Graduate Courses

An introductory overview of Latin American cinema, with an emphasis on post-World War II films produced in Cuba, Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico. Examination of each film in its historical and aesthetic aspects, and in light of questions concerning national cinema and “third cinema.” Examples from both pre-1945 and contemporary films. Conducted in English; knowledge of Spanish and Portuguese helpful but not required.

Moira Fradinger moira.fradinger@yale.edu

An introductory overview of Latin American cinema, with an emphasis on post-World War II films produced in Cuba, Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico. Examination of each film in its historical and aesthetic aspects, and in light of questions concerning national cinema and “third cinema.” Examples from both pre-1945 and contemporary films. Conducted in English; knowledge of Spanish and Portuguese helpful but not required.

We study a series of written works and their cinematic adaptations, considering first the texts in autonomous, literary terms, and then their transformation into audiovisual spectacles. In most cases we screen the film on Tuesday evening and do a comparative study in the Thursday class period, making extensive use of video clips to do close visual analysis of scenes in the light of their corresponding textual sources. Rather than develop a general theory of adaptation, we construct methodological approaches on an ad hoc basis, taking each instance of adaptation as a case study amenable to a variety of methodologies—psychoanalytic, feminist, ideological, generic, semiotic, and so forth. The class is conducted as a seminar, and active student participation is expected. There are two papers—one shorter one of a critical nature at midterm and a final research paper (approximately 15–20 pages). Films examined include (tentatively) Pasolini’s Medea and Decameron, the Tavianis’ Padre padrone, Visconti’s Death in Venice, Rosi’s Three Brothers, Salvatores’s I’m Not Afraid, and De Sica’s Two Women. Writing assignments comprise 75 percent of the final grade and class participation 25 percent.

The course sets in place some undergirding for students who want to anchor their film interest to the professional discourse of this field. A coordinated set of topics in film theory is interrupted first by the often discordant voice of history and second by the obtuseness of the films examined each week. Films themselves take the lead in our discussions.

How much does the art of cinema in the 21^st century resemble that of the previous half-century?  Have massive changes visible in production, distribution and exhibition also affected the goals and ambitions of film artists? Or do today’s auteurs and cinematographers work as their counterparts did decades ago, deploying whatever techniques current technology permits in a quest for a style that may bring out something authentic about themselves, the world, or the medium?   Analyzing films by such 21^st c. auteurs as Olivier Assayas, Claire Denis, Carlos Reygadas, Lav Diaz, David Lynch, Hong Sang-soo or others selected by the participants, we will measure new styles against techniques deployed by classic and modern auteurs like Mizoguchi, Welles, Cocteau and Hitchcock.  What new aesthetic (and practical) issues face filmmakers as they conceive their projects? We will look at a) screen format, including 3-D; b) elastic temporality, especially slow motion; c) special effects, including forms of animation, d) superimposition, including multiple screens; e) long-takes and camera movement; f) montage and alternatives to cutting; g) advances in sound design.

Have the new narrative forms, and the new types of subject matter associated with our century’s most difficult films (L’Intrus, The Werkmeister Harmonies, Le Mort de Louis XIV, Twin Peaks) given rise to the styles of major directors or are they the by-product of these styles?  Ultimately, we want to know if style matters in the way it did during cinema’s first century? Where shall we look for it? How shall we talk and write about it?  Cinema Aesthetics may require a new vocabulary today.  Each participant will focus on a technique or a style and arrive at an adequate way to make it stand out.

Modernism in Hebrew poetry: close readings of the poetry of Nathan Alterman, Lea Goldberg, Nathan Zach, Yona Volakh, Avot Yeshurun.

Hannan Hever hannan.hever@yale.edu

Intensive readings in the history and theory of translation paired with practice in translating. Case studies from ancient languages (the Bible, Greek and Latin classics), medieval languages (classical Arabic literature), and modern languages (poetic texts).

Key films and topics in British cinema. Special attention to the provincial origins of British cinema; overlaps between filmic, literary, and visual modernism; attempts to build on the British literary and dramatic tradition; cinema’s role in the war effort and in redefining national identity; postwar auteur and experimental filmmaking; “heritage” films and alternative approaches to tradition. Accompanying readings in British film theorists, film sociology (including Mass Observation), and cultural studies accounts of film spectatorship and memories. Films by Mitchell and Kenyon, Maurice Elvey, Anthony Asquith, Len Lye, John Grierson, Alfred Hitchcock, Alberto Cavalcanti, Humphrey Jennings, Michael Powell, Carol Reed, David Lean, Karel Reisz, Lindsay Anderson, Richard Lester, Peter Watkins, Stanley Kubrick, Laura Mulvey, Ken Loach, Mike Leigh, Terence Davies, Terry Gilliam, Peter Greenaway, Michael Winterbottom, Patrick Keiller, Steve McQueen.

Latin American novels and short stories from the 1920s to the 1990s in which the fantastic appears, derived from avant-garde tendencies, anthropology, and popular Afro-Hispanic religions (santería) and a Catholic tradition of miracles. Theoretical texts by Franz Roh, Sigmund Freud, Marcel Mauss, Jorge Luis Borges, Alejo Carpentier, Arturo Uslar Pietri, Gabriel García Márquez, and Roberto González Echevarría. Prose fiction by Miguel Ángel Asturias, Borges, Lydia Cabrera, Carpentier, García Márquez, João Guimarães Rosa, and Juan Rulfo, among others. Novels such as El reino de este mundo, Cien años de soledad, and Aura, and short story collections such as Cuentos negros de Cuba, Leyendas de Guatemala, and Guerra del tiempo. Conducted in Spanish; course work for students in departments other than Spanish and Portuguese in English. Open to undergraduates.

Since the publication of Ficciones in 1944 and especially since achieving world-wide acclaim after receiving ex-aequo with Samuel Beckett the Formentor Prize in 1961, Jorge Luis Borges has become one of the most influential modern writers.  His is a recognizable and often acknowledged presence in the work of novelists and short-story writers, as well as in that of philosophers and literary theorists.  There is a Borges “effect,” that can be perceived in John Barth, Julio Cortázar, Alejo Carpentier, Gabriel García Márquez, Italo Calvino, and Umberto Eco; and in Maurice Blanchot, Michel Foucault, Gerard Genette and Jacques Derrida, among others.  That effect is also projected retrospectively in Borges’s particular way of reading classics like Homer, Dante and Cervantes. An elegant, playfully ironic skepticism, together with a fondness for aporias, enigmas, puzzles, labyrinths as well as for minor genres such as the detective story are the most visible components of Borges’s style and thought.  Taken together these components suggest theories about writing and reading that have been associated with what is called postmodernism.  Classes on Carpentier and García Márquez will contrast Borges’ theory and practice of fantastic literature with what has come to be known as “magical realism.” Class discussions will be in English and readings in English or the French, Spanish and Italian originals.

This seminar is an introductory overview of Latin American gender debates and feminist traditions since the turn of the twentieth century up to today’s conversations around gender identity, human rights, gendered violence, and decolonial feminisms. The seminar consists of three basic units: (1) women’s social movements from anarchism to the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, to indigenous feminisms and the regional debate around practical and strategic gender needs; (2) local theories of patriarchy and gendered violence; (3) new gender identity laws, the discussion around sexual diversity and sexual difference, and the transgender movement today (this unit includes the analysis of one autobiography, two literary texts, and four cinematic representations). We study texts written in Latin America, at times read in comparison with some European and North American texts, and we look at their migration outside the region. The majority of texts are in Spanish, though there will be as many translations as possible for those who read more comfortably in English. Seminar meetings are conducted in Spanish.

This seminar examines the current state of the field of Chinese and Sinophone studies from different geographical and theoretical perspectives. It is a research seminar and colloquium, and we use texts in the original as well as translated languages. Topics vary.

From the new form of literary theory taking shape in romanticism to recent German Media Studies, this course examines the relation of close readings of singular texts to larger theoretical claims. We will reflect on the eminent status that literary readings have attained for broader theoretical and philosophical projects. We will specifically focus on a certain theoretical milieu in which far reaching theoretical claims were not merely exemplified or illustrated by, but in fact developed from distinct practices of (close) reading of particular literary texts. The aim is to analyze this distinct type of theory by investigating the scenes of reading that major theoretical endeavors depended upon, in order to trace the trajectory of theory and turn to more recent theoretical endeavors, to discuss the changed status that reading has for them. Among the authors we will read are Schlegel, Benjamin, de Man, Derrida, Blumenberg, Butler, Kittler, Latour.

Dissertation preparation course

This graduate seminar examines the variety of artistic, cultural, historical, and literary representations of black Africans and their descendants—both enslaved and free—across the vast stretches of the Luso-Hispanic world and the United States. Taking a chronological frame, the course begins its study of Blackness in medieval and early modern Iberia and its colonial kingdoms. From there, we examine the status of Blackness conceptually and ideologically in Asia, the Caribbean, Mexico, and South America. Toward the end of the semester, we concentrate on black Africans by focusing on Equatorial Guinea, sub-Saharan African immigration in present-day Portugal and Spain, and the politics of Afro-Latinx culture and its identity politics in the United States. Throughout the term, we interrogate the following topics in order to guide our class discussions and readings: bondage and enslavement, fugitivity and maroonage, animal imageries and human-animal studies, geography and maps, Black Feminism and Black Queer Studies, material and visual cultures (e.g., beauty ads, clothing, cosmetics, food, Blackface performance, royal portraiture, reality TV, and music videos), the Inquisition and African diasporic religions, and dispossession and immigration. Our challenging task remains the following: to see how Blackness conceptually and experientially is subversively fluid and performative, yet deceptive and paradoxical. This course will be taught in English, with all materials available in the original (English, Portuguese, Spanish) and in English translation.