FS3521: THE ANIMATE A (2015-2016)

Course Aims

1. Introduce the field of animation studies.
2. Analyze concepts and forms of animation across visual media.
3. Focus on animation as a specific approach to the history of photographic & plastic arts.

Main Learning Outcomes

Students will develop knowledge and understanding of:

1. theories and key issues relating to the study of film and visual culture;
2. film’s relationship to other forms of visual media; and
3. significant works and movements in film and visual culture from around the world and across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and key critical frameworks and a precise rigorous language for discussing questions of film and visual culture.

Students will develop the ability to:

1. engage in critical thinking, through the evaluation and challenging of abstract ideas, using appropriate research methodologies and synthesising ideas drawn from a variety of sources to enable reflection upon key questions relating to film and visual culture;
2. read film closely, identifying patterns (repetitions, developments, sites of difference and disunity);
3. engage with the process of learning in a constructive and self-motivated fashion, by following research interests beyond seminar discussion and developing arguments independently; and
4. in seminar situations articulate views and engage in reflective discussion, responding with evidence to other points of view
5. write clearly and construct coherent arguments.

Course Content

Whether as kinetically alive “motion pictures” or as uncanny doppelgangers of reality, photography and cinema have been approached by many artists, filmmakers and philosophers as unique forms of the animate. Often these forms of life in motion have attracted specific figures and concepts of animation: puppets, dolls, androids, animals, creatures, the undead, or particular things and spaces. Examining this conjunction of animate form and animated figure, this seminar will analyze the image’s intersections with life, death, movement and soul in a range of texts and works: Kleist, Baudelaire, Freud, Rilke, Benjamin, Schulz, Barthes, Whale, Lubitsch, Bellmer, Jonze, Scott, Erice, Disney, Svankmajer and the Quays.

Available only to students in MA Film Studies, Programme Year 3. This course cannot be taken as part of a graduating curriculum with the level 4 version, The Animate B.

Information on contact teaching time is available from the course guide.

View FS3521 Timetable

More Information about Week Numbers

1st Attempt

100% Continuous assessment: 1 short essay, 1500-2000 words (30%); 1 research essay 3000-4000 words (40%); 1 Project (20%); Seminar Assessment (10%).

Resit

1 research essay, 4000 words (100%).

Students are expected to complete Blackboard submissions each week, on which feedback is provided.

The essay is completed during the course. Feedback on this work will be provided to the students, thus helping them to prepare for the research essay.

Formal feedback will be provided on both essays in the form of written comments provided through Turn-it-In on MyAberdeen. Students will also be encouraged to discuss their performance on a one-to-one basis with the course co-ordinator. Written feedback will be offered on short written responses. Informal feedback on contributions to seminars will be offered on an on-going basis and students will also receive feedback in the form of a seminar assessment mark and written comments.

None.