Syllabus
Full sylabus is available upon registration, or upon request by the instructor.
QUEER FILM 2023
ATTENDANCE
Unless stated otherwise, the class sessions for the winter semester 2023 will be conducted in person. The class assignments will be turned in via the MSTeams platform. For more information about MSTeams and how to register, see here: https://dl.cuni.cz/ms-teams/.
Attendance is required and is crucial to the community-building in which we’ll be engaged over the course of the semester, exchanging ideas and learning from each other. Your participation grade will be impacted if you have more than two unexcused absences. Please do not Text/Tweet/Facebook during class; again, your grade will be impacted if you do so. Some students learn best with their laptops; laptops are acceptable if you are one of those learners, but don’t use your laptop to be online.
Preparing for classes
You are expected to read the material carefully and critically and participate in the class discussions. Participation is central component of this class; you are required to come well prepared for discussion. Prepared and active attendance is part of your grade.
ACADEMIC INTEGRITY
As an academic community, School of Humanities (and The GS Study programme) is committed to providing an environment in which research, learning, and scholarship can flourish and in which all endeavors are guided by academic and professional integrity.
The most common Academic Integrity issue that arises is plagiarism. For further clarification about what constitutes plagiarism, please refer to https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/589/01/. This is a very useful primer to understand what plagiarism is and how to avoid it.
Please keep in mind that plagiarism occurs through intentional copying of non-original (either your own or others) work as well as through the lack of proper citation of resources that you use in your papers and discussions. Academic dishonesty is defined as cheating of any kind, including misrepresenting one’s own work, taking credit for the work of others without crediting them and without appropriate authorization, and the fabrication of information. Often, plagiarism results more from not being fastidious than from intentional use of someone else’s words as your own. Make sure any and all quotations or ideas that you draw from other sources are adequately cited.
Plagiarism will result in, at a minimum, a zero on the assignment. Other consequences include any and/or all of the following: an automatic failure of the course, reporting to the University, academic probation, and/or expulsion from the programme.
N.B. ! Wikipedia will not be recognized as an academic secondary source!
DISABILITY SUPPORT SERVICES
The provision of support services for students with special needs is governed by the Rector’s Provision No. 9/2013: Charles University standards of support for students with special needs.
Centre for Information, Counselling and Social Services
E-mail: ipsc@ruk.cuni.cz
Phone: +420 224 491 850
School of Humanities: https://fhs.cuni.cz/FHSENG-1264.html
I am eager to ensure that all students feel accommodated; feel free to talk comfortably with me about any access preferences. Furthermore, disability will be approached in the context of material we study over the course of the semester to highlight disability as a useful analytic for approaching much of what we will read or view.
I. INTRODUCING QUEER FILM 5.10. Week 1: New Queer Cinema
Introducing Queer Film
What are GLBT film studies?
Is there a difference between GLBTI (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Trans_, Intesex…) and Queer film/film criticism?
Should we care about good and positive representations of GLBTIAQ people?
Why film? And does it all matter, really?
Reading:
Michele Aaron, “New Queer Cinema: An Introduction,” New Queer Cinema. A Critical Reader. Rutgers UP. 2004 (pp. 3-14)
In-class screening:
Fabulous! The Story of a Queer Cinema (Lisa Ades and Lesli Klainberg, US, 2006) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIod2QP2TaI
Recommended:
Rod Ferguson, “Race-ing Homonormativity: Citizenship, Sociology and Gay identity” in Black Queer Studies: A Critical Anthology, Patrick E. Johnson, Mae Henderson, Eds.Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2005; pp. 52-67
Keeling, Kara. „Joining the Lesbians: Cinematic Regimes of Black Lesbian Visibility,” in Black Queer Studies: A Critical Anthology, Patrick E. Johnson, Mae Henderson, Eds. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2005; (pp. 213–227)
Briggs, Laura, Gladys McCormick, and J. T. Way. "Transnationalism: A Category of Analysis." American Quarterly 60.3 (2008): 625-48. 12.10. Week 2: Queer Film Festivals and Global Cultural Economy
Reading:
Jules Rosskam, “Making Trans Cinema: A Roundtable Discussion with Felix Endara, Reina Gossett, Chase Joynt, Jess Mac and Madsen Minax.” Somatechnics 8.1(2018): 14–26.
Sharon L. Snyder and David T. Mitchell, “‘How do we get all these disabilities in here?’: Disability Film Festivals and the Politics of Atypicality.” Canadian Journal of Film Studies/Revue Canadienne d'Etudes Cinématographiques 17.1 (2008): 11-29.
Yes, We Fuck! (2015, Antonio Centeno, Raúl de la Morena); http://www.rauldelamorena.com; password: yeswefuck
Recommended:
Disclosure, dir. Sam Feder and Amy Scholder, 2020. Netflix
Available at: https://www.disclosurethemovie.com/about
Rich, B. Ruby. “The New Homosexual Film Festivals” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 12.4. (2006): 620-625.
Barrett, Michael, et al. "Queer film and video festival forum, take one: Curators Speak Out." GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 11.4 (2005): 579-603.
Straayer, Chris, and Thomas Waugh, eds. “Queer film and video festival forum, take two: Critics Speak Out." GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 12.4 (2006): 599-602.
Straayer, Chris, and Thomas Waugh, eds. "Queer Film and Video Festival Forum: Artists Speak Out." GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 14.1 (2007): 120-2.
Arjun Appadurai, Appadurai, Arjun. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis, Minn: University of Minnesota Press, 1996.
II: TRANSNATIONAL CONTEXTS 19.10. Week 3: East and Beyond/ Beyond East
Reading:
Pope, Jill. “Spectral fabulations: Belgrade drag performances refashioning socialist memories.” Memory Studies 16. no. 1(2023): 85–99
Kolářová, Kateřina. “Crip Genealogies from the Postsocialist East”, Pp. 217-238 in M. Chen, A. Kafer, E. Kim, and J. A. Minich (eds.). Crip Genealogies. Durham: Duke University Press. 2023.
Screening:
Mandragora, dir. Wiktor Grodecki, 1997.
Recommended:
Popa, Bogdan. “Marxism and queer theory at the end of the Cold War,” In: De-centering queer theory. Communist sexuality in the flow during and after the Cold War. Manchester University Press. 2021, pp. 97-130.
Zita Farkas, „The Double Bind of Visibility: Mainstreaming Lesbianism in Love Sick” in Fejes, Narcisz, and Andrea P. Balogh.Eds. Queer Visibility in Post-Socialist Cultures. Intellect, Chicago University Press. 2013, 175-196
Robert Kupta, Joanna Mizielinska, De-Centring Western Sexualities: Central and Eastern European Perspectives. Burlington: Ashgate, 2011; chapters: “Introduction: Why Study Sexualities in Central and Eastern Europe? pp. 1-10; “‘Contemporary Peripheries’: Queer Studies, Circulations of Knowledge and East/West Divide”, pp.11-27
Kathi Wiedlack, “Red” vs. the Lesbians—Russian Characters, US-Nationalism and New Cold War Cultures in Orange Is The New Black” The Body in Feminist Theories and Methodologies, a special issue of Gender, Research, eds. Kateřina Kolářová and Jaroslava Marhánková
Annotation
The course focuses on cinematic and cultural representations of gender and sexual differnce in international and Czech films. It introduces students to queer film and feminist, GLBTI and queer film studies in the context of critical reflection on global and transnational changes and influences. Since part of the course is an intensive workshop connected with the Mezipatra Film Festival, the course also discusses the role that gender and sexual identity politics play in international film festivals, and what role they play in shaping society's approach to alternative gender and sexual identities and life experiences and choices.
The course runs concurrently at George Washington University, Washington D.C., USA. The two study groups join at workshop during Mezipatra and participate in the festival together.
The workshop is intended to be a space for two groups of students from different cultural, political and linguistic contexts. Our discussion partners are George Washington University students and
Professor Robert McRuer. Robert McRuer is, among other things, a leading theorist of queer theory and "queer theory," focused on critical deconstruction of the category of "disability." Discussion of the films we will watch together during the festival open up a space for confrontations of different perspectives, as well as a more contextualized and concrete discussion of transnational dimension of film festivals.
This year's date for Mezipatra in Prague is: November 3-10, 2022. During this time, the course will meet everyday. You will be provided a detailed schedule for the workshop at the beginning of the semester.
Passes/admissions to the films in the film festival are paid by the student(s) themselves. In individual cases, where this would form a barrier to participation in the course, we will seek a solution. In such a case, please contact me.