Graduate Student Course Offerings for Film and Visual Studies – 2018-2019
Please visit https://ves.fas.harvard.edu/courses-list and https://my.harvard.edu/ for most up to date information on course schedule.
VES 138D Directors Directing
Fall Term, Wednesdays, 12:00pm - 5:45pm
Karthik Pandian and David Levine
This video and theater production course engages students in the directing of performance and the performance of directing. This dynamic will be introduced to students through the presentation and analysis of moving image and performance work that thematizes direction itself. Students will then engage in an active practice of studio work and research, culminating in individual and collaborative projects in video and performance. Course Notes: Previous experience with film, video or theater required as evidenced by at least one of the following: a college video production course, college acting class or college theater production. Interested students must attend first meeting of class during shopping week to speak with teaching staff about course enrollment procedure. Class Notes: The first meeting of this class will take place in Farkas Hall 203.
VES 174 Art of the Real: Rethinking Documentary
Fall Term, Mondays, 3:00pm - 5:45pm
Dennis Lim
What defines the documentary, and why have these definitions proved so mutable and even contentious over the years? This seminar will undertake a historical survey of the documentary from the silent era to the digital present, paying special attention to the formal, aesthetic, and ethical questions that have shaped its evolution. Looking beyond the canon and beyond traditional notions of non-fiction, the class aims to provide students with an expanded view of the real in cinema. Course Notes: There are mandatory film screenings for this class from 12:00pm to 2:00 on Mondays, preceding the class meeting, which is from 3pm to 5pm.
VES 186M A Deep History of Arts of the Secret
Fall Term, Wednesdays, 9:45am - 11:45am
Laura Marks
The arts of the secret carry out operations on the universe, understood as an interconnected, deeply folded whole. People with special knowledge—secret societies, enslaved peoples, and persecuted minorities—create and use secret arts, including alchemy, talismans, Baroque curiosity cabinets, ornament and abstraction, performative media, and algorithmic apps. We will practice embodied methods to unfold their secrets. Theories and methods will draw on Islamic Hermeticism, Sadrā, Deleuze, Focillon, Simondon, Moten, Steyerl, and others.
Course Notes: There are mandatory weekly screenings for this class on Wednesday evenings in the Carpenter Center Lecture Hall from 7:15 PM-10:00 PM.
VES 192 Cinema and French Culture from 1896 to the Present
Fall Term, Tuesdays, 12:00pm - 2:45pm
Tom Conley
Focuses on relations of cinema to French culture from the silent era to the age of video. Explores film in dialogue with cultural and historical events, development of a national style and signature, a history of criticism. Correlates study of cinema to cultural analysis. Takes up Renoir and poetic realism, unrest in 1930s, France and other filmic idioms (Italy, Hollywood, Russia), new wave directors, feminist and minoritarian cinema after 1980.
Course Notes: This course has mandatory weekly film screenings on Tuesday evenings from 7:15 to 10:00 and weekly mandatory discussion sections.
VES 196R Directed Research: Studio Course
Fall Term, Wednesdays, 6:00pm - 8:45pm
Andy Graydon
This course is intended for students who have developed the beginnings of a practice they are prepared to pursue. The motive is to assemble a group of disparate artists who come together to exchange thoughts across disciplines: painting next to photography next to writing next to filmmaking, and so on. Course Notes: Recommended for concentrators in Visual and Environmental Studies in their junior and senior year but also open to others with permission of the instructor. This course was formerly numbered VES 96r. Interested students must attend first meeting of class during shopping week to speak with teaching staff about course enrollment procedure. This course is from 6pm to 9pm.
VES 197K Cinemas of Resistance: Political Filmmaking Across the Globe
Fall Term, Mondays, 12:00pm - 2:45pm
Kate Rennebohm
Film change the world? What can the history of engaged film and media-making teach us about politics, and vice-versa? This course will study instances of political filmmaking from around the world: early 20th century avant-garde filmmaking, anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist cinemas, feminist and queer filmmaking, Indigenous cinemas, and more. Students will learn about different political movements, international histories of film theory and film form, and the ongoing legacies of cinemas of resistance. Course Notes: There are mandatory weekly screenings for this course on Fridays 12:00 PM-2:45 PM.
VES 209R Curation, Conservation and Programming
Fall Term, TBA
Eric Rentschler
For research and independent projects in the archives, collections, and exhibitions of the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, the Harvard Film Archive, or the Harvard Museums and other campus arts institutions. Open only by petition to the Department; petitions should be presented during the term preceding enrollment, and must be signed by the instructor or staff member with whom the project is to be done.
VES 252 Sonic Ethnography
Fall Term, Tuesdays, 3:00pm - 5:45pm
Ernest Karel
This is a practice-based course in which students record, edit, and produce anthropologically informed audio works which interpret culture and lived experience. Listening sessions will provide a broad context of contemporary work using location recordings, and readings will situate the practice within the growing field of sound studies. In their projects, students will experiment with technical and conceptual strategies of recording and composition as they engage with questions of ethnographic representation through the sensory dimension of sound.
Class Notes: This course has weekly labs on Mondays from 6pm to 8:45.
Recommended Prep: Experience in media production helpful but not required.
VES 271 Proseminar in Film and Visual Studies: Theory
Fall Term, Tuesdays, 9:45am - 11:45am
Laura Marks
This proseminar presents useful theories and methods for film, media, and visual culture. Beginning with aesthetics and theories of perception, we will hone skills in object-based and embodied forms of inquiry. We will work on medium specificity and intermediality, media ecologies, archives and archaeologies, and the attention economy. We will learn to research across time and space, including non-Western theories and cross-cultural research methods. We will develop skills for outputs from publishing to public programming.
Course Notes: Required of all Film and Visual Studies graduate students as well as graduate students intending to declare a secondary field in Film and Visual Studies. Interested students must attend first meeting of class during shopping week to speak with teaching staff about course enrollment procedure. Related Sections: Films TBA
Visual and Environmental Studies 301. Film and Visual Studies Workshop
Eric Rentschler
VES 305 FVS Dissertation Group
Laura Frahm
2018 Fall Term, Mondays, 3:00pm - 5:45pm
A dissertation writing course offered to graduate students within the Film and Visual Studies program in their final year of the dissertation. The course will include discussions of individual chapters, professional development components, as well as dedicated writing sessions in the months leading up to the submission of the dissertation. Class Notes: Offered to Film and Visual Studies graduate students in their final dissertation year. This course meets from 3:00 to 5:00.
Visual and Environmental Studies 310. Reading and Research
Members of the Department
Note: Conducted through regular conferences and assigned writing. Limited to students reading specifically on topics not covered in regular courses. Open only by petition to the Department; petitions should be presented during the term preceding enrollment, and must be signed by the instructor with whom the reading is to be done. All applicants for admission should first confer with the Director of Graduate Studies.
Visual and Environmental Studies 320. Directed Study
Members of the Department
VES 330R Teaching Workshop
Fall Term, TBA
Eric Rentschler
This course serves as an introduction to teaching in Visual and Environmental Studies, as well as a forum for designing instruction. There will be an emphasis on discussions of hybrid methodologies between research and practice.
VES 351HFA Film Study Center Non-Fiction Filmmaking Workshop
Fall Term, Tuesdays, 6:00pm - 8:45pm
Lucien Castaing-Taylor
A graduate workshop for Film Study Center non-fiction film and video projects. Students must complete both parts of this course (parts A and B) within the same academic year in order to receive credit. Course Notes: Admission Limited to Critical Media Practice graduate students and Film Study Center fellows. This course meets 6:00 to 9:00.
VES 355R Advanced Critical Media Practice
Fall Term, Mondays and Wednesdays, 12:00pm - 4:15pm
Lucien Castaing-Taylor
This course is for graduate students pursuing the PhD Secondary Field in Critical Media Practice as well as other students creating artistic or interpretive media projects that are complementary to their scholarship. Open to any media or subject matter, the course is centered around exhaustive, constructive critique of independent projects, supplemented by workshops, screenings and visiting artists. Recommended Prep: Interview with instructor and project proposal.
EAFM 151 Documenting China in Film and Photography
Fall Term, Wednesdays, 12:00pm - 2:45pm
Jie Li
How have cameras borne witness to modern Chinese history and contemporary China’s transformations? In this course, we will analyze documentary photography and cinema taken in China from the early 20th century to the present day, through the lenses of both Chinese and foreigners. We will interrogate the visual “evidence” that camera images can offer, look into their production and reception histories, as well as discuss the ethics, aesthetics, and politics of representation. Although we will give special focus to major historical events such as the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Cultural Revolution, and the 1989 Tiananmen protests, we will also examine visual documents of contemporary Chinese society such as migrant labor, demolitions, the One Child Policy, and environmental issues. Audiovisual texts will be complemented by theoretical and contextual readings, and the final project for the course will be writing a proposal for a documentary project of one’s own.
EAFM 204 Three Times + 1. Transitional Moments in Film and Media Culture in Japan: Seminar
Fall Term, Mondays, 12:00pm - 2:45pm
Alexander Zahlten
This seminar will focus on transitional moments in the history of film and media culture in Japan. We will explore the deep transformations of the years 1927, 1963, and 1995––with an additional focus on 1968––and their connections to media-historical shifts that include magazines, TV, animation, music, the experimental arts and other media / genres. We will also take a step back to consider the theory and methods of historiography of media, both generally and in the specific case of Japan.
HAA 101 The Making of Art and Artifacts: History, Material and Technique
Fall Term, Wednesdays and Thursdays, 3:00pm - 5:45pm
Francesca Bewer
To what extent do the availabilty of materials and development of material technology influence artistic choice and innovation? How was a particular work of art made, and why does it look the way it does? The course will explore these and other questions of materiality through a combination of close looking at objects in the Harvard Art Museums' collections, hands-on experimentation with a range of artist's materials and techniques, and discussions of related readings. Among the goals of the course are for students to gain a better understanding of the dynamic relationship between makers and the materials and techniques they use; to be able to better recognize traces of artistic processes in works of art; and consider the implications of alterations that can occur in objects over time. The course will be taught by the Harvard Art Museums' research curator for conservation and technical studies in collaboration with staff of the Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies - professionals who routinely consider questions of materiality and how they effect the way we understand, interpret, preserve and present works of art.
