| Essays
should be five to six pages in length. The primary purpose of this paper
is to develop a persuasive thesis about the material at stake. I do not
expect you to carry out major research for your topic. What I would like
to see, however, is some closer reading of a selected scene or two in
order to illustrate your argument. Please do not hesitate to talk to me
about your topic so as to discuss it in further detail. Due date is October
19, 2005.
- Compare
the representation of approaching trains in Hauptmann’s Bahnwärter
Thiel and William Turner, Rain, Steam and Speed--The Great
Western Railway.
- Hauptmann’s
Bahnwärter Thiel repeatedly uses mechanistic metaphors
in order to describe human bodies. Compare and contrast this with the
presence of multiple viewing devices and optical prostheses in Adolph
Menzel’s Traveling through the Countryside. How can we
explain the mechanization of the body?
- Compare
the figuration of the window in Adolph Menzel’s Balcony Room
with the role of windows in E.T.A. Hoffmann’s story, “The
Cousin’s corner Window,” as discussed in Benjamin’s
essay on Baudelaire. What kind of viewer do both representations imply
or produce?
- To what
extent can we think of Benjamin’s flaneur as a moviewatcher before
his or her time?
- Discuss
different understandings of time as embodied in the work and technological
inventions of Muybridge and Marey.
- How
can Bergson help us better understand the work of Marey?
- Discuss
the role of the figure of death in Benjamin’s reading of Baudelaire.
Is death the end of all speed and transistorizes?
- To what
extent can we think of Menzel’s room in Balcony Room as
a camera obscura in Jonathan Crary’s sense?
- Discuss
different strategies (visual and textual) by means of which Laszlo Moholoy-Nagy
in Dynamic of the Metropolis tries to transform the experience
of modern speed into a viable new aesthetic.
- Discuss
difference and similarities between the visual practices of railway
travelers and flaneurs as discussed in the work of Benjamin and Schivelbusch.
- Employ
Friedberg’s differentiation of mobile and virtual looking in order
to discuss some of the objects we have discussed so far.
- How
photographic is the gaze of Benjamin’s flaneur?
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