Film & Media Studies

This course explores the representation of love and romance in Hollywood, Bollywood, global art and European cinema. Romantic movies invariably revolve around the obstacles that the couple has to negotiate, overcome, or succumb to. Obstacles such as the social marginalization of the couple, death, jealously and rivalry, differences of class, race or ethnicity tend to be genre specific. The course juxtaposes and compares films and genres from different cultural contexts. Examples include melodramatic love stories, queer romance in European arthouse films, wedding films in global art cinema, interethnic romantic dramas and films about the end of love or the breakdown of marriage. 

Through exploring different areas within the Chinese language and cultural domain, including Chinese media, content creation, book publishing, and Chinese teaching, the course familiarizes students with today's volatile society and market, equipping them with the necessary skills to comprehend the dynamics of these industries within current political, social, cultural and linguistic contexts. Students gain a deeper understanding of the professional landscape and learn to combine their knowledge of Chinese language and culture with design thinking approaches for addressing opportunities and challenges they encounter in their future career. The course requires students to take prerequisites.

From a specifically aesthetic perspective, this course focuses on the sound parameters of cinema. It first involves questioning the characteristics of our listening in relation to our capacities for visual analysis, and then defining the notions of sound image and point of listening, as they have been formulated by sound theorists (Pierre Schaeffer, Michel Chion, Daniel Deshays, Peter Sendy). The course combines a historical perspective on theories and techniques of sound in cinema with a taxonomy of cinematic sounds (voice, speech, music, noise, silence) and an examination of the relationships between image and sound (direct sound, post-synchronization, counterpoint).

The media plays an extremely influential role in the public’s conceptions of crime and order. This course is designed to look at the different ways in which the media shapes our ideas and responses to crime. The course is divided into two main sections. The first half of the course examines representations of crime in different media forms and theoretical explanations for why crime is portrayed in particular ways. The second half of the course focuses on the representation of crime in popular culture, particularly in films and novels.

This course examines Shakespeare’s plays alongside their film adaptations, exploring the relationship between literature and visual media. Through readings and film screenings, the course analyzes how Shakespeare’s works were influenced by the cultural and social contexts of his time, and how modern adaptations reflect the contexts of their own production and reception. Each week focuses on a Shakespearean play and its significant film adaptations, discussing the nuanced and often innovative ways in which Shakespeare’s timeless texts have been read by scholars, readers, theater practitioners and filmmakers and reimagined through adaptation.

This course is not for the faint-hearted. It will look at ghosts and other supernatural phenomena in multiple genres and media: spooky ghost stories, scary movies, body horror stories and films, gothic tales, “romantasies,” and stories of nostalgic haunting. 

Among the questions to be explored will be: What fears do the works provoke and examine? What kinds of longing do hauntings evoke? How might we understand the paranormal socially and psychologically? We look at selected short stories by Edgar Alan Poe, Stephen King, Mariana Enriquez, Mo Yan, Yoko Ogawa, and Bora Chung.

Films to view together (in class) and explore will include the American horror classic The Shining, the baseball fantasy Field of Dreams, the Japanese horror film Ringu, the Spanish tale of haunting and heartbreak The Orphanage, and the recent body-horror hit The Substance. The course will end with selected episodes of the K-drama Goblin. 

Film-making and TV production are becoming increasingly international, rendering translation almost indispensable to the industry. Translating films and TV shows for dubbing and subtitling requires specialized skills distinct from those used in other fields. This course focuses on such skills, with an emphasis on audio-visual awareness and cinematic elements such as drama, dialogue, vernacular, and pacing. Critical theories on media and on cultural production and consumption are introduced. Students learn through hands-on translation of feature films and TV programs, as well as critiques of film and TV translations.

This course consists of a series of lectures, film viewings and workshops, and explores the different genres and practices of the cinematic non-fiction film form. Topics include a brief history and theory of the documentary as political propaganda, investigative essay, personal journal, and cinema verité observation, through the study of documentary auteurs. Students develop an understanding of the ethical precepts and an appreciation of the aesthetics and intellectual rigor of the documentary form. Through practice, students learn the fundamentals of documentary filmmaking. Students develop the ability to identify, conceptualize and research a topic, negotiate access to characters or events, manage a production through efficient budgeting and scheduling, and create a short non-fiction cinematic narrative with coherent artistic vision and intellectual purpose. Students create a documentary film project working in groups of two, where teams write, shoot, direct and edit a video documentary no more than 60 minutes of video per group with the finished film at 4-6 minutes long, complete with titles and credits. This includes oral pitches. The films are to be submitted as self-contained MOV files. Continuous assessment components include both written and studio-based exercises.

This course is an introduction to political communication. After an overview of the history of media effects theories, the lecture addresses the major issues of political communication in contemporary politics. The lecture not only introduces students to U.S.-based political communication research, but also develops an academic perspective on real-life political communication by connecting it to current issues in East Asia. In addition, the class will practice using the theories and models introduced in the sessions to analyze political phenomena. 

This course introduces the theoretical, experimental and production processes of stop motion animation. Students analyze a range of stop motion animations, explore and develop industry-level production methods, and employ these to create a stop motion movie in collaboration with fellow students. This practical approach provides a collection of knowledge and practices that can be applied to contemporary stop motion practice.