The Cinematic Body  
FALL 2018, M/W 10-11:50
Professor Jules Rosskam

This interdisciplinary class — Cinematic Arts and Gender and Women’s Studies — will explore the ways in which the cinema creates (and disciplines) bodies, as well as the ways in which the cinema itself can be thought of as a body. The course will essentially offer two tracks: one for Cinematic Arts and one for Gender and Women’s Studies students. However, students will be encouraged to work outside of their comfort zone, which may include writing and research for
filmmakers and experimenting with film production for GWST students. All students will read contemporary phenomenological film theory, queer theory, post-colonial theory, disability rights theory, animal rights theory, cyborg theories and more, as well as look at — and critically engage with — moving image works that explore the presentation and construction of bodies in exciting new ways.

Students will work with the camera as an extension of the body to explore radically different points of view and senses of focus. We will experiment with different techniques and different kinds of bodies (human, animal, and object) to bring a heightened awareness of kinesthetic involvement, animation and emotional immediacy to the bodies on screen and behind the camera. In addition, we will interject and follow bodies into different perceptions of time,
progression, place and relationship. In the process, we will express various experiences and theories of embodiment and, ultimately, question what constitutes a body and the body’s representation(s).