Courses
The following is a list of Film and Media Studies core courses. See the college catalog for Film and Media Studies electives.
FMST 201 - Introduction to Film Studies: Form and History on the Big Screen
This course introduces students to film aesthetics through the analysis of film form and style with the aim of acquiring fluency in and understanding of film's unique language as it evolved technologically, historically, and generically. Students shall explore the specificity of the language of cinema and its development in the twentieth century, paying special attention to how the big screen responded to and represented major events and historical shifts. In addition to dissecting and identifying formal choices and techniques, students will undertake close readings of films and place them in the larger context of directorial oeuvre, critical schools, period, or movement in European and American cinema, and beyond.
- Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
- Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
- Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
FMST 301 - Introduction to Film Theory
The goal of this course is to introduce students to the main ideas and debates on film theory and criticism, from the early days of silent film to the most recent approaches to digital cinema. The discussion will focus on the most significant movements and film schools in Europe, the United States, Latin America, and other parts of the world: realism, formalism, apparatus theory, psychoanalysis, feminism, auteurism, genre criticism, theories of spectatorship and reception, postmodernism, and third world and postcolonial cinema, among others. In addition to theoretical approaches, students will become familiar with cinematic language, including mise-en-scène, cinematography, editing, and sound. The course will explore the work of directors such as D.W. Griffith, Sergei M. Eisenstein, F.W. Murnau, Fritz Lang, Alfred Hitchcock, Luis Buñuel, Vittorio De Sica, Jean-Luc Godard, Octavio Getino and Fernando Solanas, Akira Kurosawa, Ingmar Bergman, Ousmane Sembene, Pedro Almodóvar, Agnès Varda, Wong Kar-wai, and Asghar Farhadi. Course includes weekly film screenings.
- Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
- Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
- Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
FMST 302 - Introduction to Media Studies
Since Marshall McLuhan's pronouncement that "the medium is the message," scholars have studied the ways in which media technologies-from the printing press and the postal service to electric lighting and Wi-Fi-support and transform our lives. This course offers an introduction to major theorists and debates in media studies through close analyses of films, literature, and theoretical texts. In keeping with McLuhan's dictum, our focus will be not so much on understanding individual media, but on understanding from the perspective of media. Questions that will concern us include: What is (and isn't) a medium? What do media do? To what extent do we create media, and to what extent do media create us? Readings from Plato, McLuhan, Kittler, Benjamin, Adorno, Heidegger, and Donna Haraway.
- Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
- Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
- Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).