FMST 324 - Cinema, Sensation, & Body

To what extent does watching a movie imitate the body’s own sensorial encounters with the world? How do filmmakers use color, sound, lighting, movement, editing and space to create embodied experience? This course is an introduction to these and related questions by examining both cinema’s bodily representations, and the relationship between the viewer’s body and the events on the screen. The approach is organized around weekly film screenings that include silent film, art cinema, experimental cinema, classical Hollywood melodrama, and the horror film. Readings explore phenomenological theories of the body by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Vivian Sobchack, Jennifer Baker, Elena del Rio, Laura Marks, Martine Beugnet, and Steven Shaviro. Students explore related approaches such as affect theory, feminism, and the relationship of bodily representation to painting, especially in the depiction of masochism.

Credits: 1.00
Corequisite: FMST 324L
Prerequisites: FMST 200
Major/Minor Restrictions: None
Class Restriction: None
Area of Inquiry: None
Liberal Arts CORE: None

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