Elena Gorfinkel is an Associate Professor in the Department of Film Studies at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. Her work focuses on film history, global art cinema, and film criticism. She is the author of Sensational Bodies: American Sexploitation Cinema's Scenes of Looking, 1959-1972 (University of Minnesota Press). Gorfinkel has also been published in numerous film journals including Screen and Camera Obscura.
The Persistence of History Cinema, Television and the Modern Event
MELISSA RAGONA (Carnegie Melon) "Algorithmic Aesthetics vs. Punk De'collage: From Animation to Live Performance" Melissa Ragona teaches a range of courses including MFA Academic Seminar, sophomore required surveys in both Modern and Contemporary Visual Culture, as well as various intermediate and upper level seminars in art history, film, sound, aesthetics, and critical theory. Ragona's critical and creative work focuses on sound design, film theory and new media practice and reception. By forging approaches from the disciplines of film studies, art history, and new media technologies, her work has sought to present a more complex aesthetic, theoretical, and historical foundation for the analysis of contemporary time-based arts. Her current book project, Readymade Sound: Andy Warhol's Recording Aesthetics examines Warhol's tape recording projects from the mid-sixties until the late 70s in light of audio experiments in modern art as well as contemporary practices of pattern matching and information visualization. Her essays that explore the nexus between sound and image in the films of Hollis Frampton and Paul Sharits have been published, respectively, in the MIT Press Journal, October and a forthcoming anthology, Lowering the Boom: New Essays on the Theory and History of Film Sound (Illinois University Press, 2008). In "Swing and Sway: Marie Menken's Cinematic Events," Women Experimental Filmmakers, ed. Robin Blaetz, Duke University Press (2007), she examines how Warhol Superstar and artist, Marie Menken used film as a way to rethink the transition from abstract expressionism to Pop Art in the 1950s and 1960s. She has also published in monographs on the work of artists, Heike Mutter and Ulrich Genth (Kerber Christof Publishers, 2006) and Christian Jankowski (JRP Ringier, 2007). Also, her book, Readymade Sound: Andy Warhol's Recording Aesthetic, is forthcoming from the University of California Press.
Sergi Sánchez holds a Ph.D. in Film and Media Studies from Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF), where he teaches digital cinema and television history. He is also the head of the Film Studies department at ESCAC (Escola de Cinema i Audiovisuals de Catalunya). He is the author of Hacia una imagen no-tiempo: Deleuze y el cine contemporáneo (Ediciones de la Universidad de Oviedo). He worked as a Programming Manager for TCM Spain between 2000 and 2003, and he contributes to various Spanish newspapers as a film and literary critic. He has published several books on cinema (on Akira Kurosawa, Terry Gilliam, Michael Winterbottom, Hal Hartley, and cinema and electronic music) and articles in collections (on Abel Ferrara, Dario Argento, Jacques Demy, Robert Rossen, Don Siegel, Georges Franju, Alain Resnais, Nagisa Oshima, and Australian SF, among others).
Our culture as a people is based on our collective memory. Should we be disturbed that our memory often is based on fiction and film rather than history? Through the years there have been hundreds of feature films made about the American Civil War, and there have been hundreds more, mainly Westerns, in which the Civil War plays some part. Counting television, the numbers may be in the thousands. Most of these films and television depictions have been standard commercial fare that may have made some impression when first shown, but have not lasted in our memory.
Gone With the Wind (1939), produced by David O. Selznick and starring Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh, is one of the best-known movies of all time. More than seventy years after its first release, it continues to appear on television on a regular basis. It depicts as truth every Civil War myth and stereotype imaginable, and it accurately reflects the racism of its time.
FA 33b Islamic Art and Architecture [ ca nw ] Through case studies of cities, sites, and monuments, the course presents an overview of the art and the architecture of the Islamic world beginning from the seventh century up to the present. Some of the themes include, but are not limited to, Islamic material culture, orientalist imaginations, systems of governance and the colonial present, search for the local identity, urban modernity and nationalism, and globalization. Usually offered every second year.Muna Guvenc
HIST 111a History of the Modern Middle East [ nw ss ] An examination of the history of the Middle East from the nineteenth century to contemporary times. Focuses on political events and intellectual trends, such as imperialism, modernity, nationalism, and revolution, that have shaped the region in the modern era. Usually offered every second year.Naghmeh Sohrabi
HIST 112a Nationalism in the Middle East [ nw ss ] Seminar examining the history of nationalism in the modern Middle East. Covers divergent theories and practices of nationalism in the region, and explores the roles of gender, memory, historiography, and art in the formation and articulation of Middle East nationalisms. Usually offered every second year.Naghmeh Sohrabi
NEJS 144a Jews in the World of Islam [ hum nw ] Examines social and cultural history of Jewish communities in the Islamic world. Special emphasis is placed on the pre-modern Jewish communities. Usually offered every second year.Jonathan Decter 2ff7e9595c
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