Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
Goldsmiths
Moving Image and Spectatorship MC52061A
Term(s) Taught: Autumn
Credits: 15 (7.5 ECTS)
Pre-Requisites: N/A
Contact Hours: One hour lecture + one hour seminar
Additional Information: Cannot be taken with Culture, Society & the Individual
Module Description: This module explores both the way spectatorship has been
understood in film theory and the dispersal of moving images and screen
technologies in contemporary visual culture. The module aims to critically reflect
on our everyday encounters with moving images, in public space, at home, on
the move, in the gallery and the museum, and in the cinema, by focusing on the
screen technologies and viewing conditions that mediate and structure that
encounter. In the process, we will critically evaluate the explanatory reach of a
range of theories of spectatorship derived from scholarship on cinema for the
audio-visual technologies and practices of the present. In the first half our focus
is largely with the cinema and its spectator as understood within film theory.
Beginning with a general introduction to the core themes and concepts running
through the module we then trace key theoretical approaches to film
spectatorship, considering in turn: critiques of the ideological effects of the
cinematic apparatus informed by psychoanalytic concepts; early cinema
scholarship on exhibition, film style and spectatorship; phenomenological
approaches to embodiment and cinema experience, and studies of cinema
reception coming from film/media history and media ethnography. In the second
half, we leave cinema behind, whilst remaining in its long shadow. Our focus
shifts to a variety of everyday encounters with moving images mediated by fastchanging delivery and display technologies. What are the technological,
institutional and spatial conditions of these encounters and how do they reshape
our understanding of spectatorship? How does our thinking about film
spectatorship also change in the light of this proliferation of new screen-based
media?
Learning Outcomes:
To introduce key theoretical debates on film and moving image spectatorship in
film, media and art theory.
To acquaint you with a range of approaches to the study of screen-based media
and their relations with viewers.
To provide you with conceptual tools to think critically about your interactions
and responses to contemporary screen technologies.
To provide you with conceptual tools to analyse comparatively historic and
contemporary screen-based media and their modes of spectatorship
To demonstrate a detailed understanding of key theoretical debates on screenbased media and spectatorship.
To demonstrate an understanding of different approaches to examinations of
moving image spectatorship.
To critically reflect on prevalent modes of spectatorship in everyday life.
To critically analyse historic and contemporary screen-based media and modes
of spectatorship.
Assessment: 1x 3,000 word essay or research project
collection of videos and CDs in the library. Personal tutorials are also available
with your seminar leader. One further note: You dont need to know a lot about
music to take this module and we certainly do not expect a technical
understanding but you need to be interested in it, and open-minded about it.
After taking this module you should be able to: Demonstrate a systematic
understanding of the key methods which enable us to analyse musical
communication and the signifying practices through which sounds, words and
images acquire social meaning. Identify the main ways that music has been
theorised, and be able to relate these different approaches to various social and
historical conditions and processes. Understand how to analyse a wide range of
musical forms and styles as sound events and social practices. Critically evaluate
the usefulness of specific theoretical ideas and be able to apply these to music
that you are familiar with and to music with which you are not so well
acquainted.
Assessment: 1x 4000 word essay Recommended Reading: N/A