4 Articles We Will Work on Next Week: Feb 1, 3, 4

Before anything else, do you know you all are PIONEERS?  While I have taught this course previously as Asian Pacific American History in Action, it was as a special topics course.  You all are the first students of the officially and permanently listed Theatre 340 course.  So whatever you do in the course, will be passed down to the future students who will take this class.  Your essays and creative works will serve as monuments that they can emulate.  I know you will do well.

While I am in DC for my meetings this week, I am tasking you to use the time to read the attached 3 articles, along with the Takaki I emailed you earlier.

You will please do your best to finish the readings by Tuesday when we meet in class, because our session then will evolve on all the material.

There is an order in which to read them as well.

1) Read TAKAKI first.
2) Saussure (Signification)
3) Gabriel (Towards a Critical Theory of Third World Film)
4) Palumbo Liu

In the background of your reading will of course be your experience of Cho's BUBBLEHEAD and Adolfson's PASSING THROUGH.

As you progress in your reading, you will experience INTER TEXTUAL REFLEXIVITY, meaning, the material you are reading will reference or clarify an image or text in a previous reading.  For instance, details in Takaki on Korean Americans will further inform your perception of the films we viewed.  Then when you proceed to Saussure's SIGNIFICATION, you will attain formal vocabulary on SEMIOTICS that will further enhance your now historic and personal experience of the films we viewed with the added visual or semiotic aesthetic theory of Saussure.  In plain language, we are complicating and layering your understanding of history, film theory, sociology, personal history...

When you read Teshome Gabriel, you will be stepping into my late mentor's genius.  Teshome Gabriel was my first ever FAMOUS teacher who changed my life.  His 3rd Film Theory and Aesthetic translates into theatre too as I have done with my own play PURPLE.  Reading Teshome will answer many of you who said or asked, "I did not know film could also be educational.  I thought it was just for entertainment."  Well, maybe it's both :-)

Palumbo Liu's article is an example of what I lectured about regarding the analysis of a single frame of film, or basically a picture.  Your midterm assignment is to write a paper in this format.  We will expand on this in class.

Please feel free to blog your response to this post/email.

Mabuhay!  (Long life and good health)
Prof. Tanglao-Aguas