Film and Anthropology
ANTH 285
Fall 2021
| Section:
01
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| Crosslisting:
FILM 323 |
| Course Cluster and Certificates: Social, Cultural, and Critical Theory Certificate |
Film & Anthropology is an exploration of the cross-pollinating relationship between ethnographic and filmmaking methods and styles. This is, in part, an effort to understand the contributions of both to the observed and documented experience of cultural life. We will watch films weekly and discuss them, as well as respond to them individually in weekly critical précis. We will, in the course of these viewings, come to some consensus as to what we mean by ethnographic and cinematic elements. The films themselves will cross genre boundaries, running the gamut from "traditional" ethnographic films to various forms of documentary and experimental film that in some way address or explore what I consider ethnographic elements. We will cover canonical early ethnographic work (Gardner, Asch, Marshall), feminist experimental interventions in ethnographic film (Minh-Ha, Varda, Deren), and contemporary work that experiments with ethnographic elements, and we will synthesize various genres into new forms of long-form documentary, ethnofiction, and trance film (Marker, Oppenheimer, Sensory Ethnography Lab, Gonzalez, Rosi, Minervini, Kuchar). We will observe the progression of style through the 20th century into the 21st, with the various intellectual threads of post-structuralism, creating modifications of centering the experience and voice of the oppressed, narrative reflexivity/abstraction/unreliability, formal experimental editing styles, the decolonial method as filmmaking practice, and the historicization and interrogation of anthropology as a fraught discipline. |
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| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
SBS ANTH |
| Course Format: Seminar | Grading Mode: |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Requirement for: (ANTH)(CSCT) |
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Past Enrollment Probability: Less than 50% |
| SECTION 01 |
Major Readings: Wesleyan RJ Julia Bookstore
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Examinations and Assignments:
Weekly critiques of films and readings, 600-1000 words; final paper which can be a multi-media project. |
Additional Requirements and/or Comments:
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| Instructor(s): Russo,Joseph Times: .....F. 01:20PM-04:10PM; Location: CFS112; |
| Total Enrollment Limit: 16 | | SR major: 4 | JR major: 5 | | |
| Seats Available: -3 | GRAD: X | SR non-major: 2 | JR non-major: 2 | SO: 3 | FR: X |
| Drop/Add Enrollment Requests | | | | | |
| Total Submitted Requests: 15 | 1st Ranked: 2 | 2nd Ranked: 4 | 3rd Ranked: 2 | 4th Ranked: 2 | Unranked: 5 |
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