* 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 0666a / HUMS 0666a / SLAV 0666a, Six Global Perspectives on Monsters  Marijeta Bozovic

What—and who—is a monster? How—and why—do monsters in literature and film terrify and entertain us? This course uses the figure of the monster as a lens for interrogating the boundaries of the human. How are “we” manufactured, naturalized, policed? We read and watch with an eye toward how monstrous figures—grotesque, excessive, opaque—stage cathartic and disturbing crises in identity, unsettle the fantasy of bodily coherence, and mark the boundaries of the foreign and the disposable. Drawing on ambitious theoretical frameworks but grounded in pleasurably horrifying case studies, we investigate what can be seen, said, and understood within cultural texts, and how monsters expose the limits of legibility itself. Through close readings and film analysis, the class reveals how the monstrous operates not only as a figure of fear but as a powerful tool for rethinking power, representation, and the boundaries of knowledge.  WR, HU
TTh 9am-10:15am

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 1520a, Introduction to Non-Fiction Filmmaking: Personal Experience & Creative Practice  Sahraa Karimi

This course introduces students to the foundations of non-fiction filmmaking through a combination of critical viewing, theoretical discussion, and hands-on creative practice. Drawing on diverse traditions of documentary and non-fiction cinema- from classical observational forms to hybrid, personal, and experimental approaches - the course emphasizes non-fiction filmmaking as a dynamic and evolving cinematic language rather than a fixed genre. The course is designed for students with no prior filmmaking experience as well as those with a background in film or media. Students explore how images, sound, time, space, and lived experience can become cinematic material, and how non-fiction film can engage with reality in imaginative, poetic, and critical ways beyond conventional documentary formats. The course is designed for students with no prior filmmaking experience as well as those with a background in film or media.  HU  RP
Th 1:30pm-5:30pm

* 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 2161a / LAST 2161a / PORT 2161a / SPAN 2095a / WGSS 2161a, Love in the Lens? Romance and Resistance in Latin American and Iberian Cinema  Giseli Tordin

Is love truly captured through the lens? Whose desire are we witnessing - the characters’, the audience’s, or the male gaze? How do films shape representations of gender through the camera’s gaze, and how can cinema subvert these ways of looking? This course, taught in Portuguese and Spanish, explores these questions through Luso-Brazilian, Latin American, and Iberian cinema while allowing students to use the languages to interpret scenes, describe characters’ perceptions and emotions, compare films, and analyze dialogue, visual composition, and cinematic techniques. Students read critical texts and film analyses, discuss ideas in class, and produce essays, scripts, and video essay projects in Portuguese or Spanish, demonstrating the ability to construct arguments, present evidence, and reflect on cultural and historical context. Themes such as unrequited love, emotional emptiness, and longing are examined not simply as romantic failure but as experiences intertwined with memory, trauma, and societal pressures, often against the backdrop of authoritarian regimes. The course considers how these films challenge a cinematic tradition shaped by Victorian ideals, where early cinema framed love as individual fulfillment and moral triumph. Postwar cinema further dramatized love through predominantly white, heterosexual relationships, reinforcing patriarchal visual norms. Through close analysis of discourses and cinematic techniques - framing, sound, spatial composition, sequence, and camera angles - students examine how film language constructs or challenges norms of gender, sexuality, and class. Students may speak and submit assignments and projects in either language (Portuguese or Spanish), creating a multilingual space for critical engagement with Ibero-Latin American visual culture and the politics of the gaze. Prerequisite: PORT 1400 (or equivalent) or SPAN 1400 (or equivalent). Conducted in Portuguese and Spanish.  L5, HU
TTh 4pm-5:15pm

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 2417b / PLSH 2460b, Polish Communism and Postcommunism in Film  Krystyna Illakowicz

The Polish film school of the 1950s and the Polish New Wave of the 1960s. Pressures of politics, ideology, and censorship on cinema. Topics include gender roles in historical and contemporary narratives, identity, ethos of struggle, ethical dilemmas, and issues of power, status, and idealism. Films by Wajda, Munk, Polanski, Skolimowski, Kieslowski, Holland, and Kedzierzawska, as well as selected documentaries. Readings by Milosz, Andrzejewski, Mickiewicz, Maslowska, Haltoff, and others. Readings and discussion in English.  HU
MW 1:05pm-2:20pm

* 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 3620b / CPLT 3380b / FREN 3840b / ITAL 3384b / JDST 3489b, Representing the Holocaust  Maurice Samuels and Millicent Marcus

The Holocaust as it has been depicted in books and films, and as written and recorded by survivors in different languages including French and Italian. Questions of aesthetics and authority, language and its limits, ethical engagement, metaphors and memory, and narrative adequacy to record historical truth. Interactive discussions about films (Life Is Beautiful, Schindler's List, Shoah), novels, memoirs (Primo Levi, Charlotte Delbo, Art Spiegelman), commentaries, theoretical writings, and testimonies from Yale's Fortunoff Video Archive.  WR, HU
TTh 2:35pm-3:50pm

* FILM 3970b / ENGL 3453b / TDPS 2302b, Writing about the Performing Arts  Margaret Spillane

Introduction to journalistic reporting on performances as current events, with attention to writing in newspapers, magazines, and the blogosphere. The idea of the audience explored in relation to both a live act or screening and a piece of writing about such an event. Students attend screenings and live professional performances of plays, music concerts, and dance events. Formerly ENGL 244 and ENGL 423.  WR, HU
TTh 11:35am-12:50pm

* 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 4257b / CPLT 3058b / GMAN 3058b, East German Literature and Film  Katie Trumpener

The German Democratic Republic (1949-1989) was a political and aesthetic experiment that failed, buffeted by external pressures, and eroded by internal contradictions. For forty years, in fact, its most ambitious literary texts and films (some suppressed, others widely popular) explored such contradictions, often in a vigilant, Brechtian spirit of irony and dialectics. This course examines key texts both as aesthetic experiments and as critiques of the country’s emerging cultural institutions and state censorship, recurrent political debates and pressing social issues. Texts by Brecht, Uwe Johnson, Heiner Müller, Christa Wolf, Johannes Bobrowski, Franz Fühmann, Wolf Biermann, Thomas Brasch, Christoph Hein; films by Slatan Dudow, Kurt Maetzig, Konrad Wolf, Heiner Carow, Frank Beyer, Jürgen Böttcher, Volker Koepp.   Knowledge of German desirable but not crucial; all texts available in English.  WR, HU
T 1:30pm-3:25pm

* FILM 4550a and FILM 4560a / AMST 4463a and AMST 4464a / EVST 4630a and EVST 4640a / TDPS 4023a and TDPS 4024a, 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 4670a / ENGL 4411a, Making Comics  Alison Bechdel

This advanced class will explore the alchemy of combining words and pictures into the visual language of comics. We’ll touch on some history and theory of comics, but this is a hands-on writing/drawing class, and the focus will be on practice: how to write, draw, design, and produce your own work. We'll be looking at different formats like single panel comics, strips, and minicomics, as well as full-length graphic novels, memoirs, and journalism. You’ll keep a sketchbook and develop a daily drawing practice. For most of the second half of the semester, you'll be working on your own minicomic. Some cartooning experience or drawing ability will be helpful.
T 1pm-4pm

* FILM 4700a, Women Filmmakers  Oksana Chefranova

The seminar surveys the extraordinary contributions that female filmmakers have made to cinema and to film theory, ranging from the beginning of cinema to the most recent examples, from narrative cinema to experimental practice. We examine films by Lois Weber, Alice Guy Blache, Germaine Dulac, Leontine Sagan, Leni Riefenstahl, Dorothy Arzner, Ida Lupino, Maya Deren, Agnes Varda, Vera Chytilova, Barbara Hammer, Julie Dash, Claire Denis, Lucrecia Martel, Kelly Reichardt, Sofia Coppola, Alice Rohrwacher, Céline Sciamma, Ana Lily Amirpour, and Mati Diop. We read texts written by women writer, filmmakers, and critics such as Germaine Dulac, Maya Deren, Barbara Hammer, Julie Dash, Colette, Virginia Woolf, Laura Mulvey, and Manohla Dargis. The cinema is approached from a variety of historical and theoretical discourses such as production history, feminism, world cinema, and post-colonial studies among others. There is an option for a practical component that might include a curatorial project, an interview with a filmmaker, or an audio-visual essay (in consultation with the instructor).  WR, HU
Th 4pm-5:55pm, T 7pm-9pm

* FILM 4710a, Independent Directed Study  Camille Thomasson

For students who wish to explore an aspect of film and media studies not covered by existing courses. The course may be used for research or directed readings and should include one lengthy essay or several short ones as well as regular meetings with the adviser. To apply, students should present a prospectus, a bibliography for the work proposed, and a letter of support from the adviser to the director of undergraduate studies. Term credit for independent research or reading may be granted and applied to any of the requisite areas upon application and approval by the director of undergraduate studies.
HTBA

* 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

* FILM 4870a, Advanced Screenwriting  Sahraa Karimi

Students write a long form screenplay or the equivalent (episodic TV, anthology screenplay etc.)  Emphasis on multiple drafts and revision. Admission in the fall term is based on acceptance of a complete step-sheet outline for the the project to be written during the coming year. Primarily for Film & Media Studies majors working on senior projects. Prerequisite: FILM 395 or permission of instructor.
M 1pm-5pm