[Track S] Perhaps no film expresses as much about cinematic desire as Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958). Though a commercial and critical flop upon its release, Vertigo has beguiled audiences, critics, artists, and scholars in the decades since. This course maintains a sustained view of this elusive film, itself a story that occurs in the gap between what we see and what we imagine we see. Along the way, students will work through various interpretations of the film from feminist film theory, psychoanalysis, philosophy, and aesthetics; examine its many sources (Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac’s From Among the Dead, Ambrose Bierce’s “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” and various other Hitchcock films); and watch films and artworks that follow the trajectory of the film’s interminable spiral motif (Lou Ye, Brian De Palma, David Lynch, Mary Helena Clark, Chris Marker, Cindy Bernard, David Reed). [Track S]