Film & Media Studies

This course examines the relationships between technological developments and cultural change, with a particular focus on digital media. It interrogates the changing theorizations of technology in society by tracing the influence of key texts in media studies, philosophy of technology, sociology, cultural studies and science and technology studies. Students explore the significance of technology in social power, identity, gender, social shaping, class, space, assemblages, actor-networks, experience, thought, time, and materiality. 

This course introduces fiction narratives, both literary and cinematic. Students learn the fundamental concepts of the storytelling art, through the analytical interpretation of fundamental literary and film works.

This course includes lecture and discussion sessions which offer an opportunity for advanced exploration of documentary cinema from the second half of the 20th century and the early 21st century. It builds upon a previous course covering the early 20th century. From the early films of Nicole Védrès, Agnès Varda, or Shirley Clarke to the works of Anderson, Marker, Lanzmann, Van der Keuken, or Wiseman, among others, this course considers why documentary production has been steadily increasing for nearly 10 years—for example, in France—and why the presence of documentaries on the big screen has continued to grow over the last decade. The discussion  sessions allow students to present historical and analytical work related to films viewed in class.

This course provides an overview of key approaches in film studies, exploring film as an art form, an economic product, a social practice, and an object of theoretical reflection. Through lectures and mandatory film screenings, students are introduced to central concepts for studying topics such as the film industry, film form, film genres, and stardom. In seminars, students analyze films and supplementary materials (e.g., film magazines, advertisements, reviews) while developing their film analysis skills individually and collaboratively.

This introductory level course develops competencies in the analysis of audiovisual media. The course explores the mechanisms of cinematographic language and the possible meanings produced through the narrative configuration of sounds and images in fiction and non-fiction audiovisual products. The course provides an introduction to the theories and methods of film analysis, as well as the history of cinema and audiovisual media from their beginnings to the digital age of distribution platforms. This course requires no prior knowledge or experience.

By the end of the course, the class will be able to build solid and critical arguments to analyze and evaluate audiovisual texts of different types: movies, series, documentaries, soap operas, advertising messages, music videos, and video games, among others.

This course offers students an introduction to world cinema through a range of debates and concepts that problematize its delineation. It addresses the development of world cinema through key historical junctures within the 20th and 21st centuries: such as the crises of modernity and the cultural ruptures emerging as a result of a confluence of geo-historical and political developments. Students learn to read cinema in and of the world as both bound by national formations while simultaneously exceeding them, through an understanding of the dynamics of cultural flows across histories and political formations. 

Today, the European Union tends to elicit, at best, indifference and boredom, and at worst, rejection. That is why it is urgent to consider ways to foster a sense of European identity, to give substance to this Europe that is perceived as too distant and too abstract. For Europe does indeed exist; it is present in our shared history, in a common past, in cultural references so obvious that we no longer see them. This course (re)discovers literary and audiovisual works, analyzes them, and discusses them in order to build a shared reflection on the nature of European identity. Sessions begin with students’ oral presentations on the selected works, followed by a class discussion on the lessons to be drawn from these works and the avenues for reflection they offer for thinking about the construction of a sense of European belonging.