Dimitrios Latsis Plan of Study

Field 1: Contemporary Film Theory: History of Vision and Perception

Description:

This area will address recent (post-1980) theoretical developments in the study of the moving
image as well as the evolving perceptual mechanisms that influenced and were influenced by the rise of
cinema at the turn of the twentieth century. Reflecting I especially intend to develop depth in
phenomenological writings in contemporary film theory, their philosophical foundations (e.g. Martin
Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Gaston Bachelard) and relevant perspectives from visual culture.
Major philosophers (among others) have become central to this field because they have repeatedly turned
to perception and nature as contentious but fruitful critical categories for understanding the cultural
production and reception of the moving image.
I will also focus on theories that address the transposition, evolution and continuities between
different media and aesthetics both contemporarily and historically, by including material that provides a
theoretical basis as to how best to associate motifs and meanings produced in earlier forms of visual
culture with equivalent ones occurring in the moving image. Therefore, especially pertinent are theses
of a comparatist bent within Art History like Aby Warburgs iconology of survival (for film studies
cf Philippe-Alain Michaud, Georges Didi-Huberman) and within Cultural Studies like Raymond
Williams' residual and emergent cultural forms that will be brought in dialogue with contemporary
debates around reception and meaning in cinema as an art among the others (cf Vivian Sobchack, Angela
Dalle Vacche, Giuliana Bruno). Both of these dimensions, the phenomenological and the comparative
reflect proliferating tendencies in contemporary apparatus theory, reception studies, comparative
aesthetics, media theory, cultural history and theorizations of vision (ex. Crary, Jay) and so relevant
texts from each of these fields that adopt or engage with the two above methodologies will be
included here.

Courses Completed: 18 s.h.

Transfer Credits: 6 s.h.
SP09 7AAQS565 French Cinema: History, Ideology, Aesthetics (King's College London) 3 s.h.
Paper submitted: After the Death: The Figure of the Author in Contemporary
French Film Theory
SP10 7AAQS660 Master's Thesis (King's College London) 3 s.h.
Between White Cubes and Dark Rooms: Authorial consistency in the gallery
installation and cinema work of five contemporary filmmakers

To be published in part as: "Between White Cubes and Dark Rooms: Authoring
Space across Films and Installations," October, Winter 2013, Issue 143.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

UI Seminars: 12 s.h.
FA10 048:273 Advanced Film Theory 3 s.h.
Topic: Contemporary Film Theory Corey Creekmur
Dimitrios Latsis Plan of Study
FA10 008:440 Seminar: Studies in 20
th
Century 3 s.h.
Topic: Joyce, Kittler and Everyday Life Cheryl Herr
Paper Submitted: God becomes man becomes fish becomes barnacle goose
Joycean re-productions of modernity in adaptations across media
FA11 008:461 Seminar: Literary Criticism and Theory 3 s.h.
Topic: Nietzsche and Heidegger: Metaphysics of Critique David
Wittenberg
SP12 08:260 Modes of Critical Analysis 3 s.h.
Topic: Sensory Perception Kevin Kopelson
Future Course to be Completed:
FA12 048:273 Advanced Film Theory 3 s.h.
Topic: The Afterlives of Classical Film Theory Corey Creekmur
Total Hours: 21 s.h.



Field 2:American Cinema in Cultural Context: Pre-Cinema to 19
Description:

This area will be dedicated to the study of American cinema (from its roots to
the early Hollywood studio system) in an intermedial, cultural context. I will focus on texts
concerning the history of the development and deployment of the various technologies of
representation that precede, intersect with or follow the institutionalization of cinema as a
form of entertainment, culture and art. Early and silent cinema histories that focus on nation,
narrative and aesthetics will be prominently represented in this area, as will studies dealing
with genre (documentary, westerns), technique (sets, sound, projection) and modes of
production (itinerant, amateur, commissioned, institutional). Texts chosen will reflect a dual
focus on ideology and social context on the one hand and aesthetics on the other. Finally, an
equal mix of history and theory of the cinema and more generally the visual culture of the
period is to be included.

Courses Completed: 15 s.h.

Transfer Credits: 3 s.h.

FA08 7AAQS515 Art Cinema (King's College London)
Dimitrios Latsis Plan of Study

Paper submitted: "Europeans in Early Hollywood: Sjstrm, Murnau, and the rate of
an American Art Cinema Tradition

UI Seminars: 12 s.h.
FA10 045:300 American Film and American Culture 3 s.h.
Topic: Early American Cinema Lauren Rabinovitz
SP11 048:275 Advanced Film History 3 s.h.
Topic: Histories of Experimental Cinema Corey Creekmur
FA11 01H:366 Seminar: Problems in American Art 3 s.h.
Topic: Landscape in American Art Joni Kinsey
Paper submitted: "The Moving Wind in the Trees: Motif and Stylistic Revivals of
Landscape across Art and Cinema" focuses on early American film travelogues

SP12 048:277 Studies in Sound and Image 3 s.h.
Topic: Hollywood Standardizes Sound Rick Altman
Future Courses to be Completed:
FA12 045:100 Independent Study 2 s.h.
Topic: Early US Cinema & Visual Cultures Lauren Rabinovitz
SP13 01H:170 Modernism and Early Twentieth-Century American Art Joni Kinsey 3 s.h.

Total Hours: 20 s.h.

Field 3: Landscape in American Cinema

Description:

Since cinema's origins and indeed from its precedents to the conclusion of New
Deal-era artistic and cultural programs (many of which adopted regionalist and naturalist
aesthetics), American movies have disseminated and render the natural landscape into
narratives for a national and international audience. This area encompasses the political,
hermeneutic and historical parameters of this phenomenon. This area is primarily
concerned with specific filmic modes and genres: early westerns, travelogues, early
documentaries, government-sponsored films, films by foreign filmmakers mostly set in US
landscapes, non-theatrical films (e.g. as part of amusements or other attractions), as well
as set design of artificial landscapes. In addition, the thematic mode of landscape will be
extended to adaptations and exchanges between film and photography, paintings,
postcards, panoramas, and stereography and other forms of contemporaneous visual
culture. What unifies this area is the framing of the land to express concerns like
nationhood, mobility, and the narrative of empire. Understood as an inter-medial corpus,
landscape in American moving images is an integral parameter of the national artistic
Dimitrios Latsis Plan of Study
tradition of the United States. The contents of the area will be informed by all three fields
(Film Studies, American Studies and Art History) and the periodization will (primarily, but not
exclusively) extend from the rich period of increased intermedial interaction in visual culture
during the years of pre-cinema in the nineteenth century to the end of WWII, both for
pragmatic reasons and because of the changes that the War brought, on a practical and
aesthetic level to the figuration of the land on screen, at home and abroad.
Natural landscape here is not meant as a flat, two-dimensional projection, a surface
or background of decorative valence, void of meaning, history or context. Contrary to such
a conception, the present area will include material that approaches landscape as a four-
dimensional (adding the horizon of time), wholly rounded and enveloping spatial category
that is worked and reworked within culture and whose production and reception can
reveal a lot about a societys self-image and ideology.


Courses Completed: 12 s.h.
Transfer Credits: 3 s.h.
SP10 7AAQS560 Media Aesthetics (King's College London) 3 s.h.
Paper submitted: Rosy-Fingered Dawn: Natural Sublime in the Landscapes
of Terrence Malick
UI Seminars: 9 s.h.
SP11 008:452 Seminar in American Literature: Walt WhitmanEd Folsom 3 s.h.
Paper Submitted: A Soul Sown in Soil: Natural Landscape in the Poetry of
Walt Whitman
SP 11 048: 273 Advanced Film Theory 3 s.h.
Topic: Phenomenologies of Sound and ImageSteve Choe
Paper submitted: Dwelling, Seeing, Meaning: Cinema Landscapes and
Merleau- Pontys Late Thought on Nature
FA11 048:112 Proseminar in Cinema and Culture 1 s.h.
Topic: Environmental Cinema Kyle Stine
SP12 01H:194 Independent Study in Art History
Topic: Landscape and the Moving Image Joni Kinsey 2 s.h.

Future Courses to be Completed:
FA12 045: 250 Seminar: Topics in American Studies 3 s.h. Topic: The Culture of Nature
Technologies of Landscape Laura Rigal


Total Hours: 15 s.h.
Dimitrios Latsis Plan of Study
Research Skill: Professionalization, Research and Pedagogy
Transfer Credits: 3 s.h.
FA 08 7AAQS500 Formations Of Film Studies (King's College London) 3 s.h.
KCL Description: An advanced introduction to contemporary approaches to film
studies. In this course, students will critically examine a range of contemporary
approaches to the study of a particular aspect of film: from a consideration of the
cultural-historical factors that bear upon the formation of the field itself, to an
examination of the historical and theoretical issues raised by the study of film style
and its relationship to spectatorship.
UI Seminars: 6 s.h.
SU211 008N:340 Writing for Learned Journals 3 s.h.
SU12 007P:217 Seminar in College Teaching 3 s.h.

Total Hours: 9 s.h.

Foreign Languages
Greek: Mother Tongue
English: fluent
French: fluent
Italian: reading knowledge

Relevant Translations:
(forthcoming) An Original Translation of Martin Heideggers 'The Provenance of Art and
the Destination of Thought'
Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, Vol 43, No 3 (October
2012) (ISSN: 0164-0771)
Dimitrios Latsis Plan of Study
Relevant Research & Publications Addendum

-Publications:

Rosy-Fingered Dawn: The Natural Sublime in the work of Terrence Malick
Refractory: A Journal of Entertainment Media (ISSN: 1447-4905), Vol 17, 2010.
Melbourne, University of Melbourne, Australia.

God becomes man becomes fish becomes barnacle goose : Joycean re-productions of
modernity in adaptations across media.
Intermedialits (ISSN: 1705-8546) no 5 Thatralizer, 2011 (ed Jean-Marc Larrue),
Montral, QC: Universit de Montral.

Between White Cubes and Dark Rooms: Authoring Space across Films and
Installations
October (ISSN 0162-2870), Winter 2013, Issue 143. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

(forthcoming) Nature's Nation on the Screen: Discursive Functions of the Natural
Landscape in Early American Films
Amerikastudien/American Studies (ISSN: 0340-2827) Deutsche Gesellschaft fr
Amerikastudien (DGfA) / German Association for American Studies, Winter Verlag
Heidelberg.

(forthcoming) Review of Roll Away the Reel World: James Joyce and Cinema (ed
John McCourt), University of Cork Press
The Irish Review (ISSN:0790-7850), Issue 45, Cork, Ireland, University of Cork Press.

-Under Review:

Expanding Cinema: Perception and Genealogies of Para-Cinematic Screen Practices
in American Avant-Garde Cinema
Moving Image Review & Art Journal (ISSN: 2045-6301) submitted Mar 2012

Genealogy of the Image in Histoire(s) du Cinema: Godard, Warburg and the
iconology of the interstice
Third Text (ISSN: 0952-8822) submitted July 2012

-Recent Conference Presentations:
Dwelling, Seeing, Meaning: A Phenomenological Reflection on Cinematic
Landscapes
European Studies Group Annual Conference, University of Iowa (December 2011, Iowa
City, IA)

Cinematic Landscapes and Merleau-Pontys Late Thought on Nature
American Philosophical Association Central Division Annual Conference
Society for the Philosophical Study of the Contemporary Visual Arts (February 2012,
Chicago, IL)
Dimitrios Latsis Plan of Study
Expanding Cinema: Genealogies of the Para-cinematic within American Avant-Garde
Cinema (paper)
Expanded Cinema in Four Dimensions: Origins, Senses, Interactivity, Publicness (Panel Chair)
2012 Conference of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies(March 2012, Boston, MA)

The Moving Wind in the Trees: Motivic and Stylistic Revivals of Landscape Across Art and
Cinema
Mimesis Now, University of Rochester (April 2012, Rochester, NY)

Utopian Landscapes and Sci-fi Autobiography: An Iconological Approach to Terrence
Malicks The Tree of Life (2011)
8th Annual Religion, Literature, and the Arts Conference at the University of
Iowa Futures and Illusions: Hope and the Longing for Utopia 24-26 August 2012

-Qualification Exams:
Theory Area: Film Theory 1990-Present
History Area:US Cinema, Origins to 1930

-Professional Memberships:
Society for Cinema and Media Studies
American Philosophical Association
Society for the Philosophical Study of the Contemporary Visual Arts
Interdisciplinary Coalition of North American Phenomenologists
Merleau-Ponty Circle