CMAa14 Research in Cinema and Theatre History

Faculty of Arts
Spring 2025
Extent and Intensity
2/0/0. 5 credit(s). Type of Completion: zk (examination).
Teacher(s)
doc. MgA. David Drozd, Ph.D. (lecturer)
doc. Mgr. Pavel Skopal, Ph.D. (lecturer)
Guaranteed by
doc. Mgr. Pavel Skopal, Ph.D.
Department of Film Studies and Audiovisual Culture – Faculty of Arts
Supplier department: Department of Film Studies and Audiovisual Culture – Faculty of Arts
Prerequisites (in Czech)
ROCNIK(2)
Course Enrolment Limitations
The course is only offered to the students of the study fields the course is directly associated with.
fields of study / plans the course is directly associated with
Course objectives
The objective of the course is to establish a solid knowledge of methodological procedures and theoretical concepts that will enable students to ask proper research questions, as well as to build up a relevant research’s profile in the field of cinema and theatre history. All of the methodological approaches and conceptual frameworks will be illustrated in details on exemplary research projects and their findings.
Learning outcomes
After finishing this course, students will be able to critically evaluate and use a range of theoretical concepts to formulate quality research hypotheses, will be oriented in paradigmatic literature related to the presented research areas, will be ready to prepare and realize a relevant research project from the field of the cultural history of cinema and theatre.
Syllabus
  • 1. Cinema history as cultural history.
  • An overview of cultural history approaches. Research projects on cinema history inspired by cultural history. Individual and collective actors in historical research: collective biography (prosopography) and inidividual biography.
  • 2. Reconstruction of theatre event as conceptual problem.
  • From 1970s theatre studies developer special subfield of „performance analysis“, turning perspective to life theatre/performative event. This raised new questions: to which extent we can reconstruct performative event as such? How could be primary sources used to grasp performance event in its complexity and effect on audience in historical context? Different concepts of Erika-Fischer Lichte, Andreas Kotte and Christopher Balme would be discussed and introduced.
  • 3. Cultural Transfer and Agency
  • Introduction to the essential concepts of agency and structures. Explanation of the "cultural transfer" concept as an alternative to the unproductive idea of "influence". Case Studies from cinema history. How we can do a research on producers, directors, managers, dramaturges, or cinema owners? Research that avoids limits of a descriptive biography needs to take into account that a historical agent is substantially limited by structural factors and his capacity to act depends on the available capital. Concepts of William H. Sewell and Pierre Bourdieu will be presented and applied to the research of cinema industry and theatre culture
  • 4. Production studies and ethnography
  • Ethnographical research in cinema production - the case study of a film school.
  • 5. Oral History in Film and Theatre Studies
  • With an accent on researches on European audiences, we will critically evaluate the projects’ designs and findings. What oral history can do, and how? How to ask questions about the past experiences? What we can – and what we can not – find out by this method?
  • 6. Theatre as transnational phenomenon
  • Theatre text, productions and different creative agents were always travelling between cultures, influencing local, national and global/European culture. Usually complex interaction in between actual artefact and new audiences takes places. Concepts of intercultural theatre (Pavis), inter-waving theatre cultures (Fischer-Lichte) and theatre in public sphere (Balme) could be used to analyse different aspects of this phenomenon.
  • 7. Social Network Analysis
  • what is SNA good for? Introduction into SNA and its terminology
  • 8. Introduction to Gephi
  • – network analysis and visualisation software
  • 9. Social Network Analysis in film and media studies
  • examples of application - SNA as a research tool in cinema
  • 10. Spaces of Ethnicity, Religion, and Politics
  • religious, ethnical, or political identity
  • 11. Spaces of Class, Gender, and Age
  • As any other public space, and even more than most of them, cinema and theatre venues had always been embroiled into the distinctions constructed along the axis of class, gender, or age of actual, potential, intended, or just imagined cinema-goers.
  • 12. A Theatre and local communities
  • Theatre institution can affect different type of communities and develop different functional relation to its audience. Samples of different local/regional theatre groups will be used to explore variety of these relations and different way how to conceptualise them.
Literature
    required literature
  • Jeffrey Klenotic: “Like Nickels in a Slot”: Children of the American Working Classes at the Neighborhood Movie House”. The Velvet Light Trap: A Critical Journal of Film and Television, vol. 48, Fall 2001, pp. 20-33
  • Fischer-Lichte, E., Riley, J., & Gissenwehrer, M. (1990). The dramatic touch of difference: Theatre, own and foreign. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag.
  • BALME, Christopher B. The globalization of theatre 1870-1930 : the theatrical networks of Maurice E. Bandmann. First published. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020, xiv, 276. ISBN 9781108487894. info
    not specified
  • Peter Burke, The Italian Renaissance: Culture and Society in Italy. Peter Burke. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986
Teaching methods
Opening discussion over the assigned reading; lecture presenting basic thesis through PowerPoint presentation, discussing application through examples of implemented research projects.
Assessment methods
Brief tests checking the knowledge of seminar reading and understanding of the lecture – 30 points; final written test – 40 points; an outline of a research project – 30 points. To pass the exam, the student has to reach the score of 60% in each of the three categories (i.e., the minimum of 18, 24, and 18 points in the respective tests). Reaching the minimum of 18 points in tests written during the semester at the lectures is a prerequisite for writing both the final exam and the research project.
Language of instruction
English
The course is also listed under the following terms Spring 2024.
  • Enrolment Statistics (Spring 2025, recent)
  • Permalink: https://is.muni.cz/course/phil/spring2025/CMAa14