Courses

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Undergraduate Course Descriptions

The list below includes descriptions of all undergraduate courses offered by the Film and Media Studies Program, though some courses may be taught more often than others. Descriptions for special topics seminars are updated each semester.

Visit the undergraduate page for course requirements for specific programs. For up-to-date information on course offerings, schedules, room locations, and registration, please visit the Student Information System (SIS).

 Required Courses

FMS 0001 Art of the Moving Image. (Formerly FMS 0020, Cross-listed as ILVS 0051) This course begins with cinema, the first art of the moving image. We will study cinema’s principal, as well as its major narrative and non-narrative forms. We will watch a variety of films from the US and abroad that exemplify cinema's myriad forms and styles: mainstream and avant-garde, fiction and non-fiction, narrative and non-narrative, black-and-white and color, silent and sound. We will then consider the extent to which cinema's aesthetic features are shared by television, as well as what is artistically distinctive about TV. Theoretical concepts relevant to moving image art, principally genre, authorship, and character identification, will also be considered. No prior study of cinema or other moving image media is required. Recommended for first- and second-year students.

Required core course for all FMS majors and minors; offered every fall and spring (starting in 2024). This course counts toward the Arts distribution requirement.

FMS 0002 Global History of Cinema. (Formerly FMS 0021, Cross-listed as ILVS 0052,) This course surveys the rich history of film art. We will begin with the emergence of the technologies for making and exhibiting films around 1894 and the major genres of early cinema (1895-1904), most of which were non-narrative. We will then turn our attention to the development of "classical" narrative film in the US in the 1900s and 1910s; the creation of alternatives to classical cinematic storytelling in the 1920s in France, Germany, the Soviet Union and elsewhere; the rise of documentary and experimental film; and the coming of synchronized sound in the late 1920s. We will see how European filmmakers on both the Left and Right responded to the increasing political turmoil in the lead-up to WWII in the 1930s while filmmakers in Japan created popular traditions of filmmaking. We will consider the impact of WWII on film history; the emergence of Italian Neo-Realism and "modernist" art cinema in the late 1940s and 1950s; the New Waves of the late 1950s; and political modernist, post-colonial, feminist and other radical forms of filmmaking that arose in response to the political crises of the 1960s. Finally, we will survey world cinema since the 1970s, focusing on the changes that have occurred in mainstream Hollywood filmmaking and the contributions to film art of filmmakers in Hong Kong and other non-western countries. 

Required core course (or FMS 0006 20th Century U.S. Television History) for all FMS majors; offered every spring of odd year (2019, 2021, etc.) This course counts toward the Arts distribution requirement.

FMS 0006 20th Century U.S. Television History. (Formerly FMS 0024, Cross-listed as TPS 0024) This core course examines the introduction and development of U.S. television through the network era (40s-90s) as a cultural history of the medium and a subject for critical engagement by media studies scholars. We trace the development of television (in the US but within a global context) from its conception through its industrial, technical, aesthetic and textual development to understand how American broadcast television emerged as a dominant cultural force around the world. In addition to gaining a working knowledge of broadcast television in its first half-century, we will also explore how specific analytical concepts in television studies develop as we learn (and practice) how media theory takes on historical research. 

Required core course (or FMS 0002 Global History of Cinema) for all FMS majors; offered every spring of even year (2018, 2021, etc.) This course counts toward the Arts distribution requirement.

FMS 0198 Senior Honors Thesis 1. First course in the two course FMS Senior Honors Thesis, followed by FMS 0199 Senior Honors Thesis 2 in the spring of the senior year. Students undertaking a production-based Senior Honors Thesis such as a screenplay, film, or TV show should enroll in the production section, which meets regularly in the fall semester to help students plan their production-based Senior Thesis. Students undertaking a scholarly thesis or some other non-production-based Senior Honors Thesis should enroll in the non-production section, and meet individually with their Senior Honors Thesis committee members.

Required ONLY of FMS majors who are undertaking an FMS Senior Honors Thesis. Department consent required. Offered every fall. Section 01 is for production projects; section 02 is for non-production/written projects.

FMS 0199 Senior Honors Thesis 2. Second course in the two course FMS Senior Honors Thesis, preceded by FMS 0198 Senior Honors Thesis 1 in the fall of the senior year.

Required ONLY of FMS majors who are undertaking an FMS Senior Honors Thesis. Department consent required. Offered every spring. Section 01 is for production projects; section 02 is for non-production/written projects.

 Social Science Courses

FMS 0032 PR & Marketing: A History of Theory and Tactics. (Formerly FMS 0043) An exploration and analysis of the history of public relations and marketing communications theory in the United States and how it evolved with and influenced our media environment and public discourse. Tracing the evolution of mass persuasion through the writings of major thinkers in the field from the mid-nineteenth century through the present, we will examine how these developed in parallel with social changes including the industrial revolution, theories of human consciousness and motivation, and advances in technology, to create an all-encompassing consumer culture. Authors will range from Gustave Le Bon, Walter Lippmann, Edward Bernays and Sigmund Freud to Daniel Boorstin, Marshall McLuhan, Stuart Ewen, Seth Godin and Malcolm Gladwell.

Using case studies, we will explore how the mechanics of this global mega industry practice strategies that influence everything from complex world affairs or simply the toothpaste we choose to buy. We will analyze advertising, images, visual design, and public relations campaigns and see how deeply these are embedded in our culture, psychology, polemics and politics, and how this is magnified by a digital reality that questions the nature of truth itself.

Students will apply these theories by working in teams to create their own marketing communications plan for a product, person, place or concept. This will include the rubric and latest thinking in the field including audience analysis, positioning strategy, messaging and examples of visual and digital communications. 

This course counts toward the Social Sciences distribution requirement.

FMS 0041 Cultures of Computing.  (Formerly FMS 0051, Cross-listed as ANTH 0136) Examines computers and computation as sociocultural phenomena. Questions universalizing narratives of technological progress by exploring the variety of human experience with computing. Topics include social media, postcolonial computing, the gender of artificial intelligence, the social analysis of mathematics, and the sociocultural implications of big data and contemporary algorithmic systems. 

This course counts toward the Social Sciences distribution requirement.

FMS 0042 Children and Mass Media. (Formerly FMS 0052, Cross-listed as CSHD 0167) Why educators, broadcasters, advertisers, and politicians consider children a special audience of the mass media. Examination of children's media content (television, video, computers, film, and print) and the effects of media on children and adolescents. Regulations that govern children's media use, including V-chip, ratings systems, and Internet access. Student projects on media literacy and other topics. 

This course counts toward the Social Sciences distribution requirement.

FMS 0043 Media and Society. (Formerly FMS 0053, Cross-listed as SOC 0040) In today's increasingly technological culture, individuals are constantly faced with choices involving media consumption. The prevalence and variety of media sources today raises questions regarding media's impact on society. This course seeks to examine the relationship between media and society, through an exploration of the factors that shape how media is produced, how media is consumed, and its effect on culture. The course incorporates analyses of key theories and concepts in media studies and sociology to allow students to engage in an examination of the changes in media over time (i.e., radio, television, and internet). In addition, the course places an emphasis on the role of the consumer in media production, and the political use of media as a means of social change. 

This course counts toward the Social Sciences distribution requirement.

FMS 0045 Media Literacy. (Formerly FMS 0055, Cross-listed as CSHD 0113)  Facebook executives are being brought before Congress to discuss their practices and the role the platform might have played in promoting the January 6 2021 assault on the Capitol. A recent Stanford University study found that the majority of students from middle school through college had difficulties in identifying what was really “fake news”. The 2021 Golden Globes featured performers making impassioned speeches about the need for greater diversity in Hollywood. Advertisers are marking a “biracial boom” and showing more interracial families than ever. All of these examples demonstrate why it’s more important than ever to become media literate, a crucial 21st century civic skill.

Media Literacy will cover these topics, and also feature units on social media’s use in the 2020 presidential campaign, sports and media, how social media are related to civic participation, why the space between public and private is shifting, and how growing up a part of “Gen Lit” can make a difference.

FMS 0046 Anthropology of Journalism. (Formerly FMS 0056, Cross-listed as ANTH 0133) This course introduces students to anthropological approaches to the study of journalism across cultural and political systems and across various scales. How is participation in discussions of public import regulated? How is truth publicly established within a community or a society? What are the roles of different forms of media in journalism? What is the relationship between the state and modes of knowledge production? What role do various emotions and styles have in advancing discussions of issues of public concern? We study theoretical approaches to the public and ethnographies of community news, foreign correspondence, and photojournalism. With a global perspective, we will consider how certain liberal democratic norms for journalism have propagated across contexts, as well as how geopolitical hierarchies are replicated within the field of journalism. 

This course counts toward the Social Sciences distribution requirement.

FMS 0047 Media of the Middle East. (Formerly FMS 0057, Cross-listed as ANTH 0133, ILVS 0144) What can we learn about the Middle East by examining media? What can we learn about media by studying institutions of production and practices of consumption alongside media texts themselves? In this course, we will read ethnographies of media from the Middle East, look at and listen to media, and read key texts in anthropological theory on media and language. We will study: (1) media such as film, television, and music that have played a role in consolidating, contesting, and complicating colonial and postcolonial states and patriarchal norms, (2) cultural products such as Qur'anic recitations, poetry, and music that are the product of regional and global circuits, and (3) new and small media like graffiti, tweets, and poetry that have been central to the Arab Revolts and other recent political movements. 

This course counts towards the anthropology area/critical geographies requirement, the World Civilization requirement, the Middle Eastern Culture/Language option, and the Social Sciences distribution requirement.

FMS 0048 Visual Anthropology. (Formerly FMS 0059, Cross-listed as ANTH 0135) Development of visual anthropology from early travel documentary forms to more recent multivocal works on video. Relationship between written and visual documents. Viewing classic ethnographic films as well as contemporary films that challenge the classic genre of ethnographic films. Special attention to ethical issues in visual anthropology.

FMS 0094 Ethnographic Film, Video, and Beyond. (Special Topics, Cross-Listed as ANTH-0039) Since its inception, ethnographic documentary has been a rich and richly contested field of debates about representation, colonialism, cross-cultural collaboration, and public anthropology. In this course, we learn about the history of ethnographic documentary by watching key works that have shaped the genre, as well as by examining contemporary works and practices in ethnographic documentary and multi-media projects. We will explore the theories of knowledge production, expression, and aesthetics that motivate and emerge from these works, as well as the institutional structures through which they have been produced and circulated.

FMS 0094 Social Media: Potential, Promise and Problems. (Special Topics, Cross-listed as CSHD 0143) Examination of content and effects of various social media platforms on young children, adolescents and emerging adults. Exploration of social media use in learning, content creation, new boundaries between public and private spaces, identity formation and curation, membership in social groups including marginalized communities. Cultural role of memes, news dissemination, effects of social media on interpersonal communication, potential of social media for youth civic engagement.

FMS 0094 Sociology of Film. (Special Topics, Cross-listed as SOC 0094) Film constitutes what Talcott Parsons has termed an "expressive symbol system. That is to say, it is a symbol system in which the expressive orientation is dominant… and directed towards something." This course will foster the capacity to analyze cinema sociologically by pairing carefully selected films that address central sociological issues such as class, gender, sex, sexuality, race, ethnicity, deviance, urban life, and immigration with topical scholarship in sociology and film. We often watch movies for entertainment, paying little attention to the sociological aspects of movies. Yet, cinema influences and is shaped by ideology, social structure, norms, and social relations. And the film industry reveals the tensions between the drive to profit, make art, send a message, influence the audience, and establish power. The course delves into the way films have reproduced and challenged social conventions by contextualizing current sociological developments in cinema. We will cover topics such as feminism; masculinity in crisis; trans bodies and the horror genre; urban poverty, race, and policing; and immigration and identity in global perspective. This course will enhance students’ understanding of culture, media, and sociology by examining classical, contemporary, independent, and foreign films and related scholarship.

FMS 0160 Branding Theory and Practice. (Upper level, formerly FMS 0194) An exploration of brands and media as transitional cultural objects that recreate our psychology, perceptions and mythologies just as we create them to further political and economic agendas. We will address the question of how our 21st century culture has changed under the influence of pervasive advertising, public relations, images and narratives that have replaced old belief systems with new, often elusive, definitions of truth, meaning and reality itself. We will tackle the concepts of Marshall McLuhan, who saw the power of media as extending our senses and thereby altering our experience of the world. We will analyze the thought structures of a consumer society through Jean Baudrillard’s system of objects, and better understand how we see the world through John Berger’s ideas on images and perception, as well as Susan Sontag’s analysis of the unique function of photographs in defining real things and events, among others. How all these concepts coalesce and accelerate in the digital world and its fast-evolving social media will frame an analysis of how opinions can be swayed at breakneck speed and blur the edges between fact and fiction in a post-modern environment.

We will ground these theories in case studies of major brands, non-profits, and issues, including Apple, Inc., Coca-Cola, Budweiser, Subaru, World Wildlife Fund, the American presidency, immigration and others. In this way, we will see how these theories are reflected in current use and if understanding them can create more effective modes of persuasion.

This course is a deep dive into the environment that produced the concepts and tactics introduced in the Fall semester course FMS 0032, Public Relations and Marketing: A History of Theory and Practice. 

Pre-requisites: FMS 0032 (PR & Marketing, formerly FMS 0043) OR FMS 0033 (Social Marketing, formerly FMS 0044); or instructor permission. This course counts toward the Social Science distribution requirement.

FMS 0161 Seminar in Mass Media Studies: Digital Hate. (Upper level, Cross-listed as SOC 0185) We have developed powerful new internet and communications technologies that democratize the ability to participate in public discourse, and the development of new kinds of social relationships, but which also facilitate—and in many cases anonymize—venomous critics focused on personal attacks rather than productive engagement. What's more, technology has outpaced the legal infrastructures we have to cope with this phenomenon. This new seminar will explore trolling, digital harassment, and technology facilitated violence, with particular attention to the way digital life varies for people from different backgrounds. Attention will be paid to the complex balance between freedom of speech, civil rights, democratic vitality, and personal safety. It will be of particular interest for students interested in media, technology, social inequality, culture, and politics. 

Recommendations:  Junior standing, SOC 0040, and permission of instructor.

FMS 0162 Media, the State, and the Senses. (Upper level, Cross-listed as ANTH 0164) This upper level seminar examines the social practices of media production, circulation, and reception. Media are both the products of and means for social, cultural, and political transformation. In studying media, we will examine their relationship to transformations of space-time perceptions, the shaping of political identities, and the constitution of complex (social, political, economic, institutional, and/or creative) connections among people and groups. How are media mobilized by states to consolidate powers? How do people challenge these authorities' attempts? Media also work on the senses, even as individuals and institutions seek to shape how they do so. In this class, we will attend to the possibilities and limitations offered by different media, due to their material forms, institutional structures, and perceptual forms. Students will have the opportunity to conduct brief media ethnographies. 

This course counts toward the Social Sciences distribution requirement.

FMS 0163 New Media, New Politics. (Upper level, Cross-listed as PS 0104) Research seminar on three media sectors: cable television, talk radio, and social media. Analysis of the economic foundations of each sector, advertising, audience demographics, and strategy. Student teams conduct an original empirical study of the media.

This course counts toward the Social Sciences distribution requirement.

FMS 0164 Seminar in Children and the Mass Media. (Upper level, Cross-listed as CD 0267) Do media images really affect what children grow up thinking about race, gender and class? Is there actually a relationship between playing violent video games and school shootings? Why is it important to have images of disability in children’s media? Does advertising create unhealthy eating practices in children? Do unrealistic media images cultivate unrealistic body images in adolescents? Can media be used to promote positive social change and civic engagement in young people?

If you’ve ever wondered about these questions, the Seminar on Children and Media will help give the tools to answer them. This upper level course digs in deep, training you to critically evaluate studies you read, parse the summaries of sensationalized research about children and media that appears in the popular press, and introduces you to ways of investigating the images and effects of media on children. Several research-based practice and professionals who create media images and evaluate them come share their expertise with the class as resources.

This course counts for the 21st century literacies concentrations in Child Study and Human Development, as an elective in Civic Studies and as an upper level course for the FMS major. It’s open to juniors, seniors and graduate students.

 Theory Courses

FMS 0040 Beyond McLuhan: Media Theory for the 21st Century. When Marshall McLuhan's well-known phrase that "the medium is the message" was published in the late 1950s, he set off a debate among media theorists and practitioners. Though the platforms of today differ, some of the questions and debates remain. This course will examine traditional mass media theories and explore the extent to which they apply to newer digital and social communication platforms and research. The course considers social reality theories including agenda setting and para-social interaction, functional theories including theories about media violence, cultivation and the diffusion of innovation, and theories about mass media and mass culture. What does it mean to learn within a participatory culture created by social media? What are the ensuing media ecologies that are created? How do media shape fan culture? To what extent does the appropriation of mass media and digital cultures blur the boundaries of narrative, and to what extent might they alter our sense of the boundaries between the public and private domains? How do traditional and new media platforms contribute to attitude change and social modeling? The focus of this class will be critical, using theory to understand research and as well as media practice.

FMS 0044 Introduction to Media Culture and Theory. (Formerly FMS 0054, Cross-listed as TPS 0022 and ILVS 0054) This course serves as an introduction to the study of popular media culture. Through readings, viewings and discussions, students will become familiar with the major areas of study, theoretical principles, methodologies, and debates that have shaped popular media studies in the past several decades. Among these are theories of representation, labor and authorship, contemporary media convergence, fandom and participatory culture, media globalization, the rise of reality television, game studies, industry and audience research, online content creation and more. Student will develop a knowledge base in qualitative media studies, its history, intellectual development, and theoretical milestones as they hone their skills in media criticism and analysis.

This course counts toward the Humanities distribution requirement.

FMS 0048 Visual Anthropology. (Formerly FMS 0059, Cross-listed as ANTH 0135) Development of visual anthropology from early travel documentary forms to more recent multivocal works on video. Relationship between written and visual documents. Viewing classic ethnographic films as well as contemporary films that challenge the classic genre of ethnographic films. Special attention to ethical issues in visual anthropology.

This course counts toward the Social Science distribution requirement.

FMS 0049 Political Cinema. (Cross-listed as ENG 0082) Analysis of films that both represent politics in its familiar manifestations (campaigns, elections, revolutions, movements for rights and liberties) and explore the politics of cinematic form.  Primary focus on mainstream fictional cinema in the U.S., but some attention to documentaries, non-Hollywood U.S. films, and political cinema in other countries.  Readings in film theory, film criticism, and cultural criticism. 

FMS 0065 Film Theory. (Cross-listed with ILVS 0061) What is cinema? Is it a mass entertainment medium or an art? And if it is an art, how is it different to other artistic mediums to which it bears a resemblance, such as theater and literature? Is it a tool of enlightenment that reveals reality as it really is, or a tool of deception offering merely an "illusion" of reality? How does it affect viewers, cognitively and emotionally? Can it change society for the better, or does it merely reproduce relations of power? These, and many other fascinating questions, have been debated widely by film theorists--many of them also filmmakers--almost since cinema's inception in the 1890s. Due to cinema's enormous popularity in the 20th century, they have also attracted the attention of intellectuals more generally, such as Rudolf Arnheim, Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, and Gilles Deleuze. Film theory has, moreover, tended to be an inter-disciplinary affair, drawing on the latest developments in psychology, anthropology, sociology, linguistics, the natural sciences, and philosophy. This course will survey the rich history of film theory in depth. We will examine the debates about cinema's nature and functions that emerged in the 1920s; the widespread, utopian belief in its potential to change both human beings and society for the better prevalent before WWII; the countervailing view, often held by Marxists, that the cinema is a tool of domination and control; the turn since WWII to theoretical paradigms such as linguistics, psychoanalysis, and cognitivism to answer questions about the cinema; feminist and postcolonial interventions into film theory in the 1970s and 1980s; and the wholesale critique of film theory undertaken by theorists and philosophers trained in Anglo-American analytical philosophy since the 1990s. The only pre-requisite for this course is a commitment to analytical thinking, in-depth reading, and rational debate. One required screening per week.

This course counts toward the Arts distribution requirement.

FMS 0066 Philosophy and Film. (Cross-listed as PHIL 0054)

This course explores whether and how the relatively young medium of film has extended the horizon of possibilities for the age-old practice of philosophy—whether, to put the issue another way, film is somehow an inherently philosophical medium.  Like works of literature and other forms of art, movies routinely press upon their viewers questions that lie at the heart of ethics:  What is the best or right thing to do?  How should human beings treat one another?  What sorts of duties and obligations do we have? What is the best sort of life to live?  But as a medium consisting essentially of nothing other than celluloid, light, and shadows, film is also particularly—perhaps even uniquely—well-suited to raise certain metaphysical and epistemological questions:  What is real, and what illusion?  How can we tell?  How reliable is the "knowledge" we think we have?  What is a person?  How can we know for sure, if we can, what someone else is really thinking or feeling?                      
                       
In this course we will explore the thesis that film, as a medium, tends to conflate these metaphysical and epistemological concerns with the ethical ones—that it brings a certain richness and complexity to certain questions on which moral philosophers have focused.  We will explore this complexity by comparing how various philosophers and various films frame and respond to the question:  What is the cost of civilization?

This course counts toward the Humanities distribution requirement.

FMS 0081 Hitchcock: Cinema, Gender, Ideology (cross-listed as ENG-0080, ILVS-0057)

Alfred Hitchcock: the name is synonymous not only with cinematic suspense, but also with the appeal of film as both a medium of popular entertainment and the distinctive art form of the twentieth century. Hitchcock's undiminished appeal reflects our continuing fascination with the visual satisfactions classic cinema affords and with the possibilities inherent in the genres (thriller, suspense film, romantic melodrama) in which Hitchcock primarily worked. This course will explore the relation between Hitchcock's achievement of cinematic "mastery" and his constant, even obsessive, attention to questions of gender, sexuality, and socio-cultural authority–questions that underlie his explorations of narrative suspense. We will examine how "seeing" in Hitchcock's films is the join between politics and erotics, inflecting cinematic spectatorship in the direction of such erotic (and political) "perversions" as voyeurism, fetishism, sadism, and masochism—"perversions" that find expression in the stylistic falir of Hitchcock's films. With this in mind we will consider the pleasures that Hitchcock's style affords: Whose pleasure is it? To what does it respond? How does its insistent perversity affect our understanding of his work? We will try to answer these questions by reading a number of essays on Hitchcock and cinema, including recent interventions from the perspectives of psychoanalysis, feminism, and queer theory. In that sense, this course will introduce students to theories of cinematic interpretation. But our engagement with ways of reading film (in an interdisciplinary and cross-cultural framework) will be filtered through the close and careful study of some of the most complex, compelling, and influential texts in cinematic history. These will include The 39 Steps, Rebecca, Shadow of a Doubt, Notorious, Rope, Strangers on a Train, Rear Window, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho, and The Birds. Students will be encouraged to attend showings of the films on the library's large screen in Tisch 304, but they will be permitted to watch the movies on their own (before the day of class discussion, of course) if they cannot attend the weekly screenings. This course fulfills the post-1860 requirement for English majors.

This course counts toward the Arts distribution requirement.

FMS 0087 Postmodernism and Film. (Cross-listed as ENG 0081) We encounter, perhaps even use, the word "postmodern" with some regularity. But do we really know what it means? This course will introduce students to major aspects of postmodern thought (as articulated by critics and philosophers including Jacques Derrida, Judith Butler, Slavoj Žižek, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Frederic Jameson, Donna Haraway, Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Roland Barthes, and Jean Baudrillard) by studying a variety of films that engage or mobilize postmodern concepts. We will explore the tensions between modernist and postmodernist views of the world in the context of a number of other relations as well, including those between film and philosophy, between technology and interpretation, between meaning and image, and between what Barthes calls "the work and the text." Although we will carefully attend to a wide variety of films that raise issues central to postmodernism, that doesn't mean that the films we will be studying are themselves postmodern films. Instead, we will suggest that postmodernism in cinema is inescapable and impossible at once. This course will make clear just what that means and why it might be so. The following are likely to be among the cinematic texts we examine in class: the Wachowski's The Matrix, Scott's Blade Runner, Lassiter's Toy Story, Polanski's Chinatown, Zemeckis's Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Fincher's Fight Club, Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense, Gilliam's 12 Monkeys, Amenabar's Abre los Ojos, Nolan's Memento, Lynch's Mulholland Drive, Luhrman's Moulin Rouge, and Haneke's Funny Games. This course does not presuppose any prior experience of literary theory or cinematic analysis and all serious students, whatever their background or major, are welcome to enroll. But the class will be off-putting for those resistant to dealing with complex ideas or unwilling to think about film as more than a medium of popular entertainment.

This course counts toward the Humanities distribution requirement.

FMS 0094 Women's Visions in Global Film (Special Topics, Cross-listed as ILVS 0091) How do we define women’s film? Given its formal and cultural diversity, is this a productive or reductive categorization? What are the principal preoccupations of female directors and how do they negotiate scopophilia of the established filmmaking tradition? How do they depict female subjectivity with regard to race, class, and sexuality and what type of discourse do they generate within their cultural environments? How do they navigate the body politics in various global contexts? What are the challenges securing funding and visibility on the (inter) national production and distribution circuits? These are some of the questions to be addressed in this course. Relying on cine-feminist and postcolonial theory and critical scholarship, we will watch a vast array of 21st century films by female filmmakers from all continents and examine their aesthetic, cultural, and political aspects. We will look into the mechanisms of highlighting women’s issues and analyze the impact these auteurs had on established socio-cultural and artistic practices. Some of the directors include Leila Djansi, Agnès Varda, Susanne Bier, Mira Nair, Lulu Wang, Jasmila Žbanić, Naomi Kawase, and others.

FMS 0094 Intro to Film Theory. (Special Topics, Cross-listed as ILVS 0092) Arguably more than any other art form, film has the potential to foster the illusion of reality. As such, it generates a multitude of questions: Can we consider cinema to be a true art form, even though it reproduces the external world in apparently mechanical fashion? How does our experience living life compare with our experience as spectators of film? How does film condition our perceptions of time and space? What are the consequences (representational, psychological, ethical) of filming and disseminating scenes of unspeakable violence or trauma? Is viewing a film analogous to dreaming while asleep, and may we therefore analyze films just as we would dreams and the unconscious?

This course is an introductory survey of the critical concepts in film theory from the classical pre-1968 period to the present. We will read representational texts from Formalist, Realist, Soviet, and Semiology/Suture theory, and follow the trajectory to critical race, feminist, and queer theory. Many of the great film theorists were also filmmakers, and we will raise questions about the mutual reverberations of praxis and theory. Students will be encouraged, for example, to stake their own positions in the great debates about suture theory, and how they perceive the relationship between spectator and screen in Hitchcock's continuity editing. Film theory owes an enormous debt to philosophy—aesthetics, ontology, phenomenology, psychoanalysis; and we will periodically reference those philosophers critical to the development of film theory—Heidegger, Ayfre, Benjamin, Bergson, Lacan.

We will establish the frameworks and fundamental questions that film theory inherited from philosophy. We will ask whether film can do the work of philosophy—that is, whether film itself can be construed as a mode of thought, as Stanley Cavell has proposed. Is film, and not merely film theory, on a continuum with philosophical thought? Or does it represent a radical new mode of philosophizing? We will analyze Gilles Deleuze's reframing of cinema as the evolution from the movement-image to the time-image and the implications of his model for the study of film and philosophy.

FMS 0094 Audio Storytelling: From Old Time Radio to Podcasting. (Special Topics) In 1981, MTV kicked off its music video programming with The Buggles "Video Killed the Radio Star," a music video celebrating and/or critiquing the power of images over pure sound. Almost 40 years later, however, radio is still going strong. Moreover, audio storytelling has experienced a rebirth in the form of podcasting. This course explores the history and theory behind audio storytelling. From pre-television narrative radio, to ethnic and/or niche programming, from BBC dramas, to modern podcasts, we will explore how different groups have spoken to each other and outsiders through audio forms. We will also explore the process of producing audio narratives, culminating in a podcast. 

Pre-requisites: FMS 0001 (Art of the Moving Image, formerly FMS 0020) OR FMS major/minor; or instructor permission.

FMS 0094 Media Ethics. (Special Topics) The course aims at analyzing the ethical dimensions of communication and the media. It will address questions like: what is a good communication? Can communication and the media contribute to a better and more just society? What role do they have in shaping personal identity and interpersonal relations? In order to answer these and other questions, the course will integrate theoretical reflection and analysis of concrete cases. Different relevant media will be taken into account, with a specific focus on the new media and the ethical issues raised by information and communications technology (ICT). Topics include: objectivity and neutrality in journalism, the significance of "fake news," reality and fiction in television, the impact of social networks, and ethical issues in cyberspace.

FMS 0094 The Horror Film: Gender, Race, and Genre. (Special Topics, Cross-listed as ILVS 0094) This course will explore how horror films represent and intersect with gender and race. We will view films spanning the mid-twentieth century to the present day, and study their relations to specific historical and cultural contexts, social movements, developments in the genre, and theoretical writings on race and gender. We will investigate examples from various subgenres in which fear and disgust are closely intertwined with gender and racial differences, such as slasher, revenge, black horror, and mother horror. Broad questions about the horror genre’s popular appeal will be examined alongside theories that account for differences in how horror films are experienced. Many of the films we will study are North American, but we will also look into influential films from other national and cultural contexts, such as Japanese horror and global art cinema.

FMS 0165: Television in the Age of Change. (Upper Level, Cross-listed as ILVS 0072 & TPS 0121) This course offers an introduction to television studies and media theory through an in-depth look at contemporary television and its radical transformations along recent technical, industrial, creative and cultural changes. Throughout the class, we will focus on recent television theory and how scholars have addressed major issues and debates in contemporary television. Among these will be narratives and genres, programming conventions, global trends, the creative industry, streaming content, webTV and audience and fan practices. As we read this work and analyze television texts, we will consider how these various changes imperil, enrich, and transform television as we know it.

Pre-requisites: FMS 0001 (Art of the Moving Image, formerly FMS 0020) OR FMS major/minor; or instructor permission. This course counts toward the Arts distribution requirement.

FMS 0176 The Horror Film. (Upper Level) This course on the horror film is designed for FMS majors and others seeking an in-depth historical and theoretical understanding of the horror film. There is a mandatory screening each week in which we will watch two films, and students will be required to do significant reading and write a research paper on some aspect of the horror genre. We will study the history of the horror film from its beginning in the 1920s through to the present day, focusing on classic, influential films such as Frankenstein; Dracula; The Thing from Another World; Psycho; Night of the Living Dead; The Exorcist; The Texas Chainsaw Massacre; Halloween; and Alien. We will also watch more recent films including Videodrome; The Silence of the Lambs; Scream; and Get Out. While most of the films we examine will be from North America, we will occasionally make forays into other national and cultural traditions, especially Japanese horror, and we will pay equal attention to the creative innovations of individual filmmakers and the conventions of the genre within which they work. We will consider whether the genre reflects if not promotes the fears of American society as well as its representation of gender and race. We will also address some of the larger philosophical and theoretical questions it raises: what, precisely, is horror? Why do we enjoy watching films which make us feel ostensibly undesirable emotions such as fear and disgust, emotions which, in our ordinary lives, we tend to avoid? Finally, we will ask what serial television can do with the genre that film cannot using examples such as The Walking Dead. This course counts as a theory and an upper-level elective for the FMS major.

Pre-requisites: FMS 0001 (Art of the Moving Image, formerly FMS 0020) OR FMS major/minor; or instructor permission. This course counts toward the Arts distribution requirement.

FMS 0180 Psychoanalysis and Cinema. (Upper Level, Cross-listed as ENG 0180 & ILVS 0180) Psychoanalysis, however we may view it as an institution or a therapeutic practice, has profoundly affected how most of us think about sexuality, subjectivity, and everyday practices. The world would look quite different without such concepts as the unconscious, fetishism, oedipal rivalry, identification, and the drives. And who could imagine cinema in the absence of those concepts? In the same way that psychoanalysis seems to presuppose the cinematic apparatus (as key terms like "projection," "the primal scene," or the "dream-screen" would suggest), so cinema and cinema theory can seem to presuppose psychoanalysis as well. This course will explore psychoanalysis and cinema together in three specific ways: by looking at how we can understand psychoanalysis through cinema; by looking at psychoanalysis as represented in cinema; and by looking at psychoanalytic logics as essential to the practice of cinema. Each week we will read texts of psychoanalytic theory (including psychoanalytic film theory) in relation to cinematic works that exemplify, respond to, or illuminate them. We will explore in particular how the theories of sexuality at the heart of psychoanalysis shape both the form and content of cinematic representation. Readings may include works by such authors as Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Slavoj Žižek, Jane Gallop, Christian Metz, Joan Copjec, Mary Anne Doane, Leo Bersani, Barbara Creed, Stephen Heath, Kaja Silverman, Laura Mulvey, and Raymond Bellour. Films to be studied may include Spellbound and Marnie (Hitchcock), Pulp Fiction (Tarantino), Apocalypse Now (Coppola), The Piano Teacher (Haneke), Moonlight (Jenkins), The Silence of the Lambs (Demme), Persona (Bergman), Pressure Point (Cornfield), Peeping Tom (Powell), Melancholia (Von Trier), There Will Be Blood (Anderson), and Eve's Bayou (Lemmons). No more than 16 students will be admitted into the class and registration will be limited to those who are majoring in English or Film and Media Studies. Others who wish to enroll may request permission by emailing the instructor and explaining either how the class addresses their interests or their academic plans or by indicating that they plan to major in English or Film and Media Studies. 

This course counts toward the Humanities distribution requirement.

FMS 0184 Film and Modernism. (Upper Level, Cross-listed as ENG, ILVS, FAH-0150)Central to modernism--that vast, diverse movement that transformed the arts in the late 19th and 20th centuries--was the desire to modernize art, to break with tradition and cultivate new artistic forms and styles more suited to the modern world. But how did modernism impact the cinema, given that, as a new medium, it initially lacked traditions to break with? In this upper-level seminar, we will consider what modernism was in general, and how it initially took root in film. Beginning with German Expressionism of the 1920s, arguably the first modernist movement in cinema, we will examine how filmmakers in Europe and beyond sought to create equivalents of modernism in the fine arts, theater, and literature while simultaneously attempting to purify film of these arts. We will see how modernist filmmakers negotiated the transition to sound in the late 1920s as well as the re-emergence of varieties of realism in the politically charged 1930s and war-torn 1940s. After considering whether Italian Neo-Realism is a form of modernism, we will turn out attention to European filmmakers who cultivated innovative forms and styles in the post-war period often in dialogue with Hollywood genre filmmaking. We will also look at the extent to which modernism influenced filmmakers working in the studio system in the United States and beyond, such as in Japan. Finally, we will return to Europe to witness the politicization of modernism in the late 1960s and will ask whether modernist cinema, as many have argued, came to an end in the 1970s and has been replaced by postmodernism. We will study at least some of the following filmmakers: Akerman, Antonioni, Bergman, Bresson, Clair, Dulac, Eisenstein, Epstein, Fellini, Godard, Hitchcock, Jansco, Kawalerowicz, Kinugasa, Kubrick, Kurosawa, Lang, Makavejev, Oshima, Pabst, Resnais, Rossellini, and Varda. This is a 4 SHU, upper-level course with one mandatory screening per week. As this is an upper-level seminar, students are required to research and write a research paper of at least 4,000 words.

Prerequisite: FMS-0001 OR FMS-0002 or FMS-0087 OR ENG-0081; or instructor permission

FMS 0186 How Films Think. (Upper Level, Cross-listed as ENG 0186) This upper-level seminar is intended for serious students of film who want to explore how cinema creates a complex language through which to think. Although we'll cover such specific aspects of the medium as montage, the long take, point of view, shot/reverse shot, framing, and other elements of cinematic rhetoric, we will focus more precisely on how specific directors deploy those devices to subjectivize the camera as the locus of authorship and thought. We will study, that is, how visual style produces, complements, reframes, and undoes a movie's surface narrative by generating the need to read that narrative in relation to the function of the camera. What does the movement of the camera do to the image that it depicts? How does it underscore, ironize, or "think" about the "content" of the image itself? To answer these questions we will focus on works by six American directors acclaimed for their mastery of cinematic style: Orson Welles, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Stanley Kubrick, Quentin Tarantino, and David Lynch. Films to be examined will probably include Citizen Kane, The Lady from Shanghai, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas, The Godfather (Parts I and II), 2001: A Space Odyssey, Blue Velvet, Lost Highway, and Kill Bill (Volumes 1 and 2). Students must be willing to participate actively in conversation and intellectual exchange. They will be responsible for group presentations on a regular basis throughout the semester. This course fulfills the post-1860 requirement.

This course counts toward the Humanities distribution requirement.

FMS 0194 Screening Paranoia (Special Topics) From worries about digital surveillance, to the widespread dissemination of misinformation, we seem to live in a paranoid age. But anxieties about technology and an atmosphere of mistrust are hardly new phenomena. We will see how emerging technologies have been met with fear throughout history—from beliefs that early electronic media such as radio could contact other worlds, to more contemporary anxieties about digital technologies tracking our every behavior. We will trace how popular media such as film have represented paranoia, from 1950s science fiction to 1970s thrillers, and conclude by examining how digital media have helped to make conspiracy theories a central part of mainstream political discourse.

Pre-requisites: FMS 0001 (Art of the Moving Image, formerly FMS 0020); or instructor permission

FMS 0194 Audio Storytelling: From Old Time Radio to Podcasting. (Upper Level, Special Topics) In 1981, MTV kicked off its music video programming with The Buggles "Video Killed the Radio Star," a music video celebrating and/or critiquing the power of images over pure sound. Almost 40 years later, however, radio is still going strong. Moreover, audio storytelling has experienced a rebirth in the form of podcasting. This course explores the history and theory behind audio storytelling. From pre-television narrative radio, to ethnic and/or niche programming, from BBC dramas, to modern podcasts, we will explore how different groups have spoken to each other and outsiders through audio forms. We will also explore the process of producing audio narratives, culminating in a podcast. Upper level.

Pre-requisites: FMS 0001 (Art of the Moving Image, formerly FMS 0020) or FMS major or minor; or instructor permission.                      
                       
FMS 0194 Israeli Cinema and TV in a Regional and Global Context. (Upper Level, Special Topics, Cross-listed as TPS 0194, ILVS 0091, JS 0092) In the past few decades, Israeli films and television shows have circulated widely around the world, as original productions and as source material for local adaptations. In this course we will examine contemporary Israeli films and TV in terms of their narrative and style and think broadly about the relationship between local specificity and global appeal. In our readings, screenings and discussions, we will explore how these works engage with Israel's Palestinian conflict and occupation, the region’s embattled history, religious and ethnic friction, queer and gendered identities, and Arab and Palestinian creators' work in Israel’s media industries. Throughout, we will consider how film and media respond, critique, and take part in social, cultural and political change. The course includes mandatory weekly readings and screenings. All screenings are subtitled – no knowledge of Hebrew or Arabic is required.

Pre-requisites: FMS 0001 (Art of the Moving Image) or FMS 0044 (Intro to Media Culture and Theory); or instructor permission

FMS 0194 Media and the Environment. (Special Topics) The early filmmaker D.W. Griffith praised film’s capacity to capture “the beauty of wind moving in the trees,” thus echoing an idea that was common to much of the early discourse on photography and cinema: that these media brought people into contact with real, physical nature. As conceptions of humanity’s place in the environment have evolved, so too have the ways that people use media to represent nonhuman nature. We will look closely at how movies and other popular media have depicted nature, and examine how audiovisual media have been used within the environmental movement, from the conservation efforts of the mid-20th century to the increasingly urgent efforts of activists in the era of climate change. We will read work by prominent scholars in ecocriticism, and view a wide range of media, looking at narrative, documentary, and experimental practices.  

Pre-requisites: FMS 0001 (Art of the Moving Image, formerly FMS 0020) OR FMS major or minor; or instructor permission.

FMS 0194 Seminar in English: Political Cinema. (Special Topics, Cross-listed as ENG 0191) What makes a film “political”?   In this seminar, we will look at a series of films that do two things:  they represent politics in its familiar manifestations--campaigns, elections, revolutions, counter-revolutions, movements in favor of rights and liberations--but they also explore and exploit the politics of cinematic form.  Instead of simply asking how these films portray politics, in other words, we will be approaching them with a view toward understanding the interplay between politics and cinema.  We will focus on mainstream fictional cinema in the United States, but we will also consider documentaries, non-Hollywood U.S. films, and political cinema in other countries.  We will be juxtaposing more or less recent films with “classics” from the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.   Films likely to be chosen include:  Sorry to Bother You (Riley), City Hall (Wiseman), The Last Hurrah (Ford), Selma (DuVernay), The Manchurian Candidate (Frankenheimer), The Battle of Algiers (Pontecorvo), Malcolm X (Lee), One Night in Miami (King), Dr. Strangelove (Kubrick), Nashville (Altman), A Face in the Crowd (Kazan), Salt of the Earth (Biberman), Vice (McKay).  Readings in film theory, film criticism, and cultural criticism will be an essential part of the course. Students will be required to write a few short (two-to-three-page) papers and one longer (ten-page) research paper.  

 Film and Media Practice Courses

FMS 0010 Film and Media Production I. (Formerly FMS 0030) The Basics of Visual Storytelling explores the tools and techniques necessary to create audio/visual stories for film, television, and online content. This course will enhance students' media literacy while also giving them the practical foundations of film and media production. Students will gain knowledge of camera equipment and rigs, sound recording, lighting setups, and postproduction techniques as well as gain a deeper understanding and appreciation for the art of visual storytelling. Recommended for first- and second-year students interested in FMS as a major. Students who complete FMS10 will fulfill the main prerequisite for the intermediate and advanced production courses in Film and Media Studies.

Recommended for first and second year students.

Pre-requisites: FMS 0001 (Art of the Moving Image) OR FMS major/minor; or instructor permission. This course counts toward the Arts distribution requirement.

Variable pre-requisites: (1) May also be restricted to first-years, sophomores and juniors; seniors and fifth years by instructor permission. This course is only open to first-years with the intent of pursuing an FMS major. First-years should email instructors with relevant experience to enroll. This course counts toward the Arts distribution requirement OR (2) May also be restricted to first-years, sophomores, juniors. Seniors by instructor permission.

FMS 0012 Producing for Film. (Formerly FMS 0034, Cross-listed as TPS 0151) Exploration of the art of creative film production through participation on the production team for a new professional film project. Through film analysis, theoretical readings, project development, production experience, and engagement with working filmmakers, students will expand their capacities to think as artists and critics. Learn and practice fundamental elements of successful producing, including script breakdown, budgeting, fundraising, executing contracts, copyright and other legal documents, casting, scheduling, location scouting, shooting, editing, marketing, and distribution. Gain skills to facilitate their own future projects, while developing increased understanding of film as a collaborative medium. 

Pre-requisites: FMS 0010 (Film and Media Production I, formerly FMS 0030); or instructor permission. This course counts toward the Arts distribution requirement.

FMS 0013 Documentary Film: History and Practice. (Formerly FMS 0037)  Documentary filmmaking class that emphasizes hands-on nonfiction fieldwork. Examines documentary history and theory to provide an understanding of how documentarians communicate a distinct point of view. Individual and group assignments designed to teach technical skills and examine different aspects of the documentary fieldwork process. Final documentary media project. 

Pre-requisites: FMS 0010 (Film and Media Production I, formerly FMS 0030); or instructor permission. This course counts toward the Arts distribution requirement.

FMS 0014 From Script to Screen. (Formerly FMS 0094) This class has been created to offer FMS students a new filmmaking opportunity. The course is designed to serve two,  interlocking purposes. It’s a chance for students who’ve written scripts in Screenwriting 1 to produce them. At the same time, it will provide a workshop environment and a pool of like-minded filmmakers who can collaborate on each other’s  projects. The class will develop skills in producing, casting, directing, and cinematography.  NOTE: although the class is recommended for students who’ve completed Screenwriting 1, others who have an interest in making original films are welcome.

Pre-requisites: FMS 0010 (Film and Media Production I, formerly FMS 0030) OR FMS 0020 (Screenwriting I, formerly FMS 0032); or instructor permission. This course counts toward the Arts distribution requirement.

FMS 0020 Screenwriting 1. (Formerly FMS 0032, Cross-listed as TPS 0079) Introduction to cinematic storytelling and dramatic construction, which guides student short film ideas from concept to screenplay. The course operates as an immersive workshop in the craft of writing, short, engaging scripts. Screenings and analysis of innovative narrative shorts from around the world supplement weekly script development and insightful roundtable discussion of student work. 

Pre-requisites: FMS 0010 (Film and Media Production I, formerly FMS 0030) OR TPS 0002 (Fundamentals of Performance Production); or instructor permission. This course counts toward the Arts distribution requirement.

FMS 0021 Screenwriting II. (Formerly FMS 0033, Cross-listed as TPS 0178) Study of screenwriting with an emphasis on visual storytelling, dramatic structure, and character development. Analysis of engaging and innovative films and produced screenplays that push beyond conventions. Weekly workshops emphasizing peer analysis and critique. This course can be taken twice. First semester students develop a script outline and the first act of their screenplays. Second semester students and those enrolling with a work-in-progress complete their screenplays.

Pre-requisites: FMS 0020 (Screenwriting I, formerly FMS 0032) OR TPS 0079; or instructor permission. This course counts toward the Arts distribution requirement.

FMS 0022 New Forms of Screen Narrative. (Formerly FMS 0035, Cross-listed as ENG 12)This is a course in basic screen narrative. We will spend the first weeks of the course learning how a film narrative is usually structured - though we will, of course, pay due attention to other possible ways of producing dramatic tension and audience involvement. The class will workshop their story ideas – first in a condensed form of four pages, and then in a longer form of twelve pages. After that we will turn to the basics of script formatting, and students will begin writing the sections of their film’s first thirty pages. We will workshop those pages (and more, depending on how quickly each student proceeds) throughout the rest of the course.

FMS 0024 Acting for the Camera (Special Topics, Cross-listed as TPS 0093) On stage, the audience may be anywhere from a few feet away in the front row to the back row of the second balcony, and the job of the actor is to reach every audience member from the closest to the furthest away. How does this change on camera when the ‘audience’ is only inches away from the performer's face. In this course students will explore and unpack the long held belief that with on camera acting “less in more” and discover that the more accurate phrase is: “Less externalized is more effective, however the energy, listening and commitment of the actor remains the same”.

FMS 0025 Costume Design. (Formerly FMS 0027, Cross-listed as TPS 71) Development of the skills of script analysis, rendering, and process for the design of costumes. Lab fee $250.

This course counts toward the Arts distribution requirement.

FMS 0026 Dance and the Hollywood Musical. (Formerly FMS 0094, Cross-listed as DNC 0091) Examine the aesthetic, historic and socio-political background of the American Hollywood musical as reflected in and by dance. The course will look at the changing dynamic between dance, the dancer/actor, the choreographer, director and cinematographer and how these different elements evolve over time. Assignments include viewings, readings, movement experiences, and individual research projects. 1.0 credits.

This course counts toward the Arts distribution requirement.

FMS 0027 Dance on Camera. (Formerly FMS 0024, Cross-listed as DNC 0077) Inter-disciplinary course designed for any dancer, artist or student interested in film & video production with dance or movement as a medium. Participants will take dance and movement concepts outside of studio walls and into the community through site-specific collaborative video projects. Through storyboarding, shooting, editing, and choreographing/directing, students will learn basic video production techniques and advanced camera work in this hands-on course. Development of movement ideas as well as non-linear editing skills will be explored. Work culminates in end of semester public screening and online video sharing. Open to all. No dance or film/video experience necessary. 

This course counts toward the Arts distribution requirement.

FMS 0028 Scene Design. (Formerly FMS 0028, Cross-listed with TPS 0070) Development of the skills of script analysis, rendering and model making, and process for the design of scenery. Course objective include: develop each person’s creative process and empathic imagination, develop, apply and challenge aesthetic criteria, acquire skills in interpersonal communication and effective collaboration, understand the individual and collective roles of a production team, learn the technical aspects of production through the hands-on experience, implement organizational and problem-solving skills, develop flexibility and adaptability. 

This course counts toward the Arts distribution requirement.

FMS 0029 The Designer’s Eye: History Style & Decor. (Formerly FMS 0061, Cross-listed with TPS00 31) This course is designed to be a survey course in décor, style and architecture from early Egyptian to Modern American. Its intention is to give architects, interior designers and designers for film, television and theater a basic working knowledge of period and style in regards to interior decor and architectural style. Because of the vast amount of history and material that needs to be covered during the semester it will be difficult to study any one period in any considerable depth. For this reason we will spend more time on the early foundations of décor and architecture and cover the subsequent periods more swiftly. We will spend the first month covering the Egyptian, Crete-Mycenae, Greek and Roman periods. After an exam on the first section we will proceed quickly through Early Christian, Byzantine, Romanesque, Gothic, English Medieval, and the Italian Renaissance. After another exam we will spend the rest of the semester working quickly through Modern American. The course will be taught through a series of power point lectures which will include various clips from documentaries and period films. 

This course counts toward the Arts distribution requirement.

FMS 0030 Creative Writing: Journalism. (Formerly FMS 0041, Cross-listed as ENG 0007) This course is an introduction to the nuts-and-bolts of journalism. We'll focus on researching and writing news stories, features, profiles, opinion pieces, and reviews. The aim of the course will be to develop reporting and interviewing skills, master journalistic principles and forms, and encourage clear thinking and clear writing. Students will cover stories both on- and off-campus. They will read their work in class, with class members taking on the roles of editors. We'll also take a close look at the local and national press and examine how they cover various stories. 

Pre-requisites: ENG 0001 and ENG 0002 or ENG 0003 and ENG 0004 or equivalent(s). This course counts toward the Arts distribution requirement.

FMS 0031 Intermediate Journalism. (Formerly FMS 0042, Cross-listed as ENG 0011) What the news media will be like in the coming years is up for grabs, but the nuts and bolts of good journalism remain the same: getting the story by tuning into events and getting people to tell us what the public needs to know; finding and using sources effectively; investigating and analyzing events; and reporting it all accurately, clearly, and engagingly. This course gives you, as a student journalist, the opportunity to sharpen these skills by writing stories regularly as you learn the craft and business of the field. You'll work mostly independently on topics of your choosing to practice news reporting, and feature writing for various journalism platforms. We’ll also discuss practical, ethical, and legal issues in the news media among ourselves and with professional journalists.

Prerequisite: Familiarity with the basics of reporting. 

Pre-requisites: ENG 0001 and ENG 0002 or ENG 0003 and ENG 0004 or equivalent(s). This course counts toward the Arts distribution requirement.

FMS 0032 PR & Marketing: A History of Theory and Tactics. (Formerly FMS 0043) An exploration and analysis of the history of public relations and marketing communications theory in the United States and how it evolved with and influenced our media environment and public discourse. Tracing the evolution of mass persuasion through the writings of major thinkers in the field from the mid-nineteenth century through the present, we will examine how these developed in parallel with social changes including the industrial revolution, theories of human consciousness and motivation, and advances in technology, to create an all-encompassing consumer culture. Authors will range from Gustave Le Bon, Walter Lippmann, Edward Bernays and Sigmund Freud to Daniel Boorstin, Marshall McLuhan, Stuart Ewen, Seth Godin and Malcolm Gladwell.

Using case studies, we will explore how the mechanics of this global mega industry practice strategies that influence everything from complex world affairs or simply the toothpaste we choose to buy. We will analyze advertising, images, visual design, and public relations campaigns and see how deeply these are embedded in our culture, psychology, polemics and politics, and how this is magnified by a digital reality that questions the nature of truth itself.

Students will apply these theories by working in teams to create their own marketing communications plan for a product, person, place or concept. This will include the rubric and latest thinking in the field including audience analysis, positioning strategy, messaging and examples of visual and digital communications. 

This course counts toward the Social Sciences distribution requirement.

FMS 0033 Social Marketing: Theory and Practice. (Formerly FMS 0044) Explores the field of social marketing, which uses marketing concepts and tools to promote political and social causes such as eliminating poverty and creating equality. Examines the theories and history of this field using authors from psychology, media studies, and social and commercial marketing. Analyzes case studies of how marketing has succeeded in persuading consumers to invest in political and social causes the same way they do in commodities, changing behavior to improve health, the environment, voting, and social justice among others. Team projects applying these theories by partnering with local non-profit organizations, analyzing each organization’s communications and marketing goals, and providing them with a marketing communications plan that includes both new strategies and tactics such as logos, web pages, print materials, or event and outreach concepts. 

This course counts toward the Social Sciences distribution requirement.

FMS 0034 Creating Children’s Media. (Formerly FMS 0058, Cross-listed as CSHD 0143) Good media for kids comes from a recipe of creativity, understanding children, knowing media conventions - and having a sense of adventure and fun! In this class you’ll learn how to apply theories of child development and research about children’s media and try your hand at creating some new children’s media of your own. We’ll talk about what makes children’s media educational, about how children’s media can be created in diverse and equitable ways that address issues of social justice, and we’ll see how media can be used to get children civically engaged. We will try our hands at: Making a pitch to take a children’s book and turn it into a movie, writing an episode of an original children’s television show or a spec script for an existing show, writing a proposal for a children’s educational app. Many children’s media professionals (writers, directors, producers) will join us as guest speakers and as future contacts.

This course counts toward the Social Sciences distribution requirement.

FMS 0067 Composition for Film. (Cross-listed as MUS 0067) Introduction to composing music for a variety of visual media, including film, video games, and advertising. Access to the music lab where students produce their work hands on. Recommendations: Working knowledge of notation and sequencing software (such as Finale or Sibelius and DigitalPerformer or Pro Tools) helpful.

Pre-requisites: Music 5 or equivalent; or instructor permission. This course counts toward the Arts distribution requirement.

FMS 0094 The Art and Business of Crafting Compelling Media Campaigns  (Special Topics) Immerse yourself in the exciting world of commercial filmmaking with this dynamic course! Gain comprehensive insight into both the theory and practice of creating commercial films. Students will actively participate in the creative process, encompassing writing, producing, directing, and pitching various forms of short-form videos. Through a combination of lectures, screenings, and hands-on projects, students will develop a profound understanding of how commercial filmmaking shapes our culture, producing content such as television commercials, political ads, "brand videos," and corporate or non-profit narratives. The course covers essential techniques in pre-production, production, and post-production.

FMS 0094 Television Storytelling  (Special Topics) This course is an introduction to cinematic storytelling and dramatic construction, which guides student short film ideas from concept to screenplay. The course operates as an immersive workshop in the craft of writing, short, engaging scripts.  Screenings and analysis of innovative narrative shorts from around the world supplement weekly script development and insightful roundtable discussion of student work.

The class will explore fundamental structures of narrative and their expression in traditional television formats, such as the sitcom, the hour-long drama, as well as new modalities born out of the streaming revolution such as 8-12 episode season arcs, anthology series, mini series, and variable runtimes. Students will develop either an original pilot or write a spec episode of an existing show, as well as learning about the writers room, developing a show bible, show running, TV genres, and the nuts and bolts of the role of the writer in the production process. 

Half the History: Finding, Creating, and Amplifying Women’s Historical Stories through Media  (Special Topics) Half the History: Finding, Creating, and Amplifying Women’s Historical Stories through Media is an interdisciplinary course combining history, theory, and practice. We’ll be exploring some of the ways in which women’s stories have – and have not – been told, how archives have not systematically saved and curated the stories of women’s lives, and how the lives of women of color have been even less preserved. We’ll focus on reframing questions that will enable us to tell historical stories in new ways.                      
                       
Students will gain hands-on producing experience working together on films, podcasts, and short biographies for the Half the History series on under-told stories of women in U.S. history and will also create an individual Half the History passion project. We’ll be developing materials for viewers/listeners/readers of different ages, and talking about how media producers might incorporate child development theory and practice in their work. Readings include theory, popular media, and other critical sources from different disciplines that examine issues of representation in media, in addition to exploring the lives of particular historical figures. Through collaborative media making, students will learn and execute strategies for successful producing.

FMS 0094 Experimental Film: From Concept to Practice (Special Topics) This class explores experimental filmmaking techniques and practices as both a way to augment a commercial film practice and as an alternative cinema in its own right. Various traditions from the cinematic avant-garde will be considered for the creation of personal projects, including experimental film as a medium for personal expression, an exploration of film form, and a critique of mass media and culture. Screenings of notable work, readings, discussions of contemporary film issues, and visiting artist lectures will provide students with the context needed to engage with experimental film communities, film festivals, and exhibition spaces locally and abroad.

Pre-requisites: FMS-0010 (Film and Media Production I, formerly FMS-0030); or instructor permission

FMS 0094 Crafting Your Vision: Intermediate Visual Storytelling (Special Topics) This project-based course will employ a production-unit model to shoot a short feature over the course of the semester. Teams with discrete departments will work concurrently, enabling each student to be a department head: producer, director, cinematographer, gaffer, sound engineer, or art designer. In addition to the film project, students will learn from guest speakers in a workshop environment. Students will use the FMS program’s professional-level equipment, highlighted by the industry standard, like the Arri Alexa digital cinema camera and other rigs. Intended for advanced students, particularly students interested in making a senior thesis film in the future.

Pre-requisites: FMS-0010 (Film and Media Production I, formerly FMS-0030); or instructor permission

FMS 0094 Acting as a Career (Special Topics, Cross-listed as TPS-0145) This course will explore what is needed to build a career as an actor. The course will consist of, but is not limited to, lectures, audition workshops, interviews with industry professionals, casting directors and agents.

Pre-req: Junior/senior standing or special permission from instructor

FMS 0094 Diaspora ArTchives: Colonialism, Race, and Immigration in Contemporary Film and Media (Special Topics, Cross-listed as RCD 0194) Official Archives—libraries, record offices, museums, repositories, books— function as depositories of “truth”, where knowledge about past events can be stored and recovered. Yet, we know that the “truths” found in traditional archives are incomplete: books and mainstream film productions are often biased while silences and omissions enter every level of archive-making and historical production. This course proposes an innovative approach to archiving and researching through the engagement, analysis and recovery of oral histories and artistic productions of immigrants (loosely defined to include second generations, refugees, undocumented, and new citizens) as they appear in film, media and cultural productions. Students will engage in the critical analysis of the historical relationship between race, diaspora, and citizenship.  Building on original stories and artistic materials presented in class, students will then contribute to the production of a digital archive and network that connects people, objects and events across the globe. The archives can be created via different mediums, including film. Our goal is to make the archive a tool for teaching and learning as well as a functional artistic piece for the larger community. Pre-requisites: RCD-0005; or instructor permission

FMS 0094 Acting for TV and Film. (Special Topics, Cross-listed as TPS 0093) This is an on camera acting course. You will learn how to use acting techniques to create believable characters in various genres of Television and Film. Class size is small to ensure maximum screen time. You will work on Eye Line (where to look), how to best use your voice, how to access emotions, and physicality. All classes will be filmed and students will review each other's work.

FMS 0094 Audio Storytelling: From Old Time Radio to Podcasting. (Special Topics) In 1981, MTV kicked off its music video programming with The Buggles "Video Killed the Radio Star," a music video celebrating and/or critiquing the power of images over pure sound. Almost 40 years later, however, radio is still going strong. Moreover, audio storytelling has experienced a rebirth in the form of podcasting. This course explores the history and theory behind audio storytelling. From pre-television narrative radio, to ethnic and/or niche programming, from BBC dramas, to modern podcasts, we will explore how different groups have spoken to each other and outsiders through audio forms. We will also explore the process of producing audio narratives, culminating in a podcast.

Pre-requisites: FMS-0001 (Art of the Moving Image, formerly FMS 0020) OR FMS major or minor; or instructor permission. 

FMS 0094 Costume Design for Film, TV, and New Media. (Special Topics, Cross-listed with TPS 0094) Students will engage in theoretical and practice-based projects, including designing for student thesis film projects. There will be guest lecturers currently working in the industry to provide context and career information. Previous experience with costume design, styling, or film production is recommended.

FMS 0094 Creating Children's Media. (Special Topics, Cross-listed as CSHD 0143) It goes into writing a script for a children’s television show? How do you pitch a great children’s book as a movie? How do you write an ad for kids? How can you propose an educational app that someone will want to develop? This course will combine learning how children’s education media products are developed with formative and summative research with a practice-based workshop approach to applying educational learning theory and principles in creative ways. We’ll examine award-winning children’s media, hear from people who created it and craft our own. We’ll take a workshop approach in developing scripts for children’s TV shows, learning what goes into pitching a book for film and building proposals for interactive media products. The course will include a field trip to WGBH to participate in a hackathon to design new media products for children.


FMS 0094 Film Criticism: Art and Practice (Special Topics,) This class will examine movie reviewing as both a practice and an art, and it will use the form to springboard to a larger engagement with cultural analysis as a whole. What does it mean to think critically about the media and popular culture through which we swim every day? What tools are needed to decode its messages? The course will function partly as a historical survey largely (but not wholly) focusing on American writers such as James Agee, Manny Farber, Andrew Sarris, and Pauline Kael. As we move into the modern day, topics will include the rise of genre-based criticism, the schisms and fragmentation of specialist critics and agendas, and how the form and substance of cultural criticism can change with the container (tweet, blog post, episode recap) in which it appears. A second, parallel track will focus on students learning to write professional film and cultural criticism for themselves. Through weekly screenings of classic films and current theatrical releases, and through regular writing and in-class peer editing of reviews, students will receive a grounding in formulating opinions for public consumption in ways that combine journalistic integrity, contextual knowledge, and an individualistic voice that makes for a "good read."

FMS 0094 Game Design. (Special Topics, Cross-listed as COMP 50) Principles, design, and development of games. Game structure, engineering, physics, testing, 2D and 3D rendering, user interfaces, sound, and animation. Security of online games. Applications of Economics, Music, and Psychology in crafting games. Projects include writing game design documents, developing an interactive fiction game, and building a functional game in a team.

Recommendations: COMP15.

FMS 0094 Hearing Cinema – Film and Media Sound. (Special Topics, Cross-listed as COMP 0050) Hearing Cinema is a production course devoted to understanding sound’s complex role in the audiovisual relations of the cinema. Workshops and assignments will guide you in creating works that explore an expanded range of sound’s potentials within film’s interplay of looking, listening, and imagining. Rather than begin with sound in relation to the film image, we will begin with the relation of listener to environment, cultivating capacities of close listening, description, and recording of sounds in the field. From there we will explore the expressive powers of sound when placed in conversation with, rather than in the service of, the moving image by creating short works of your own design. Topics will include experimental montage, the voice in narrative cinema, the roles of music beyond the soundtrack, microphone techniques, sound editing, basic effects and processing. There will be additional screenings assigned one day per week, schedule to be determined. 

Pre-requisites: FMS 0010 (Film and Media Production I, formerly FMS 0030); or instructor permission.

FMS 0094 Solo Dance on Camera. (Special Topics, Cross-listed as DNC 0091) Practice based, open to anyone interested in making work for moving bodies, objects and voices in response to both open-ended and self-designed prompts. Record, edit, and structure videos or animations. The semester will culminate with final works that will be streamed. 3 course credits. 

FMS 0099 FMS Media Internship. Internships in media provide insights into the world of communications through professional experience, teach you about the industry, and give you important hands-on experience. This course provides faculty support and academic credit for media-related internships in all areas of communication, including broadcasting, film, journalism, public relations, marketing, advertising, publishing, web and multimedia, social media, and other fields. 4-credit course includes 3 short papers, short weekly reflections, regular meetings with the instructor, and 150 work hours onsite at the internship. 2-credit course includes 2 short papers, short weekly reflections, regular meetings with the instructor, and 75 work hours onsite at the internship. Available to rising sophomores, juniors, and seniors. It is NOT required to be an FMS major or minor. Pass/Fail. 

Consent required. Section 01 is 4 credits; section 02 is 2 credits.

FMS 0134 Screenwriting III. (Upper Level, Cross-listed as TPS 0178) This advanced screenwriting course will focus on completing Acts II and III of a feature-length screenplay in a workshop setting. The following screenwriting steps will be examined and discussed: character development, story, plot, structure, dialogue, visuals, setups and payoffs, and genre. Films and published screenplays will also be analyzed. 

Pre-requisites: FMS 0021 (Screenwriting II, formerly FMS 0033) OR FMS 0022 (New Forms of Screen Narratives, formerly FMS 0035); or instructor permission. This course counts toward the Arts distribution requirement.

FMS 0136 Directing for Film. (Upper Level, Cross-listed as TPS 0150) Advanced exploration of the art of the film director from both a critical and artistic perspective. Through focused study of films and writings by diverse narrative film directors, students will develop deeper understanding of how directors use film techniques to shape a story. Through practice-based exercises and workshops with industry professionals, students will hone directing techniques, including how to work with actors and ways to use the camera, movement, design, lighting, editing, and other film elements for effective story telling. 

Pre-requisites: FMS 0010 (Film and Media Production I, formerly FMS 0030); or instructor permission. This course counts toward the Arts distribution requirement.

FMS 0138 Advanced Filmmaking. (Upper Level, Cross-listed as TPS 0194) By arrangement. Production of an original piece of work – including but not limited to a short narrative film, a short documentary, an experimental piece, or a screenplay. 

Instructor Consent. This course counts toward the Arts distribution requirement.

FMS 0139 Independent Filmmaking. (Practice)

Congratulations! Your classmates and you have been contracted by Jumbo Films, an independent production company, to shoot a festival-ready short feature. Based on a script that Jumbo Films has optioned, this project involves working with experienced actors and professional equipment in order to realize your collective vision for the film. To bring the project home on time and under budget, we'll be employing Jumbo Films' proprietary “units” system. This ensures that everyone will work as a "principal" (producer, director, DP, or sound recordist, for example) on at least one unit, while providing support as crew on the others. NOTE: The results will be handed off to the Jumbo Films Post-Production Group for finishing in the spring. Intended for advanced FMS majors. Excellent preparation for a production senior thesis. This course does not count as an FMS upper level requirement. This course counts toward the Arts distribution requirement.

Pre-requisites: FMS 0001 (Art of the Moving Image, formerly FMS 0020); or instructor permission. Recommended: FMS 94 Crafting Your Vision. This course counts toward the Arts distribution requirement. This course does NOT count toward the FMS upper level requirement.


FMS 0140 Independent FIlmmaking Post-production Students in this course will form a real-world postproduction team. Their task is tofinish a short, festival-level feature film -- one that was shot by students enrolled in FMS-0139 Independent Filmmaking last fall. Working with the footage, audio, and notes from the fall, the post team will edit and color grade the film while, at the same time, writing a score and completing a final sound mix. The finished film will premiere at the end of the semester.

Pre-requisites: Instructor Permission

FMS 0137 Advanced Documentary Production. (Practice, Upper Level) An intensive workshop environment where students produce in-depth documentary projects over the course of the semester. Advanced Documentary Production provides the resources to do long-form documentary research, fieldwork, and editing. This course encourages collaboration and creativity in student’s documentary approach via fieldwork assignments, class discussions, instructor feedback, and peer critique. Students will learn how to evaluate documentary storytelling through hands-on experience and develop their understanding of visual language by watching professional and student-produced work. By the end of the semester, all participants will have a documentary film or media project to screen or exhibit. 

Pre-requisites: FMS 0010 (Film and Media Production I, formerly FMS 0030) OR FMS 0013 (Documentary Film, formerly FMS 0037); or instructor permission. This course counts toward the Arts distribution requirement.

FMS 0160 Branding Theory and Practice. (Upper level, formerly FMS 0194) An exploration of brands and media as transitional cultural objects that recreate our psychology, perceptions and mythologies just as we create them to further political and economic agendas. We will address the question of how our 21st century culture has changed under the influence of pervasive advertising, public relations, images and narratives that have replaced old belief systems with new, often elusive, definitions of truth, meaning and reality itself. We will tackle the concepts of Marshall McLuhan, who saw the power of media as extending our senses and thereby altering our experience of the world. We will analyze the thought structures of a consumer society through Jean Baudrillard’s system of objects, and better understand how we see the world through John Berger’s ideas on images and perception, as well as Susan Sontag’s analysis of the unique function of photographs in defining real things and events, among others. How all these concepts coalesce and accelerate in the digital world and its fast-evolving social media will frame an analysis of how opinions can be swayed at breakneck speed and blur the edges between fact and fiction in a post-modern environment.

We will ground these theories in case studies of major brands, non-profits, and issues, including Apple, Inc., Coca-Cola, Budweiser, Subaru, World Wildlife Fund, the American presidency, immigration and others. In this way, we will see how these theories are reflected in current use and if understanding them can create more effective modes of persuasion.

This course is a deep dive into the environment that produced the concepts and tactics introduced in the Fall semester course FMS 0043, Public Relations and Marketing: A History of Theory and Practice. 

Pre-requisites: FMS 0032 (PR & Marketing, formerly FMS 0043) OR FMS 0033 (Social Marketing, formerly FMS 0044); or instructor permission. This course counts toward the Social Science distribution requirement.

FMS 0187 SoundTracks: Studies in Audio-Vision. (Cross-listed as MUS 0193) The soundtrack as a variable aural complex (of music, sound, and voice) crucial to the audio-visual experience. The study of audio-visual artifacts -- from silent to digital film, from melodrama to animation and music video, from blockbusters to installations -- and of current critical literature in musicology, film studies, and media studies.  Sustained inquiry into historical and ideological modes of image-sound synchronization. Entanglements of the visual and the aural, as well as their aesthetic aspiration to constitute an immersive sensorium. Prerequisites:  Junior or Senior standing or graduate standing or permission of instructor.

Pre-requisites: Junior or Senior standing; or instructor permission. This course counts toward the Arts distribution requirement.

FMS 0194 Audio Storytelling: From Old Time Radio to Podcasting. (Special Topics) In 1981, MTV kicked off its music video programming with The Buggles "Video Killed the Radio Star," a music video celebrating and/or critiquing the power of images over pure sound. Almost 40 years later, however, radio is still going strong. Moreover, audio storytelling has experienced a rebirth in the form of podcasting. This course explores the history and theory behind audio storytelling. From pre-television narrative radio, to ethnic and/or niche programming, from BBC dramas, to modern podcasts, we will explore how different groups have spoken to each other and outsiders through audio forms. We will also explore the process of producing audio narratives, culminating in a podcast. Upper level.

FMS 0194 The Audio-Visual Imagination. (Special Topics, Upper Level, Cross-listed as MUS 197) This course delves into histories, theories, and practices that engage with listening and viewing to create imaginal territories connecting the environment, embodied perception, language and social construction. Co-taught by SMFA and Tufts Music Department, it consists of both a Studio and a Seminar component. Students from both schools are offered a new opportunity to combine research and artistic practice, and may choose to take both or either components. The seminar will study a range of audiovisual artifacts and media practices (cinema, experimental video, sound installations, performance art, and more) and the theoretical and critical debates they have generated. The Studio component will foster the production of critical and topical interventions within the texture of current audio-visual media. No pre-requisites. One credit.

FMS 0194 Film and Multimedia Music Analysis. (Upper Level, Cross-listed as MUS 165) How does film music structure our experience of a movie? What makes a score for a video game music successful? In this class, we will explore a variety of analytical methods for understanding screen music, both on its own terms and as a component within a multimedia text. Emphasis on recent film and television scoring (Williams, Zimmer, Newman), music video, and video games. Throughout, students will explore analytical approaches that stem from traditional music but also will develop their own methodologies to grapple with the unique qualities and demands of screen music. Special importance placed on developing musical transcription skills. Specific repertoire ranges extensively, and will be partially determined by student interest. Intended for advanced undergraduates and graduates. Recommendations: Music 112, graduate standing, or permission of instructor.

 Non-U.S. Film or Media Courses

FMS 0050 Disney Studios Meets Studio Ghibli. (Cross-listed with JPN 0083 & ILVS 0078) In this course we will be exploring both the fascinating differences and the surprising similarities that these two vastly influential animation studios share. Disney is known for almost a century as exporting a certain kind of American popular culture—optimistic, family-oriented and with easily understandable values of good versus evil. Its overall “message” is supported by the studio’s trademark brightly colored visuals and catchy song and dance numbers. In contrast, Ghibli Studios, along with other Japanese animation, started to catch fire internationally in the late twentieth century and was seen as offering an alternative to Disney’s (and Hollywood’s) “happily ever after” vision. While Ghibli, like Disney, creates immersive fantasy worlds that employ beautiful visuals and emotionally affecting musical scores, the studio’s overall vision is more complex and includes a willingness to tolerate ambiguity and an insistence on going beyond simplistic formulations of good versus evil. At the same time, both studios have important similarities in their brilliant use of animation techniques, their family orientation, broadly moral values system, choice of story and consistent use of the genres of fantasy and science fiction.

FMS majors and minors looking to enroll in this course for Fall 2022 must initially enroll in JPN-0083. After enrollment, students wishing to be enrolled in the FMS course for degree requirements will be switched to FMS section.

This course counts toward the Humanities distribution requirement.

FMS 0061 French Cinema. (Cross-listed) France is home to one of the richest, most influential national cinemas in film history. This lecture course will examine how French filmmakers helped pioneer the major genres of early cinema in the 1890s; contributed to the development of narrative film in the 1900s and 1910s; and then created alternatives to mainstream cinema in the 1920s such as Impressionism. We will see how they dealt with the coming of sound in the late 1920s, cultivated new "realist" styles such as Poetic Realism in the 1930s, and responded to the rise of the Popular Front and the German occupation. We will consider the so-called Tradition of Quality that emerged during and after the occupation; French film noir of the 1950s; the New Wave and the "Left Bank" group of the 1960s; political modernism and feminist film of the 1970s; and the "cinema du look" and the "new realism" of the 1980s and 1990s. Finally, we will examine trends in contemporary French filmmaking, such as the extreme violence that has characterized some French films since the 1990s (the so-called New French Extremity), the cinema de banlieue with its focus on multi-racial working class and marginalized communities on the peripheries of cities, the "beur" films of filmmakers of Arab heritage, and LGBTQ+ filmmaking. At all times we will pay careful attention to the historical conditions that gave rise to these trends, as well as the most important debates in French film theory and criticism. There will be two, separate, mandatory screenings per week. In English. No prior study of film nor knowledge of French is required.

FMS 0068 From Beijing to Bollywood: Cinema of India and China. (Cross-listed as CHNS 0083, ENG 0091, & ILVS 0091) Comparative perspective on China and India via their cinematic traditions, related historical contexts, modern cultural production, and social transformations using selected films and critical essays. Nationalism, revolution, globalization as film expression.

This course counts toward the Humanities distribution requirement.

FMS 0069 and 0169: Latin American Cinema. (Cross-listed with FAH 0084 and 0184) The development of cinema in district Latin American contexts with emphasis on Mexico, Brazil, Cuba, and Latinos in the U.S.. Emphasis on how film from aids articulations of cultural and political identity. Course consists of weekly film screening outside of class and in-class discussion and film screening. Students taking the course at the 100-level are required to write an additional research paper incorporating both contextual and comparative analysis of two films selected in consultation with the instructor.

This course counts toward the Arts distribution requirement.

FMS 0075 World of Japanese Animation: Culture, Cult, and Commerce. (Cross-listed as JPN 0081) The themes, directors, and imagery of Japanese animation (anime). Analysis of animation as a medium. Study of major themes--elegiac, carnival-esque, and apocalyptic. From prewar military propaganda to the contemporary work of Satoshi Kon, Hayao Miyazaki, Mamoru Oshii and Katsuhiro Otomo. The anime industry and the spread of anime worldwide. A consideration of otaku culture. Taught in English.

This course counts toward the Arts distribution requirement.

FMS 0076 Arab and Middle Eastern Cinemas. (Cross-listed as ILVS 0087 and ARB 0057) An overview of the social role of cinema in the Arab world and the broader Middle East focusing on a historical perspective on the development and expansion of cinema in these parts of the world, as well as several thematic windows through which the relationship of cinema to these societies is examined. In English.

This course counts toward the Humanities distribution requirement.

FMS 0077 Italian Film. (Cross-listed as ITAL 0075) Watch and discuss Italian films from directors like De Sica, Rossellini, Fellini, and Sorrentino. Emphasis on the social, cultural and political history of Italy, 1945 to today. Films shown with English subtitles. Informed, engaged class participation a must. 

This course counts toward the Arts distribution requirement.

FMS 0078 Japanese Film. (Cross-listed as JPN 80) Survey of important Japanese films, including internationally renowned works by the "masters," Mizoguchi, Ozu, and Kurosawa; the '60s avant-garde cinema of Oshima and Shinoda; and some innovative works by contemporary filmmakers such as Itami and Morita. Understanding Japanese cinema in relation to Western cultural hegemony. Taught in English. This course satisfies an IR requirement. Please see the Japanese website for more details.

This course counts toward the Arts distribution requirement.

FMS 0079 German Film. (Cross-listed as GER 0085) A survey of German cinema, from its striking and influential achievements in the Weimar Republic, through its role under Hitler and its decline in the postwar period, to the remarkable phenomenon of New German Cinema in the sixties and seventies and the developments of the contemporary period.

This course counts toward the Arts distribution requirement.

FMS 0080 Russian Film: Art, Politics and Society. (Cross-listed as RUS 0080) Survey of film classics by Eisenstein, Pudovkin, Vertov, Tarkovsky, and others, tracing the parallels between the history of film and the history of the new Soviet state and society. Lenin and film as propaganda; the experimental twenties; cinema verité (kinopravda); Socialist Realism; the Great Patriotic War; the "thaw" 1960s to present: conservatives vs. liberals; unbanned films, and the new cinema of glasnost and perestroika. Films with English subtitles. No prerequisites.

This course counts toward the Arts distribution requirement.

FMS 0083 Latinx Theatre and Film. (Cross-listed as TPS 0016) An introduction to Latinx theatre, film, and performance as a potent creative and political force in the United States. Representative works by Latino playwrights, performance artists, and filmmakers will be discussed in light of issues such as labor and immigration, gender and sexuality, generation gaps in Latino culture, hybridized identities, interculturalism, and the United States' relationship with Latin American nations.

This course counts toward the Arts distribution requirement.

FMS 0084 Jewish Experience On Film. (Cross-listed as JS 0142, REL 0142, WL 1042 and ILVS 0142) Selected classic and contemporary films dealing with aspects of Jewish experience in America, Europe, and Israel, combined with reading on the cultural, historical, and philosophical problems illuminated by each film. One weekly session will be devoted to screenings, the other to discussion of the films and readings. In English.

This course counts toward the Arts and Humanities distribution requirement.

FMS 0085 Film & Nation: Russia & Central Asia. (Cross-listed as RUS 0085 and with CIV 0085 and ILVS 0086) After the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russia and some former Central Asian republics, now the independent countries of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan embarked on a nation-building project through cinema. We will explore national identity, national space, new heroes and new national myths in films ranging from the Russian mega-hits Brother and Company 9 to the international art-cinema favorites, The Adopted Son (Kyrgyzstan) and The Hunter (Kazakhstan); we will also study recent multi-national productions such as the historical actions films Nomad and Mongol. No prerequisites. All films with English subtitles.

This course counts toward the Arts distribution requirement.

FMS 0086 Classics of World Cinema. (Cross-listed as ILVS 0100 and WL 0101) Worldwide survey of major films from the silent era to present. Trends in filmmaking styles and genres; the impact of modern history on cinematic art; cultural, theoretical, and philosophical issues related to the study of film. Filmmakers covered may include Eisenstein, Chaplin, Renoir, Welles, DeSica, Ray, Ozu, Bergman, Fassbinder, Sembene, and Zhang Yimou.

This course counts toward the Arts and Humanities distribution requirement.

FMS 0088 Introduction to Chinese Cinema. (Cross-listed as CHNS 0080) Evolution of Chinese film from its inception to the present and how cinematic changes reflect social, cultural, and political changes. Major film directors and cinematic styles and techniques they employed and different subject matters that have preoccupied them. Relationships between Chinese film and politics, social-cultural changes, Hollywood, and the unresolved issues of modernity. No prerequisites.

This course counts toward the Arts and Humanities distribution requirement.

FMS 0090 Major Japanese Film Directors: The World of Studio Ghibli. (Cross-listed as JPN 0112) Beginning in the mid 1980's the Japanese animation studio, Studio Ghibli, began to produce original animated films of such high quality that they eventually reached a global audience. This course explores the work of the Studio's two major directors, Isao Takahata and Hayao Miyazaki, and also introduces works by other directors such as Kondo Yoshifumi and Goro Miyazaki. The course will look at not only the aesthetics of each film considered but also will explore the cultural and commercial impact of the studio overall.

This course counts toward the Arts distribution requirement.

FMS 0091 New Chinese Cinemas: Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Mainland China. (Cross-listed as CHNS 0081 and ILVS 0081) A comparative exploration of films made in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the PRC in recent decades. Examination of how political, economic, and ideological contexts affect filmmaking in these different "Chinese" regions; how these differences help demonstrate diversities, specificities, contradictions, as well as interactions within and between these Chinese communities.

This course counts toward the Arts distribution requirement.

FMS World War II on Film (Special Topics, cross-listed as ILVS-0092) For each of the major combatants—Britain, Germany, Japan, Russia, the United States—the Second World War was the single most important event in their modern histories. Whether in victory or defeat, it has anchored their respective national myths as each has sought to define itself against and within it, even more so with the end of the Cold War. Film about the war therefore constitutes an optimum vehicle for studying the manifestation and propagation of these myths. Its dramatic reach and appeal make it accessible to a broad audience and its overlapping conventions and codes make it ideal for cross-cultural study and comparison among these nations. This course will examine in depth two to three (mostly) post-1985 movies for each country, generally of a blockbuster nature since they are the ones that most readily attempt to position themselves as myth-making productions, so to speak. In so doing, we will not only learn how nation-defining movies “work” but, equally important, what they try to assert about national identity on a global stage in the post-cold war world. Given that most people “get” their history from popular culture and that this is the very same venue through which images of nation and self are projected, this topic is of no small consequence—especially today. Because the war, in many significant ways, is still being fought. No prerequisites. In English.

FMS 0094 Screening Palestine (Special Topics, cross-listed as ARB-0091) What if we were to think of the Middle East in sonic rather than visual terms? The visual has been a dominant frame for the study of the Middle East often at the neglect of sound. In this course, we will draw on methods from Media Studies, Sound Studies, and Middle Eastern Studies to explore sound in the Middle East. We will think of sound and the Middle East in three areas, although there will certainly be overlap between them: soundscapes, technologies, and voices. Listening to phonograph records, Arabic pop music videos, the call to prayer, protest chants, traffic sounds, and other sonic texts, we will consider the following questions: What can a soundscape tell us about history, culture, and politics in the Middle East that other topics cannot? How have experiences of sound changed with the introduction of new sound technologies? What are the relationships between sound and power?  How have political, cultural, and commercial forces shaped what is audible in certain places in the Middle East, and what is not? How does sound exclude and/or create community? How does sound help to create, reinforce, and/or complicate notions of gender, race, class, and other vectors of identity? In addition to learning about the Middle East, we will become more attuned to, and critical of, the sounds we encounter daily.

FMS 0094 Screening Palestine (Special Topics, cross-listed as ARB-0092) This course explores the idea of Palestine as expressed by visual artist and filmmakers, both Palestinian and non-Palestinian. The filmmaker Rashid Masharawi has suggested, “Palestine only exists in cinema” – so, a core question for the class is: How do artists and filmmakers create Palestine, and what does its conception signify to them? Is it a struggle, a polity, a history, a people? An imminent future, a lost past? In seeking to address these questions, we will explore how visual culture, and in particular cinema, plays an important role in imagining Palestine for different audiences in diverse settings. Through engaging the work of a wide range of artists and filmmakers, we will explore how the idea of Palestine has evolved, in particular over the past seventy years, and why it has remained steadfastly as a kind of promise or dream.

FMS 0094 Russian & Eastern European Cinema (Special Topics, Cross-listed as ILVS 0091) From its inception to current production, the cinema of “the other Europe” has played a central role both in terms of its artistic achievements and as social commentary. Owing to the censorship imposed by the socialist governments, East European directors often had to seek alternative means of expression to depict society in its true shades. These explorations opened up a provocative dialogue which criticized the official regimes and established new narrative and cinematic models. In the more recent period, film has often served as a corrective tool in the fragile new democracies and a voice of protest fighting for civil rights. In this course we will examine a series of East European masterpieces, many of them Oscar nominees or winners at festivals in Cannes, Venice, Berlin and Moscow. We will analyze both the innovations they introduce to film as an artistic medium as well as their subversive elements opposing various types of oppression. Themes include intimate personal stories in the face of social catastrophe, ethical dilemmas of individual vs. public interest, narratives of youth and emancipation, rebelling against patriarchal culture, and others. All films have English subtitles.

This course counts toward the Arts distribution requirement.

FMS-0094 WWII on Film (Special Topics, Cross-listed as ILVS 92) For each of the major combatants—Britain, Germany, Japan, Russia, the United States—the Second World War was the single most important event in their modern histories. Whether in victory or defeat, it has anchored their respective national myths as each has sought to define itself against and within it, even more so with the end of the Cold War. Film about the war therefore constitutes an optimum vehicle for studying the manifestation and propagation of these myths. Its dramatic reach and appeal make it accessible to a broad audience and its overlapping conventions and codes make it ideal for cross-cultural study and comparison among these nations. This course will examine in depth two to three (mostly) post-1985 movies for each country, generally of a blockbuster nature since they are the ones that most readily attempt to position themselves as myth-making productions, so to speak. In so doing, we will not only learn how nation-defining movies “work” but, equally important, what they try to assert about national identity on a global stage in the post-cold war world. Given that most people “get” their history from popular culture and that this is the very same venue through which images of nation and self are projected, this topic is of no small consequence—especially today. Because the war, in many significant ways, is still being fought. No prerequisites. In English.

FMS-0094 Politics of Middle East Film (Special Topics, Cross-listed as ARB 92-01) A study of film from around the Middle East region through the lenses of politics, history, art, and expression. Films in a variety of languages with English subtitles will be viewed, their contexts examined, and impacts gauged for how they advanced discussions of social, economic, aesthetic, and political topics, and challenged preconceived ideas.

FMS 0094 Women's Visions in Global Film (Special Topics, Cross-listed as ILVS 0091) How do we define women’s film? Given its formal and cultural diversity, is this a productive or reductive categorization? What are the principal preoccupations of female directors and how do they negotiate scopophilia of the established filmmaking tradition? How do they depict female subjectivity with regard to race, class, and sexuality and what type of discourse do they generate within their cultural environments? How do they navigate the body politics in various global contexts? What are the challenges securing funding and visibility on the (inter) national production and distribution circuits? These are some of the questions to be addressed in this course. Relying on cine-feminist and postcolonial theory and critical scholarship, we will watch a vast array of 21st century films by female filmmakers from all continents and examine their aesthetic, cultural, and political aspects. We will look into the mechanisms of highlighting women’s issues and analyze the impact these auteurs had on established socio-cultural and artistic practices. Some of the directors include Leila Djansi, Agnès Varda, Susanne Bier, Mira Nair, Lulu Wang, Jasmila Žbanić, Naomi Kawase, and others.

FMS 0094 Third Cinema and It's Geographies (Special Topics, Cross-listed as ILVS 0091) Amidst socialist revolutions and subsequent authoritarian military regimes in Central and South America in the 1960s-70s, several filmmakers wrote manifestos calling for a new type of revolutionary cinema. Third Cinema, as the genre would ultimately be called, presented an alternative to Hollywood and its commercial mode of production, as well as to European art cinema and its focus on individual expressions of auteur directors. A disavowal of Eurocentrism, Third Cinema engaged with themes of liberation, anticolonialism, self-determination, and revolution through distinct aesthetic choices, modes of production, and methods of distribution and exhibition. Third Cinema, it was hoped, would inspire revolutionary activism, and create a space for the expression of a new culture. In this course, we will chart the history and trajectory of this influential genre and movement as it manifested in nations of the Global South (Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia) and their specific socio-historical contexts. We will interrogate the utility of Third Cinema as a frame of comparative analysis across contexts of the Global South, trace the movements that the genre inspired, and consider its legacies and contemporary manifestations. In addition to engaging with films and film analysis, we will read work by Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césare, and Paulo Freire and other theorists to deepen our analysis and understanding of the contexts out of which Third Cinema films were produced.

FMS 0094 The Sonic Middle East (Special Topics, Cross-listed as ARB 0094) What if we were to think of the Middle East in sonic rather than visual terms? The visual has been a dominant frame for the study of the Middle East often at the neglect of sound. In this course, we will draw on methods from Media Studies, Sound Studies, and Middle Eastern Studies to explore sound in the Middle East. We will think of sound and the Middle East in three areas, although there will certainly be overlap between them: soundscapes, technologies, and voices. Listening to phonograph records, Arabic pop music videos, the call to prayer, protest chants, traffic sounds, and other sonic texts, we will consider the following questions: What can a soundscape tell us about history, culture, and politics in the Middle East that other topics cannot? How have experiences of sound changed with the introduction of new sound technologies? What are the relationships between sound and power?  How have political, cultural, and commercial forces shaped what is audible in certain places in the Middle East, and what is not? How does sound exclude and/or create community? How does sound help to create, reinforce, and/or complicate notions of gender, race, class, and other vectors of identity? In addition to learning about the Middle East, we will become more attuned to, and critical of, the sounds we encounter daily.

FMS 0094 Arab-Jewish Literature and Film. (Special Topics, Cross-listed as ILVS 0092 and ARB 0092) This course explores cinematic and literary representations and creative outputs of Jews originating from Arab or Muslim lands. In addition, it traces the figure of the Jew in contemporary Arabic literature and cinema. During the past decade, the figure of the Arab Jew has appeared with increasing frequency on Arabic screens and in novels. Simultaneously, in Israel, Mizrahi and Arab-Jewish artistic expression has witnessed a revolutionary moment. What drives this communal engagement with Arab-Jewish culture, history, and memory? Could such texts and films be read as a moment of connection within a sea of separation? Conversely, do they highlight the impossibility of forging connections and retracing bonds? Readings and films focus on the themes of exile, trauma, memory, haunting, estrangement, return, and hope.                      
FMS 0094 Contemporary Russian Media. (Special Topics, Cross-listed as RUS 0072) An exploration of Russian culture through literature, film, the media, and the arts from the era of "stagnation" to glasnost, perestroika, and the post-Soviet period. The destruction and reconstruction of cultural and political canons and myths: the Stalinist legacy and reevaluation of Soviet history; the revival of religion and nationalism; social dislocation: the problems of youth, the generation gap, and women's issues; the breaking of taboos and the dark side of freedom—violence, crime, pornography, and neofascism; the liberalization and commercialization of art. All readings and films are in English. No prerequisites.

FMS 0094 Eastern European Cinema. (Special Topics, Cross-listed with RUS 0092 & ILVS 0092) From its inception to current production, the cinema of “the other Europe” has played a central role both in terms of its artistic achievements and as social commentary. Owing to the censorship imposed by the socialist governments, East European directors often had to seek alternative means of expression to depict society in its true shades. These explorations opened up a provocative dialogue which criticized the official regimes and established new narrative and cinematic models. In the more recent period, film has often served as a corrective tool in the fragile new democracies and a voice of protest fighting for civil rights. In this course we will examine a series of East European masterpieces, many of them Oscar nominees or winners at festivals in Cannes, Venice, Berlin and Moscow. We will analyze both the innovations they introduce to film as an artistic medium as well as their subversive elements opposing various types of oppression. Themes include intimate personal stories in the face of social catastrophe, ethical dilemmas of individual vs. public interest, narratives of youth and emancipation, rebelling against patriarchal culture, and others. All films have English subtitles and will be screened in class. 

FMS 0094 Kafka and Film. (Special Topics, Cross-listed as GER 0092 and ILVS 0092) An avid moviegoer in cinema's early days, modernist writer Franz Kafka expressed a profound ambivalence towards film throughout his life. Nonetheless, many aspects of cinema—its mechanical reality, the distortions of space and time that film allows, and the distracted, fast-moving gaze that it engenders—share deep affinities with Kafka's own writing. Because Kafka's texts often turn to the question of what writing means and the difficulties inherent in artistic and writerly media, they are ideal for a comparison to film. In this course, we will read some of Kafka's most famous works alongside viewings of filmic adaptations Spring 2017 and other films that implicitly or explicitly evoke the Kafkaesque. Through this comparison, we will explore the imagistic and cinematic qualities of Kafka's literary texts as well as other key aspects that distinguish Kafka's work. In English. May be taken at the 100-level with additional assignments in German. Cross-listed as FMS 94-01 and ILVS 92-02. This course satisfies an IR requirement, please see the IR website for more details.

FMS 0094 Love and War in French Films. (Special Topics, Cross-listed as ILVS 0092 and FR 0092) An investigation of the art of French cinema, this course focuses on the themes of love, war, and love and war in a dozen French films from the 1930's to the present. How do we think about film? How do we talk about film? We will study film theory and basic cinematic techniques, as well as the historical, social, and cultural contexts of films of the poetic realism, nouvelle vague, and more contemporary movements.

FMS 0094 Iranian Cinema and Theatre. (Special Topics, Cross-listed with TPS 0094) Since 1997 when the Iranian film Taste of Cherry (directed by Abbas Kiarostami) received the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, Iranian cinema has enjoyed international attention and, at times, acclaim. Later generations of Iranian filmmakers have built upon Kiarostami’s fame and followed in his footsteps (or departed from his aesthetics) with varying degrees of success. Iranian cinema today provides an eclectic body of cultural products, going back far before Kiarostami’s time and continuing to present time, that is a lens through which Iranian culture at large can be scrutinized. Similarly, Iranian modern theatre, with a history expanding from the eighteenth century to present, reflects the nation’s ways of life, apprehensions, hopes, and political and aesthetic paradigms. In the capital Tehran alone more than one hundred live theatrical events are staged every night. From sacred, religious Shi’a performances and centuries-old comic traditions, to contemporary plays by Iranian playwrights, these performances have a unique place in the Iranian cultural consciousness. By introducing students to this vibrant body of work, this course seeks to contextualize these cultural artifacts and understand them within their socio/political contexts. No prior study of cinema and theatre, nor language skills, are required.

FMS 0094 Visual and Literary Cultures after the "Arab Spring". (Special Topics, Cross-listed as ARB 0091) This course examines the ways that the new media publics that proliferated during the "Arab Spring" (such as twitter, YouTube, the public space of the city) contributed to the growth of new artistic means of expressing social realities. Students will be exposed to a vast selection of artistic and cultural productions, such as the mini-documentary, the horror film, the graphic novel, graffiti, animation, the protest song, and zombie narratives. Prior knowledge of Arabic literature/culture not expected. Additional film screening to be arranged. 

FMS 0175 Visualizing Colonialism. (Cross-listed as ARB 0155 and ILVS 0155) An overview of the intersection between visual culture and the conditions of colonialism and postcoloniality. Readings and viewings on representations of the non-Western world in colonial-era painting and photography, leading to an examination of the history of colonial cinema, and to later postcolonial visualizations of the colonial period. The development of cinemas of anti-colonial resistance, and persisting effects of colonialism and empire in contemporary global visual cultures, including contemporary arts and new media. Materials drawn from a variety of regional contexts, with special emphasis on the Arab world. Secondary readings drawn from anti-colonial theorists and postcolonial studies. This course satisfies requirements for IR and is one of the "Introductory survey" courses for the Colonialism Studies minor. Please see their websites for more details. In English.

FMS 0178 War and Cultural Memory in Literature and Cinema of the Middle East. (Cross-listed as ARB 0157 and ILVS 0157) Formation of cultural memory and/or memorialization of socially traumatic experiences such as war, viewed through literature and cinema. May include focus on: the Algerian war of independence, the Lebanese civil war, the Iran-Iraq war, the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, among others. Primary texts from these conflicts along with secondary texts on theories of social trauma and cultural memory. In English.

This course counts toward the Humanities distribution requirement.

FMS 0181 New Latin American Film. (Cross-listed as SPN 0151; taught in Spanish) This course analyzes some representative films of past and current Latin American schools of cinema: the Brazilian Cinema Novo, Argentine "Tercer Cinema", the Cuban "Cinema de la Revolución", Mexican post-evolutionary film, Andean "indigenista" film, and contemporary production. The purpose is not only to familiarize the students with canonical directors such as Glauber Rocha, Fernando Birri, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, Jorge Sanjinés, Carlos Diegues, Walter Salles, and Armando Robles Godoy, but also with new directors and with the social, political and cultural contexts of their work. Conducted in Spanish. 

Recommendations: Two 30-level Spanish courses or consent of the instructor. This course counts toward the Humanities distribution requirement.

FMS 0183 Mexican Cinema and Identity. (Cross-listed as SPN 0814) This course will focus on on the great films of 20th Century Mexico ain order to study the pivotal moments in the creation of Mexican identity. We will go from Santa, the first sound film of Mexican cinema, by Antonio Moreno to the acclaimed Amores Perros, the film of Alejandro González Iñarritu among many others. While we study the films and their audiences, we will discuss the symbolic invention of the modern Mexican State from the post-revolution to modern days, with a spacial emphasis on the "Mexican Miracle" films and its posterior critique in directors as Luis Estrada. In Spanish.

Recommendations: Two 30-level Spanish courses or consent of the instructor. This course counts toward the Arts distribution requirement.

FMS 0184 Film and Modernism. (Upper Level, Cross-listed as ENG, ILVS, FAH-0150)Central to modernism--that vast, diverse movement that transformed the arts in the late 19th and 20th centuries--was the desire to modernize art, to break with tradition and cultivate new artistic forms and styles more suited to the modern world. But how did modernism impact the cinema, given that, as a new medium, it initially lacked traditions to break with? In this upper-level seminar, we will consider what modernism was in general, and how it initially took root in film. Beginning with German Expressionism of the 1920s, arguably the first modernist movement in cinema, we will examine how filmmakers in Europe and beyond sought to create equivalents of modernism in the fine arts, theater, and literature while simultaneously attempting to purify film of these arts. We will see how modernist filmmakers negotiated the transition to sound in the late 1920s as well as the re-emergence of varieties of realism in the politically charged 1930s and war-torn 1940s. After considering whether Italian Neo-Realism is a form of modernism, we will turn out attention to European filmmakers who cultivated innovative forms and styles in the post-war period often in dialogue with Hollywood genre filmmaking. We will also look at the extent to which modernism influenced filmmakers working in the studio system in the United States and beyond, such as in Japan. Finally, we will return to Europe to witness the politicization of modernism in the late 1960s and will ask whether modernist cinema, as many have argued, came to an end in the 1970s and has been replaced by postmodernism. We will study at least some of the following filmmakers: Akerman, Antonioni, Bergman, Bresson, Clair, Dulac, Eisenstein, Epstein, Fellini, Godard, Hitchcock, Jansco, Kawalerowicz, Kinugasa, Kubrick, Kurosawa, Lang, Makavejev, Oshima, Pabst, Resnais, Rossellini, and Varda. This is a 4 SHU, upper-level course with one mandatory screening per week. As this is an upper-level seminar, students are required to research and write a research paper of at least 4,000 words.

Prerequisite: FMS-0001 OR FMS-0002 or FMS-0087 OR ENG-0081; or instructor permission

FMS 0194 Film Representation in Latin America. (Special Topics, Cross-listed as SPN 0191) How do films tell stories? What do they chose to represent and how do they represent those stories? This course explores different ways recent Latin American films have dealt with the issue of representation. Focusing on a number of topics such as political unrest, sexuality, and immigration among others, we analyze the effect camera techniques, editing and acting have in the stories conveyed, both in documentaries as well as in fiction films. Films from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Peru, and Uruguay.

Prerequisite: Two 30 level courses or consent.

FMS 0194 Literature and Film of Post-Civil War Spain. (Special Topics, Cross-listed as SPN 0192) This class will focus on the literature and film produced in Spain between 1939 and 1975, the era following the end of the Spanish Civil War. Known as the posguerra, these were the years of the dictatorship of Francisco Franco. Within this political system, how did writers and film makers react to the limitations imposed on them by the establishment of an official censorship? What type of images of Spain emerged in narrative, theater and film and which stylistic techniques were used in their representation? How do these visions compare among themselves and to the one held by the Franco government of a "New Spain"? These are some of the issues to be discussed as we study a representative sampling of novels, plays and film, keeping in mind the historical context in which they were created. Class discussion, oral presentation, two papers and a final exam. In Spanish.

FMS 0194 Mexican Cinema and Identity. (Special Topics, Cross-listed as SPN 0192-C) This course will focus on on the great films of 20th Century Mexico ain order to study the pivotal moments in the creation of Mexican identity.We will go from Santa, the first sound film of Mexican cinema, by Antonio Moreno to the acclaimed Amores Perros, the film of Alejandro González Iñarritu among many others. While we study the films and their audiences, we will discuss the symbolic invention of the modern Mexican State from the post-revolution to modern days, with a special emphasis on the "Mexican Miracle" films and its posterior critique in directors as Luis Estrada. In Spanish.

FMS 0194 Seminar: Hayao Miyazaki. (Special Topics, Cross-listed as JPN 0191) This course explores in depth the works of Hayao Miyazaki, considered by many to be the greatest living animator in the world today. Starting with his first hit television series Future Boy Conan we will go chronologically through his major films ending with his most recent available work, The Wind Rises. Along the way we will examine such recurring themes and issues as the role of trauma, apocalypse and the child’s point of view, as well as his animation techniques, use of imagery and music. We will also look at several Western films (Wall-e, Where the Wild Things Are and Avatar) for comparative purposes.

 Upper-Level Courses

FMS 0134 Screenwriting III. (Upper Level, Cross-listed as TPS 0178) This advanced screenwriting course will focus on completing Acts II and III of a feature-length screenplay in a workshop setting. The following screenwriting steps will be examined and discussed: character development, story, plot, structure, dialogue, visuals, setups and payoffs, and genre. Films and published screenplays will also be analyzed. 

Pre-requisites: FMS 0021 (Screenwriting II, formerly FMS 0033) OR FMS 0022 (New Forms of Screen Narratives, formerly FMS 0035); or instructor permission. This course counts toward the Arts distribution requirement.

FMS 0136 Directing for Film. (Upper Level, Cross-listed as TPS 0150) Advanced exploration of the art of the film director from both a critical and artistic perspective. Through focused study of films and writings by diverse narrative film directors, students will develop deeper understanding of how directors use film techniques to shape a story. Through practice-based exercises and workshops with industry professionals, students will hone directing techniques, including how to work with actors and ways to use the camera, movement, design, lighting, editing, and other film elements for effective story telling. 

Pre-requisites: FMS 0010 (Film and Media Production I, formerly FMS 0030); or instructor permission. This course counts toward the Arts distribution requirement.

FMS 0137 Advanced Documentary Production. (Practice, Upper Level)) An intensive workshop environment where students produce in-depth documentary projects over the course of the semester. Advanced Documentary Production provides the resources to do long-form documentary research, fieldwork, and editing. This course encourages collaboration and creativity in student’s documentary approach via fieldwork assignments, class discussions, instructor feedback, and peer critique. Students will learn how to evaluate documentary storytelling through hands-on experience and develop their understanding of visual language by watching professional and student-produced work. By the end of the semester, all participants will have a documentary film or media project to screen or exhibit. 

Pre-requisites: FMS 0010 (Film and Media Production I, formerly FMS 0030) OR FMS 0013 (Documentary Film, formerly FMS 0037); or instructor permission. This course counts toward the Arts distribution requirement.

FMS 0138 Advanced Filmmaking. (Upper Level, Cross-listed as TPS 0194) By arrangement. Production of an original piece of work – including but not limited to a short narrative film, a short documentary, an experimental piece, or a screenplay. 

Instructor Consent. This course counts toward the Arts distribution requirement.

FMS 0139 Independent Filmmaking. (Practice, Upper Level)) Employs a real-world, production-unit model to shoot a festival-level short feature. Teams with discrete departments will work concurrently, enabling each student to be a department head: producer, director, cinematographer, gaffer, sound engineer, or art designer. Will use the FMS program’s professional-level equipment, highlighted by the industry-standard Arri Alexa digital cinema camera. Intended for advanced students. Counts toward the arts distribution. 

Pre-requisites: FMS 0001 (Art of the Moving Image, formerly FMS 0020); or instructor permission. This course counts toward the Arts distribution requirement.

FMS 0160 Branding Theory and Practice. (Upper level, formerly FMS 0194) An exploration of brands and media as transitional cultural objects that recreate our psychology, perceptions and mythologies just as we create them to further political and economic agendas. We will address the question of how our 21st century culture has changed under the influence of pervasive advertising, public relations, images and narratives that have replaced old belief systems with new, often elusive, definitions of truth, meaning and reality itself. We will tackle the concepts of Marshall McLuhan, who saw the power of media as extending our senses and thereby altering our experience of the world. We will analyze the thought structures of a consumer society through Jean Baudrillard’s system of objects, and better understand how we see the world through John Berger’s ideas on images and perception, as well as Susan Sontag’s analysis of the unique function of photographs in defining real things and events, among others. How all these concepts coalesce and accelerate in the digital world and its fast-evolving social media will frame an analysis of how opinions can be swayed at breakneck speed and blur the edges between fact and fiction in a post-modern environment.

We will ground these theories in case studies of major brands, non-profits, and issues, including Apple, Inc., Coca-Cola, Budweiser, Subaru, World Wildlife Fund, the American presidency, immigration and others. In this way, we will see how these theories are reflected in current use and if understanding them can create more effective modes of persuasion.

This course is a deep dive into the environment that produced the concepts and tactics introduced in the Fall semester course FMS 0043, Public Relations and Marketing: A History of Theory and Practice. 

Pre-requisites: FMS 0032 (PR & Marketing, formerly FMS 0043) OR FMS 0033 (Social Marketing, formerly  FMS 0044); or instructor permission. This course counts toward the Social Science distribution requirement.

FMS 0161 Seminar in Mass Media Studies: Digital Hate. (Upper level, Cross-listed as SOC 0185) We have developed powerful new internet and communications technologies that democratize the ability to participate in public discourse, and the development of new kinds of social relationships, but which also facilitate—and in many cases anonymize—venomous critics focused on personal attacks rather than productive engagement. What's more, technology has outpaced the legal infrastructures we have to cope with this phenomenon. This new seminar will explore trolling, digital harassment, and technology facilitated violence, with particular attention to the way digital life varies for people from different backgrounds. Attention will be paid to the complex balance between freedom of speech, civil rights, democratic vitality, and personal safety. It will be of particular interest for students interested in media, technology, social inequality, culture, and politics. 

Recommendations:  Junior standing, SOC 0040, and permission of instructor.

FMS 0162 Media, the State, and the Senses. (Upper level, Cross-listed as ANTH 0164) This upper level seminar examines the social practices of media production, circulation, and reception. Media are both the products of and means for social, cultural, and political transformation. In studying media, we will examine their relationship to transformations of space-time perceptions, the shaping of political identities, and the constitution of complex (social, political, economic, institutional, and/or creative) connections among people and groups. How are media mobilized by states to consolidate powers? How do people challenge these authorities' attempts? Media also work on the senses, even as individuals and institutions seek to shape how they do so. In this class, we will attend to the possibilities and limitations offered by different media, due to their material forms, institutional structures, and perceptual forms. Students will have the opportunity to conduct brief media ethnographies. 

This course counts toward the Social Sciences distribution requirement.

FMS 0163 New Media, New Politics. (Upper level, Cross-listed as PS 0104) Research seminar on three media sectors: cable television, talk radio, and social media. Analysis of the economic foundations of each sector, advertising, audience demographics, and strategy. Student teams conduct an original empirical study of the media.

This course counts toward the Social Sciences distribution requirement.

FMS 0164 Seminar in Children and the Mass Media. (Upper level, Cross-listed as CD 0267) Do media images really affect what children grow up thinking about race, gender and class? Is there actually a relationship between playing violent video games and school shootings? Why is it important to have images of disability in children’s media? Does advertising create unhealthy eating practices in children? Do unrealistic media images cultivate unrealistic body images in adolescents? Can media be used to promote positive social change and civic engagement in young people?

If you’ve ever wondered about these questions, the Seminar on Children and Media will help give the tools to answer them. This upper level course digs in deep, training you to critically evaluate studies you read, parse the summaries of sensationalized research about children and media that appears in the popular press, and introduces you to ways of investigating the images and effects of media on children. Several research-based practice and professionals who create media images and evaluate them come share their expertise with the class as resources.

This course counts for the 21st century literacies concentrations in Child Study and Human Development, as an elective in Civic Studies and as an upper level course for the FMS major. It’s open to juniors, seniors and graduate students.

FMS 0165 Television in the Age of Change. (Cross-listed as ILVS 0072 / TPS 0121) This course offers an introduction to television studies and media theory through an in-depth look at contemporary television and its radical transformations along recent technical, industrial, creative and cultural changes. Throughout the class, we will focus on recent television theory and how scholars have addressed major issues and debates in contemporary television. Among these will be narratives and genres, programming conventions, global trends, the creative industry, streaming content, webTV and audience and fan practices. As we read this work and analyze television texts, we will consider how these various changes imperil, enrich, and transform television as we know it. 

Pre-requisites: FMS 0001 (Art of the Moving Image, formerly FMS00 20) OR FMS major/minor; or instructor permission. This course counts toward the Arts distribution requirement.

FMS 0169 Latin American Cinema. (Cross-listed with FAH 0084 and 0184) The development of cinema in district Latin American contexts with emphasis on Mexico, Brazil, Cuba, and Latinos in the U.S.. Emphasis on how film from aids articulations of cultural and political identity. Course consists of weekly film screening outside of class and in-class discussion and film screening. Students taking the course at the 100-level are required to write an additional research paper incorporating both contextual and comparative analysis of two films selected in consultation with the instructor.

This course counts toward the Arts distribution requirement.

FMS 0175 Visualizing Colonialism. (Cross-listed as ARB 0155 and ILVS 0155) An overview of the intersection between visual culture and the conditions of colonialism and postcoloniality. Readings and viewings on representations of the non-Western world in colonial-era painting and photography, leading to an examination of the history of colonial cinema, and to later postcolonial visualizations of the colonial period. The development of cinemas of anti-colonial resistance, and persisting effects of colonialism and empire in contemporary global visual cultures, including contemporary arts and new media. Materials drawn from a variety of regional contexts, with special emphasis on the Arab world. Secondary readings drawn from anti-colonial theorists and postcolonial studies0This course satisfies requirements for IR and is one of the "Introductory survey" courses for the Colonialism Studies.

FMS 0176 The Horror Film. This course on the horror film is designed for FMS majors and others seeking an in-depth historical and theoretical understanding of the horror film. There is a mandatory screening each week in which we will watch two films, and students will be required to do significant reading and write a research paper on some aspect of the horror genre. We will study the history of the horror film from its beginning in the 1920s through to the present day, focusing on classic, influential films such as Frankenstein; Dracula; The Thing from Another World; Psycho; Night of the Living Dead; The Exorcist; The Texas Chainsaw Massacre; Halloween; and Alien. We will also watch more recent films including Videodrome; The Silence of the Lambs; Scream; and Get Out. While most of the films we examine will be from North America, we will occasionally make forays into other national and cultural traditions, especially Japanese horror, and we will pay equal attention to the creative innovations of individual filmmakers and the conventions of the genre within which they work. We will consider whether the genre reflects if not promotes the fears of American society as well as its representation of gender and race. We will also address some of the larger philosophical and theoretical questions it raises: what, precisely, is horror? Why do we enjoy watching films which make us feel ostensibly undesirable emotions such as fear and disgust, emotions which, in our ordinary lives, we tend to avoid? Finally, we will ask what serial television can do with the genre that film cannot using examples such as The Walking Dead. This course counts as a theory and an upper-level elective for the FMS major.

Pre-requisites: FMS 0001 (Art of the Moving Image, formerly FMS00 20) OR FMS major/minor; or instructor permission. This course counts toward the Arts distribution requirement.

FMS 0177 Religion and Film. (cross-listed as REL 0100) Scholars of religion and culture argue that films are worthy of study as contemporary religious texts and rituals, given how they function in social and personal life. Some point to patterns of film spectatorship and engagement that mirror traditional ritual behavior, both corporate and private. Some view films as modern "myths," stories that inspire and challenge, creating opportunities for ethical and philosophical conversation and action. Other scholars study films as carriers of "theologies," worldviews that convey ultimate or deep meaning, and thus reinforce, challenge or re-imagine traditional perspectives. Still others analyze the production and distribution of films to unveil the circulation of messages that reinforce prevailing norms, practices and institutions (whether religious or not), or pose challenges to them. In every case, these approaches are enriched by attention to film as an art form and aspects of film theory. This course invites students to explore the rich terrain of film through the variety of approaches employed by religious studies scholars. We will open up films to explore their messages about contemporary religions and religious issues, as well as to gain a broader and deeper understanding of "religion" itself. Genres will include drama, comedy, animation, horror and science fiction. 

This course counts toward the Humanities distribution requirement.

FMS 0178 War & Cultural Memory in Literature and Cinema of Middle East. (Cross-listed as ARB 0157, ILVS 0157) Formation of cultural memory and/or memorialization of socially traumatic experiences such as war, viewed through literature and cinema. May include focus on: the Algerian war of independence, the Lebanese civil war, the Iran-Iraq war, the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, among others. Primary texts from these conflicts along with secondary texts on theories of social trauma and cultural memory. In English.

This course counts toward the Humanities distribution requirement.

FMS 0179 Film and the Avant-Garde. This upper-level seminar, intended for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in film and media studies, art history, and at the SMFA, provides an in-depth survey of the history of avant-garde film in Europe and North America. We will begin in the late 1910s, when avant-gardists working primarily in other media (Fernand Leger, Marcel Duchamp), as well as filmmakers belonging to cross-media avant-garde movements like Dada and Surrealism, made some of the most enduring avant-garde films of all time. We will also consider how documentary filmmakers (Dziga Vertov) experimented with novel forms of documentary such as the city film, and animators (Mary Ellen Bute) pioneered new types of abstract animation. We will then turn our attention to avant-garde film in the United States following WWII, observing how filmmakers (Maya Deren, Stan Brakhage) updated pre-war avant-garde genres like the abstract film and the "psychodrama" associated with Surrealism, and how they pioneered new genres in the 1950s, principally the lyrical film. After examining the radical films of Andy Warhol, we will consider Structural Film of the late 1960s and its relation to artworld movements such as Minimalism and Conceptual Art, as well as the pluralism of avant-garde film since the 1970s. We will end by examining the impact of digital technologies on avant-garde film, and the proliferation of moving image installations in art galleries and museums. Throughout, attention will be given to the historical conditions that gave rise to these developments, the theories behind them, and the use of avant-garde film by feminists and others for socio-political critique.

FMS 0180 Psychoanalysis and Cinema. (Cross-listed as ENG 0180) Psychoanalysis, however we may view it as an institution or a therapeutic practice, has profoundly affected how most of us think about sexuality, subjectivity, and everyday practices. The world would look quite different without such concepts as the unconscious, fetishism, oedipal rivalry, identification, and the drives. And who could imagine cinema in the absence of those concepts? In the same way that psychoanalysis seems to presuppose the cinematic apparatus (as key terms like "projection," "the primal scene," or the "dream-screen" would suggest), so cinema and cinema theory can seem to presuppose psychoanalysis as well. This course will explore psychoanalysis and cinema together in three specific ways: by looking at how we can understand psychoanalysis through cinema; by looking at psychoanalysis as represented in cinema; and by looking at psychoanalytic logics as essential to the practice of cinema. Each week we will read texts of psychoanalytic theory (including psychoanalytic film theory) in relation to cinematic works that exemplify, respond to, or illuminate them. We will explore in particular how the theories of sexuality at the heart of psychoanalysis shape both the form and content of cinematic representation. Readings may include works by such authors as Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Slavoj Žižek, Jane Gallop, Christian Metz, Joan Copjec, Mary Anne Doane, Leo Bersani, Barbara Creed, Stephen Heath, Kaja Silverman, Laura Mulvey, and Raymond Bellour. Films to be studied may include Spellbound and Marnie (Hitchcock), Pulp Fiction (Tarantino), Apocalypse Now (Coppola), The Piano Teacher (Haneke), Moonlight (Jenkins), The Silence of the Lambs (Demme), Persona (Bergman), Pressure Point (Cornfield), Peeping Tom (Powell), Melancholia (Von Trier), There Will Be Blood (Anderson), and Eve’s Bayou (Lemmons). No more than 16 students will be admitted into the class and registration will be limited to those who are majoring in English or Film and Media Studies. Others who wish to enroll may request permission by emailing the instructor and explaining either how the class addresses their interests or their academic plans or by indicating that they plan to major in English or Film and Media Studies. This course fulfills the post-1860 requirement.

This course counts toward the Humanities distribution requirement.

FMS 0181 New Latin American Film. (Cross-listed as SPN 0151) This course analyzes some representative films of past and current Latin American schools of cinema: the Brazilian Cinema Novo, Argentine "Tercer Cinema", the Cuban "Cinema de la Revolución", Mexican post-evolutionary film, Andean "indigenista" film, and contemporary production. The purpose is not only to familiarize the students with canonical directors such as Glauber Rocha, Fernando Birri, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, Jorge Sanjinés, Carlos Diegues, Walter Salles, and Armando Robles Godoy, but also with new directors and with the social, political and cultural contexts of their work. Conducted in Spanish. 

Recommendations: Two 30-level Spanish courses or consent of the instructor. This course counts toward the Humanities distribution requirement.

FMS 0186 How Films Think. (cross-listed as ENG 0186) This upper-level seminar is intended for serious students of film interested in exploring how cinema creates a language through which to think. Although we’ll cover such specific aspects of the medium as montage, the long take, point of view, shot/reverse shot, framing, and other elements of cinematic rhetoric, we will focus more precisely on how specific directors deploy these devices to produce the effect of subjectivizing the camera as the locus of authorship and thought. We will study, that is, how visual style produces, complements, reframes, and undoes a movie's surface narrative by generating the need to read that narrative in relation to the function of the camera. What does the use of the camera and the frame, of color, sound, and size, do to the image? How does it underscore, ironize, or "think" about the "content" of the image itself? To answer these questions we will focus on works by five American directors acclaimed for their mastery of cinematic style: Orson Welles, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Stanley Kubrick, and David Lynch. Films to be examined will include Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, The Lady from Shanghai, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas, The Godfather (Parts I and II), 2001: A Space Odyssey, Blue Velvet, Lost Highway, and Mulholland Drive. As a seminar class, this course is intended for students willing to participate actively in conversation and intellectual exchange. Students will be responsible for group presentations on a regular basis throughout the semester.

This course counts toward the Humanities distribution requirement.

FMS 0187 SoundTracks: Studies in Audio-Vision. (Cross-listed as MUS 0193) The soundtrack as a variable aural complex (of music, sound, and voice) crucial to the audio-visual experience. The study of audio-visual artifacts -- from silent to digital film, from melodrama to animation and music video, from blockbusters to installations -- and of current critical literature in musicology, film studies, and media studies.  Sustained inquiry into historical and ideological modes of image-sound synchronization. Entanglements of the visual and the aural, as well as their aesthetic aspiration to constitute an immersive sensorium. Prerequisites:  Junior or Senior standing or graduate standing or permission of instructor.

Pre-requisites: Junior or Senior standing; or instructor permission. This course counts toward the Arts distribution requirement.

FMS 0194 Screening Paranoia (Special Topics) From worries about digital surveillance, to the widespread dissemination of misinformation, we seem to live in a paranoid age. But anxieties about technology and an atmosphere of mistrust are hardly new phenomena. We will see how emerging technologies have been met with fear throughout history—from beliefs that early electronic media such as radio could contact other worlds, to more contemporary anxieties about digital technologies tracking our every behavior. We will trace how popular media such as film have represented paranoia, from 1950s science fiction to 1970s thrillers, and conclude by examining how digital media have helped to make conspiracy theories a central part of mainstream political discourse.

Pre-requisites: FMS-0001 (Art of the Moving Image, formerly FMS-0020); or instructor permission

FMS 0194 Audio Storytelling: From Old Time Radio to Podcasting. (Special Topics, Upper level) In 1981, MTV kicked off its music video programming with The Buggles "Video Killed the Radio Star," a music video celebrating and/or critiquing the power of images over pure sound. Almost 40 years later, however, radio is still going strong. Moreover, audio storytelling has experienced a rebirth in the form of podcasting. This course explores the history and theory behind audio storytelling. From pre-television narrative radio, to ethnic and/or niche programming, from BBC dramas, to modern podcasts, we will explore how different groups have spoken to each other and outsiders through audio forms. We will also explore the process of producing audio narratives, culminating in a podcast.

Pre-requisites: FMS-0001 (Art of the Moving Image, formerly FMS 0020) OR FMS major or minor; or instructor permission. 

FMS 0194 The Audio-Visual Imagination. (Special Topics, Cross-listed as MUS 0197) This course delves into histories, theories, and practices that engage with listening and viewing to create imaginal territories connecting the environment, embodied perception, language and social construction. Co-taught by SMFA and Tufts Music Department, it consists of both a Studio and a Seminar component. Students from both schools are offered a new opportunity to combine research and artistic practice, and may choose to take both or either components. The seminar will study a range of audiovisual artifacts and media practices (cinema, experimental video, sound installations, performance art, and more) and the theoretical and critical debates they have generated. The Studio component will foster the production of critical and topical interventions within the texture of current audio-visual media. No pre-requisites. One credit.

FMS 0194 Dark Places: Sound and Music in SciFi and Noir. (Special Topics, Cross-listed as MUS 0197) Study and research in a seminar involving one or more of the following: music history, composition, ethnomusicology, music theory. Please see departmental website for specific details. Recommendations: Prerequisites depend upon topic and level of instruction.

FMS 0194 Film Representation in Latin America. (Special Topics, Cross-listed as SPN 0191; taught in Spanish) How do films tell stories? What do they chose to represent and how do they represent those stories? This course explores different ways recent Latin American films have dealt with the issue of representation. Focusing on a number of topics such as political unrest, sexuality, and immigration among others, we analyze the effect camera techniques, editing and acting have in the stories conveyed, both in documentaries as well as in fiction films. Films from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Peru, and Uruguay. Prerequisite: Two 30 level courses or consent.                      
FMS 0194 Literature and Film of Post-Civil War Spain. (Special Topics, Cross-listed as SPN 192.01) This class will focus on the literature and film produced in Spain between 1939 and 1975, the era following the end of the Spanish Civil War. Known as the posguerra, these were the years of the dictatorship of Francisco Franco. Within this political system, how did writers and film makers react to the limitations imposed on them by the establishment of an official censorship? What type of images of Spain emerged in narrative, theater and film and which stylistic techniques were used in their representation? How do these visions compare among themselves and to the one held by the Franco government of a "New Spain"? These are some of the issues to be discussed as we study a representative sampling of novels, plays and film, keeping in mind the historical context in which they were created. Class discussion, oral presentation, two papers and a final exam. In Spanish.

FMS 0194 Media and the Environment. (Special Topics) The early filmmaker D.W. Griffith praised film’s capacity to capture “the beauty of wind moving in the trees,” thus echoing an idea that was common to much of the early discourse on photography and cinema: that these media brought people into contact with real, physical nature. As conceptions of humanity’s place in the environment have evolved, so too have the ways that people use media to represent nonhuman nature. We will look closely at how movies and other popular media have depicted nature, and examine how audiovisual media have been used within the environmental movement, from the conservation efforts of the mid-20th century to the increasingly urgent efforts of activists in the era of climate change. We will read work by prominent scholars in ecocriticism, and view a wide range of media, looking at narrative, documentary, and experimental practices.  

Pre-requisites: FMS 0001 (Art of the Moving Image, formerly FMS 0020) OR FMS major/minor; or permission of instructor.

FMS 0194 Media Fallout: The Powers and Perils of Communication. (Special Topics, Cross-listed as ANTH 0149) A half-century ago, Marshall McLuhan wrote that, just like Cold War efforts to control nuclear fallout, "so we will one day try to control media fallout." McLuhan was right. This course in "mediarology" explores media (ritual, mass, digital, mobile, etc.) as endemic forces reshaping societies and psyches across the planet. Topical units this semester will examine mass media as modernity's defining element; religions and/as media; and changes in media, power, and public protest. We will also pose more speculative questions, including whether media are a type of drug (or the converse), and how technical media and spirit mediums overlap.

Recommendations: One course in anthropology or FMS.

FMS 0194 Mexican Cinema and Identity. (Special Topics, Cross-listed as SPN 0192) This course will focus on on the great films of 20th Century Mexico in order to study the pivotal moments in the creation of Mexican identity. We will go from Santa, the first sound film of Mexican cinema, by Antonio Moreno to the acclaimed Amores Perros, the film of Alejandro González Iñarritu among many others. While we study the films and their audiences, we will discuss the symbolic invention of the modern Mexican State from the post-revolution to modern days, with a special emphasis on the "Mexican Miracle" films and its posterior critique in directors as Luis Estrada. In Spanish.

FMS 0194 Seminar: Hayao Miyazaki. (Special Topics, Cross-listed as JPN 0191) This course explores in depth the works of Hayao Miyazaki, considered by many to be the greatest living animator in the world today. Starting with his first hit television series Future Boy Conan we will go chronologically through his major films ending with his most recent available work, The Wind Rises. Along the way we will examine such recurring themes and issues as the role of trauma, apocalypse and the child’s point of view, as well as his animation techniques, use of imagery and music. We will also look at several Western films (Wall-e, Where the Wild Things Are and Avatar) for comparative purposes.

FMS 0194 Video Game Music. (Special Topics, Cross-listed as MUS 0151) An introduction to the field of ludomusicology ("ludo" from ludus, for "game"), including both the study of music in games, and the study of game-like or playful elements in music. Through case studies of individual games and readings in musicology and media studies, surveys how the musical styles of video game soundtracks have evolved in response to changing technologies (from early analog synthesis, to FM and responsive MIDI, to modern orchestral soundtracks); how game music relates to other musical genres; how game designers have used interactive music and sound to create new kinds of play experiences (from Mario Paint to Guitar Hero and Just Dance); and how popular culture continues to process and repurpose video game aesthetics (via tribute bands and orchestral concerts, and on platforms like Twitch and YouTube). Designed to be interdisciplinary, mixing musical analysis, theory, social and cultural context, and science and technology studies. Students will have the choice between writing a final essay, or creating a game-related media piece, such as a video or audio project, a video game score, or even an actual game.

FMS 0194 Seminar in English: Political Cinema. (Special Topics, Cross-listed as ENG 0191) What makes a film “political”?   In this seminar, we will look at a series of films that do two things:  they represent politics in its familiar manifestations--campaigns, elections, revolutions, counter-revolutions, movements in favor of rights and liberations--but they also explore and exploit the politics of cinematic form.  Instead of simply asking how these films portray politics, in other words, we will be approaching them with a view toward understanding the interplay between politics and cinema.  We will focus on mainstream fictional cinema in the United States, but we will also consider documentaries, non-Hollywood U.S. films, and political cinema in other countries.  We will be juxtaposing more or less recent films with “classics” from the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.   Films likely to be chosen include:   Sorry to Bother You (Riley), City Hall (Wiseman), The Last Hurrah (Ford), Selma (DuVernay), The Manchurian Candidate (Frankenheimer), The Battle of Algiers (Pontecorvo), Malcolm X (Lee), One Night in Miami (King), Dr. Strangelove (Kubrick), Nashville (Altman), A Face in the Crowd (Kazan), Salt of the Earth (Biberman), Vice (McKay).  Readings in film theory, film criticism, and cultural criticism will be an essential part of the course.  Students will be required to write a few short (two-to-three-page) papers and one longer (ten-page) research paper.  

 Additional Electives

FMS 0062 Imagining the Holocaust on Stage and Screen. (Cross-listed with TPS 25) One of humankind’s darkest encounters with radical evil, the Holocaust has been called an unprecedented tragedy in human history. For decades playwrights and filmmakers have struggled to understand its complexities and illuminate its horrors. An introduction to plays, feature films and documentaries about the Holocaust from Nazi-era propaganda to contemporary reflections on genocide, this seminar will explore the ethics and challenges of Holocaust representation for artists and audiences alike. It will consider artistic expression as a form of cultural resistance, a way to cope with trauma and develop resilience. The rise of authoritarian regimes around the world, the surge in antisemitism locally, nationally and globally, the virulence of racism and other pathologies of hate, make studying the Holocaust relevant, timely and urgent.

This course counts toward the Arts distribution requirement.

FMS 0064 The Music of John Williams and Star Wars. (Cross-listed with MUS 55) A critical evaluation of the music of John Williams. Emphasis is placed Williams's eclectic style and the wider cultural and social currents in which his music participates. The composer's engagement with history and politics is given special attention, notably through collaborations with directors like Spielberg and Stone and connections to local musical institutions. Second half of course dedicated to the scores for the Star Wars franchise, focusing on topics of thematic construction, myth, and gender and racial representation. No prior background in music required; essential musicological concepts introduced through direct study of Williams's music.

This course counts toward the Arts distribution requirement.

FMS 0070 Histories of Film, Part One 1895-1955. (SMFA Fenway campus, Cross-listed as VISC 0010) The two Histories of Film courses are sequential, single semester courses that may be taken separately, but are created as a year-long foundational inquiry into the art of cinema, from its inception in the late nineteenth century through to the present.  By investigating the aesthetic, formal and stylistic devices of film as well as its narrative codes and structures we will consider the evolution of cinema's rich and complex language through broad historical, theoretical and critical frameworks. Our inquiry will lead us through the historic, interwar Avant-Garde, German Expressionism, Soviet filmmaking of the 1920s, the classical studio Hollywood film, Italian Neorealism, the North American postwar Avant-Garde, New Wave Cinemas of the 1960s, contemporary Global Cinema and more. The presentation of films will be paired with noteworthy essays that engage in a variety of methodologies and analyses while positioning them within critical, interpretive and historic contexts, including theories of modernity, postmodernity, feminism, queer theory, post-colonialism, decolonialism, trauma studies and more.

This course counts toward the Arts distribution requirement.

FMS 0071 Histories of Film II, 1955-Present. (SMFA Fenway campus, cross-listed as VISC 11) The two Histories of Film courses are sequential, one-semester courses that may be taken separately, but are created as a year-long inquiry into the history of the art of cinema. Constructed as a foundations course, we will examine the historical development of cinema from its inception in the late nineteenth century through the present. Presented through a broad historical, aesthetic, and critical framework, this course will introduce the student to the study of cinematic representation by focusing on the first half-century of its development in the fall and the second half-century of its development in the spring. By investigating the aesthetic, formal, and stylistic devices of film as well as its narrative codes and structures we will consider the evolution of its rich and complex language. Our study will focus on such noteworthy film movements as the early international avant-garde, German Expressionism, Soviet filmmaking of the 1920s, the classical studio Hollywood film (including genre and authorship studies), postwar cinemas in Japan and Italy, international New Wave cinemas of the 1960s, post-classical American cinema, World cinema, contemporary independent film practices, and more.

This course counts toward the Arts distribution requirement.

FMS 0072 Cinematic Cities. (SMFA Fenway campus, Cross-listed as SMFA/VISC 0105) Invented at the end of the 19th century as a uniquely modern medium, and at a time of enormous urban growth and expansion, the cinema has had a long and illustrious relationship to the city. From the early silent celebrations of modernity and urban space in Berlin, Symphony of a City and Man with a Movie Camera, to later postmodern dystopian machinations in Blade Runner and The Matrix, the cinema has been uniquely positioned to script both the celebration and decay of urban space. Guided by thematic topics, this course will investigate the cinematic representation of the city as the site of promise, emancipation, and creativity but also as the site for projected dystopian futures, where the excesses and decay of capitalist expansion and global climate change become starkly evident.

This course counts toward the Arts distribution requirement.

FMS 0073 History and Aesthetics in Hitchcock. (SMFA Fenway campus, cross-listed as VISC 100) This course will provide the student with an aesthetic and historically-focused investigation into the cinematic work of Alfred Hitchcock. The presentation of Hitchcock’s films will be paired with noteworthy essays that engage in a variety of methodologies and analyses while positioning them within critical, interpretive and historic contexts. Using close textual readings, we will investigate the various historic, aesthetic, thematic and formal concerns threaded throughout his cinematic work.  In our study we will examine his skillful narrative coding of the suspense thriller using point-of-view/spectator identification techniques, his powerful but often problematic representation of women, the patterns of looking and voyeurism inscribed in his work and much more.

This course counts toward the Arts distribution requirement.

FMS 0074 Neo-Noir and its Contexts. (School of the Museum of Fine Arts Fenway campus, cross-listed as VISC 101) This course will introduce the student to a group of historic American films produced between 1941 and 1958 that are often identified as "film noir." We compare this historic group of films with later incarnations of film noir, examining how this original historic body of work profoundly influenced a wide range of neo-noir practices. We will contextualize these films through broad historical, aesthetic and critical frameworks and analyze a range of common underlying themes and preoccupations including: the creation of a dark and brooding pessimism; the representation of the noir woman as a "femme fatale;" modernity, postmodernity, urbanism, postwar paranoia and anxiety, the existential impulse of noir, issues of race, gender and more. The work of such directors as Billy Wilder, Jules Dassin, Roman Polanski, Ridley Scott, David Lynch, Bill Duke, Rian Johnson, Christopher Nolan, Chanwook Park, the Coen Brothers and more will be considered.

This course counts toward the Arts distribution requirement.

FMS 0081 Hitchcock: Cinema, Gender Ideology. (Cross-listed as ENG 80) Alfred Hitchcock: the name is synonymous not only with cinematic suspense, but also with the appeal of film as both a medium of popular entertainment and the distinctive art form of the twentieth century. Hitchcock's undiminished appeal reflects our continuing fascination with the visual satisfactions classic cinema affords and with the possibilities inherent in the genres (thriller, suspense film, romantic melodrama) in which Hitchcock primarily worked. This course will explore the relation between Hitchcock's achievement of cinematic "mastery" and his constant, even obsessive, attention to questions of gender, sexuality, and socio-cultural authority–questions that underlie his explorations of narrative suspense. We will examine how "seeing" in Hitchcock's films is the join between politics and erotics, inflecting cinematic spectatorship in the direction of such erotic (and political) "perversions" as voyeurism, fetishism, sadism, and masochism—"perversions" that find expression in the stylistic flair of Hitchcock's films. With this in mind we will consider the pleasures that Hitchcock's style affords: Whose pleasure is it? To what does it respond? How does its insistent perversity affect our understanding of his work? We will try to answer these questions by reading a number of essays on Hitchcock and cinema, including recent interventions from the perspectives of psychoanalysis, feminism, and queer theory. In that sense, this course will introduce students to theories of cinematic interpretation. But our engagement with ways of reading film (in an interdisciplinary and cross-cultural framework) will be filtered through the close and careful study of some of the most complex, compelling, and influential texts in cinematic history. These will include The 39 Steps, Rebecca, Shadow of a Doubt, Notorious, Rope, Strangers on a Train, Rear Window, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho, and The Birds. Students will be encouraged to attend showings of the films on the library's large screen in Tisch 304, but they will be permitted to watch the movies on their own (before the day of class discussion, of course) if they cannot attend the weekly screenings. This course fulfills the post-1860 requirement for English majors.

This course counts toward the Arts distribution requirement.

FMS 0082 Music On Film/Film On Music. (Cross-listed as MUS 35) Films, animation, and videos as audio-visual media, from Fantasia to The Shining, attending to the matching of images with sound and music. Topics such as synchronization and synchresis, vertical montage and musicality of the image-track, leitmotif and dolby, in literature from film, music, and media studies. Class discussion crucial to develop the ability to "audition" film and video.

This course counts toward the Arts distribution requirement.

FMS 0089 African American Theater and Film. (Cross-listed as TPS 18) A broad historical survey of plays and films created by African Americans. Comparison of cinematic and theatrical representations. Relation of African American aesthetics to broader American, European and Pan-African forms. Historical evaluation and comparison of images created by African-Americans and those established in the mainstream milieu. No prerequisite. (May be taken at the 100-level for graduate credit with consent.)

This course counts toward the Arts distribution requirement.

FMS 0092 Film Noir and the American Tradition. (Cross-listed as ENG 88) This course will explore film noir as a distinctively American cultural product that emerges from a fascination with evil inseparable from the fantasy of America's national innocence. We will consider film noir as the symptomatic expression of the contradictions America confronted when it tried to come to terms with its identity as a global military and economic power–contradictions reflecting an incoherent identity that produced, in film noir, a genre about incoherence, moral ambiguity, and the inevitability of interpretative doubt. The femme fatale, the figure on whom the crisis of interpretation tends to focus, will occupy a central position in our thinking. We will trace the insistence of sexual anxiety (the fears provoked by sexually aggressive heterosexual women as well as by sexually non-normative women and men alike) in narratives that express the fragility of community (especially as questions of ethnic or racial difference get joined to sexual difference). Linking these dark films of murder, betrayal, and forbidden desires to issues raised by feminist, queer, and psychoanalytic theory, this course will trace the inscriptions of anxieties that continue to shape our national psyche and to grip our cinematic imagination. Films to be studied may include Double Indemnity, Laura, The Big Sleep, Murder My Sweet, Out of the Past, The Crimson Kimono, The Woman in the Window, The Third Man, Odds Against Tomorrow, One False Move, Seven, Lost Highway, The Dark Knight, and The Departed. This course fulfills the post-1860 requirement.

FMS 0094 Storytelling: Radio/Podcasts. (Special Topics, Cross-listed with MDIA-0186) This course examines theoretical and practical aspects of audio storytelling.Via collective listening sessions, seminar discussions and practical assignments, we will explore genres, techniques and approaches to tell stories through sound. Thanks to the Internet and to podcast distribution, a revival of narrative sound formats is underway. This recent wave of interest tackles an interdisciplinary field between radio, literature, music, theater, poetry, journalism, politics and contemporary art – an area yet to be defined, historically and theoretically. This course will explore this hybrid territory. We will map different histories of audio storytelling, while experiencing works by pioneering figures and contemporary practitioners, as well as actively engaging in making audio stories.

FMS 0094 Philosophy of Humor. (Special Topics, Cross-listed with PHIL 0091) The course will enlighten us on the nature of humor, its role in the good life, and its presence in our culture especially in comedic movies and TV shows. It will disclose the epistemological role of humor (its relation to truth) and will discuss its ontological root (its relation with reality), along with its more traditional roles in aesthetics, ethics, and politics. It will span the various functions of humor, its aggressive, sexual, social, defensive, and intellectual functions. It will introduce the history of the different genres of the comical in various cultures, Eastern and Western alike. The various functions of humor and the readings introducing them will be exemplified with movies spanning 100 years of cinema and contemporary TV shows. The course will also address the multifarious relations Western philosophy entertained with the comical from its inception in the 6th century BC to this day. Finally, the course will teach us how to use humor to effectively implement philosophic ideals, such as self-knowledge, deliberation, understanding, and toleration, to approach the human condition from a realistic point of view by practicing living with unresolved conflict, and, alternatively, to resolve the inherent conflict in the human condition on a higher level that through acceptance of our shared ridiculousness yields joy and serenity. Through the apparently fun topic of humor, the deepest aspects of human reality will be elegantly approached, such as the tragic sense of life, the ambivalence that plagues everything human, and the conflict, both internal and external, that defines our condition, and finds its expression in our culture, in movies and TV shows, in stand-up comedy and everyday life.

FMS 0094 The Animated Universe: The History of Animation from Emile Cohl to Anime. (Special Topics, Cross-listed as ILVS 91-02) This course explores the history and theory of animation, the art form that Paul Wells has described as "the medium of the twenty first century". But animation as we know it arguably begins at the start of the twentieth century with the whimsical metamorphoses of Winsor McCay and Emile Cohl so we will start there and continue within a generally chronological framework. Along the way we will explore a wide range of topics such as techniques (cel, rotoscoping, CGI), auteurs, (Disney, Miyazaki), music (as emotional amplification and in musicals, music videos), visual effects in live action films, the animated body, television cartoons, experimental/art animation, propaganda, commerce, gender, fantasy and humor. We will also include a section on culturally specific animation, most notably Japanese anime.

Students are encouraged for their final papers to delve more deeply into these topics and, if interested, to explore other aspects of animation such as animation in advertising, computer games, web design, cell phone applications, children's animation and instructional animation.

FMS 0094 Cinema of the Apocalypse. (Special Topics, Cross-listed as ILVS 91) The end of the world has long been a central theme in many cultures and religions. Judeo-Christian visions of apocalypse, such as the great flood and the Book of Revelation, described times of moral reckoning when good fought against evil. In Japan, the Buddhist doctrine of Mappo (the latter days of the law) foresaw a time of moral and spiritual decay. More recently the last century brought in horrific images of world-ending events most notably nuclear holocaust, environmental disasters and alien invasions. It is appropriate that cinema, the medium most associated with the twentieth century, has been particularly effective in envisioning an enormous variety of end times. It is also not surprising that Japanese cinema, from the only country that has experienced atomic bombing, contains some of the most memorable and affecting evocations of apocalypse. This course examines the way apocalypse has been expressed in both Western and Japanese cinema. We begin with Ingmar Bergman's magnificent allegory of medieval European disaster, The Seventh Seal, continue with the Cold War classic Dr. Strangelove and important live action works from America, Japan and Korea (Terminator Two: Judgement Day, Black Rain, Snow Piercer followed by Japanese animation's (anime) trio of classic apocalyptic works, Akira, Princess Mononoke and Ghost in the Shell and the anime influenced American film Wall-e.) The course will end with Lars Von Triers exquisite apocalyptic meditation, Melancholia. Themes to be discussed: the role of apocalyptic thought in East Asian and Western culture, modes of loss and mourning, processing nuclear and environmental catastrophe, and how live action and animation create different end-time visions.

FMS 0094 From Beijing to Bollywood: Cinema of India & China. (Special Topics, Cross-listed as CHNS 91) Through selected films and critical essays, this new course introduces a comparative perspective in order to understand two neighboring countries in Asia, their modern cultural production, and their social transformations. In particular, an examination of nationalism, revolution, and globalization as filmic expression. In English. No prerequisites.

FMS 0094 From "Why Not" to Wi-Fi: History of American Broadcasting. (Special Topics, Cross-listed as EXP 56) A mere century ago, the word 'broadcasting' was a farming term for the method casting seed widely. Today, no one associates 'broadcasting' with agriculture. This course will explore the amazing evolution of American electronic media, from its embryonic beginnings in the garages of a few thousand enthusiasts to its current state as a multi-trillion dollar industry that connects people in ways that could not have been imagined just three decades ago. Beginning with radio—the first mass medium and the one that lay the foundation upon which all subsequent media was built—this course will trace the growth of electronic media and will explore how programming (content) changed and adapted with each new technology. Of equal importance, media is at once an influencer of society and a reflector of it, and so we will examine the ways in which broadcast, and in turn the internet, has dealt with and radically affected cornerstones of society, including music, religion, sports, and politics.

FMS 0094 Media & Environment: Creating Change. (Special Topics, Cross-listed as ENVS 196/TCS 94) Now, more than ever, the environment needs engaged informed and skilled advocates. This class will explore current issues ranging from the Dakota Pipeline, to deforestation, to pollution of the oceans. to climate change, and give you ways to sharpen your skills to use the media for getting out effective and targeted messages. We'll be bringing in a diverse group of important environmental advocates, organizers, filmmakers and journalists as guest speakers who will tell their stories of creating environmental awareness and change. Our focus includes the powerful role media can play in giving voice to underrepresented voices and illuminating issues of environmental justice. Learn to make a difference in local, national and global communities on the environmental issues that are most pressing.

FMS 0094 Queer Cinema. (Special Topics, Cross-listed as TPS 23) This course will explore films which in turn explore questions of gender identity and its construction, alternative sexual behaviors, and the formation of such categories as "gay," "lesbian" and "queer." The range will be from the silent period to recent avant-garde and Hollywood productions. Influential directors such as Derek Jarman, Andy Warhol, Pedro Almodovar and John Waters will be examined in detail. Films will be studied within the context of their cultures. Students are asked to leave preconceived notions at the door. Mandatory Film Screenings.

FMS 0094 Race for the White House in a Modern Media Entertainment. (Special Topics, Cross-listed as PS 118) We'll look at the campaign side: how candidates devise strategy, use social media, television advertising and target voters. On the media side, we'll go inside the newsroom to learn how campaigns are covered and candidates are scrutinized. What is the best way to question a candidate? How do reporters ensure fairness in their reporting? Do the media play an outsized role in the campaign by driving the narrative for voters? We'll experience the important presidential debates in real time and experience the final stretch of the campaign by studying the importance of get out the vote efforts, polling and the electoral map and how these aspects get covered by the press. You will also get some historical perspectives about how campaigns reflect where the country is at a particular moment. And we will try to determine what a presidential campaign and its coverage in the press shows us about how a candidate would lead the country.

FMS 0094 Visual and Literary Cultures after the "Arab Spring." (Special Topics, Cross-listed as ARB 91) This course examines the ways that the new media publics that proliferated during the "Arab Spring" (such as twitter, YouTube, the public space of the city) contributed to the growth of new artistic means of expressing social realities. Students will be exposed to a vast selection of artistic and cultural productions, such as the mini-documentary, the horror film, the graphic novel, graffiti, animation, the protest song, and zombie narratives. Prior knowledge of Arabic literature/culture not expected. Additional film screening to be arranged.

FMS 0195 Directed Study. A Directed Study is an independent study conducted under the close supervision of an FMS faculty member. It is typically for FMS seniors who have a strong interest in an area of study in which there are no courses being offered during the students’ tenure at Tufts, or who want to do advanced work that exceeds the confines of regularly offered courses. Ideally, the student should have studied with the faculty member and have already done some work before the Directed Study begins, such as identifying readings and other research materials and articulating a rationale for the study. The student meets on a regular basis with the faculty member during the semester, and undertakes in depth research directed by the faculty member on the area of the study. The result is typically a long research paper or creative work.

Department consent required