01 TTH5 CAC 23192 BEROIZA HH-B4
T 6,7 FILM SCREENING ABE-1180
This course examines how feminist theories impact the study of cinema and how cinema impacts the study of feminist theories. Students draw on fifty years of scholarship from the landmark work on spectatorship and desire that launched feminist film theory in the 1970’s, to the queer, transgender, postcolonial, transnational, disability studies, and critical race theory approaches that have emerged since to analyze concepts of gender, sex, and sexuality in film. Using examples from Hollywood, global mainstream, independent, avant-garde, and experimental film, we will examine women in cinema as intersectional subjects and objects of representation, viewers, and makers of film. Possible screenings include Cheryl Dunye’s The Watermelon Woman, Agnès Varda’s Cléo from 5 to 7, Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust, Carolyn Lazard’s Crip Time, and Sebastián Lelio’s A Fantastic Woman. Central concerns throughout the semester will be to 1) critically interrogate concepts of “woman,” “women,” and “femmes” and 2) continually revise our notions of “what makes a film feminist?”