Film and Media Studies

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)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3)

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 nonmajors 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: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Citizens and Society (FA4)

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 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)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3), Engagement with 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)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3)

This one-credit short course is designed to introduce students—including non-majors—to the critical study of film. This semester our subject will be four international films released in 2025: Park Chan-Wook’s No Other Choice, Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident, Oliver Laxe’s Sirât, and Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value. Among other things, we’ll discuss each director’s particular thematic and stylistic innovations and how each film universalizes subject matter particular to its country of origin. In-class screenings, weekly quizzes, and emphasis on discussion over lecture. No prior experience in film studies required. This one-credit course will be graded Pass/Fail. Due to the limited number of meetings, perfect attendance is required, and students must attend the first day of the course.

Distribution Area: Humanities

AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Ethics and Foundations (FA5)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (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 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)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3), Engagement with Society (FA4)

In this course, you will produce a 7–10 minute mitigation video to be used in a Maryland resentencing hearing as part of the state’s Decarceration Initiative. Working in a two-person Maysles-style camera/mic unit ideally one film student and one social science student as a team, you will collaborate with Maryland Office of the Public Defender attorneys and social workers to interview an incarcerated client inside a correctional facility, document the lives of their family and community members, and craft a character-driven narrative grounded in care, accuracy, and ethical responsibility.The class is designed to conduct an intensive 10-day production outside of class consisting of: 1 day Orientation at the Baltimore City Office of the Public Defender + 2 days on-site pre-production + 4 days Primary filming + 2 days Pick-up shoots + 1 day Community screening for fact-checking and final consent. Throughout the semester, you will complete weekly production assignments, maintain professional communication with stakeholders, and develop a legal, sociological, and human understanding of how individual life histories are shaped by structural forces such as race, class, policing, and incarceration. Students who have completed at least one of the following will be given priority: AS.061.150, AS.061.152, AS.100.423, AS.220.213, AS.362.204, AS.362.127, AS.191.365, AS.145.360, AS.360.111, AS.060.315, AS.362.115, AS.362.335, AS.190.300.

Distribution Area: Humanities

AS Foundational Abilities: Citizens and Society (FA4), Ethics and Foundations (FA5), Projects and Methods (FA6)

EN Foundational Abilities: Engagement with Society (FA4)

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 basic principles of visual storytelling in narrative film as they apply to the design, creation, and revision of the 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 two short screenplays, which will be critiqued in-class during weekly table reads and with the Instructor (one-on-one) during office hours. Select professional 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. Final Draft screenwriting software is required; a FREE 18-week trial will be made available for all students who don’t already have Final Draft.

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)

The history of media art is in many ways a history of artists trying to find new modes of distribution and exchange for that art. From early video collectives mailing tapes to contemporary artists launching NFT collections, media artists have consistently challenged traditional gallery distribution models by creating alternative networks for circulation, funding, and audience engagement. This course examines how technological shifts and economic pressures have shaped strategies for media art distribution from the 1960s to the present.We will trace the evolution from mail art networks and public access television to social media platforms and blockchain marketplaces, analyzing how each era's dominant technologies enabled new forms of artistic exchange. Students will investigate case studies including Radical Software magazine's tape-sharing network, the rise of net.art communities, platform-based art practices, and contemporary cryptocurrency/NFT art markets. Throughout, we will consider how distribution methods influence artistic content, community formation, and definitions of artistic value.The course positions media art not just as aesthetic practice, but as a testing ground for alternative economic and social models. Students will analyze how artists have leveraged everything from postal systems to peer-to-peer networks to build sustainable creative practices outside conventional art market structures.

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 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

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)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3), Engagement with 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)

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)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3), Engagement with 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)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (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)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3), Engagement with Society (FA4)

Writing Intensive

How do images and writing evoke sensory experience?  How can storytelling explore culture, social codes, the inner lives of characters?  Students in this course will consider a range of material including poetry, prose, and film.  They'll respond with brief written analyses; creative writing, including brief dramatic scenes; and both still and moving smartphone images.  Throughout they'll practice the close observation necessary to locate telling details in their own worlds, and create textured, immersive work.  An introductory film studies or film production course is recommended, but not required.  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)

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)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (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)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (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)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3), Engagement with 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)

This course is an exploration of the craft and history of textile-making in relation to animation. This will involve the translation of patterns into structures for the creation of animations. Color, texture, the source of materials and iconography of images used in the textiles will be considered, as well as the people who made them and why. The course will include visits to the Baltimore Museum of Art to study and research textiles. That study and research will be used in the creation of animations - hand-drawn and collage or photo-based works. Knowledge of use of DSLR cameras and video and sound editing required.

Distribution Area: Humanities

AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Projects and Methods (FA6)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3)

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.

Distribution Area: Humanities

AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Projects and Methods (FA6)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3)

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)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3)

Writing Intensive

Slow Cinema: The Ethics of Being-with in Time. Against the tendencies of a media environment that seems to prioritize faster content at shorter intervals in nearly all areas of cultural life, this course attends to the aesthetics, ethics, and attentional challenges of slow cinema. A global array of filmmaking practices traceable to the earliest years of film history, slow cinema cultivates what we will call long circuits of attention—extended modes of looking and listening that unfold across decelerated time. Although often associated with long takes, slow cinema cannot be reduced to shot duration; some films deploy extremely long takes while maintaining a rapid, volatile tempo, revealing that slowness is an experience rather than a technical property. Over the semester, we will consider how the formal strategies of slow cinema open up meditative and contemplative modes of spectatorship, inviting new forms of care toward dimensions of life that often go unnoticed: labor, landscape, environment, memory, and existence itself.

Distribution Area: Humanities

AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Ethics and Foundations (FA5)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3)

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)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3)

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)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (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)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3)

Writing Intensive

A workshop devoted to creating complex characters for screenplays and short fiction. Students will examine memorable film, television, and literary characters, and most importantly, observe and listen to the people in their own lives and larger culture. They'll learn craft from accomplished writers, but ultimately develop fresh, persuasive characters drawn from the world around them. Short written and visual exercises and a longer, written, final project. Students should contact the instructor with any questions.

Prerequisite(s): AS.061.147 OR AS.061.205 OR AS.061.241 OR AS.061.265 OR AS.220.106

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

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

A survey of female beauty, villainy, comedy, and humanity in film and television from the silent era to the present.  Brief written shot analyses and an oral presentation.  Interested students lacking pre-requisites should contact the instructor.  $50 lab fee.

Prerequisite(s): AS.061.140 OR AS.061.141 OR AS.061.238 permission of instructor.

Distribution Area: Humanities

AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Ethics and Foundations (FA5)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3)

This course explores the major paradigms of film and visual theory, covering how significant thinkers have conceived of the medium from its inception to the present day, including its comparison and contrast to other forms of visual media and art. Topics include the classical opposition between formalist and realist film theories as well as critical approaches to narrative, genre, spectatorship, and representation. Students are expected to enter the course ready to engage in discussion. Frequent film screenings illustrate key concepts.

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

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)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (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)

This course is an overview of the American movie musical, one of film’s most durable—and arguably most innovative—genres, from the advent of sound to the present. We’ll explore the evolution of the musical as it adapted to the unique properties of film, pioneered technological innovation, and daringly addressed social and cultural change beneath the guise of its purportedly conservative form. Mostly, we’ll closely examine a wide range of films and the essential elements of the genre: dance, music and lyrics, and the performers who bring them to life. We’ll study how and why the popularity of musicals has waxed and waned (and waxed) over time and speculate on what the future portends for the form. Students will discuss, present and write about particular musicals throughout the semester, and will work together as a group to produce a short musical as the final project. AS.061.140 or AS.061.141 are preferred but not required

Distribution Area: Humanities

AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Ethics and Foundations (FA5), Projects and Methods (FA6)

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)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3)

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)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3), Engagement with 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)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3), Engagement with Society (FA4)

Writing Intensive

This course is designed to immerse students in the creative, technical, and logistical challenges of narrative film production. The journey will yield a greater understanding of the professional structure of a film crew, as well as the collaborative creativity and intentionality necessary to make a narrative short film. Students will be divided into teams, each of which will produce, shoot, and edit a short narrative film based upon a 5 to 10-page screenplay written by a fellow student (and completed by the time the course begins). Students will fill all principal crew roles—director, cinematographer, producer, editor, location sound mixer, etc. Instructors will serve a guiding role throughout all phases of student projects, sharing practical strategies and technical expertise relating to the creative, collaborative nature of the filmmaking process. Instructors will also expose students to several working film professionals in order to further illuminate the key creative roles and dynamics inherent to narrative filmmaking.

Distribution Area: Humanities

AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Ethics and Foundations (FA5), Projects and Methods (FA6)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3)

"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)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3), Engagement with 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)

In this course we’ll examine Hitchcock and his legacy, with an emphasis on close formal analysis of his films, their cultural and political significance, and the sources of their enduring influence. Along with careful consideration of key individual films, we’ll read some of the various critical and theoretical approaches they’ve inspired, and we’ll take as our premise that a thorough understanding of Hitchcock’s working methods is essential knowledge for filmmakers and cinephiles.

Prerequisite(s): AS.061.140 OR AS.061.141

Distribution Area: Humanities

AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Ethics and Foundations (FA5)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3)

Have you ever read a book or a news story, watched a play, or even heard a song, and thought to yourself, "This would make a GREAT movie!"? This course turns that impulse into action, revealing the strategy and process needed for developing a short screenplay from pre-existing "I.P." (intellectual property). By exploring several case studies — films and tv series and the source material that inspired them — students will identify the practical strategies employed by professional screenwriters with the goal of employing them with their own screenplay adaptations. The bulk of the class will focus on designing, writing, and rewriting a 20 to 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. Discussions from time to time will also touch on the business of screenwriting. Students are expected to have previously completed AS.061.205 or another lower-level screenwriting class, and to be using Final Draft software (free 18-week trial available, as well as a full license 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

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).

Distribution Area: Humanities

AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (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.

Distribution Area: Humanities

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)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3), Engagement with Society (FA4)

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.

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 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. No pre-requisite.

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 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.

Prerequisite(s): AS.061.140 or AS.061.141

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, 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)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3), Engagement with 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)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3)

This course focuses on Cannes, one of the world’s oldest and most influential film festivals. We will explore the role of film festivals in fostering aesthetic communities and creating markets by reading about the culture, politics, and commerce of film festivals, Cannes in particular, and by watching films that permit us to compare Official Selections to less orthodox choices for parallel sections and concurrent festivals. Classes meet 8x during the semester. 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, when students attend the Cannes Film Festival. Students must have valid passports by the beginning of spring semester and be able to travel to France after semester’s end, 15-25 May 2026. Travel, lodging, and food will be paid for by JHU and FMS. Instructor approval required. Contact lmason@jhu.edu for further information.Students must submit a short essay on course goals, a short film review, and participate in an interview to be considered for enrollment. Do not use AI for application preparation.

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). 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. Only students who have taken The Cannes Film Festival (AS.061.401) may enroll. Mandatory organizational meeting TBD before departure.

Distribution Area: Humanities

AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3)

EN Foundational Abilities: Creative Expression (FA3)

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).

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

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.

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 Customized Academic Learning using the Customized Academic Learning form found in Student Self-Service: Registration > Online Forms.

AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Projects and Methods (FA6)

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 Customized Academic Learning using the Customized Academic Learning form found in Student Self-Service: Registration > Online Forms.

AS Foundational Abilities: Writing and Communication (FA1), Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Projects and Methods (FA6)

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 Customized Academic Learning using the Customized Academic Learning form found in Student Self-Service: Registration > Online Forms.

AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Projects and Methods (FA6)

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 Customized Academic Learning using the Customized Academic Learning form found in Student Self-Service: Registration > Online Forms.

AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Projects and Methods (FA6)

Permission required. Screenwriting Track students complete an independent project.

Prerequisite(s): You must request Customized Academic Learning using the Customized Academic Learning 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)

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 Customized Academic Learning using the Customized Academic Learning form found in Student Self-Service: Registration > Online Forms.

AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Projects and Methods (FA6)

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 Customized Academic Learning using the Customized Academic Learning form found in Student Self-Service: Registration > Online Forms.

AS Foundational Abilities: Culture and Aesthetics (FA3), Projects and Methods (FA6)