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Graduate Program | Graduate Courses || Recent Courses | Dissertations || Undergrad Courses | Undergrad Program | Undergrad Calendar || Summer Courses
Committee Chair:
Thomas Gunning
CWAC 264, 702-0264
Director of Undergraduate Studies:
James Lastra
Ro 418, 702-9244
Program Coordinator:
Noah Minnick
G-B 418, 834-10 77
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For more than a century, and across widely different cultures, film has been the primary medium for storytelling, for depicting and exploring the world, and for engaging and shaping the human senses and emotions, memory and imagination. We live in a time in which cinema, the theatrical exhibition of films to a paying public, is no longer the primary venue in which films are consumed. But even as it is being transformed by television, video, and digital media, cinema seems to survive, and these media in turn are giving rise to new forms of moving image culture.
The major in Cinema and Media Studies provides a framework within which College students can approach the history of film and related media from a variety of historical, critical, and theoretical perspectives. Focusing on the study of the moving image (and its sound accompaniments), the program enables students to analyze how cinema creates meanings through particular forms, techniques, and styles; how industrial organization affects the way films are produced and received; and how the social context in which they are made and consumed influence the way we understand and make meaning of films.
At the same time, the goal is to situate the cinema (and related media) in broader contexts, such as the formation of visual culture and the history of the senses; modernity, modernism, and the avant-garde; narrative theory, poetics, and rhetoric; commercial entertainment forms and leisure and consumer culture; sexuality and gender; constructions of ethnic, racial, and national identities; and transnational media production and circulation, and the emergence of global media publics.
Students graduating with a Cinema and Media Studies major will be trained in critical, formal, theoretical, and historical thinking and analysis. The program aims to develop an ability to understand forms of cultural production in relation to wider contexts, as well as to foster discussion and writing skills. Students will gain the tools to approach today's media environment from a historical and international perspective, and will thus be able to work within a changing mediascape.
Application to the Program: Students wishing to enter the
program should consult with the Director of Undergraduate Studies in the
Spring Quarter of their first year. Participation in the program must be
declared to the Director of Undergraduate Studies before registration.
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The major is comprised of twelve courses and a B.A. research paper.
Courses. There are four required courses in the major.
Of the eight remaining courses, five must either originate in or be cross-listed with Cinema and Media Studies. For these five courses, students are encouraged to choose broad survey courses as well as those with more focused topics, such as courses devoted to a single genre, director, or national cinema.
The other three courses needed to satisfy the requirements of the major may be taken from outside Cinema and Media Studies, in which case they must be chosen with a view toward how they can be brought to bear on the study of cinema in significant ways. For example, among these three one could imagine a group of courses focusing on art forms and media other than film, photography, and video (e.g., the visual arts, digital media, architecture, literature, theater, opera, dance); cross-disciplinary topics or sets of problems (e.g., the urban environment, violence and pornography, censorship, copyright and industry regulation, concepts of the public sphere, globalization); subfields within area studies (e.g., East Asian, South Asian, African American, Jewish studies); or traditional disciplines (e.g., history, anthropology/ethnography, philosophy, psychology, linguistics, sociology, political economy). Students choose these courses in consultation with the Director of Undergraduate Studies and are expected to briefly explain their rationale for taking them by the fourth week of the Winter Quarter of their third year.
B.A. Research Paper. A B.A. research paper is required of all students in the program. During the Spring Quarter of their third year, students meet with the Director of Undergraduate Studies to discuss the focus of their B.A. project, a process to be concluded by the seventh week of the quarter; they begin reading and research during the summer. By the Autumn Quarter of the fourth year students should have selected a project adviser and be prepared to present an outline of their project to the Senior Colloquium; writing and revising take place during the Winter Quarter. The final version is due by the fourth week of the quarter in which the student plans to graduate. The B.A. research paper typically consists of a substantial essay that engages a research topic in the history, theory, and criticism of film and/or other media. The essay may be supplemented by work in the medium of film or video. Registration for the B.A. research paper (CMST 29900) may not be counted toward distribution requirements for the concentration.
Grading. Students concentrating in Cinema and Media Studies must receive quality grades in all courses required for the concentration. Non-concentrators may take Cinema and Media Studies courses on a P/F basis if they receive prior consent from the instructor.
Honors. Students who have earned an overall GPA of 3.25 or higher and a GPA of 3.5 or higher in concentration courses may be nominated for honors. These honors are reserved for the student whose B.A. research paper shows exceptional intellectual and/or creative merit in the judgment of the first and the second readers, the Director of Undergraduate Studies, and the Master of the Humanities Collegiate Division.
Advising. By the fourth week of Autumn Quarter of the third year, each student is expected to obtain approval of his or her program of study from the Director of Undergraduate Studies. In choosing their three non-CMS electives, students are encouraged to take courses with and to consult with members of the resource faculty.
Calendar of
concentration deadlines
CMS Undergraduate Listhost
| Summary of Requirements | |
| 1 | Introduction to Film Analysis (CMST 10100) |
| 2 | History of International Cinema sequence (CMST 28500/CMST 28600) |
| 1 | Senior Colloquium (CMST 29800) |
| 5 | elective courses in Cinema and Media Studies (as specified) |
| 3 | further elective courses (as specified) |
| - | B.A. research paper |
| 12 | total courses |
Graduate Program | Graduate Courses || Recent Courses | Dissertations || Undergrad Courses | Undergrad Program | Undergrad Calendar
