Rice should rejuvinate film studies program

As they peruse the course catalog, new students will behold a cornucopia of courses, an abundance of academia, a superfluity of scholasticism.

New four-letter words, and not the kind so beloved to chanting Lovetteers, begin to enter their vernacular: Huma, Orgo, Diff-E. However, there is one four-letter word that is conspicuously scarce in this sea of scholarly terminology: Film.

During the fall semester, discerning students can manage to find one film class cross-listed in English and Art History, two production classes in Visual Arts and one course offered in the English department as “Global Media Studies.” To be fair to the dozens of students fluent in Spanish, Chinese or Russian, film courses also exist in those departments. However, this represents a miniscule opportunity set, a total of about 100 student enrollment spaces for an undergraduate population of nearly 3,000. Frustrated freshmen will be further dismayed to learn that there is not even an introductory-level film class included among these. So, Joey Freshman asks himself: Why the dearth of offerings?

Hard as it may be to believe, film studies courses were plentiful only a few years ago. There was serious talk of film becoming a major, or at least a track within the art history major. However, a recent exodus of faculty has led to a sharp decline in the number of film courses in the humanities curriculum.

The 2005 retirement of world-renowned art historian Tom McEvilley, as well as the departures of Asian Studies Professor Hajime Nokatri and Hispanic Studies Professor Rafael Selaberry, have thinned the number of film courses presently available. However, the most significant departure occurred over the summer, when Art History Professor Hamid Naficy decided to leave Rice for Northwestern. His move eradicated the four courses he would have taught this academic year, including HART 280: History and Aesthetics of Film.

Naficy is a world-class scholar and prolific writer, with five books to his credit. This total includes his upcoming history of Iranian cinema, a subject on which he is probably the world’s leading authority. Having a person of his caliber teaching film at Rice for more than a decade was a great boon to the school. His loss should represent an equally great disappointment. At least one of his classes, HART 484: Exile and Diaspora Cinema, cannot be taught by anyone else. And unless someone is hired to fill his position in the Art History department, all the others will not be taught.

It is important to consider why Naficy decided to leave Rice. Inasmuch as such a thing can depend on a single factor, the Art History department’s rejection of the Art History film major track — a plan spearheaded by Naficy and English Professor Kirsten Ostherr — apparently was something he saw as a harbinger of a bleak future for film studies at Rice. The tenuous position that film studies occupies is made all the more unstable with every departure, creating the risk of a self-fulfilling prophecy for the demise of film studies. The best solution to this problem would be for film to have its own major. Although financial realities render this impossible, for the time being, film is something that hides in nooks and crannies. Film fanatics willing to go over the course offerings with a fine-toothed comb may find something right up their alley.

Despite this, students need not be content with the current situation and course offerings. First and foremost, filling Naficy’s teaching position with another full-time film person would greatly help offset the negative impact of his departure.

There is no reason that film, such a vital part of modern academic study — and perhaps the most significant expression of the last 100-plus years of human existence — should be treated as a second-class subject at a school committed to being at the forefront of the academic world. Students must demand improvement in the film curriculum.

Luke Stadel is a Brown College senior.

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