2019-2020 Academic Catalog 
    
    Mar 28, 2024  
2019-2020 Academic Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

SCRN 291 - Capstone Course - Variable topics


The Screen Studies capstone involves a seminar-style, intensive exploration of a single subject area relevant to moving-image media.  Historical, theoretical, and practical approaches are all considered.  Students engage in intensive weekly readings, discussions, and presentations, with the semester culminating in a well-researched and polished 25-page paper, or a carefully developed and refined video project.  The goal is to produce work that could be worthy of submission to a graduate admissions committee, or to a writing contest or film festival.  Students should expect this course to require considerably more weekly work than a standard 200-level Screen course and adjust their fall schedule accordingly. Topics vary.

Fall 2019 Topic: Transgender and Queer Media Studies Today

This will be devoted to the study of recent scholarship in transgender and queer media studies. These intersecting and overlapping fields of analysis are currently going through an intellectual renaissance as a result of the contributions of a new generation of trans and queer scholars. In their publications of the last few years, scholars such as Quinlan Miller, Eliza Steinbock, and Cáel M. Keegan have begun to delineate trans aesthetics and trans affects across a varied body of film, TV, and new media. This media was at times crafted by trans filmmakers and artists, at others the result of a culture or industry in transition, and quite often both. Meanwhile, scholars such as Laura Horak and Damon Young have dug into the archives of specific production and reception contexts and studied how cinema has participated in changing visions of gender and sexuality, while scholars such as Alexis Lothian, Andre Carrington, Nicole Morse, and micha cárdenas have explored how queer and trans artists and fans of color use digital technologies and digital platforms to imagine queer and trans of color futures. Together these scholars reorient the often rigidly binary canon of feminist film theory and broaden the methodological horizon for the study of gender, sexuality, and media. Like the other Screen capstones offered over the last couple years, this capstone is designed as a seminar, specifically “an intensive, graduate-studies-level experience in which students are encouraged to draw upon their past and current studies both inside and outside the Screen major.” Students will be given the opportunity to put their scholarly knowledge to more “practical” or creative use, while also being pushed to bring creativity to their critical thinking and research. In the case of this particular capstone, Clark students will theorize and create the trans and queer media they wish to see in the world.

 

Prerequisites: SCRN seniors or Permission.

Anticipated Terms Offered: Offered every fall