Film Studies

Minor

Film Studies is an interdisciplinary program that draws on a wide variety of approaches. In completing the minor, students will become familiar with the theoretical and cultural contexts from which we approach film and other visual media.

The program understands films as points of access to diverse cultural traditions, and visual media as shapers of contemporary political, economic, and social life. One emphasis of the program is aesthetic and formal analysis. The technical and theoretical principles that govern visual media reward careful analysis, especially in exemplary or problematic instances. Another emphasis is the complex relationship between these media and the societies that create them.

Students begin the program with an introduction to film's history, language, and technological development. Students then take at least one course in the theoretical principles that shape our understanding of contemporary visual media, and at least one course in the relationship between these media and a particular culture. Minors will then take two additional courses in theory or culture.

Film Studies thus hopes to create thoughtful, literate consumers and critics of contemporary visual media.