What makes an informed and engaged citizen of media, culture, and society in the second quarter of the 21st century? This course will equip students with crucial skills for navigating contemporary media environments: how to engage in formal and visual analysis across media, how to be discerning consumers of information, and how to think critically about the political and economic systems that structure our heavily mediated lives. Critical terms for the study of media, such as industry, information, infrastructure, interactivity, networks, publics, screens, will be examined through the analysis of various media artifacts from photography, cinema, broadcast TV and digital platforms.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 30
Prerequisites: None. Open to First-Years and Sophomores, Juniors by permission of instructor.
Instructor: Staff
Distribution Requirements: ARS - Visual Arts, Music, Theater, Film and Video
Typical Periods Offered: Spring
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Fall; Spring
Notes:
This course introduces students to the study of audio-visual media, including oral, print, photographic, cinematic, broadcast, and digital media forms and practices. Using a case study approach, we will explore the nature of audio-visual communication/representation in historical, cultural, disciplinary, and media-specific contexts, and examine different theoretical and critical perspectives on the role and power of media to influence our social values, political beliefs, identities, and behaviors. We'll also consider how consumers of media representations can and do contest and unsettle their embedded messages. Our emphasis will be on developing the research and analytical tools, modes of reading, and forms of critical practice that can help us to negotiate the increasingly mediated world in which we live.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 30
Prerequisites: None.
Instructor: Staff
Distribution Requirements: ARS - Visual Arts, Music, Theater, Film and Video
Typical Periods Offered: Spring; Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes: Required weekly film screening.
In an age of algorithmic automation, mass surveillance, and the commodification of social relations, this course asks the question: is technology evil? Using that provocation as a means to investigate the design, use, and economics of social media and other digital objects, we will read a mix of academic and popular texts that treat new media as a problem—not as an unqualified ill, but as something to be carefully considered in all of its immense power and pervasiveness in everyday life. Through an introduction to the methodologies of visual analysis, and close reading, we will think critically about the role of mass media in the production of consuming subjects, of the representations of race, gender and sexuality in new media, and the nature and role of aesthetics and design in contemporary life.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 15
Prerequisites: None. Open to First-Years only.
Instructor: N. Gutierrez
Distribution Requirements: ARS - Visual Arts, Music, Theater, Film and Video
Other Categories: FYS - First Year Seminar
Typical Periods Offered: Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
This introductory course explores video as an art form. Organized around a series of assignments designed to survey a range of production strategies, the course is a primer to the technical and conceptual aspects of video production and to its historical, critical, and technical discourse. Relationships between video and television, film, installation, and performance art are investigated emphasizing video as a critical intervention in social and visual arts contexts. Weekly readings, screenings, discussions and critique, explore contemporary issues in video and help students develop individual aesthetic and critical skills. Practical knowledge is integrated through lighting, video/sound production and editing workshops.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 14
Crosslisted Courses: CAMS 135
Prerequisites: Open to First-Years, Sophomores, and Juniors. Seniors by permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Joskowicz
Distribution Requirements: ARS - Visual Arts, Music, Theater, Film and Video
Typical Periods Offered: Spring; Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Fall; Spring
Notes: Meets the Production requirement for CAMS majors. Ann E. Maurer '51 Speaking Intensive Course.
Photo I is a foundational studio course exploring key methods and concepts in photography and visual media. Technical skills will be addressed through camera and darkroom work, lighting, and the discussion of photographic images. Studio assignments, readings, discussions, lectures, gallery visits, and critiques will help students understand photography's broader role in contemporary art, history, and society. Aimed for first year and sophomore students, and those pursuing majors in Studio Art, MAS, or CAMS.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 12
Crosslisted Courses: CAMS 138
Prerequisites: None. Open to First-Years and Sophomores. Juniors and Seniors by permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Landeros
Distribution Requirements: ARS - Visual Arts, Music, Theater, Film and Video
Typical Periods Offered: Spring; Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Fall; Spring
Notes: Meets Production requirement for CAMS major.
This course investigates the technological, economic, and cultural determinants behind forms of media from the last 150 years, including the telephone, the telegraph, photography, and film, as well as new media like virtual reality and interactive media. If photography realized the desire to transcend mortality and early cinema fulfilled the dream to depict the world, their missions have been extended by technologies that seek to invent new worlds as well as material and virtual realities. Relying on a material theory of film and audio-visual media, the course examines both technologies of making and of circulation, exploring the commercial potential of the entertainment industry. The course will employ relevant texts, films, and other audio-visual artifacts.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 15
Prerequisites: One of the following - CAMS 100, CAMS 101, CAMS 105, ARTS 165/CAMS 135, ARTS 108/CAMS 138, ARTH 100, WRIT 107, any CAMS 200-level course, or permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Staff
Distribution Requirements: ARS - Visual Arts, Music, Theater, Film and Video
Typical Periods Offered: Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Fall
Notes:
Examining cinematic forms and styles, this course retraces film's emergence and development as an art and its relations to other artistic, cultural, technological, and socio-economic practices. Analysis of representative films will help understand cinema's relationship to reality, including its reproduction and construction of the "real," the changing terms of spectatorship, and the ways in which film aesthetics have been employed to build ideology and interrogate it. Understanding form as inextricably bound to content, we will appreciate the aesthetic significance of formal choices and innovations within particular films, directorial oeuvres, periods and movements, from classical Hollywood cinema to European New Waves of the 60s and 70s, to the contemporary cinemas of Asia and Latin America.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 15
Prerequisites: One of the following - CAMS 101, CAMS 105, ARTS 165/CAMS 135, ARTS 108/CAMS 138, ARTH 100, WRIT 107; or permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Morari
Distribution Requirements: ARS - Visual Arts, Music, Theater, Film and Video
Typical Periods Offered: Spring
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Spring
Notes:
This course explores the cinematic conventions and experiments employed by Chinese filmmakers over the past hundred years. Unique Chinese film genres such as left-wing melodrama, martial arts films and model play adaptations, as well as the three "new waves" in China's recent avant-garde cinema, will be examined and discussed. Individual filmic visions and techniques experimented with by important directors such as Fei Mu, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Zhang Yimou, and Jia Zhangke will be closely analyzed. Class discussions will aim to help students understand the history, politics, and aesthetics of Chinese cinema. Theoretical aspects of film studies will also be incorporated into class readings and discussions. No prior knowledge of China or film studies is required.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 25
Crosslisted Courses: CAMS 20 3
Prerequisites: None
Instructor: M. Song
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature; ARS - Visual Arts, Music, Theater, Film and Video
Typical Periods Offered: Every other year; Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Fall
Notes:
Photography is so much a part of our private and public lives, and it plays such an influential role in our environment, that we often forget to examine its aesthetics, meanings, and histories. This course provides an introduction to these analyses by examining the history of photography from the 1830s to the present. Considering fine arts and mass media practices, the class will examine the works of individual practitioners as well as the emergence of technologies, aesthetic directions, markets, and meanings.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 25
Crosslisted Courses: CAMS 20 7
Prerequisites: None. ARTH 100 strongly recommended.
Instructor: Berman
Distribution Requirements: ARS - Visual Arts, Music, Theater, Film and Video
Typical Periods Offered: Every other year
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
An introduction to writing for television. We’ll read, watch, and discuss pilot episodes of network and cable comedies and dramas. We'll study and practice the basics: script format, episode structure, story and character development, visual description. Each student will develop and write their own original TV pilot, and students will give and receive feedback through the workshop process.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 15
Crosslisted Courses: CAMS 20 8
Prerequisites: None.
Instructor: Lu
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Spring
Notes: Mandatory Credit/Non Credit. This course may be repeated once for credit.
The standard narrative of digital technologies is that they change the world for the better: they facilitate access to information and create new efficiencies in labor and entertainment. But does this story accurately reflect the impact of technology on global society? In this course, we will undertake a critical investigation of the seminal moments and objects in the history of computing, from cybernetics to social media. Along the way, we will work to focus on perspectives that have too often remained invisible in this history, for instance the gendered role of labor in computer programming and production and the prevalence of social bias in the design and function of technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 20
Prerequisites: None.
Instructor: N. Gutierrez
Distribution Requirements: ARS - Visual Arts, Music, Theater, Film and Video
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
This course explores the history and theory of queer cinema through the lens of contemporary media studies. Rather than separating film from other media, we will study the ways in which queer cinema has always trafficked with the broader landscape of queer cultural production, including literature, television, art, and activist speech. The course will thus ultimately examine queerness as a question of aesthetic form: How is queerness be rendered through experiments in filmic color? Or sound and sonics? Does transgender cinema represent a distinct genre of film or has it been part of queer cinema from the beginning?
To better understand these questions, we will situate our study of queer cinema and media within the history of LGBTQIA + political struggle, both in the United States and globally. We will study, for example, film and video production during the American AIDS crisis and examine its relationship to queer activism. We’ll also ask after the political promise of platforms like TikTok and Instagram: Do they have the potential to build queer utopia? Has social media inherited or betrayed the radical political vision of older queer cinemas?
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 20
Prerequisites: None.
Instructor: Gyenge
Distribution Requirements: ARS - Visual Arts, Music, Theater, Film and Video
Typical Periods Offered: Spring
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
In this course we will investigate the relationship between the individual, the mass, and the medium from the early twentieth century to today. We will begin with the phenomenon of mass media and the idea of popular culture as it has historically been constituted by the film, television, and radio industries. We will then turn our attention to contemporary algorithmic media, from streaming platforms like Netflix and Spotify to social media platforms like Instagram and Twitter. Through an engagement with major theoretical works in media studies and the formal analysis of media objects including films, TV shows, and video games, we will consider the ways that popular media across a range of historical and cultural contexts have been theorized in terms of identity, social control, and spectacle.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 20
Prerequisites: None.
Instructor: Gutierrez
Distribution Requirements: ARS - Visual Arts, Music, Theater, Film and Video
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
This course examines ecology’s intersection with cinema and media studies. Amidst climate change, ecological theorists have complicated boundaries between nature and technology and between humans and nonhumans. We will focus on the intersection of these ecological conversations with cinema and media studies. This course will consider a range of media, from mushrooms to cyborgs; explore cinematic innovations aimed at depicting nonhuman actors; discuss how media create their own environments; and cover topics like digital waste. Course readings will include a range of contemporary ecological perspectives, including texts from Feminist Science and Technology Studies, Black Studies, and Indigenous Critical Theory. We will apply these ideas in discussions of recent films.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 15
Crosslisted Courses: ES 219
Prerequisites: None
Instructor:
Distribution Requirements: ARS - Visual Arts, Music, Theater, Film and Video
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
Why is it that only a limited number of filmmakers and national cinemas figure prominently in histories of cinema? Why do film scholars tend to prioritize artistic direction and ignore the labor of technicians or seasonal employees? Why is Alice Guy-Blaché overshadowed by the “great men” who, it is claimed, “invented” cinema? With such questions in mind, we will re-scan conventional film historiography and claim places for previously overlooked individuals and practices. We seek to create an inclusive canon that acknowledges the work of women, minor cinemas, and indigenous communities. In an endeavor to decolonize film history, this course will take a global approach to cinema’s rich and vastly unsurveyed legacy of more than a century.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 20
Prerequisites: None
Instructor: Morari
Distribution Requirements: ARS - Visual Arts, Music, Theater, Film and Video
Typical Periods Offered: Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Fall
Notes:
This course will consider how documentary film and media have responded to the expansion of digital technology, the birth of social media, and a rapidly evolving media environment to engage with contemporary global concerns like climate change, migration, and rising authoritarian politics. Students will gain a familiarity with issues central to documentary studies like voice, authority, authenticity, and evidence and analyze a variety of non-fiction texts from the past twenty years, in media forms ranging from theatrical film and broadcast television to podcasts and documentary games. Assignments will include response papers, an analytical essay, and a class presentation.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 15
Prerequisites: None
Instructor: Staff
Distribution Requirements: ARS - Visual Arts, Music, Theater, Film and Video
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
This course surveys the history, theory, and practice of documentary film, considering the ways its forms and ethics have changed since the beginning of cinema. We study the major modes of the documentary, including cinema verité, direct cinema, investigative documentary, ethnographic film, agit-prop and activist media, and the personal essay, as well as recent forms such as the docudrama, the archival film, “mockumentary,” and Web-based forms. We will examine the “reality effects” of these works, focusing on the ways in which they create their authority. We will ask: How do these films shape notions of truth, reality, and point of view? What are the ethics and politics of representation and who speaks for whom when we watch a documentary? What do documentaries make visible or conceal?
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 20
Prerequisites: None
Instructor: Gyenge
Distribution Requirements: ARS - Visual Arts, Music, Theater, Film and Video
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
The history of Chicanxs and Latinnes on the big screen is a long and complicated one. To understand the changes that have occurred in the representation of the Chicanx/Latine community, this course proposes an analysis of films that traces various stereotypes to examine how those images have been perpetuated, altered, and ultimately resisted. From the Anglicizing of names to the erasure of racial backgrounds, the ways in which Chicanxs and Latines are represented has been contingent on ideologies of race, gender, class, and sexuality. We will examine how films have typecast Chicanas/Latinas as criminals or as "exotic" based on their status as women of color, and how filmmakers continue the practice of casting Chicanas/Latinas solely as supporting characters to male protagonists.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 25
Crosslisted Courses: CAMS 223
Prerequisites: None.
Instructor: Mata
Distribution Requirements: ARS - Visual Arts, Music, Theater, Film and Video
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
This course examines the films of a number of major Italian women directors across two artistic generations: Cavani and Wertmüller from the 1960s to the 1970s; Archibugi, Comencini, and others from the 1990s to the 2010s. Neither fascist cinema nor neorealism fostered female talents, so it was only with the emergence of feminism and the women's movement of the 1960s and 1970s that a space for female voices in Italian cinema was created. The course will explore how women directors give form to their directorial signatures in film, focusing on their films' formal features and narrative themes in the light of their socio-historical context.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 25
Crosslisted Courses: CAMS 224
Prerequisites:
Instructor: Laviosa
Distribution Requirements: ARS - Visual Arts, Music, Theater, Film and Video
Typical Periods Offered: Spring
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
How did cinema, originally hailed as a popular entertainment, achieve the social legitimacy that elevated it to the rank of an art form and an industrial force? This course examines the development of cinema as an institution from its origins to its present digital extensions, with a particular focus on the United States and its dominance in the domestic and global markets. Relying on academic scholarship, film criticism, and a selection of films, we will examine the historical, social, and aesthetic conditions that led to the creation of the movie theater, art houses, and multiplexes, as well as cinema's relationship to television and online streaming. The study of the screening technologies and physical spaces will be accompanied by an analysis of how race, gender, and class played in drawing in or keeping out moviegoers.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 20
Prerequisites: None.
Instructor: Morari
Distribution Requirements: ARS - Visual Arts, Music, Theater, Film and Video
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
Creative exploration of the moving image as it relates to digital methods of animation, video, and motion graphics. Hands-on production of audio, image, text, and time-based media synthesis, with a conceptual emphasis on nonlinear narrative, communication design, and visual expression. Screenings and lectures on historical and contemporary practices, coupled with readings and discussions of the theoretical, artistic, and cultural issues in the moving image.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 12
Crosslisted Courses: CAMS 230
Prerequisites: Any 100-level ARTS course, or ARTS 221/CAMS 239.
Instructor: Olsen
Distribution Requirements: ARS - Visual Arts, Music, Theater, Film and Video
Typical Periods Offered: Every other year
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes: Wendy Judge Paulson '69 Ecology of Place Living Laboratory course. This course does not satisfy the Natural and Physical Sciences Laboratory requirement.
This course introduces students to key analytic frameworks through which media and the mediation of culture have been examined. Using an anthropological approach, students will explore how media as representation and as cultural practice have been fundamental to the (trans)formation of modern sensibilities and social relations. We will examine various technologies of mediation-from the Maussian body as “Man's first technical instrument” to print capitalism, radio and cassette cultures, cinematic and televisual publics, war journalism, the digital revolution, and the political milieu of spin and public relations. Themes in this course include: media in the transformation of the senses; media in the production of cultural subjectivities and publics; and the social worlds and cultural logics of media institutions and sites of production.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 15
Crosslisted Courses: CAMS 232
Prerequisites: None
Instructor: Karakasidou
Distribution Requirements: SBA - Social and Behavioral Analysis
Typical Periods Offered: Every other year
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Fall
Notes:
This course examines Jews’ roles in the development of the American mass media and popular culture, as well as representations of Jewishness in a range of media from the turn of the 20th century to the present. We will focus on print, recorded, and broadcast media—including magazines, newspapers, pamphlets, record albums, radio, film, and television—and study some of the crucial figures in the histories of these cultural forms, while considering how Jewishness has been packaged for and presented to American audiences. Cultural productions studied will include Abie the Agent, The Jazz Singer, The Goldbergs, MAD Magazine, Annie Hall, Seinfeld, the New Yorker, and This American Life.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 30
Crosslisted Courses: CAMS 233
Prerequisites:
Instructor: Lambert
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature
Typical Periods Offered: Every other year; Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
A creative writing course in a workshop setting for those interested in the theory and practice of writing for film. This course focuses on the full-length feature film, both original screenplays and screen adaptations of literary work.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 15
Crosslisted Courses: CAMS 234
Prerequisites: None
Instructor: Cezair-Thompson
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature; ARS - Visual Arts, Music, Theater, Film and Video
Typical Periods Offered: Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Spring; Fall
Notes: Mandatory Credit/Non Credit. This course may be repeated once for credit.
An intermediate level studio that guides students through different approaches to film/video production while challenging linear narrative and documentary conventions. Students experiment with non-narrative approaches to content, structure, and technique. Investigations of space and performance are informed by poetry, literature, sound, color, fragmentation, and abstraction. Building upon the historical legacy of the moving image, students incorporate self-exploration, social critique, and manipulation of raw experience into an aesthetic form. Students develop independent or collaborative moving image and/or performance projects and articulate their artistic process through a series of presentations and critiques.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 14
Crosslisted Courses: CAMS 235
Prerequisites: Any 100-level ARTS course and either CAMS 101 or CAMS 201, or permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Joskowicz
Distribution Requirements: ARS - Visual Arts, Music, Theater, Film and Video
Typical Periods Offered: Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Fall
Notes: Meets the Production requirement for CAMS majors. CAMS majors who have taken CAMS 201 are encouraged to register for this class instead of ARTS 165/CAMS 135.
Photo II focuses on digital photography, photographic color theory, studio and location lighting, digital retouching, inkjet printing, and Adobe software. Assignments address contemporary and historic theories of photography as contemporary art and the aesthetic and cultural implications of the ubiquity of digital photography. Studio assignments, readings, discussions, lectures, gallery visits, and critiques will help students prepare for project-based work.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 12
Crosslisted Courses: CAMS 238
Prerequisites: Any 100-level ARTS course or permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Landeros
Distribution Requirements: ARS - Visual Arts, Music, Theater, Film and Video
Typical Periods Offered: Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Spring
Notes:
Introduction to artistic production through electronic imaging, manipulation, and output. Emphasis on expression, continuity, and sequential structuring of visuals through the integration of image, text, and motion. Image output for print, screen, and adaptive surfaces are explored in conjunction with production techniques of image capture, lighting, and processing. Lectures and screenings of historic and contemporary uses of technology for artistic and social application of electronic imaging.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 15
Crosslisted Courses: CAMS 239
Prerequisites: Any 100-level ARTS course.
Instructor: Olsen
Distribution Requirements: ARS - Visual Arts, Music, Theater, Film and Video
Typical Periods Offered: Spring
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
This course will serve as an introduction to representations of Asian/American women in film beginning with silent classics and ending with contemporary social media. In the first half of the course, we examine the legacy of Orientalism, the politics of interracial romance, the phenomenon of "yellow face", and the different constructions of Asian American femininity, masculinity, and sexuality. In the second half of the course, we look at "Asian American cinema" where our focus will be on contemporary works, drawing upon critical materials from film theory, feminist studies, Asian American studies, history, and cultural studies.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 25
Crosslisted Courses: CAMS 241
Prerequisites: None
Instructor: Creef
Distribution Requirements: ARS - Visual Arts, Music, Theater, Film and Video
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Spring
Notes:
This course explores the treatment of various types of love – for the beloved, the family, the community, the motherland or the divine – in Indian cinema, the largest film industry in the world. We examine Indian cinema's early phase in the colonial milieu, its flourishing in popular and art films since the 1950s, and contributions of diaspora Indians. We will watch films by prominent directors of the postcolonial era who articulated India’s national identity as well as the socio-religious and political aspirations of its common people integrating indigenous sacred symbolism. We will consider how several films reflect a religious sensitivity in portraying the motherland almost as a divine entity worthy of worship. Paying particular attention to the distinctive grammar of song, dance and intense drama, we will analyze the ways in which the film-makers reworked long-prevailing South Asian conventions of narration and performance in a medium imported from Europe.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 25
Crosslisted Courses: REL 223,CAMS 243
Prerequisites: None
Instructor: Shukla-Bhatt
Distribution Requirements: ARS - Visual Arts, Music, Theater, Film and Video
Typical Periods Offered: Spring
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
This will be a course about the future and how it is made. We will look at multiple modes of speculation, including financial speculation, speculative storytelling through fiction and cinema, and speculative political claims on new futures. Each of these modes of speculation will imagine and predict radically different futures, and each mode will tell us something crucial about economic, cultural, and political life in the US. We will study the rise of futures trading and money as a speculative media technology; read some of Octavia Butler’s fiction and watch sci-fi movies; and look at contemporary movements for debt cancellation, prison abolition, and climate justice. Readings will draw from film and media studies, Black feminism, queer theory, anti-colonialist thought, and Marxism.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 25
Crosslisted Courses: CAMS 245
Prerequisites: None
Instructor: Alexander
Distribution Requirements: SBA - Social and Behavioral Analysis
Typical Periods Offered: Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
Defying repeated prophecies of the “death of cinema,” 21st century filmmaking has shown extraordinary vitality across the globe. In this course, we will explore some of the remarkable cinema produced since the turn of the millennium, from both long-prominent filmmaking nations, such as the United States, Japan, and France, and cinematic domains new to international audiences, such as Romania, Taiwan, and Greece. We will study the complex interplay between aesthetic, ideological, economic, and technological concerns in a range of recent films, exploring how contemporary filmmakers combine traditional cinematic forms and emerging new media technologies, and the ways they are broadening and transforming the possibilities of filmmaking. We will aim to deepen both our appreciation and our understanding of some of the most compelling films made in recent decades, and of the cinematic medium itself.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 30
Prerequisites: None.
Instructor: Shetley
Distribution Requirements: ARS - Visual Arts, Music, Theater, Film and Video
Typical Periods Offered: Every other year
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 10
Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor and director of Cinema and Media Studies required.
Typical Periods Offered: Spring; Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Spring; Fall
Units: 0.5
Max Enrollment: 10
Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor and director of Cinema and Media Studies required.
Typical Periods Offered: Spring; Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Fall; Spring
This course will look at representations of prisons, policing, and criminality across US cinema history. We will watch a wide range of movies, from Thomas Edison’s 1901 recreation of Leon Czolgosz’s execution to classic noir, cop procedurals, crime thrillers, horror, and science fiction. Readings will draw from abolitionist, feminist, Marxist, and Black Radical traditions to guide our attention to the ideologies of crime, punishment, policing and incarceration that circulate in and spill out of US cinema. Readings will occasionally invite us to step back and think about the role of cinema in the production of what Ruth Wilson Gilmore and Jordan T. Camp have called “carceral commonsense.” In addition to Gilmore and Camp, authors will include Angela Y. Davis, Khalil Gibran Muhammed, Dylan Rodriguez, W.E.B Du Bois, Assata Shakur, Stuart Hall, Mariame Kaba, Jonathon Finn, Eric A. Stanley, Gina Dent, Simone Browne, and Erin Gray.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 25
Crosslisted Courses: CAMS 254
Prerequisites: None.
Instructor: Alexander
Distribution Requirements: ARS - Visual Arts, Music, Theater, Film and Video
Typical Periods Offered: Spring
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
Critical examination of the expanding field of information and interface design for interactive media. Emphasis will be on effective visual communication, information design, and creative content creation for online and digital platforms. Hands-on production will focus on design methods, theory, limitations leading to innovative approaches. Screenings and discussions on contemporary practices, theoretical, artistic, and cultural issues.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 15
Crosslisted Courses: CAMS 255
Prerequisites: Any 100-level ARTS course and either CS 110 or CS 111.
Instructor: Olsen
Distribution Requirements: ARS - Visual Arts, Music, Theater, Film and Video
Typical Periods Offered: Spring
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Spring
Notes:
This course focuses on cinematic productions made by African filmmakers and shot in Africa. We will critically examine the stakes of a "pan-African" approach to the study of African cinema. We will focus on the way contemporary African filmmakers use innovative experiments in the cinematic medium to create a dynamic and provocative dialogue with important aspects of African reality: on one hand, urbanization, migration, religious extremism, economic disparity, patriarchy; on the other, strong collectivities, indigenous solutions, gender fluidity, traditional and modern environmental awareness. We will follow how the video boom of the 80s and 90s that established Nollywood of Nigeria and Gollywood of Ghana consolidated a robust and faithful spectatorship in Africa and amongst the vast African diaspora. Through the study of specific techniques, we will track the ambition of contemporary African filmmakers to create and expand African cinematic aesthetics, target world audiences, and sustain a local spectatorship.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 18
Prerequisites: None.
Instructor: Prabhu
Distribution Requirements: ARS - Visual Arts, Music, Theater, Film and Video
Typical Periods Offered: Spring
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
This course will examine the history of cinema through the lens of American slavery. Outside of the classroom much of what we know, or think about slavery derives often from popular media-particularly through film and television. Can Hollywood do the work of historians? Does historical interpretation through film serve as useful, beneficial, or detrimental? Can we make an argument for the historical efficacy of films? What is the difference between historical accuracy and historical authenticity? In examining these films, we will take into account the time period, location, and the political and social context in which they were created. We will see how much film tells us about slavery and, most importantly, what film might tell us about ourselves. Through a critical reading of a range of historical works, cultural critiques and primary sources, students will have a better comprehension of how historians and filmmakers both differ or find mutual agreement in their understanding of the past.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 25
Crosslisted Courses: CAMS 271
Prerequisites: None
Instructor: Jackson
Distribution Requirements: ARS - Visual Arts, Music, Theater, Film and Video
Typical Periods Offered: Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
A journey through the dark side of the American cinematic imagination. Emerging during World War II and its aftermath, Film Noir presents a pessimistic, morally ambiguous inversion of Hollywood uplift, delivered in glamorous visual style. This course will explore Film Noir from its origins, through the revival of the genre in the early 1970s, to its ongoing influence in contemporary cinema, as noir has expanded beyond Hollywood to become a global form. We'll pay particular attention to noir's transformation of cinematic style, and to its representations of masculinity and femininity. Films that may be studied include Howard Hawks's The Big Sleep, Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity, Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye, Roman Polanski's Chinatown, and David Lynch's Mulholland Drive.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 30
Prerequisites: None.
Instructor: Shetley
Distribution Requirements: ARS - Visual Arts, Music, Theater, Film and Video
Typical Periods Offered: Every other year
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
This course examines the cinematic output of Nazi Germany as a test case for the development of film as propaganda. We consider the cinematic medium as entertainment and as a cultural event with the potential to influence a population. We trace the forebears of Nazi film, including WWI propaganda produced in Britain, France and Germany and Soviet films made to serve the revolutionary agenda. We examine the ways in which Goebbels' Ministry of Propaganda deployed both overtly propagandist films and films that couched Nazi ideals in narratives from melodrama to fantasy, and examine whether films could exceed their official aims and become subversive. And we consider post-WWII developments: the continuing careers of producers of propaganda and the ways that modern media shapes new forms of propaganda.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 25
Crosslisted Courses: CAMS 286
Prerequisites: None.
Instructor: Hans
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature; ARS - Visual Arts, Music, Theater, Film and Video
Typical Periods Offered: Spring; Every three years
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Spring
Notes:
In 1895, the first movie camera filmed workers leaving a factory. That movie camera has been replaced by a security camera that both protects and monitors those workers. From the early cameras to the latest technologies, the history of cinema and media can be understood as a recurrent series of surveillance techniques. This course examines surveillance technologies and monitoring practices to explore how technology and ideology came to play together in audio-visual forms. We will examine the politics and ethics of security and surveillance, stretching from the first manifestations of voyeuristic photography to such modern forms as drones, GPS and user security on social media. Course materials will include readings as well as features, documentaries and video installations.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 14
Prerequisites: CAMS 201 or CAMS 202, or permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Morari
Distribution Requirements: ARS - Visual Arts, Music, Theater, Film and Video
Typical Periods Offered: Every other year
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
This course will familiarize students with media archaeology as an alternative methodology to the study of film and media. Three major events occurred in 21st-century media that make classical methodologies obsolete: the proliferation of digital technologies; the emergence of new media industries in Asia, Latin America, and Africa; and the loss of cachet of European art film. Instead of insisting on cinema’s uniqueness as an art form, media archaeology examines how cinema’s past has been embedded in other media practices, other technologies and social uses. By foregrounding a media archaeology approach, this course will examine cinema history in interaction and competition with other forms of entertainment, scientific pursuits, practical applications and military uses.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 12
Prerequisites: CAMS 201 or CAMS 202.
Instructor: Morari
Distribution Requirements: ARS - Visual Arts, Music, Theater, Film and Video
Typical Periods Offered: Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
What does it mean to be human in the digital age? Where do modern Western ideas of humanity or subjectivity come from, and how are they changing in an age of global commerce and digital technology? In this course, we will explore these questions under the broad rubric of posthumanism, a multi-disciplinary body of literature which is concerned with the ways that the concepts of humanism and identity are manifest with and through modern technology. We will investigate posthumanism and related concepts from multiple perspectives: cultural, historical, philosophical, and aesthetic, with a particular emphasis on representations of identity and labor in popular culture, from film and television to digital media.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 12
Prerequisites: CAMS 201 or CAMS 202, or permission of the instructor.
Instructor: N. Gutierrez
Distribution Requirements: ARS - Visual Arts, Music, Theater, Film and Video
Typical Periods Offered: Spring
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
This seminar explores ethnographic film as a genre for representing "reality," anthropological knowledge and cultural lives. We will examine how ethnographic film emerged in a particular intellectual and political economic context as well as how subsequent conceptual and formal innovations have shaped the genre. We will also consider social responses to ethnographic film in terms of the contexts for producing and circulating these works; the ethical and political concerns raised by cross-cultural representation; and the development of indigenous media and other practices in conversation with ethnographic film. Throughout the course, we will situate ethnographic film within the larger project for representing "culture," addressing the status of ethnographic film in relation to other documentary practices, including written ethnography, museum exhibitions, and documentary film.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 15
Crosslisted Courses: CAMS 30 5
Prerequisites: ANTH 301 or two 200-level units in anthropology, cinema and media studies, economics, history, political science, or sociology or permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Staff
Distribution Requirements: SBA - Social and Behavioral Analysis
Typical Periods Offered: Every other year
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
In Advanced Writing for Television, we’ll pick up where Writing for Television left off. Students will continue to practice the skills of writing teleplays—character and story development; structure and arc; tension and conflict; audience, premise, and tone; scenes, description, action, and dialogue; and voice and clarity. We’ll start by studying a range of TV shows: comedies, dramas, web series, and others. Through reading scripts, watching shows, and discussing both in class, students will develop a more advanced and specific understanding of what makes a show work. Through their own writing, students will practice applying the lessons they’ve learned. In the workshop process, we’ll discuss everything that comes up in students’ scripts—what’s working, what’s not, and what we can all learn about TV writing from each example.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 15
Crosslisted Courses: CAMS 30 8
Prerequisites: CAMS 208/ENG 208
Instructor: Holmes
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature
Typical Periods Offered: Every other year
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes: Mandatory Credit/Non Credit
This course examines how the over 4,000 annual film festivals impact the economics, circulation, and aesthetics of cinema. Events like Cannes, Berlin, and Venice may be known for glitzy red carpet premieres but are also important nodes in the global film market; less well-known, local, or niche festivals bring communities together and raise awareness about social issues. Students will learn the history of major A-level festivals and examine their global geopolitical implications. Furthermore, academic texts from the new and burgeoning subfield of festival studies will help us consider film’s role in conversations about human rights, environmentalism, and LGBTQ+ identity. Students will compare festival histories, objectives, and programming to construct arguments about how festivals have impacted global film circulation. Students will also plan a hypothetical festival to think through the practical concerns of programming.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 14
Prerequisites: Either CAMS 201 or CAMS 202, and an additional 200-level CAMS course.
Instructor: Morari
Distribution Requirements: ARS - Visual Arts, Music, Theater, Film and Video
Typical Periods Offered: Every other year
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Fall
Notes:
Introduction to the design and production of three-dimensional objects and spaces using industry-standard modeling software. Overview of basic modeling, surface design, and camera techniques. Emphasis on creative application of the media, in relation to architectural, experimental, and time-based forms. Screenings and lectures on traditional and contemporary practices, coupled with readings and discussions of the theoretical, artistic, and cultural issues in the virtual world.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 15
Crosslisted Courses: CAMS 313
Prerequisites: Any ARTS course. Strong computer familiarity needed.
Instructor: Olsen
Distribution Requirements: ARS - Visual Arts, Music, Theater, Film and Video
Typical Periods Offered: Every other year
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
What is “real” and what is “reality” in an age of artificial intelligence, photorealistic (but fake) images, and immersive simulations like VR? In this course we will investigate these questions from a historical, theoretical, and aesthetic perspective. We will examine a range of media, from 19th century immersive technologies like the stereoscope to contemporary digital media like video games to VR, in order to situate them both within and against traditions of aesthetic realism, in both Western and Non-Western countries. Through an examination of these and other objects, our goal will be to develop a set of tools for interpreting reality and realism as historical concepts that change over time with and through the evolution of media technologies.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 12
Prerequisites: CAMS 201 or CAMS 202 or permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Gutierrez
Distribution Requirements: ARS - Visual Arts, Music, Theater, Film and Video
Typical Periods Offered: Spring
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
Various topics in New Media are explored through research, creative activity, and theoretical discussion. Topics address historical as well as contemporary issues that bridge art and technology. This is an advanced level New Media course giving students the opportunity to focus on personal projects, explore contemporary and historical new media concepts as well as receive critiques from other students. Topics covered will focus on media history and research, contemporary intermedia artists, designers, thinkers and scientists, along with readings and discussions. Collaboration will be encouraged between Studio Art, Architecture, Music, CAMS, Media Arts, Theater and Computer Science. This course may be used to fulfill the capstone requirement for MAS.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 15
Crosslisted Courses: CAMS 321
Prerequisites: Two 200-level courses in ARTS, CAMS, or MAS.
Instructor: Olsen
Distribution Requirements: ARS - Visual Arts, Music, Theater, Film and Video
Typical Periods Offered: Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Fall
Notes: This course may be repeated once for credit.
We constantly describe films with labels like action, horror, rom-com, sci-fi, musical, western, but where do those categories come from, and how do we decide what belongs within them? This course will explore the concept of film genre in terms both theoretical and practical. We’ll examine the antecedents of cinema’s genre system in literary criticism, read key works of film genre theory, and watch films in a wide range of genres. Among the questions we’ll address are: How do ideas about genre help us understand the cinematic experience? How do genre categories influence the production and marketing of films, and the discourse around them? How do ideas about genre connect to social identities, such as race and gender, to create categories like “chick flick” or “Blaxploitation”? What criteria differentiate the genres we value from those we don’t?
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 15
Prerequisites: Either CAMS 201 or CAMS 202, and an additional 200-level CAMS course.
Instructor: Shetley
Distribution Requirements: ARS - Visual Arts, Music, Theater, Film and Video
Typical Periods Offered: Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Spring
Notes:
This course will explore a wide range of writing on current film and television, thinking about the forms of contemporary discourse on the moving image and ways our own writing can join the conversation. We will read and write reviews, trend pieces, and star studies, bringing our specialized knowledge as moving image enthusiasts to bear on pieces intended to speak to and engage a broad reading public. Students will develop and present their writing in workshop discussions, and serve as editors to their peers. Readings from classic and contemporary writers on film and television will help us refine our sense of what makes writing on media illuminating, accessible, and compelling.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 12
Prerequisites: CAMS 202 or permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Shetley
Distribution Requirements: ARS - Visual Arts, Music, Theater, Film and Video
Other Categories: CSPW - Calderwood Seminar in Public Writing
Typical Periods Offered: Spring
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
This advanced-level projects class centers on the production and critique of individual lens-based media, including film/video, photography, and digital time-based media. Students will develop semester-long projects and will articulate their artistic process through a series of presentations and critiques over the semester structured alongside screenings, readings, invited lectures, and discussions that investigate various positions from artists and directors on the dynamics of space on screen. This is a project-based rather than an assignment-based class, and students will be encouraged to try new techniques and exercises as their work progresses over the semester. Students work individually and in groups and will participate in their peers' production exercises.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 14
Crosslisted Courses: CAMS 335
Prerequisites: One of the following - ARTS 165/CAMS 135, ARTS 208/CAMS 238, ARTS 265/CAMS 235, ARTS 308/CAMS 338, ARTS 221/CAMS 239, ARTS 255/CAMS 255, ARTS 260/CAMS 230, ARTS 313/CAMS 313, ARTS 321/CAMS 321, or permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Joswkowicz
Distribution Requirements: ARS - Visual Arts, Music, Theater, Film and Video
Typical Periods Offered: Spring
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Spring
Notes: Meets the Capstone requirement for MAS majors.
Advanced explorations of aesthetic and content issues through the use of both traditional light-sensitive and digital methodologies. Advanced photographic techniques and equipment will be presented in response to each student's work. Continued emphasis is placed on research into the content and context of the photographic image in contemporary practice through visiting artist events as well as gallery and museum visits.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 12
Crosslisted Courses: CAMS 338
Prerequisites: One of the following - ARTS 108/CAMS 138, ARTS 208/CAMS 238, ARTS 221/CAMS 239; or permission of the instructor required.
Instructor: Nhamo
Distribution Requirements: ARS - Visual Arts, Music, Theater, Film and Video
Typical Periods Offered: Spring
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Spring
Notes:
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 15
Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Open to juniors and seniors.
Typical Periods Offered: Spring; Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Spring; Fall
Units: 0.5
Max Enrollment: 10
Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor.
Typical Periods Offered: Spring; Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Spring; Fall
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 15
Prerequisites: Permission of the director.
Typical Periods Offered: Spring; Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Fall; Spring
Notes: Students enroll in Senior Thesis Research (360) in the first semester and carry out independent work under the supervision of a faculty member. If sufficient progress is made, students may continue with Senior Thesis (370) in the second semester.
This advanced-level studio class is for students interested in exploring the relationship between architecture, narrative and digital space. The class will begin with research into filmic environments that utilize place, architecture and objects as narrative tools. We will look at the use of interiors and exteriors, circulation between spaces, and the use of props and/or computer generated imagery to create space. Our focus will be on the construction of cinematic space as a formal and conceptual component of storytelling. Using architecture, installation, performance, film, and literature as guides to navigating both constructed and conceptual landscapes, students projects will explore advanced strategies of image and sound manipulation, both technical and conceptual. Students will develop semester-long projects and will articulate their artistic process through a series of presentations and critiques over the semester focusing on a project that integrates digital and physical narrative spaces.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 14
Crosslisted Courses: CAMS 366
Prerequisites: One of the following - CAMS 101, ARTS165/ CAMS 135, ARTS 265/ CAMS 235, ARTS 216, an MIT Architecture Studio, or permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Joskowicz
Distribution Requirements: ARS - Visual Arts, Music, Theater, Film and Video
Typical Periods Offered: Every other year
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 25
Prerequisites: CAMS 360 and permission of the department.
Typical Periods Offered: Spring; Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Spring; Fall
Notes: Students enroll in Senior Thesis Research (360) in the first semester and carry out independent work under the supervision of a faculty member. If sufficient progress is made, students may continue with Senior Thesis (370) in the second semester.