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Orientation > Visiting and Erasmus Students
The following pages list the Sophister modules available for the academic year 2018-2019.
Visiting students are advised that you are considered to be Junior Sophisters while at Trinity. Places are limited
in all options. In particular, you may only sign up for Documentary filmmaking (HT) if you have already gained sufficient production skills. |
| Module Name |
Module Code and ECTs credits |
Semester |
Contact Hours |
Module Personnel |
Digital Theory and Practice |
FSS028 (5 ECTS) |
1 (Michaelmas Term) |
22 class hours plus 22 screening hours |
TBD |
Description
Rationale and aims
This module will consider some of the major transformations that have taken place in the 21st century as a result of the increasing dominance of
digital technologies and the rapidity of their evolution. It will analyse key concepts in digital theory and introduce students to the foundational components
of digital practice. Students will apply the critical and conceptual tools under discussion to the creation of their own digital content.
Learning outcomes
On successful completion of this module students will be able to:
Evaluate current trends in digital theory (PO2)
Evaluate current trends in digital practice (PO3)
Contextualise their knowledge of key aspects of digital theory and practice within its social, cultural, economic and industrial framework (PO1)
Engage in elements of digital practice informed by the theoretical and creative concepts under discussion (PO3, PO4, PO5)
Resources
There is no set text for this course. Required viewing and reading is set each week. Further viewing and reading is recommended as appropriate.
Methods of Teaching and Student Learning
Teaching methods include lectures, seminar discussions, and digital practice exercises. Students will be expected to attend all classes and undertake all the
required viewing; read from primary as well as secondary sources and comment upon these readings; participate in class discussion; perform the required assessment(s).
Students may be required to make a class presentation on some aspect of the course covered.
Methods of assessment
90% coursework (including written and digital practice-based components)
10% participation
Module Evaluation
Course and Teaching Surveys will be circulated to students at the end of the module. Feedback will inform course development.
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| Module Name |
Module Code and ECTs credits |
Semester |
Contact Hours |
Module Personnel |
Tracing Film Noir |
5 |
1 (Michaelmas Term) |
22 lecture/seminar hours. 22 screening hours |
Dr. Padraic Killeen |
Description
Rationale and aims
In this module we will discuss and examine the emergence of film noir in 1940s American cinema. We will analyse its historical and sociopolitical origins as
well as its complex connections to American hardboiled fiction, the gangster genre, French Poetic Realism, German Expressionism, and existential philosophy.
We shall address the difficulties in categorising film noir as a genre and ask whether it is better understood as a given historical cycle of films, a formal style,
or an aesthetic sensibility. We shall trace the influence of noir across genres and map the many diverse paths it takes in cinema and other media forms from the late 1960s
onwards. The module will examine the narrative patterns distinctive to film noir and identify key characteristics of noir iconography, sound, and performance.
We will analyse the problematic philosophical questions film that noir poses about gender, sexuality, identity, and the stability of the self. We will also address complex
problems of temporality that are uniquely to the fore in film noir. Finally, we will attend to the diverse philosophical and critical impulses within noir and examine its
significance in relation to psychoanalysis, existentialism, and affect theory.
Course Content
- Historical Origins of Noir
- Narrative Patterns of Noir
- Noir Iconography
- Sound and Music in Film Noir
- Psychoanalysis and the Divided Self
- Gender, Sexuality, and the Femme Fatale
- Time and Temporality in Film Noir
- The Spaces and Places of Noir
- The ‘Modern Noir’
- Film Noir and Philosophy
- The Complex Noir Mediascape
Learning outcomes
Successful completion of this module will enable students to:
Identify the key historical determinants and aesthetic elements of Film Noir.
Theorise the central socio-cultural and philosophical issues of identity construction, gender, and temporality that arise in Film Noir.
Analyse the idea of Film Noir as a complex counter-cultural force within the Classical Hollywood Cinema.
Apply a diverse set of theoretical models and critical approaches both to Film Noir and to a wider range of films and cultural phenomena.
Resources
There is no set text for this course. Required viewing and reading is set each week. Further viewing and reading is recommended as appropriate.
Methods of Teaching and Student Learning
Teaching methods include screenings of films and film excerpts, lectures and seminar discussions. Students will be expected to attend all classes and screenings;
read from primary as well as secondary sources and comment upon these readings; participate in class discussion; perform the required assessment(s).
Students may be required to make a class presentation on some aspect of the course covered.
Methods of assessment
90% coursework
10% participation
Further assessment details will be provided in the course outline.
Module Evaluation
Course and Teaching Surveys will be circulated to students at the end of the module. Feedback will inform course development.
|
| Module Name |
Module Code and ECTs credits |
Semester |
Contact Hours |
Module Personnel |
Female Directors of the Middle East and the Maghreb. |
5 |
Semester 1 (Michaelmas Term) |
22 lecture/seminar hours |
Dr. Conor O’Kelly |
Description
Rationale and aims
The manner in which film can provide political agency to marginalized voices is examined in this module through an analysis of the films of women directors
from the Middle East. Drawing from theories of postcolonial identity and biopolitics, the module includes films and filmmakers from countries with long and rich cinema
histories such as Iran but also from the very new national cinema of Saudi Arabia. The themes of the module are reflected in those of the films screened, whereby the
emancipatory potential of cinema is plotted in depictions of education, resistance and transgression. Students will consider how popular cinematic discourses,
including ideas of authorship, spectatorship and genre are deeply affected by the political and religious environment in which they take place.
Learning outcomes
On successful completion of this module students will be able to:
Synthesise their knowledge of female Middle Eastern and Maghrebi cinema within a wider economic, industrial, aesthetic and socio-cultural context; (PO1)
Analyse current issues relevant to the study of female directors within the broader context of currents within film studies; (PO2)
Identify shared tropes, subject matter and themes that are common across different Middle Eastern and Maghrebi cinemas ; (PO3)
Apply the theoretical models and critical approaches under discussion to specific films and film styles; (PO3, PO5, PO7)
Course Content
- History of films by women in the Middle East
- Postcolonial theory in cinema
- Foucault’s biopolitics
-
- The challenges of representation for the marginalised
- Gender and cinema
- Critical responses
- Textual analyses
Resources
There is no set text for this course. Required viewing and reading is set each week. Further viewing and reading is recommended as appropriate.
The following titles are useful accompaniments to the module as a whole.
Foucault, Michel, and Colin Gordon. Power/knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977. New York: Pantheon Books, 1980.
Hillauer, Rebecca. Encyclopedia of Arab Women Filmmakers. Rev. and updated ed. Cairo ; New York: American University in Cairo Press, 2005.
Morris, Rosalind C., and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, eds. Can the Subaltern Speak?: Reflections on the History of an Idea. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010.
Methods of Teaching and Student Learning
Teaching methods include film screenings, lectures and seminar discussions. Students will be expected to attend all classes and screenings; read from primary as well as
secondary sources and comment upon these readings; participate in class discussion; perform the required assessment(s).
Students may be required to make a class presentation on some aspect of the course covered.
Methods of assessment
90% coursework
10% participation
Further assessment details will be provided in the course outline.
Module Evaluation
Course and Teaching Surveys will be circulated to students at the end of the module. Feedback will be used to reflect on course development.
|
| Module Name |
Module Code and ECTs credits |
Semester |
Contact Hours |
Module Personnel |
Screening Irish-America |
FSS021 (5 ECTS) |
Michaelmas |
11 hours lectures, 11 hours seminars, 22 hours screenings |
Professor Ruth Barton |
Description
Learning outcomes
This course will enable students to:
be conversant with the historical, political and social backgrounds to these works (PO1, PO2)
employ textual analysis to discuss and illustrate these issues (PO3)
confidently evaluate the shifting nature of film representation in the period covered (PO1, PO2, PO3)
Learning aims
This is a Sophister Option course. We will be asking what kind of narratives and cinematic space Irish characters have occupied within Hollywood and how political events,
such as 9/11, have inflected these representations.
The objective is to produce a critical historical approach to issues of representation in Irish-American themed films.
Module Content
This module will cover the history and development of the representation of Irish-America on screen from early and silent filmmaking to john Crowley’s Brooklyn (2015).
We will consider the historical and sociological background to these representations and analyse the films via theoretical considerations of race, religion and ethnicity
as well as genre, gender, stardom and authorship. Thus we will consider the key figures of James Cagney and John Ford and examine the contrasting depictions of masculinity
and femininity in these films. We will discuss how films from the early and silent period and the Classic period built the foundation for subsequent
filmmakers and how the model was altered by subsequent generations from the Kennedy era to the present.
Recommended Reading List.
The principal course textbook will be Ruth Barton (ed) (2009) Screening Irish-America (Dublin & Portland Or.: Irish Academic Press).
Films to be screened and discussed will include: Irene (Alfred E Green, 1926), True Confessions (Ulu Grosbard, 1981), Miller’s Crossing (Joel Coen, 1990).
Methods of assessment
90% coursework
10% participation
Further assessment details will be provided in the course outline.
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| Module Name |
Module Code and ECTs credits |
Semester |
Contact Hours |
Module Personnel |
Writing For The Small Screen |
FSS035 (5 ECTS) |
Michaelmas Term |
22 lecture/seminar hours |
Justin MacGregor |
Description
Rationale and aims
The aim is to develop your writing of narrative scripts for television or online exhibition by creative practice. You will explore screenwriting techniques for each
of these mediums and undertake writing either a pilot script for an original television or online programme or a series bible for an original television or online programme.
Building on the three-act structure, you will consider other storytelling methods that may be more suitable to your original programme. You will learn all aspects of script
development from originating a series idea, to writing the script, to analysing possible exhibition and funding options for your project.
This module is designed to familiarise you with the process and procedures involved in developing and writing a long form script suitable for the small screen.
Learning outcomes
This module will enable students to:
- Devise ideas for television or online broadcast.
- Be able to write a narrative script that is feasible to make and engages your chosen audience.
- Develop tools to analyse and script-edit television or online broadcast scripts.
- Create and write a range of effective scripts.
- Participate in a writer’s room scenario.
Resources
Blake Snyder, Save the Cat!: The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need, Studio City: Michael Wiese Productions, 2005; David Howard, Edward Mabley,
The Tools of Screenwriting: A Writer’s Guide To The Craft and Elements of a Screenplay,
London: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1995; John Yorke, Into the Woods: How Stories Work and Why We Tell Them, London: Penguin, 2014.
Methods of Teaching and Student Learning
Classes will be a combination of lecture/seminar, written exercises and analysis.
Methods of assessment
Participation and Reflection 30%
Two Drafts of a Pilot 70%
Module Evaluation
Course and Teaching Surveys will be circulated to students at the end of the module. Feedback will be used to reflect on course development.
|
| Module Name |
Module Code and ECTs credits |
Semester |
Contact Hours |
Module Personnel |
Contemporary Non-Western Cinema |
TBC (5/10 ECTS) |
Semester 2 (Hilary Term) |
22 lecture/seminar hours |
Dr. Conor O’Kelly |
Description
Rationale and aims
This module explores the development of non-western cinema with particular reference to films from the last twenty years. Studying films from the Middle East,
Asia and Australia, the module will explore the historical development of film-making with reference to specific national and cultural identities. With reference to the
manner that cinema is a powerfully ideological medium the module will examine how film is used to express marginalized political positions.
The course examines cinematic representation through a number of diverse theoretical methods.
Course Content
- Middle Eastern Protest Cinema.
- The Rise of South Korean Cinema.
- Representations of Aboriginal Australia.
- The Art Cinema of Apichatpong Weerasethakul.
- Taiwan's New Wave and Hou Hsiao-hsien
- The Cinema of Ann Hui
Learning outcomes
On successful completion of this module students will be able to:
Demonstrate a knowledge of current key film movements, directors and critical writings in the context of current non-western cinema.
Discuss the historical, political and cultural backgrounds relevant to the studied films and directors.
Use critical and theoretical models to analyse the films under discussion.
Resources
There is no set text for this course. Required viewing and reading is set each week. A useful primer for the course is:
Shohat, Ella, and Robert Stam. 2014. Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media. Second edition. Sightlines. London; New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.
Methods of Teaching and Student Learning
Teaching methods include lectures and seminar discussions. Students will be expected to attend all classes and screenings; read from primary as well as secondary sources
and comment upon these readings; participate in class discussion; perform the required assessment.
Students may be required to make a class presentation on some aspect of the course covered.
Methods of assessment
90% coursework
10% participation
Further assessment details will be provided in the course outline.
Module Evaluation
Course and Teaching Surveys will be circulated to students at the end of the module. Feedback will be used to reflect on course development.
|
| Module Name |
Module Code and ECTs credits |
Semester |
Contact Hours |
Module Personnel |
Film Theory and Criticism |
FSS033 (5 ECTS) |
2 (Hilary Term) |
22 lecture/seminar hours, 22 screening hours |
Dr. Paula Quigley |
Description
Rationale and aims
This module will consider some of the ways in which film has been theorised since its inception up to the present day. We will begin by considering early film theory’s
focus on questions of medium specificity, film language, and film and reality. We will then expore models of film authorship and spectatorship. We will discuss ways in which
the relationship between film and society and film and ideology has been conceptualised. Following this, we will look at more recent interventions and reorientations in relation
to identity politics, as well as the so-called ‘corporeal turn’. Finally, we will consider the ways in which film theory is being reconceived in the digital age. Overall, this
module is designed to develop and deepen students’ engagament with film theory and criticism through close readings of key texts.
Course Content
- Ontology of the film image
- Film and reality
- Film and authorship
- Film and/as language
- Film and ideology
- Film and gender
- Film and spectatorship
- Film and politics
- Film and the body
- Film theory in the digital age
Learning outcomes
On successful completion of this module students will be able to:
- Identify key issues in the history of film theory and criticism (PO1)
- Analyse key issues in the history of film theory and criticism (PO2)
- Apply the theoretical models and critical approaches under discussion to specific films and film styles (PO3, PO5, PO7)
Resources
There is no set text for this course. Required viewing and reading is set each week. Further viewing and reading is recommended as appropriate.
Methods of Teaching and Student Learning
Teaching methods include screenings of films and film excerpts, lectures and seminar discussions. Students will be expected to attend all classes and screenings;
read from primary as well as secondary sources and comment upon these readings; participate in class discussion; perform the required assessment(s).
Students may be required to make a class presentation on some aspect of the course covered.
Methods of assessment
90% coursework
10% participation
Further assessment details will be provided in the course outline.
Module Evaluation
Course and Teaching Surveys will be circulated to students at the end of the module. Feedback will inform course development.
|
| Module Name |
Module Code and ECTs credits |
Semester |
Contact Hours |
Module Personnel |
Russian cinema |
FSS007 (5 ECTS) |
Hilary Term |
11 hours lectures, 11 hours seminars, approx 58 hours self study and assignments |
Prof. Ruth Barton |
Description
Rationale and aims
This is a Sophister Option course. The objective is to introduce students to Soviet and Russian filmmaking via a selection of key films and filmmakers.
Students will be encouraged to explore the ideological and political backgrounds to the films and to
familiarise themselves with aesthetic concerns in order to be able to evaluate the films critically.
Course content:
This course focuses on a selection of key Russian films and filmmakers with a particular emphasis on the work of Andrei Tarkovsky and his legacy.
The course will open with an introduction to Soviet filmmaking and policies and then move on to examine the cinema of Tarkovsky. We will then look at a number films made
before and after the fall of communism. These will include Little Vera (Vasili Pychul 1988), Nikita Mikhalkov’s Burnt by the Sun (1994), The Return (Andrei Zvyagintsev, 2006)
and the films of Alexander Sokurov. Attention will be paid to issues of freedom of expression, social critique, government policies on filmmaking and the reception of Soviet
and Russian films outside of the country.
We will also be considering the aesthetics and production contexts of these films.
Learning outcomes
This course will enable students to:
be conversant with the historical, political and social backgrounds to these works (PO1)
employ textual analysis to discuss and illustrate these issues (PO 2, PO3)
confidently evaluate the shifting nature of film representation in the period covered (PO2, PO3, PO7)
Resources
Films to be screened and discussed include: Man With A Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929), Andrei Rublev (Tarkovsky, 1966), Nostalgia (Tarkovsky, 1983), Little Vera
(Vasili Pychul 1988), Nikita Mikhalkov’s Burnt by the Sun (1994), The Return (Andrei Zvyagintsev, 2006) and the films of Alexander Sokurov. Course textbooks will include:
David C Gillespie, Early Soviet Cinema (2000), Russian Cinema (2003); Andrew Horton & Michael Brashinsky, The Zero Hour: Glasnost and Soviet Cinema in Transition; Birgit Beumers
(2007), The cinema of Russia and the former Soviet Union, (2007); Andrei Tarkovsky Sculpting in Time: Reflections on the Cinema,
(1989; revised ed.); George Faraday, Revolt of the Filmmakers (2000).
Methods of Teaching and Student Learning
This course will be taught through a combination of film screenings, lectures and seminars. Students will be expected to prepare for seminar discussion by reading the set
texts and viewing the set film. Students may be required to make a class presentation on some aspect of the course covered.
Methods of assessment
90% coursework
10% participation
Further assessment details will be provided in the course outline.
Module Evaluation
This course will be evaluated by an end-of-term survey.
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| Module Name |
Module Code and ECTs credits |
Semester |
Contact Hours |
Module Personnel |
Digital Storyworlds |
FSS030 (5 ECTS) |
2 (Hilary Term) |
22 class hours |
TBD |
Description
Rationale and aims
Media are fundamental to our sense of living in a social world. Since the beginning of modernity, media have transformed the scale on which we act as social beings.
And now in the era of digital media, media themselves are being transformed as platforms, content, and producers multiply. This has led to the most recent development in media:
Digital Storyworlds – the created universe in which transmedia narrative is set across different platforms. These transmedia, interconnected narratives can be fiction,
non-fiction or a combination of the two. In this module, students will explore the structures of transmedia narratives and begin to understand how to develop
and create their own storyworld within which real or imagined objects, individuals, events, and research can co-exist to “tell” a story.
Learning outcomes
This module will enable students to:
Plan and develop digital storyworlds across different platforms
Theorize existing digital storyworlds
Create and produce parts of a digital storyworld
Analyze and critique related theory and practice
Module content:
Classes will be a combination of lecture/seminar, written exercises and analysis, and digital practice.
Resources
Materials provided on Blackboard. Other current reading lists provided at start of term.
Methods of assessment
1) Ongoing assessment and participation 10%
2) Coursework combining theory and practice 90%
Further assessment details will be available in the course outline
Module Evaluation
Student feedback will be requested every year and will feed into development of this module.
|
| Module Name |
Module Code and ECTs credits |
Semester |
Contact Hours |
Module Personnel |
Practical Documentary Filmmaking |
FSS013 (5 ECTS) |
Hilary Term |
22 lecture/seminar hours |
Justin MacGregor |
Description
Rationale and aims
This practical module is designed to give students a basic understanding of the processes of developing, scripting, planning, shooting and selling a
documentary film. It will concentrate on the practical aspects of documentary filmmaking and the inherent issues and problems. It will provide students with the audio
and camera skills required to document a subject. We will look at the problem of access: how to get it and what it means; how to treat your subject, conduct interviews and
chose a style for your work and how to successfully realise your project. We will look at planning and scripting and how best to pick a style that suits your subject needs.
In addition, we will have camera classes where students will be taught the basics of filming real life scenes. Students will be required to come up with ideas for a short form
documentary, 5 minutes in duration and set on the grounds of TCD. Classes will be organised around a practical format working first through a series of exercises and then taking
these projects through to completion.
Learning outcomes
On successful completion of this module students will be able to:
plan, prepare and shoot a short documentary film
identify the story, deciding an angle or view-point and the journalistic approach
choose a mode of filmmaking appropriate to your story
use cameras and audio equipment in the field
understand the language of documentary and different styles of documentary filmmaking
interview subjects in a professional manner
construct a narrative and prepare for an edit
Module content:
- Basic concepts of documentary: what is a documentary film?
- Treatments: what do I want to say and how best to say it?
- Planning, what is the documentary style?
- How to prepare a shoot.
- How to write a script
- An understanding of shots, scenes and the vocabulary of film.
- Camera skills: how to operate a camera.
- How to film in a real life setting (fly-on-the-wall).
- Audio skills: recording clean audio in the field.
- Problem solving in the field.
- How to conduct interviews and put your subject at ease.
- How to prepare for an edit with a paper edit.
- Writing voice over and narration.
Resources
Materials provided on Blackboard. Other reading lists provided at start of term.
Methods of Teaching and Student Learning
Classes will be a combination of lecture/seminar, written exercises and analysis
Methods of assessment
Participation and Reflection 30%
Paperwork / Film 70%
Module Evaluation
Course and Teaching Surveys will be circulated to students at the end of the module. Feedback will be used to reflect on course development.
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| Module Name |
Module Code and ECTs credits |
Semester |
Contact Hours |
Module Personnel |
Writing For The Big Screen |
TBD (5 ECTS) |
Hilary Term |
22 lecture/seminar hours |
Justin MacGregor |
Description
Rationale and aims
The aim is to expand and develop your writing of narrative scripts to feature films. You will explore screenwriting techniques for this medium by undertaking to
write either a treatment for a feature film or the first half of a feature film from the setup through to the midpoint. Building on the three-act structure, you will consider
other methodologies that may be more suitable: such as the five-act structure and the six-stages of structure among others. You will explore the creation of fully realized
characters, the best use of subtext, and the role of subplots. This module is designed to familiarize you with the process
and procedures for developing and writing a feature film script aimed at development for the big screen.
Learning outcomes
This module will enable students to:
Devise ideas suitable for a feature film.
Be able to write a feature film script that is feasible to make and engages your target audience.
Develop tools to analyse and script-edit feature film scripts.
Create a range of fully realized characters.
Effectively use subtext and subplots to enhance your story.
Create and write a range of effective scripts.
Participate in a writer’s room scenario.
Resources
Blake Snyder, Save the Cat!: The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need, Studio City: Michael Wiese Productions, 2005; David Howard, Edward Mabley, The Tools of
Screenwriting: A Writer’s Guide To The Craft and Elements of a Screenplay, London: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1995; John Yorke,
Into the Woods: How Stories Work and Why We Tell Them, London: Penguin, 2014.
Methods of Teaching and Student Learning
Classes will be a combination of lecture/seminar, written exercises and analysis.
Methods of assessment
Participation and Reflection 30%
Two drafts of the first half of a feature film or a treatment 70%
Module Evaluation
Course and Teaching Surveys will be circulated to students at the end of the module. Feedback will be used to reflect on course development.
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