Early Cinema to 1915

EARLY CINEMA TO 1915
YORK UNIVERSITY/FACULTY OF FINE ARTS/DEPARTMENT OF FILM
FA/FILM 4600 _FILM 5320
WINTER 2008

Course Director: Sharon Hayashi
Office: Centre for Film and Theatre 232
Office Hours: Tuesdays 11am-1pm
Telephone: 416-736-2100 x22177
E-mail: hayashi@yorku.ca
Class blog: http://www.yorku.ca/hayashi/film4600/earlycinema

Lecture/Screening: Thursday 10am-2pm CFT 137

Prerequisite: Permission of the Course Director

Course Description and Objectives: Between the late 1880s and 1915, cinema is invented in at least three ways: as a technology; as a social and economic structure; and as a means of expression. It is the aim of this course to provide a chronological overview of these three inter-related developments. We will look first at the world that produces cinema, i.e. the state of late 19th century technology and technological development, the structure and meaning of the entertainment industry and the sorts of work that appear to anticipate film form. The course will then focus on the development of film narrative in the first two decades of the 20th century. We will look at a large number of short films–actualities, early comedy, drama and non-fiction– as well as features from the U.S., Great Britain, France and elsewhere. The focus of this year’s course will be on issues of gender, sexuality and race with a specific focus on the body and landscape in early cinema.
Course Director Availability:
My office hours are Tuesday 11am to 1pm or by appointment. If you cannot make my office hours please e-mail at least one week in advance to schedule an appointment at another time. I will try to answer e-mails as quickly as I can but allow for one week for a response. Please reserve e-mail for making appointments, asking brief questions of information and to notify me of class absence. Substantive discussions about course materials and assignments should occur in conversation in office hours. You are encouraged to see me in my office hours to discuss any topic regarding the course including assignments, difficulties you are having with the course, suggestions for further reading, or clarification and expansion of issues that interest you.

Method of Evaluation:
Undergraduates
Short Essay–1500-2000 words, 5-7 pages—Due Feb 7, 2008 20%
Long Essay—2500-3500 words, 10-14 pages—Due April 3, 2008 40%
Questions Assignments 15%
Attendance 10%
Participation 15%
Graduates
Seminar Presentation 20%
Major Essay—5000-7500 words, 20-30 pages—Due April 3, 2008 40%
Questions Assignments 15%
Attendance 10%
Participation 15%

Important Dates:
–Last day for undergraduates to enroll in Winter course with permission of instructor: January 25, 2008
–Last day for undergraduates to drop Winter course without receiving a grade:
March 7, 2008

Readings:
A course kit of photocopied readings will be available at Keele Copy Centre (416-665-9675, 4699 Keele Street, just across the street from the main entrance of the University).
Readings should be completed before class for the week in which they are assigned.
Additional readings may be assigned or recommended during the course.

Attendance and Participation:
Please note that regular attendance is expected and required. Absences from class require a reason. Two or more continuing absences require documentation, such as a medical certificate. Unexplained absences will result in academic penalties. Your participation grade will be determined on the basis of the quality and frequency of participation in discussion and on the basis of consistent improvements in assignments over the semester.

Writing Skills:
I cannot emphasize enough the importance of good writing skills. I strongly urge you to take advantage of the university’s Centre for Academic Writing, S329 Ross Bldg (416-736-5134.
If you have difficulties with the English please contact YUELI (York University English Language Institute) 287 Winters College, 416-736-5353 or ESL-OLC (English as a Second Language Open Learning Centre) 037 Vanier College (www.yorku.ca/eslolc.

Assignment Submission: Proper academic performance depends on students doing their work not only well, but on time. Accordingly, assignments for this course must be received on the due date specified for the assignment. Assignments are to be handed in directly to the instructor. Asssignments not handed in directly to the instructor must be dropped off at the Department of Film and Video CFT225. All assignments must have your student name and number, and course title and number clearly indicated on the front page. Do not slip assignments under doors. E-mailed and faxed assignments are not accepted. Ensure that you keep hard copies of all submitted work. In case of lost assignments you are responsible for a replacement.

Grading: The grading scheme for the course conforms to the 9-point grading system used in undergraduate programs at York (e.g., A+ = 9, A = 8, B+ - 7, C+ = 5, etc.). Assignments will bear either a letter grade designation or a corresponding number grade (e.g. A+ = 90 to 100, A = 80 to 90, B+ = 75 to 79, etc.)
(For a full description of York grading system see the York University Undergraduate Calendar - http://calendars.registrar.yorku.ca/pdfs/ug2004cal/calug04_5_acadinfo.pdf)

Lateness Penalty: One grace period of up to 3 late days will be allotted to each student. After you use up your one grace period assignments will be penalized half a grade point per day late, including weekends (i.e. a full grade point for Saturday and Sunday). Exceptions to the lateness penalty for valid reasons such as illness, compassionate grounds, etc., may be entertained by the but will require supporting documentation (e.g., a doctor’s letter).

Academic Honesty and Integrity:
York students are required to maintain high standards of academic integrity and are subject to the Senate Policy on Academic Honesty (http://www.yorku.ca/secretariat/legislation/senate/acadhone.htm).

There is also an academic integrity website with complete information about academic honesty. Students are expected to review the materials on the Academic Integrity website (http://www.yorku.ca/academicintegrity/students.htm).
Access/Disability:
York provides services for students with disabilities (including physical, medical, learning and psychiatric disabilities) needing accommodation related to teaching and evaluation methods/materials.

It is the student’s responsibility to register with disability services as early as possible to ensure that appropriate academic accommodation can be provided with advance notice. You are encouraged to schedule a time early in the term to meet with each professor to discuss your accommodation needs. Failure to make these arrangements may jeopardize your opportunity to receive academic accommodations.
Additional information is available at www.yorku.ca/disabilityservices or from disability service providers:
• Office for Persons with Disabilities: N108 Ross, 416-736-5140, www.yorku.ca/opd
• Learning and Psychiatric Disabilities Programs - Counselling & Development Centre: 130 BSB, 416-736-5297, www.yorku.ca/cdc
• Atkinson students - Atkinson Counselling & Supervision Centre: 114 Atkinson, 416-736- 5225, www.yorku.ca/atkcsc
• Glendon students - Glendon Counselling & Career Centre: Glendon Hall 111, 416-487- 6709, www.glendon.yorku.ca/counselling

Ethics Review Process:
York students are subject to the York University Policy for the Ethics Review Process for Research Involving Human Participants. In particular, students proposing to undertake research involving human participants (e.g., interviewing the director of a company or government agency, having students complete a questionnaire, etc.) are required to submit an Application for Ethical Approval of Research Involving Human Participants at least one month before you plan to begin the research. If you are in doubt as to whether this requirement applies to you, contact your Course Director immediately

Religious Observance Accommodation:
York University is committed to respecting the religious beliefs and practices of all members of the community, and making accommodations for observances of special significance to adherents. Should any of the dates specified in this syllabus for an in-class test or examination pose such a conflict for you, contact the Course Director within the first three weeks of class. Similarly, should an assignment to be completed in a lab, practicum placement, workshop, etc., scheduled later in the term pose such a conflict, contact the Course director immediately. Please note that to arrange an alternative date or time for an examination scheduled in the formal examination periods (December and April/May), students must complete an Examination Accommodation Form, which can be obtained from Student Client Services, Student Services Centre or online at http://www.registrar.yorku.ca/pdf/exam_accommodation.pdf

Student Conduct:
Students and instructors are expected to maintain a professional relationship characterized by courtesy and mutual respect and to refrain from actions disruptive to such a relationship. Moreover, it is the responsibility of the instructor to maintain an appropriate academic atmosphere in the classroom, and the responsibility of the student to cooperate in that endeavour. Further, the instructor is the best person to decide, in the first instance, whether such an atmosphere is present in the class. A statement of the policy and procedures involving disruptive and/or harassing behaviour by students in academic situations is available on the York website http://www.yorku.ca/secretariat/legislation/senate/harass.htm

Course Schedule (Topics, screenings and readings are subject to change)

Week 1: January 3 Introduction
Screening: Movement: Edison and Company: Camera, Early Photography and Moving Pictures, 1991 60min.

Week 2: January 10 Protocinema: Muybridge and Marey/ Cinematic Time and Space in Modernity
Readings:
–Mary Ann Doane, “Temporality, Storage, Legibility,” from The Emergence of Cinematic Time, pp33-68.
Screening: Muybridge and Marey.

Week 3: January 17 Cinema of Attractions
Readings:
–Tom Gunning, “The Cinema of Attractions: Early Film, Its Spectator and the Avant-Garde,” in Early Cinema: Space, Frame, Narrative (London: BFI, 1990), pp56-62.
–Tom Gunning, “An Aesthetics of Astonishment: Early Film and the (In)Credulous Spectator,” Viewing Positions (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1994), 114-133.
–Thomas Elsaesser, “The New Film History as Media Archaeology,” pp.75-117.
Screening: Lumiere films and other shorts

Week 4: January 24 Bodies, Gender and Sexuality
Readings:
–Mary Ann Doane, “Technology’s Body: Cinematic Vision in Modernity,” pp. 530-551.
–Constance Balides, “Scenarios of Exposure in the Practice of Everyday Life: Women in the Cinema of Attractions,” pp. 63-80.
–Lucy Fischer, “The Lady Vanishes: Women, Magic, and the Movies,” pp. 339-354.
–Kristen Whissel, “The Gender of Empire: American Modernity, Masculinity, and Edison’s War Actualities,” pp141-165.
Screening: Edison films, Melies films, and other shorts

Week 5: January 31 The Electric Message
Readings:
–Tom Gunning, “Systemizing the Electric Message: Narrative Form, Gender and Modernity in The Lonedale Operator,” from American Cinema’s Transitional Era, ed. Charlie Keil and Shelley Stamp (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), pp. 15-49.
–Tom Gunning, “Heard Over the Phone: The Lonely Villa and the de Lorde Tradition of the Terrors of Technology,” pp.216-227.
–Tom Gunning, “Doing for the Eye What the Phonograph Does for the Ear,”pp. 13-31.
Screenings: Lonedale Operator, dir. Griffith, 1911
[Lonely Villa, dir. Griffith, 1909]

Week 6: Feb 7 White Slavery
Readings:
–Janet Staiger, “The White Slave,” in Bad Women: Regulating Sexuality in Early American Cinema (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995,pp54-85, 116-146.
–Ben Brewster, “Traffic in Souls (1913): An experiment in feature-length narrative construction,” pp. 226-241.
Screening: Traffic in Souls, dir. George Loane Tucker, 1913.

Short Paper due (Undergraduates)

Reading Week: Feb 11- Feb 15 No Classes

Week 7: Feb 21 Westerns and the West in Early Cinema
Readings:
–Nanna Verhoeff, “City Limits,” “Deconstructing the Other,” “Easterns,” in The West in Early Cinema: After the Beginning (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2006), 45-95.
–Nanna Verhoeff, “Genre,” “Landscape,” The West in Early Cinema: After the Beginning (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2006), 108-126, 188-206.
Screenings: Great Train Robbery, 1903
Buffalo Bill’s Wild West

Week 8: February 28 Trains
Readings:
–Lynne Kirby, “Inventors and Hysterics: The Train in the Prehistory and the Early History of Cinema,” “Romances of the Rail in Silent Film,” in Parallel Tracks: The Railroad and Silent Cinema (Durham: Duke University Press, 1996), 19-73, 75-131.
–Wolfgang Shivelbusch, “Railroad Space and Railroad Time” and Panoramic Travel,” The Railway Journey: The Industrialization of Time and Space in the 19th C (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), pp 33-44, 52-69.
Screenings: Hazards of Helen, dir. James Davis and J.P. McGowan, 1914
Perils of Pauline, dir. Louis Gasnier and Donald MacKenzie, 1914

Week 9 : March 6 Sex and Crime and Women Action Stars
Readings:
–Jennifer Bean, “Technologies of Early Stardom and the Extraordinary Body,” in A Feminist Reader in Early Cinema (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002), pp 404-443.
–Ben Singer, “Female Power in the Serial-Queen Melodrama: The Etiology of an Anomaly,” in Silent Film, ed. Richard Abel (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1996), pp. 163-193.
– Kristine J. Butler, “Irma Vep, Vamp in the City: Mapping the Criminal Feminine in Early French Serials,” pp. 195-220.
Screening: Les Vampires, dir. Louis Feuillade, 1915
Irma Vep, dir. Oliver Assayas, 1996

Week 10 : March 13 Early Cinema and the Public Sphere
Readings:
–Miriam Hansen, “Early Cinema—Whose Public Sphere?” Early Cinema, pp. 228-246.
–Miriam Hansen, “Introduction: Cinema Spectatorship and Public Life,” in Babel and Babylon: Spectatorship in American Silent Film (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991), pp. 1-19.
– Linda Williams, “Race, Melodrama, and The Birth of a Nation (1915),” pp 242-253.
Screening: Birth of a Nation, D. W. Griffiths, 1915.

Week 11: March 20 Race and Spectatorship
Readings:
–Mary Carbine, “ ‘The Finest Outside the Loop’: Motion Picture Exhibition in Chicago’s Black Metropolis, 1905-1928,” pp234-262.
Suggested Reading:
–David Gerstner, “African American Realism: Oscar Micheaux, Autobiography, and the Ambiguity of Black Male Desire ,” from Manly Arts: Masculinity and Nation in Early American Cinema (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), pp83-118.
–Charlene Regester, “From the Buzzard’s Roost: Black Movie-going in Durham and Other North Carolina Cities during the Early Period of American Cinema,” in Film History, vol.17, pp113-124.
–Jaqueline Stewart, “Negroes Laughing at Themselves? Black Spectatorship and the Performance of Urban Modernity,” Critical Inquiry 29 (Summer 2003), pp. 650-677.
Screening: Body and Soul, dir. Oscar Micheaux

Week 12: March 27 Early Cinema and the Present
Readings and Screenings TBA