Syllabus

Week 1: Introduction
Film: Viking Eggeling: Symphonie Diagonale (1924; 7 min.)
Film: Hans Richter: Filmstudie (1925; 4 min.)
Hans Richter, “The Film as an Original Art Form” (handout)
Gilles Deleuze, from The Movement-Image, selections (handout)

Week 2: The Psyche of Weimar Germany
Film: Robert Wiene, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919)
Siegfried Kracauer, “Caligari,” 61-76 (Reader)
Sigmund Freud, “On Dreams” (Reader)

Week 3: Representation of the Double
Film: Paul Wegener/Stellan Rye, The Student of Prague (1913)
Siegfried Kracauer, “Forebodings,” 28-34 (Reader)
Sigmund Freud, “On Narcissism: An Introduction” (Reader)

Week 4: Symphony of Horror and Desire
Film: Friedrich Murnau, Nosferatu (1922)
Siegfried Kracauer, “Processions of Tyrants,” 77-87
Sigmund Freud, “The Uncanny” (Reader)

Week 5: The Aesthetics of Death and Desire
Film: Fritz Lang, Destiny (1921)
Siegfried Kracauer, “Destiny,” 88-95
Walter Benjamin, “The Storyteller” (Reader)

Week 6: Political Theology
Film: Fritz Lang, Metropolis (1926)
Max Weber, “Introduction,” The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Reader)
Carl Schmitt, Political Theology (selections) (Reader)
Recommended: Siegfried Kracauer, “The Mass Ornament” (Reader)

Week 7: Science and Values
Max Weber, “Politics as a Vocation” in: The Vocation Lectures
Max Weber, “Science as a Vocation” in: The Vocation Lectures

Week 8: Modernist Cinema and Cinematic Illusion
Film: Friedrich Murnau, The Last Laugh (1924)
Siegfried Kracauer, “Mute Chaos,” 96-106
G.W.F. Hegel, “Independence and Dependence of Self-Consciousness: Lordship and Bondage,” from the Phenomenology of Spirit (Reader)

Week 9: Modernity and Urban Life
Film: Walter Ruttmann, Berlin: Symphony of a City (1927)
Siegfried Kracauer, “Montage” 181-89
Georg Simmel, “The Metropolis and Mental Life” (Reader)
Recommended: Martin Heidegger, “Creative Landscape: Why Do We Stay in the Provinces?” (Reader)

Week 10: “Between Two Worlds”
Film: Josef von Sternberg, The Blue Angel (1930)
Georg Simmel, “The Flirtation” (Reader)

Week 11: The Aesthetics of Communism
Film: Slatan Dudow / Bertolt Brecht, Kuhle Wampe (1932)
Bertold Brecht, “The Film, the Novel, and Epic Theater” (Reader)
Walter Benjamin, “What is Epic Theater?” (Reader)

Week 12: The Aesthetics of Fascism
Film: Leni Riefenstahl, Triumph of the Will (1934)
Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception” (Reader)

Week 13: The Proletarian Legacy of Weimar Germany
Film: Frank Beyer, Trace of Stones (1966)
Georg Lukács, “Thoughts on an Aesthetics of Cinema” (Reader)

Week 14: The “Hot Autumn”
Film: R. W. Fassbinder: A. Kluge, V. Schöndorff, E. Reitz et al., Germany in Autumn (1977/1978)
Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political (selections) (Reader)

Week 15: The Politics of Lying, Final Discussion (open)
Film: Wolfgang Becker, Goodbye Lenin (2003)
Hannah Arendt, “Truth and Politics” (Reader)

Books and Films

Please order the following books either through Amazon or any other online bookstore. You may want to order “express” to make sure to have done the readings on time.

Siegfried Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler (Princeton)
Max Weber, The Vocation Lectures (Hackett)

All films should be viewed before our class meetings. All films are available digitally through the Language Resource Center and its website http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~lrc

To access any of the digitized films, you will need your Rice Net ID user name and password. Once you have reached the list of films for “FSEM 122”, you will have another set of user name/password, which are: film000/filmrice. You can access the films from any computer on campus, but not necessarily from your personal computer in your college room.

Work Constituting the Grade

•  Preparation for class discussions and active participation in discussions (40%)
•  Three essays (40%)
•  Oral presentation (20%)