Mexican film director Alejandro González Iñárritu acquired rapidly an international stature – from the Semaine de la Critique’s prize in Cannes for Amores Perros (2000) to multiple Oscars awards for two of his recent films. His work displays a mastery of film narrative and of film form, along with a personal film style. In the unfolding of his films, he enjoys playing at the cutting edge of intersecting lives and narrative accounts intercrossing class & country. He investigates geopolitical æsthetics and cross-geographies, intermedialities, existential life-and-death struggles, interpersonal and meta-historical violence, trauma and loss, grieving and depression. In so doing, he also manifests a keen search for his characters’ motivations (helped by a few prominent actors of our times) and a specific philosophical vision about fortitude-in-struggle. We shall focus on an in depth study of Babel (2006) —this professor’s peer-reviewed pub about Babel will be made available to members of the seminar—, Amores Perros (2000), 21 Grams (2003), and Birdman (2014) which earned four Oscars (director, film, screenplay, DP), wherein the philosophical aspects of postmodernism are underscored, The Revenant (2015, – which also earned Oscars for director and screenplay,– and excerpts from Biutiful (2010). 

Precise methods of film analysis – frame and shot composition, shot-by-shot analysis, narrative programs, filmic figures and filmic poetics, emotional modulations, film genre, deep structure, integration of specific films into the history of cinema, and philosophy-through-cinema — along with research in the PoMo Zeitgeist. Students will explore in seminar modes the case for the compelling effect, style and politics of Iñárritu’s films. 

This course examines Pacific Island (Pasifika) speculative fiction and how these works illuminate the intertwined histories of settler colonialism, extractivism, and climate change. Drawing from diverse literary traditions and cultural practices that unsettle dominant narratives around climate futures focusing on crisis and extinction, these texts imagine alternative futures rooted in more reciprocal and sustainable relationships with land, ocean, and community. We consider how storytelling might reshape our understanding of climate responsibility so as to inspire more just visions of the future.

In addition to a selection of poetry and fiction in different genres, we will be reading key theoretical texts and/or monographs in Pacific Studies and Indigenous ecocriticism.

Please contact instructor for course description.

Please contact instructor for course description.

This course provides an overview of the relevant literature in Critical Language Awareness as it pertains to best practices for teaching language and culture. We will explore theoretical frameworks, analyze language use in various contexts, and develop pedagogical strategies that empower students to engage critically with power, discourse, and language ideologies.