Film and Media Studies (FMST)

An exploration of significant questions and integrative concepts in Film and Media Studies, their grounding in the process of scientific discovery and application, and their broader relevance to society. Designed for first-year students. Although topics vary, the courses also seek to improve students’ communication skills beyond the written word.

An introduction to various topics in Film and Media Studies.

Introduction to a particular topic in Film and/or Media Studies. This course may be repeated for credit where there is no duplication of topic.

“Fake news is not a fight over Truth but rather a fight over Power.” We’ll examine how political, societal, and technological forces affect the spread of information, and explore our own behaviors in order to become more thoughtful consumers of media.

This research- and writing-intensive course introduces methods for critical engagement with texts across different media (e.g., film, digital media, TV, print, recorded music). Students are strongly encouraged to take 250 before enrolling in 300-level courses in the Program.

Explores major theoretical issues in visual culture since the advent of photography, as well as intersections with other theoretical approaches like critical theory, psychoanalysis, feminism, queer theory, critical race theory, and postcolonialism.  This course satisfies the major computing requirement.

An overview of world cinema(s) as technology, commodity, and cultural form from cinema’s birth till the rise of television in the 1960s. The course focuses on fictional, live-action, narrative cinema but also examines documentary, animated and experimental films through the concepts of genre, authorship, race, sexuality, gender, and spectatorship.

This course introduces important cinematic developments since television became a dominant medium in the 1950’s (e.g., Nouvelle Vague, New German cinema, New Hollywood); provides exposure to the work of some of the most important modern filmmakers of the last half-century; and explores the influence of television on film and the development of “new media.”

These courses focus on the cultural products, values, and identities that emerge and circulate through media produced in and for countries outside the U.S.

We will read internationally popular late 20th and early 21st Century haunting and ghost films as reflections of political and cultural traumas that have long ‘haunted’ both society and cinema in the United States and abroad. Cinematic ghost stories such as The Conjuring, Shutter Island and The Orphanage are powerful tools for raising questions about history precisely because ghosts can be thought of as place-holders for, or symbols of, memory and unfinished trauma. As Thomas Elsaesser and others have suggested, film itself is a place-holder for memory; film captures the past for us to see years later. There is an undeniable relationship between the ghosts and wraiths we see on the screen and the insubstantial qualities of film itself. Like spirits, film is brittle, flimsy and transparent. Cinematic images, too, appear made up of light and shadows; they are flickering things, like shades or ghosts. And like ghosts, 20th Century films such as Rosemary’s Baby continue to be in dialogue with or to haunt 21st Century films such asThe Conjuring, forcing us to re-evaluate history and its representation in film texts.

In this course we will explore Charles Darwin’s ongoing cultural and scientific legacy over 150 years after the completion of The Origin of the Species, (completed in 1858 and first published in 1859,) perhaps the most important book written in the history of biology. Our questions about Darwin and Darwinism are not from the perspective of biologists, though, but rather from that of cultural critics. Students will first read Origin of the Species itself, and then we will turn to texts which investigate Darwin’s life as well as the many debates about and (mis)-readings of Evolution and Natural Selection from Darwin’s time until our own. Topics include but are by no means limited to: the importance of the debates (most ongoing) about evolution, various representations of Darwin and Darwinism (including its misinterpretation by German, English and American Eugenicists) and the role they play in popular culture, and the implications of Natural Selection itself.

This course will survey the “afterlife” of Surrealism, emphasizing trends from 1966 to the present, particularly those outside the French tradition. Not only will we be moving outside the ambit of the Parisian avant-garde, we will also be moving outside of the genres usually associated with Surrealism; in other words, along with film, we'll examine “post-cinematic” forms like anime and video games.

A historical survey of documentary generes, ranging from ethnographic film to war propaganda to Direct Cinema. Documentaries will be place in their cultural contexts and analyzed according to the theoretical issues they raise.

Exploration of a particular topic in Film and/or Media Studies. This course maybe repeated for credit when there is no duplication of topic.

In this course, students will learn about the fundamental elements of narrative, experimental, or documentary film production, including preproduction, directing, editing, and cinematography.

Introduction to creative media practice that is not motion picture production (for example, screenwriting or web design). May be repeated for credit when there is no duplication of topic.

This class will introduce students to the fundamentals of writing for the cinema. Students will also complete a detailed treatment for an original screenplay, one they can complete on their own.

More specialized instruction in film or media production. May be repeated for credit when there is no duplication of topic.

This video production workshop course builds on the Introduction to Production course and helps students to develop critical skills as documentary filmmakers. These skills include how to properly select a subject, do pre production, shoot an engaging interview, and to create a complex and dynamic non-fiction film that reflects individual interests.

This post-production workshop course further develops students’ video post-production skills and gives a special emphasis on the art of film editing. This course includes an analysis of the aesthetic principles and practices of editing for both picture and sound in narrative, documentary and experimental cinema.

This video production workshop builds on Introduction to Production and seeks to further develop student’s skills of storytelling with the camera by focusing on the art of Cinematography

Study in depth of a specialized topic in Film and/or Media Studies. This course maybe repeated for credit when there is no duplication of topic. This course satisfies the COLL 400 requirement.