Thursday, May 5, 2016
Syllabus and Basic Policies
Syllabus and Basic Policies for the Course
Syllabus for ENG 4/839
Subject to Adjustments
Required Course Books (available at UNL Bookstore)
Additional readings online (either follow hyperlinks in syllabus or notice "BB" for Blackboard).
A note on the readings: I do not expect that you do all the readings. Rather, consider the readings listed in syllabus as the research component of the course--research I've done for you well knowing that a 3-week session doesn't allow you to do proper research. I would like you to read as much from Bauman's book as possible and make sure you read at least one essay or interview assigned for each class meeting; those of you who are graduate students should read all of Bauman's book as well as at least two of the assigned readings on the film and/or filmmaker per screening. Note, too, that your blog entries should, on occasion, reflect knowledge of some of the readings (to be demonstrated by quotations and paraphrases--by, that is, engaging some of the arguments already made on the assigned films); for the grad students among you, your posts should always reflect such knowledge.
A note (and warning) on the films: Please beware that some of the assigned films include graphic violence and/or sex & nudity. These films are contemporary films engaging contemporary culture. If you--for whatever reasons--object to being exposed to such images and "difficult" topics you should not take this course. That said, the majority of these films won't have such images/scenes/moments.
Week 1:
- Bauman, Zygmund. Liquid Times: Living in the Age of Uncertainty (Polity, 2006).
- Fisher, Jaimey. Christian Petzold (U Illinois P, 2013).
- Jones, Kent, ed. Olivier Assayas (Synema, 2012).
Additional readings online (either follow hyperlinks in syllabus or notice "BB" for Blackboard).
A note on the readings: I do not expect that you do all the readings. Rather, consider the readings listed in syllabus as the research component of the course--research I've done for you well knowing that a 3-week session doesn't allow you to do proper research. I would like you to read as much from Bauman's book as possible and make sure you read at least one essay or interview assigned for each class meeting; those of you who are graduate students should read all of Bauman's book as well as at least two of the assigned readings on the film and/or filmmaker per screening. Note, too, that your blog entries should, on occasion, reflect knowledge of some of the readings (to be demonstrated by quotations and paraphrases--by, that is, engaging some of the arguments already made on the assigned films); for the grad students among you, your posts should always reflect such knowledge.
A note (and warning) on the films: Please beware that some of the assigned films include graphic violence and/or sex & nudity. These films are contemporary films engaging contemporary culture. If you--for whatever reasons--object to being exposed to such images and "difficult" topics you should not take this course. That said, the majority of these films won't have such images/scenes/moments.
Week 1:
Monday, May 16
Course Introduction
Film: Jerichow (Christian Petzold, 2008; 92 min.)
Tuesday , May 18
Film: Climates (Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2006; 101 min.)
Readings for Wednesday: "Climates and other Disasters" (BB); "Climates of Nihilism" (BB); Review (BB)
Wednesday, May 19
Film: Old Joy (Kely Reichardt, 2006; 76 min.)
Readings for Thursday: Kelly Reichardt in Focus 19-33 & 58-83 (BB); "Kelly Reichardt"; Review of Old Joy; Interview on Old Joy; "New Voice"; Review
Thursday, May 20
Film: Clean (Olivier Assayas, 2004; 90 min.)
Readings for Friday: Bauman, 27-54; Jones, 154-161
Friday, May 21
Cumulative discussion of films screened during week 1
No film screening
Film to watch for Monday: Demonlover (Olivier Assayas, 2002; 129 min)
Readings for Monday: Jones, 140-153; Bauman, 55-70
Week 2:
Monday, May 23
Film: Boarding Gate (Olivier Assayas, 2007; 106 min.)
Readings for Tuesday: Jones, 170-179; Shaviro (BB)
Tuesday, May 24
Film: Yella (Christian Petzold, 2007; 89 min.)
Wednesday, May 25
Film: Wendy and Lucy (Kelly Reichardt, 2008; 80 min.)
Readings for Thursday: "The Silent Majority"; Interview on Wendy and Lucy; "A Completely False Sense of Security"; Review; "Kelly Reichardt"
Thursday, May 26
Film: Three Monkeys (2008; 101 min.)
Readings for Friday: Bauman, 71-93; "Three Monkeys: An Interview" (BB); "A Lonely and Beautiful Country" (BB); Review (BB)
Friday, May 27
Cumulative discussion of films screened during week 2
No film screening
Film to watch for Tuesday: Winter Sleep (Nuri Bilge Ceylon, 2014, 194 min.)
Readings for Tuesday: "I Always Try to Find Something Better" (BB); Review (BB)
Week 3:
Monday, May 30: Memorial Day
Tuesday, May 31
Film: Night Moves (2013; 112 min.)
Readings for Wednesday: "Interview"; "Filmmaker Magazine"; "Film Comment"; "Fellow Travelers" (BB)
Wednesday, June 1
Film: Barbara (2012; 105 min.)
Thursday, June 2
Film: Phoenix (2014; 98 min.)
Readings for Friday: Fisher (BB); "Indiewire"; "Cinemascope"; "Just be Yourself"; "Film Comment"; "Survivor's Song"; Bauman, 94-110
Readings for Friday: Fisher (BB); "Indiewire"; "Cinemascope"; "Just be Yourself"; "Film Comment"; "Survivor's Song"; Bauman, 94-110
Friday, June 3
Cumulative discussion of films screened during week 3
Conclusions and course evaluations
No film screening
Course Policies
I have not been known to spell out the course policies in great detail and then not hold you accountable to them. In general, I intend to treat you as adults: you make your own decisions, and I do not judge you for the decisions you make; I will, however, hold you accountable for your decisions and their consequences according to the policies below. My assumption is that you have read and understood the policies and, by remaining in class, agree to be held accountable to them as they are stated. Thus, please read them and, if you have questions, ask me about them at the beginning of the session.
Academic Honesty
The university’s policy on academic honesty is stated in the “Student Code of Conduct.” For more information, go to http://stuafs.unl.edu/DeanofStudents/Student%20Code%20of%20Conduct%20May%20Rev%202014%20a.pdf. The policy prohibits plagiarism, cheating on examinations, unauthorized collaboration, falsification, and multiple submissions. Violation of the policy will result in automatically failing the course, and I reserve the right to pursue disciplinary sanctions with the university.Attendance
English Department policy states that if students miss more than 20% of scheduled class time for any reason, the student fails the course, no matter what other work s/he completed and regardless of the quality of that work. We have 14 scheduled classes. 20% of this amounts to 2.8 class periods. So if you miss three (3) or more scheduled class meetings you will automatically fail the course.
Other than the 20% rule and the policy regarding the mandatory attendance at the two lectures, the following consequences will ensue from your lack of attendance:
- One absence: no immediate consequence.
- Two absences: your final grade will automatically be lowered by 2/3 of a full grade (so if you earned a B+ you'd end up with a B- for the course).
Attendance will be taken a the start of class when I call roll. If you are not present at the start of class it will be your responsibility to make sure you inform me of your presence at the end of class. If you fail to do so I will automatically record you as having been absent—even if you were in class but forgot to sign in.
Please note that should you have been absent once earlier in the session and then catch a cold later on and as a result will have to miss class, you still will have exceeded the allowed number of absences and will lose points accordingly (or fail the course, as the case may be). The same holds true for “family emergency” excuses and the like: if you think it’s more important to drive your sister to the airport or attend a distant family member’s funeral then so be it. Just be aware that you will lose points once you exceed one (1) absence, regardless of what the reasons for those absences are. Those of you who have to miss class due to university-sanctioned activities or military engagements should indicate this to me in person at the beginning of the semester.
Late Arrivals
I expect you to be in class on time. Period. Latecomers distract me and other students. If I notice that you come late on a regular basis I will tell you to be on time or not come at all.
Note: If there is a class meeting in our classroom before our scheduled meeting time, please avoid attempting to enter the classroom before the previous class’s professor and students have left. It’s only a matter of courtesy to let the preceding class’s professor finish his or her business as well as to allow students to leave the classroom without having to fight their way through you.
Your are responsible for all material covered in class
Because you are responsible for all material covered in this class, I strongly encourage you to exchange email addresses and phone numbers with fellow students so that you can find out what we’ve done in class (and get notes from someone who attended class). Please do not contact me to find out what you’ve missed.
Classroom behavior
It should go without saying that I expect you to treat the classroom space appropriately. By this I mean:
- Do not sleep in class. I find this seriously offensive and will not hesitate to wake you up and ask you to leave. My general advice is this: if you are so tired that you fall asleep you should go home, since your bed is undoubtedly more comfortable than our classroom’s chairs. (If you've been diagnosed with
- Phones: I don’t want to see any cell phones. There's no reason for them to be on your desk or in your hand. It’s ok if you are not available for 3 hours. Really. It’s ok. So turn them off before class starts and put them away until class is officially over.
- Computers: I do think it is acceptable and often helpful for you to have a website open that relates to the film(maker) we discuss; however, I don't think it's acceptable or helpful for you to check sports scores, news stories, chat rooms, Facebook, or whatever else is better left for time after class--so: don't do it.
- Do not read newspapers or any other unrelated texts.
- I will do my best to finish on time. To this end I will start screening the film on the film screening days so that the film ends at 400p; please do not begin packing your stuff before the end of the film. On the days (Fridays) when we don't watch a film in class, I will have my phone alarm set to ring two minutes prior to the official end of our class meeting time. If I forget and end up going over time, please call my attention to it, as you have the right to leave according to schedule so that you make it to your next class in a timely fashion. Having said this, I do not appreciate you starting to pack your bags before I signal that we’re done. Packing your bags makes a lot of noise and distracts: it’s flat-out rude, so please refrain from doing so.
Withdrawals & Incompletes
As a general rule I do not grant incompletes. University policy states that incompletes may be given only in special hardship cases and that they will not be used merely for extending the time for completion of course requirements. Consult university policy on this matter as well as matters pertaining to withdrawing: http://registrar.unl.edu/adds-drops-changes-and-withdrawals-summer.
Check your email
I expect you to check your email account that you have registered with Blackboard regularly. I do tend to send announcements to class via email of which I want you to be aware before any given class meeting; and I might want to contact you individually as well. You should therefore consider it part of your daily routine for this course to monitor your email account.
Emailing me
When contacting me via email (which is the easiest and fastest way to contact me), please write our course number (ENG 4/839) in the subject line so I recognize you as one of my current students, which will facilitate the speed at which I respond. If you email me with a question, please make sure first to check our various course documents: chances are that the answer to your question (especially if it is not a question about the content of a text) can be found in these documents. Don’t be surprised if I merely reply by writing, “Please check course documents.”
Office Hours:
I'm not going to set up regular office hours since we'll see each other every day. Just let me know--either verbally or via email--that you want to talk with me, and we'll set up a meeting, possibly even right after class.
Last but not least:
Your decision to stay in this course indicates to me that you understand and agree to the above course contract. This means that I will hold you accountable for abiding by its rules throughout the course of the semester.
With all of this said, I hope you will have a great semester. Welcome!
Purpose of and Instructions for Using this Blog
Purpose of and Instructions for Using this Blog
Welcome to the pre-session 2015 session of
ENG 4/839--Film Directors.
Your professor:
Dr. Marco Abel. I'm professor of English and Film Studies, as well as chair of the English Department at UNL. My office is located in 204a Andrews Hall, which is the chair's office in the department's main office (which is 202 Andrews). I've been at UNL since 2004. You can find out more about me here.
The basic course premise:
The course will closely study the oeuvre of four contemporary directors: the German filmmaker, Christian Petzold; the French director, Olivier Assayas; the Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan, and the US American auteur, Kelly Reichardt. To provide an overriding framework for our conversations about their films, I sub-titled the course "'One Cannot Love Without Money': Desire, Power, and Contemporary World Cinema." The quotation--that one cannot love without money--comes from Petzold's film Jerichow.
The basic idea I hope to capture with this subtitle is the question of how contemporary subjectivity is affected by neoliberal finance capitalism, how, that is, who we are is deeply impacted by what the latest configuration of capitalism is doing to us. Is love possible without sufficient financial resources? How are our desires shaped by the permanent state of (economic) precarity many of us are confronting? What forms of community are possible when people find themselves constantly forced to be mobile, having or being expected to move to "where the jobs are"? And how does contemporary cinema investigate this relationship between the private and the public, between desire and capital(ism), between who "I" am and how "they" want "me" to be? What (new?) forms does it develop in the process, or simply use to dramatize these questions? What answers does it provide? What differences might we notice in how films from different countries engage these questions?
You can find the course syllabus and basic policies here.
How to use this blog:
1. After each day's screening, each of you has to post a blog entry by no later than midnight of the day the film screened. While you may post later than midnight, I will not give you credit for contributions posted after midnight.
My hope is that each of you will read at least some of your peers' posts (the more you read the better); I myself will of course read all of them, and I will let our in-class conversations be guided by the blog conversations. I believe that the quality and frequency of your in-class participation will benefit from having to express some of your thoughts on the films in writing prior to our in-class discussions.
Each day we will start with a conversation about the film we watched the previous day (or over the weekend) and will end class with the next film screening.
2. Your posts can vary in length but should contain at least one substantial idea or thought about the film in relation to the course topic.
You might be able to express such an idea or thought in as little as one fully developed paragraph; or you might be more expansive in your entry and post, say, a short essay of 500-1,000 words. In general, I do not expect that you post such "lengthy" essays each and every time, but I strongly encourage you to consider being more elaborate in your remarks at least once a week.
Overall I encourage you to balance things out: sometimes you have a lot to say, so you should feel free to do so; at other times you don't have that much to say, so stay brief. Whatever you do, however, your post has to be relevant to the film on which you write and must engage the broader topic of the course. How you engage the topic can vary widely: through close readings of a moment in the film, through working with some of the assigned course readings, through directly responding to what one or more of your peers have argued, or through broader reflections on the film and the course topic. Here, again, I urge you to balance things out.
What is always important is that you ground your arguments and observations in the facts of the film at hand: you need to be able to evidence what you argue. While there is no correct interpretation of any given film (or text more broadly speaking), there are most certainly wrong interpretations. (For example, Moby-Dick is not about my uncle Paul: claiming otherwise would be counter-factual and simply absurd, just as it's absurd to argue the sun revolves around the earth. Such statements are simply false.)
3. In general, I hope that you engage each other. In other words, if there are already a number of posts on a given film before you get the chance to post, you should read some of them and see if you cannot build on the existing arguments, whether by adding ideas, arguing with the ideas, filling in gaps, etc. However, you are not allowed to attack your peers: you can critique and disagree with arguments, but you need to do so in a respectful manner. Personal attacks and such like will not be tolerated by me.
Keep in mind that the blog is supposed to foster interaction between all members of this course. Act accordingly, please.
4. In week 1 & 3 you get to skip posting on one film of the 4 films screened during those weeks; in week 2 you get to skip 2 of the 5 films that will be screened; however, you must post on the films you are asked to watch at home over the two weekends between respectively, week 1 and 2 and week 2 and 3. Failure to blog on a film (beyond the allowed skips) will automatically result in a lowering of the possible points you can obtain for that week from 100 to 80; so if you missed one post in week two you could get only 80 points that week (and that only if your other posts were "perfect").
5. To ensure that you do some of the assigned readings, your posts must engage (citations, paraphrases) one or more of the relevant texts (relevant = relevant to the films at hand). Failure to engage assigned texts in meaningful fashion will prevent you from getting full credit for your posts.
6. Since there are no additional writing assignments, you will receive each week a cumulative grade for your blog posts, which will result in three grades (one per week); you will also receive one grade per week for your in-class participation.
Your final grade will be based on the following formula:
Total blog entries = 75% of final grade (with each week equally weighed)
+
Total in-class participation = 25% of final grade (with each week equally weighed)
7. Class attendance will affect your final grade only if you fail to attend class. I expect you to attend each of the 14 class meetings we have. Missing one class meeting won't have any negative effect on your grade; missing two class meetings will automatically result in a lowering of your final grade by 2/3 of a grade (so if you earned a B"+" you would end up with a "B-"); missing three class meetings or more will automatically results in an "F" for the course, as that would be more than 20% of our class time (this is per English Department rules and not negotiable). Barring special hardships, the reason for failure to attend class has no bearing on this matter.
8. ACE
*This course satisfies Student Learning Outcome #7 of the ACE program, “Use knowledge, theories, or methods appropriate to the arts to understand their context and significance.”
*Students will study the aesthetics and social significance of the motion picture, and analyze films in detail. Through course lectures, readings, as well as by screening and discussing films, students will gain appropriate knowledge and theories to understand films and their artistic and cultural contexts. Through various writing assignments, students will learn how to write about film and how to use appropriate film terminology. Students will also talk about the wider cultural ramifications—which might include class, race, gender, and sexuality—as they are expressed in film dealing with the issue of globalization.
*Students watch and discuss a film every day. Class sessions will include brief lectures that provide relevant knowledge and context. Films are screened and, as a class, students discuss the work in the context of their readings on related issues in film aesthetics or culture. Students will be expected to carefully analyze the film with regard to the issue of globalization. We are especially interested in what these films disclose regarding the values, concerns, and social customs of the various societies that created them and of the women and men who directed them. Through the writing of daily blog posts, students will have an opportunity to demonstrate the relevant knowledge and skills needed for successful film analysis.
9. Students with Disabilities Policy
Services for Students with Disabilities (SSD) provides individualized academic support for students with documented disabilities. Support services can include extended test time, textbooks and handouts in alternative formats (electronic texts, Braille, taped texts, etc), classroom notes, sign language interpreters, and transcriptionists. SSD not only accommodates students that have visible disabilities, but students with other varying types of disabilities that impact college life.
If you have a documented disability that is impacting your academic progress, please call SSD at 472-3787 and schedule an appointment with the Director, Veva Cheney, or the Assistant Director, Barbara Woodhead.
10. Office Hours
Since we see each other every day, I propose that rather than having a regular slot set aside for office hours you simply approach me after class if you feel want to talk with me. We can always walk to my office, if necessary.
If you cannot talk with me after class I'd be happy to meet you at other times; please just let me know, either verbally or via email.
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