Approaches to Panel Topics
VSAR 422 Spring 2001
want to add to this or ask me research info?

Below are some possible ideas which you can focus on in your research within each panel topic heading. Begin to consider which you may be interested in researching. Do some research before making a choice. Midway through the semester I will ask you to provide me with three choices of panel topics you might be interested in.

TOPIC #1
Histories of the media
development of the moving image, sound film, early animation, Lumiere, Melies, silent film, military and technology, crazy inventions. digital cinema, virtual reality enviroments as new forms of representation, computer games, hypertexts, interactivity, poetry and the computer, three-D, Imax, disneyland, simulation, the mediated body

TOPIC #2
Third World/Global Cinema & Technology
indigeneous use of video/film, The Navajo Project, economics and production (Soviet film),film from India, film from Africa, revolutionary movements and technology (Chiapas), global communication, the notion of what constitutes "progress" in a technological world, how hollywood effects world cinema, revolutionary movements and film, representation of the other, colonialism/racism/representation

TOPIC #3
Gender & (Technology/film/video)
gender and computer games, gendered learning/gendered use, women filmmakers, how gender is constructed, buddy films, computer programming and gender, shifting identity and the internet, is the gaze male?, gender responses to horror film, melodrama women, women's pictures, chick flicks, the technology of suture, queer film, gay and lesbian representaion in hollywood,sound--the voice--who hears what when?, constructing the subject, autobiography, feminism and film, children's movies, anime, disney animation and gender construction

TOPIC #4
Transgression and Subjectivity
horror film, violence on film, reality cinema, body/performance art, male transgression, taboo, experimental film from 30's to the 60's, Austrian experimental film, talk shows, video art, surrealist film, queer studies, violence in film, breaking roles, the body and its boundaries, body modification, Bataille, how is the self transformed through the technology, postmodern notion of fractured self, new technologies and the body