This is a foundational course that introduces students to central concepts, theories and methods in film and media studies. We will study the histories and genres of cinema and formal techniques such as lighting, editing, and sound to develop a critical understanding of film as a dominant mode of representation. We will also critically analyze television and other forms of electronic media to gain a better understanding of perspectives and practices of emerging technologies and forms of distribution. [H]
This course introduces students to the creative, theoretical, and practical aspects of media production and is designed to provide a foundational understanding of audio-visual storytelling. Students will learn the technical fundamentals of composition, lighting, audio recording, digital video cameras, and non-linear editing. The class will be grounded in deep discussions of ethical media-making and responsible practices that move between past, present, and future. We will study aspects of pre-production, production, and post-production through hands-on assignments, readings, screenings, discussion of assigned exercises, and in-class workshops with digital storytelling equipment.
This course will introduce students to the practice of writing and researching in the discipline of Film and Media Studies. Students will learn to develop strong research questions, identify relevant scholarly sources, draft a working bibliography, conduct archival research, and write and revise a research paper. They will develop these skills as we study a variety of media formations. [W]
Through a series of reading/viewing/discussion sessions, this course will first examine issues and ideas that involve the use of new media methods and technologies in the contemporary practice of art. Second, through studio projects ranging from video art to social practice art to internet art, this course will serve as a laboratory from which experiments will be performed that investigate these ideas through students' own cultural production. [W, H]
This course is an examination of the films of Martin Scorsese, one of the most prolific, successful, and distinctive filmmakers in American cinema. As we explore both the breadth and depth of Scorsese's body of work, we will use his films as windows through which to understand: 1) cinema as a complex art form, and 2) cultural complexities around issues such as family, ethnicity, class, masculinity, deviance, salvation, and violence. [H]
In this course, held primarily inside Northampton County Jail in Easton, we will learn about the basics of mass incarceration in the United States and the ways in which media has contributed to, reified and changed the discourse around mass incarceration. The course introduces students to basic, but critical concepts of the criminal justice system and similarly, basic concepts, and method central to film and media studies. Through required weekly screenings, readings, writing, regular discussion and peer presentation, we will analyze the above to gain a better understanding of our community in the Lehigh Valley. [H, V, GM1]
This hands-on production course is the second half of the media production sequence begun in FAMS 201 and builds on the fundamentals of lighting, sound, and camera. Students will further develop their digital film making techniques as well as learn to edit in Final Cut Pro. They will work on individual and collaborative media assignments that will culminate in a public screening at the end of the semester.
The study of film theory gives us deeper insight into film as a language and social practice, allowing one to explore cinema's relationship to historical, aesthetic, social, political and technological influences.We will study some of the debates in classical film theory, auteurism, psychoanalysis, feminist film theory, queer theory, postmodernism and post colonialism as they apply to issues of perception, the spectator, representation, adaptation and realism. [W]
With the advent of photography, film, and digital media, visuality became a ubiquitous and highly contested form of perception. What lends images their power and appeal? How do visual media elicit desire, inscribing differences of race, gender, religion, and class? What production practices and critical discourses respond to today's politicized images and cultures of performativity, representation, and spectacle? This course introduces students to the key concepts and theories of the multifaceted fields of media theory and visual culture. [W]
The transition to sound at the end of the 1920s brought a new layer of sensory experience to the cinema; however, synched sound also homogenized the film market. It eliminated the idiosyncratic formats, genres, and theatre experiences that defined the silent era. This course will introduce students to the diverse histories of film's first decades and the many ways in which these ghosts of film history have returned in the twenty-first century.
An examination of the fundamental philosophical questions about the arts, including: What is art? Are there standards in the evaluation of artworks? Do the arts require or convey knowledge, an if so, what kind? What is the connection between art and emotion? What are the possible relationships between art and morality? Readings are drawn from both classical and contemporary philosophical writings. [H,V]
This course introduces students to the basic elements of screenwriting: developing characters, writing dialogue, plotting scenes, and structuring narrative. Writing assignments build from initial treatments to individual scenes and story outlines with emphasis on drafting and revision. By viewing films, reading screenplays, and critiquing the work of peers, students learn about the role of the screenwriter in the collaborative process of film making, and work towards a final portfolio that will include a polished script of their own. [H, W]
In this course, students will learn how to write for both comedic and dramatic series. An intensive workshop process will guide students through the process of developing a TV pilot, including concept, act structure, character development, scene breakdowns, and dialogue. By the end of the semester, students will know how to properly format and pitch a series idea. [W]
This non-production course examines the work of women filmmakers and how women have historically been constructed (and not constructed) in cinema. We will examine issues of gender, spectatorship, sexuality, race, representation and authorship as they intersect with images of women such as savior, victim, femme fatale, mother and artist. [GM1, W]
This non-production film course is a tour through cinema via several influential genres or film types. Focusing on 3 or 4 important genres, we will look closely at the films' stylistic elements, cultural impact, and role in cinematic history. Questions considered will include how genres are established, stretched, and subverted, and the political or social uses of certain genres. Possible genres include Film Noir, the Western, the Musical, Screwball Comedies, and the Horror Film. [H]
Media are often associated with the West, leaving other sites of visual production out of the picture. Since the early colonial period, African audiences have consumed images, especially cinema, while largely being relegated outside the frame. How have Africans resisted the hegemony of Western images and representations? What differences are involved when Africans seize the camera and seek to tell stories that reflect their own social realities? [GM1, GM2, SS]
In this class we will study various cinemas of the world and the cultural, political, and historical contexts from which they emerge. Through screenings, complementary readings, and case-studies, and guided discussion we will develop an understanding of the theoretical debates as they relate to concepts of ''national,'' ''global,'' and ''third'' cinemas, and explore different systems of production and distribution. Looking at how cinema across the world can be a means of expression, a form of entertainment, and an instrument for political change, we will examine the ways in which films reflect the cultures from which they emerge and how they, in turn, influence those and other cultures. [GM1, GM2, H] Pre-req: FAMS 101
What is an image? What is vision? How and why do we look, gaze, and spectate? This course aims to introduce students to global Visual Studies, including the central debates and theoretical frameworks that inform the field, along with the contemporary media formations that have motivated its development. Students will learn to analyze images and media using a set of critical tools and concepts (e.g., the gaze, interpellation, embodiment, circulation, commodity fetishism, objectivity, the archive, biopower, the anthropocene, post-humanism, etc.) and consider the role that images and media play in constructing categories of racial, sexual, ethnic, geographic, and biological difference. Finally, this course will challenge students to consider the stakes of disciplinary boundaries and interdisciplinary thought. [H]
The purpose of this course is to develop a critical understanding of the relationship between communication, media, power, development and social change in different political, social, and cultural settings throughout Latin America. We will examine theories related to social movements in the digital age through case studies from Venezuela and Mexico. Students will utilize new technologies to create a final podcast project on a related topic of their choice. [GM1, GM2]
Practical experience in fields relating to film and media. Written reports are required of the student, as is an evaluation of the student by the supervising agency. Advance approval of the program internships coordinator required.
This course extends the hands-on media making of the early production courses and is recommended for students hoping to 1) complete a production-based capstone project in their senior year, and/or 2) sharpen their media work into a coherent, presentable portfolio. Students will practice advanced camera and sound techniques and learn to operate Avid and Premiere editing software on several complex assignments that will result in a diverse e-portfolio of finished media. [H]
Governed by the metaphor of ''spectre,'' this seminar looks at the tangle between race, images and technology. Beginning with early image-making and the birth of cinema and moving through the 20th century up to the present day, we will examine how the rise of mass media in modern consumer society and the relationship between visual cultures and power have deeply intertwined to influence and create racialized discourses such as eugenics, diversity, and post-raciality. [GM1, H, V]
This course is an examination of documentary film-its form, history, style, and impact on cinema and culture. We begin with 19th century roots of the documentary and proceed to the recent democratization of digital documentary film making, Among the topics covered will be early actualities, travelogues, propaganda, newsreels, cinema-verite, direct cinema, avant-garde, mockumentary, educational, experimental and political documentaries, and recent developments in digital documentary. Our overall goals are to become critically thoughtful of cinematic texts, to gain familiarity with significant documentary techniques, to acquire an understanding of the historical evolution of documentary film as an art form and social tool, and to learn something of the diverse state of documentary film making today. Readings will aid students in the development of a practical understanding of how doc films work, and present a range of critical and theoretical approaches to film study. Essential to this collaborative process will be learning to use video cameras and Final Cut Pro digital editing software, as well as practicing film making techniques along the way to the construction of an original documentary film. The last activity of the semester will be a student doc film festival.
An examination of philosophical questions on the nature, interpretation, and evaluation of film. Topics may include: the distinctive nature of the moving image compared to other forms of representation; the issue of whether film is an art form; film authorship; the essence of film narrative; the role of the imagination in understanding and appreciating film; identification and emotional engagement with characters; film and morality; film and knowledge. [H, V, W, GM2]
What is death, according to cinema? The consumption, the contemplation, the act, the fear, the penalty, the humanity of death, are collectively among the most represented and memorable of topics on screens large and small. How is the subject altered across genres, platforms, spectator positions and historical/cultural contexts? Are screen depictions of death a storytelling device or a commodification and exploitation of the fear of death? Do screen representations serve significant cultural purpose in understanding this most human of dimensions? Cinematic texts include works by Ingmar Bergman, Akira Kurosawa, Hal Ashby, Lars von Trier, Chantal Akerman, Michael Haneke, Tomas Guttierez Alea, Freida Lee Mock, and Errol Morris, and television including The Knick and Penny Dreadful. [H, V]
Taking Gilles Deleuze's concept of ''minoration'' as a starting point, this advanced seminar explores the minor/minority across a wide range of visual forms, formats, and exhibition practices, including amateur films, home movies, and orphan cinema as well as works from ''minority'' media communities (third cinema, indigenous, exilic, independent, experimental, etc.). Students will also experiment with a range of minor techniques, including 8mm and 16mm filmmaking, found footage filmmaking, and digital remixing. [V]
This course explores what moving images are in the twenty-first century. Since the late 1990s, roughly one hundred years after the invention of the first film camera, film fans, scholars, and archivists began lamenting the ''death of cinema.'' The emergence of digital images seemed to threaten an entire century of film practice and the very foundation of film studies. If we no longer had physical film, so the argument goes, cinema was dead. Though scholars have never stopped announcing the death of cinema, moving images have expanded and proliferated wildly in the twenty-first century. In this course we will examine the new visual forms that arrive after the analogue era, how these images transform what we know of cinema, what losses or deaths accumulate, and what remains of the twentieth century. [H]
Via screenings, readings, and guided discussion we will develop an understanding of the “national cinema” of India and the related categories of regional, parallel, Bollywood, diaspora, documentary, and prayoga cinemas. Studying films from the silent era to the present, we will look at the histories and theories of Indian cinema and how film has been deployed as a means of artistic expression, ideological context, spectacle, and an instrument for political change. We will focus specifically on how gender and religion are portrayed and weaponized, how they intersect with and reflect on the culture from which they emerge. [GM1, GM2, W]
This course focuses on Japan's East Asian empire (in Taiwan, Korea, China, and several Pacific Islands), and the war against America (1941-45), through the lens of visual-studies scholarship and still- and moving pictures. Beginning with late 19th century Japanese wood-block prints and ending with 1940s propaganda films, we chart the relationship between the visualization of war, image propagation, and the mobilization of the national peoples in whose names wars are launched and sustained. [GM2, W]
A seminar on topics selected by the instructor.
This course traces sound theory across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. From the sound obsessions and anxieties of silent cinema to the disruptive sound experiments of the Fluxus collective to the expansive field of contemporary sound art and its remixture of the historical archive, this course considers the aesthetic, political, and epistemological possibilities of sound.
Student directed research or study under the supervision of an adviser.
This required course for FAMS majors is a chance for students to synthesize their course of study into one major individual project.The capstone is a workshop-based experience where students design and complete either a critical or creative (or some combination of the two) project that results in a public presentation of their most advanced work as FAMS majors. [W]
This course asks FAMS juniors and seniors to begin transitioning their work to the larger community of media makers, scholars, and educators. Capstone Praxis has a dual focus: 1) to enhance the skills individual students need to shape and effectively present themselves for post-college opportunities, and 2) to work collectively to create, manage and host programs and events that enhance campus and local communities. Capstone Praxis students will sharpen their individual portfolios and presentation skills while working with speakers, networking with alums, curating work, and designing and implementing outreach that expands the meaningful impact and accessibility of film and media studies.
A two semester independent research project culminating in a thesis on a topic selected by the student in consultation with the adviser. [One W credit only upon completion of both 495 and 496]