CINEMA AND PERFORMING ARTS (CPA)

Cinema and Performing Arts (CPA) encompasses a broad spectrum of performing arts, traditional and modern, as well as the local, regional and transnational cinemas of East Asia.  We require students to verse themselves in a variety of live performance, dramatic literature, cinematic styles, and other media, examining the shared aesthetic and social frameworks within which works are created, produced, and function.  With the foundation supplied by courses in specific performing and cinematic works, students will explore in seminars formal and thematic relationships among the various forms.  They will also consider the transformations and innovations that have occurred in response to changing audiences and social conditions.

Studies of cinema are aimed at providing students with a solid background on the cinemas of Japan, China, Korea, as well as more recent developments in Pan Asian and transnational cinema.  We offer a well-rounded approach, which balances film history and the technology and techniques of filmmaking with film criticism.  From the development of industry studios and the globalization of local film markets to the evolution of filmmaking technology and the changing aesthetic trajectories of filmmakers, we explore cinema as the complex intersection of art and commerce that it is. Our approach is also informed by other relevant anthropological, sociological, psychological and political theories and approaches, including post/colonialism, Marxism, post/modernism, and gender studies.

Studies in the performing arts cover the history of dramatic forms in social context in China and Japan.  Students will be introduced to major genres in relationship to song, storytelling arts, puppetry, and other expressive forms.  We seek to furnish a rounded approach by building skills in textual analysis, as well as studies of the elements of performance, such as music, staging, acting skills, reception, and criticism.  Students will also examine the movement of texts and other artifacts of performance in the marketplace and among groups and individuals who help determine their value and use.

FACULTY

Michael Berry
(Chinese fiction and cinema)
Sabine Frühstück
(Japanese cultural studies), Katherine Saltzman-Li
(early modern Japanese literature)
John Nathan
(Japanese fiction and cinema)
Bhaskar Sarkar
(Chinese cinema)
Mayfair Yang
(Chinese anthropology and religion).