Claremont McKenna College

HIST 096 CM-01: The Amazon

• Instructor: Sarynski, Sarah
  • Tuesday/Thursday, 9:35-10:50 PM
  • The Hive
  • Elective

From the time of the conquest, the outside world turned the Amazon into an imagined place to unleash their fantasies and fears. This course introduces students to the gendered and racialized narratives of the Amazon focusing on how such narratives have been imagined in visual culture. We examine images (wood carvings and photography), explorers’ accounts, ethnography, novels, advertisements, environmental campaigns and films from the time of the conquest to the present day. The point is to understand how the Amazon and its people have been imagined externally and internally, and why certain narratives hold power in the Western world.

HIST 096 CM-02: The Amazon

• Instructor: Sarynski, Sarah
  • Tuesday/Thursday, 11:00-12:15 PM
  • The Hive
  • Elective

From the time of the conquest, the outside world turned the Amazon into an imagined place to unleash their fantasies and fears. This course introduces students to the gendered and racialized narratives of the Amazon focusing on how such narratives have been imagined in visual culture. We examine images (wood carvings and photography), explorers’ accounts, ethnography, novels, advertisements, environmental campaigns and films from the time of the conquest to the present day. The point is to understand how the Amazon and its people have been imagined externally and internally, and why certain narratives hold power in the Western world.

KRNT 130 CM-01: Korean Cinema & Culture

• Instructor: Pak, Sooran
  • Tuesday/Thursday, 1:15-2:30 PM
  • Room 12 (Roberts North)
  • Elective

This course examines Korean history, politics, culture, and society through analysis of their representation in contemporary Korean cinema. This course will follow the history of Korea chronologically from Yi Dynasty to the present focusing on the topics such as Confucianism, Colonial period, nationalism, Korean War, national division, military government, democratic movements, and urbanization. The focus of the class will be equally distributed between the films themselves and the historical time and people captured on these films. Knowledge of Korean is not required.

LIT 130 CM-01: Introduction to Film

• Instructor: Morrison, James
  • Tuesday/Thursday, 11:00-12:15 PM
  • Room 15 (Roberts North)
  • Introduction to Critical Studies

From its inception, cinema has often been conceptualized as having a “language” of its own. This course examines that metaphor from aesthetic, cultural, social, and historical perspectives. We will begin with a close analysis of a contemporary popular film, in an effort to “defamiliarize” typical conventions of cinematic expression, and then proceed through a study of multiple movements and genres in the history of film, from German Expressionism to the French New Wave, from Hollywood to documentary to avant-grade and independent filmmaking. Overall, the course is intended to provide students with a broad introduction to film analysis and to the field of Film Studies.

LIT 131 CM-01: Film History I (1925-1965)

• Instructor: Morrison, James
  • Tuesday/Thursday, 2:45-4:00 PM
  • Room 15 (Roberts North)
  • Media History

This course surveys the history of cinema as art and mass medium, from the introduction of sound to the rise of the “New Hollywood.” Topics such as cinematic response to World War II, the decline of the studio system, and “new waves” of European filmmaking are studied in social, cultural and aesthetic perspectives.

LIT 134C CM-01: Special Studies in Film – Spy Films

• Instructor: von Hallberg, Robert
  • Tuesday/Thursday, 4:15-5:30 PM
  • Room 105 (Roberts South)
  • Media History

A seminar designed to explore the aesthetic achievement and social impact of film as an art form. Subjects for study include such topics as specific film genres, the work of individual filmmakers, and recurring themes in film. Each year the seminar concentrates on a different area – for example, “Film and Politics,” “The Director as Author,” or “Violence and the Hero in American Films.” Repeatable for differing topics. The topic for spring 2024 is “Spy Films”. This course focuses on spy-thrillers. The films are entertainments, but they deal directly with political subjects; they imagine ways of being a patriot, an effective agent, a reliable civil servant, and of pursuing the interests of a state beyond lawful, acknowledged procedures. We will emphasize interpretations that engage these concerns, and look to some essays by political philosophers to guide our analyses.

RLST 125 CM-01: Race/Religion in Hollywood Films

• Instructor: Espinosa, Gaston
  • Tuesday, 6:00-10:00PM
  • Room 105 (Roberts South)
  • Elective

This course critically examines how Blacks, Latinos/as, and Native Americans have been depicted and socially constructed in Hollywood-distributed films over the past century. We start by exploring screenwriting and critical theories about film, race, religion, gender, and social change and then how Hollywood has served as a vehicle for both affirming racial-ethnic stereotypes and/or challenging and resisting them in their desire to rewrite the visual narrative of American history. We analyze and interpret how film can function as a vehicle for racial, religious, political, gender, and/or social commentary, conscientization, protest, and reconciliation.