Readings

Required Texts

Buy at Amazon Barnouw, Eric. Documentary: A History of the Non-fiction Film. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1993. ISBN: 9780195078985.

Buy at Amazon Fatimah Tobing Rony. The Third Eye: Race, Cinema and Ethnographic Spectacle. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996. ISBN: 9780822318408.

Buy at Amazon Ginsburg, Faye, Abu-Lughod, Lila and Brian Larkin eds. Media Worlds: Anthropology on New Terrain. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002. ISBN: 9780520232310.

Buy at Amazon Grimshaw, Anna. The Ethnographer’s Eye: Ways of Seeing in Modern Anthropology. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001. ISBN: 9780521773102.

Recommended Text (books out of print)

Buy at Amazon MacDougall, David. Transcultural Cinema. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998. ISBN: 9780691012346.

Readings by Class Session

Many of the film screenings listed below are linked to more information provided by the Internet Movie Database.

SES # TOPICS READINGS
1 Introduction Required Readings

Barnouw. Chapter 1.

"Seeing Anthropology." Chapter 1 in Rony.

"Introduction." In Grimshaw.

Screenings

Lumiere Shorts. 1895.

Bontoc Eulogy. Directed by Marlon Fuentes. 56 min. New York: Cinema Guild, 1995.

Recommended Viewing

Fusco, Coco, and Guillermo Gomez-Pena. Couple in a Cage.
2 Early Cinema Required Readings

Barnouw. Chapter 2.

Buy at Amazon Selections from Kino-Eye.The writings of Dziga Vertov. Edited by Annette Michaelson. 1985, University of Cal Press. pp. 5-21. ISBN: 9780520056305.

Buy at Amazon Vaughan, Dai. "The Man with the Movie Camera." In The Documentary Tradition. Edited by Lewis Jacobs. New York: W. W. Norton, 1979. ISBN: 9780393950427.

Grimshaw. Chapter 3.

"Taxidermy and Romantic Ethnography: Robert Flaherty's Nanook of the North." Chapter 4 in Rony.

Buy at Amazon Briggs, Jean. "Family Life: Expressions of Closeness." Chapter 2 in Never in Anger: Portrait of an Eskimo Family, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006. ISBN: 9780674608283.

Look over press kit from 1920s marketing of "Nanook and the North." Studies in Visual Communication. Vol. 6, no. 2, 2-4: 61-76. (Special issue on Flaherty).

Screenings

Nanook of the North. Directed by Robert Flaherty. 69 min. 1922.

Selections from The Man with a Movie Camera. Directed by Dziga Vertov. 1928.

Recommended Readings

Vertov, Dziga. Introduction to Kino-Eye.

Buy at Amazon Nelmes, Jill, ed. "The Soviet Montage Cinema of the 1920s." Chapter 13 in An Introduction to Film Studies, London and New York: Routledge, 1999. ISBN: 9780415173100.

Recommended Viewing

Nanook Revisited. 60 min. 1990.
3 Ethnographic Film as Science and Beyond

Required Readings

Grimshaw. Chapters 5 and 7.

Jacknis, Ira, and Margaret Mead, and Gregory Bateson. "Bali: Their Use of Photography and Film." In Cultural Anthropology. pp. 160-177.

Buy at Amazon Mead, Margaret. "Visual Anthropology in a Discipline of Words." In Principles of Visual Anthropology. Edited by Paul Hockings, Mouton de Gruyter, 1995. ISBN: 9783110142280.

MacDougall, David. "Beyond Observational Cinema." In Hockings.

Buy at Amazon Connolly, Bob, and Robin Anderson. Selections from First Contact. New York, NY: Viking, 1987. pp. 1-18, and 235-305. ISBN: 9780670801671.

Lutkehaus, Nancy. "Interview with Filmmaker Bob Connolly." Visual Anthropology Review 10, no.2 (1994): 771-75.

Screenings

Selections from Trance and Dance in Bali. Directed by Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson. 20 mins. 1951.

MacDougall, David, and Judith MacDougall. Under the Men's Tree. 15 min. 1974.

Connolly, Bob, and Robin Anderson. Joe Leahy's Neighbors. 90 min. 1988.

Recommended Readings

MacDougall, David. "Visual Anthropology and Ways of Knowing." In Transcultural Cinema.

Recommended Viewing

Connolly, Bob, and Robin Anderson. First Contact. 54 min. 1982.

Connolly, Bob, and Robin Anderson. Black Harvest. 90 mins. 1992.

4 Cinema Verite and Cine-fiction: The Films of Jean Rouch

Required Readings

Grimshaw. Chapter 6.

Buy at Amazon Stoller, Paul. Selections from The Cinematic Griot. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1992. pp. 1-47, and 131-144. ISBN: 9780226775463.

Taylor, Lucien. "A Conversation with Jean Rouch." Visual Anthropology Review. Vol. 7, no.1 (Spring 1991): 92-102.

Rouch, Jean. "The Camera and the Man." In Hockings.

———. "Our Totemic Ancestors and Crazed Masters." In Hockings.

Buy at Amazon Uadike, Frank. "Africa and the Cinema." Excerpts from chapter 1 in Black African Cinema. Nwachukwu Frank Ukadike. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1994. pp. 48-58. ISBN: 9780520077485.

Screenings

Rouch, Jean. Jaguar. 93 min. 1971.

Recommended Readings

Adams, John. "Jean Rouch Talks about his films to John Marshall and John Adams." American Anthropologist. Vol. 80, no. 4 (Dec. 1978).

5 Cine-fiction and Cinema Verite: The Films of Jean Rouch (cont.)

Required Readings

S. Feld, et al. Studies Visual Communication. A special issue on "Chronicle of a Summer." Vol. 11, no. 1, (Winter 1985): 4-35.

Feld, Steve. "Themes in the Cinema of Jean Rouch." In Visual Anthropology. Vol. 2. pp. 223-247.

Viera, John David. "Images as Property." In Image Ethics.

Screenings

Rouch, Jean, and Edgar Morin. Chronicle of a Summer. 90 min. Corinth Films, 1961.

Recommended Viewing

Godard, Jean-Luc. Breathless.

Truffaut, Francois. The Four Hundred Blows.

6 Direct Cinema in the US: Observing at Home Required Readings

Barnouw. Chapter 5, pp. 231-262.

Buy at Amazon Winston, Brian. "The Documentary Film as Scientific Inscription." In Theorizing Documentary. Edited by Michael Renov. New York, NY: Routledge, 1993. pp. 37-57. ISBN: 9780415903820.

Buy at Amazon Atkins, Tomas. "Frederick Wiseman's America." In The Documentary Tradition. Edited by Lewis Jacobs. New York, NY: W. W. Norton, 1979. pp. 536-550. ISBN: 9780393950427.

Buy at Amazon Wiseman, Frederick. "High School." In The New Documentary in Action. Edited by Alan Rosenthal. Berkeley,CA: University of California Press, 1971. pp. 66-75. ISBN: 9780520018884.

Buy at Amazon Drew, Robert. "An Independent with the Networks." In New Challenges for Documentary. Edited by Alan Rosenthal. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. pp. 389-401. ISBN: 9780520057241.

Leacock, Richard. "For an Uncontrolled Cinema." Film Culture. No. 22/23: 23-25.

Anderson, Carolyn, and Thomas Benson. "Direct Cinema and the Myth of Informed Consent: The Case of Titicut Follies." In Image Ethics. pp. 58-90.

Screenings

Primary. Directed by Richard Leacock, D. A. Pennebaker, Terence McCartney-Filgate, and Albert Maysles. 54 min. 1960.

High School. Directed by Frederick Wiseman. 75 mins. Zipporah Films, 1968.

Recommended Viewing

Don't Look Back. Directed by D. A. Pennbacker. 95 mins. Kino Films, 1966.
7 Communities and Conflict: Debating Nuclear Technologies

Guest Lecturer: Filmmaker Chris Boebel
Required Readings

Buy at Amazon Stranahan, Susan. "Nuclear Development." Chapter 6 in Susquehanna: River of Dreams. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. ISBN: 9780801851476.

Buy at Amazon Krikson, Kai. "Three Mile Island: A New Species of Trouble." In A New Species of Trouble, New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Co., 1994. ISBN: 9780393035940.

Buy at Amazon Gusterson, Hugh. "Bodies and Machines." Chapter 5 in Nuclear Rites. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998. ISBN: 9780520213739.

Screenings

Containment: Life After Three Mile Island. Directed by Chris Boebel and Nick Poppy. 60 min. 2004.
8 Gender and Sexuality Required Readings

Buy at Amazon Hooks, Bell. "Review of Paris is Burning in Reel to Real." In Race, Sex and Class at the Movies. New York, NY: Routledge, 1997. ISBN: 9780415918237.

Friedlander, Eva. "Review of India Cabaret." Society for Visual Anthropology Newsletter (Fall 1988).

Valentine, David, and Riki Ann Wichins. "One Percent on the Burn Chart: Gender Genitals and Hermaphrodites with Attitude." Social Text. Vol. 15, no. 3/4 (1997): 215-222.

Appadurai, Arjun, and Carol Breckenridge. "Marriage, Migration and Money: Mira Nair's Cinema of Displacement." In Visual Anthropology. Vol. 4, 1991. pp. 95-102.

Larkin, Brian. "Indian Films and Nigerian Lovers: Media and the Creation of Parallel Modernities." Africa. Vol. 67, no. 3 (1997).

Buy at Amazon Nanda, Serena. Selections from "Neither Man Nor Woman." In The Hijras of India. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing, 1998. ISBN: 9780534509033.

Screenings

India Cabaret. Directed by Mira Nair. 57 mins. 1985.

Paris is Burning. Directed by Jennie Livingston. 78 mins. 1990.

Recommended Readings

Morris, Ros. "All Made Up: Performance Theory and the New Anthropology of Sex and Gender." Annual Review of Anthropology (1995): 567-445.
9 Observing the 'Exotic' in the U.S. Screenings

Fast, Cheap and Out of Control. Directed by Errol Morris.

Recommended Viewing

The Thin Blue Line. Directed by Errol Morris. 115 mins. 1987.
10 The Personal and the Political: A Case of Environmental Activism Required Readings

"Advocate," and "Guerilla." Chapters 3 and 5 in Barnouw.

Buy at Amazon Fabian, Johannes, and Tshibumba Matulu. Selections from Remembering the Present. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1996 (Interview with painter and paintings of Lumumba). ISBN: 9780520203761.

Buy at Amazon Citron, Michelle. "Fleeing from Documentary: Autobiographical Film/Video and 'Ethics of Responsibility'." In Feminism and Documentary. Edited by Diane Waldman, and Janet Walker. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1999. ISBN: 9780816630073.

Buy at Amazon Katz, John, and Judith Katz. "Ethics and the Perception of Ethics in Autobiographical Film." In Image Ethics. Edited by Larry Gross, John Katz, and Jay Ruby. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2003. ISBN: 9780816638253.

Screenings

Blue Vinyl. Directed by Judith Helfand, and Daniel Gold. 96 min. 2003.

Recommended Readings

Peck, Raoul. Lumumba: Death of a Prophet. 69 min. 1992.

A Healthy Baby Girl. Directed by Judith Helfand. 57 min. 2002.
11 Finding a Future for Culture on Film/Video: Feature Films, Documentaries, and "the Social Practice of Media" Required Readings

Ginsburg, Faye. "Introduction." In Media Worlds.

Ginsburg, Faye. "Screen Memories: Resignifying the Traditional in Indigenous Media." In Media Worlds.

Huhndorf, Shari. "Atanarjuat, The Fast Runner: Culture, History and Politics in Inuit Media." American Anthropologist. Vol. 105, no. 4 (2003): 822-826.

Screenings

Selections from Nanook Revisited.

Starting Fire with Gunpowder. Inuit Broadcasting Corporation.

Selections from Antanajuaruat ("The Fast Runner").

Recommended Readings

MacDougall, David. "Transcultural Cinema." Chapter 13 in Transcultural Cinema.

Buy at Amazon Fischer, Michael M. J. "Film as Ethnography and Cultural Critique in the Late Twentieth Century." in Diane Carson and Lester Friedman, ed. Shared Differences: Multicultural Media and Practical Pedagogy. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1995. ISBN: 9780252064500.

Web site for Igloolik Isuma Productions.