2024 Fall

FILM 20 001 - LEC 001

Film and Media Theory

Damon R Young

Aug 28, 2024 - Dec 13, 2024

Tu, Th

09:30 am - 10:59 am

Berkeley Art Museum 1T75

Class #:21527

Units: 4

Instruction Mode: In-Person Instruction

Offered through Film and Media

Current Enrollment

Total Open Seats: 1

Enrolled: 156

Waitlisted: 0

Capacity: 157

Waitlist Max: 36

Open Reserved Seats:

3 reserved for New Undergraduate Transfer Students

3 hours of instructor presentation of course materials per week, 9 to 5 hours of outside work hours per week, 0 to 3 hours of instructional experiences requiring special laboratory equipment and facilities per week, and 0 to 1 hours of the exchange of opinions or questions on course material per week.

Final Exam

TUE, DECEMBER 17TH

03:00 pm - 06:00 pm

Physics Building 4

Other classes by Damon R Young

Course Catalog Description

This course is intended to introduce undergraduates to the study of a range of media, including photography, film, television, video, and print and digital media. The course will focus on questions of medium "specificity" or the key technological/material, formal and aesthetic features of different media and modes of address and representation that define them. Also considered is the relationship of individual media to time and space, how individual media construct their audiences or spectators, and the kinds of looking or viewing they enable or encourage. The course will discuss the ideological effects of various media, particularly around questions of racial and sexual difference, national identity, capitalism, and power.

Class Description

This course introduces students to theories and methods in the scholarly study of audiovisual media, including photography, television, film, video, and digital media. Throughout the semester, we will focus on questions of medium “specificity,” asking: what are the technological/material, formal, and aesthetic features that define different media and their various modes of address and representation? We will consider how different media work with time and space, and how they construct their audiences or spectators, producing different kinds of “publics.” We will analyze the ways media texts produce ideological effects, focusing on questions of racial and sexual difference, national identity, capitalism and power. The course is organized around the close reading of major works of 20th century media and cultural theory. One of the aims of the course is to learn how to appreciate, rather than being intimidated by, the challenge of reading complex theoretical material. Works of cultural theory take us beyond the comfort zone of the immediately intelligible, asking how what seems “obvious” and “natural” comes to appear that way. A weekly film screening will help us flesh out the ideas covered in the course using concrete examples.