* FILM 0100a / ENGL 0831a / HUMS 0125a, Love and Death in American Film  Moeko Fujii

How do we detect when love begins—or when it ends? This course explores film noir—perhaps the most “American” of film genres—where love is rarely safe and often fatal. Rather than celebrating the formation of the American couple, noir constructs triangles that unsettle the couple form. These complications challenge the ideal of romantic love and open the door to difference and uncertainty—an ambiguity that carries its own kind of erotic charge. Like the detectives who move through these dark worlds, we follow shifting figures such as the stranger, the femme fatale, the double, and the alien. We look at how race, gender, class, and sexuality intersect with drive and desire—who or what draws us toward finding love—and how these forces help shape ideas of both “the American” and American film itself. We study key works from classic Hollywood film alongside neo-noirs from New Hollywood and contemporary cinema that inherit and transform noir’s obsessions. Students develop skills in close film analysis and acquire a theoretical toolkit for thinking critically about cinema and desire. Enrollment limited to first-year students.  HU
T 1:30pm-3:25pm, M 7pm-10pm

FILM 1501a / CPLT 1501a / HUMS 1501a, Introduction to Film Studies  Staff

A survey of film studies concentrating on theory, analysis, and criticism. Students learn the critical and technical vocabulary of the subject and study important films in weekly screenings. Prerequisite for the major.  WR, HU  0 Course cr
HTBA

* FILM 1620b / ART 1942b, Introductory Documentary Filmmaking  A.L. Steiner

The art and craft of documentary filmmaking. Basic technological and creative tools for capturing and editing moving images. The processes of research, planning, interviewing, writing, and gathering of visual elements to tell a compelling story with integrity and responsibility toward the subject. The creation of nonfiction narratives. Issues include creative discipline, ethical questions, space, the recreation of time, and how to represent "the truth."  RP
W 1:30pm-5:30pm

FILM 2407b / CPLT 1430b / HUMS 1900b, Cinema in the World  Moira Fradinger

Development of ways to engage films from around the globe productively. Close analysis of a dozen complex films, with historical contextualization of their production and cultural functions. Attention to the development of critical skills. Includes weekly screenings, each followed immediately by discussion.  HU  0 Course cr
HTBA

* FILM 2540a / ENGL 2151a, Skin and Surface: Fashion and Culture  Moeko Fujii

What do we mean by fashion? This course explores the intimate relationship between film, fashion, and various modes of self-fashioning and unfashioning. By examining the sartorial—what, or whom, we wear—in literature and film, we consider the ramifications of style in discourses on race and gender. We study films, novels, and photography that focus on garments in ways that highlight the complex relationship among material histories, social fabrics, and notions of the corporeal and the human. Along the way, we unsettle the easy yet stubborn distinction between surface and interiority. From Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo to Wendell B. Harris’s Chameleon Street, Frederick Wiseman’s documentary of department stores to Lee Bul’s cyborg sculptures, this course asks: how does fashion constitute—or unravel—our notions of the self and of the world as “surface” activity?  HU
W 4pm-5:55pm

FILM 2940a / ART 2943a, Cinematography: History, Theory, Practice  Jonathan Andrews

This course serves to introduce students to the artistic practice of cinematography in the context of its history from the birth of cinema to the present. Readings, screenings, and discussions exploring film history are complemented by readings, workshops, and creative assignments exploring the tools, techniques, conventions, and scientific and psychological foundations of the cinematographer’s art.
T 2:30pm-6:30pm

* FILM 2980a or b / AMST 3303a or b / EP&E 247 / ER&M 3530a or b / SAST 2620a or b, Digital War  Madiha Tahir

From drones and autonomous robots to algorithmic warfare, virtual war gaming, and data mining, digital war has become a key pressing issue of our times and an emerging field of study. This course provides a critical overview of digital war, understood as the relationship between war and digital technologies. Modern warfare has been shaped by digital technologies, but the latter have also been conditioned through modern conflict: DARPA (the research arm of the US Department of Defense), for instance, has innovated aspects of everything from GPS, to stealth technology, personal computing, and the Internet. Shifting beyond a sole focus on technology and its makers, this class situates the historical antecedents and present of digital war within colonialism and imperialism. We will investigate the entanglements between technology, empire, and war, and examine how digital war—also sometimes understood as virtual or remote war—has both shaped the lives of the targeted and been conditioned by imperial ventures. We will consider visual media, fiction, art, and other works alongside scholarly texts to develop a multidiscpinary perspective on the past, present, and future of digital war. none  HU, SO
HTBA

* FILM 3007a / RSEE 3120a / SLAV 3120a / UKRN 3120a, Cinematic Ukraine: Culture, Identity, and Memory  Olha Tytarenko

This course traces the evolution of Ukrainian cinema from the avant-garde experiments of the 1920s to the vibrant post-2014 film resurgence. Exploring themes of national identity, historical memory, and resistance to political and cultural oppression, we analyze how filmmakers have shaped Ukraine’s self-conception through film. Topics include the poetic cinema of the 1960s, post-Soviet transition films, and contemporary works responding to war and cultural sovereignty. Students will engage critically with cinematic language, narrative structures, and visual aesthetics while incorporating perspectives from postcolonial theory and memory studies. The course features guest lectures from Ukrainian film directors and hands-on cinematographic workshops. Weekly thematic units pair films with historical and theoretical readings, offering a dynamic exploration of Ukraine’s place in global cinema and cultural history. None  HU
T 1:30pm-3:25pm, Th 6pm-9pm

* FILM 3047b / EALL 2810b, Japanese Cinema and Its Others  Aaron Gerow

Critical inquiry into the myth of a homogeneous Japan through analysis of how Japanese film and media historically represents “others” of different races, ethnicities, nationalities, genders, and sexualities, including women, black residents, ethnic Koreans, Okinawans, Ainu, undocumented immigrants, LGBTQ minorities, the disabled, youth, and monstrous others like ghosts.  HU
MW 11:35am-12:50pm

FILM 3050a / CPLT 3610a, Animation: Disney and Beyond  Staff

Survey of the history of animation, considering both its aesthetics and its social potentials. The focus is on Disney and its many alternatives, with examples from around the world, from various traditions, and from different periods.  HU  0 Course cr
HTBA

* FILM 3257a / CPLT 3074a / GMAN 3074a, German Cinema 1918–1933  Jan Hagens

The years between 1918 and 1933 are the Golden Age of German film. In its development from Expressionism to Social Realism, this German cinema produced works of great variety, many of them in the international avantgarde. This introductory seminar gives an overview of the silent movies and sound films made during the Weimar Republic and situate them in their artistic, cultural, social, and political context between WWI and WWII, between the Kaiser’s German Empire and the Nazis’ Third Reich. Further objectives include: familiarizing students with basic categories of film studies and film analysis; showing how these films have shaped the history and the language of film; discussing topic-oriented and methodological issues such as: film genres (horror film, film noir, science fiction, street film, documentary film); set design, camera work, acting styles; narration in film; avantgarde cinema; the advent and use of sound in film; Realism versus Expressionism; film and popular mythology; melodrama; representation of women; modern urban life as spectacle; film and politics. Directors studied include: Grune, Lang, Lubitsch, Murnau, Pabst, Richter, Ruttmann, Sagan, von Sternberg, Wiene, et al.
   WR, HU
W 4pm-5:55pm

* FILM 3270a / AMST 3395a, The Documentary Tradition  Charles Musser

This course examines key works, crucial texts, and fundamental concepts in the critical study of non-fiction cinema, exploring the participant-observer dialectic, the performative, and changing ideas of truth in documentary forms.  HU  RP
T 4pm-5:55pm, M 7pm-10pm

* FILM 3300a, The Screenwriter's Craft  Camille Thomasson

A rigorous writer's workshop. Students conjure, write, rewrite, and study films. Read screenplays, view movie clips, parse films, and develop characters and a scenario for a feature length screenplay. By the end of term, each student will have created a story outline and written a minimum of fifteen pages of an original script. All majors welcome.  Application required. Please find the link to the application form on the syllabus. 
T 2:30pm-4:30pm

* FILM 3417a / HELN 2380a / WGSS 2233a, Weird Greek Wave Cinema  George Syrimis

The course examines the cinematic production of Greece in the last fifteen years or so and looks critically at the popular term “weird Greek wave” applied to it. Noted for their absurd tropes, bizarre narratives, and quirky characters, the films question and disturb traditional gender and social roles, as well as international viewers’ expectations of national stereotypes of classical luminosity–the proverbial “Greek light”–Dionysian exuberance, or touristic leisure. Instead, these works frustrate not only a wholistic reading of Greece as a unified and coherent social construct, but also the physical or aesthetic pleasure of its landscape and its ‘quaint’ people with their insistence on grotesque, violent, or otherwise disturbing images or themes (incest, sexual otherness and violence, aggression, corporeality, and xenophobia). The course also pays particular attention on the economic and political climate of the Greek financial crisis during which these films are produced and consumed and to which they partake.  HU
Th 1:30pm-3:25pm

* FILM 3440a / GMAN 3440a, Landscape, Film, Architecture  Fatima Naqvi

Movement through post-1945 landscapes and cityscapes as a key to understanding them. The use of cameras and other visual-verbal means as a way to expand historical, aesthetic, and sociological inquiries into how these places are inhabited and experienced. Exploration of both real and imaginary spaces in works by filmmakers (Wenders, Herzog, Ottinger, Geyrhalter, Seidl, Ade, Grisebach), architects and sculptors (e.g. Rudofsky, Neutra, Abraham, Hollein, Pichler, Smithson, Wurm, Kienast), photographers (Sander, B. and H. Becher, Gursky, Höfer), and writers (Bachmann, Handke, Bernhard, Jelinek). Additional readings by Certeau, Freytag, J.B. Jackson, L. Burckhardt.  HU
Th 9:25am-11:20am, W 7pm-10pm

FILM 3550b / ART 3941b, Intermediate Film Writing and Directing  Jonathan Andrews

In the first half of the term, students write three-scene short films and learn the tools and techniques of staging, lighting, and capturing and editing the dramatic scene. In the second half of the term, students work collaboratively to produce their films. Focus on using the tools of cinema to tell meaningful dramatic stories. Priority to majors in Art and in Film & Media Studies. Prerequisites: ART 2941.  RP
T 2:30pm-6:30pm

* FILM 3990a / ENGL 2411a, The Craft of Graphic Narrative  Alison Bechdel

This class explores the ways that text and sequential images work together to tell stories. This class will be a roughly equal mix of theory and practice, of reading comics with a critical eye and making your own comics. We’ll study aspects of craft like voice, structure, point of view, description, and character development, as well as comics-specific elements such as page layout, panel transitions, and the abstract-to-realistic drawing style continuum. This is a beginner-level class. You don't need to be an experienced cartoonist, but an affinity for drawing will serve you well.  RP
TTh 9am-10:15am

* FILM 4550a / AMST 4463a / EVST 4630a / TDPS 4023a, Documentary Film Workshop  Charles Musser

A yearlong workshop designed primarily for majors in Film and Media Studies or American Studies who are making documentaries as senior projects. Seniors in other majors admitted as space permits.  RP
W 3:30pm-6:20pm, T 7pm-10pm

* FILM 4600a, Sound/Image Practice  Leighton Pierce

The power and potential of sound is often overlooked as a means of advancing a film’s narrative/structural logic while simultaneously enhancing its emotional patina and immersive engagement. Our core concern in this course is with the conceptual development-through-practice of the sound/image dynamic. Students complete several short videomaking exercises in the first 7 weeks designed to highlight specific challenges in sound for picture. For the second half of the semester, each student design, shoot, edit, and mix a short (3-5min) video of their own design–a video that demonstrates attention to the use of sound in video and an understanding of how to design visual shots and temporal structures with sound in mind. There is no genre or mode preference in this class. Fiction, non-fiction, experimental, animation, game, tiktok, anything is okay. In addition, students complete weekly short readings with brief written responses, a final 2-3 page paper summarizing the concepts, goals, and outcomes of the final project, a short quiz, and are expected to fully participate in all in-class activities and critiques. Basic video editing experience.  RP
W 1pm-4pm

* FILM 4800a, Film and Media Hybridity Lab  Leighton Pierce

This course supports senior majors completing a screenwriting or moving image/sound project as their thesis. The focus is to support innovative, hybrid, and emergent forms of film/media making and writing, or to support conventional projects through custom-designed practical exercises. There are two options: 1) the lab as a context for innovative film/media/writing projects that do not productively fit into the standard FMS senior courses, or 2) the lab as a supplement to the standard FMS thesis production classes. In this case, the thesis project would be overseen in the standard thesis classes with the lab serving as conceptual and practical development through specifically designed exercises in technique, critique, and conceptual exploration.  For Film and Media Studies seniors only. Permission of the instructor and DUS required.  RP
Th 1pm-4pm

* FILM 4830a and FILM 4840b / ART 4942a and ART 4943b, Advanced Film Writing and Directing  Jonathan Andrews

A yearlong workshop designed primarily for majors in Art and in Film & Media Studies making senior projects. Each student writes and directs a short fiction film. The first term focuses on the screenplay, production schedule, storyboards, casting, budget, and locations. In the second term students rehearse, shoot, edit, and screen the film. Priority to majors in Art and in Film & Media Studies. Prerequisite: ART 3941.
W 8:20am-12:20pm