Film & Performing Arts Archives - Page 3 of 3

Activism

The Art of Contemplating Justice

An excerpt from Studies into Darkness: The Perils and Promise of Free Speech

November 1, 2022 • by Amar Kanwar

When you look at any crime, it is investigated by an agency, the police, or the criminal justice system of any society. The process of justice is based on an investigation that is in turn based on the collection of evidence. Only evidence defined as permissible by law is presented ...

Film & Performing Arts

Three Thousand Years of Longing—And One Hour and Forty-Eight Minutes of Regret from This Humanities Professor

The new film from George Miller doesn’t do humanities scholars any favors

October 5, 2022 • by Hannah H. Kim

The problem of Three Thousand Years of Longing isn’t just that Alithea, our unfortunate representative, is unimaginative; the plot suggests the humanities have no natural home in the twenty-first century....

Three Thousand Years of Longing—And One Hour and Forty-Eight Minutes of Regret from This Humanities Professor

Feminism

What Does It Mean to Be “Written By a Woman?”

How a misleading phrase went viral on TikTok, Twitter, and then became part of the Gen Z lexicon

November 17, 2021 • by Madeleine Janz

He could be skinny or ripped or somewhere in between, but never fat. He’s different from most of the men you meet: He doesn’t catcall, he doesn’t question your rape story, and he would never, ever put anything other than your pleasure and happiness first. He could be old or ...

What Does It Mean to Be “Written By a Woman?”

Film & Performing Arts

Faculty TeeVee

In the Netflix series The Chair, Sandra Oh is charged with a Sisyphean task: an English department faculty in decline. Spoiler alerts!

August 20, 2021 • by Claire Potter

_____ It’s such a setup, and one of Dr. Ji-Yoon Kim’s colleagues knows it. As Dr. Kim settles into her office as the first woman—the first woman of color, no less—to chair the English department at the fictional Pembroke University, a package awaits her. It is a nameplate for her desk which ...

Film & Performing Arts

When Filming “On-Location” Is Filming “At-Home”

The pandemic has interrupted business as usual — but that might be good for your creativity

July 30, 2020 • by Dawnja Burris

But the pandemic changed that. Making a short film without being able to be on location, without a crew, and being physically distanced from subjects is exactly what many film students experienced this past spring semester when their classes were moved online because of COVID-19. Films that had been carefully ...

When Filming “On-Location” Is Filming “At-Home”

Film & Performing Arts

When the Networks Prescribed a Dose of Reality for Ailing Soap Operas

How AIDS and Social Issues Reinvigorated Soaps in the 1990’s

March 9, 2020 • by Elana Levine

In this excerpt, Levine looks at how “the soaps”, challenged by flagging ratings in the 1990s, embraced the social issues of their day. --- Reality versus Fantasy As soap ratings initiated their slow decline by the later 1980s, the programs began to explore new developments in storytelling, shifting the boundaries of soap opera ...

When the Networks Prescribed a Dose of Reality for Ailing Soap Operas

Film & Performing Arts

Jerome Robbins, Montgomery Clift, and the Origins of “West Side Story”

How a hit Broadway musical was born in New York’s post-war bohemia

March 2, 2020 • by Julia Foulkes

We print this excerpt from Julia L. Foulkes, A Place for Us: “West Side Story” and New York (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016) in celebration of the new Broadway production of West Side Story that opened at The Broadway Theater on February 20, 2020. The choreographer Jerome Robbins and the actor Montgomery ...