Undergraduate Program

This course provides a broad overview and introduction to media. We will cover histories of different types of media (internet, radio, audio recordings, television, cable, film, journalism, magazines, advertising, public relations, etc.) as well as various theories and approaches to studying media. No prior knowledge is necessary, but a real interest and willingness to explore a variety of media will come in handy. Occasional outside screenings will be required (but if you cannot attend the scheduled screenings, you may watch the films on your own time through the Multimedia Center reserves.) Students will be evaluated based on assigned writing, classroom discussion leading, participation, short quizzes, midterm exam and final exam.

Location

Meliora Room 203 (TR 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

This course introduces the basic aesthetic and technical elements of video production. Emphasis is on the creative use and understanding of the video medium while learning to use the video camera, video editing processes and the fundamental procedures of planning video projects. Strategies for the use of video as an art-making tool will be explored. Works by artists and directors critically exploring media of film and video will be viewed and discussed. Video techniques will be studied through screenings, group discussions, readings, practice sessions and presentations of original video projects made during the course. Sophomores and Juniors with officially declared FMS and SA majors are given priority registration; followed by sophomores and juniors with officially declared FMS and SA minors. Studio arts supplies fee: $75. To be added to the rolling waiting list contact Jason Middleton.

Location

Sage Arts Center Room 101 (MW 10:25AM - 1:05PM)

This course introduces the basic aesthetic and technical elements of video production. Emphasis is on the creative use and understanding of the video medium while learning to use the video camera, video editing processes and the fundamental procedures of planning video projects. Strategies for the use of video as an art-making tool will be explored. Works by artists and directors critically exploring media of film and video will be viewed and discussed. Video techniques will be studied through screenings, group discussions, readings, practice sessions and presentations of original video projects made during the course. Sophomores and Juniors with officially declared FMS and SA majors are given priority registration; followed by sophomores and juniors with officially declared FMS and SA minors. Studio arts supplies fee: $75.

Location

Sage Arts Center Room 101 (TR 4:50PM - 7:30PM)

This course will survey the way in which Jewish music and film engaged the issues of Jewish history, memory, and identity. The first half of the course will focus on the cultural and religious role of song and music in Judaism from their Biblical origins to contemporary Klezmer. The second part of the course will explore the medium of film for the portrayal of Jews, the gendered dimensions of Jewish religious and daily life, as well as formative events in Jewish history. Our discussions of both music and film will aim to contextualise Jewish life and culture in broader discourses of the surrounding society. We will also reflect on geographical and ethnic differences, such as the Sephardi-Ashkenazi divide, cultural influences on the Jews in Yemen and North Africa, Europe and North America. We will also trace enduring themes such as spirituality, suffering, redemption, and personal/world repair (tiqqun) that have played an important role in the development of Jewish culture.

Location

Hylan Building Room 101 (T 3:25PM - 6:05PM)

This course merges contemporary art production with technologies and social interventions. Students will combine historical, inter-media approaches with new, evolving trends in social practice. Students will deploy introductory level techniques to create new works at the intersection of art, design, and technology. Not open to seniors. Studio Art lab fee applied.

Location

Sage Arts Center Room 108 (MW 4:50PM - 7:30PM)

“Miracles are a retelling in small letters,” said C.S. Lewis, “of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.” In recent years, Korean film and television has taken the world by storm in what is no small miracle of marketing, technology, and story-telling, but what does contemporary Korean film and television render visible that would otherwise be difficult to see? Onscreen interactions with the supernatural, divine, or horrific provide a unique medium for myth-making, identity formation, and world-building. In this course students will explore the ways in which religion in Korean film and television confront mortality and collective anxieties, and how the interaction between the religious and nonreligious serve as sites for the construction and interrogation of nation, race, gender, identity, modernity, cosmology, and moral discourse.

Location

Frederick Douglass Room 420 (MW 3:25PM - 4:40PM)

In recent years, both on a local and on a national level, the word “Heimat" has played a prominent role in German politics. In 2018 it was added to the name of the Ministry of the Interior, and now that ministry is often called the “Heimatministerium.” It is not a coincidence that the rising prominence of this term has been accompanied by increasingly open and mainstream attacks against immigrants, asylum seekers, trans and non-binary people, and other marginalized groups. The term, which can be loosely translated as “homeland” in English, invokes a nostalgic yearning for an idyllic harmonious past, but this past is an imaginary one. Throughout its history, Heimat has often been closely tied to discourses of the nation and national identity, and the process of creating this homeland is an exclusionary one that tries to establish clear boundaries between who belongs. This course will explore representations of Heimat and attempts to redefine and resist the concept in German film, literature and politics from post-WWII to the present. Materials and discussions will be in English. 

Location

Hylan Building Room 305 (MW 10:25AM - 11:40AM)

In the decade preceding the collapse of the USSR, rock music became a galvanizing force for change and an enduring cultural commodity for the last Soviet generation.  The traditionally western musical genre, often maligned by the establishment for its alleged propaganda of anti-socialist ideology, quickly infiltrated everyday like in the USSR and, subsequently, other art forms; most notably, the high regimented Soviet film industry.  This course will examine the representation of rock music in Soviet, post-Soviet and contemporary Russian cinema and will raise questions about the ways in which film popular music engages with sociopolitical events and acts as a destabilizing agent for totalitarianism. Taught in English.

Location

Lattimore Room 401 (MW 10:25AM - 11:40AM)

What is the self, and where can we find it? What do we see when we look in the mirror, in a photograph, or in a short video? What role do these and other optical media play in the search for the self? Can the self be represented visually? In this new seminar, students will engage with these and other questions posed by a diverse range of texts and other media. Course materials will be drawn from literature, philosophy, and other media contemporaneous to the invention and reception of various visual media, such as photography and film in the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries This course is designed for all undergraduates. Emphasis on developing close reading and media literacy skills. Instruction and discussion will be in English and all course materials will be in English or in English translation

Location

Morey Room 205 (TR 11:05AM - 12:20PM)

This course will explore various concepts of mobility and encounters within ethnographic films and texts. Questions we will investigate include: How does one represent a culture? What notions of race, gender, sexuality and national identities are reinforced and challenged in these works? Who speaks for whom and what are the consequences? What kinds of power relationships are hidden or made visible in these films and texts?

Location

Lechase Room 161 (MW 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

This course explores three of Italy’s mostprominent postwar directors, Federico Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni and Liliana Cavani, who developed distinct cinemas and contributed radical representations to key cultural debates. 
Students will examine each filmmaker’s specific formal and thematic innovations, such as Fellini’s 
carnivalesque and dreamlike states, Antonioni’s use of space and color, and Cavani’s marginal 
figures and use of flashback. Students will also compare how their works address three of postwar 
Italy’s and the West’s most critical questions: modernization, the 1968 student protests and the 
legacy of Fascism. Films include: Fellini’s La Dolce Vita and Amarcord; Antonioni’s Red Desert and 
Zabriskie Point; Cavani’s The Cannibals and The Night Porter. Assignments include: historical, 
biographical and critical readings, film screenings, short papers and a final essay. Readings will 
be in English and films will be shown with English subtitles

Location

(TR 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

Moving images recorded on analog film defined the 20th century in an unprecedented way. This course considers the tangible object that is the source of the image onscreen, and the social, cultural, and historical value of a reel of film as an organic element with a finite life cycle. We focus on the analog photographic element and its origins (both theatrical and small gauge), the basics of photochemical film technology, and the state of film conservation and preservation worldwide. Guest lectures by staff of the Moving Image Department of George Eastman Museum provide a first-hand look at film preservation in action, allowing us to consider analog film as an ephemeral form of material culture: a multipurpose, visual record that is art, entertainment, evidentiary document, and historical artifact. Weekly film assignments. Class meets on River Campus and at George Eastman Museum (900 East Ave, no admission fee; STUDENTS PROVIDE THEIR OWN TRANSPORTATION FOR CLASSES OFF CAMPUS). No audits, no pre-requisites. Enrollment limited by hands-on nature of course and meeting space capacity.

Location

Wegmans Room 1009 (R 2:00PM - 4:40PM)

This class explores global trends in film history from 1989 to the present. In considering the contemporary period of cinema, we will look at the technical, social, and formal aspects of the medium. Of interest will be new digital technologies for production, post-production, and exhibition in both commercial and independent filmmaking (e.g., CGI, HD, Motion Capture, High Frame Rate), all of which are linked to a network culture that emerges after 1989. We will also focus on geopolitical developments and social upheavals such as the end of the Cold War, the events of September 11, 2001, economic and cultural globalization, and the post-2008 financial crisis as all these altered various national/regional cinemas and genres (e.g., the spy film, the horror movie, the comedy-drama, and action movies). We will screen the works of major figures in late twentieth century and early twenty-first century world cinema from the United States, Mexico, China, and Hong Kong to Palestine, Iran, India, and Senegal. 

Location

Gavett Hall Room 301 (TR 3:25PM - 4:40PM)

What makes a metropolis so fascinating, disorienting, or dreadful? Is it the history, the people, or the never-ending parade of sights and sounds? In this course, we journey through four major urban centers in East Asia—Shanghai, Tokyo, Seoul, and Taipei—by examining their kaleidoscopic reflections in literature and film. We will come across city narratives composed from a medley of perspectives: Shanghai seen by Japanese writer Yokomitsu Riichi and by Chinese writer Wei Hui; Tokyo through the eyes of edokko (“Edo/Tokyo native”) writer Tanizaki Junichirō, zainichi (“resident Korean in Japan”) writer Yū Miri, and Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-Hsien. While appreciating the stories, we will learn about the complicated histories of each metropolis and acquire skills to critically analyze how a physical place can be transformed into metaphors for modernity, turmoil, sentimentality, (dis)connection, and so on. Taught in English.

Location

Lattimore Room 401 (TR 4:50PM - 6:05PM)

This course uses video and moving images to explore the intersectional roots of the ecological crisis, from pandemics to racial justice and climate disruption. Guided by Félix Guattari's "The Three Ecologies," students will develop Eco-cinematic consciousness through projects involving installation, sound, and networked media, examined within a critical environmental arts framework.  Instructor Permission. Studio Art lab fee applied.

Location

Sage Arts Center Room 101 (MW 2:00PM - 4:40PM)

This course will trace the history of music in film from the inception of silent motion pictures in the late 19th century to present-day productions. Will consider how the aural and visual aspects of the medium interact dramatically and how the music can enhance or otherwise influence interpretation of what is happening on the screen.

Location

Dewey Room 1305 (TR 2:00PM - 3:15PM)

Only some people have direct experience with war, but almost all people have very firm ideas about what war is like––Writing war (writing about war; describing literal wars or fictionalizing them) is as old as writing itself, and war writing a staple of reading. We will think about the "encounter" with war in reading. With a selection of texts drawn heavily from the World Wars of the twentieth century, we will investigate questions of how war is represented in different media. We will learn how to translate our reading into our own writing. This course is designed to introduce students to the practice of critical reading and textual analysis, practices that are the cornerstone of the humanistic / social science disciplines. All reading and discussion in English, primary German reading available for additional credit.  

Location

Lechase Room 104 (TR 9:40AM - 10:55AM)

Get an overview of what’s happening in scripted television today as you find ways to refine your own pilot and series idea for the market.
 
There is a plethora of new and exciting shows being released in this current television era. For a new writer, the sheer number of genres and the type of shows can be overwhelming, and you might find yourself at a loss in determining the best way to convey the story you wish to tell. In this course you get a brief overview of some current pilots selected across genres, but demonstrate that regardless of the type, setting, and world of a show, the most successful pilots have certain structural and storytelling elements in common. You learn how to formulate and refine an idea for your own pilot script and receive advice on how to survive the inevitable rough spots you will face in a career in television.
 

Location

Meliora Room 224 (TR 2:00PM - 3:15PM)

Apart from his infamous cameos, Alfred Hitchcock was a filmmaker who wanted his presence—seen or unseen—felt by his audience. When you watch a Hitchcock film, you are meant to be acutely aware that it is Hitchcock’s film. This course examines how exactly that works. More than a proper noun, “Hitchcock” implies a formal style, a dramatic genre and a paradigm of postwar Auteurism and influence. This course revolves around a close examination of fifteen out of the director’s fifty films, as well as samples from his television series. Without pardoning his socially insensitive shortcomings (i.e. misogynist “heroes,” mistreatment of leading ladies, use of blackface, etc.) we will unpack just what constitutes the “Hitchcock” touch. From his British silents to his Hollywood “masterpieces” to his final works, this course considers the ways in which Hitchcock devised a relation among narrative, spectator and character point of view, so as to yield his singular configuration of suspense, sensation and perception. 

Location

Hylan Building Room 102 (MW 11:50AM - 1:05PM)

This course examines the philosophical, aesthetic, and social issues that are central to classical film theory. It traces the historical development of film theory from 1900 to the 1950s. We will begin with thinkers in the period of early cinema, including Germaine Dulac, Jean and Marie Epstein, and then we will examine the development of film theory in the work of later theorists, such as Jean Mitry, Sergei Eisenstein, Dziga Vertov, Siegfried Kracauer, Walter Benjamin, Andre Bazin, and Christian Metz. Weekly screenings of historically contemporary films will allow us to examine the ongoing dialogue between the evolving medium and the developing theoretical discussion.

Location

Morey Room 504 (MW 3:25PM - 4:40PM)

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Location

( 7:00PM - 7:00PM)

Registration for Independent Study courses needs to be completed thru the instructions for online independent study registration.

Location

( 7:00PM - 7:00PM)

The FMS Capstone provides a collaborative learning environment in which students have the opportunity to create a sustained project in their senior year. The project will represent a culmination of the student’s creative and academic goals and work within the major. The Capstone includes peer and instructor feedback on works-in-progress, hands-on instruction, workshops with visiting filmmakers and media professionals, and screening and discussion of films relevant to students’ creative work. Student projects may include: a film/video in the categories of narrative, documentary, or experimental; a group of shorter film/video projects in those same categories or shorter-form genres like music video or videographic essay; an article-length research paper.  Prerequisite of FMST/SART/ENGL 161: Introduction to Video Art or equivalent training in film/video production. Instructor’s permission required.

Location

Morey Room 403 (W 10:25AM - 1:00PM)

This course examines the philosophical, aesthetic, and social issues that are central to classical film theory. It traces the historical development of film theory from 1900 to the 1950s. We will begin with thinkers in the period of early cinema, including Germaine Dulac, Jean and Marie Epstein, and then we will examine the development of film theory in the work of later theorists, such as Jean Mitry, Sergei Eisenstein, Dziga Vertov, Siegfried Kracauer, Walter Benjamin, Andre Bazin, and Christian Metz. Weekly screenings of historically contemporary films will allow us to examine the ongoing dialogue between the evolving medium and the developing theoretical discussion.

Location

Morey Room 504 (MW 3:25PM - 4:40PM)