culture and representation— city and cinema...cinema and the city: film and urban societies in a...

ILAS https://nu2020city.blogspot.com/ 2020 Spring MA RAN ([email protected])

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CULTURE AND REPRESENTATION— CITY AND CINEMA

Lecturer: MA Ran ([email protected]) Time: FRIDAY 14:45~16:15

We meet at ZOOM for all classes!! (see details below) Join Zoom Meeting (copy+paste/click)

https://zoom.us/j/4916249127?pwd=WitVUnlYTlp5cXBrODRwQVAwbHlldz09

Meeting ID: 491 624 9127

Password: 2020maaran Venue: everywhere with Wifi

Office Hour: ZOOM with my ID; appointment by email Course Blog: https://nu2020city.blogspot.com/

[readings and other course-related materials, notifications would be updated at the course blog; for password when

downloading, ask the teacher.


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Course Description & Objective In this disorienting, globalizing world, the lives and existence of human beings are to great extent defined by the urban conditions they are enmeshed within and contending with. This survey course attempts to look at major urban issues and cultural topics in modern societies by engaging with a wide spectrum of cultural texts drawn from films and other types of visual/image works such as photography, transmedia art projects/installations, manga, and anime. Our case studies pay particular attention to the social contexts and cities in contemporary East Asia. However, the ‘city’ will not be simply explored as the theme or ambience featured in these texts. Following our adventure of ‘entering’ the city as cultural texts (such as Tokyo, Osaka, Nagasaki/Hiroshima, Beijing, Taipei, and Seoul), with the socio-historical dimensions of urban space theoretically surveyed, we shall at the same time direct our attention to the various types of urbanites and their mental life. While our urban lives are haunted by memories and desire, they have been on the other hand greatly mediated by the newly-developed digital technologies and (platforms of) social media. Overall, departing from our observations upon Asian metropolises/societies, students are expected to debate and discuss cinematic/visual/cultural texts in relation to the urban condition of local, regional and global scales. Through the lectures, students are expected to learn how to approach and critique the cultural space of cities by utilizing key concepts drawn from various theoretical perspectives such as cultural studies, visual culture, and sociology. Evaluation:

THREE times of absence=FAIL 35% Attendance (method TBA) & contribution to e-group discussions/e-presentations [group presentation is associated with Discussion sessions] 30% Reading Journal (15%x2) 35% Final Paper


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Notes on ZOOM (please do some self-study) 1. It’s not a must to install ZOOM (free for users), but would be more

efficient if you download the app—highly recommended; 2. Please make sure you add me, Ran, ([email protected]) to your

ZOOM contact list (we may migrant to JACS account later after May when the free service terminates, but at the moment please just add my NU mail account);

3. Join Zoom Meeting (copy+paste+click) 10 min every Friday before the class starts, with your audio and video on; a password is needed for joining the meeting.

Meeting link (if you cannot use an app): https://zoom.us/j/4916249127?pwd=WitVUnlYTlp5cXBrODRwQVAwbHl

ldz09 OR in the app, find our Meeting ID: 491 624 9127

Password: 2020maaran [see the images below, this is how you could find the meeting with the

app by clicking JOIN; but please try not to use nickname while taking the lectures since it will take a longer time to figure out who you are]


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4. For any problems, write to Ran; report the problems as

soon as possible please via email. Notes on E-Absence: If a registered student is absent from the lecture for more than three times (including 3 times!), s/he would FAIL the course, UNLESS sufficient medical proof, or other formats of evidence is provided immediately. When you have to be absent for justified reasons, please contact the teacher/TA as soon as possible. Course Assignments: All assignments are preferably submitted to the teacher in Word Doc (if you haven’t installed Microsoft, PDF is fine), via email. The WORD file should contain “CITY”+ the student’s name in its file name. Preferred style is Harvard. Please self-study Harvard (check out the blog post). Reading Journal (15% x2): TBA (200-300 words per assignment) Final Paper: Due Date TBA. (1000-1500word). (If you wish, you can go over the word limit.) Details and writing samples will be offered later. Notes on E-Discussion: Four discussion sessions are arranged in this semester, which aim to give students opportunities to further engage specific theoretical frameworks, socio-historical contexts, and films assigned through intensive discussions and processes of brainstorming. Followed by a 60-min lecture on a specific theme of that week, students are given time for presentation and group discussions. More TBA. Notes on the Writings: We have certain standard for academic writing in English. It would be really helpful if you take courses in academic writing and find a native-speaker consultant to check your writings. For self-study, a perfect instruction on writings for East Asian studies courses could be found here: http://writingproject.fas.harvard.edu/files/hwp/files/writing_in_east_asian_studies.pdf Notes on Plagiarism: Plagiarism: A writer who presents the ideas of words of another as if they were the writer’s own (that is, without proper citation) commits plagiarism. Plagiarism is not tolerable in this course at Nagoya University. You should avoid making quotes or drawing on figures from nowhere—you must provide sources of reference for quotation and/or citations you use in the paper. This applies to images and media clips as well. Failure to observe this


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would risk being charged of plagiarism. [All assignments/papers will be checked with professional software] TRIGGER WARNING ON FILMS FOR HOMEWORK: All selected films are masterpieces in their own ways, and for research and teaching purposes, also based on the tenet of freedom of expression, the process of selection is not, and should not be subjected to criteria applied to regular theatrical screenings. NEVERTHELESS, first make sure that you have reached the age for watching some of the listed films. Some titles may contain potentially violent, sex, blood, and similarly ‘discomforting’ contents—check imdb.com to read the plot BEFOREHAND, and you should consult with your teacher if you have problem attending the screening due to the film’s content. You could quit the classroom during the screening, if you find the content disturbing. Make-up work should be done based on mutual-understanding and communication.

SCHEDULE OF CLASSES

Week 1★Apr 17th INTRODUCTION Would be mainly about how to use ZOOM.

Week 2★Apr 24th CRITIQUE OF MODERNITY

Required Reading Benjamin, W. (1969). Paris: Capital of the Nineteenth Century. Perspecta, 12, 165-172. doi:10.2307/1566965

Crais, C. (2008). Modernity. In Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern World. : Oxford University Press. Retrieved 11 Apr. 2020, from https://www-oxfordreference-com.eproxy.lib.hku.hk/view/10.1093/acref/9780195176322.001.0001/acref-9780195176322-e-1037.

Sturken, Marita & Cartwright, Lisa. (2009). Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture.pp.89-103

May 1stNational Holiday-No Class


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Week 3★ May 8th CITY AS CULTURAL TEXT

Required Reading Shiel, Mark. (2001) “Cinema and the City in History and Theory”, Cinema and the City: Film and Urban Societies in a Global Context, ed. Tony Fitzmaurice and Mark Shiel, pp1-18

Week 4★May 15th FLÂNEUR AND STRANGERHOOD: ROAMING

IN THE CITY (Paris/Shanghai/Seoul) Required Reading

[please refer to the Benjamin reading in Week 2]

Amato, J. (2008). Walking. In Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern World. : Oxford University Press. Retrieved 11 Apr. 2020, from https://www-oxfordreference-com.eproxy.lib.hku.hk/view/10.1093/acref/9780195176322.001.0001/acref-9780195176322-e-1680.

Reference Reading

Featherstone, M. (1998). The "Flâneur", the City and Virtual Public Life. Urban Studies, 35(5/6), 909-925. Retrieved April 12, 2020, from www.jstor.org/stable/43084038

Homework Viewing

Suzhou River/蘇州河, Dir. LOU Ye, 2000

[sharing method TBA]

Homework Viewing Any title mentioned by Yomota


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Week 5★May 22nd TOKYO, OR ELSEWHERE

Required Reading

Catherine Russell (2002) “Tokyo, the movie”, Japan Forum, 14:2, 211-224, DOI: 10.1080/09555800220136365

Yomota, Inuhiko. (2003). “Stranger than Tokyo: Space and Race in Postnational Japanese Cinema”, Jenny Kwok Wah Lau eds. Multiple Modernities: Cinemas and Popular Media in Transcultural East Asia. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Pp76-89 Films for Reference: Ghost in the Shell, Dir. OSHII Mamoru, 1995 Swallowtail Butterfly, Dir. IWAI Shunji, 2008

Week 6★May 29th THE DISAPPEARING CITY:

RUINS & MONUMENTS I (Hiroshima/Nagasaki)

Required Reading Zwigenberg, R. (2014). Introduction. In Hiroshima: The Origins of Global Memory Culture (pp. 1-22). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9781107775442.002 ‘Look at the Sculpture’/ by ODAWARA Nodoka 小田原のどか[scanned artist material] Check out artist collective Chim↑Pom’s controversial art project at Hiroshima:[http://chimpom.jp/project/hiroshima.html]

Week 7★June 5th THE DISAPPEARING CITY:

RUINS & MONUMENTS II (Beijing/Shanghai) with in-class screening of shorts

Required Reading


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Lu, Sheldon H.(2007) “Tear Down the City: Reconstructing Urban Space in Contemporary Chinese Popular Cinema and Avant-Garde Art”, The Urban Generation: Chinese Cinema and Society At The Turn Of The Twenty-First Century, eds. Zhang Zhen.pp137-160 Film for discussion: 100 Flowers Hidden Deep/百花深处, Dir.: CHEN Kaige/陈凯歌 (available at YouTube; we will watch it in class too)

Week 8★June 12 HAUNTING CITIES AND FEMALE GHOSTS

Required Reading Dudley, Andrew. (2010). “Ghost Towns”, Cinema at the City’s Edge: Film and Urban Networks in East Asia. Yomi Braester, James Tweedie, eds., Hong Kong University Press.

Reference Reading

Wee, V. (2011). Patriarchy and the Horror of the Monstrous Feminine. Feminist Media Studies, 11(2), 151–165. https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2010.521624

Week 9★June 19th SCREENING: HAFU: THE MIXED-RACE EXPERIENCE IN JAPAN/ハーフ, Dir. Megumi Nishikura, Lara Perez Takagi, 2013 NOTE: methods of screening/streaming TBA.

Week 10★June 26th LIVING AS ‘THE OTHER’ IN THE CITY

Required Reading Ko, Mika. (2010). “Nihonjinron: The Ideology of Japaneseness”. Japanese Cinema and Otherness: Nationalism, Multiculturalism and The Problem of Japaneseness. Routledge. Pp.11-31

Homework Viewing: Any horror titles mentioned by both authors


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Week 11★July 3rd

FUTURISTIC AND DYSTOPIAN CITIES [discussion]

Required Reading Ceresa, M. (2017). Shanghaied into the future: The Asianization of the future Metropolis in post-Blade Runner cinema. Journal of Architecture and Urbanism, 41(2), 129-144. Featherstone, M. (2012). Utopia, dystopia. In H. K. Anheier & M. Juergensmeyer (Eds.), Encyclopedia of global studies (Vol. 1, pp. 1726-1729). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc. doi: 10.4135/9781452218557.n543

Week 12★July 10th GLOBAL CITIES AND INTERNATIONAL FILM

FESTIVAL NETWORK

Required Reading Stringer, Julian (2001). “Global Cities and International Film Festival Economy,” Cinema and the City: Film and Urban Societies in a Global Context, ed.Mark Shiel and Tony Fitzmaurice, London: Blackwell, 2001, 134–44

Week 13★July 17th Group Presentations

Week 14★July 31st Thesis Workshop

Homework Viewing: Blade Runner (1982)

Dir. Ridley Scott

culture and representation— city and cinema...cinema and the city: film and urban societies in a...

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