Women’s Studies 742

Feminist Film Theory,Spring 2012

Prof. L. Mizejewski, 113D University Hall, phone 292-1021

Office hours Tues 10-11; Thurs. 10-11 and 1-3

This course will survey the history of women in Hollywood film and also the major movements of feminist film theory from the early work in psychoanalysis to present day intersections with cultural studies, queer theory, and scholarship on race and transnational issues. Topics will include spectatorship, stardom, feminist auteurism, and genre. This class will be conducted as a seminar, structured by discussion, with occasional mini-lectures as needed.

Students who need to have an accommodation for disability are responsible for contacting the professor as soon as possible. The Office for Disability Services (150 Pomerene Hall; 292-3307; 292-0901 TDD) verifies the need for accommodations and assists in the development of accommodation strategies.

Required texts (SBX only):

Mayne, Judith. Cinema and Spectatorship. London and New York: Routledge, 1993.

Ovalle, Priscilla.Dance and the Hollywood Latina: Race, Sex, and Stardom. New Brunswick: Rutgers, 2011.

Radner, Hilary. Neo-Feminist Cinema: Girly Films, Chick Flicks and Consumer Culture.

New York: Routledge, 2011.

White, Patricia. Uninvited: Classical Hollywood Cinema and Lesbian Representation.

Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 1999.

Required outside screening: Stella Dallas (Vidor, 1937) and Pretty Woman (Marshall, 1990)

will be available on drm.osu.edu the week before due date.

Essays on Carmen:

Beltrán, Mary C. "The Hollywood Latina Body As Site Of Social Struggle: Media Constructions Of Stardom And Jennifer Lopez's 'Cross-Over Butt'." Quarterly Review Of Film And Video19.1 (2002): 71-86.

Berenstein, Rhona. "I'm Not the Sort of Person Men Marry": Monsters, Queers, and Hitchcock's Rebecca. Out in Culture : Gay, Lesbian, and Queer Essays on Popular Culture. Eds.Corey K. Creekmur and Alexander Doty. Durham : Duke UP, 1995. 238-59.

Doane, Mary Ann. “Female Spectatorship and Machines of Projection: Caught and Rebecca.” The Desire to Desire: The Woman’s Film of the 1940s. Bloomington

Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 1987. 155-75.

---. “Gilda: Epistemology as Striptease.” Femmes Fatales: Feminism, Film Theory, Psychoanalysis. New York and London: Routledge, 1991. 99-118.

Chughtai, “The Quilt.” The Quilt and Other Stories. Riverdale on Hudson: Sheep Meadow

P: 1994. 5-12.

Gopinath, Gayatri. “Local Sites/Global Contexts: The Transnational Trajectories of Fire and

‘The Quilt.’” Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures.

Durham and London: Duke UP, 2005. 131-60.

Heung, Marina. “’What’s the Matter With Sara Jane?’ Daughters and Mothers in Douglas Sirk’s Imitation of Life.” Imitation of Life: Douglas Sirk, Director. Ed. Lucy Fischer. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 1991. 302-24.

Hiro, Molly. "''Tain't No Tragedy Unless You Make It One': Imitation Of Life, Melodrama, And The Mulatta." Arizona Quarterly: A Journal Of American Literature, Culture, And Theory66.4 (2010): 93-113.

Kaplan, Ann. “Women, Film, Resistance: Changing Paradigms.” Women Filmmakers:Refocusing. Eds. Jacqueline Levitin et al. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2003. 15-28.

LaPlace, Maria. “Producing and Consuming the Woman’s Film: Discursive Struggle in

Now, Voyager. Home is Where the Heart Is: Studies in Melodrama and the Woman’s

Film. Ed. Christine Gledhill. London: BFI, 1987. 138-66.

Letteri, Richard. "Dirty Baby: The Gender Politics Of Million Dollar Baby." Quarterly Review Of Film And Video 28.3 (2011): 204-217.

Levitin, Jacqueline. “Excerpts from a Master Class with Deepa Mehta.” In Levitin. 284-90.

---. “An Introduction to Deepa Mehta: Making Films in Canada and

India.” In Levitin. 273-83.

---, ed. Women Filmmakers: Refocusing. Vancouver: U of BC P, 2002.

Martin, Angela. “Refocusing Authorship in Women’s Filmmaking.” In Levitin. 29-37.

Modleski, Tania. "Clint Eastwood And Male Weepies." American Literary History 22.1 (2010): 136-158.

--. “Woman and the Labyrinth: Rebecca.” The Women Who Knew TooMuch: Hitchcock and Feminist Theory. New York and London: Methuen, 1988.

Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” 1975. Feminism and Film Theory. Ed.

Constance Penley. New York: Routledge, 1988. 57-68.

Sklar, Robert, and Tania Modleski. "Million Dollar Baby A Split Decision." Cineaste 30.3 (2005): 6-11.

Williams, Linda. “Playing the Race Card” and “The American Melodramatic Mode.” Playing the Race Card: Melodramas of Black and White from Uncle Tom to O.J. Simpson. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton UP, 2001. 3-44. .

Recommended websites:

  • Internet Movie Data Base—excellent and reliable source of information and details about films : complete cast and crew, names of characters, etc.
  • This is the resources page of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies. It contains links for online cinema journals, archives, research centers, copyright information, etc.

Requirementsand assignments:

1) Attendance, engaged participation, and daily discussion questions:As with any graduate seminar, you are responsible for attending every class and engaging in the discussion. Because I am assigning a grade for participation, please be courteous in giving your colleagues in the seminar an opportunity to make thoughtful responses. Even though this is a small class, raise your hand and wait to be called on. For each reading, please bring to class a written discussion question about a concept or passage from the text that you think should be complicated, explicated, or otherwise analyzed. Your participation grade will reflect your oral responses but also the quality and thoughtfulness of your written questions.

Participation: 20% of final grade.

2) Shortresponse paper(2 pp. double spaced) and leadership of the first hour of class discussion: For the date you’ve chosen (a Thursday), please write a short paper responding to the day’s readings. You can make connections, explore and complicate one or more issues; or juxtapose issues to previous readings. Email your response paper to me by 10 a.m. the day of class so I can post it on Carmen and everyone can read it before classtime. In class, please sum up the main points of your paper and use them to launch discussion. Short paper: 20% of final grade.

3) Methodologies paper (2 pp. double spaced) due April 17: This is not so much a paper as an exercise designed to have you analyze the interdisciplinary methodologies used by Priscilla Ovalle to frame her book (previously her dissertation) on stardom and race. Your primary goal is to describe what you can learn from her about constructing and writing a dissertation/book project.Using her introductory chapter and her first chapter, please describe a) where and how she makes her primary argument, b) how she convinces us that this topic and argument have value for feminist studies, c) how she sets up an interdisciplinary methodology, and d) how she applies this framework to her chapter on DelRio.Methods paper: 20% of final grade.

4) Final paper: conference length, 10 pp. due June 6:Your paper should analyze a film of your own choosing, using the theories and materials we have discussed in class as well as materials you find in your research. During the last two days of class, each of you will present a ten-minute version of your paper (5 pages), conference style, to the class. Think of this presentation as a draft for which you can get feedback from the class. In timing your paper, estimate two minutes per page plus clips.Final paper: 40% of final grade.

Your paper proposal containing a one-paragraph description of your project, your research questions, your methodology, and a beginning bibliography of at least 5 items, is due May 1.

Please note: the Midwest Popular Culture Association meeting will be held in Columbus this October. The deadline for abstracts and proposals is the end of April. CFP:

For your research, I recommend the following data bases: Academic Search Premiere, Gender Studies, MLA Bibliography, the Film Literature Index, and the Film-Television Literature Index. (Make certain you use BOTH film indexes! The latter covers only full-text.) Note: because EBSCO now scans all of these, you can do multiple-index searches once you’ve signed on to any one of these. The tab “Choose Databases” is on the upper left of EBSCO Host.

Research format: You may use either Chicago or MLA style for your papers.

Screenings and readings:

March 27Introductions

Screening:The Cheat (DeMille, 1915)

March 29Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” (Carmen)

Mayne, 1-102

April 3Sexualities

Berenstein, “I’m Not the Kind of Woman Men Marry” (Carmen)

Screening: Rebecca (Hitchcock, 1940)

April 5Doane,”Caught and Rebecca” (Carmen)

Modleski, “Woman and the Labyrinth” (Carmen)

White, pp. 61-74

April 10White, xi-49

Mayne, 105-41

Now, Voyager (Rapper, 1942)

April 12White, 94-135

LaPlace, “Producing and Consuming the Woman’s Film” (Carmen)

Outside screening: Stella Dallas (Vidor, 1937) on drm.osu.edu

April 17Stardom

Ovalle, 1-48 and 70-90

Screening: Gilda (Vidor, 1946)

Methodologies Paper due

April 19Ovalle 90-100

Doane, “Gilda as Striptease”(Carmen)

April 24Melodrama I: Race

Linda Williams, “Playing the Race Card” and “The American Melodramatic Mode” (Carmen)

Screening: Imitation of Life(Sirk, 1959)

April 26Hiro, “Tain’t a Tragedy” (Carmen)

Heung, “What’s the Matter with Sara Jane?” (Carmen)

May 1Melodrama II: Masculinities

Modleski, “Clint Eastwood and Male Weepies” (Carmen)

Million Dollar Baby(Eastwood 2004)

Paper proposals due today

May 3Sklar and Modleski, “Split Decision” (Carmen)

Letteri, “Dirty Baby” (Carmen)

May 8Neo and Post Feminisms

Radner, 1-61

Required at-home screening: Pretty Woman

Screening: Legally Blonde (Luketic, 2001)

May 10Radner, 62-81 and 117-71, 90-97

May 15Radner, pp. 82-97

Beltrán, Mary C. "The Hollywood Latina Body” (Carmen)

Screening: Maid in Manhattan (Wang, 2002) or Out of Sight (Soderberg 1998)

May 17Radner, 98-115

Ovalle, 126-44

May 22Women Filmmakers

Kaplan, “Women, Film, Resistance” (Carmen)

Martin, “Refocusing Authorship in Women’s Filmmaking” (Carmen)

Chughtai, “The Quilt” (Carmen)

Screening, Fire (Mehta, 1996)

May 24Gopinath, “Local Sites/Global Contexts” (Carmen)

Levitin, “An Introduction to Deepa Mehta” (Carmen)

“Excerpts from a Master Class with Deepa Mehta” (Carmen)

May 29Conference Papers

May 31Conference Papers

June 6Papers due by 5 pm by email ()

Plagiarism: As defined in University Rule 3335-31-02, plagiarism is “the representation of another’s works or ideas as one’s own; it includes the unacknowledged word for word use and/or paraphrasing of another person’s work, and/or the inappropriate unacknowledged use of another person’s ideas.” It is the obligation of this department and its instructors to report all cases of suspected plagiarism to the Committee on Academic Misconduct. After the report is filed, a hearing takes place and if the student is found guilty, the possible punishment ranges from failing the class to suspension or expulsion from the university. Although the existence of the Internet makes it relatively easy to plagiarize, it also makes it even easier for instructors to find evidence of plagiarism. It is obvious to most teachers when a student turns in work that is not his or her own and plagiarism search engines make documenting the offense very simple. Always cite your sources; always ask questions before you turn in an assignment if you are uncertain about what constitutes plagiarism. To preserve the integrity of OSU as an institution of higher learning, to maintain your own integrity, and to avoid jeopardizing your future, DO NOT PLAGIARIZE!

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