2021-2022 Academic Catalog

May 01, 2024

2021-2022 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 2020 TOPIC: THE DIGITAL GAZE

To encounter the gaze is to confront one’s own position in a field of vision, a field of oppositional desires. This capstone seminar for Screen Studies and MCA seniors posits the existence of a “digital gaze,” and contrasts it with various past and passing forms of analog gaze. Most especially, the course seeks to understand contemporary black activism as both fighting against, and subversively exploiting, a ubiquitous digital gaze grounded in cellphone videos, surveillance footage, police body cameras, social media streams, and drone technologies. Some or our weekly topics will include the transgressive and mainstream modalities of glitch aesthetics; digital documentaries on influential analog afro-punk subcultures; the exnominated white privilege of contemporary street art; the cinematic trope of the ethnic/racial neighbor as a site of jouissance (or surplus enjoyment); crowdsourced cellphone footage as a counter-hegemonic weapon; the “fake Karen” TikTok phenomenon as a form of overidentification; digital intermediality in the installations and performances of artist Nick Cave; and the mainstream CGI blockbuster’s attempts to stabilize and “tame” the gaze in its potential for traumatic rupture. SCRN 291 may be counted as a capstone in the MCA major.

Prerequisites: SCRN 101 or MCA 101 or Permission.

Anticipated Terms Offered: Offered every fall