Film & Media Studies

This course examines how journalist have occupied a unique place in Western popular culture and looks at questions such as why are journalist so ubiquitous in popular culture; how accurate have those depictions been now and in the past; how has the depiction of journalist changed over time, and how have those changes mirrored the public perceptions of journalists and journalism; how do those depictions of journalist compare to reality; how has popular culture dealt with real life ethical dilemmas that confront journalists; and how effective have real-life journalists been at telling their own narratives — portraying the gritty reality, or embellishing the fictionalized view of the profession.

The course is part of the Laurea Magistrale program and students are permitted to take the course with instructor consent. Commerce and art collide in the film marketplace every day. Is there a line between business and art, content and promotion, the bottom line and award accolades? This course explores the reality behind big budget art. The course details the life of two fundamentally different products: the independent and studio film. From concept inception to final net revenue reality, the course investigates basic aspects of development, finance, production, marketing, and distribution by investigating two roles 1) indie producer and 2) studio executive. The course focuses on the history of the U.S. production distribution studio machine as the primary market maker that has recently shifted towards international distribution and streaming. It provides an overview of the history of film from a business perspective, outlines the basic terminology of filmmaking development, finance, and production, and outlines indie to studio structures. The course also focuses on the major tools of the marketing executive, their budget, partnership structures, and the essence of timing media for film campaigns.

This course covers the procedures, formats, and conventions of scriptwriting, and the skills and attitudes necessary to produce acceptable writing according to those conventions. This is partly a “creative writing” course, and regular reading and writing is required. Students learn advanced skills in writing scripts for selected media (e.g. film, television, theater, computer games); become aware of how script-writing skills are shaped by production processes; create plots, narrative structures, characters, and dialogue suitable for different media; and learn how existing stories can be adapted and developed in the writing of scripts for different media.

This course offers a panoramic overview of American cinema from the 1970s to the present including different historical periods, genres, movements, styles, and principal auteurs. 

This course is designed for students wishing to clarify and/or advance their career goals through a 6-week internship. It provides a structured and guided learning environment to help students make the most of their internship experience in Korea. Course components facilitate students' professional development, focusing on the transition from the role of a student to the role of a working professional. 

Media and popular culture have long played a key role in shaping and reflecting gendered power relations as well as processes of identification. This course provides an introduction to the representations and constructions of gender in contemporary culture and media. It develops students' understanding of gender, media, and culture in a period of time of rapid globalization and digitization. Through this course, students acquire theoretical and methodological tools to study gender in the media, and across a range of contemporary cultural phenomena. They apply a critical lens to the representations of gender in popular cultural media, focusing on the production, circulation, and reception of media representations of masculinity, femininity, and sexuality. The course also explores the ways in which questions of gender and sexuality might shape and inform identities. It adopts an intersectional approach and analyzes the way gender intersects with race, class, and sexuality.