Film & Media Studies

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.

This course traces the history of comics and graphic novels in Western Europe and North America. Beginning with an introduction presenting the main characteristics of this medium, this course traces its development, from the beginnings of storytelling with images in Antiquity to the latest innovations. Even though they have retained their own characteristics over the last two centuries, Western European and North American comics have also developed in close proximity. Following the development of the press and book industry, as well as other media like cinema, comics and graphic novels have a rich history that can only be understood in their cultural context. This course allows students to understand how this medium has shaped and been shaped by many aspects of the history and cultures of these places.

This course introduces fiction film screenwriting. It covers the professional practice of developing, writing and rewriting short film scripts in a collaborative, workshop environment. Upon completing this course, students will have significantly developed their practice in preparation for future screenwriting projects.

This course covers the historical development of journalistic activity in Brazil across different media. It investigates the relationships between journalism, culture, and power in Brazil.

This course examines media through a social justice lens – revealing hidden costs and social, political, cultural implications of emerging media technologies and longstanding media practices. It covers key concepts and theories from media studies, journalism studies, cultural studies, sociology, and criminology, with an emphasis on First Nations knowledges and critical approaches to race and gender.