Department website: https://krieger.jhu.edu/film-media/
The Film and Media Studies Program offers a comprehensive education in all aspects of the practice, theory, and history of the cinematic arts. Courses are offered in critical studies, screenwriting and filmmaking—narrative, documentary, experimental film, animation —within a rigorous curriculum designed to foster critical understanding and historical knowledge. Student filmmakers and scholars explore the relationship of film and media to modern cultures, literatures, art, history, and philosophy. The Film and Media Studies Program is housed in a 20,000 square foot facility that offers an enhanced learning environment as well as all the tools available to professional filmmakers: a large sound stage, a recording studio, a computer lab, editing suites, a screening room, classrooms, and an extensive catalog of filmmaking equipment.
The faculty, comprised of renowned scholars and filmmakers, are known for their dedication to teaching and promoting a highly collaborative and nurturing environment. The small size of the program allows for an unusual amount of hands-on experience, intensive mentoring, individual attention, and access to special opportunities for undergraduates.
Many students go on to attend graduate film school or to work in the film and media industries after graduation. Among the program's graduates are directors, screenwriters, producers, editors, actors, cinematographers, financial and marketing executives, film scholars and curators, entertainment lawyers, agents, digital technicians, and web designers. The rapidly growing network of alumni provides graduates with essential support and mentoring, opening doors to a wide range of opportunities in the film and media industry. In addition, undergraduates have access to generous filmmaking grants and funding opportunities from a range of resources available only to FMS majors and minors.
For current course information and registration go to https://sis.jhu.edu/classes/
Courses
This course prepares students for FMS’s Intersession field trip to Los Angeles, and also serves as an introduction to the professional skills necessary to navigate a career in film, television, and other fields of entertainment. Through discussion, hands-on practice, and guest lectures with FMS alumni, students will learn how to find their way in a complex industry, how to present themselves and their work, how to choose the right path, and how to cultivate the connections and opportunities they’ll need to succeed. We will also discuss what to expect and how to make the most of the week-long intersession course, which introduces students to alumni in a range of professions in film, television, and entertainment. Meets 6 times during the semester. Required for students planning to enroll in The Entertainment Industry in Contemporary Hollywood. Open to all FMS majors and minors.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Projects and Methods (FA6)
This course will explore film and television career paths and strategies through conversations with producers, screenwriters, directors and other creatives in New York and Los Angeles, some of whom are JHU alumni. Students will gain an understanding of how to track the rapidly changing global entertainment landscape, how to craft a successful path, and how to improve the skills necessary for a professional career in entertainment.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Projects and Methods (FA6)
EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3)
Ever wondered how the ads you see seem to know exactly what you want even before you do? Dive into the world of Big Data and Advertising where technology meets creativity to shape consumer behavior and business strategy. This course offers a deep exploration of how big data is revolutionizing advertising, from personalized ads to predictive analytics. By integrating perspectives from psychology, economics, computer science, and marketing, you’ll gain insights into how data drives decisions in the advertising world. Explore the psychological principles behind consumer behavior, learn how data is collected, and understand the ethical implications of using personal information in advertising. Through hands-on programming in Python, you’ll manipulate large datasets to discover patterns that drive ad campaigns. This interdisciplinary course challenges you to think critically about the intersection of technology, ethics, and business, preparing you to navigate the complexities of data-driven advertising. No prior coding experience is required, making this course accessible to all students interested in the powerful combination of big data and advertising.
Distribution Area: Humanities, Quantitative and Mathematical Sciences
AS Foundational Abilities: Science and Data (FA2), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3)
EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3)
Documentary films raise awareness about underreported geopolitical issues, challenge dominant narratives by revealing and amplifying the voices of the marginalized, and advocate for change by expressing the complexity of conflict through first-hand, grounded accounts of human experience. Documentary films claim to be real, true, and right. Are they? Can they serve as a platform for critical analysis and a reflection of human experience in its most urgent form? This course is designed to familiarize students with topical and continuing geopolitical issues caused by overarching American involvement, to analyze award-winning documentary films in terms of their cinematic strategies, and to practice imagining the smell, touch, and scream comprising the human cost of world conflict. Since this course meets only four times, perfect attendance is mandatory.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4), Democracy (FA4.1)
EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3), Engagement with Society (FA4)
In this course students will learn the fundamentals of film analysis through a survey of American and international films from the silent era to the early 1960s. With an emphasis on discussion over lecture, the class will consider selections from Africa, Asia, Central America, Europe, and the U.S. In addition to lively class participation, requirements include quizzes, shot analysis exercises, and short written responses. No prior experience in film studies required. Non-majors and pre-majors welcome!
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3), Engagement with Society (FA4)
Writing Intensive
Introduction to Cinema provides an overview of American and international cinema from 1960 to the present. Through lectures and discussion, weekly screenings, and intensive visual analysis of individual films, we will explore the aesthetic, cultural, political, and economic forces that have shaped the art and industry of film over the past 60 years. Regular quizzes, writing assignments, class participation required. Mandatory film screenings.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3), Engagement with Society (FA4)
Writing Intensive
This course is a study of the visual language used to create a moving picture. Through screenings and discussion of films (narrative, documentary and experimental), videos, and related readings, students will develop a visual critical facility and will demonstrate this facility in several video projects. The course will focus on image construction, including composition, framing, movement inside the frame and use of light as well as meaningful use of sound. Students will learn to be attentive to rhythm and tempo in picture editing and sound. In-class video assignments are included, in which students will work in small groups.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Projects and Methods (FA6)
EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3)
This primer to screenwriting will emphasize the power of the image to deliver character, situation, and theme, and to advance even complex plots. Students will analyze narrative films, compose their own still and moving images with cellphone cameras, and write several short dramatic pieces to be read and workshopped by the group. They'll learn the basics of scene design and of screenplay format. For FMS majors in the screenwriting track, this course fulfills the Media and Narrative requirement . $50 lab fee.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3), Engagement with Society (FA4)
Writing Intensive
In this course we will explore the history of anime through weekly screenings and short response papers. Directors include early filmmakers Shimokawa, Kouchi, Kitayama and more contemporary influential directors including Miyazaki (Princess Mononoke), Oshii (Ghost in the Shell), Otomo (Akira) and Kon (Paprika). Creative assignments will explore anime's relationship to manga and students will create a short animation as a final project. This class is open to all and no previous animation experience is required.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Projects and Methods (FA6)
EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3)
Writing Intensive
This course introduces students to basic considerations of shooting 16mm film. Through lectures and practice, the course approaches the basics of light meter readings, basic camera operations and shot composition. The course also highlights specific readings from classical film theory to augment weekly shooting exercises. Each week students, working in groups, shoot film exercises, providing a general overview of film production. For the final project, each group shoots and edits (physical edits) a short (3-5 minutes) film on 16mm black and white reversal film stock.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Projects and Methods (FA6)
EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3)
This course introduces students to the world of digital filmmaking. Through screenings, production assignments, and in-class labs, students will develop proficiency in digital cameras, sound recording devices, and software. Students will work individually to produce several video projects. For their final projects students will pitch an idea and develop a more complex film.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Projects and Methods (FA6)
EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3)
This course will encourage students, including non-majors and those in disciplines outside the humanities, to engage with film texts both critically and creatively. Through short written critical responses, short smartphone video exercises, and short creative storytelling exercises, students will explore the language of film from the inside out. In-class screenings of both classic and contemporary films, and an emphasis on discussion over lecture. No prior experience necessary; just bring your love of movies!
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3)
EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3), Engagement with Society (FA4)
Writing Intensive
The Lights, Camera, Action short course series is designed to introduce non-majors, including students in disciplines outside the humanities, to the critical study of film texts. This iteration will explore four films directed by Alfred Hitchcock over four decades, tracing his particular thematic and stylistic innovations across his long career. In-class screenings and emphasis on discussion over lecture. Four short written responses. No prior experience in film studies required. This one-credit course will meet September 9, 16, 23, and 30 and will be graded Pass/Fail. Due to the limited number of meetings, perfect attendance is required.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
This mini-course will provide a survey of American and international films to which city as setting is integral. In-class screenings and emphasis on discussion over lecture. Four short written responses. No prior experience in film studies required. Due to the limited number of meetings, perfect attendance is required.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3)
The Lights, Camera, Action short course series is designed to introduce non-majors, including students in disciplines outside the humanities, to the critical study of film texts. This iteration will explore representations of youth in a selection of films of different eras and national cinemas. In-class screenings and emphasis on discussion over lecture. Four short written responses. No prior experience in film studies required. This one-credit course will meet August 31, September 7, 14, 21, and will be graded Pass/Fail. Due to the limited number of meetings, perfect attendance is required. In fall 2023, the course will be taught by three FMS senior faculty members, and guest professor Keith Mehlinger of Morgan State University.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3), Engagement with Society (FA4)
This mini-course will offer an introduction to the basics of film analysis through a survey of films directed by women. In-class screenings and emphasis on discussion over lecture. Short weekly written responses. No prior experience in film studies required; non-majors welcome. This one-credit course will meet September 2, 9, 16, 23, and will be graded Pass/Fail. Due to the limited number of meetings, perfect attendance is required.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3)
In this course students will consider variations of the personal essay film, wherein filmmakers explore their own experiences, both real and imagined. These films constitute dialogues between filmmaker and world using subjective approaches, including but not limited to first person narration. Students will make a short (4-6 minutes) 16mm film from original and possibly archival footage; their own filmic essays based upon personal experiences. We will look at the works of several essay filmmakers including Ross McElwee, Jean Luc Godard, Chris Marker, and Su Friedrich.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Ethics and Foundations (FA5), Projects and Methods (FA6)
EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3)
In this course we will explore the principles of visual storytelling in narrative film as they apply to the design, creation, and revision of the short-form screenplay. Specifically, we will focus on learning the craft of screenwriting — strategies, processes, and philosophies that writers can develop, practice, and rely upon as they progress through a series of screenwriting exercises and write a 12-page screenplay, which will be critiqued in-class during weekly table reads and with the Instructor (one-on-one) during office hours. Select produced feature screenplays will be read and analyzed — and clips from select films viewed — to further explore what works well on the page, and how it translates to working well onscreen. (Scripts and clips often selected from American films from the '70s, '80s, and '90s.) A free 18-week trial of Final Draft software will be made available for all students who don’t wish to purchase it outright for $99.)
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3), Engagement with Society (FA4)
Writing Intensive
Students will produce several animations using hand-made techniques, including drawinganimation, paper puppets and stop-motion. Screenings and readings will provide a historical and conceptual context to the exploration of animation as an experimental technique within both narrative and non-narrative works.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Projects and Methods (FA6)
EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3)
This workshop promotes more effective writing, hones interpretive skills, and encourages the development of a distinctive voice through a series of progressively more complex assignments. By sharing draft essays with the class, commenting on one another’s work, and revising, students will learn to edit their own work and to thoughtfully critique others’. Fulfills the Film and Media Studies expository writing requirement.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3), Engagement with Society (FA4)
Writing Intensive
An exploration of the major films and directors of the French New Wave that is also designed to help students consolidate their skills in the analysis of film. The course will examine the origins of the French New Wave, looking at the directors as critics and as passionate film fans, along with the institutional and historical context of the films. It will also ask how the French New Wave changed the process of filmmaking, and transformed the way we think about the work of the director--inspiring more vocations in filmmaking than any other movement in cinema history. Film screenings T 7:30-10:00PM. $40 lab fee.
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3)
Writing Intensive
In this production course, students will create multiple video projects that reflect the representation of dreams, psychosis, and altered states in cinema. We will screen and deconstruct a variety of feature films, video artworks, and music videos to understand the mechanics and language of subjective realism as a narrative form. We will trace this stylistic lineage from its roots in art house cinema to its rise as an accepted Hollywood modality. We will also explore editing and software techniques that will further students' ability to create stunning works of strange beauty.Basic proficiency with digital cameras and editing is required. This class fulfills the intermediate film production requirement.
Prerequisite(s): AS.061.145 OR AS.061.152
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
This course will serve as an introduction to Adobe After Effects. Students will learn a variety of motion graphics techniques such as digital character animation, rotoscoping, motion tracking, chroma key compositing and automating 3D cameras. Through screenings and discussions students will gain insight into the myriad of ways After Effects is used in Film and Television. Throughout the semester students will complete several short video art projects.
Prerequisite(s): AS.061.152OR AS.061.145
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Projects and Methods (FA6)
EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3)
This course will emphasize close observation and critical thinking. Through weekly screenings and class discussion, students will practice noticing; seeing and hearing with fresh eyes and ears, and taking nothing on screen for granted. And they’ll learn to reflect on and contextualize what they find, drawing evolved conclusions about how film texts communicate ideas and what those ideas may be. They’ll consider all elements of cinematic form; an array of analytical frameworks including genre, historical era, authorship, and modes of production; and representations of gender, race, and class. Emphasis on discussion over lecture. Regular quizzes, a short oral presentation and a short written analysis. No prior experience in film studies required; majors and non-majors welcome.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3), Engagement with Society (FA4)
From the films of Robert Flaherty, Jean-Luc Godard, Agnes Varda and Andy Warhol, through the work of Peter Watkins, Ulrich Seidl, Jia Zhangke, Lizzie Borden, Pedro Costa, Abbas Kiarostami, Kevin Jerome Everson, Sacha Baron Cohen and Chloé Zhao, this course explores the dominant techniques, the aberrations, and the virtues and limitations of hybrid filmmaking. Topics discussed include the ethics of representation, the significance of craft, questions of selection, narrative hegemony, the nature of performance, and the porous boundaries between documentary and fiction film. Students will be guided in their own hybrid filmmaking experiments throughout the semester.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Projects and Methods (FA6)
A workshop devoted to creating compelling short scripts and stories based on personal experience. Analysis of films, memoir, and short fiction, along with collaborative development of student work, will emphasize how unique worlds and world views can reflect a larger shared humanity. All writers welcome. Tell your story!
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3), Engagement with Society (FA4)
Writing Intensive
This course covers twelve Korean films made after 1987 and their depictions of Korea’s post-liberation history from 1945 onward. It explores national cinema as historiography, symptom, and discursive practice that constructs and confounds national identity. With our attention on marginalized characters, urban and industrial settings, and themes of social unrest, we will discuss how Korea’s tumultuous history of war, military dictatorship, neoliberal developmentalism, and U.S. alliance birthed a cinematic undercurrent of madness and trauma. The latter part of the semester focuses on the works of three auteurs—BONG Joon Ho, LEE Chang Dong, and PARK Chan Wook.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
Convention and innovation in a selection of popular film genres, including horror, comedy, melodrama, gangster films, and westerns. Regular quizzes and three short written critical responses, one with revision. Students should expect to view two films each week. Non-majors welcome!
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3), Engagement with Society (FA4)
Writing Intensive
This course offers an introduction to the major paradigms of film theory, covering how significant thinkers have conceived of the medium from its inception to the present day. Frequent film screenings help to illustrate key concepts. Topics include the classical opposition between formalist and realist film theories as well as critical approaches to narrative, spectatorship, and representation. Students are expected to enter the course ready to engage in discussion. Weekly film screenings. $50 lab fee.
Prerequisite(s): AS.061.140 OR AS.061.141
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3)
Writing Intensive
This course will examine films (features and shorts) throughout the history of cinema beginning with Alice Guy-Blaché . We will look at how form reveals content, thematic issues and how films relate to the culture and politics of the filmmaker. Filmmakers include Germaine Dulac, Nelly Kaplan, Marguerite Duras, Chantal Ackerman, Barbara Hammer and Nina Menkes. Readings include critical essays, texts by the filmmakers and fiction. Assignments consist of weekly papers on the films.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
Writing Intensive
Using P. Adams Sitney's text: The Cinema of Poetry, this course will explore the relationship between poetry and the moving image. When experimental film began to define itself in the 1950s and 60s the terms cine-poem and film-poem were ubiquitous as identifying avant-garde cinema. Poetic structures in the moving image will be studied in relation to language, images and formation of meaning. Students will independently research a poet who greatly inspired and influenced a filmmaker/moving image artist and write on that filmmaker's work. One moving image project will be undertaken and completed during the semester as well. Weekly assignments will include screenings, reading, writing, and or video work.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3)
Writing Intensive
A workshop devoted to the art and science of a funny story well told. Students will analyze comic fiction, film, and classic television, and create their own short, comic works, drawing on personal experience and real-world observation. They'll learn the basics of screenplay format and scene design, and hone close observation and critical thinking skills. This course satisfies the Film and Media Studies screenwriting requirement. 220.105 OR 225.06 recommended but not required. Both majors and non-majors welcome.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3), Engagement with Society (FA4)
Writing Intensive
This course offers an introduction to internet studies through the many ways digital culture has touched our everyday lives: memes, blogs, gaming, social networking, instant messaging, and more. From its origins in connecting scientific researchers to its present form as a multi-device, multi-platform web connecting us to everything from each other to our smart homes, the internet has proven that nearly our entire social world can be processed as data and linked up. While this has meant greater connection, it has also raised questions about how we learn, communicate, behave, and organize. The internet has long promised new avenues of personal expression, but it has also brought with it the quandaries of echo chambers, information silos, and disinformation campaigns. In response to these complicating effects, the course offers an opportunity for students to develop the critical mapping tools necessary to orient oneself within this vast cultural network and its rapid historical unfolding.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4), Democracy (FA4.1)
EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3), Engagement with Society (FA4)
Writing Intensive
This course offers a journey through the history of computer animation. We’ll start with an archaeology of the digital image, look at experimental animations by early computer artists, and sketch out the work of engineers in developing techniques of wire-frame modeling, texture mapping, shadowing, and facial animation. Beginning with short films and digital sequences in otherwise live-action movies, we’ll cover a wide variety of animation styles in an international context. Screenings will be drawn from a selection of fully computer-animated features, such as those from Studio Ghibli and Pixar; live-action movies with digital special effects in the mode of Tron (Lisberger, USA, 1982) and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (Cameron, USA, 1992); films that use computer software to aid traditional methods of animating, such as The Illusionist (Chomet, France, 2010) and Boy and the World (Abreu, Brazil, 2014); and animated documentaries, such as Waltz with Bashir (Folman, Israel, 2008) and Tower (Maitland, USA, 2016).
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3)
Writing Intensive
Before film even emerged as a popular entertainment form, motion pictures were used to study the human body for purposes of scientific inquiry and medical practice. The present-day crossovers between imaging science and cinema—the inclusion of medical imaging in movies and television shows, the deployment of informational videos and animations in telehealth, and the myriad ways that digital imaging itself is spurred on by the needs of scientific investigation and the demand for cultural works—suggest that what we know about the human body is caught up in a complex web of technical representations and cultural meanings. This course explores the construction of the human body within this array of cinematic practice. Our approach will be twofold: First, we will consider scientific and medical images not merely as powerful means of seeing what would otherwise be unseeable but also as technically enabled and culturally influenced ways of knowing, that is, images, as in cinema, that are historical and could be otherwise. Second, we will examine representations of the human body in the history of film, focusing on how bodies are represented, what bodies are privileged, and how bodies are figured using medical imaging.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3), Engagement with Society (FA4)
Writing Intensive
This course explores film adaptation by considering how words, images, and sounds offer different affordances and constraints for creative expression. A central goal is to conceive of adaptation outside of typical discussions of fidelity to a source work and instead consider how different artistic media open up unique opportunities for storytelling. To this end, we will draw on a number of different intermedial translations, which may include from novel to film (The Night of the Hunter, from Davis Grubb’s book to James Agee’s screenplay to Charles Laughton’s film), from short story to film (The Turin Horse), from graphic novel to film (Ghost World) or television series (HBO’s Watchmen), from personal essay to documentary film (James Baldwin’s The Devil Finds Work and I Am Not Your Negro), from poetry to film (O Brother, Where Art Thou), from play to film (A Raisin in the Sun and My Own Private Idaho), from radio drama to film (Sorry, Wrong Number), and film-to-film homage (Far From Heaven and All That Heaven Allows). We will also delve into the vagaries of film-to-book novelizations and the curious case of concurrently writing film and book, as in Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clark’s collaboration on the film and novel 2001: A Space Odyssey (both adapted from a short story).
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
Writing Intensive
This course will explore the intertwined history of video as a communications technology and as an artistic medium. We will look at the variety of ways artists use video for documentation and expression today, and consider some possible trajectories for the medium in the era of AI products, virtual reality, platforms and algorithms. Students will track the evolution of video by watching key examples of the form, evaluating and discussing the work in class, and then making their own short videos that riff on those examples. Students learn the history of this important creative medium, as well as techniques of conceptualization, interpretation, project planning, storyboarding, basic production, and presentation of video work.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3), Engagement with Society (FA4)
In this course, each student is responsible for the design and production of a short 16mm film. The film may be shot on color and/or black and white negative stock. The format is Super 16mm. The film may include sync and/or non-sync sound. The idea behind the “mongrel” film is for the student to incorporate a variety of genres within this project. These may include stylistic elements typically associated with documentaries, experimental, narrative, animation, and lost and found films. Students are expected to have previously completed AS.061.150 and an intermediate level film production class.
Prerequisite(s): AS.061.150
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Projects and Methods (FA6)
EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3)
The year 2020 challenged the film industry by imposing restrictions on our mobility, collaboration and access. Unable to gather in large groups or travel to the ideal location, much less rent equipment or leave the confines of our homes, moving-image makers found creative ways to embrace these limitations and continue making exceptional things. This intro-level production course will go back to basics in an attempt to define and explore the essential elements of visual storytelling. In this present, and in the future, how do we embrace the aesthetic challenges that come with limited resources and means? Can we make a compelling film or video without human subjects? Can we tell a dynamic story using only one location? Is there a possibility for drama when only one character appears on screen? Can sound be used to evoke the world outside the frame? And how do we make meaningful, relevant, transcendent work amidst a social, political and public health crisis? Over the course of the semester, students will be exposed to films and filmmakers who use these questions to stimulate their practice, and in turn, will be asked to address these challenging questions for themselves through the work they create for class. This course will fulfill the Advanced Filmmaking requirement for the major and minor. Students should have already completed an introductory and intermediate production course before enrolling.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Projects and Methods (FA6)
Combining approaches to audio storytelling and multimedia production, this course offers a wide-ranging introduction to the art of podcasting. Students will learn techniques from the innovators of the golden age of radio, read culturally significant radio plays, develop tools for critically listening to and analyzing today’s podcasts, and learn how to research, write for, and produce their own podcasts. Examples will come from a broad sample of narrative, documentary, interview, and discussion-based podcasts. While no formal training in audio production is necessary to take the course, students will be expected to learn the necessary skills to create their own podcasts. In-class demonstrations of microphones, editing software, and approaches to sound design will be offered. The full suite of podcast materials—written copy, cover image, and audio file—will be posted to the JHU FMS Podcasting channel at https://jhufilmandmedia.podbean.com/. Subscribe to the feed on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. $50 lab fee.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Projects and Methods (FA6)
Writing Intensive
This course will be a hands-on, immersive, deep dive into executing comedic moments through cinematic tools and language. Through screenings and critique, we will analyze a diverse spectrum of films and television until we distill and synthesize that ineffable substance of what makes something funny. Subjects like “Spoof,” “Slapstick” and “Not Funny” will be covered. Students should expect multiple artist visits, time to edit in class and plenty of group discussion. Each student will create two short comedy films throughout the semester, and work collaboratively on a third. We will also have technical days devoted to operating advanced cameras such as the Canon C300 MK2. $100 lab fee.
Prerequisite(s): AS.061.145 OR AS.061.152
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Projects and Methods (FA6)
A workshop devoted to creating complex characters in challenging moral landscapes. Students will view and discuss a wide range of films; and creative assignments may include profiles, short fiction, monologues, and dramatic scenes for the screen. Short critical and creative written exercises, and a longer, creative final project.
Prerequisite(s): AS.061.148 OR AS.061.205 OR AS.061.315 OR AS.061.316 OR Instructor Permission
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Ethics and Foundations (FA5)
Writing Intensive
A workshop devoted to creating compelling short scripts based on personal experience. Analysis of screened films and collaborative development of student work will emphasize how unique worlds and world views can reflect a larger shared humanity. Short critical and creative written exercises, and a longer, creative final project.
Prerequisite(s): AS.061.148 OR AS.061.205 OR AS.061.315 OR AS.061.316 or Instructor permission.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3)
Writing Intensive
Story design for the screenplay with special attention to the genres of comedy, horror, melodrama, and adventure. Regular workshops, short written exercises, and a longer final project.
Prerequisite(s): AS.061.148 OR AS.061.205 OR AS.061.270 OR permission of the instructor.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3)
Writing Intensive
Using narrative theory, this hybrid course teaches students the ins and outs of narrative forms that interact with cinema, engaging with both screenwriting and narrative studies. Using the adaptation of author Neil Gaiman's Coraline to teach students the differences in narrative structure that align with fiction, the graphic novel, and the film, it also enables them to engage in their own adaptation. Taking an original concept from short fiction to a graphic novel treatment to a film treatment, culminating in a short film script and storyboard, the course teaches the fundamentals of narrative theory and encourages students to engage with them creatively.
Prerequisite(s): AS.061.205
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1)
Writing Intensive
Since the rise of HBO in the late 1990s, cable, network, and streaming television has become home to a diverse range of "quality" shows that showcase strong perspectives by unique creators. These series creators work within an intensive commercial medium and a cultural context they speak to but cannot themselves determine. This course examines the relationship between the cultural milieu in which they create work and the show creator themselves. Featuring such examples as Donald Glover's Atlanta, Michael Shur's The Good Place, Phoebe Waller-Bridge's Fleabag, Rebecca Sugar's Steven Universe, Mindy Kaling's The Mindy Project, and Terence Nance's Random Acts of Flyness, among others, it encourages students to engage in aesthetic critique as well as cultural analysis, with the ultimate end of making students better understand the relationship between television and auteur, and be better able to engage with the culture in which they swim via its media.
Prerequisite(s): AS.061.140 OR AS.061.141
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3), Engagement with Society (FA4)
Writing Intensive
From tap dancer to gangster, assassin to anguished teen, versions of the male in film from the silent era to the present. Cross-listed with Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality. One core course in Film and Media Studies is preferred but not required.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3)
Writing Intensive
Fantasized, mythologized, and revised: the cinematic west as landscape and idea through the lenses of classical Hollywood and of contemporary independent women and indigenous filmmakers. Oral presentation, regular shot analyses, and a short written critical response. Interested students lacking pre-requisites should contact the instructor.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
The bad guy as hero from Little Caesar to Goodfellas. Film screenings Th 7:30-10:00 PM, Sun 7:00-9:30 PM. In addition to the prerequisites, students should complete an 200-level Film and Media Studies Critical Studies course or obtain permission from the instructor (lbucknell@jhu.edu) to enroll.
Prerequisite(s): AS.061.140 OR AS.061.141 AND students should complete an 200-level Film and Media Studies Critical Studies course or obtain permission from the instructor
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3)
Writing Intensive
A survey of primarily American, 20th century, popular crime film: hits, heists, cons, organized crime, crimes of passion, and other "left-handed form[s] of human endeavor." Oral presentation, shot analyses, and two short written critical responses. Interested students lacking pre-requisites should contact the instructor.
Prerequisite(s): AS.061.140 OR AS.061.141 OR AS.061.238 OR AS.061.144
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Ethics and Foundations (FA5)
EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3)
Dead ends, darkness, and dangerous women in the postwar films of Sam Fuller, John Huston, Fritz Lang, Anthony Mann, Jacques Tourneur, and others. Oral presentation, regular shot analyses, and a short written critical response. Interested students lacking pre-requisites should contact the instructor.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Ethics and Foundations (FA5)
Writing Intensive
This course explores how French films have interrogated the body. We will ask how they have attempted to come to terms with human physicality, desire, and fragility--and with the ability of cinema itself to move spectators emotionally and even physically. Themes explored will include sexuality, gender identity and disability. AS.061.140 or AS.061.141 or permission of instructor. $50 lab fee.
Prerequisite(s): AS.061.140 OR AS.061.141 or instructor permission.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
With its unique ability to transcend both time and space, cinema is particularly suited to address the nature of memory and the politics of remembering. This course will examine how film frames, revises, translates and transforms memories—personal, historical and cultural—through a range of examples in recent global cinema. Films may include those by Pedro Almódovar, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Lee Chang-dong, Claire Denis, Michael Haneke, Andrew Haigh, Joanna Hogg, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Christian Petzold, Sarah Polley, Hong Sang Soo, Celine Sciamma, and Jia Zhangke.
Prerequisite(s): AS.061.140 OR AS.061.141
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Ethics and Foundations (FA5)
EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3)
Writing Intensive
This course will explore changing representations of adolescence in films from the 1950s to today across a range of mainstream Hollywood, independent, and international films. We’ll examine how this dynamic and misunderstood genre shapes and reshapes perceptions of youth, and we’ll discuss the frank and sometimes explosive ways teen films address difficult questions of race, class and sexual identity, often in the guise of “pure” entertainment. Recommended Course Background: Introduction to Cinema I or Introduction to Cinema II, or permission of instructor.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
Writing Intensive
"What would it be if cinema were left to its own devices, doing what it does best?" This course will attempt to answer that question, posed by the great American filmmaker Albert Maysles, as we explore the fundamentals of observational documentary filmmaking and their ability to capture the unvarnished truth of the human condition. During the semester you'll partner with a classmate, alternating between camera/mic operation, following a human subject born in March, earning and gaining access to real people's lives and conveying intimacy that transcends language and cultural barriers. The class follows the principals and practices detailed in Michael Rabiger's book Observing. Course features include a heavy and rigorous production schedule each week, hands-on documentary filmmaking experience using the Canon C100 camera and Premiere editing software, and professional training in the managing of subject-observer relations. Students should have already completed a 100-level and a 200-level digital production course.
Prerequisite(s): AS.061.152 OR AS.061.145 AND an intermediate level FILM-PROD course.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4), Projects and Methods (FA6)
EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3), Engagement with Society (FA4)
Documentary Theory: The Work of Documentary in the Age of Reality Reproduction This course explores contemporary documentary film and video with an emphasis on selected directors and the theoretical implications suggested by their work. In particular, we look at the notion of the ‘real’ as it is constructed and maintained through and by documentaries. This inquiry necessarily involves a reflection that is philosophically as well as politically motivated. Directors include Errol Morris, Trinh Minh-ha, Ross McElwee, and Werner Herzog. Readings are eclectic, ranging from Annie Dillard to Martin Heidegger. Counts toward 300 or 400-level critical studies requirement.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
Charting a history from when computers were human (and more precisely, women, as Jennifer Light has shown) to our present moment when AI has taken on much of what was once seen as the sole province of the human, this course considers the development of computers as tools of communication, cooperation, creativity, and play. It follows a story of how machines once designed for numerical calculation became media. It relatedly covers how the technologies of twentieth-century media fed into computers: how camera lenses came to be used for silicon electronics, how television screens became computer monitors, how the fundamentals of radio opened up to cellular data. Course materials will be drawn broadly from media theory, the history of technology, game studies, literature, films, music albums, and dead and living hardware and software. Central questions will include how computers extended the capabilities of legacy media, as in electronic music, digital film production, and online publishing; how they outmoded or threatened traditional formats, as can be seen with the dwindling of magazine racks and the end-of-cinema debates; and how they enabled entirely novel technologies, from the word processor to the graphical user interface. Assignments will involve applying media-theoretical concepts to objects of computer history: a short traditional research paper and a 3–5 minute video essay (no experience required; all instruction and tools provided in class).
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3), Engagement with Society (FA4)
This course will explore a range of Almodóvar’s work, from the early films emerging out of La Movida Madrileña up to and including The Human Voice and Parallel Mothers, with particular emphasis on All About My Mother, Talk to Her, Bad Education, Volver, and Pain and Glory. We will examine the director’s influences and antecedents—Bunuel, Hitchcock, Sirk, Cassavetes, among others—against the backdrop of Spain’s dramatic political and cultural transformation after the death of Franco. And we will closely analyze the characteristics that define Almodóvar’s status as an auteur: his groundbreaking approach to sexuality, queer politics and gender transformation; his innovative use of melodrama; and his dazzlingly eclectic visual style.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4), Democracy (FA4.1)
Writing Intensive
This course will explore strategy and process for developing a short screenplay from pre-existing literary or journalistic source material (short story, news/feature article, etc.). By exploring several “case studies” — feature films and the source material that inspired them — students will identify the practical strategies employed by professional screenwriters with the goal of employing such strategies with their own screenplay adaptations. Bulk of class will focus on designing, writing, and rewriting a 20-30 page screenplay, and sharing multiple drafts with the class (and with the professor one-on-one) for critique over the course of the semester. Each student should have 2-3 pieces of material under consideration for possible adaptation by the start of class. Discussions from time to time will also touch on the business of screenwriting. (Scripts and clips often selected from American films spanning the 60s through the 2000s.) Students will be required to purchase a license for Final Draft screenwriting software for $99. Students are expected to have previously completed AS.061.205 or another lower level screenwriting class.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3), Engagement with Society (FA4)
Writing Intensive
Spend a semester evoking fear, building tension, generating suspense, and eliciting screams as we analyze the screenplays behind some of cinema’s greatest horror movies—and you craft your own 20 to 30-page fright film script along the way. Students should have previously completed AS.061.205 (Introduction to Screenwriting).
Prerequisite(s): AS.061.205
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3)
Writing Intensive
Surrealism, a movement to revolutionize human thought and experience, continues to influence art and culture. We'll define Surrealism through primary texts, including those of Andre Breton, Antonin Artaud and others as well as through the films created in the early part of the 20th century. Using an understanding of surrealism found in the readings, as well as in surrealist games and automatic writing, we'll study a diverse group of filmmakers influenced by the practice, including Luis Buñuel, Joseph Cornell, Raul Ruiz and contemporary artists such as David Lynch. Assignments include weekly papers and one final creative project.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3), Engagement with Society (FA4)
Writing Intensive
A hand-made, 2-D animation course based on ideas of automatism. Students will create their own animated movie during the semester with in-class animation exercises. Readings will included Dada and Surrealist texts, poetry and theory of poetics. Sounds ideas will be discussed and pursued related to the ideas explored throughout the semester. $125 lab fee.
Prerequisite(s): AS.061.145 OR AS.061.152
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Projects and Methods (FA6)
EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3)
An exploration of a series of contemporary French films that bear witness to the contemporary reality of France as a multi-ethnic society and ask essential questions about cultural identity. Is cultural and ethnic identity something that you are born into or it is a role that you elect or perform? How should individuals living today understand their relation to historical injustices? Are there things that we can learn only through relationships with people from other cultures? Screenings include works of Abdellatif Kechiche, Jacques Audiard, Claire Denis, Céline Sciamma, Michael Haneke, Mathieu Kassovitz, the Dardennes. $50 LAB FEE
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4), Democracy (FA4.1)
This course traces the history of the soundtrack from Vitaphone at the coming of sound to Dolby Stereo in the New Hollywood era to the fully immersive, atmospheric sound systems of today’s cinemas and home theaters. We consider major theories on the relationship between sound and image, the production of sound space, the role of the voice in cinema, and the effects of film music. Assignments will engage with the materials through both analytical reflection and short creative sound production. Screenings and examples are likely to include early sound classics, such as Sunrise (1927) and 42nd Street (1933); notable international innovators, such as The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933) and A Man Escaped (1956); pathbreaking stereo entries, such as Fantasia (1940) and Apocalypse Now (1979); recent exemplars of film music, such as In the Mood for Love (2000) and Morvern Callar (2002); and films that reflect on the very nature of sound recording, such as The Conversation (1974) and The Lives of Others (2006).
Prerequisite(s): AS.061.140 OR AS.061.141
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3), Engagement with Society (FA4)
Writing Intensive
Maurice Merleau-Ponty writes, “the real is a closely woven fabric”. In this course we will consider how several artistic disciplines weave their own version of that fabric. These disciplines include documentary film, prose poetry, landscape painting, literature, and music. The course will be predicated upon Martin Heidegger’s essay, “The Age of the World Picture” and follow the lead of Roland Barthe’s essay on the “effect of the real”. We will also highlight various hybrid forms within these disciplines, with particular attention to the work of W.G.Sebald and Steven Reich.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3), Engagement with Society (FA4)
This is part one of a two-part course that explores Los Angeles—as mythic landscape, dream factory, nexus of cultural imaginary and historical reality—through both critical study and experiential fieldwork in the city itself. In the spring (open to FMS majors and minors), we will examine a selection of films across six decades that prominently feature LA as a cultural and historical construct. We’ll consider how the films utilize the city’s unique architectural spaces, its built environment, its racial and ethnic politics, and its proximity to an “unruly” natural world to shape narrative structure and aesthetics. Most importantly, we’ll examine LA’s relationship to Hollywood as the world capital of filmmaking—and of mythmaking. During the spring semester, students will engage in close analysis of the films and study selected readings, completing a series of written and oral assignments and preparing an independent project to be completed post-semester in Los Angeles. During the post-semester faculty-led Experiential Research Lab, students will travel to Los Angeles to complete their short projects under the mentorship of the faculty director. The independent work may be a creative or research project of their own choosing—a short film or screenplay, a creative or scholarly essay or oral project—that engages with a particular aspect of the city in the manner of the work we conduct in the spring. Students who choose the spring course must take the experiential research lab in Los Angeles. The Experiential Research Lab will feature field trips with JHU faculty to film sites, screening events, film archives, and other Los Angeles landmarks; and workshops on screenwriting, producing, and directing with JHU alumni. A networking event with alumni—including directors, writers, producers, and other creatives—will be a feature of the second week of the session, and alumni will be available for consultation, mentorship, and networking opportunities throughout the course.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3), Engagement with Society (FA4)
Writing Intensive
During the summer faculty-led Experiential Learning Lab, students will conduct field research and complete their short projects under the mentorship of the faculty director. The independent work may be a creative or research project of their own choosing—a short film or screenplay, a creative or scholarly essay or oral project—that engages with a particular aspect of the city in the manner of the work we examined in the spring. The summer portion of the course will also feature field trips with JHU faculty to film sites, screening events, film archives, and other Los Angeles landmarks; and workshops on screenwriting, producing, and directing with JHU alumni. A networking event with alumni—including directors, writers, producers, and other creatives—will be a feature of the second week of the session, and alumni will be available for consultation, mentorship, and networking opportunities throughout the three-week course.
Prerequisite(s): AS.061.386
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
This course introduces students to some of the most exciting female directors of the 21st century, asking how gender shaped the production and reception of their films. Do particular directors attribute any significance to the fact of being a woman? Does a director's gender shape her choice of subject or how she represents it? Does wider knowledge of works directed by women change our sense of the canon and authorship? Covers non-U.S. films, strongly encouraged for FMS majors and minors. Cross-listed with WGS. No pre-requisite.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
This course will engage with the Baltimore Museum of Art’s ongoing environmental initiative, Turn Again to the Earth, to explore the relationship between cinematic portrayals of the natural world and works of art in the BMA’s collections. Focusing on three upcoming exhibits—Deconstructing Nature: Environmental Transformation in the Lucas Collection; Engaging the Elements: Air, Fire, Water, Earth; and The Way of Nature: Art from Japan, China and Korea—we’ll examine paintings, prints, photographs and other materials at the BMA in tandem with a series of films that similarly pose questions about environmental change and human intervention in the natural world. We’ll explore how culture and history inform representation across visual media and through time in three distinct areas: industrialization in the early 20th century American West; Europe and late 20th century environmental change; and natural and unnatural environments in contemporary Asia. Filmmakers under consideration will include Robert Altman, Michelangelo Antonioni, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Sky Hopinka, Bong Joon-ho, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Terrence Malick, Kenji Mizoguchi, Kelly Reichardt, Agnes Varda, and Jia Zhongke. Class will take place at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Priority will be given to FMS majors and minors.
Prerequisite(s): AS.061.140 or AS.061.141
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
In this course, we explore different understandings of "love" and the way that film has dealt with the concept as a medium. We explore a variety of approaches to the question of "love" - from the agapic to the familial to the romantic - through a series of interdisciplinary readings ranging from philosophy to anthropology. We will also equally explore the question of how film has engaged with the question of love as a concept, and what depictions of human affection - from the general to the personal - it has offered us. Screenings are required for this course. Lab fee: $50
Prerequisite(s): AS.061.140 OR AS.061.141 OR AS.061.226
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Ethics and Foundations (FA5)
EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3)
Writing Intensive
Violence, ritualized and anarchic, celebrated and deplored, in popular film from silent era melodrama and slapstick comedy to contemporary sports, crime, and combat films. Two short critical papers and an oral presentation. Interested non-majors and pre-majors may contact the instructor about permission to enroll: lbucknell@jhu.edu.
Prerequisite(s): AS.061.140 OR AS.061.141 OR AS.061.238
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Ethics and Foundations (FA5)
EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3)
Writing Intensive
This course uses French film to examine the history of twentieth-century Paris. We will consider how filmmakers interpreted the social, political, and technological transformations that shaped Paris in the modern era, treating movies as expressions of change and means by which filmmakers comment on it. Taught in English. $50 lab fee.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
Students will create their own stop-motion models (puppets) based on a wire armature model. In small groups, students will design and create a simple set and make a short stop-motion movie using a DSLR camera. The question of "why animate" will be explored in student projects and responses to screenings. We will study the history of stop-motion puppet animation from Starewicz to Svankmajer to Nick Park.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Projects and Methods (FA6)
This course focuses on one of the world’s oldest and most influential film festivals-- that of Cannes-- in order to explore the role of film festivals in fostering aesthetic communities and creating markets. We will read about the culture, politics, and commerce of film festivals in general, and about Cannes in particular, as we watch films that permit us to compare Official Selections to the less orthodox choices of parallel sections and concurrent festivals. Classes meet 8x during the semester. Final organization meeting TBD. Attendance at all classes and evening screenings is mandatory. This two-credit course is the mandatory companion to AS.061.402, Cannes Experiential Learning Excursion, where students will be attending the Cannes Film Festival after classes end in May. There, students will chart their way among screenings; meet with festival professionals; write journals and reviews based on their experience; and gather regularly to debrief. Students must be able to acquire passports and travel to France. Travel, lodging, and food will be paid for. Instructor approval required. Contact lmason@jhu.edu for further information. Be prepared to send a short essay on course goals and a short film review to be considered for enrollment.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3)
EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3)
Writing Intensive
Mandatory travel portion of the Cannes Film Festival course (AS.061.401). Travel will take place May 16-27. We will lodge in Cannes and attend the five film festivals running concurrently there. Students will chart their way among screenings; meet with festival professionals; write journals and reviews based on their experience; and gather regularly to debrief. Participants have already been identified.
Prerequisite(s): AS.061.401
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Projects and Methods (FA6)
EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3)
If you love watching thrillers — and believe you are possessed with the right blend of obsession, stamina and blind faith required to write one — then please join us for 13 weeks of screenwriting exploration as we tangle with this most beguiling and and satisfying of film genres. By semester’s end, you’ll have written a “killer” first act of a feature script, developed a detailed step outline for acts 2 and 3, designed a look-book to inspire yourself and future collaborators, and hatched a plan to see you project through to completion (on your own, or in a future class.)
Prerequisite(s): AS.061.205 AND AS.061.373
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Ethics and Foundations (FA5)
Writing Intensive
Intensive workshop course where students will write a first draft of a feature-length screenplay. Classes will focus on the specific challenges of the students’ works-in-progress, with an emphasis on developing a story idea that is suitable for a feature, and the craft to see it through to completion. Particular emphasis will be placed on the feature screenwriter’s central challenge: creating enough of a structure in the early writing stages to keep the screenplay on track, while remaining open to new ideas for scenes and sequences that inevitably arise as the characters, story, and themes come to life. Select produced feature screenplays will be read and analyzed — and clips from select films viewed—to explore what works well on the page, and how it translates to working well onscreen. Throughout the course, Instructor will also devote a portion of class time to discuss the business of screenwriting. Students will be required to purchase a license for Final Draft screenwriting software for $99 by Week 2 (if they have not already done so for a prior screenwriting course).
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Projects and Methods (FA6)
EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3)
Writing Intensive
Animating Cartoons: This class will focus on character animation. Through weekly screenings of cartoons and animations and reading comics, the form will be analyzed in class discussions and short papers. Students will create their own hand drawn character and create an extensive story board for an animation involving their character. A scene will be chosen and a short hand-drawn animation from the storyboard will be created.
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Projects and Methods (FA6)
EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3)
You’ve just finished the first draft of your feature screenplay or long-format teleplay. If you’re like most mortals, including the teacher of this course, it’s likely to be terrifically average. Here’s the chance to make it good — and possibly great — with a semester’s worth of systematic, high-octane rewriting. Hard labor, creative breakthroughs and a glimpse at what it takes to get Hollywood’s attention included.
Prerequisite(s): AS.061.404
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Projects and Methods (FA6)
EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3)
Writing Intensive
This course explores various elements of film production and filmic expression through a somewhat nebulous field typically described as lost films. Lost films (or as they are sometimes called, "orphan" films) can be generally described as films that have, for a variety of reasons, fallen out of the public view. They frequently come from educational, scientific, medical, or industrial films from the 1950s and 1960s. Using these films as source materials, lost film filmmakers explore and expose cultural conventions, visual icons, and historical value materials. Each week, students are responsible for re-editing sources found on an internet archive site. The assignments follow thematic concerns related to film editing. Students complete a final project (4-8 minutes). All editing for the course is accomplished with non-linear software, generally Adobe Premiere or Final Cut.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Projects and Methods (FA6)
EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3)
Permission required. Production track students complete an independent project. Should must have completed one advanced level FMS production course (POS tag FILM-PROD).
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Ethics and Foundations (FA5), Projects and Methods (FA6)
EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3)
Critical studies track students complete an independent research project.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Projects and Methods (FA6)
EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3)
Writing Intensive
An independent study in Film and Media Studies gives students the opportunity to pursue an independent research project or develop/produce a film project or a script under the mentorship of a Film and Media Studies faculty member.
Prerequisite(s): You must request Independent Academic Work using the Independent Academic Work form found in Student Self-Service: Registration, Online Forms.
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Projects and Methods (FA6)
EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3)
Writing Intensive
For students who wish to explore an aspect of film studies not covered by existing courses. The course may be used for research or directed readings/viewings and should include one lengthy essay or several short ones as well as regular meetings with the adviser.Permanently required: Lab Fee: $100 (if production related)
Prerequisite(s): You must request Independent Academic Work using the Independent Academic Work form found in Student Self-Service: Registration, Online Forms.
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Projects and Methods (FA6)
EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3)
Writing Intensive
An internship in the field of Film and Media to be overseen and approved by a Film and Media Studies faculty member. Prior approval is required.
Prerequisite(s): You must request Independent Academic Work using the Independent Academic Work form found in Student Self-Service: Registration, Online Forms.
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Projects and Methods (FA6)
EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3)
An internship in the field of Film and Media to be overseen and approved by a Film and Media Studies faculty member. Prior approval is required.
Prerequisite(s): You must request Independent Academic Work using the Independent Academic Work form found in Student Self-Service: Registration, Online Forms.
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Projects and Methods (FA6)
EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3)
Permission required. Screenwriting Track students complete an independent project.
Prerequisite(s): You must request Independent Academic Work using the Independent Academic Work form found in Student Self-Service: Registration, Online Forms.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Projects and Methods (FA6)
EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3)
Writing Intensive
An independent study in Film and Media Studies gives students the opportunity to pursue an independent research project or develop/produce a film project or a script under the mentorship of a Film and Media Studies faculty member.
Prerequisite(s): You must request Independent Academic Work using the Independent Academic Work form found in Student Self-Service: Registration, Online Forms.
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Projects and Methods (FA6)
EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3)
An internship in the field of Film and Media to be overseen and approved by a Film and Media Studies faculty member. Prior approval is required.
Prerequisite(s): You must request Independent Academic Work using the Independent Academic Work form found in Student Self-Service: Registration, Online Forms.
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Projects and Methods (FA6)
EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3)
Cross Listed Courses
Art
As the historical core of the photographic medium, documentary photography spans a broad range of expressions. This includes its earliest role in scientific and medical advancements, landscape surveys, journalism, war reportage, social action, personal storytelling, and conceptual mythmaking. Within these modes of image-making, photography inspires conversation about truthful witness vs. aesthetic commentary. In this course, students have the option to photograph with digital technology, including, but not limited to DSLR, Mirrorless, Point-and-Shoot, and Smartphone Cameras. We will use Adobe software for file management, image editing, sequencing, and inkjet printing. Course projects, readings, lectures, critiques, and field trips in Baltimore are designed to expand our image-making vocabulary and refine individual photographic styles. DSLR cameras are available on loan for the semester. Attendance for the first class is mandatory.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4), Projects and Methods (FA6)
Center for Africana Studies
In this course, we will follow the development of black poetry primarily as it has evolved in the United States. Beginning with the first published African American writers of the eighteenth century and ending with several important poets writing and performing today, we will consider the shape of the African American poetic tradition as commonly anthologized and as defined by our own theoretically-informed readings of the assigned literature. Attention will be given to both canonical and neglected literary movements and groups. Readings will include poetry and essays by Frances E.W. Harper, James Weldon Johnson, Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, Amiri Baraka, Harryette Mullen, Tracie Morris, and others.
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3), Engagement with Society (FA4)
Writing Intensive
Comparative Thought and Literature
What do films and philosophy have in common? Do films express, with their own means, philosophical problems that are relevant to our experience of ourselves and the world we live in? This term we will study such issues with a particular focus on questions of justice, truth, revenge, forgiveness, hope, hate, and fear.
Prerequisite(s): Students who are enrolled in or have completed AS.300.699 are not eligible to take AS.300.399.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3), Engagement with Society (FA4)
Writing Intensive
From dancing skeletons and Mickey Mouse to nuclear-powered robots and Fritz the Cat, modernist visual culture is replete with iconic images of animated existence. This course surveys these diverse forms of "animatedness” emerging within the interconnected histories of special effects film and animated media, focusing on their entanglement with broader modernist practices, movements, and styles between the 1920s and the 1970s. Students will explore the shared origins of animation and special effects in the frame-by-frame manipulations of early trick film, the hopes and fears attached to machine aesthetics in German expressionism, French surrealism, and Soviet avant-garde cinema of the 1920s, and the ambivalent agency expressed by animated bodies in American and Japanese cartoons of the 1920s-40s. They will then assess the continuities and ruptures in the aesthetic and political commitments of interwar and postwar modernisms through case studies from North American, Central and Eastern European, and Japanese animation. By engaging with the diverse forms of “animatedness” and animated media presented in this course, students will develop critical theoretical, historical, and comparative frameworks for navigating the complex entanglements of organic life, emotional states, and machine technologies that increasingly define contemporary existence.
Prerequisite(s): Students may not have taken the AS.300.321 version of this course.
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3)
East Asian Studies
This course aims to inspire students to explore the impacts, meanings, and explanations of social transformation in contemporary China, via the lens of documentary photography. The photographic images of selective topics will include the products of photojournalism and documentary photography, and several documentary films, by both Chinese and non-Chinese photographers. While one picture is worth thousand words, one picture may also provoke countless interpretations. Students are strongly encouraged to read broadly about different aspects of social transformations in contemporary China, and to select and curate their own subjects of photo images. The spirit of comparative study of documentary photography of China and other parts of world will be strongly encouraged. Active class participation is imperative. A small exhibition on the campus will be organized by the Spring semester. The course is designed for upper division undergraduates. Cross-listed with Sociology and International Studies (CP).
Distribution Area: Social and Behavioral Sciences
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3)
Writing Intensive
We will examine modern Korean culture through short stories and a series of films associated with New Korean Cinema. One aim of the course is to gain a sense of history from which the literary and cinematic artifacts obtain their representative artistic status. A second aim is to inquire into the relationship between written and filmic texts in order to articulate what the limits and advantages are of that specific medium. No prior familiarity with Korean language is expected.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3), Engagement with Society (FA4)
English
The word “podcast” was coined in 2004 as a portmanteau of “broadcast” and “iPod.” As thename implies, podcasts were born when an old mode of audio transmission (radio broadcast) met a new technology (portable mp3 players like Apple’s iPod, or rather RSS feeds adapted to handle audio files). But even back then, “podcasts” were more than just time-delayed radio programs you could carry around in your pocket. They also included a wide range of born-podcast formats: free-flowing talk shows, scripted audio-essays, anthologies of audio-journalism, etc. In this course, we will study the historical origins and contemporary range of podcasts as a medium for writing and performance. We will consider how this medium has absorbed genres from other media (memoir, essay, drama, documentary, fiction, autofiction, etc.) and combined them in innovative ways. We will also explore genres made possible for the first time by podcasts—whether by their ability for on-demand playback, by their low cost of distribution, or by their openness to audio-experimentation. The primary skills taught by this course are careful listening and analytic writing. This is not a course in podcast production. It will, however, require students to analyze podcasts by “quoting” them in both text-based papers and audio-essays. As such, this course will teach some basic skills in editing audio, writing scripts, and mixing sound.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3), Engagement with Society (FA4)
Writing Intensive
In this course, we'll explore relations between media via films about writers and fictions about film. Along the way, we'll visit with an array of troubled wordsmiths, glittering stars, obsessive fans, and unscrupulous executives; in at least two or three cases, we'll read a novel about cinema and then watch that novel's own cinematic adaptation. Texts may include films by Billy Wilder, Jean-Luc Godard, Jane Campion, Pedro Almodóvar, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, and Cord Jefferson as well as fictions by Elizabeth Bowen, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Evelyn Waugh, Manuel Puig, Abdellah Taïa, and Sharlene Teo.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
Writing Intensive
First Year Seminars
This First-Year Seminar introduces students to the intellectual life of the university by considering some of the riches of contemporary global cinema. After a brief introduction each week, you will watch the assigned film and read some texts to deepen your sense of how to analyze it and think about broader matters the director has taken on. During in-class discussion, we will consider what makes a particular film noteworthy, what the director seems to think about his/her national context, and how local issues intersect with broader questions about the human condition. How does the past shape us? What is justice? What is political action? Who are we responsible to? We will also consider aesthetics. What is a good director? How do we know we are watching good acting (especially when reading subtitles?) What impact do cinematography and editing have on our perception of a film? How do film makers speak to and quote one another?
Distribution Area: Humanities
Sound plays a rich and complex role in our everyday lives and in our various forms of media art. In the past thirty years, sound studies has become a new addition to the study of the human senses, as well as the relationship of these senses to history, aesthetics, epistemology, culture, and art. How do we listen to the world around us? To different media? In this First-Year Seminar, we explore listening to the lived environment, to music, and to multimedia sound art ranging from performance art to cinema. The nexus of questions surrounding listening opens us up to a host of new texts and approaches: those of acoustic ecology, or how we experience sound via the lived and natural environment; those of the relationship between the senses and our emotions; those of the nature of musical listening; and those of the art world as it engages with sound. This seminar is a mixture of sound theory and practice. We will read, debate, and bring in examples. Students will create their own projects, both written and sonic. No prior experience in sound theory or sound practice are required.
Distribution Area: Humanities
History of Art
Landscape in narrative cinema has silent enunciating power. The choice of location shots alone constitutes a set of complex considerations. We may wonder, why was Monument Valley featured in so many westerns? Is it only because of the site’s marvelous photogenicity, or its geographic location, or its social and historical significance? The formal and stylistic choices filmmakers made regarding how landscape is represented on screen, whether as a real or a fictional site, also reveal critical engagements with both social reality and the pictorial conventions of landscape art. Does it look barren or lush? sublime or banal? What is the concept of nature, what is a “view,” or picturesque, and how are these critical questions in representations of landscape framed and mediated in cinema? Does the representation of landscape work for or against the storyline unfolding on screen? What does it tell us about social reality, ecological concerns, and political commentary?This course examines landscape in narrative cinema not only as subject or part of the mise-en-scene but also as a way of seeing, a site of expression, and locus of social, historical, and political meaning. Each week we explore a film genre or a film movement, for example, Western, or Japanese New Wave, and study how landscape functions in that genre. Students are expected to watch films, read, and analyze both the readings and films carefully prior to coming to class. As a term project, each student selects a particular site (any site of their choice) for the focus of their study and research of cinematic landscape in the course. These sites can be a place personal to you, or a place you think is interesting or important in cinema. There will be workshops during the course of the semester to help complete the final project.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3), Engagement with Society (FA4)
Interdepartmental
This class will be a hands-on experience for students to be involved in the early stages of a documentary’s making. Students will be working with the professor on researching, planning, and writing the treatment for a documentary about a forgotten feminist play (1927) from pre-Holocaust Vienna, where diversity and progressive thought were still possible. This romantic comedy centers around a self-determined matriarch, Therese, helping her three daughters navigate the expectations of rigid, societal beliefs – often leading by example – as they find their way into adulthood. Moving back and forth between the archive of its time both through the re-appropriation of Nazi newsreels and propaganda films, as well as ephemeral films of the time and the the new staging of the play, the film will take the audience inside a theater space where a vibrant environment of escapism smashes against the harsh reality of its time, which is as vivid as it was 80 years ago.
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
Modern Languages and Literatures
This course traces the history of Italian cinema from the silent era to the new millennium, highlighting its main trends and genres, and reflecting on the major transformations modern and contemporary Italian society experienced over the twentieth and twentieth-first centuries. We shall examine iconic films such as Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves, Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’Avventura, and Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Mamma Roma, that received international recognition and influenced other national, cinematic productions. We shall also look at the work of less famous, or independent filmmakers who received less critical attention. While this class takes an historical approach, it also includes a theoretical component and introduces students to the specificity of the cinematic language, examining films in relation to the mise-en-scène, frame composition, camera movements, editing, and sound. This class is taught in English.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
Course is taught in ENGLISH. Did you know that one of the first Latin American actresses to conquer Hollywood was Brazilian? Did you know that cinema has existed in Brazil since 1895, just six months after the first screening in Paris? This course is an introduction to both the academic study of cinema as a communicative art and to Brazilian film. The films selected focus on the late 1950s to the present and highlight import episodes and challenges in the advancement of Brazilian society as well as its cinematic production. Film aesthetics are analyzed through a number of critical perspectives, including class, race, gender as well as ethnicity, nationalism or national identity, colonialism, social changes, and the politics of representation. In this sense, the films, and documentaries that we will be watching and studying encompass the period from the rise of New Cinema (Cinema Novo) up to films exploring the most recent trends, including movies launched up to 2022. Students wishing to do the course work in English for 3 credits should register for section 01. Those wishing to earn 4 credits by doing the course work in Portuguese should register for section 02. No Prereq.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4), Democracy (FA4.1)
EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3), Engagement with Society (FA4)
Writing Intensive
How has the Holocaust been represented in literature and film? Are there special challenges posed by genocide to the traditions of visual and literary representation? Where does the Holocaust fit in to the array of concerns that the visual arts and literature express? And where do art and literature fit in to the commemoration of communal tragedy and the working through of individual trauma entailed by thinking about and representing the Holocaust? These questions will guide our consideration of a range of texts — nonfiction, novels, poetry — in Yiddish, German, English, French and other languages (including works by Primo Levi and Isaac Bashevis Singer), as well as films from French documentaries to Hollywood blockbusters (including films by Alain Resnais, Claude Lanzmann, and Steven Spielberg). All readings in English.
Prerequisite(s): Cannot be taken by anyone who previously took AS.213.361
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
The Archives is a documentary currently in production that visits Holocaust archives and Jewish cemeteries around the world, including in Austria, Germany, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Brazil, and the U.S. These hallowed places of Holocaust history are the searching grounds for four descendants seeking evidence of their interrupted family stories from the pre-second World War era. As the protagonists get closer to the truth with the help of archivists assisting them in their searches, they receive a measure of restitution. This course is an opportunity to participate in the latest documentary by Professor Bernadette Wegenstein as her team ends production and moves the film into post-production. Students will assist in the pre-production of final film shoots planned for March 2025 in New York and Baltimore. Interested students will be able to take part in these film shoots as credited production assistants. They will also learn how a documentary that has been made over the past three years will be prepared for post-production including writing a paper cut and working with animators. Students don’t need any formal knowledge of documentary filmmaking but should be interest in research, Holocaust history, and exile stories.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Projects and Methods (FA6)
EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3)
From the epic movies of the silent era to neorealist and auteur films of the post-war period, all the way to contemporary Academy winner The Great Beauty, Italian cinema, has had and continues to have a global impact, and shape the imaginary of filmmakers all over the world. This course traces Italian film history from its origins to recent times, highlighting its main genres and trends beyond the icons of neorealist and auteur cinema, including the so-called ‘comedy Italian style,’ spaghetti westerns, horror, mafia-mockery films, feminist filmmaking, and ecocinema. While learning to probe the cinematic frame, and examine composition, camera movements, cinematography, editing, and sound, and interrogating issues of gender, class, and race, we will screen classics such as Bicycle Thieves, La Dolce Vita, and L’Avventura, but also forgotten archival films by pioneer women filmmakers, and works by emergent, independent filmmakers.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)
EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3), Engagement with Society (FA4)
Writing Intensive
“Everything which we loved is lost! We are in a desert” – this emotional assertion was the reaction to Kazimir Malevich’s 1915 painting The Black Square, as the artist himself recalled it. This sentiment of fearing, warning and even witnessing the end of the world as we know it, will stand at the center of the course. We will study the literary and cinematic representations of this apocalyptic notion and investigate its theoretical, theological, physiological and aesthetic aspects. We will seek to trace the narrative dynamics as well as literary and cinematic means of apocalyptic representations in works from various periods, languages, cultures and religions. Among the issues to be discussed: what is the apocalypse, biblical apocalypse, dystopia and nostalgia, trauma and post trauma, war and the apocalypse, the Holocaust as the end of civilization, the atomic bomb, realism and anti-realism, political changes and the apocalypse in popular culture.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Citizens and Society (FA4), Ethics and Foundations (FA5)
Writing Intensive
The Archives is a documentary currently in production that visits Holocaust archives and Jewish cemeteries around the world, including in Austria, Germany, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Brazil, and the U.S. These hallowed places of Holocaust history are the searching grounds for four descendants seeking evidence of their interrupted family stories from the pre-second World War era. As the protagonists get closer to the truth with the help of archivists assisting them in their searches, they receive a measure of restitution. This course is an opportunity to participate in the latest documentary by Professor Bernadette Wegenstein as her team ends production and moves the film into post-production. Students will assist in the pre-production of final film shoots planned for March 2025 in New York and Baltimore. Interested students will be able to take part in these film shoots as credited production assistants. They will also learn how a documentary that has been made over the past three years will be prepared for post-production including writing a paper cut and working with animators. Students don’t need any formal knowledge of documentary filmmaking but should be interest in research, Holocaust history, and exile stories.
Distribution Area: Humanities
From the epic movies of the silent era to neorealist and auteur films of the post-war period, all the way to contemporary Academy winner The Great Beauty, Italian cinema, has had and continues to have a global impact, and shape the imagination of filmmakers all over the world. This course traces Italian film history from its origins to recent times, highlighting its main genres and trends beyond the icons of neorealist and auteur cinema, including the so-called ‘comedy Italian style,’ spaghetti westerns, horror, mafia-mockery films, feminist filmmaking, and ecocinema. While learning to probe the cinematic frame, and examine composition, camera movements, cinematography, editing, and sound, and interrogating issues of gender, class, and race, we will screen classics such as Bicycle Thieves, La Dolce Vita, and L’Avventura, but also forgotten archival films by pioneer women filmmakers, and works by emergent, independent filmmakers. This course is taught in English. Additional sessions in Italian will be arranged upon students’ request.
Distribution Area: Humanities
AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4), Projects and Methods (FA6)