Christian Keathley
Office
Axinn Center 211
Tel
(802) 443-3432
Email
ckeathle@middlebury.edu
Office Hours
On leave 2023-2024

Christian Keathley is the Walter J Cerf Distinguished Professor of Film & Media Culture.  He teaches Film History, International Cinema, Authorship & Cinema, French New Wave, and Film & Literature, among other courses.

Keathley, who arrived at Middlebury in 2002, holds a PhD in Film Studies from the University of Iowa, an MFA in Filmmaking from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and an MA and a BA in English and Film Studies from the University of Florida.

He is the author of Cinephilia and History, or the Wind n the Trees (Indiana UP, 2007), as well as a variety of essays in journals such as Screen, Movie, Framework, Photogénie, and The Cine-Files, and in volumes such as The Last Great American Picture Show, Directed by Allen Smithee, and The Language and Style of Film Criticism.

Keathley is also co-author, with Catherine Grant and Jason Mittell, of The Videographic Essay: Criticism in Sound & Image (caboose books, 2016; second edition revised and expanded 2019). Now available online as The Videographic Essay: Practice and Pedagogy. http://videographicessay.org/works/videographic-essay/index

He is a founding co-editor of [in]TRANSITION: Journal of Videographic Film & Moving Image Studies, recipient of the 2015 Anne Friedberg Innovative Scholarship Award of Distinction from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies. http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/intransition/

Along with his Middlebury colleague Jason Mittell, Keathley is the co-recipient of two grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities for “Scholarship in Sound & Image: A Workshop on Videographic Criticism” (2015, 2017, 2018), a summer program for teaching videographic criticism to faculty from around the world.  For these workshops, Keathley and Mittell were recipients of the 2020 Innovative Pedagogy Award from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies.

Keathley is currently at work on several projects: an essay video, The Signature Effect, that explores the relationships between himself, the Warner Bros director William Keighley, and their shared ancestral home of Keighley, West Yorkshire, England; and a BFI Film Classics volume on All the President’s Men, co-authored with Robert B Ray. 

Courses Taught

Course Description

Global Film Histories I
This course will survey the development of the cinema from 1895 to 1960. Our study will emphasize film as an evolving art, while bearing in mind the influence of technology, economic institutions, and the political and social contexts in which the films were produced and received. Screenings will include representative and celebrated works from world cinema. 3 hrs. lect./3 hrs. screen

Terms Taught

Spring 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2022

Requirements

ART, HIS

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Course Description

Cinema and Memory
Depicting the experience of memory is a challenge that filmmakers have returned to repeatedly throughout cinema’s history. In this course, we will screen films from around the world to explore the ways in which individual and cultural memory have found expression in cinema. We will screen narrative features, documentaries, and experimental films as we consider the various aesthetic strategies filmmakers from different periods and cultures have used to portray the complex relationships between past and present, real and imagined. (FMMC 0102; Not open to students who have taken FYSE 1242) 3 hrs. lect./disc./3 hrs. screen.

Terms Taught

Spring 2023

Requirements

ART, CMP

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Course Description

Classic Hollywood/New Hollywood
During the period know as “New Hollywood” (1967-76), American filmmakers routinely turned to classical genres as a way both to celebrate the films that had inspired them and to re-think their values and themes in light of the changes in American culture during that period. In this class, we will focus on three film genres (detective, western, and gangster films) and will view classical versions and New Hollywood reworkings. Films screened will include The Maltese Falcon (1940), Chinatown (1974), My Darling Clementine (1946), McCabe & Mrs Miller (1971), Little Caesar (1931), and The Godfather (1972), among others. (FMMC 0101 or FMMC 0102 or by approval) 3 hrs. seminar/3 hr. screen

Terms Taught

Fall 2021

Requirements

AMR, ART, NOR

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Course Description

International Cinema
Topic is determined by the instructor - refer to section for the course description.

Terms Taught

Fall 2019, Spring 2023

Requirements

ART

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Course Description

Authorship & Cinema: Hitchcock and Renoir
Alfred Hitchcock and Jean Renoir are commonly regarded as two of the greatest filmmakers in history, yet their cinematic styles stand in sharp contrast to one another. In this course, we will survey the careers of these two directors, viewing a representative selection of their films and considering the national production contexts in which they worked. Most importantly, we will engage in careful analysis of their works in order to understand the ways in which their approaches to film style resulted in sharply contrasting ideas of cinema and the world. Films screened will include: The 39 Steps, Notorious, Rear Window, Vertigo, Psycho (Hitchcock); Toni, The Crime of Monsieur Lange, Grande Illusion, Rules of the Game (Renoir). (FMMC 0101 or 0102)

Terms Taught

Fall 2020, Fall 2022

Requirements

ART

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Course Description

French New Wave
Beginning in 1959 and continuing through the 1960s, dozens of young French cinephiles, thrilled by Hollywood genre movies and European art films, but disgusted with their own national cinema’s stodgy productions, took up cameras and began making films. This movement, known as La Nouvelle Vague, remains one of the most exciting, inventive periods in cinema history. This course focuses on the major films and directors (Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut, Alain Resnais) of the period and also gives consideration to the cultural, technological, and economic factors that shaped this movement. (Formerly FMMC 0345)

Terms Taught

Spring 2021

Requirements

ART, EUR

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Course Description

Videographic Film and Media Studies
Digital video technologies—such as DVDs, digital editing software, and online streaming—now enable film and media scholars to “write” with the same materials that constitute their object of study: moving images and sounds. But such a change means rethinking the rhetorical modes traditionally used in scholarly writing, and incorporating more aesthetic and poetic elements alongside explanation and analysis. In this hands-on course, we will both study and produce new videographic forms of criticism often known as “video essays,” exploring how such work can both produce knowledge and create an aesthetic impact. (FMMC 0101 or FMMC 0104 or by approval) 3 hrs. sem

Terms Taught

Spring 2020

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Course Description

Film Theory
This course surveys the issues that have sparked the greatest curiosity among film scholars throughout cinema's first century, such as: What is the specificity of the film image? What constitutes cinema as an art? How is authorship in the cinema to be accounted for? Is the cinema a language, or does it depart significantly from linguistic coordinates? How does one begin to construct a history of the cinema? What constitutes valid or useful film research? Readings will include Epstein, Eisenstein, Bazin, Truffaut, Wollen, Mulvey, Benjamin, Kracauer, and others. (Formerly FMMC 0344) (FMMC 0101 or FMMC 0102 or instructor approval) 3 hrs. lect./3 hrs. screen.

Terms Taught

Spring 2022

Requirements

ART, CW

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Course Description

Advanced Independent work in Film and Media Culture
Consult with a Film and Media Culture faculty member for guidelines.

Terms Taught

Fall 2019, Winter 2020, Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Winter 2021, Spring 2021, Fall 2021, Winter 2022, Spring 2022, Fall 2022, Winter 2023, Spring 2023, Fall 2023, Winter 2024, Spring 2024

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Course Description

Senior Tutorial
All FMMC majors must complete this course in their senior year, during which they undertake the process of devising, researching, and developing the early drafts and materials for an independent project in Film and Media in their choice of medium and format. Students will be poised to produce and complete these projects during Winter Term, via an optional but recommended independent study. Prerequisites for projects in specific formats are outlined on the departmental website.

Terms Taught

Spring 2020

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Course Description

Senior Independent Work
After completing FMMC 0700, seniors may be approved to complete the project they developed during the previous Fall semester by registering for this independent course during the Winter Term, typically supervised by their faculty member from FMMC 0700. Students will complete an independent project in a choice of medium and format, as outlined on the departmental website. This course does not count toward the required number of credits for majors, but is required to be considered for departmental honors. In exceptional cases, students may petition to complete their projects during Spring semester.

Terms Taught

Winter 2020, Winter 2021, Winter 2022, Winter 2023, Winter 2024

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Course Description

Cinema and Memory
Depicting the experience of memory is a challenge filmmakers have returned to repeatedly throughout cinema’s history. In this seminar we will screen films from around the world to explore the ways in which individual and cultural memory have found expression in cinema. We will screen narrative features, documentaries, and experimental films as we compare the various aesthetic strategies filmmakers from different periods and cultures have used to portray the complex relationships between past and present, real and imagined. Films screened will include After Life; The Bad and the Beautiful; The Long Day Closes; Hiroshima, mon amour; La Jetée; Shoah. 3 hrs. sem.

Terms Taught

Fall 2021

Requirements

ART, CMP, CW

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Course Description

European Studies Senior Thesis
(Approval Required)

Terms Taught

Winter 2020, Winter 2021, Winter 2022, Winter 2023, Winter 2024

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