Post your reading questions for week eight’s readings:
Tom Gunning’s “Doing For the Eye What the Phonograph Does for the Ear”
Friedrich Kittler’s “Gramaphone, Film Typewriter”
Thomas Elsaesser’s “The New Film History as Media Archaeology”
Please, post them in the comment section for this entry.
Post your reading questions for week seven’s readings:
Janet Staiger’s “The White Slave” from Bad Women: Regulating Sexuality in Early American Film
Ben Brewster’s “Traffic in Souls: An Experiment in Feature-length Narrative Construction” from Cinema Journal, Vol. 31
Please, post them in the comment section for this entry.
Post your reading questions for week six’s readings on “the Electric Message”.
Please, post them in the comment section for this entry.
Undergraduate Assignment # 1
Short Essay–1500-2000 words, 5-7 pages—Due Feb 22, 2007
Choose any two of the following readings. Outline the main arguments of the essays. State how the authors are trying to reconceptualize or redirect the study of early cinema. What aspect of early cinema do they emphasize? What are the consequences of their interventions? What do they contribute to our understanding of early cinema or the study of cinema in general? Please feel free to e-mail me if you have any questions about the assignment.
Tom Gunning, “ ‘Animated Pictures’: Tales of the cinema’s forgotten future, after 100 years of film.”
Mary Ann Doane, “Temporality, Storage, Legibility.”
Dai Vaughn, “Let There Be Lumiere.”
Tom Gunning, “The Cinema of Attractions: Early Film, Its Spectator and the Avant-Garde.”
Tom Gunning, “An Aesthetics of Astonishment: Early Film and the (In)Credulous Spectator.”
Mary Ann Doane, “Technology’s Body: Cinematic Vision in Modernity.”
Constance Balides, “Scenarios of Exposure in the Practice of Everyday Life: Women in the Cinema of Attractions.”
Lucy Fischer, “The Lady Vanishes: Women, Magic, and the Movies.”
Kristen Whissel, “The Gender of Empire: American Modernity, Masculinity, and Edison’s War Actualities.”
Janet Staiger, “Troublesome Pictures.”
Unfortunately, for week five’s topic on the “Western and the West in Early Cinema” Kathleen was unable to present. However, we do have her notes: Kathleen’s Presentation
Both this week’s readings and discussion made references to Fredrick Jackson Turner’s “The Significance of Frontier in American History” which can be read here and Patricia Nelson Limerick’s “Turnarians All” which can be read here .
The films we viewed in class today are are available on the LoC wesbite under the Chronological Title list of Edison Motion Pictures:
http://www.memory.loc.gov/ammem/edhtml/edmvchrn.html#1
Buffalo Bill’s Wild West films (Sioux Ghost Dance, Buffalo Dance, Bucking Broncho, Annie Oakley ) are listed under 1894, The Great Train Robbery under 1903, and The Little Train Robbery under 1905.
Another useful link on the Library of Congress Website lists their collection of American Indians in Silent Films:
http://www.loc.gov/rr/mopic/findaid/indian1.html