Film & Media Studies

The purpose of this course is to understand how race and gender issues have been represented in different dramatic texts since the late 19th to the early 21st century modern drama. Each week the course discusses one (or sometimes two dramatic) text(s) to examine how each playwright use different dramatic strategy, symbols, mise-en-scene, and characterization to convey his or her social and political messages. By the end of the course, students understand several playwrights' dominant aesthetics and historical contexts and the critical turning points in the history of modern and contemporary drama from 1870s to the present.

The aim of this course is two-fold: to take a retrospective view to trace the evolution of media sociology, and a prospective view to assess current challenges confronting sociological analyses of the new media paradigm – monopoly-owned and user-driven digital platforms – the business models which underpin them, including algorithmic journalism, and their perceived "surveillance" effects.

This course is to understand cultural content, find classic works that serve as the basis and source material for modern content, and analyze key elements. Based on this, we attempt to apply content suitable for modern society. To achieve this, we combine exploration of human nature, understanding of society, and knowledge of works of art and popularity. Goal is to understand cultural content and produce corresponding content; to attempt storytelling through characters and situations; and to understand and attempt mise-en-scène and storytelling methods.

As a core professional course for undergraduates majoring in journalism, New Media Creation and Operation aims to enable students to have a deep understanding of the theoretical and practical issues in the field of new media and master certain basic methods of new media operation through systematic teaching of new media development related theories and organizing students to participate in new media creation and operation practice. At the same time, new media platform operation principals of well-known mainstream media and We Media will be invited to the class to share the operation characteristics of different types of new media platforms with students through case analysis and discussion, so as to have a more intuitive and vivid understanding of the development trend of new media.

This course is about methods of script-writing. The purposes of the course includes enhance the students’ understanding of playwriting and screenwriting both in theory and in practice; improve students’ comprehensive and aesthetic abilities on film narratology; master the basic skills and methods of script-writing; grasp the fundamental skills of dramaturgy; comprehend the classical interpretation of representative scripts; master the writing methods of typical genres; be familiar with cinematic narrative techniques.

This course offers an introduction to key aspects of film history and film cultures in Spain from the Transition years to democracy (1973-1982) to the present day. Drawing on methodological topics such as film style, authorship, genre, and gender, the course has a dual focus: on the one hand, it looks at the challenges to the idea of nation that shaped film history after the Civil War and during the Transition in order to contextualize the transformations that Spanish cinema undergoes in the 1990s; on the other, the course explores the new configurations (digital, transnational) that have come to shape the label "Spanish cinema" in the 21st century, in the context of the global image markets.

This course examines the relationship between crime and the media. It encourages students to develop an understanding of how the media help to influence the public views of crime and criminalization. It will do this by focusing on media portrayals of crime and criminal behavior, media effects and theories of media and communication.

This course provides an introduction to the industrial, cultural, and theoretical histories of Chinese/Chinese language/Sinophone cinemas. Since the 1980s, filmmakers such as Ann Hui, Tsai Ming-liang, Ang Lee, Jia Zhangke, and Wong Kar-wai have made Chinese-language films known to the audiences in Europe and North America. This course discusses the historical contexts in which these filmmakers emerged. Also, it introduces lesser-known filmmakers and film practices and suggests new understandings of what Chinese/Chinese language/Sinophone cinemas are.

In the last few decades, the number of film festivals in the world has boomed. Even more recently, film studies researchers have begun to pay attention to this phenomenon, and the sub-field of film festival studies has grown rapidly. This course combines practice and theory. Students form small groups and curate their own evenings in a week-long campus film festival to be held in the final week of the semester. Students also read a wide range of research in film festival studies. 

This course examines North Korean cinema, following its historical trajectory. Through the examination we learn about images of North Koreans, their state and culture and also how these images have changed. We also expect that our understanding of North Korea and its people that will be gained through the course can hopefully lead to perspectives on the unification of the two Koreas. Topics include The Liberation and the Formation of North Korean Cinema, Establishment of Juche Ideology, Shin Sang-ok on the Scene of North Korean Cinema, Action/War Genre of North Korean Cinema, Motif of a Hidden Hero, Changing Scenes of the early 1990s, The Arduous March Era, Image of North Korea on International Screen, and North Korea’s International Film Co-productions.