 20 Feet from Stardom frequently asks these women to take a backseat to the more famous men who tell their stories. Talking-head interviews featuring rock stars such as Mick Jagger and Bruce Springsteen are woven into the film's narrative, their voices overlaying archival television footage and newly recorded studio performances in which backup vocalists are allowed to take center stage, if only momentarily. The “front/back” rhetoric of racial oppression and separation specific to postwar America is thus presented to concertgoers as a “natural” way of spatializing race—of spatially distributing people of different ethnicities whose connection to the civil rights movement has perhaps been obscured by their professional commitments.
Research Interests: Music, Film Studies, Film Analysis, Documentary (Film Studies), Celebrity Culture, and 16 moreCivil Rights, African American Culture, Film History, Civil Rights Movement, African American Studies, Documentary Film, Black Women's Studies, Black Feminist Theory/Thought, Film and Media Studies, Documentary, Stardom and Celebrity, Star Studies, Black Music and Politics, Celebrity and Star Studies, Vocalists, and Backup Singers
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This mise-en-scène featurette discusses the critical-cinephilic privileging of the final scene in Michelangelo Antonioni's 1962 film The Eclipse, and then briefly considers two other, less-studied moments when the wind (an "invisible" but... more
This mise-en-scène featurette discusses the critical-cinephilic privileging of the final scene in Michelangelo Antonioni's 1962 film The Eclipse, and then briefly considers two other, less-studied moments when the wind (an "invisible" but felt presence in the mise-en-scène) foregrounds ontological properties of the cinematic medium (with an emphasis on movement).
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Research Interests: Literature, Asian American Studies, Immigration, Identity (Culture), Film Adaptation, and 13 moreEast Asian Studies, Chinese American history, Chinese Diaspora (Migration and Ethnicity), Asian-American Film, Asian American Literature, Authorship, Chinese American Literature, Film and Media Studies, Cinema Studies, Novels, Film and Literature, Amy Tan, and Asian American
This essay uncovers the production and reception history of It’s a Big Country (1951), a multi-director M-G-M film that explores the interwoven issues of nationhood, citizenship and cultural diversity during the cold war era. Produced by... more
This essay uncovers the production and reception history of It’s a Big Country (1951), a multi-director M-G-M film that explores the interwoven issues of nationhood, citizenship and cultural diversity during the cold war era. Produced by the liberal studio chief Dore Schary, who referred to the film as a ‘propaganda picture’ and a ‘message picture,’ It’s a Big Country is a contradictory text that explicitly upholds the cold war mandate of inclusive representations (with episodes focusing on different racial/ethnic groups including African-Americans, Italians, the Irish, Greeks, Hungarians and Jews) and implicitly challenges the myth of national unity through subtle textual maneuvers. We argue that the imperfections and shortcomings of Schary’s ambitious project (which received negative reviews upon its original release) are indicative of the national failings of a segregated, Cold War America. To a certain extent, the film was ahead of its time and its potential as a meaningful social statement had to be significantly tempered due to industrial and ideological constraints. Its underlying message, however, still has the power to spark conversations about the dialectic of social fragmentation and national belonging as well as the omnibus-like assembly of identities that go into making a nation.
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In this chapter I explore the multiple functions and meanings of alcohol in M*A*S*H, looking at specific episodes that deploy drinks and drunkenness in thematically significant ways. Key case studies include season six’s “Fallen Idol,”... more
In this chapter I explore the multiple functions and meanings of alcohol in M*A*S*H, looking at specific episodes that deploy drinks and drunkenness in thematically significant ways. Key case studies include season six’s “Fallen Idol,” season eight’s “Bottle Fatigue,” and season nine’s “Bottoms Up,” which collectively highlight the fact that almost everyone in the camp turns to beers, wine, cocktails, and other spirits as a means of much-needed relief. More importantly, these episodes also contain scenes in which the main characters confront the reasons for, and effects of, periodic drinking. The bulk of this chapter, then, examines the interrelatedness of alcohol and war, taking into consideration the reasons why Hawkeye and other characters might turn to the bottle from time to time. I also reiterate what James Wittebols and other media scholars have argued about M*A*S*H: that it is a cultural production of social and political relevance that not only entertains but also enlightens; serving an edifying role even as its controversial content and tonally schizophrenic form (shifting from comedy to drama and vice-versa) disturb some audiences.
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This article seeks to demonstrate the underlying ideological similarities between President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Depression-era political rhetoric and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s Captains Courageous (1937), an adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s... more
This article seeks to demonstrate the underlying ideological similarities between President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Depression-era political rhetoric and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s Captains Courageous (1937), an adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s 1897 novel of the same title. Rather than claim a simple causal relationship between FDR’s oratorical calls for socio-economic reform and M-G-M’s cinematic tale of cooperative teamwork in the face of adversity, the authors make the more modest assertion that the president’s mid-1930s discourse is echoed in, and mediated by, director Victor Fleming’s contemporaneous production. The film, which on the surface displays the hallmarks of a conservative cultural production, actually functions as a pro-collectivist, pro-New Deal message about the perils of dishonest, unbridled competition. In addition, Captains Courageous is suffused with audiovisual signifiers that are unexpectedly in tune with the sound design and mise-en-scene of ‘social realist’ films of the period. In making their case, the authors not only provide a reading of Captains Courageous that goes against conventional wisdom, but also pose a critical intervention in the traditional historiography of Depression-era film production, which has often neglected to account for this and other (admittedly anomalous) instances of pro-Roosevelt sentiments issuing forth from a studio that famously supported the Republican Party.
Research Interests: Film Studies, Narrative, Literature and cinema, Adaptation, Political Rhetoric, and 18 more1930s (U.S. history), Great Depression, Narrative Analysis, Cinema, The Great Depression of 1930s, Rudyard Kipling, Cinema Studies, Political Speech Analysis, FDR, Classics, Films, 1930s, The New Deal, Political Speeches, Classics and FIlm, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Studio System, Victor Fleming, and Captains Courageous
This article examines the important yet overlooked 1965 omnibus film Paris vu par… (Paris Seen by…, a.k.a. Six in Paris), a transauthorial production bringing together the individual contributions of directors Claude Chabrol, Jean-Luc... more
This article examines the important yet overlooked 1965 omnibus film Paris vu par… (Paris Seen by…, a.k.a. Six in Paris), a transauthorial production bringing together the individual contributions of directors Claude Chabrol, Jean-Luc Godard, Eric Rohmer, Jean Rouch, Jean Douchet, and Jean Daniel Pollet. Like Paris, Je t’aime (2006) forty years after it (albeit on a very different scale), each episode of this film is set in a different section of the French capital, introduced by way of expository captions identifying the various locales and names of the filmmakers. Inspired by the writings of Walter Benjamin, Tom Conley, and Naomi Schor, the author examines how the six constituent parts of Paris vu par… crystallize various facets of French life scattered across the map of Paris, thus imparting a sense of representational wholeness despite the film’s metonymic slippage into modularity. In looking at the ways in which the topographical and sociopolitical ingredients of this film relate to aesthetic and narratological elements, the author seeks to draw out similarities between the idea of people as social clusters and the concept of narrative communities, attracting the reader’s eye to their spatial relations (as collections) while foregrounding the salient features of ‘postcard cinema’.
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[co-authored with Carl Burgchardt] This essay analyzes Elia Kazan’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945), an adaptation of Betty Smith’s bestselling novel of the same title (published two years earlier). The central visual elements in this... more
[co-authored with Carl Burgchardt] This essay analyzes Elia Kazan’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945), an adaptation of Betty Smith’s bestselling novel of the same title (published two years earlier). The central visual elements in this film are thresholds or openings, such as windows, doorways, and stairways, which together comprise a liminal space whose crossings serve as the literal inscriptions of Kazan’s dialectical project. These are sites of indeterminacy, where personal transitions and economic transactions take place. Significantly, the film’s most intense moments of emotional harmony and discord occur in front of (or through) these in-between thresholds, where softness gives way to hardness (and vice versa). The alternating pattern of harmony, contrasted with interpersonal conflict, constitutes what the authors call the ‘emotional dialectics’ of the film. Transitions from dreamy contentment to harsh realization or an awareness of the hard truth of a situation occur rapidly in these liminal spaces. Building on the work of theorists such as André Bazin, Jean Mitry, and Dudley Andrew, the essay concludes that A Tree Grow in Brooklyn not only targets the relational chasms to be crossed by its main characters but also builds a bridge between the producers of the past (including director Kazan) and viewers of the present, contemporary audiences who are asked to peer through a cinematic ‘window’ and partake in a view of the warmth and intimacy to be found in an immigrant family’s life.
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Drawing from existing literature in the field of comedy studies (including work related to three long-established theories of laughter: superiority theory, incongruity theory, and relief theory), this paper examines the humorous elements... more
Drawing from existing literature in the field of comedy studies (including work related to three long-established theories of laughter: superiority theory, incongruity theory, and relief theory), this paper examines the humorous elements in Hong Sang-soo's films. Focusing on the Korean director's tellingly titled film HaHaHa (2010), the author puts forth the idea that both internal and external bursts of hilarity (coming from the characters and from the audience, respectively) form a line of bivalent critique that links textual and extratextual aspects of screen comedy. That linkage is gestured toward by the artificial ‘movement’ (or, rather, magnification) of the image specific to the zoom shot, which can be seen in nearly every one of this film's simultaneously painful and pleasurable, uncomfortable and entertaining, sequences. In addition to expanding Paul Willemen's theory of cinematic zooming, the author seizes upon some of the most persuasive writings about the comic mode in order to critically frame Hong Sang-soo's unique brand of humorous self-reflexivity.
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This article explores episodes of the contemporary American television programmes Strangers with Candy (Comedy Central, 1999–2000) and Veronica Mars (UPN/CW, 2004–07) so as to ascertain and discursively frame the complex relationship... more
This article explores episodes of the contemporary American television programmes Strangers with Candy (Comedy Central, 1999–2000) and Veronica Mars (UPN/CW, 2004–07) so as to ascertain and discursively frame the complex relationship between cults (or neo-religious organizations) and cult TV. Although different from one another in many respects, these two TV series share an interest in the cliquish formations of high-school life that divide students into warring camps of insiders and outsiders. Moreover, both programmes contain pivotal episodes in which the ritualistic practices of fictional cults are presented ambivalently – as a source of humour yet also as a gateway through which the unconventional female protagonists pass on their way to self-discovery. That journey has extraordinary resonance for fans or ‘followers’ of these programmes. As argued by Jonathan Gray in his recently published work on ‘affect, fantasy, and meaning’, fans and followers are viewers who are ‘most involved in their consumption’. As such, Strangers with Candy and Veronica Mars deserve scrutiny as steadfastly worshipped texts conducive to the kinds of meta-consumptive discourses and practices that might shed light on culturally entrenched attitudes related to neo-religious activities.
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As a big-budget adaptation of Katherine Paterson's 1977 Newbery Award-winning novel of the same title, the 2007 Walden Media/Walt Disney family film Bridge to Terabithia departs from its source material in telling ways, subtly shifting... more
As a big-budget adaptation of Katherine Paterson's 1977 Newbery Award-winning novel of the same title, the 2007 Walden Media/Walt Disney family film Bridge to Terabithia departs from its source material in telling ways, subtly shifting the motives, manners, and yearnings of the main adolescent characters while compounding the complexities of gender roles and class relations. In this essay, I triangulate three texts—the novel, the recent motion picture, and a little-seen Canadian telefilm of the same title (released in 1985)—so as to arrive at a better understanding of how different types of cultural production respond to questions of masculinity and femininity over time, in different historical periods.
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In this groundbreaking work, author David Scott Diffrient explores largely understudied facets of cinematic horror, from the various odors permeating classic and contemporary films to the wetness, sliminess, and stickiness of these... more
In this groundbreaking work, author David Scott Diffrient explores largely understudied facets of cinematic horror, from the various odors permeating classic and contemporary films to the wetness, sliminess, and stickiness of these productions, which, he argues, practically scream out for a tactile mode of textural analysis as much as they call for more traditional forms of textual analysis. Dating back to Carol Clover’s and Linda Williams’s pioneering work on horror cinema, film scholars have long conceptualized this once-disreputable category of cultural production as a “body genre.” However, despite the growing recognition that horror serves important biological and social functions in our lives, scholars have only scratched the surface of this genre with regard to its affective, corporeal, and sensorial appeals.
Diffrient anatomizes horror films in much the same way that a mad scientist might handle the body, separating and recombining constitutive parts into a new analytical whole. Further, he challenges the tendency of scholars to privilege human over nonhuman beings and calls into question ableist assumptions about the centrality to horror films of sight and sound to the near exclusion of other forms of sense experience. In addition to examining the role that animals—living or dead, real or fake—play in human-centered fictions, this volume asks what it means for audiences to consume motion pictures in which actors, stunt performers, and other creative personnel have put their own bodies and lives at risk for our amusement. Historically grounded and theoretically expansive, Body Genre: Anatomy of the Horror Film moves the study of cinematic horror into previously unchartered waters and breathes life into a subject that, not coincidentally, is intimately connected to breathing as our most cherished dividing line between life and death.
Diffrient anatomizes horror films in much the same way that a mad scientist might handle the body, separating and recombining constitutive parts into a new analytical whole. Further, he challenges the tendency of scholars to privilege human over nonhuman beings and calls into question ableist assumptions about the centrality to horror films of sight and sound to the near exclusion of other forms of sense experience. In addition to examining the role that animals—living or dead, real or fake—play in human-centered fictions, this volume asks what it means for audiences to consume motion pictures in which actors, stunt performers, and other creative personnel have put their own bodies and lives at risk for our amusement. Historically grounded and theoretically expansive, Body Genre: Anatomy of the Horror Film moves the study of cinematic horror into previously unchartered waters and breathes life into a subject that, not coincidentally, is intimately connected to breathing as our most cherished dividing line between life and death.
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Considers the remake from a variety of critical and theoretical perspectives and positions it alongside other serialized cultural forms. Examines the historical significance of the remake in revitalizing local industries and breathing... more
Considers the remake from a variety of critical and theoretical perspectives and positions it alongside other serialized cultural forms.
Examines the historical significance of the remake in revitalizing local industries and breathing life into established film genres (e.g., action-adventure, crime drama, romantic comedy, the Western, etc.).
Draws attention to previously overlooked motion pictures produced in East Asia and acknowledges the significant contributions of several prolific yet neglected filmmakers.
Re-evaluates canonical texts and offers fresh assessments of legendary auteurs such as Ozu Yasujiro, Yu Hyun-mok, Miike Takashi, Johnnie To, and Stephen Chow.
Showcases the role of remakes in forging cross-cultural alliances — both within and beyond the East Asian region — while pointing toward prospects of increased transnational coproductions in the coming years.
This wide-ranging, historically grounded exploration of motion picture remakes produced in East Asia brings together original contributions from experts in Chinese, Hong Kong, Japanese, South Korean, and Taiwanese cinemas and puts forth new ways of thinking about the remaking process as both a critically underappreciated form of artistic expression and an economically motivated industrial practice. Exploring everything from ethnic Korean filmmaker Lee Sang-il’s Unforgiven (2013), a Japanese remake of Clint Eastwood’s Western of the same title, to Stephen Chow’s The Mermaid (2016), a Chinese slapstick reimagining of Walt Disney’s The Little Mermaid (1989) and Hans Christian Andersen’s 1837 fairy tale, East Asian Film Remakes contributes to a better understanding of cinematic remaking across the region and offers vital alternatives to the Eurocentric and Hollywood-focused approaches that have thus far dominated the field.
Examines the historical significance of the remake in revitalizing local industries and breathing life into established film genres (e.g., action-adventure, crime drama, romantic comedy, the Western, etc.).
Draws attention to previously overlooked motion pictures produced in East Asia and acknowledges the significant contributions of several prolific yet neglected filmmakers.
Re-evaluates canonical texts and offers fresh assessments of legendary auteurs such as Ozu Yasujiro, Yu Hyun-mok, Miike Takashi, Johnnie To, and Stephen Chow.
Showcases the role of remakes in forging cross-cultural alliances — both within and beyond the East Asian region — while pointing toward prospects of increased transnational coproductions in the coming years.
This wide-ranging, historically grounded exploration of motion picture remakes produced in East Asia brings together original contributions from experts in Chinese, Hong Kong, Japanese, South Korean, and Taiwanese cinemas and puts forth new ways of thinking about the remaking process as both a critically underappreciated form of artistic expression and an economically motivated industrial practice. Exploring everything from ethnic Korean filmmaker Lee Sang-il’s Unforgiven (2013), a Japanese remake of Clint Eastwood’s Western of the same title, to Stephen Chow’s The Mermaid (2016), a Chinese slapstick reimagining of Walt Disney’s The Little Mermaid (1989) and Hans Christian Andersen’s 1837 fairy tale, East Asian Film Remakes contributes to a better understanding of cinematic remaking across the region and offers vital alternatives to the Eurocentric and Hollywood-focused approaches that have thus far dominated the field.
Research Interests: Film Studies, Chinese Studies, Cinematic Space, Japanese Cinema, Film Adaptation, and 15 moreEast Asian Studies, East Asian Politics, Hong Kong Cinema, East Asian Cinema, Korean cinema, Film Remakes, Film and Media Studies, Cinema Studies, Filmmaking, Hong Kong Society, East Asian Languages and Cultures, Korean Wave, Contemporary Cinema, Transnational Film/media, and Remakes
Contradictory to its core, the sitcom—an ostensibly conservative, tranquilizing genre—has a long track record in the United States of tackling controversial subjects with a fearlessness not often found in other types of programming. But... more
Contradictory to its core, the sitcom—an ostensibly conservative, tranquilizing genre—has a long track record in the United States of tackling controversial subjects with a fearlessness not often found in other types of programming. But the sitcom also conceals as much as it reveals, masking the rationale for socially deviant or deleterious behavior behind figures of ridicule whose motives are rarely disclosed fully over the course of a thirty-minute episode. Examining a broad range of network and cable TV shows across the history of the medium, from classic, working-class comedies such as The Honeymooners, All in the Family, and Roseanne to several contemporary cult series, animated programs, and online hits that have yet to attract much scholarly attention, this book explores the ways in which social imaginaries related to “bad behavior” have been humorously exploited over the years. The repeated appearance of socially wayward figures on the small screen—from raging alcoholics to brainwashed cult members to actual monsters who are merely exaggerated versions of our own inner demons—has the dual effect of reducing complex individuals to recognizable “types” while neutralizing the presumed threats that they pose. Such representations not only provide strangely comforting reminders that “badness” is a cultural construct, but also prompt audiences to reflect on their own unspoken proclivities for antisocial behavior, if only in passing.
Research Interests: Sociology, Cultural Studies, Media Studies, Television Studies, Popular Culture, and 15 moreHumor, Scatology, Talk shows, The Monstrous and Otherness, Military, TV studies, Satire, Sitcoms, Film and Television Comedy, Alcohol Drinking, Monsters, Monsters and the Monstrous, Alchoholism, Religious Cults, and Standup Comedy
Rights advocacy has become a prominent facet of South Korea’s increasingly transnational motion picture output, especially following the 1998 presidential inauguration of Kim Dae-jung, a former political prisoner and victim of human... more
Rights advocacy has become a prominent facet of South Korea’s increasingly transnational motion picture output, especially following the 1998 presidential inauguration of Kim Dae-jung, a former political prisoner and victim of human rights abuses who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000. Today it is not unusual to see a big-budget production about the pursuit of social justice or the protection of civil liberties contending for the top spot at the box office. With that cultural shift has come a diversification of film subjects, which range from undocumented workers’ rights to the sexual harassment experienced by women to high-school bullying to the struggles among people with disabilities to gain inclusion within a society that has transformed significantly since winning democratic freedoms three decades ago. Combining in-depth textual analyses of films such as Bleak Night, Okja, Planet of Snail, Repatriation, and Silenced with broader historical contextualization, Movie Minorities offers the first English-language study of South Korean cinema’s role in helping to galvanize activist social movements across several identity-based categories.
Research Interests: Human Rights Law, Human Rights, Transnationalism, Popular Culture, Genre, and 14 moreSchool violence, Korean History, Film and History, Korean cinema, Documentary Film, Animal Rights, Women Rights, Cinema Studies, Migrant workers, Filmmaking, North Korea, South Korean politics, Prisoners, and Nonhuman Rights
Research Interests: Film Studies, Film Theory, Narrative, Space and Place, Literature and cinema, and 15 moreFilm Analysis, Cinematic Space, Film Genre, Narratology, Intertextuality, Gender in Film, Film History, Cinema, Film Aesthetics, Cinema Studies, Films, Paris, 11 September Attacks, Metatextuality, and Omnibus Films
Research Interests: European History, European Studies, German Studies, Film Studies, European Cinema, and 14 moreFilm Analysis, Politics, European Union, German Cinema, Competition, Cinema, Documentary Film, European Union Politics, Film and Media Studies, Cooperation, Olympic Games, Olympics, Supranationalism, and Omnibus Films
Research Interests: Film Studies, French Cinema, European Cinema, Film Analysis, Italian Cultural Studies, and 14 moreItalian Cinema, Film History, Sexuality and Cinema, Sexuality in Film, Cinema, Commedia dell'arte, Auteur Studies, Authorship, French New Wave, Film and Media Studies, French Film, Jean-Luc Godard, Film Auteurs, and Omnibus Films
Research Interests: British Literature, Film Studies, British History, Literature, Literature and cinema, and 11 moreFilm Analysis, Film Adaptation, Film History, Cinema, British Cinema (Film Studies), 20th Century British Literature, Cinema Studies, Film and Literature, Literary Adaptation, W. Somerset Maugham, and Omnibus Films
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Research Interests: Reception Studies, Film Studies, Genre studies, Narrative, Genre, and 13 moreAudience Studies, Film Analysis, National Cinemas, Film Genre, Audience and Reception Studies, National Identity, Auteur Theory, Cinema, Auteur Studies, Film and Media Studies, Film Auteurs, Cinema Studies, and Omnibus Films
Research Interests: Film Theory and Practice, Film Studies, Film Theory, Narrative, Literature and cinema, and 14 moreFilm Analysis, Narratology, Italian Cinema, Film History, Transmedial Storytelling, Auteur Theory, Narrative Analysis, Cinema, Narrative Theory, Film Aesthetics, Film and Media Studies, Film Auteurs, Transmedia, and Cinematic Arts
Research Interests: Film Studies, Film Theory, Literature, Narrative, Literature and cinema, and 15 moreCinematic Space, Film Adaptation, Film History, Cinema, Narrative Theory, American Vaudeville, Film Aesthetics, Cinematic Time, Film and Media Studies, Books, Films, Bibliophilia, Popular Entertainment, Vaudeville, Omnibus Films, and Episode Film
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As the two billion YouTube views for “Gangnam Style” would indicate, South Korean popular culture has begun to enjoy new prominence on the global stage. Yet, as this timely new study reveals, the nation’s film industry has long been a hub... more
As the two billion YouTube views for “Gangnam Style” would indicate, South Korean popular culture has begun to enjoy new prominence on the global stage. Yet, as this timely new study reveals, the nation’s film industry has long been a hub for transnational exchange, producing movies that put a unique spin on familiar genres, while influencing world cinema from Hollywood to Bollywood.
Movie Migrations is not only an introduction to one of the world’s most vibrant national cinemas, but also a provocative call to reimagine the very concepts of “national cinemas” and “film genre.” Challenging traditional critical assumptions that place Hollywood at the center of genre production, Hye Seung Chung and David Scott Diffrient bring South Korean cinema to the forefront of recent and ongoing debates about globalization and transnationalism. In each chapter they track a different way that South Korean filmmakers have adapted material from foreign sources, resulting in everything from the Manchurian Western to The Host’s reinvention of the Godzilla mythos.
Spanning a wide range of genres, the book introduces readers to classics from the 1950s and 1960s Golden Age of South Korean cinema, while offering fresh perspectives on recent favorites like Oldboy and Thirst. Perfect not only for fans of Korean film, but for anyone curious about media in an era of globalization, Movie Migrations will give readers a new appreciation for the creative act of cross-cultural adaptation.
Movie Migrations is not only an introduction to one of the world’s most vibrant national cinemas, but also a provocative call to reimagine the very concepts of “national cinemas” and “film genre.” Challenging traditional critical assumptions that place Hollywood at the center of genre production, Hye Seung Chung and David Scott Diffrient bring South Korean cinema to the forefront of recent and ongoing debates about globalization and transnationalism. In each chapter they track a different way that South Korean filmmakers have adapted material from foreign sources, resulting in everything from the Manchurian Western to The Host’s reinvention of the Godzilla mythos.
Spanning a wide range of genres, the book introduces readers to classics from the 1950s and 1960s Golden Age of South Korean cinema, while offering fresh perspectives on recent favorites like Oldboy and Thirst. Perfect not only for fans of Korean film, but for anyone curious about media in an era of globalization, Movie Migrations will give readers a new appreciation for the creative act of cross-cultural adaptation.
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Omnibus films bring together the contributions of two or more filmmakers. Does this make them inherently contradictory texts? How do they challenge critical categories in cinema studies? What are their implications for auteur theory?... more
Omnibus films bring together the contributions of two or more filmmakers. Does this make them inherently contradictory texts? How do they challenge critical categories in cinema studies? What are their implications for auteur theory?
As the first book-length exploration of internationally distributed, multi-director episode films, David Scott Diffrient's Omnibus Films: Theorizing Transauthorial Cinema fills a considerable gap in the history of world cinema and aims to expand contemporary understandings of authorship, genre, narrative, and transnational production and reception. Delving into such unique yet representative case studies as If I Had a Million (1932), Forever and a Day (1943), Dead of Night (1945), Quartet (1948), Love and the City (1953), Boccaccio '70, (1962), New York Stories (1989), Tickets (2005), Visions of Europe (2005), and Paris, je t'aime (2006), this book covers much conceptual ground and crosses narrative as well as national borders in much the same way that omnibus films do.
Omnibus Films is a particularly thought-provoking book for those working in the fields of auteur theory, film genre and transnational cinema, and is suitable for advanced students in Cinema Studies.
As the first book-length exploration of internationally distributed, multi-director episode films, David Scott Diffrient's Omnibus Films: Theorizing Transauthorial Cinema fills a considerable gap in the history of world cinema and aims to expand contemporary understandings of authorship, genre, narrative, and transnational production and reception. Delving into such unique yet representative case studies as If I Had a Million (1932), Forever and a Day (1943), Dead of Night (1945), Quartet (1948), Love and the City (1953), Boccaccio '70, (1962), New York Stories (1989), Tickets (2005), Visions of Europe (2005), and Paris, je t'aime (2006), this book covers much conceptual ground and crosses narrative as well as national borders in much the same way that omnibus films do.
Omnibus Films is a particularly thought-provoking book for those working in the fields of auteur theory, film genre and transnational cinema, and is suitable for advanced students in Cinema Studies.
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Research Interests: Asian Studies, European Studies, Music, Media Studies, Film Studies, and 14 morePopular Culture, Film Analysis, Africa, Civil Rights, Caribbean Studies, Film History, Polish Film, Social movements and revolution, Cuban History, Art and Independent Cinema, Film Aesthetics, Cinema Studies, 1960s, and Czechoslovakia
Not unlike the video game industry, which has grown exponentially over the past three decades and is expected to generate worldwide revenues exceeding $300 billion five years from now, the academic study of video games has developed... more
Not unlike the video game industry, which has grown exponentially over the past three decades and is expected to generate worldwide revenues exceeding $300 billion five years from now, the academic study of video games has developed tremendously since the first social scientists began researching their effects on users beginning in the early 1980s. And yet, despite this explosion of scholarly interest in a subject that, only a few years earlier, had been looked down upon as either a corrupting influence on the nation’s youth or an innocuous plaything lacking the artistic merits of other forms of mass entertainment (such as motion pictures), the field has largely remained rooted to longstanding debates between narratologists and ludologists about the distinguishing features of this relatively new medium. In other words, the ontological question of what a video game essentially “is,” as seen from opposing but oddly consonant formalistic perspectives (which replaced earlier functionalist attempts to answer the question of what a video game essentially “does”), has been so central to academic work in this area that other approaches have been slow to come. However, in recent years, several important critical explorations of video games have been published by scholars with a vested interest in the politics of representation — work that builds upon yet diverges considerably from the story-centered and play-centered methodologies of earlier generations.
In this course, we will dive into some of those publications, looking at how the authors confront the commercial logics of mainstream representations while proposing alternatives to the conceptual frameworks that, until recently, have dominated video games studies. Using their work as a springboard, we will investigate why certain representational schemas related to ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and social class have remained in place throughout much of the medium’s history. But we will also learn how video games, to quote Bo Ruberg, “have always been queer,” and have presented a far more diverse spectrum of hermeneutic possibilities and agential opportunities for players who are themselves neither monolithic in their tastes nor reducible to a single identity. To be sure, homophobic, misogynist, and racist imagery — a recurring feature of some of the biggest-selling, most violent AAA releases over the past twenty years — will be all-too-familiar to many of the estimated 212 million Americans who call themselves “gamers.” However, a host of smaller indie games, including titles produced outside the United States and in the Global South, have given us counter-hegemonic views on different cultures and lived experiences that are as innovative and refreshing in their quirkiness as they are vital to our own negotiated or resistant readings of digital media texts. Ranging widely across philosophical and theoretical traditions, from affect theory and phenomenology to cultural studies, our discussions this semester will hopefully be as immersive and interactive as the best, most challenging and life-enriching video games.
In this course, we will dive into some of those publications, looking at how the authors confront the commercial logics of mainstream representations while proposing alternatives to the conceptual frameworks that, until recently, have dominated video games studies. Using their work as a springboard, we will investigate why certain representational schemas related to ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and social class have remained in place throughout much of the medium’s history. But we will also learn how video games, to quote Bo Ruberg, “have always been queer,” and have presented a far more diverse spectrum of hermeneutic possibilities and agential opportunities for players who are themselves neither monolithic in their tastes nor reducible to a single identity. To be sure, homophobic, misogynist, and racist imagery — a recurring feature of some of the biggest-selling, most violent AAA releases over the past twenty years — will be all-too-familiar to many of the estimated 212 million Americans who call themselves “gamers.” However, a host of smaller indie games, including titles produced outside the United States and in the Global South, have given us counter-hegemonic views on different cultures and lived experiences that are as innovative and refreshing in their quirkiness as they are vital to our own negotiated or resistant readings of digital media texts. Ranging widely across philosophical and theoretical traditions, from affect theory and phenomenology to cultural studies, our discussions this semester will hopefully be as immersive and interactive as the best, most challenging and life-enriching video games.
Research Interests: Critical Theory, Cultural Studies, Gender Studies, Queer Studies, Racial and Ethnic Politics, and 13 moreSexuality, Gender and Sexuality, Phenomenology, Video Games, Race and Ethnicity, Gender, Video Game Theory, Video Game History, Casual Games, Gaming, LGBT Studies, Avatars, and Play and Creativity in the Curriculum
This course takes a hands-on approach to the subject of tabletop gaming, giving students the opportunity to learn about the cultural and historical significance of structured play by actually playing games from the past twenty-five years.... more
This course takes a hands-on approach to the subject of tabletop gaming, giving students the opportunity to learn about the cultural and historical significance of structured play by actually playing games from the past twenty-five years. Emphasis will be placed on mechanisms unique to modern board games, including area control, auctioning/bidding, card drafting, deck building, resource management, set collecting, trick taking, and worker placement. Class time will be devoted to cooperative and competitive play sessions in which active listening, conflict resolution, deductive reasoning, diplomatic negotiation, role-playing, storytelling, and other communicative skills are honed for the sake of making students more keenly aware of their roles as social beings. Besides promoting the therapeutic benefits of simply “having fun” and imagining new “ways of being” that are removed from one’s everyday experiences, this course taps into games’ educational value and aims to highlight the socializing and professionalizing functions of this ostensibly low-stakes, but life-enriching, pastime. By the end of the semester, students will have seen how the seemingly insignificant act of sitting across from other people, collectively interpreting a set of rules, and entering the “magic circle” of tabletop gameplay can spark creativity, foster emotional wellness, strengthen interpersonal relations, and prepare them for the challenges that lay ahead, post-graduation.
Research Interests: Cultural Studies, Media Studies, New Media, Phenomenology, Conflict Resolution, and 13 moreSerious Gaming, Ludology, Board Games, Tabletop Game Design, Games, Educational Gaming, Gaming, Role Playing Games, Role Playing Game (RPG), Modern Board Games, Gaming Culture, Eurogames, and Tabletop Roleplaying Games
Research Interests: Cultural Studies, Film Studies, Science Fiction, Exploitation Cinema, Film History, and 14 moreSpectatorship, Horror Cinema, Cinema, Cinematic Affect, Queer Cinema, Film Exhibition, Low-budget films, Taste, Grindhouse, Trash, Media Audiences, Aesthetics of Taste, Kitsch, Camp, and Trash Film, and Bad Films
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In an effort to lend cohesiveness to the daily topics, readings, and screenings this semester, our course has been organized around the topic of “monstrosity.” No iconographic element is as central to the horror genre than the monster, a... more
In an effort to lend cohesiveness to the daily topics, readings, and screenings this semester, our course has been organized around the topic of “monstrosity.” No iconographic element is as central to the horror genre than the monster, a figure of radical alterity and spectatorial dread that has served several cultural purposes over the decades. Indeed, the allegorical and metaphorical meanings of the monster, which shift to reflect the different historical and sociopolitical contexts in which motion pictures are produced and consumed, are as varied as the many exterior forms or physical characteristics associated with cinematic terror (e.g., those of ghosts, masked killers, vampires, werewolves, zombies, etc.). We will delve into the monster’s polysemic ability to convey multiple ideas/meanings over the next four weeks.
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This course is designed to introduce students to the historical significance and contemporary functioning of large-scale and small-scale film festivals. With an emphasis on applied communication skills, SPCM 480A3 provides students with... more
This course is designed to introduce students to the historical significance and contemporary functioning of large-scale and small-scale film festivals. With an emphasis on applied communication skills, SPCM 480A3 provides students with firsthand information and working knowledge of the challenges and benefits involved in organizing and running a festival. Specifically, students will be involved in programming decisions, promotional matters, and on-site or virtual operational tasks (including guest relations) prior to and during the run of the ACT Human Rights Film Festival. The course combines traditional pedagogical techniques (lectures, discussions, etc.) with creative learning exercises (role-playing, problem-solving, etc.) and a number of guest talks in which professionals with expertise in film festival programming, marketing, and operations share information with students.
Research Interests: Communication, Media Studies, Film Studies, Human Rights, Public Sphere, and 14 moreCinema, Film and social change, Documentary Film, Civil Society, Film Festivals, LGBT Studies, Film industry, Queer Film Festivals, Film Festival Programming, Women filmmakers, Filmmakers, Human Rights Film Studies, Documentary Film Festivals, and Human Rights and Cinema
Women have been making movies since the earliest efforts to transform the motion picture medium from a technological curiosity (dating back to the 1890s and 1900s) into what would soon become the twentieth century's most dynamic vehicle... more
Women have been making movies since the earliest efforts to transform the motion picture medium from a technological curiosity (dating back to the 1890s and 1900s) into what would soon become the twentieth century's most dynamic vehicle for storytelling. But the "story" of cinema that we have often told ourselves has largely denied women their rightful place as both pioneers and provocateurs who have been as central to its development as an artistic and commercial form as any man has been. This course introduces students to a wide variety of narrative and experimental films directed and written by women, covering a 100-year history that begins with the groundbreaking works of several silent-era filmmakers (including Alice Guy-Blaché, Lois Weber, Germaine Dulac, and Dorothy Arzner) and which culminates with recent productions helmed by some of today's most gifted auteurs (including Sofia In addition to exploring how major figures such as Maya Deren, Agnès Varda, Larisa Shepitko, Věra Chytilová, Chantal Akerman, and Claire Denis catalyzed particular artistic and national film movements from the 1940s to the 1980s, we will focus on particular genres (e.g., action-adventure, the costume drama, melodrama, romantic comedy, science fiction, the social problem film, etc.) that have been revitalized and deconstructed from feminist perspectives. How does a postfeminist horror film like Karyn Kusama and Diablo Cody's Jennifer's Body (2009) or a strongly female-focalized Western like Kelly Reichardt's Meek's Cutoff (2010) dismantle their respective genres and offer politically progressive ways of (literally and figuratively) "framing" women's bodies? Which genres, historically coded as either "masculine" or "feminine," are most in need of this revitalization, and what are the cultural, industrial, and social conditions that have either facilitated or hindered women's entrance into the filmmaking business? These and similar questions will fuel class discussions of weekly film screenings throughout the semester.
Research Interests: Gender Studies, Queer Studies, Film Studies, French Cinema, Women's History, and 15 moreGenre studies, National Cinemas, Film Genre, Gender, Feminism, Women & Film, Masculinities, Studies On Men And Masculinity, Feminist Film Studies, Queer Cinema, Movies, Women and Film, Women and Gender Studies, Cinema Studies, and Feminity and Masculinity
In this course, students will examine a specific film genre from a variety of critical and theoretical perspectives (e.g. structuralism, feminism, psychoanalysis, auteurism, fan studies, etc.). Attention will be paid to the "evolution" of... more
In this course, students will examine a specific film genre from a variety of critical and theoretical perspectives (e.g. structuralism, feminism, psychoanalysis, auteurism, fan studies, etc.). Attention will be paid to the "evolution" of that genre within a specific historical framework and within various national contexts. By the end of the semester, students will have gained a deeper understanding of that genre's cultural, social, and political significance, and will have encountered some of the most important academic writing about that genre. SCREENINGS are REQUIRED (as part of course LAB work). Few genres elicit such diametrically opposed opinions as the horror film, which has been celebrated and scorned in equal measure since its earliest manifestations at the turn of the twentieth century. In this course, we will examine recent trends in horror cinema (1990s-2010s) as well as its centrality within academic writing about genre filmmaking. In fact, no other film genre (with the exception of the Western) has generated the amount of scholarly discourse as horror, a category of cultural production with roots in gothic literature and fantasy fiction. Unlike its literary antecedents, however, horror cinema has long been held in low regard by proponents of "good taste," owing to its often-shocking displays of repulsive imagery and graphic bloodshed. This semester we will investigate the many reasons for horror's status as a genre of "ill repute," plunging below the surface of key texts to explore their deeper themes and potentially progressive meanings. Although frequently "conservative" or even reactionary (in terms of their overt ideological orientation and fetishizing of female victims), many horror films also challenge the status quo and encourage viewers to question normative conceptions of gender, sexuality, race, and identity-something typically associated with "liberal" perspectives on an increasingly diverse U.S. society. Rather than limit ourselves to American productions, however, we will expand our view of horror cinema to accommodate international films (turning our attention to important contemporary motion pictures from Japan, South Korea, France, Great Britain, Spain, Norway, Sweden, Austria, Australia, and Iran, among other countries). Taking such a broadly global approach, we can see more clearly how gender is performed and possibly deconstructed in different cultural settings while arriving at a better sense of how our own embodied fears might be mirrored in onscreen representations of the violence experienced by "others." Ultimately, this course provides an in-depth overview of the major theories surrounding horror cinema, a genre that will be unpacked with regard to its persistent themes, paradoxical appeals, representational schemas, and long-established narrative conventions.
Research Interests: Gender Studies, French Cinema, Genre studies, Film Analysis, National Cinemas, and 12 moreHorror Film, East Asian Cinema, Global Cinemas, Korean cinema, Horror Cinema, Film Remakes, Cinema, Women in Horror Films, Japanese Horror film, Spanish cinema (Film Studies), Women and Film, and Transnational Cinema
This graduate seminar provides a broad yet in-depth overview of recent developments in phenomenological and sensorial approaches to media studies. Traditionally, media texts have been construed as sites of meaning to be "read"-or... more
This graduate seminar provides a broad yet in-depth overview of recent developments in phenomenological and sensorial approaches to media studies. Traditionally, media texts have been construed as sites of meaning to be "read"-or hermeneutically "unpacked"-by spectators who are sensitively attuned to the inner workings of films, television series, musical compositions, and other cultural productions. Such interpretative activity, focused on the formal and functional properties of a given text, has been conceived of as a largely cognitive and structural-rather than corporeal and sensorial-exercise. Over the past two decades, however, scholars have advanced alternative ways of conceptualizing and engaging in textual analysis, putting their own bodies and lived experiences front-and-center as mediating factors in cultural consumption. Drawing upon the work of key thinkers in this area, including Vivian Sobchack, Laura Marks, Jennifer Barker, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, this course introduces students to a range of philosophical inquiries surrounding multisensory media engagement, connecting seemingly discrete phenomena (related to sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch) while encouraging greater self-reflection on the students' part (in terms of their own previous experiences with motion pictures, TV shows, music recordings, graphic novels, video games, and online texts). Week-to-week, emphasis will be placed on textual materiality and the medium-specific features of selected case studies, giving students an opportunity to discern the unique aural, visual, olfactory, gustatory, and tactile components of cinematic, televisual, literary, digital, and online communication. However, this course takes one specific type of cultural production-the horror film-as its thematic and historical through-line during the first half of the semester. Few genres exert as much affective sway over its audience as the horror film, which has been described by more than one theorist as a "body genre." As such, it will serve as a useful springboard for thinking about and sensorially perceiving our own physical or emotional "limits" as audiences.
Research Interests: Media Studies, Media and Cultural Studies, Film Theory, Television Studies, Film Analysis, and 14 morePhenomenology, Video Games, Horror Film, Consciousness, Haptics, Media, Hermeneutic Phenomenology, Cinema, Affect (Cultural Theory), Horror, Textual analysis, The Senses, Media Text, and Lived Experiences
Research Interests: Media Studies, Media and Cultural Studies, Human Rights Law, Human Rights, International Human Rights Law, and 10 moreHuman Rights Education, Media, Human Rights Theory, Cinema, History of Human Rights, Documentary Film, Social and Political Theories of Justice & Human Rights, Film and Media Studies, Mass media, and Cinema Studies
For decades, prison films have held a special fascination, paradoxically drawing movie audiences in to an enclosed space that most people would prefer to avoid at all costs in " real " life, and from which escape is difficult if not... more
For decades, prison films have held a special fascination, paradoxically drawing movie audiences in to an enclosed space that most people would prefer to avoid at all costs in " real " life, and from which escape is difficult if not impossible. As a cultural category, the prison film is instantly recognizable thanks to the enduring nature of its iconography, which has remained remarkably consistent ever since the earliest " classics " of the genre — The Big House (1930) and I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1933) — were produced by major Hollywood studios at a time of economic uncertainty. In the years following the Great Depression, dozens of U.S. motion pictures have contributed to what film scholar Alison Griffiths calls the " carceral imaginary, " a culturally constructed set of assumptions about what corrections facilities might actually be like, visually represented as towering concrete walls, claustrophobic cells, barbed wire, iron bars, ominous guard towers and other oft-recycled imagery. In this course, we will shine a spotlight on this paradoxical type of cultural production, examining why it both compels and repels us through its mix of inspirational heroics and abject human suffering. After spending the first few weeks focusing on the U.S. context, in which a " prison-industrial complex " has emerged in recent decades (to the dismay of many rights activists), we will shift to a more broadly international sphere of cultural production, looking at films that expand the semantic and syntactical dimensions of the genre in different national contexts and historical eras. Extending beyond the prison film proper to explore motion pictures in which individuals' freedom of movement and other basic human rights are denied by authoritarian military governments, religious institutions, and other cruel oppressors, we will discuss concentration camp films (set during the Holocaust and other genocidal events) as well as the abusive treatment of prisoners of war (POWs) and prisoners of conscience, from Vietnam to Ireland. The final weeks of the semester will emphasize women's ability to overcome the structural obstacles of patriarchal societies, both inside and outside prison settings. This course adheres to the Academic Integrity Policy of the Colorado State University General Catalog (p. 7) and the Student Conduct Code.
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Despite its ubiquity and influential power as a cultural form, television has often been overlooked and even dismissed as little more than a diversion in our everyday lives. As a result, the experience of watching TV has frequently been... more
Despite its ubiquity and influential power as a cultural form, television has often been overlooked and even dismissed as little more than a diversion in our everyday lives. As a result, the experience of watching TV has frequently been compared to other " leisure activities " in which participants — far from being mentally engaged — can let their minds rest (or wander) and momentarily " escape " the real world. However, it is because of its ubiquitous presence in our lives that television demands scrutiny, particularly with regard to the means by which it generates both consensus and debate about matters of great political and social importance. In this course, we will take television seriously as a popular persuasive force, one that is capable of narrative complexity and thematic profundity as well as artistic preeminence in this age of digital media, mobile viewing, online file sharing, and instant Internet access to classic programs of yesteryear. We are in the midst of what some commentators call a new " Golden Age of Television, " initiated nearly two decades ago by HBO programs like The Sopranos and The Wire and, more recently, AMC hits like Mad Men and Breaking Bad. Also referred to as " Peak TV, " the current cultural moment is marked by an abundance of viewing options and offerings, much of which is now available through various streaming services (as opposed to traditional broadcast channels). At the heart of Peak TV is a host of critically lauded series that will receive special attention in this class, including House of Cards, Orange is the New Black, Master of None, Mindhunter, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, BoJack Horseman, Dear White People, Jessica Jones, and Stranger Things. These shows share something in common: they are all examples of Netflix original programming, available for online consumption via the world's most popular on-demand, subscription-based media provider/distributor. In addition to watching episodes from these and other Netflix programs, we will employ four main approaches or methodologies to better understand the cultural significance and ideological role played by this misunderstood medium. Those four approaches — industrial/institutional analysis, formal/textual analysis, audience/reception studies and critical/cultural studies — together comprise the theoretical framework that we will use throughout the semester. Topics include, but are not limited to: media regulation, production practices, labor issues, product placement, audience measurement, the long-tail strategy, the experience of binge-watching, network branding, post-network industrial developments, genre categorization, televisual style, acting/performance, reality TV, animation, the politics of representation, transmedia storytelling, fandom, and Netflix-related controversies. Throughout the semester, you will be asked to " binge-watch " several episodes from selected Netflix programs, in addition to a few television series of your own choosing. Your viewing journals for each of those programs — House of Cards, BoJack Horseman, Orange is the New Black, and One Day at a Time (plus three more TV shows that you have selected as case studies) — will be emailed to the professor at the beginning of each week. These journals should detail your moment-to-moment comprehension of formal, narrative, and thematic elements, and should conclude with a brief assessment of that show's overall cultural significance. ** A NETFLIX SUBSCRIPTION IS REQUIRED FOR THIS COURSE ** In addition to teaching students how to analyze televisual texts through the use of critical terminology specific to the medium, one of my aims this semester is to introduce you to important contemporary TV programs that you have NOT already viewed outside of class. Your choice of programs will occasionally determine the specific questions that you will be asked to answer as part of your reading responses and blog entries. CONTENT NOTE: Please bear in mind that some of the TV programs that we will watch this semester foreground themes and contain images that you might find offensive. Viewer discretion advised.
Research Interests: Cultural History, Cultural Studies, Media Studies, Media and Cultural Studies, Television Studies, and 14 moreSocial Media, TV, Media, Series TV, Television History, Television, TV studies, TV Series, Netflix, Cinema and Television, Televisión Digital, Narrowcasting, Netflix Problem, and Binge Watching
This course is designed to introduce students to the subject of film adaptations, focusing specifically on classic and contemporary motion pictures that are based on award-winning examples of children's literature. More generally, the... more
This course is designed to introduce students to the subject of film adaptations, focusing specifically on classic and contemporary motion pictures that are based on award-winning examples of children's literature. More generally, the course takes a deeply historical, broadly transnational approach to the study of childhood, adolescence, and media, looking at the origins of " kid culture " in western and nonwestern contexts as well as its contemporary manifestations and permutations in an age of online identity formation and digital communication. After first examining how " childhood " — as both a distinct social category and an ideological construct — was " invented " through a convergence of various ideas, practices, and technologies beginning in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, we will track the development of kid culture over the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, looking at key contributors to that culture (including literary practitioners such as Each week we will read and discuss a different novel or picture book that is aimed at young readers and then explore how that text was adapted for the big screen. Through close textual analysis, we will interpret each assigned case study with an eye to its linguistic, narrative, and/or stylistic complexity as well as its latent ideological content. Questions about each text's representations of gender, ethnicity, race, and social class will propel our discussions, as will the various themes that emerge over the course of the semester (e.g. friendship, innocence, familial and national belonging, romantic longing, loss, grief, mourning, etc.). Because children's literature has traditionally been understood as a didactic way for parents and educators to instill certain ethical values in the minds of young readers, a significant portion of our class meetings will be devoted to the threat of censorship and the moral panics that have sprung up around certain publications tackling controversial subjects. Ranging across different categories or genres of children's literature and film, such as fairy tales, historical fiction, fantasy, animal fables, graphic novels, and animation, this course showcases the richness and diversity of cultural productions that can be appreciated and enjoyed for generations, by audiences young and old alike. Besides promising pleasure, reading and viewing literary and cinematic texts in this manner can be an edifying experience, capable of fueling our own imaginations and enhancing our understanding of the world around us.
Research Interests: Film Studies, Film Theory, Literature, Children's Literature, Film Analysis, and 12 moreChildren's and Young Adult Literature, Adaptation, Film Adaptation, Children's Media, Film History, Children and Media, Film and Media Studies, Children's Play, Children, Cinematic Adaptation, Children's film, and Children's Film and Media
“There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.” These words, spoken by the Jewish writer and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel as part of his 1986 Nobel Peace Prize... more
“There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.” These words, spoken by the Jewish writer and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel as part of his 1986 Nobel Peace Prize lecture, are perhaps more relevant today than they were thirty years ago. Indeed, the second decade of the twenty-first century has witnessed countless examples of protestors around the world taking to the streets in opposition to local and/or global issues. Examples of politically divisive social movements at home and abroad include: the 2010 pro-democracy uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia, and other Middle East countries (i.e. the “Arab Spring”); the 2011 Occupy Wall Street demonstrations that brought attention to economic inequality; and the 2014 Umbrella Revolution sit-in protests against the Hong Kong government. These and many other recent events have entered public consciousness through media, which has long played a significant role in sparking social change.
This Capstone course provides students with an in-depth overview of the last decade’s major instances of political activism as filtered through the lens of traditional and nontraditional media forms (from documentary films and television series to online blogs and video games). Attention will be given to longstanding problems, including institutionalized racism and the discrimination/oppression faced by immigrants, women, and members of the LGBTQ community. However, we will focus on relatively new technologies that bring greater awareness of these issues to diverse audiences (for example, the recording of police brutality on cell-phone cameras and the emergence of the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag on social media websites). Other topics include the growth of international human rights film festivals, “Do-It-Yourself” (DIY) media, citizen journalism, independent news providers, podcasting as an alternative form of radio, the “free software” movement, and grassroots efforts to challenge stereotypical portrayals of ethnic minorities in mainstream cultural productions.
This Capstone course provides students with an in-depth overview of the last decade’s major instances of political activism as filtered through the lens of traditional and nontraditional media forms (from documentary films and television series to online blogs and video games). Attention will be given to longstanding problems, including institutionalized racism and the discrimination/oppression faced by immigrants, women, and members of the LGBTQ community. However, we will focus on relatively new technologies that bring greater awareness of these issues to diverse audiences (for example, the recording of police brutality on cell-phone cameras and the emergence of the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag on social media websites). Other topics include the growth of international human rights film festivals, “Do-It-Yourself” (DIY) media, citizen journalism, independent news providers, podcasting as an alternative form of radio, the “free software” movement, and grassroots efforts to challenge stereotypical portrayals of ethnic minorities in mainstream cultural productions.
Research Interests: Social Change, Social Movements, Media Studies, Media and Cultural Studies, Film Studies, and 27 moreTelevision Studies, Political communication, Media Activism, Social Activism, Harry Potter, Facebook, Twitter, Feminist activism, Documentary Film, Activism, Youtube, Advocacy and Activism, Documentary, Communication Studies, Facebook Studies, Digital Activism, Protest Movements, Social protests, Arab Spring (Arab Revolts), Clicktivism, Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Movement, Communication and media Studies, Gezi Protests, Hashtag Activism, Hong Kong Umbrella Movement, and Black Lives Matter
Research Interests: Gender Studies, Film Studies, Film Theory, Comedy, Genre studies, and 19 moreGenre, Film Analysis, Fantasy (Film Studies), Film Genre, Horror Film, Melodrama, Science Fiction Film, Musicals, Screwball Comedy, Film Noir, Gender in Film, War Films, Genre Theory, Cinema, Film musicals, Gender and Genre, Hollywood Musicals, Slapstick Comedy, and Social Problem Film
Research Interests: Cultural History, Film Studies, Film Analysis, Surrealism, German Expressionism, and 18 moreItalian Cinema, Cinema, French New Wave, Italian neorealist cinema, Czech New Wave, Cinema Studies, Dadaism, German Expressionist Film, British New Wave, French New Wave Film, Japanese new wave, Italian Neorealism, Art Movements, Indian New Wave, Film Movement, French Poetic Realism, Iranian film, and Indian Parallel Cinema
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In the words of the Hollywood studio-system director Frank Capra, screenwriting is " the least understood and the least noticed " aspect of moviemaking. This Communication Studies capstone course helps students to take notice of — and,... more
In the words of the Hollywood studio-system director Frank Capra, screenwriting is " the least understood and the least noticed " aspect of moviemaking. This Communication Studies capstone course helps students to take notice of — and, more importantly, to understand — the significant role that screenwriting plays in the creation of cinematic and televisual stories. In addition to approaching the subject of the screenplay from critical and historical perspectives (with outside film screenings and readings of representative texts), students will learn the basics of writing for the big screen: formatting the page, pitching ideas, building story-worlds, plotting action, creating three-dimensional characters, and crafting believable dialogue. Emphasis will be placed on the screenplay as a form of creative, industrial, and mass communication, and the applied tools that students acquire in this class can help them to transition into a professional life that values personal expression and artistic collaboration.
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This course is designed to introduce students to the ways in which motion pictures have sparked significant social changes at home and abroad. Focusing on narrative fiction films as well as documentary features and shorts, students will... more
This course is designed to introduce students to the ways in which motion pictures have sparked significant social changes at home and abroad. Focusing on narrative fiction films as well as documentary features and shorts, students will be asked to consider the relationship between artistic expression, cultural diffusion, societal impact, and political efficacy in an age of contested meanings and ideological entrenchment. S p e c i f i c F o c u s o f t h e C o u r s e a n d S t u d e n t L e a n i n g O b j e c t i v e s Human rights, as outlined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (adopted by the U.N. General Assembly on December 10, 1948), are the " rights and freedoms to which all humans are entitled. " Any cultural production purporting to be rooted in human rights issues or discourses subscribes to this underlying principle that everyone — regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation — is endowed with certain entitlements by reason of being human. Although such works have been produced for decades, only in recent years have there been a significant number of films that pivot on the struggles or challenges faced by individuals whose fundamental rights as human beings have been either threatened or trampled upon by forces beyond their control. Over the course of the semester, students will be introduced to a series of contemporary motion pictures dealing with human rights issues, from documentaries about the Holocaust of World War II to short films about military slavery and wartime rape to feature-length works about political refugees and asylum seekers. We will frame human rights cinema as a discursive category of filmmaking, one whose roots stretch back to " social problem films " of the 1920s-1930s and which increasingly relies on organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch for financing and distribution. By the end of the semester, students will grasp the historical contexts that not only gave rise to human rights violations but also made possible the production of independent and studio-backed films that seek to remedy social problems of the past and present. In addition to examining the political backdrops against which several historically important films emerged, students will gain proficiency in analyzing those films' aesthetic and formal traits while becoming more sensitively aligned with the struggles and sufferings of people beyond U.S. borders.
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Research Interests: Japanese Anime, Japanese Cinema, Asian Film, Hong Kong Cinema, Mainland Chinese Film, and 13 moreJapanese Film, East Asian Cinema, Korean film, South Korean Cinema, Asian Cinema, Chinese film, East Asian Film and Visual Studies, Hong Kong film, Korean popular culture, Taiwanese Cinema, East Asian Film, Hong Kong Cinema and Popular Culture, and Taiwanese Literature and Film
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images for lecture and discussion (The Errand Boy and The Patsy as metafilms)
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Images for lecture and discussion (Sansho the Bailiff)
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images and ideas for Videodrome lecture/discussion (Horror Film course)