Film & Media Studies

This course examines the intersection of artificial intelligence, social media, and democratic processes, focusing on their impact on public discourse, political engagement, and policymaking. It explores topics such as algorithmic influence on opinion formation, misinformation and disinformation dynamics, digital activism, and the ethical implications of AI in shaping democratic participation. Through case studies, critical analysis, and practical projects, the course equips students with the tools to critically assess the evolving role of AI-driven platforms in the digital public sphere and their implications for democracy. Special attention is given to Scandinavian and European contexts, providing a regional perspective on global challenges

How has the media covered the war on Gaza and what are the underlying political, cultural and business imperatives that have shaped this coverage? What narratives are being foregrounded by legacy Western and Arab media respectively? What role is alternative media playing and what controls are different Social Media platforms imposing on permissible content? What is it like to be a Palestinian journalist in Gaza when journalists are being killed by Israel at an unprecedented rate? These are some of the questions that students critically engage with throughout this course, through a combination of theoretical readings, case studies, multimedia analysis, documentary screenings and guest speakers from the field. The course encourages students to connect scholarship with practice through writing, media monitoring, and creative projects that interrogate the relationship between communication and power in one of the most mediatized conflicts of our time.

This course covers a range of films that map issues affecting Galician culture and society. It identifies the major historical, socio-economic, political, and cultural shifts that have affected Galicia in the 20th and 21st centuries. It provides an understanding of key issues affecting Galician society such as linguistic diglossia, climate change, migration, rural abandonment, industrialization and Minoritization. This course helps develop key skills in film analysis, how to read and critically evaluate academic sources on a range of topics related to Galician cinema, culture and society, and how to combine the studied themes into a coherent overview of Galician culture and society.

This course examines the many roles of the media in the web of modern life. It equips students with basic concepts of the operation, information of the landscape and ecology of media and social media. An experiential learning model is implemented where outings are arranged for students to understand what is news or information content, how news or information content is produced, presented, delivered on different platforms to consumers. Students experience how what happens in the real world is transformed into content which they read or watch in the virtual world. Being informed consumers and content producers, students have the real life experience of having the two roles and in this course they learn how their lives, study, work and their health physically and mentally are affected by the media and social media. Concepts such as news reporting, information gathering, news writing, feature writing, preparing materials in different forms for social media posts as professional journalists and social media account operators are introduced. The course also covers concepts such as media ownership, credibility, and how to construct and deconstruct news products in various forms including text, video, visual and audio as content consumers. 

The democratization of media technology in contemporary society has transformed the way one perceives and records the world. Mobile devices have made it possible to record images and videos of everyday life anywhere and anytime, and one now has means to edit these images and produce them into secondary texts. This course focuses on "place," and while setting up a specific place as a field, it tackles documentary as a method of preserving the history, culture and memory of that place. 

This course examines a focused corpus of artworks: Jacques-Louis David, THE DEATH OF MARAT and THE INTERVENTION OF THE SABINE WOMEN; Antoine-Jean Gros, BONAPARTE VISITING THE PLAGUE VICTIMS OF JAFFA; Théodore Géricault, THE RAFT OF THE MEDUSA; Eugène Delacroix, LIBERTY LEADING THE PEOPLE; Gustave Courbet, A BURIAL AT ORNANS; and Edgar Degas, LITTLE DANCER AGED FOURTEEN. It conducts an historical study of these landmark works, while opening onto broader perspectives such as the history of the tableau vivant, theater, and cinema, and initiating a reflection on their place within contemporary visual culture. Two sessions are devoted to the relationship between history painting and early cinema, with a particular focus on Jean-Léon Gérôme's JERUSALEM and Luc-Olivier Merson's REST ON THE FLIGHT INTO EGYPT.
 

In this course, students are introduced to a range of practices from across the disciplines that are taught on the Media Production BA. Centered around a series of lectures from staff practitioners, students are introduced to the different approaches employed, whether by digital artists, designers, filmmakers, art-activists, or practice-research academics. Insights are given into multifaceted processes, how to find inspiration, explore themes and turn interests into final work and how to take action. The lectures are complemented by a number of seminars and smaller group sessions where students widen the scope of enquiry, to look at specific examples of contemporary media practice, identifying modes and methods. 

The course examines the relationship between film and literature, focusing on narrative structure, genre, and adaptation. Using key films such as The Birth of a Nation, Citizen Kane, and works by Alfred Hitchcock, it explores concepts of film syntax and the role of the auteur. Literary and cinematic genres like melodrama and the Western are studied through texts such as The Ox-Bow Incident. The course also analyzes major adaptations, including The Turn of the Screw, Much Ado About Nothing, and Atonement, highlighting the dialogue between literary and cinematic storytelling.

This course focuses on the technologies, analysis, and expression of ideas in both print and digital media. It discusses how journalistic content is selected, written, and structured in both print and digital formats. Students study different styles of writing (news, opinion, analysis), and review how to think critically and communicate responsibly as a future journalist or media professional. 

This course focuses on contemporary fiction that looks to our future as radically dystopian. It explores the reasons for dystopia and the way we construct, through film and literature, images of an uncertain future and the challenges we face as a society. This course also discusses speculative fiction, specifically the impact of scientific and technological development on our society as constructed and proposed through literature and film.   

Pre-requisites: Advanced knowledge of Spanish