Film Theory Reading List

The following reading list for the English and Film Studies PhD program is provided by the department and is updated yearly to reflect changes in the discipline.

For more information about reading lists, see the Comprehensive Area Exam page.

(1) Perception, Representation, Narration (25 text units)

Arnheim, Rudolf. Film as Art. University of California Press, 1957.

Artaud, Antonin. “Cinema and Abstraction [1927].” Antonin Artaud: Selected Writings. Ed. Susan Sontag. Trans. Helen Weaver. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. 149-150.

Artaud, Antonin. “Cinema and Reality [1927].” Antonin Artaud: Selected Writings. Ed. Susan Sontag. Trans. Helen Weaver. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. 150-152.

Balázs, Béla. Theory of the Film: Character and Growth of a New Art. New York: Dover Publications, 1970.

Bazin, André. What is Cinema? Vol. 1 & 2. Trans. by Hugh Gray. Berkeley: U of California Press, 1967-71.

Bordwell, David. “Classical Hollywood Cinema: Narrational Principles and Procedures.” Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology: a Film Theory Reader. Ed. Philip Rosen. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986. 17-34.

Bordwell, David. “Contemporary Film Studies and the Vicissitudes of Grand Theory.” PostTheory: Reconstructing Film Studies. Eds. David Bordwell and Noël Carroll. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996. 3-36.

Bordwell, David. Narration in the Fiction Film. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985.

Branigan, Edward. Point of View in the Cinema: A Theory of Narration and Subjectivity in Classical Film. Berlin New York: Mouton, 1984.

Burch, Noël. Theory of Film Practice. Princeton, N.J.: University Press, 1981.

Canudo, Riccioto. “Birth of a Sixth Art [1911].” French Film Theory and Criticism: A History/Anthology, 1907-1939. Ed. Richard Abel. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988. 58-65.

Canudo, Riccioto. “Reflections on the Seventh Art [1923].” French Film Theory and Criticism: A History/Anthology, 1907-1939. Ed. Richard Abel. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988. 291-302.

Carroll, Noël. “Prospects for Film Theory.” Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies. Eds. David Bordwell and Noël Carroll. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996. 37-68.

Carroll, Noël. Philosophical Problems of Classical Film Theory. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988.

Carroll, Noël. Mystifying Movies: Fads and Fallacies in Contemporary Film Theory. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988.

Currie, Gregory. Image and Mind: Film, Philosophy and Cognitive Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Eisenstein, Sergei. “Film Form: New Problems.” Film Form. Ed. and Trans. Jay Leyda. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1949. 122-149.

Eisenstein, Sergei. S. M. Eisenstein: Selected Works. Volume I. Writings, 1922-34. Ed. and Trans. Richard Taylor. London: BFI, 1988.

• “Beyond the Shot [1929].”
• “Dramaturgy of Film Form [1929].”
• “The Fourth Dimension in Cinema [1929].”

Eisenstein, Sergei. “Vertical Montage.” S. M. Eisenstein: Selected Works Volume II. Towards a Theory of Montage. Ed. Michael Glenny and Richard Taylor. Trans. Michael Glenny. London: BFI, 1994 327-399.

Epstein, Jean. “On Certain Characteristics of Photogénie [1924].” Abel, Richard. French Film Theory and Criticism: A History/Anthology, 1907-1939. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988. 314-318.

Epstein, Jean. “Magnification [1921].” French Film Theory and Criticism: A History/Anthology, 1907-1939. Ed. Richard Abel. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988. 235-240.

Epstein, Jean. “The Senses I (b) [1921].” French Film Theory and Criticism: A History/Anthology, 1907-1939. Ed. Richard Abel. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988. 241-245.

Frampton, Daniel. Filmosophy. London: Wallflower Press, 2006.

Kracauer, Siegfried. The Mass Ornament: Weimar Essays. Ed. and Trans. Thomas Y. Levin. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995.

• “Cult of Distraction.” 323-328.
• “Film 1928.” 307-322.
• “Photography.” 47-64.

Kracauer, Siegfried. Theory of Film: the Redemption of Physical Reality. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997.

• “Epilogue.” 285-311.
• “Part I, General Characteristics.” 27-74.
• “Photography: Systematic Considerations.” 12-26.
• “The Spectator.” 157-172.

Kuleshov, Lev. “Selections from Art of Film.” Screen Reader 1. London: The Society for Education in Film and Television, 1977. 337-350

Mitry, Jean. “The Film Image.” The Aesthetics and Psychology of Cinema. Trans. Christopher King. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1997. 29-88.

Münsterberg, Hugo. The Film: A Psychology Study [1916]. New York: Routledge, 2001.

Panofsky, Erwin. “Style and Medium in the Motion Pictures.” Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings. 3rd Edition. Eds. Gerald Mast and Marshall Cohen. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. 215-233.

Plantinga, Carl. “Movie Pleasures and the Spectator’s Experience: Towards a Cognitive Approach.” Film and Philosophy 2.2 (1995): 3–19.

Pudovkin, V. I. “From Film Technique.” Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings. 5th Edition. Eds. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. 9-14

Sontag, Susan. On Photography. New York: Dell Publishing, 1978.

Turvey, Malcolm. “Seeing Theory: On Perception and Emotional Response in Current Film Theory.” Film Theory and Philosophy. Eds. Richard Allen and Murray Smith. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997. 431–456.

Vertov, Dziga. Kino-Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov. Ed. Annette Michelson. Trans. Kevin O'Brien. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984.

• “From Kino-Eye to Radio-Eye[1929].” 85-91.
• “Kino-Eye [1926].” 60-78.
• “Kinoks: A Revolution [1923].” 11-20.
• “WE: Variant of a Manifesto [1922].” 5-9.

(2) Ideology, Apparatus, Signification (18.75 text units)

Althusser, Louis, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an Investigation).” Eds. Aradhana Sharma and Akhil Gupta. The Anthropology of the State: A Reader. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2006. 86-112.

Bellour, Raymond. “The Obvious and the Code.” Screen 15 (Winter l974-75): 7- 17.

Barthes, Roland. “The Photographic Message.” Image/Music/Text. Glasgow: Fontana Press, 1993. 15-31.

Barthes, Roland. “The Rhetoric of Photography.” Image/Music/Text. Glasgow: Fontana Press, 1993. 32-51.

Barthes, Roland. “The Third Sense.” Image/Music/Text. Glasgow: Fontana Press, 1993. 52-68.

Baudry, Jean-Louis. “Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematographic Apparatus.” Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology: A Film Theory Reader. Ed. P. Rosen. New York; Columbia University Press, 1985.

Comolli, Jean-Louis. “Technique and Ideology: Camera, Perspective, Depth of Field (Part One).” Movies and Methods, Vol. II. Ed. Bill Nichols. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985. 40-57.

Comolli, Jean-Louis. “Technique and Ideology: Camera, Perspective, Depth of Field (Parts Three and Four).” Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology. Ed. Philip Rosen. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986. 421-443.

Comolli, Jean-Louis, and Jean Narboni. “Cinema/Ideology/Criticism (1).” Screen Reader 1: Cinema/Ideology/Politics. Ed. John Ellis. London: The Society for Education in Film and Television. 2-11.

Comolli, Jean-Louis, and Jean Narboni. “Cinema/Ideology/Criticism (2).” Screen Reader 1: Cinema/Ideology/Politics. Ed. John Ellis. London: The Society for Education in Film and Television, 1977. 36-46.

Heath, Stephen. “Notes on Suture.” Screen 18:4 (Winter 1978). 48-76.

Heath, Stephen. “Narrative Space.” Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology. Ed. Philip Rosen. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986. 379-420.

Henderson, Brian. “Towards a Non-Bourgeois Camera Style,” Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings, 6th ed. Eds. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. 54-64.

Kaplan, E. Ann. Looking For the Other: Feminism, Film, and the Imperial Gaze. New York: Routledge, 1997.

Lacan, Jacques. “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I As Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience” [1936]. Écrits: A Selection. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1977. 1-7.

Lacan, Jacques. “Of the Gaze as Objet Petit a.” The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1978. 67-119. 

MacCabe, Colin. High Theory/Low Culture: Analysing Popular Television and Film. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1986.

MacCabe, Colin. “Theory and Film: Principles of Realism and Pleasure,” Screen 17 (Autumn 1976): 7-27. Reprinted in Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology. Ed. Philip Rosen. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986. 179-197.

Metz, Christian. “The Imaginary Signifier (excerpts).” Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology. Ed. Philip Rosen. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986. 244-278.

Metz, Christian. Film Language: a Semiotics of the Cinema. Trans. Michael Taylor. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974.

• “Preface.” ix-xvi.
• “On the Impression of Reality in the Cinema.” 3-15.
• “Notes Toward a Phenomenology of the Narrative.” 16-28.
• “The Cinema: Language or Language System?” 31-91.
• “Problems of Denotation in the Fiction Film.” 108-146.

Mulvey, Laura. “Afterthoughts on ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ inspired by Duel in the Sun.” Feminism and Film Theory. Ed. Constance Penley. New York: Routledge, 1988. 69-79.

Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen 16:3 (1975): 6–18.

Polan, Dana. “Bertolt Brecht and Daffy Duck: Toward a Politics of Self-Reflexive Cinema?,” American Media and Mass Culture: Left Perspectives. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1987. 345-56.

Prince, Stephen. “Psychoanalytic Film Theory and the Problem of the Missing Spectator.” PostTheory: Reconstructing Film Studies. Eds. David Bordwell and Noël Carroll. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996. 71-86.

Rancière, Jacques. The Future of the Image. Trans. Gregory Elliott. London: Verso, 2007.

Rodowick, D. N. The Crisis of Political Modernism: Criticism and Ideology in Contemporary Film Theory. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1988.

Rodowick, D. N. The Difficulty of Difference: Psychoanalysis, Sexual Difference & Film Theory. New York: Routledge, 1991.

Silverman, Kaja. The Acoustic Mirror: The Female Voice in Psychoanalysis and Cinema. Indiana University Press, 1988.

Silverman, Kaja. “Suture (excerpts).” Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology. Ed. Philip Rosen. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986. 219-235.

Virilio, Paul. War and Cinema: The Logistics of Perception. Trans. Patrick Camiller. London: Verso, 1989.

Wollen, Peter. “Godard and Counter-Cinema: Vent d'Est.” Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology. Ed. Philip Rosen. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986. 120-129.

(3) Identity Politics, Culture, Reception (21 text units)

Adorno, Theodor, and Max Horkheimer. “The Culture Industry: Entertainment as Mass Deception [1944]” Dialectic of Enlightenment. Trans. John Cumming. New York: Continuum, 1995, 120-167.

Andrew, Dudley. “The Unauthorized Auteur Today.” Film Theory: An Anthology. Eds. Robert Stam and Toby Miller. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000. 20-29.

Baudelaire, Charles. “The Modern Public and Photography,” in Classic Essays on Photography: 83-89.

Bazin, Andre. “La Politique des auteurs.” Theories of Authorship: A Reader (1981). Ed. John Caughie. London and New York: Routledge, 2001. 44-46.

Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility (Third Version).” Walter Benjamin. Selected Writings, Vol. 4 (1938-1940). Eds. Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003. 251-283.

Butler, Judith. “Gender Is Burning: Questions of Appropriation and Subversion.” Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex.” New York: Routledge, 1993. 121-140.

Corrigan, Timothy. “The Commerce of Auteurism.” Critical Visions in Film Theory: Classic and Contemporary Readings. Eds. Corrigan et al. Boston and New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2011. 416-29.

De Lauretis, Teresa. Technologies of Gender: Essays on Theory, Film, and Fiction. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987.

Deleuze, Gilles. Cinema 1: The Movement Image. Trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986.

Deleuze, Gilles. Cinema 2: The Time Image. Trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989.

Diawara, Manthia. “Black Spectatorship: Problems of Identification and Resistance.” Screen 29.4 (Autumn 1988): 66-79.

Doane, Mary Ann. Femmes Fatales: Feminism, Film Theory, Psychoanalysis. New York: Routledge, 1991.

Doane, Mary Ann. “Film and the Masquerade: Theorizing the Female Spectator.” Film and Theory: An Anthology. Eds. Robert Stam and Toby Miller. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2000. 495-509.

Doane, Mary Ann. “Woman’s Stake: Filming the Female Body.” Feminism and Film Theory. Ed. Constance Penley. New York: Routledge, 1988. 216-228.

Dorfman, Ariel and Armand Mattelart. How to Read Donald Duck: Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic. 1971. International General, New York, 1991.

Gaines, Jane. “White Privilege and Looking Relations: Race and Gender in Feminist Film Theory.” Film and Theory: An Anthology. Eds. Robert Stam and Toby Miller. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2000. 715-732.

Ginsburg, Faye. “Screen Memories and Entangled Technologies: Resignifying Indigenous Lives.” Multiculturalism, Postcoloniality and Transnational Media. Eds. Ella Shohat and Robert Stam. New Brunswick, NJ and London: Rutgers University Press, 2003. 77-98.

hooks, bell. “The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators.” Film and Theory: An Anthology. Eds. Robert Stam and Toby Miller. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2000. 510-523.

Jenkins, Henry. Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture. New York: Routledge, 1992.

Landsberg, Alison. “Prosthetic Memory: The Ethics and Politics of Memory in an Age of Mass Culture.” Memory and Popular Film. Ed. Paul Grainge. Manchester and New York: Manchester UP, 2003. 144-61.

Sarris, Andrew. “Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962,” Braudy and Cohen. 561-64.

Sconce, Todd. “Irony, Nihilism and the New American ‘Smart’ Film,” Screen 43.4 (Winter 2002): 349-69.

Stacey, Jackie. Star Gazing: Hollywood and Female Spectatorship. London: Routledge, 1994.

Stam, Robert and Ella Shohat. Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media. London: Routledge, 1994.

Stam, Robert and Ella Shohat, “Film Theory and Spectatorship in the Age of the ‘Posts’.” Reinventing Film Studies. Eds. Christine Gledhill and Linda Williams. Arnold: Oxford and New York, 2003. 381-401.

Williams, Linda. Figures of Desire: A Theory and Analysis of Surrealist Film. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981.

Wollen, Peter. “The Auteur Theory (excerpt),” Theories of Authorship: A Reader. Ed. John Caughie. London: Routledge, 1981. 138-151.

(4) Technology, Media, Digitality (17 text units)

Belton, John. “Digital Cinema: A False Revolution.” October 100 (2002): 98-114.

Belton, John. “Technology and Aesthetics of Film Sound.” Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings. 7th Edition. Eds. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. 63-72.

Bolter, Jay David and Richard Grusin. Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999.

Burston, Jonathan. “Synthespians Among Us: Rethinking the Actor in Media Work and Media Theory.” Media and Cultural Theory. Ed. James Curran and David Morley. New York: Routledge, 2006. 250-62.

Constandinides, Costas. From Film Adaptation to Post-Celluloid Adaptation: Rethinking the Transition of Popular Narratives and Characters Across Old and New Media. New York: Continuum, 2010.

Elsaesser, Thomas, “Early Film History and Multi-Media: An Archaeology of Possible Futures?” New Media, Old Media: A History and Theory Reader. Eds. Wendy Hui Kyong Chun and Thomas Keenan. NY: Routledge, 2006.

Freidberg, Anne. “The End of Cinema: Multimedia and Technological Change.” Film Theory and Criticism Seventh Edition. Eds. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. 834-852.

Friedberg, Anne. The Virtual Window: From Alberti to Microsoft. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006.

Gunning, Tom. “The Cinema of Attractions: Early Cinema, Its Spectators and the Avant Garde,” Early Cinema: Space Frame Narrative. Ed. Thomas Elsaesser. London: BFI, 1990. 56-62.

Haraway, Donna. “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century.” Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge, 1991.149-181.

Haraway, Donna. “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism, and the Privilege of Partial Perspective.” Ibid. 183-201.

Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press, 2008.

Kittler, Friedrich. Gramophone, Film, Typewriter. Trans. Geoffrey Winthrop-Young and Michael Wutz. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999.

Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001.

McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964.

Murray, Timothy. Digital Baroque: Mew Media Art and Cinematic Folds. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008.

Prince, Stephen. “The Emergence of Filmic Artifacts: Cinema and Cinematography in the Digital Era.” Film Quarterly 57.3 (Spring 2004): 24-33.

Whissel, Kristen. “Tales of Upward Mobility: The New Verticality and Digital Special Effects.” Film Theory and Criticism Seventh Edition. Eds. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. 834-852.

(5) Films (assuming each film will be viewed twice) (7.75 text units)

• The Birth of a Nation (D.W. Griffith, 1915, 190 min.)
• Strike (Sergei Eisenstein, 1925, 82 min.)
• Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927, 153 min.)
• Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941, 119 min.)
• Rashomon (Akira Kurosawa, 1950, 88 min.)
• Persona (Ingmar Bergman, 1966, 85 min.)
• Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Chantal Akerman, 1975, 201 min.)
• Do the Right Thing (Spike Lee, 1989, 120 min.)
• The Matrix (Andy and Larry Wachowski, 1999, 136 min.)
• Triumph of the Will (Leni Riefenstahl, 1935, 114 min.)
• Wild Strawberries (Ingmar Bergman, 1957, 91 min.)

Recommended Reference Texts (Not Required)

Andrew, J. Dudley. Concepts in Film Theory. New York: Oxford University Press, 1984.

Andrew, J. Dudley. The Major Film Theories. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976.

Easthope, Anthony. (Ed.). Contemporary Film Theory. London New York: Longman, 1993.

Lapsley, Robert and Westlake, Michael. Film Theory: An Introduction. 3rd ed. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2006.

Stam, Robert and Toby Miller. (Eds.). A Companion to Film Theory. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1999.