Time Schedule:
Cynthia Steele
C LIT 357
Seattle Campus
The film as an art form, with particular reference to the literary dimension of film and to the interaction of literature with the other artistic media employed in the form. Films are shown as an integral part of the course. Content varies.
Class description
Analysis of representations of the U.S.-Mexico border in film and literature, by artists and scholars from the U.S., Mexico, and Europe. While we will begin with images of the border region, and of Latin America in general, in Orson Wells' Touch of Evil (1951) and clips from other classic Hollywood films of the 1940s and 1950s, we will pay particular attention to the blossoming of border scholarship and authors during the late 1990s and early 2000s. While there will be some consideration of formal issues like genre and cinematography, our primary focus will be on representation and ideology. Topics will include longstanding U.S. stereotypes of the border region and of Latin America in general, as they relate to race, ethnicity, gender and social class; and anti-imperialist and postcolonial critiques of these stereotypes. We will examine how performance art, fiction film, and both traditional and experimental documentary film have each been brought to bear on these issues, from a 'Northern' or a 'Southern' perspective, in the context of globalization and postmodernism. Required Textbooks:
1. Luis Humberto Crosthwaite et.al., Puro Border: Dispatches, Snapshots & Graffiti from La Frontera. El Paso: Cinco Puntos Press, 2003.
2. Tom Miller, ed. Writing on the Edge: A Borderlands Reader. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 2003.
Films: Orson Welles, Touch of Evil (1951); Jesse Lerner and Rubén Ortiz, Fronterilandia (1997); Gullermo Gómez Peña, Border Brujo (1987); Marlo Bendau, Guillermo Gómez Peña (1996); María Novaro, The Garden of Eden (1994); John Sayles, Lone Star (1999); Ursula Biemann, Performing the Border (1999); Lourdes Portillo, Señorita Extraviada (2001); Bruno Sorrentino, City of Dreams (2001); Dee Dee Halleck, Gringo in Mañanaland (1999); and Chantal Akerman, De lautre côte (2002).
Student learning goals
General method of instruction
Lecture and discussion.
Recommended preparation
Class assignments and grading
Two 5-6-page analytical essays, including bibliography, 30% each 60%
Two in-class film response papers, 10% each 20%
Class participation 20%
