Film & Media Studies

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.

This course uses postwar Japanese films and animation (anime) as the principal texts and investigates their relationship with contemporary Japanese culture, society and politics. The course introduces the various genre and representative film and anime, together with specific critical writings on these works. The focus is on the relationship between the films and the audience, the impact of the dominance of films and anime in present day Japan and worldwide, and the various social and cultural issues such as violence and globalization that are closely related to the movie industry.

How has the media been incorporated into our experiences of place and culture? How do we understand our media consumption, and our dwelling and travelling experiences, and how would such an understanding help us make sense of the increasingly globalizing world in which we live?  

This course explores the role the media play in deterritorialized, global and multicultural contexts. It first introduces two key approaches to media globalization, cultural imperialism paradigm and cultural globalization thesis, and considers how the production, circulation and consumption of global entertainment media have shaped the ways we understand both domestic and foreign cultures. It then examines a range of contemporary cultural phenomena such as cultural migrants, diaspora, media representation of minority, etc. and considers how such phenomena are concerned with critical issues in relation to globalization, identity formation and the shaping of our sense of place. 
 
A range of media texts (e.g. movies, television programs) will serve as exemplars to be analyzed in the lecture and discussion, in order to help students grasp the key concepts of relevant theories. 

Since the Covid19 pandemic and in the context of climate change, slogans such as “follow the science” or appeals to “trust science” have become ubiquitous. In fact, for modern societies, science and scientists are probably the last remaining unquestioned authorities; when we need guidance, we turn to scientific experts and trust that they will give us solid advice. However, this is a relatively new development; during the time of the ascent of the sciences, from the 18th through to the mid-20th centuries, new discoveries and inventions in the sciences as well as the scientists and inventors themselves were met with fear, skepticism or suspicion. One powerful expression of this attitude of societies towards the sciences can be found in popular works of fiction: we still use the names of fictional characters such as Faust, Frankenstein, Dr Jekyll or Dr Strangelove to characterize mad, evil or amoral scientists as well as dangerous scientific and/ or technological developments. Program: In this course, we will examine the development of literary / cultural imaginations of science and scientists, looking at key texts as well as key developments in the sciences: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, galvanism and the creation of life; Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde: experimental drugs and the split personality; H.G. Wells’ The Island of Dr Moreau: Vivisection and genetics; Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World: eugenics, genetic engineering and chemistry; the figure of the physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, the ‘father of the atomic bomb’, in post-war reality and fiction, and, finally, the benevolent scientific research on climate change as presented in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Green Earth trilogy. Based on extracts from the texts and on academic texts which contextualize and analyze the topics, discussions in class will take literature as a point of departure for a more fundamental examination of the connection between science and society.

This course offers an introduction to the historical film genre by examining American, British, European, and Japanese films made during the past 20 years. It considers the debates surrounding the representation of history on film, and the influence and impact that historical films have on the public imagination and understanding of history. Students explore the aesthetic pleasures that historical films offer to audiences, as well as the wider public discussion and debate that historical films provoke among scholars, critics, and journalists in print and online.