This course provides an introduction to film history beginning with the incorporation of synchronous sound technology at the onset of the “Golden Age” of cinema. Although we will focus significantly on the development and maintenance of the Hollywood film industry, this lens will also prompt questions about power, propaganda, and spectatorship, in a global context. Therefore, we will track the evolution of the motion picture industry in both Hollywood and international markets through the end of, what is known as, the “studio system” era. One of the primary goals of this class is to understand how dominant ideologies related to race, class, gender, and sexuality have impacted American and international film industries over time. By analyzing the industrial, technological, and cultural changes that shaped the film industry, students will be prompted to consider various film movements and the ways in which they attempted to address the socio-political conditions of their respective audiences. Students will be encouraged to critically engage with a range of film styles that collectively shifted the form and function of the industry during critical moments in history.
Days: TU TH  05:00-06:20 PM

Survey of major directions in film and media theory. Various theories of mass culture, realism, auteurism, semiotics, feminism, cultural studies, and theories of other media, with an emphasis on developing the student’s ability to analyze and articulate a theoretical argument. Materials Fee
Days: MO WE  11:30-12:50 PM

Survey of major directions in film and media theory. Various theories of mass culture, realism, auteurism, semiotics, feminism, cultural studies, and theories of other media, with an emphasis on developing the student’s ability to analyze and articulate a theoretical argument. Materials Fee
Days: TU TH  11:00-12:20 PM

This course offers a critical overview of key theoretical concepts and arguments that have informed film and television studies, with a focus on the study of sound and voice-over narration in documentary and fiction film.  After a brief historical and technical introduction, we will consider the creative manipulation of sound elements across genres and in the work of influential filmmakers such as Francis Ford Coppola, Agnès Varda, Orson Welles, and Ousmane Sembène.  How did documentary help to launch the use of voice-over?  How have fictional genres featured voice-over as a core element of their narrative discourse? What role has voice-over played in the development of feminist cinema and films from the Global South?  Segments of films from a wide range of cultural sources will be shown in class.  Prerequisites are FMS 85A, FMS 85B, FMS 86, or FMS 87.
Days: MO WE  01:00-02:20 PM

The course is upper level and conducted like a seminar—a weekly conversation on topics arising from the reading of primary sources (from 600 BCE to now).  No tests.  But there is weekly reading and weekly writing. You’ll compose written summaries of the readings  (to prove you read it)  and you’ll compose short ‘thought’ essays about ideas in the readings that set in motion your further thinking on the matter.  Your short thought essays become topics we all can discuss in class. Note:  there is reading and writing due the first day of class  (see assignments on Canvas).  In addition to reading and writing, you must talk (and listen) in our class discussions, and obviously you must show up for that. An absence in a once-a-week class is a whole week of absences. You are graded 50% each on writing and speaking  (with an absence losing all speaking points for that week).  The primary sources you’ll read represent only a tiny portion of a vast literature of religious skepticism, a literature that no one gets exposed to in their educational career, from kindergarten through the Ph.D.  (Why do you think that is?)  There is one textbook available via PDF and possibly in the UCI bookstore:  “Varieties of Unbelief from Epicurus to Sartre,” edited by J.C.A. Gaskin.
Same as Rel Std 103
Days: WE  03:00-05:50 PM

This course covers the most important themes in the history of Armenians and Armenia in the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries and does so within a regional (i.e., Middle East and Caucasus) and global context. This course will have a strong thematic approach as we proceed from imperial rule in the nineteenth century through twentieth-century genocide, brief independence, sovietization, and independence again, culminating in the Velvet Revolution, and most recently the war over Artsakh/Karabakh. As we explore this history, we will focus on Armenians as imperial and national subjects in ancestral lands as well as transimperial and transnational subjects in a diaspora that has had a complex relationship with the idea and reality of homeland.
Days: MO WE  09:30-10:50 AM

Emphasis/Category: World Religious Traditions (Category 1)

The course is upper level and conducted like a seminar—a weekly conversation on topics arising from the reading of primary sources (from 600 BCE to now).  No tests.  But there is weekly reading and weekly writing. You’ll compose written summaries of the readings  (to prove you read it)  and you’ll compose short ‘thought’ essays about ideas in the readings that set in motion your further thinking on the matter.  Your short thought essays become topics we all can discuss in class. Note:  there is reading and writing due the first day of class  (see assignments on Canvas).  In addition to reading and writing, you must talk (and listen) in our class discussions, and obviously you must show up for that. An absence in a once-a-week class is a whole week of absences. You are graded 50% each on writing and speaking  (with an absence losing all speaking points for that week).  The primary sources you’ll read represent only a tiny portion of a vast literature of religious skepticism, a literature that no one gets exposed to in their educational career, from kindergarten through the Ph.D.  (Why do you think that is?)  There is one textbook available via PDF and possibly in the UCI bookstore:  “Varieties of Unbelief from Epicurus to Sartre,” edited by J.C.A. Gaskin.

Same as History 114 Section A

Days: WE  03:00-05:50 PM

Emphasis/Category: Locating Europes and European Colonies, Inter-Area Studies
The era of New Imperialism (1880–1914) was underpinned by racial and cultural hierarchies that cast Europe as superior and therefore morally justified in pursuing global dominance over “uncivilized” territories. Echoes of Empire examines both the ideological foundations of New Imperialism and the systems of governance it produced, before turning to the processes of decolonization that radically reshaped Europe in the decades after the Second World War. The course focuses on how late colonialism transformed Europe through demographic shifts, migration policies, and cultural and political debates about national identity. Readings and films reveal how Europe continues to negotiate its colonial past through nostalgia, silence, and avoidance. Case studies from Britain, Germany, France, and the Netherlands illustrate how colonial legacies remain central to contemporary debates over multiculturalism, populism, and memory. By the end of the course, students will gain both historical literacy and the tools to assess how late colonialism continues to influence European identity and politics.
Days: MO WE  02:00-03:20 PM

Emphasis/Category: Inter-Area Studies
Presence in virtual reality is not simply a technical feature.  It is a way of relating.  This course examines how presence takes shape when bodies, technologies, and stories meet in immersive environments.  Students will draw on posthuman theory from thinkers such as Donna Haraway, N. Katherine Hayles, and Rosi Braidotti to understand communication as a distributed practice.  We will experiment with virtual reality as a medium where sensing, movement, voice, and world design come together.  Joy becomes a quiet thread within this work.  It emerges when presence is shared and co-created.  Students will create small immersive pieces that invite others into moments of attention, care, and wonder.
Days: TU TH  03:30-04:50 PM