| Screenings | Monday 10:00 - 12:00 pm, Room 222, Innis College |
|---|---|
| Seminars | Tuesday 12:00 - 2:00 pm, Room 222, Innis College |
| Office Hours | Monday 12:00 – 1:00; Tuesday 2:00-3:00; or by appointment. |
In the late sixties, feminist critiques of the mass media emphasized the distorted and limiting stereotypes of women in dominant cinema. A constellation of critical questions soon began to emerge: the issue of a discernible feminine aesthetic; an emerging critique of images of women criticism; an interrogation of the ideological processes of cinematic signification; and a subsequent revision of feminist critical practices in the genre studies that emphasized readings "against the grain".
In the eighties Feminist Film Theory became situated at the centre of cultural studies. The most productive topics of debate were theories of the look, gendered spectatorship, language and the voice, voyeurism and fetishism, narrativity and its relation to gender, and representation and subjectivity. In the nineties, theoretical approaches based on psychoanalysis, semiotics, deconstruction and postmodernism came under scrutiny. New work inflected readings of gender with issues of sexualities, abilities and racial/cultural identities; postcoloniality, postmodernism and transnationalism.
In the present, the new historicism has invigorated an international archival project that aims to theorize new paradigms of authorship and reception and to rediscover lost women filmmakers from every aspect of the film industry. At the same time, reception and affect, the classical canon and the archive and new readings of toxic texts have become intense foci of feminist scholarship.
This course maps the history of feminist approaches to cinema from mid-sixties critiques of stereotypes of women to current debates in feminist film theory. As well as feminist critical strategies, the course also surveys some of the cinematic strategies that women filmmakers have devised to challenge the prevailing norms in dominant cinema.
Film texts include some classic films of Hollywood as well as many genres of films by women directors.
This is a seminar and discussion course. Reading the assigned texts and participating in class discussions will be essential to the course. Films will be screened every week.
Course Reader.
All course assignments, handouts, and announcements will be posted on Blackboard
for your
convenience. To access the INI 323Y Blackboard website, go to the U of T portal
log-in page at
http://portal.utoronto.ca and log in using your UTORid and password. Once logged
in to the portal, look for the “My Courses” module, where you will
find a link to the course website.
Patricia Erens (ed.) Issues in Feminist Film Criticism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990.
Sue Thornham, ed. Feminist Film
Theory: A Reader. New York: New York University
Press, 1999.
The books have been ordered at Toronto Women’s Bookstore, 73 Harbord St. (just west of Spadina), 416-922-8744; as well as at the University of Toronto Booksore (Koffler Bldg., College & St. George).
Prerequisites: NEW 260Y or INI 115Y