General Catalog 2024-25

Lecture, three hours. Overview of most popular art form in world’s largest nation to show how cinema struggled under incipient capitalism in Russia, how moviemaking on other side of world departed from path marked out by Hollywood and London, how films operate as form of nationwide persuasion, relationship between word and image in those acts of persuasion, how even frightening dogma cannot escape importance of audience desire(s), different forms of social existence as refuge from both capitalism and communism, and what values of world’s biggest country are. Role of language in self-definition. Is selfhood verbal or visual matter? P/NP or letter grading.