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# Course covenant
## CIN1101s24
Seminars should be communal spaces of intellectual adventure, vulnerability, and risk-taking. This covenant specifies practices that are all animated by the fundamental assumption that we are a group of people in a room trying to understand things better. By following this seminar, we agree to the following principles:
1. Self-determination
2. Radical generosity
3. Genuine questioning
4. Rigorous inquiry
5. Preparedness
6. Openness
7. Good citizenship
8. Responsible teaching & learning
Each of these principles has attached to it a number of practices; in any case, the spirit is always more important than the letter here.
### Self-determination
This covenant both organizes and expresses our collective self-determination: our group is what we make of it through our values and participation. This covenant is not a contract (whose violations are adjudicated and enforced by an external force), but rather an agreement we make with one another other. We agree to:
* Address any failures to honour the covenant as directly and generously as possible. The first best option is to bring it to that person's attention, in person, quickly and generously. If that is not feasible (logistically, or emotionally), the next best option is to address it with Scott as soon as possible. (And this latter point _includes_ any instances of Scott's covenantal slips.)
* Address any of Scott's failures to honour the covenant with him, as directly and as quickly as you can bear.
* Revisit the covenant from time to time over the course of the term, making revisions as the group deems salutary or necessary.
### Radical generosity
Generosity is a patient, trusting, giving, and forgiving posture; it is radical when it extends into dynamics of exploration, unknowing, and conflict. To muster the genuine curiosity that drives good intellectual work, and the vulnerability that comes with it, we must treat one another with extraordinary generosity. We agree to:
* Speak in seminar with sincerity and vulnerability, reflecting our honest questions and curiosity.
* Speak in seminar with generosity toward others, promoting the intellectual development of others in the seminar.
* Listen in seminar with sincerity and vulnerability, working to understand what others are saying, especially when it is not clear to us.
* Listen in seminar with generosity, committed to the value of what others are saying, especially when it is not clear to us.
* Strive to ensure our contributions to seminar are motivated, offering reasons for what we say when it seems appropriate, or when asked to do so.
* Disagree in ways that are constructive, and as motivated as the rest of our speaking.
* Treat differences in knowledge and understanding with respect and gentleness.
* Treat differences in structural relations to power (race, sexuality, gender, ability, migration, &c.) with respect, gentleness, and humility.
### Genuine questioning
Questions are genuine when they express sincere curiosity, unknowing, uncertainty, or desire. For intellectual work to matter—to its authors, to its readers—it must be motivated by questions that are sincerely posed. We agree to:
* Continually motivate seminar discussion through the asking of questions and substantial inquiry.
* Ask questions that are genuine, especially when they seem stupid, or are inarticulate.
* Speak in class with as little fear of failure as we can muster; the point of engaging in discussion is not to get things right, but to learn, together.
* Avoid speaking in ways that are devised to demonstrate expertise or virtuosity.
### Rigorous inquiry
Genuine questions are not themselves sufficient to good intellectual work. Those questions must be met with discipline: stuck with for long enough to really open; addressed methodically; answers sought outside oneself, in the lessons of our texts, objects, and colleagues. It is through practices of rigorous—but always generous—inquiry that we learn such discipline. We agree to:
* Ground our discussion in the practice of close reading, staying close to the texts (primary & secondary) at hand.
* Keep our contributions to the seminar as focused as possible on the problems and questions that arise from such close reading.
* Share disagreements and difficulties when they arise.
* Ground disagreements in evidence from the text.
### Preparedness
The principle of preparedness is an iteration of generosity. It affirms the generosity of arriving into a scene of community having done (at least some of) the necessary work to question sincerely and inquire rigorously. We agree to:
* Do our level best to complete the reading before seminar begins, and to always come able to manifest meaningful engagement.
* Read actively, and in a spirit of inquiry.
* Work to sharpen our questions before seminar.
* Read generously, and then critically: we agree to work first to understand a text on its own terms, and only then to understand a text's limitations.
### Openness
The principle of openness is a different, related iteration of generosity. It affirms that a productive seminar room must also make space for surprise—and that means also making space for undisciplined, naïve, vague, or silly contributions. We agree to:
* Treat others' experiences and differences with respect, generosity, and modesty, affirming that good intentions do not suffice to bridge all gaps.
* Try out others' questions and ideas sincerely and in good faith.
### Good citizenship
The principle of good citizenship means behaving in ways that allow others to learn well. We agree to:
* Be on time to seminar, which begins at 3:10pm.
* Stay the whole duration of the seminar—or, if we must leave, we agree to do so with as little disruption as possible.
* Leave the seminar room for bio-breaks in ways that are unobtrusive. (Asking for permission to leave is obtrusive.)
* Moderate our participation in the seminar, ensuring that a small cadre of students does not dominate discussion. We note that this responsibility cuts both ways. For those of us who are dilatory, we agree not to take up too much space in the seminar. For those of us who are laconic, we agree not to leave others to do the work of sustaining discussion.
### Responsible teaching
The classroom is not a symmetrical institution. Scott agrees to embody authority in responsible and responsive ways. In particular, Scott agrees to:
* Make seminar time regularly available to discussions of pedagogical practices.
* Listen to concerns about, and difficulties with, pedagogical practices from students openly, without judgment, and without consequences.
* Make appropriate changes to pedagogical practices, including this covenant, in response to such concerns and tuned to the needs of students.
* Make himself available to meet with students to discuss course material and procedures outside of class.
* Communicate course requirements plainly.
* Offer reading priorities for weeks when readings are very heavy (this may be most weeks).
### Responsible learning
Students must take on responsibility for the practices of learning. We agree to:
* Take responsibility for our learning, understanding that the learning that can take place in this seminar is organized by their practices of inquiry.
* Take the initiative to address and, if posssible, to remedy any difficulties with the course material as they arise.
* Share concerns about, and difficulties with, pedagogical practices with Scott and other students as they arise.
* Perform course obligations in a timely manner, or communicate regarding delays or other snafus in a proactive and timely manner.

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# Theories and Practices of the Cinema
## CIN1101HS
### Contents
<!--toc:start-->
- [Administrativia](#administrativia)
- [Course details](#course-details)
- [Catalog description](#catalog-description)
- [Scott's take](#scotts-take)
- [Assignments & marking](#assignments-marking)
- [Course patterns](#course-patterns)
- [Reading](#reading)
- [Course schedule](#course-schedule)
- [Week 1: Introductions, 2024-01-10](#week-1-introductions-2024-01-10)
- [Week 2: Cinema, or the invention of modern life, 2024-01-17](#week-2-cinema-or-the-invention-of-modern-life-2024-01-17)
- [Week 3: The culture industry and the critique of instrumental reason, 2024-01-24](#week-3-the-culture-industry-and-the-critique-of-instrumental-reason-2024-01-24)
- [Week 4: Politics and the unconscious, 2024-01-31](#week-4-politics-and-the-unconscious-2024-01-31)
- [Week 5: The cinematic body, 2024-02-07](#week-5-the-cinematic-body-2024-02-07)
- [Week 6: Writing theoreticall, 2024-02-14](#week-6-writing-theoreticall-2024-02-14)
- [Midterm paper due: March 1, by 11:59pm](#midterm-paper-due-march-1-by-1159pm)
- [Week 7: More film theory: Kyle Steven, 2024-02-28](#week-7-more-film-theory-kyle-steven-2024-02-28)
- [Week 8: Cont', 2024-03-06](#week-8-cont-2024-03-06)
- [Week 9:The altered spectator: Caetlin Benson-Allot, 2024-03-13](#week-9the-altered-spectator-caetlin-benson-allot-2024-03-13)
- [Week 10: Cont'd, 2024-03-20](#week-10-contd-2024-03-20)
- [Week 11:The subject in technology: Damon Youn, 2024-03-27](#week-11the-subject-in-technology-damon-youn-2024-03-27)
- [Week 12: Cont', 2024-04-03](#week-12-cont-2024-04-03)
- [WIP standups/workshop: date TBD, sometime between April 3 and 19.](#wip-standupsworkshop-date-tbd-sometime-between-april-3-and-19)
- [Final paper due: April 26, 2024, by 11:59pm](#final-paper-due-april-26-2024-by-1159pm)
- [Course policies](#course-policies)
- [Addressing Scott](#addressing-scott)
- [Late work](#late-work)
- [Comments on work](#comments-on-work)
- [In case of a strike](#in-case-of-a-strike)
- [Academic misconduct and plagiarism](#academic-misconduct-and-plagiarism)
- [Contact](#contact)
- [Accessibility](#accessibility)
<!--toc:end-->
### Administrativia
* _Instructor_: Scott Richmond, Associate Professor Cinema and Digital Media
* _Meets_: Wednesdays, 3-7pm, in Innis 223E
* _Office hours_: Tuesdays, 1-4pm; you must sign up at https://calendly.com/s-richmond/officehours
### Course details
#### Catalog description
Organized around a series of issues that have incited ongoing discussion and debate among scholars, cultural critics, and filmmakers, this course takes a topical approach to the study of film theory. In the process it both revisits some of the most canonical texts in the field and attends to more recent attempts to think through our contemporary moment, when digitality and transnationalism are radically changing the nature of film as well as the manner in which it is produced, distributed, exhibited, and viewed. Among those issues to be discussed are medium specificity, spectatorship, narrativity, affect, and the relationship between aesthetics, economics, and politics.
#### Scott's take
My goals for you for this semester are: (1) to get a solid grounding in how to read, think, and write film-theoretically; and (2) to develop a sense of film theory as a contemporary practice that emerges out of a set of shared concerns. Because of this, the course will be split, broadly, into two parts: (1) a decidedly quick-and-dirty tour through some of the most important texts in film theory, according to me; and (2) Zoom visits from some of the more important/interesting practitioners of film theory these days. The former should inform the latter.
#### Assignments & marking
There are two papers for the course. A midterm paper due on March 1 (5-7pp.), and a final paper on April 26 (18-20pp.). Please note that all written work will be submitted to all participants in the course: we are a community of scholars working and thinking together.
**Midterm paper.** Worth 25% of your final mark. The midterm paper will involve close engagement with any one of the essays from Kyle Stevens, _The Oxford Handbook of Film Theory_ (that we are not otherwise reading together in class). This will involve an analytical summary and theoretical critique of this essay. Students will all work on different essays.
**Final paper.** Worth 50% of your final mark. The final paper will be an act of theorizing of your own. This will be guided (if not quite scaffolded) over the second half of the course. The midterm paper should be a starting point for this.
**Good citizenship.** Worth 25% 0f your final mark. Good citizenship involves things both countable and uncountable. The countable parts will be assessed using a chit system; the uncountable parts will be assessed holistically. Each is worth a third of the "good citizenship" mark total. Here's the breakdown:
* _Guiding the conversation._ Once during the semester, students will be required (with a partner) to pose the questions to which will will address ourselves during the seminar portion of the course. You must do this, but there is no evaluative component. You get full marks if you do the thing.
* _Showing up to the seminar._ This is fuzzy. Are you on time? Do you contribute to the discussion? Have you done the reading? Are you supportive of your fellow students? Assessed holistically.
* _Taking minutes._ Twice during the semester, you will be responsible for taking the minutes of the class. Most weeks, that means there will be two people taking minutes. Those two (or three) people will harmonize their notes into a quasi-official record of our seminar proceedings. There is no evaluative component. You get full marks if you do the thing twice; half marks if you do it once; zero marks if you don't do it at all.
**Submitting work.** All work will be turned into the entire class: we are writing for one another. This means that when you write, e.g., your midterm paper, you are working on it for a concrete audience: _the other people in this seminar_. Use that knowledge as you write.
#### Course patterns
We have four hours together, in a single block, every week. Here's how you can expect us to spend our time together on days when there isn't a visitor. That's not our first day. That's also not our writing workshop.
* Announcements & program notes.
* Good news. For about 5 minutes, everybody shares good news from their professional and/or personal and/or culinary and/or pet lives.
* Mini-lecture. For 10-15 minutes, Scott will digest the major background information for working through the texts at hand. This will be brief, interactive, and informal.
* Questions. For about 10 minutes, the two guides for the week set up our questions for the seminar discussion. The group will decide which question(s) to address ourselves to.
* Think/Pair/Share. 10 minutes. Students will spend 5 minutes identifying specific passages from the reading that may be useful for working through a question, reading those passages, and taking notes on them & the question. Then, they will spend 5 minutes in pairs discussing what they read, wrote, and thought.
* Student driven discussion. For the next 40-60 minutes, students will have a discussion. For the first 20 minutes of that discussion, Scott is not allowed to speak unless asked a direct question from a student.
* Redirect. After the formal discussion, we'll collect another round of questions that arose or are still unanswered during the first discussion. We'll proceed straight to discussion this time.
* Break. At least 5, as much as 15 minutes, depending on energy levels, screening length, etc.
* Screening (or similar). Scott will introduce the screening and what to look for/think with/perplex over.
* Another break. At least 5 minutes, likely only ever 5 minutes.
* What did you see? Discussion of the screening. Continues until the end of class.
#### Reading
This is a reading-heavy and reading-forward course. The attachment here is to the site of theory. I know it's a lot; you need to get through it. That doesn't mean you need to read every word carefully! Part of the explicit project here will be to relinquish an attachment to mastery. That often means burning out the anxiety about understanding every word. I'm here to help you get it right, but I'm more concerned with your finding sincere & authentically productive ways to engage.
### Course schedule
#### Week 1: Introductions, 2024-01-10
* No guides.
* We will discuss this, and other, course documents.
* Scott Richmond, "On the Impersonality of Experience," from _The Oxford Handbook of Film Theory_ (2022)
* Roland Barthes, "The Third Meaning," from _Image, Music, Text_ (1973)
* Stanley Cavell, "Music Discomposed," from _Must We Mean What We Say?_ (1979)
#### Week 2: Cinema, or the invention of modern life, 2024-01-17
* No guides. Scott demos guiding.
* Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility," "Experience and Poverty," and "On Some Motifs in Baudelaire," from _Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings_
* Susan Buck-Morss, "Aesthetics and Anaesthetics: Walter Benjamin's Artwork Essay Reconsidered," _October_ 62 (1992).
* Miriam Bratu Hansen, "Room-for-Play: Benjamin's Gamble with the Cinema," _October_ 109 (2004)
* _Screening_: Dziga Vertov, _Man with a Movie Camera_ (USSR, 1929, 68 min.)
#### Week 3: The culture industry and the critique of instrumental reason, 2024-01-24
* Guides TBD.
* Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, "The Concept of Enlightenment" and "Enlightenment as Mass Deception: The Culture Industry," from _Dialectic of Enlightenment_
* Theodor Adorno, "On the Fetish Character in Music and the Regression of Listening," from _The Culture Industry_
* _Musical listening_: some Western art and pop music: Bach, Beethoven, Glass, Lucier; Donna Summer, Lady Gaga, Chappel Roan (approx. 90 minutes, with discussion)
#### Week 4: Politics and the unconscious, 2024-01-31
* Guides TBD.
* Jacques Lacan, the Mirror Stage essay, from _Écrits_
* Jean-Louis Baudry, "Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematographic Apparatus," _Film Quarterly_ 28.2 (1974-75)
* Laura Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," _Screen_ 16.3 (1975)
* Christian Metz, "Identification, Mirror," "The Passion for Perceiving," and "Disavowal, Fetishism" from _The Imaginary Signifier_
* Mary Ann Doane, "Film and the Masquerade," _Screen_ 23.3-4 (1982)
* _Screening_: Howard Hawks, _Gentlemen Prefer Blondes_ (USA, 1953, 91 mins.)
#### Week 5: The cinematic body, 2024-02-07
* Guides TBD.
* Roland Barthes, "Leaving the Movie Theater," from _The Rustle of Language_
* Frantz Fanon, "The Fact of Blackness," from _Black Skin, White Masks_
* Steven Shaviro, "Film Theory and Visual Fascination," from _The Cinematic Body_
* Vivian Sobchack, "What My Fingers Knew," from _Carnal Thoughts_
* _Screening_: Kathryn Bigelow, _Strange Days_ (USA, 1995, 145 min.)
#### Week 6: Writing theoreticall, 2024-02-14
* No guides.
* Wayne Booth, et al., _The Craft of Research_, selections
#### Week 7: More film theory: Kyle Steven, 2024-02-28
* Guides TBD.
* Readings TBA.
* Screening: Lynne Ramsay, _You Were Never Really Here_ (UK/France/USA, 2019, 90 mins.)
#### Midterm paper due: March 1, by 11:59pm
#### Week 8: Cont'd, 2024-03-06
* Kyle Stevens, "The Very Thought of Theory" and "The Frame of the Skull," from _The Oxford Handbook of Film Theory_
* Zoom visit from Kyle Stevens (Applachian State University)
#### Week 9: The material spectator: Caetlin Benson-Allot, 2024-03-13
* Guides TBD.
* Zhou Chenshu, "Introduction: 'Projecting Cinema'," from _Cinema Off Screen: Moviegoing in Socialist China_ (2021)
* Addtional screening & readings TBA.
#### Week 10: Cont'd, 2024-03-20
* Caetlin Benson-Allott, "Contesting the White Gaze: Black Film and Postcinematic Spectatorship" from _The Oxford Handbook of Film Theory_
* Caetlin Benson-Allott, "Introduction: Material Mediations," "Shot in Black and White: The Racialized Reception of US Cinema Violence," and "Conclusion: Expanding the Scene of the Screen" from _The Stuff of Spectatorship_
* Zoom visit from Caetlin Benson-Allott (Georgetown University)
#### Week 11: The subject in technology: Damon Young, 2024-03-27
* Guides TBD.
* Sigmund Freud, "A Child is Being Beaten," _International Journal of Psycho-Analysis_ 1 (1920)
* Bela Belasz, "The Close Up" and "The Face of Man," from _Theory of the Film_ (1952)
* Michel Foucault, "The Gay Science," _Critical Inquiry_ 37.3 (2011)
* Robin Wood, "Psycho," from _Hitchcock's Films Revisited_ (1989)
* Sianne Ngai, "Our Aesthetic Categories," _PMLA_ 125.4 (2010)
* Screening: John Cameron Mitchell, _Shortbus_ (USA, 2006, 101 min.)
#### Week 12: Cont'd, 2024-04-03
* Damon Young, "In Defense of Psychoanalytic Film Theory" from _The Oxford Handbook of Film Theory_
* Damon Young, "Through the Window from _Psycho_ to _Shortbus_" from _Making Sex Public_
* Damon Young, "Ironies of Web 2.0," _Post45_ 2 (2019)
* Zoom visit from Damon Young (University of California, Berkeley)
#### WIP standups/workshop: date TBD, sometime between April 3 and 19.
#### Final paper due: April 26, 2024, by 11:59pm
### Course policies
#### Addressing Scott
I prefer that you call me Scott. If you must inscribe our hierarchical relation, I prefer Professor Richmond. I will deliver a dad joke (well, a gay uncle joke) by calling you "Student" if you call me "Professor."
#### Late work
I do not believe in penalty or punishment in the classroom. No late penalties. That said, I'll accept a late midterm paper up to 10 days late, no questions asked. If you're in the weeds, talk to me about it, and we'll figure out what can work for you. After 10 days, however, we'll have to have a meeting talking about how you got yourself into the kind of hot water where you're flubbing deadlines that hard. You'll have some work to do on yourself.
The deadline for the final paper is a hard stop, for real. I will accept final papers until 11:59pm on April 26, after which I will no longer accept papers. You should plan on having the paper done well in advance, with plenty of time to revise. I mean this: if you don't have a complete working draft of a paper by April 19, you are in hot water.
#### Comments on work
I will have your midterm paper returned to you, with fulsome comments, within two weeks of when you submit it. If you give me the paper after April 1, I will mark but not comment on it.
Comments on your final paper will take the form of a conversation between you and me. I will start with the question, "What do you want to learn from me about your work?" You should have an answer to that before we have our meeting.These meetings will take place in early May (hence the hard deadline for the final paper.)
#### In case of a strike
I take it that a strike will not _directly_ affect us in this class, since you are here in your capacities as a student. That said, we can discuss this. I am here in solidarity for you, and I'd like to know what solidarity can look like, meaningfully, for y'all.
That said, I do suspect that a strike may _indirectly_ affect us: you'll be distracted, and possibly distraught. Not great conditions for learning. We'll feel our way through this, and I'd like to know what I can do to help.
#### Academic misconduct and plagiarism
School of Graduate Studies policies on academic misconduct and plagiarism are in full effect. These can be found at https://www.sgs.utoronto.ca/policies-guidelines/academic-integrity-resources/. This is deadly serious stuff for graduate students; I am a deep stickler for academic integrity. If you have questions or even hesitations about what is permissible, please ask early and often. Also, if it comes down to giving me something plagiarized or flubbing a deadline, flub the deadline (the late work policy above should take a lot of pressure off, here).
I have taken no provisions to mitigate academic dishonesty from ChatGPT. I trust you, and I _actively want to know what you think_. That said, it does not quite go without saying: please do not use LLMs in an academically dishonest manner. That means: do not represent its output as your own thoughts, insights, or writing. (Seriously: do not take your thought so unseriously as to suggest, even to yourself, that it can be replaced by fancy autocomplete.)
#### Contact
I am more or less drowning in work, and email specifically. I cannot guarantee a response to email or Matrix DMs in a particular window of time; I will do my best to respond within two business days. That said, especially if it's a time sensitive matter, I encourage you to send a follow-up email if I haven't gotten back to you within a week (or less, if the time-sensitive matter is getting ripe). I will _thank_ you for this sort of reminder; it is not remotely an imposition. Also, you may do better to make an appointment with me in office hours: you can be certain of my attention then.
#### Accessibility
I aim for universal accessibility in my course design, but this is not always possbile. If you have any concerns about accessibility issues (documented or undocumented, of whatever kind), please confer with me early and often about them. We will work together collaboratively to address your concerns.