COURSE SCHEDULE

 


week 1
| week 2 | week 3 | week 4 | week 5 | week 6 | week 7
week 8 | week 9 | week 10 | week 11 | week 12 | week 13 | week 14 | week 15

ERES = Availabe from the Electronic Reserve System at Washington University.
For complete bibliographical information, click here.
Entries in green are recommended readings.
Week 1: Introduction
W 8/31
  • Introduction
  • Object:
    • Laszlo Moholoy-Nagy, Dynamic of the Metropolis (1921/22/27)
  • Reading:
    • Kern, The Culture of Time and Space. 10-35. 131-180.
Week 2: Subjective Vision / Mobile Vision
W 9/7
  • Object:
    • Adolph Menzel, Balcony Room (1845)
  • Reading:
    • Crary, Techniques of the Observer. 1-25. 67-137. [ERES]
    • Friedberg, “The Mobilized and Virtual Gaze in Modernity.” 15-38. [ERES]
Week 3: Walking: The Nineteenth-Century Flaneur
W 9/14
  • Object:
    • Charles Baudelaire, “A une passante” [ERES]
  • Reading:
    • Benjamin, “On Some Motifs in Baudelaire” [ERES]
    • Benjamin, “[M:] The Flaneur” [ERES]
    • Gleber, The Art of Taking a Walk. 23-42. 129-170. [ERES]
Week 4: Trains
W 9/21
  • Objects:
    • Gerhard Hauptmann, Bahnwärter Thiel / Lineman Thiel (1888)
    • William Turner, Rain, Steam and Speed--The Great Western Railway (1844)
    • Adolph Menzel, Berlin-Potsdam Railway (1847)
    • Adolph Menzel, Traveling through the Countryside (1892)
  • Reading:
    • Schivelbusch, The Railway Journey. 1-45. 52-88. 113-170.
    • Kirby, Parallel Tracks. 19-74. [ERES]
Week 5: Photography / Chronophotography
W 9/28
  • Objects:
    • Selected nineteenth- and early twentieth century photographs
    • Etienne-Jules Marey, Schenkel, Long Jump (1886)
    • Etienne-Jules Marey, Morin, Walk (1886)
    • Series Photography by Eadweard Muybridge
  • Reading:
    • Benjamin, "Little History of Photography" [ERES]
    • Cadava, Words of Light. 3-13. 47-63. 87-97. 128. [ERES]
    • Doane, “Temporality, Storage, Legibility: Freud, Marey, and the Cinema” [ERES]
    • Braun, Picturing Time. 42-149. [ERES]
Week 6: Perception, Duration, Motion: Henri Bergson
W 10/5
  • Reading:
    • Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory. 9-177.
Week 7: Film
M 10/11
  • Screening: Films by Lumiere Brothers, Melies, Ruttmann and Richter
W 10/12
  • Objects :
    • Auguste and Louis Lumiere, Workers Leaving the Factory (1895)
    • Auguste and Louis Lumiere, Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat (1895)
    • Auguste and Louis Lumiere, Photograph (1895)
    • Auguste and Louis Lumiere, The Sprinkler Sprinkled
    • Auguste and Louis Lumiere, Promenade of Ostriches, Paris Botanical Gardens (1896)
    • Auguste and Louis Lumiere, New York, Brooklyn Bridge (1896)
    • Auguste and Louis Lumiere, New York: Broadway at Union Square (1896)
    • Georges Melies, A Trip to the Moon (1902)
    • Walter Ruttmann, Opus I (1922)
    • Hans Richter, Ghosts before Breakfast (1927)
  • Reading:
    • Gunning, “An Aesthetics of Astonishment: Early Film and the (In)Credulous Spectator” [ERES]
    • Deleuze, Cinema 1: The Movement-Image. 1-70. [ERES]
    • Charney, Empty Moments: Cinema, Modernity, and Drift. 67-88. [ERES]
Week 8: Relativity
W 10/19
  • Reading:
    • Albert Einstein, Relativity: The Special and the General Theory
  • ESSAY 1 due
Week 9: Movement, Speed, and the “Disintegration” of Form
W 10/26
  • Objects:
    • Paul Cezanne, Mont Sainte-Victoire (various versions)
    • Marcel Duchamp, Nude Descending the Stairway (1912)
    • Giacomo Balla, Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash (1912)
    • Umberto Boccioni, Unique Forms of Continuity in Space (1913)
    • Giacomo Balla, Mercury Passing in Front of the Sun (1914)
    • Hannah Höch, Cut with the Kitchen Knife (1919)
    • Herbert Bayer, Lonely Metropolitan (1932)
    • Pablo Picasso, Guernica (1937)
  • Reading:
    • Marinetti, “The New Religion-Morality of Speed” [ERES]
    • Kern, The Culture of Time and Space, 1880-1918. 181-210.
    • Gombrich, “Ambiguities of the Third Dimension” [ERES]
    • Mitchell, “Space and Time: Lessing’s Laocoon and the Politics of Genre” [ERES]
Week 10: Airplanes
W 11/2
  • Objects:
    • Franz Kafka, The Aeroplanes at Brescia (1909) [ERES]
    • Kasimir Malevich, Suprematist Composition: Airplane Flying (1915)
    • Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, The Pope’s Monoplane: Political Novel in Free Prose (1912) [ERES]
  • Reading:
    • Kern, The Culture of Time and Space, 1880-1918. 241-258.
    • Demetz, The Air Show at Brescia, 1909. 149-185. [ERES]
    • Malevich, "From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism: The New Realism in Painting" [ERES]
    • Malevich, "Non-Objective Art and Suprematism" [ERES]
    • Malevich, "The Question of Imitative Art" [ERES]
    • Marinetti, “Technical Manifesto of Futurist Literature” [ERES]
Week 11: The Speed of War
W 11/9
  • Object:
    • Ernst Jünger, In Stahlgewittern / Storm of Steel (1920)
  • Reading:
    • Kern, The Culture of Time and Space, 1880-1918. 259-312.
    • Hüppauf, “Experiences of Modern Warfare and the Crisis of Representation” [ERES]
Week 12: Political Mobilization
M 11/15
  • Screening: Triumph of the Will (1935, dir. Leni Riefenstahl)
W 11/16
  • Objects:
    • Leni Riefenstahl, Triumph of the Will (1935)
    • Ernst Jünger, "Total Mobilization" [ERES]
  • Reading:
    • Paul Virilio, Speed & Politics. 000-000.
Week 13: Thanksgiving Break
W 11/23
  • Thanksgiving Break: No class
Week 14: Cars
M 11/29
  • Screening: Detour (1945, dir. Edgar Ulmer)
W 11/30
  • Objects:
    • Edgar Ulmer, Detour (1945)
    • Giacomo Balla, Speeding Automobile and Lights (1913)
    • Paul Strand, Wire Wheel (1920)
    • Anton Stankowski, Zeitprotokoll mit Auto (1929)
    • Michel Butor, Mobile. i-ix. 5-15. 52-69. [ERES]
  • Reading:
    • Marinetti, "The Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism" [ERES]
    • Dimendberg, “The Will to Motorization: Cinema, Highways, and Modernity” [ERES]
    • Ross, Fast Cars, Clean Bodies. 15-70. [ERES]
    • Bel Geddes, Magic Motorways. 1-42. 105-122. 221-247. [ERES]
    • Silk, “The Automobile in Art” [ERES]
Week 15: Slow Down?
W 12/7
  • Objects:
    • Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History” (1940) [ERES]
    • Peter Handke, Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire (1980)
  • ESSAY 2 due