Courses

0001 Art of the Moving Image. (cross listed ILVS-0051, TPS-0020) This course begins with cinema, the first art of the moving image. We will study cinema's principal aesthetic features: its basic stylistic techniques, such as editing, cinematography, mise-en-scene, and sound, 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. Required core course for all FMS majors and minors. Students should take Art of the Moving Image (FMS-0001) as their first course in the major (or aim to complete it in their first year in FMS). FMS-0001 is a pre-enrollment requisite for a number of FMS courses and must be taken before enrolling in those courses. This course is taught every semester and is open to first-years, sophomores, and juniors. Recitation/screening required. Prerequisite: First-year, sophomore, junior. [Core Course: Required]

0002 Global History of Cinema. (cross listed 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. FMS required course (choose one): Global History of Cinema (FMS-0002) OR 20th Century U.S. Television History (FMS-0006. Students should aim to complete the second core requirement by junior year, if possible. Both are taught alternating spring semesters - typically Television History (FMS-0006) is offered in the even years and Global History (FMS-0002) in the odd years. Recitation/screening required. Prerequisite: None. [Core Course: Required]

0006 Television History. (cross listed 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. FMS required course (choose one): Global History of Cinema (FMS-0002) OR 20th Century U.S. Television History (FMS-0006). Students should aim to complete the second core requirement by junior year, if possible. Both are taught alternating spring semesters - typically Television History (FMS-0006) is offered in the even years and Global History (FMS-0002) in the odd years. Recitation/screening required. Prerequisite: None. [Core Course: Required]

0010 Film and Media Production I: The Basics of Visual Storytelling. 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 post-production 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 FMS-0010 will fulfill the main prerequisite for the intermediate and advanced production courses in Film and Media Studies. Optional lab fee may be collected in class for equipment accessories. 4 Credits. Prerequisite: FMS-0001 and first-year, sophomore, junior. [Practice]

0012 Producing for Film. (cross listed 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. Prerequisite: FMS-0001 and FMS-0010. [Practice]

0013 Documentary Film: History and Practice. 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. Prerequisite: FMS-0001 and FMS-0010. [Practice]

0014 From Script to Screen. 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. Prerequisite: FMS-0001 and FMS-0010 OR FMS-0020. [Practice]

0015 Crafting Your Vision: Intermediate Visual Storytelling. This project-based course will employ a production-unit model where students in teams will be given a scripted scene to produce, shoot, and edit over the course of the semester. Production roles will be divided up as director, cinematographer, gaffer and sound engineer so students can focus on the craft of storytelling during their time in class. Participants in the course will also have assigned roles within the editing process. Students will use the FMS program’s professional-level equipment, like the Canon C300 digital cinema camera and other rigs. This class is intended for intermediate students who have taken FMS10, particularly students interested in making a senior thesis film in the future. By the end of the class, students will have gone through pre-production, production, and post-production with measurable outcomes in each phase of the process. We will dive into the discrete choices made by the many artists working on a shoot to execute an artistic project. In addition to the film projects and exercises, students will learn from guest speakers, have hands-on workshops, and analyze films through the lens of craft. Prerequisite: FMS-0001 and FMS-0010. [Practice]

0016 Cinematography. This course represents the first-ever FMS class focusing solely on the cinematographer’s craft. Students will emerge from the class with a deeper understanding of how cameras and lenses work and a newfound confidence in their shooting. Through a series of individual and collaborative exercises, we will explore the technology behind cinematography, how it impacts the many facets of a film’s look, and how students can apply these principles in their own practice. In support of our hands-on activities, we will also examine the artistry of such influential cinematographers as Greg Toland, Roger Deakins, James Wong Howe, Vittorio Storaro, Ellen Kuras, Ernest Dickerson, and Leila Kilburn, to name a few. Prerequisite: FMS-0001. [Practice]

0017 Sound in Filmmaking. This course is designed to aid student filmmakers in gaining a deeper understanding of the principles and practices involved in both “on set” and postproduction sound work. Along with a look at the history of sound in the movies and an introduction to audio theory relative to cinema, the class will focus on developing proper technique for using microphones, digital recording decks, DAWs, and computer-based tools for scoring. We will also delve into such areas as media management, working with directors and editors, ADR, and special effects. Prerequisite: FMS-0001. [Practice]

0018 Storytelling and Film Editing. This course explores the practice and art of film editing as the indispensable work that awaits all moving image storytellers once production has ended.  Students will gain experience editing both scripted and documentary films to advance their conceptual and technical understanding of the challenges editors face and the solutions they discover along the way to reaching final cut. Prerequisite: FMS-0001 and FMS-0010. [Practice]

0019 Experimental Film: From Concept to Practice. 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. Prerequisite: FMS-0001. [Practice]

0020 Screenwriting I. (cross listed 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. Prerequisite: FMS-01; or instructor permission. [Practice]

0021 Screenwriting II. (cross listed 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. Course may be taken twice. Prerequisite: FMS-0020 or TPS-0079. [Practice]

0022 New Forms of Screen Narrative. (cross listed ENG-0012) 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. Prerequisite: ENG-0001 and ENG-0002 or ENG-003 and ENG-0004 or equivalent. [Practice]

0023 TV Writing: Pitch to Script. 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. Prerequisite: FMS-0001. [Practice]

0024 Acting for the Camera. (cross listed TPS-0052) 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”. Prerequisite: None. [Practice]

0025 Costume Design. (cross listed TPS-0071) Development of the skills of script analysis, rendering, and process for the design of costumes. Lab fee $250. . Prerequisite: None. [Practice]

0026 Dance and the Hollywood Musical. (cross listed DNC-0085) 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. Prerequisite: None. [Practice]

0027 Dance on Camera. (cross listed 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. Prerequisite: None. [Practice]

0028 Scene Design. (cross listed 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. Prerequisite: None. [Practice]

0029 The Designer's Eye: History of Style & Decor. (cross listed TPS-0031) 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 an 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 first 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. Prerequisite: None. [Practice]

0030 Creative Writing: Journalism. (cross listed 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. Prerequisite: Completion of college writing. [Practice]

0031 Intermediate Journalism. (cross listed ENG-0011, CVS-0041) 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. Prerequisite: Completion of college writing. [Practice]

0032 PR & Marketing: A History of Theory and Tactics. 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. Prerequisite: None. [Practice, Social Science]

0033 Social Marketing: Theory and Practice. 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. Prerequisite: None. [Practice]

0034 Creating Children's Media. (cross listed CSHD-0169) 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. Prerequisite: None. [Practice, Social Science]

0035 The Art and Business of Crafting Compelling Media Campaigns. 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. Prerequisite: None. [Practice]

0036 AI in Motion: Ethics, Innovation, and Impact in Digital Media Industries. In this course, students will delve into the transformative role of AI in digital media industries, with a particular focus on cinema and television. Through a praxis-based model, participants will critically engage with theoretical and empirical texts to uncover the history and navigate the current ethical debates surrounding AI. The course aims to equip students with a nuanced understanding of AI's impact on contemporary media practices, alongside hands-on experience with cutting-edge AI tools for text, sound, image, and motion picture generation. By examining interdisciplinary perspectives and engaging with the latest industry trends, students will emerge with a comprehensive skill set, ready to critically analyze and creatively engage with the future of AI in media. Prerequisite: None. [Practice, Theory]

0037 Online Video Platforms: Algorithms, Content Creation, and Social Impact. This course explores the evolving landscape of online video platforms and the power dynamics that shape them. This course critically examines the role of algorithms, surveillance capitalism, and the attention economy in the production and sharing of video content on platforms like YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and more. Through a combination of social analysis and hands-on experience, students will engage with key questions about why content goes viral, why people are compelled to share online, how platform design influences creators, and what social and political impact these videos have. In addition to readings written responses, students will create, produce, and market an original video series on a platform of their choice, critically reflecting on the ethical implications of their work. The course will challenge students to navigate these platforms and examine the broader social impact of their content, combining practical skills with theoretical insights. Prerequisite: None. [Theory, Practice]

0038 Half the History: Finding, Creating, and Amplifying Women’s Historical Stories through Media. (cross listed WGSS-0085, TPS-, CSHD) 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. Prerequisite: . [Practice]

0041 Cultures of Computing. (cross listed 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. Prerequisite: None. [Social Science]

0042 Children and the Mass Media. (cross listed CSHD-0167, CVS-0147) 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. Prerequisite: None. [Social Science]

0043 Media, Culture, and Society. (cross listed 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. Prerequisite: None. [Social Science]

0044 Introduction to Media Culture and Theory. (cross listed TPS-0022, 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. Prerequisite: None. [Theory]

0045 Media Literacy. (cross listed CSHD-0113, CVS-0139, TSC-0022) 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. Prerequisite: None. [Social Science]

0046 Anthropology of Journalism. (cross listed 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. Prerequisite: None. [Social Science]

0047 Media of the Middle East. (cross listed ANTH-0144, 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. Prerequisite: . [Social Science, Non-U.S.]

0048 Visual Anthropology. (cross listed 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. Prerequisite: None. [Theory, Social Science]

0049 Political Cinema. (cross listed 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. Prerequisite: None. [Theory]

0050 Disney Studios Meets Studio Ghibli. (cross listed 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. Prerequisite: None. [Non-U.S.]

0051 Storytelling: Radio/Podcasts. (cross listed MDIA-0166) 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. SMFA course, taught on the Medford campus. If a letter grade is needed, please inform the instructor. Prerequisite: None. [Practice]

0052 The Horror Film. This course on the horror film is designed for both FMS students and non-FMS students seeking an in-depth historical and theoretical understanding of the horror film. 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 Nosferatu; 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 like Scream, The Babadook, and Get Out. While most of the films we examine will be from North America, we will occasionally make forays into Japanese horror (Godzilla, The Ring), 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? This course fulfills the Theory requirement for FMS majors but is open to any student including non-majors. Please note: FMS-0176 is an upper level section of the same course. FMS-00984-08 is recommended for first-years and students with limited film experience. Prerequisite: FMS-0001. [Theory]

0059 World War II on Film. (cross listed 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. Prerequisite: None. [Non-U.S.]

0060 Global Indigenous Film & Media. (cross listed RCD-0094-04, TPS-0037) Centered on Indigenous visual and verbal texts, this course examines film and other media produced by Indigenous peoples around the world and engages the politics and practices of (self)representation, transnational film and media production, marketing, and distribution, and critical and post-colonial theories of literature, film, and media. We will ground our study of the exploding global phenomenon with considerations that include Fourth Cinema, Indigenous cultures and their futures, questions of agency, sovereignty, and artistic expression, and the power of the persistent work of everyday action and language that are hallmarks of Indigenous creativity. Prerequisite: None. [Theory]

0061 French Cinema. (cross listed FR-0061) 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. Prerequisite: None. [Non-U.S.]

0062 Imagining the Holocaust on Stage and Screen. (cross listed TPS-0025, TPS-0125, JS-0025) 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. Prerequisite: None. [Elective]

0063 Love and War in French Film. (cross listed FR-0075) An investigation of the art of French cinema, this course focuses on the themes of love, war, and love and war in 13 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 mouvements, by directors Renoir, Clément, Carné, Resnais, Malle, Truffauat, Godard, Rohmer, Keislowski, and others. Films include: La grande illusion, Les jeux interdits, Les enfants du paradis, Hiroshima mon amour, Jules et Jim, Les parapluies de Cherbourg, Pierrot le fou, Lacombe Lucien, Les roseaux sauvages, Trois couleurs: Bleu; De rouille d'os, and Amour. Course work includes weekly film viewing, weekly reaction paper, one 5 page paper, one 8 – 10 page final paper, 2 oral exposés, class participation. Prerequisite: None. [Non-U.S.]

0064 The Music of John Williams and Star Wars. (cross listed MUS-0055) 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. Prerequisite: None. [Elective]

0065 Film Theory. (cross listed 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. Prerequisite: None. [Theory]

0066 Philosophy and Film. (cross listed 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? Prerequisite: None. [Theory]

0067 Composition for Film: Film and Multimedia Composition. (cross listed MUS-0017) 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. Prerequisite: MUS 5/equivalent OR instructor permission . [Practice]

0068 From Beijing to Bollywood: Cinema of India and China. (cross listed 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. Prerequisite: None. [Non-U.S.]

0069 Latin American Cinema. (cross listed HAA-0084) The development of cinema in district Latin American contexts with emphasis on Mexico, Brazil, Cuba, and Lationos 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. Prerequisite: None. [Non-U.S.]

0070 Histories of Film, Part One 1895-1955. (cross listed VMS-0010) This course is one of two: the courses are sequential, single semester courses that may be taken separately, but are created as a year-long inquiry into the art of cinema. Constructed as a foundational course we will examine the development of cinema from its inception in the late nineteenth century through to the present. Using a broad historical, theoretical and critical framework, this course will introduce the student to the study of cinematic representation in a roughly chronological manner by focusing on the first half of its development in the fall and the second half 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. The two courses will focus on such noteworthy film movements as the early International AvantGarde, German Expressionism, Soviet filmmaking of the 1920s, the classical studio Hollywood film, postwar cinemas in France and Italy, the American Avant-Garde, International New Wave Cinemas of the 1960s and 1970s, post-classical American Cinema, contemporary Global cinemas including works from Iran, New Zealand and more. This course will also introduce the student to several foundational ideas and methodologies in the study of cinema including theories of modernity and postmodernity, feminist film theory, queer theory, intertextuality, post-colonialism, trauma studies and more. The presentation of films will be paired with noteworthy essays that engage a variety of methodologies and readings of the films while positioning them within critical, interpretive and historic contexts. SMFA Campus. This course is one of two: the courses are sequential, single semester courses that may be taken separately, but are created as a year-long inquiry into the art of cinema. Prerequisite: None. [Elective]

0071 History of Film II: 1955-Present. (cross listed VMS-0011) 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. Prerequisite: None. [Elective]

0072 Cinematic Cities. (cross listed VMS-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. Prerequisite: None. [Elective]

0073 History and Aesthetics in Hitchcock. (cross listed VISC-010) 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. Prerequisite: None. [Elective]

0074 Neo-Noir and Its Contexts. (cross listed VMS-0101) 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, Chan-wook Park, the Coen Brothers and more will be considered. Class takes place on SMFA campus. Prerequisite: None. [Elective]

0075 World of Japanese Animation: Culture, Cult, and Commerce. (cross listed JPN-0081) The themes, directors, and imagery of Japanese animation (anime). Analysis of animation as a medium. Discussion of relation between manga and anime and cultural roots of both media. 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. Prerequisite: None. [Non-U.S.]

0076 Arab and Middle Eastern Cinema. (cross listed ILVS-0087 & 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. Prerequisite: None. [Non-U.S.]

0077 Italian Film. (cross listed ITAL-0075) Required recitation. Prerequisite: None. [Non-U.S.]

0078 Japanese Film. (cross listed JPN-0080) This course will examine Japanese cinema, providing a survey on its development across history, starting with important films from major foundational filmmakers of both pre- and post-World War II, progressing through the decades to study innovative films made by contemporary Japanese directors today. Particular attention will also be paid to the development of major cinematic genres heavily associated with Japan. Taught in English. Prerequisite: None. [Non-U.S.]

0079 German Film. (cross listed 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 : the contemporary period. (May be taken at the 100-level). Prerequisite: None. [Non-U.S.]

0080 Russian Film: Arts, Politics, & Society. (cross listed 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, perestroika, and post-Soviet Russia. Films with English subtitles. Prerequisite: None. [Non-U.S.]

0081 Hitchcock: Cinema, Gender, Ideology. (cross listed 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. Prerequisite: None. [Theory]

0082 Music On Film, Film On Music. (cross listed MUS-0056) Representations of music and musicianship in contemporary cinema. Examination of a number of films, focusing in particular on the soundtrack: which musical works it quotes, and how these works interact with the film's narrative. Each film thus provides the point of departure for the exploration of a broad range of issues related to music and its sociocultural significance, an exploration tangibly linked to the concrete experience of music as a representational practice.. Prerequisite: None. [Elective]

0083 Latinx Theatre and Film. (cross listed TPS-0016, LST-0051) In this course students will examine Latinx theatre and performance as a potent creative and political force in the United States. The class will utilize the plays, musicals, theatre for young audiences, and performance art, film and television to discuss issues such as labor and immigration, gender and sexuality, gentrification, trauma, technology, history and the United States' relationship with Latin American nations. Students will also engage with key figures and artistic movements associated with Latinx theatre and performance. Prerequisite: None. [Non-U.S.]

0084 Jewish Experience On Film. (cross listed ILVS-0143, JS-0142, REL-0142) Selected classic and contemporary films dealing with aspects of Jewish experience in America, Europe, and Israel, combined with reading on the cultural 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. Prerequisite: None. [Non-U.S.]

0085 Film & Nation: Russia & Central Asia. (cross listed ILVS-0086 & RUS-0085 ) After the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russia and several former Central Asian republics, now the independent countries of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan embarked on a nation-building project through cinema; topics considered: how ethnic and national identities were subsumed into a "Soviet" identity and then split apart in the post-Soviet period; constructions of new national identities, national spaces, heroes and myths in films ranging from the Russian mega-hits Brother and Company 9 to the international festival favorites, The Adopted Son (Kyrgyzstan) and The Hunter (Kazakhstan); influence of Hollywood and multi-national productions in historical action films such as Nomad and Mongol; changes in film styles and genres, as well as in the structure and economics of the film industry. No prerequisites. All films with English subtitles. Prerequisite: None. [Non-U.S.]

0086 Classics of World Cinema. (cross listed ILVS-0100 & WL-0101) Worldwide survey of major films from the silent era to the 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. Prerequisite: None. [Non-U.S.]

0087 Postmodernism and Film. (cross listed 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 techonology 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. Prerequisite: None. [Theory]

0088 Introduction to Chinese Cinema. (cross listed CHNS-0080, ILVS-0100) 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. Prerequisite: None. [Non-U.S.]

0089 African American Theater and Film. (cross listed TPS-0018 & AFR-0048) 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. Prerequisite: None. [Elective]

0090 Major Japanese Film Directors: The World of Studio Ghibli. (cross listed JPN-011) 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. Prerequisite: None. [Non-U.S.]

0091 New Chinese Cinema. (cross listed CHNS-0081, 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. Prerequisite: None. [Non-U.S.]

0092 Film Noir and the American Tradition. (cross listed ENG-0088) This course explores film noir as a profoundly American cinematic tradition that emerges from the fascination with evil that accompanies the fantasy of American innocence, a fascination rooted in the racial crimes at the origin of the nation. We will read film noir as an expression of the contradictions that structure U.S. society--contradictions between law and self-determination, between social collectivity and individualism, between Puritanical strictures and capitalist amorality. These contradictions inform film noir as a genre about incoherence, moral ambiguity, and the inevitability of interpretative doubt. Film noir’s racial and ethnic subtexts will be examined in terms of the genre’s response to threats to the social dominance of white, heterosexual, cis-gendered men.  Those same threats make the femme fatale, the figure on whom the crisis of interpretation tends to focus, and the queered man, the foil who frequently serves as the femme fatale’s accomplice, central to the sexual anxiety that permeates these films. Linking these narratives of corruption, betrayal, and forbidden desires to issues raised by feminist, queer, and psychoanalytic theory, this course will engage the tensions that continue to shape our national psyche and our cinematic imagination. Films to be studied may include The Maltese Falcon, Murder My Sweet, Double Indemnity, Out of the Past, The Third Man, Kiss Me Deadly, Touch of Evil, Odds Against Tomorrow, The History of Violence, Devil in a Blue Dress, Lost Highway, and The Dark Knight. Prerequisite: FMS or ENG major or minor. [Elective]

0094 Seminar: Studies in Film Festivals. (cross listed None) In recent decades, the number of film festivals in the world has exploded. According to Hollywood Progressive, each year more than 12,000 varied film festivals take place globally (2024). Film Studies researchers have taken notice of this growth and reach of film festivals, and the sub-field of Film Festival Studies has emerged. In this seminar that combines theory and practice, we will read a range of research in Film Festival Studies, including current scholarship on film festivals—from the history of film festivals to film festival theory and research that explores types of film festivals, economics of film festivals, and power dynamics of film festivals. We will frame our approach to this body of work with an additional focus on independent film, independent film exhibition, and Art House Convergence (AHC) and consider emergent alternatives and audience-building strategies that now exist alongside traditional distribution models. Guest lectures from industry professionals and class screenings will further inform our seminar. During the second half of the semester, students will work in small groups to help plan and promote the week-long FMS campus film festival held in the final week of the semester.. Prerequisite: Sophomore standing. Recommended: FMS major or minor. [Practice, Theory]

0094 Special Topics: Cinema of Apocalypse. (cross listed JPN-0091, ILVS-0091) 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 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, and Japan ("Terminator Two: Judgement Day", "Black Rain", "Battle Royale") followed by Japanese animation’s (anime) classic apocalyptic works, ("Akira", "Princess Mononoke", "Your Name") and the anime influenced American film "Wall-e"  in comparison with "Castle in the Sky: Laputa and Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind". 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. Prerequisite: None. [Elective]

0094 Special Topics: Costume Design for Film, TV, and New Media . (cross listed 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. Prerequisite: None. [Practice]

0094 Special Topics: Directions in Contemporary Film. (cross listed VMS-0193-04) Interdisciplinary course examines cinema’s engagement in alternative forms of film exhibition outside of mainstream movie theaters—from the silent era “cinema of attractions,” to the outward explosion of the screen frame in mid-century widescreen formats and avant-garde expanded cinema, and to multi-screen video installations and digital forms of contemporary moving images which produce embodied, interactive, and immersive storytelling and spectatorial modes. Broadly surveys historical and theoretical approaches to film’s connection with trends in American spectacle, art, and embodied experiences ranging from panoramas, world's fairs exhibits, amusement parks, planetariums, theme parks, video games, and virtual reality. Prerequisite: None. [Elective]

0094 Special Topics: Eastern European Cinema. (cross listed ILVS-0092, RUS-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. Prerequisite: None. [Elective]

0094 Special Topics: Ethnographic Film, Video, and Beyond. (cross listed 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. Prerequisite: None. [Social Science]

0094 Special Topics: Imagining Black Europe. (cross listed RCD-0094-03, ILVS-0093-03, AFR-0047-01) This course studies contemporary representations of Black Europeans in film, music, and popular culture in dialogue with critical works about diaspora and transnational blackness. We will read work by Tiffany Florvil (Germany), Grada Kilomba (Portugal), SA Smythe (Italy) among others as we explore the different ways in which Black European artists engage with questions of national and transnational belonging.  Students will write, conduct research, and engage in hands-on creative projects.Prerequisite: None. [Non-U.S.]

0094 Special Topics: Iranian Cinema and Theatre. (cross listed 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. Prerequisite: None. [Non-U.S.]

0094 Special Topics: Media Culture Now. (cross listed SMFA-0182) An understanding of how mass media functions is necessary to enact meaningful social change. The media representation of women, immigrants, refugees, BIPOC, and LGBTQIA+ individuals, as well as topics such as war, US military recruiting from gaming industries, presidential elections, reality TV, social media, significantly influences both our public policy and private lives. In this course we will challenge commercial methods of cultural production, create collages and zines exploring our vernacular culture, and question how these forms of cultural production and mass media have become powerful means of expressing culture, shaping the ‘frames’ through which we perceive our everyday lives. Open to all SMFA and non-SMFA students. Prerequisite: None. [Elective]

0094 Special Topics: Media Ethics. (cross listed PHIL-0091) 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 cyberspac. Prerequisite: None. [Theory]

0094 Special Topics: Migrant Narratives. (cross listed ILVS-0092-01) The course explores an array of global cinematic representations of migrant experience while relying on writings on the concepts of hybridity, migrancy, internal colonialisms and transculturation. We will discuss a broad range of filmmakers, styles and cross-cultural encounters as well as the works’ social implications. In addition to the films and readings, students will research their own family background and contribute their creative projects to our discussion of dislocation challenges (internal or external), understanding of difference, the sense of place and its socio-economic effects. Prerequisite: . [Elective]

0094 Special Topics: Philosophy of Humor. (cross listed 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. Prerequisite: None. [Elective]

0094 Special Topics: Politics of Middle East Film. (cross listed ARB-0092-01) 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. Prerequisite: None. [Non-U.S.]

0094 Special Topics: Russian & Eastern European Cinema. (cross listed 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. Prerequisite: None. [Non-U.S.]

0094 Special Topics: Screening Palestine. (cross listed 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. Prerequisite: None. [Non-U.S.]

0094 Special Topics: Sociology of Film. (cross listed 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. Prerequisite: None. [Social Science]

0094 Special Topics: The Horror Film: Gender, Race, and Genre. (cross listed None) . Prerequisite: FMS-0001. [Theory]

0094 Special Topics: The Sonic Middle East. (cross listed 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. Prerequisite: None. [Non-U.S.]

0094 Special Topics: Third Cinema and its Geographies. (cross listed ARB-009) 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. Prerequisite: None. [Non-U.S.]

0094 Special Topics: Women's Visions in Global Film. (cross listed 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. Prerequisite: None. [Theory, Non-U.S.]

0095 Creative Careers and Artistic Life Seminar. (cross listed TPS-0100) Conceiving, researching, and planning complex creative projects (including thesis and capstones); delving into range of careers and creating job seeking materials including portfolios and websites for creative professions. Learning about self-motivation and productive collaboration for artistic careers happens alongside increased peer and mentor feedback to prepare for a life as a confident artist working dynamically in collaborative and independent art forms.   Recommended:  TDPS, FMS, Studio Art major or minor with junior or senior standing, open to other majors with instructor permission. Prerequisite: TDPS, FMS, Studio Art major or minor with junior or senior standing, open to other majors with instructor permission. [Elective]

0099 FMS Media Internship. Your internship will teach you about the world of communications through hands-on experience in broadcasting, film production, print journalism, public relations, marketing communications, advertising, publishing, web and multimedia, social media, and other fields. This course involves 2 short papers, short weekly reflections, regular meetings with the instructor, and 75 work hours onsite at the internship. Open to all students. All internships are graded P/F. Section 01 is 4 credits. Section 02 is 2 credits. This course counts as a practice elective, but cannot be counted toward the practice degree requirement category. Prerequisite: None. [Practice]

0134 Screenwriting III. (cross listed TPS-0179) 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. Prerequisite: FMS 33 or FMS 35 OR instructor permission. Prerequisite: FMS-0021. [Practice]

0136 Directing for Film. (cross listed 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. Prerequisite: FMS-0001 and FMS-0010. [Practice]

0137 Advanced Documentary Production. In 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. Prerequisite: FMS 0010 OR FMS 0013. [Practice, Upper Level]

0138 Advanced Filmmaking. (cross listed Instructor permisison) 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 in preparation for the capstone project. . Prerequisite: Senior standing and FMS majors and minors and permission of instructor. [Practice]

0139 Independent Filmmaking. Congratulations! Your classmates and you are about to form an independent production company in order to shoot a festival-ready short feature from a script you’ve 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 a “units” system which ensures that everyone has a chance to be a "principal" (producer, director, DP, or sound recordist, for example) on at least one unit, while providing support as crew on the others. The results will be handed off to your post-production group for finishing in the spring. The course is excellent preparation for a production senior thesis. Instructor permission required. This course does not count toward the FMS upper level degree requirement.. Prerequisite: Instructor permission (FMS 10 recommended). [Practice]

0140 Independent Filmmaking-Post Production Working with the footage, audio, and notes from FMS 139, postproduction teams will edit and color grade, write a score, and complete a final sound mix for a festival-level feature film. The finished film will premiere at the end of the semester. Please contact howard.woolf@tufts.edu. This course does not count toward the FMS upper level degree requirement. Prerequisite: Instructor permission (FMS 10 recommended). [Practice]

0160 Branding Theory and Practice. 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. Prerequisite: FMS-0032 or FMS-0033. [Practice, Social Science, Upper Level]

0161 Digital Dystopias: Hate and Extremism Online. (cross listed as SOC-0185) Exploration of topics related to digital hate (e.g., digital harassment, extremist propaganda, de-platforming, technologically-facilitated violence, content moderation). Examines the complex balance between freedom of speech, civil rights, democratic vitality, and personal safety. Focus on digital experiences of those from historically marginalized groups. Prerequisite: SOC-0040 or FMS-0043 or instructor permission. [Social Science, Upper Level]

0163 Seminar: New Media, New Politics. (cross listed PS-0104 & TCS-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. Prerequisite: None. [Social Science, Upper Level]

0164 Seminar in Children and the Mass Media. (cross listed CSHD-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. Prerequisite: None. [Social Science, Upper Level]

0165 TV in the Age of Change. (cross listed 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. Prerequisite: FMS-0001. [Theory, Upper Level]

0169 Latin American Cinema. (cross listed FAH-0184) The development of cinema in district Latin American contexts with emphasis on Mexico, Brazil, Cuba, and Lationos 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. Prerequisite: None. [Non-U.S., Upper Level]

0175 Visualizing Colonialism. (cross listed ARB-0155, ILVS-010, CST-0010) 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.  Cross-listed as ILVS 101, FMS 175-01 AAST 194-12, AFR 147-04, CST 10-01, LST 194-12. 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. Prerequisite: None. [Non-U.S., Upper Level]

0176 The Horror Film. This course on the horror film is designed for both FMS students and non-FMS students seeking an in-depth historical and theoretical understanding of the horror film. 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 Nosferatu; 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 like Scream, The Babadook, and Get Out. While most of the films we examine will be from North America, we will occasionally make forays into Japanese horror (Godzilla, The Ring), 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? This is a 4 SHU/credit upper-level seminar with a required recitation/screening and a required research paper of at least 4,000 words. Weekly screening (recitation) required. Prerequisite: FMS-0001. [Upper Level]

0177 Religion and Film. (cross listed 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 fi lm as an art form and aspects of film theory. This course invites students to explore the rich terrain of fi lm 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. Prerequisite: None. [Upper Level]

0178 War & Cultural Memory in Literature and Cinema of Middle East. (cross listed 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. Prerequisite: None. [Non-U.S., Upper Level]

0179 Film and the Avant-Garde. (cross listed FAH-0159, ILVS-0091) 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. Prerequisite: None. [Upper Level]

0180 Psychoanalysis and Cinema. (cross listed ENG-0180) Psychoanalysis has affected all of us, whether we recognize it or not. The world would look quite different without such concepts as the unconscious, fetishism, identification, oedipal relations, or the drives. And cinema is particularly difficult to imagine in its absence. Psychoanalysis seems to presuppose cinema (as notions like “projection,” the “dream-screen,” or the “primal scene” suggest) as much as cinema and cinema theory seem to presuppose psychoanalysis. This course thinks the two 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 principles as essential to cinema. Each week we will pair texts of psychoanalytic theory (including psychoanalytic film theory) with films that exemplify, respond to, or illuminate them in some way. We will explore how the theories of sexuality at the heart of psychoanalysis shape both the form and content of cinematic representation. Readings may include works by authors such as Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Slavoj Žižek, Jane Gallop, Christian Metz, Joan Copjec, Mary Anne Doane, Barbara Creed, Stephen Heath, Kaja Silverman, Laura Mulvey, Kara Keeling, Diana Fuss, Frank Wilderson III, and Thierry Kuntzel . Films to be studied may include Spellbound (Hitchcock), Cat People (Tourneur), Freud (Huston), Secrets of a Soul (Pabst), The Phantom Thread (Anderson), Moonlight (Jenkins), The Silence of the Lambs (Demme), Black Panther (Coogler), Persona (Bergman), Pressure Point (Cornfield), Peeping Tom (Powell), and Eve’s Bayou (Lemmons). This class is intended to be a small seminar and registration will be limited to those who are majoring in English or FMS. Others who wish to enroll may do so by requesting permission of the instructor via email and explaining their preparation for the class. Prerequisite: FMS or ENG major or minor. [Theory, Upper Level]

0181 New Latin American Film. (cross listed 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.  Prerequisite: Recommendations: Two 30-level Spanish courses or consent of the instructor. [Non-U.S.]

0182 Dark Places: Sound in Noir, Horror, and SciFi. (cross listed MUS-0194) This seminar explores how the soundtrack participates in the creation of space and place in film. Focusing on films that more or less overtlyembrace the generic conventions of SciFi ,Horror, and "Noir," we will question how sound and music interact with visions of dystopia. Readings in film theory, musicology and media studies, as well as the close viewing/listening of a number of films, will constitute the basis for a creative and rigorous inquiry into film's power to construct and manipulate soundscapes and the aural sense of place. The seminar is designed for graduate and advanced undergraduate students in any field.. Prerequisite: Junior or senior standing or graduate standing or permission of instructor. [Upper Level]

0183 Mexican Cinema and Identity. (cross listed SPN-0184) 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. Prerequisite: None. [Non-U.S.]

0184 Film and Modernism. (cross listed ILVS, FAH-0150, ENG) 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: None. [Upper Level]

0186 How Films Think. (cross listed 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.. Prerequisite: None. [Theory, Upper Level]

0187 SoundTracks: Studies in Audio-Vision. (cross listed 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. Prerequisite: Junior or Senior standing or graduate standing; or instructor permission. [Practice, Upper Level]

0195 Directed Study. (cross listed None) 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. Prerequisite:  Jr/Sr FMS majors and department consent. [Elective]

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. Prerequisite: Dept Consent. [Sr Honors Thesis]

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. 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. Prerequisite: Department Consent. [Sr Honors Thesis]