Queer Cinema in Transnational Perspective

Sylabus

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: [e-mail]

Phone: [phone]  

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

Anotace

Kurz se věnuje filmovým a obecně kulturním reprezentacím genderové a sexuální jinakosti ve světovém i českém filmu a uvádí studující do problematiky Queer filmu a feministických, GLBTI a queer filmových studií a to v kontextu kritické refllexe globálních a transnacionálnícj proměn a vlivů. Jelikož částí kurzu je i intenzivni workshop navázán na filmový festival Mezipatra, diskutuje kurz i roli, kterou v politice genderových a sexuálních identit hrají mezinárodní filmové festivaly, a jakou roli hrají ve formování přístupu společnosti k alternativním genderovým a sexuálním identitám a životním zkušenostem a volbám.

Kurz probíhá paralelně na George Washington University, Washington D.C., USA. Obě studijní skupiny se setkají v rámci workshopu během Mezipater a společně se festivalu zúčastní.

Workshop je zamýšlen na prostor pro setkání dvou skupin studujících z rozlišných kulturních, politických a koneckonců i jazykových kontextů. Našimi partnery_kami v diskuzi jsou studující George Washington University a prof. Robert McRuer. Robert McRuer je mj. předním teoretikem queer teorií a "teorie kriploušství", zaměřené na kritickou dekonstrukci kategorie "postižení". Diskuze filmů, které budeme společně sledovat v rámci filmového festivalu, otevírají prostor pro konfrontace různých pohledů, i kontextualizované a konkrétnější diskuzi o transnacionálním rozměru filmových festivalů.

V letošním roce probíhá workshop souběžně s Mezipatry v Praze (3.–10. 11. 2022), v těchto dnech probíhá workshop celo- a každodenně (viz sylabus).

Permanentku/vstupy na filmy v rámci filmového festivalu si studující hradí sami/y. V individuálních případech, kdy by toto tvořilo bariéru v účasti na kurzu, budeme hledat řešení. V takovém případě mě prosím kontaktujte.