Film & Media Studies

This course examines the pressures of technological change on contemporary media institutions and communications practices. Students will be introduced to key debates about media convergence, the relationship between technological change and media practices, and the shift from mass communication to networked communication. A range of case studies drawn from different media sectors including photography, the music industry, television, cinema, and the Internet will be complemented by examination of emerging practices such as video games, digital art and surveillance.

This course examines America's 'dream factory' as profit-oriented industry, mass entertainment, and cinematic art form. It covers key historical developments including the star system, Production Code censorship, New Hollywood, and the franchise film.

This course examines knowledge of industry standard tools for film production. Students will apply techniques, creative approaches, and methodologies to the production of a short film project.

This course provides fundamental knowledge of media history in Japan and Asia from the late 19th century to the early 21st century, discussing the historical process of the transformation of relations between media, governments and peoples. The focus is to promote historical understanding and analysis of media development with influences in political process.

This course examines key trends and changes in contemporary television drama. This includes the exploration of different genres and narrative forms, along with the impact of new styles and technologies in changing industrial contexts, to include both broadcast and streamed services. The course also explores broader theoretical ways of understanding contemporary television, such as its relation to modernity and the nation state, globalization, and the place of television in contemporary culture. Although much of the emphasis is on English language television, students are invited to explore comparative examples from other countries and cultures in the context of developing a specific area of focus for a case study.

The course introduces a special segment of popular culture in a historical context: the impact of the Cold War on science fiction film. It also considers how, as media technology developed between 1945-1990, nuclear threat, the arms race, and space race also inspired film and television directors to tell stories about a potential future. The course covers great movies born inside the Western and Eastern block, and discusses the different periods of Cold War (Thaw, Détente, etc.) thematized science fiction.

This course examines the hybrid and diverse nature of the British cinema since the advent of the British New Wave in the early 1960s. Students explore a number of key themes in the British cinema's long post-war quest for a sustainable model of film-making: the tensions between the local and the international; the consistent struggle between art and entertainment; and the recurring pattern of "boom and bust" in British production. Central to the examination of British cinema since 1960, however, is a focus on the social, political, and cultural contexts of British cinema, and the ways in which British cinema, and British culture, has been marked (and transformed) by the British Empire and its legacies. 

This course introduces and discusses historical developments and theoretical reflections of interactive media and looks at important authors, texts, and arguments. It explores various perspectives to analyze interactive media and uses these perspectives to illuminate selected cases. Topics include technological determinism; a Marxist base for digital superstructure; digital economy; history of the internet revisited; cyborgs and cybercommunities; cyberpower; digital texts, digital minds; artificial worlds, cyber bodies, and digital self; and alternatives to the West.

Through the use of a wide range of clips and relevant texts, this course looks at two kinds of propaganda in films, the overt and the covert, and the different categories within each type. The course makes a distinction between a the propaganda film that does not disguise its intentions to influence and even to convert audiences; and those films that have an ideology embedded in them, be it a western, thriller, comedy, or melodrama. The course is mainly structured chronologically and takes a contextual and intertextual approach to the subject while seeking out the specificity of cinema. It is supplemented and illustrated by the use of clips from films and one or two complete feature films, to which historical and critical analyses are applied to view films from different perspectives. In other words, the course explores how to "read" films.

For this excursion-based course, we will visit the Museum of Modern Electronic Music (MOMEN), considering questions around legacy,  historiography, and representation in the telling of electronic dance music’s histories. We will also avail ourselves of experiential opportunities on offer at the museum, such as DJ workshops and artist talks. In addition, we will visit the Robert Johnson nightclub in nearby Offenbach, which will afford firsthand experience as well as an opportunity to think about nightlife ethnography. In the seminar leading up to the excursion, we will explore the histories of German popular electronic music and Detroit techno, discuss nightlife fieldwork, and consider what might happen when museums and electronic music meet.