Selected Syllabi

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Great Directors: Woody Allen

Overview: Over a period of forty years, Woody Allen has written and directed approximately forty films, in addition to acting in many films by other directors. This amazing productivity makes it very difficult to choose which films to study in a ten-week course. I have spent the past summer watching and rewatching all forty of them, and I have made some interesting discoveries. First of all, with the exception of his two earliest films, What’s Up, Tiger Lily? and What’s New, Pussycat? (neither of which he directed and both of which he hated), Allen has not made a bad movie. They are not all equally good, of course, and some of his best have been financial failures, but there is not a film among them that is not at least good. The first few are virtually plotless, with only a vague storyline upon which he could hang his one-liner jokes. Take the Money and Run, Bananas, Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex, and Sleeper could best be characterized as inspired silliness, and the audiences loved them. There are some fans who wish he would go back to making that kind of film. Those films also established the Woody Allen “persona,” and the audience expectations created by that persona have been among the greatest problems Allen has faced as a writer and as an actor in his own films. There are still people who believe, with astonishing naiveté, that this “nebbish” persona is the “real” Woody Allen, and that has led to egregious misinterpretation of his work.

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The Western

Overview: The western is the defining genre of film. So many decisively influential films have been westerns that it can fairly be said: You can’t know film if you don’t know the western. Despite the fact that it has gone in and out of fashion since its inception at the beginning of the 20th century, the western has enjoyed more enduring popularity than all other film genres combined. In peak years, westerns accounted for as much as 40% of Hollywood’s entire output. It’s been estimated that more than one-fifth of all American films ever made are westerns. The straightforward shoot-’em-ups and high-action programmers of the cinema’s first half century…the more character-oriented “adult westerns” of 1946-68…the invasion of European-made “spaghetti westerns” of 1962-78…the iconoclastic “revisionist” westerns of 1968-90…the post-modern western revival of the 1990s and 2000s—all these reflect the changing attitudes of American society and politics, while still exemplifying the core images, themes, and values that uniquely identify a film as a western, regardless of the country or time period in which it is set.

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Science Fiction Films

Overview: In an era when we are capable of destroying all life on earth in a single day of nuclear strikes, or over several decades through the reckless destruction of our environment, no other film genre addresses the subject of our future as fully as science fiction. In addition to spurring many technological innovations in moviemaking throughout its history, science fiction films traditionally have undertaken serious philosophical exploration and social, cultural, and ideological critique. They often address, implicitly or explicitly, our assumptions, our values, our aspirations, and our fears. Moreover, because they speak directly to their times, they serve as a useful barometer for how people viewed themselves and their world at the time they were created. This course introduces the SF film genre, its methods of inquiry, its notable experiments, and through a series of interdisciplinary readings and an eclectic selection of films, the stakes in our imaginative visions of our future.

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International Film: Global Africa

Overview: The goal of this class is to highlight how people of African descent are expressing their heritage, identity and vital issues through cinematic images worldwide.  The course will provide an in-depth analysis of films from across the broad spectrum of the African Diaspora in order to capture their richness and diversities in terms of aesthetic, political, social and cultural significance.

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