As registration for the Fall 2021 academic semester begins, I wanted to provide more information about courses I will begin teaching starting September, 2021. Please see detailed descriptions below. If you have any specific questions that are not answered here, you can contact me directly. I look forward to another rich and engaging semester with both new and familiar faces (some in person this year following the difficulties of Covid-19, yay!)
ARTH 3130: Film and the City
Fall 2021: In-person Instruction
Kwantlen Polytechnic University
Wednesdays 4:00-6:50pm, Room Fir 130
This course takes as its focus the dynamic intersections of the filmic medium and the emergence of the “city” as both a conceptual and material idea, examining how filmmakers and the techniques of filmmaking from the early 20th C. forward have been closely bound up in representing the visual, spatial, and mental contours of the metropolis. Beginning with an examination of film’s critical role in the development of modern art and the history of the avant-garde, this course will also draw from existing issues and debates concerning the expanding field of visual culture, exploring how the evolving city (as place and idea) and its various filmic representations have played a reflexive role in the development and understanding of important themes emerging in the modern and contemporary art of the past century. In this way, the course will roughly follow the history and theory of visual arts as it moves from the emergence of the modern period in Europe through the demise of modernism following WWII and into the areas of post-modernism, post-colonialism, and identity politics informing current debates about globalization/migration.
The course is organized using case studies beginning with European cities and representative films that engage with questions of modernism and modernity, then working outwards to non-Western and North American cities, allowing for both a chronological and thematic approach to exploring the intersections of film and the city. Cities under investigation will include Rome, Tokyo, Paris, London, New York, Rio de Janeiro, Berlin, Lahore, Los Angeles, Beijing, and Vancouver.
ARTH 1130: Introduction to Film Studies
Fall 2021: Online, asynchronous with weekly synchronous meetings Fridays
Kwantlen Polytechnic University
The ever popular film studies course has moved online once again for Fall 2021 and is continuing to evolve and update to consider recent developments in the film industry, together with new research that links histories of cinema's past to its present. This is a course that will have you thinking critically about motion pictures long after the final exam-- it also provides an opportunity to visit and see films at the Vancouver International Film Festival (October 1-11).
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Students will study the history and development of world cinema, and the comprehension and theory of film as a visual language and art-making practice from its inception in the late nineteenth century to the present. The goal of the course is to introduce students to the critical interpretation of the cinema and the various vocabularies and methods with which one can explore the aesthetic function, together with the social, political, and technological contexts and developments, of moving pictures. The format of this course (as an asynchronous online course with a one hour online synchronous weekly discussion) will normally entail a short interactive presentation, the screening of a full-length film, and a focused group discussion. Each film will serve as a starting point and gateway for discussion about the course’s daily theme.
ARTH 1140: Introduction to Visual Art, Urban, and Screen Culture
Fall 2021: Online, fully asynchronous with optional synchronous bi-monthly meetings on Thursdays
Kwantlen Polytechnic University
Formulated to compliment ARTH 1130: Introduction to Film Studies, this course extends the conversation about screen culture to the world of urban studies and public art. We begin with the question "How do we navigate and make sense of the fast-changing world of new urban visual environments and the emerging world of screen culture?" and explore case studies in street and graffiti art, hip-hop and punk culture, video gaming, anime, new media and Internet art, urban performance art, activist art, grassroots fashion, street photography, and the world of mobile photography and filmmaking.
COURSE DESCRIPTION: Students will study the broad field of contemporary visual art and culture with a specific focus on the role of urban environments and the emerging world of screen culture in shaping new possibilities for global art production and circulation. Students will explore how they can become active agents rather than passive observers through engagement with the diversity of visual art and culture surrounding them. They will investigate interdisciplinary topics connecting the world of visual art with urban and screen cultures through case studies in street and graffiti art, hip-hop and punk culture, video gaming, anime, new media and Internet art, urban performance art, activist art, grassroots fashion, street photography, and the world of mobile photography and filmmaking.
CA 117: Modern Art History
Fall 2021: In-person Instruction
Simon Fraser University
Thursdays 6:30-9:20pm, Vancouver Harbour Centre Campus 1700.
Offered as a core required course in SFU’s School for the Contemporary Arts, CA 117 offers an introduction the visual arts of the nineteenth century, with a critical focus on the roots of modernism and the avant-garde. If you have ever wondered how Western art evolved from its more traditional, Renaissance roots to the challenging and at times difficult-to-understand contemporary art of today, this is the course that holds many of your answers.
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course provides an introduction to the complex ways in which social and political change, and ideologies of gender, class, race and ethnicity, worked to shape aspects of nineteenth century visual culture in Europe and North America. Emphasis will be placed on the roles played by industrialization, political revolution, rapid urban growth, global commerce, and the new media technologies of an expanding consumer culture in defining a wide range of visual culture. Throughout the term we will also examine different representations and debates around the idea of modernity and the “modern.” Since the time period under investigation has often been called “The First Modern Century”, we will pay particular attention to shifting ideas related to labour and leisure, urban social space and spectacle, and issues bearing on Euro-American expansion of empires in relation to indigenous populations, throughout the nineteenth century to turn of the twentieth century up to WWI.