Film Studies Program Requirements

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Faculty

  • Eileen Chanza Torres (Chair)
  • Mark Rubinfeld

View Film Studies Courses

Program Goals

  • Students will use terms and methods of film analysis effectively, and identify the concepts used by film scholars from various perspectives.
  • Students will grasp film history in an international context, recognizing it as a dynamic set of economic, sociopolitical, technological, and aesthetic confrontations.
  • Students will situate film as an element of culture - how it influences, and is influenced by, the culture in which it is made; how film influences the ways we view ourselves and others in cultural terms such as race, gender, economics, and history; and how film is both an agent and result of social change.
  • Students will perform detailed film critiques in various media, critically evaluating the use of formal elements, narrative structure, and the place of films in their historical and cultural contexts.

Objectives

The program offers an academic minor. The Film Studies minor provides students with the skills and knowledge necessary to understand the nature and function of moving images in contemporary global culture. The Film Minor deepens students’ understanding of American and world history, communications and media, visual arts, and literature. It will serve students in careers stemming from any of those fields.

Program Requirements

Students must meet the university-wide graduation requirements in addition to the Film minor:

  • 124 total hours
  • 30 upper division hours
  • WCore or Honors College requirements

Film Studies Minor

Requirement Description Credit Hours Prerequisites
I. Lower Division Courses 8  
FILM 110 Making Sense of Movies 4  
Take one additional lower-division course from the following:    
FILM 210 (Un)American Cinema  4  
FILM 212 Film Genres 4  
FILM 220 Transnational Cinema 4  
II. Upper Division Courses 4  
Choose one of the following:    
FILM 310 Humans, Monsters, and Things In-Between 4  
FILM 320 Seeing Time: Science/Fiction & Film 4  
III. Electives 12  
Twelve additional credit hours in FILM courses (including the ones listed above) or related electives, as approved by program chair, such as:    
LMW 211 Reading and Detection 4  
LMW 215 Vampire Literature 4  
SOC 320 Sociology of Popular Culture 4  
Total Hours for the Film Studies Minor 24