Film & Media Studies

This course examines the many different ways that we might think about fans and fan cultures, from what they think about, talk about and produce, to the way they are seen by themselves, other fans, media industries, the culture more broadly. This course encourages students to observe the media around them and to assess it critically, including understanding economic and power dynamics, as well as the role that is played by gender, race, ethnicity, language, sexuality, and cultural and social capital.

This course examines the changing public sphere over time, from its early-modern emergence to the challenges of tabloid news and online fragmentation in contemporary media culture.

This course examines the role of media in cases of modern conflict, genocide, and peace processes. It covers media structure, content, framing and psychological responses during times of conflict and peace-making, and how media informs audiences and either foments or quells conflict.

This course examines feature film and the main traditions of film criticism. A series of significant films, from 1915 to the present, are explored in detail. The aim is to develop a historical perspective, an awareness of film-making as an art and an interest in the relationship between films and society, including debates about race, gender, censorship.

This course examines the complex interplay between politics and the media. This interplay shapes public discourse and political outcomes as political actors strategically leverage media platforms to influence public opinion, while the media frames and reports on political events. Students will focus on examining theories of political communication, the media’s influential role in agenda-setting, and the critical examination of phenomena such as misinformation, fake news, censorship, propaganda, the rise of celebrity politicians, political advertising, satire, citizen journalism, and permanent campaigning. 

This course explores ethical issues in the design and use of information and communication technologies (ICTs). It examines ethical theories and practices from historical, interdisciplinary, and cross-cultural perspectives relating to current and emerging ICTs. Students  study the major ethical frameworks such as consequentialism, deontology, virtue ethics etc. They look at how they are applied to issues around privacy, security, social media interactions, access, health, game design, and so on. And they explore how the design of technological systems and structures can support ethical principles.

This course analyzes a range of the most recent work from contemporary film directors from American, European, and world cinema. Students examine the films from a number of critical and theoretical perspectives and engage with key concepts and concerns such as nationalism and cinema, transnationalism, postmodernism, and audience reception.

Students are introduced to theories and practices in film and screen media industries. Historical and cultural contexts of a variety of creative industries are examined. Detailed case studies of specific productions, from inception and funding/development to production and promotion, are analyzed. Practitioners from the film/screen media industry and from creative culture industries deliver a series of workshops to illuminate contemporary approaches and practices during the course.

This course examines the medium of comics both as a visual language and as a means of communication. Beginning with a history of comics, the course considers a variety of storytelling techniques, ranging from comics journalism to graphic medicine, from activism to indigeneity, as well as superheroes, the underground, and manga.

Through an exploration of the complex and contradictory relationships between the global, local, regional, and national, this course focuses on the key issues and scholarly debates in the field of global media studies. Students explore a broad range of media as case studies to understand the relationship between location, culture, and identity. This course equips students with a broad-ranging and comparative understanding of the many ways in which media are produced, consumed, distributed, and circulated across the globe and their impact on our imaginations of a global world.