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XTIANTHE 968 (Divinity) – The Theological Aesthetics of the Image

This seminar will explore primary and critical writings related to the contested role of images in philosophical theology and –aesthetics, and also in some nineteenth-century literature. Rather than approaching the image from the perspective of art history, our objective is to trace how, beginning in late antiquity, images have functioned and how their role has been conceptualized, first in religious practice and philosophical theology, and more recently in literature, philosophy, aesthetic theory, and phenomenology. (Taught by Professor Pfau) Download the complete course description.

MUSIC 790S-1 – Sem Hst Of Mus (topics) “Representations of sound, voice and music in film” – Th 03:05 PM-05:35 PM Biddle 069

Cinema remains a privileged locus for conveying in popular culture a conception of music primarily indebted to Western philosophical discourses on musical experience (through listening, or performance) in the wake of the Kantian sublime, from music’s ineffability to musical formalism.

Aim of this seminar is to unveil the connections between the aural dimension of cinema and philosophies of music, language, and the voice, through a series of essential readings (notably Eisler/Adorno, Siegfried Kracauer, Rudolf Arnheim, Robert Bresson…). In so doing, we also intend to pinpoint to a current divide between film sound theory and “film music” scholarship by addressing the following points:

  • cinematic representations of music, and the aural;
  • the music-as-language trope, and film music as “semiotic fallacy”;
  • storytelling and voice-over and their interrelation with music scoring.
  • music and/as gender.

(Taught by Professor Waeber)