Critical Analysis: Semiotic Approaches to Media and the Event

Details

Description

This course examines semiotic approaches to film, media, and culture through an exploration of primary and secondary texts.  We will read and discuss selected readings by Jean Baudrillard, Roland Barthes, Emile Benveniste, Umberto Eco, Roman Jakobson, Charles Sanders Peirce, Ferdinand de Saussure, among others.  In addition, we will screen a number of films that will serve as the basis for weekly discussions and a mid-term assignment, featuring a range of popular, avant-garde and documentary works. The objective of this class is to familiarize you with the vocabulary and methods of semiotics so you can adapt it to thinking and writing about audiovisual representations foregrounding the concept of the “event.” Your final project for this course consists of a semiotic analysis of an event developed in consultation with the instructor.