![Still from the 1902 film A Trip to the Moon on a cell phone screen](/sites/default/files/styles/content_header_image_tier_three_large/public/media/Documents/Film-Media/trip-to-the-moon-banner_0.jpg.webp?itok=Ej6lEyxA)
Film & Media Studies
If you don’t know how to use media, media will use you.
Film and Media Studies seeks to understand the moving image—something that we engage with, use to communicate, and are entertained by, almost every day. Simply watching lots of media does not teach us how media works, and how media works on us—as individuals and as a culture. Film and Media Studies deals with the study of the moving image in everything from cinema to television to video art to the internet to video games and well beyond—any moving image that can be seen on any kind of screen.
Requirements & Courses
Goals for Majors in Film and Media Studies
- The ability to critically analyze works from a wide variety of moving image media (e.g., cinema, television, video art, streaming video, mobile apps, video games, GIFs) and artistic modes (e.g., narrative, documentary, experimental)
- A keen awareness of moving images’ contexts (political, historical, cultural, technological, industrial and social) and how these evolve over the life of their circulation
- Research skills that cover a range of types and levels—basic Internet research, in-depth scholarly research, archival research—and an understanding of how to use different kinds of research appropriately
- An ability to make creative media, at least an introductory production level, with a critical eye and reflective mindset
- Proficiency at sharing ideas effectively through three types of communication:
- Written: majors will be able to write clearly and persuasively in a range of formats and for a range of audiences (e.g., blog posts, short response papers, conference abstracts, in-depth research papers)
- Spoken: majors will be able to present ideas orally in a range of settings (e.g., one-on-one with the instructor, in small discussion groups, in large classroom discussions, through in-class presentations)
- Media: beyond the form of creative media-making majors learns in their production classes, they will also learn to communicate scholarly ideas about media through media (e.g., by making websites, video essays, podcasts, GIS mapping projects)
Film and Media Studies Major
Requirements
Ten courses
- FMS 150
- One media history course (a survey course covering approximately 50 years of one moving image medium’s global history): FMS 251 or other course in the Five Colleges with adviser approval.
- FMS 290
- One film, video, digital production and/or screenwriting course: FMS 280, FMS 281, FMS 282ap, FMS 283 or other course in the Five Colleges with adviser approval.
- Three courses in a focus, normally chosen by the second semester of junior year, designed by the student in consultation with the adviser. Focus areas include, but are not limited to:
- Theories of film and/or other media
- Media production
- National/transnational cinemas and/or other media industries
- Identity and representation
- Moving image audiences and cultures
- Comparative genres
- Avant-garde/experimental media
- Documentary
- Media histories
- Media industry studies
- Television studies
- Digital media
- Popular culture
- Three additional electives
Major Requirement Details
- No more than four courses in the major can be production courses.
- Three courses must be taken at the advanced level, at least one of which must be a 300-level seminar.
- One course must centrally address documentary or experimental/avant-garde media.
- Only one component course (in which the moving image figures significantly but is not the central focus of the course) may count for the major.
Honors
Admission by permission of the department.
Film and Media Studies Minor
Requirements
Six courses
- FMS 150
- FMS 290 or an FMS 300-level seminar
- Four electives
- All courses to be taken at Smith except by permission of the chair or minor adviser.
- No more than two courses in the minor can be production courses.
Courses
FMS 150 Introduction to Film and Media Studies (4 Credits)
This course introduces students to FMS through units that pair scholarly approaches with influential media forms: the Aesthetics of Film, the History of Television, and the Technologies of Digital Media. Through these units, students ask: what human desires animate a relationship with media? For what purposes have people invented and evolved these technologies? How do makers use them, and what are audiences seeking in them? These questions help students see the fundamental forces that unite film, television, and digital media alongside the elements that distinguish them from each other. Enrollment limited to 30. {A}
Fall
FMS 220 Colloquium: Oral History and the Moving Image (4 Credits)
Oral history is a method of documenting a person or community’s memories through a recorded dialogue or interview in order to address absences in the historical record. This course investigates theories, histories and practices of oral history in relation to the moving image, from Zora Neal Hurston’s fieldwork films (1927) to the present, examining 1) the relationship between oral history and non-fiction filmmaking; 2) the use of oral history methods in the writing of film and media histories, including institutional histories and counter-histories; and 3) the use of oral histories in the creation of works of art. Enrollment limited to 20. (E) {H}
Fall, Spring, Variable
FMS 232 Unruly Women:Trailblazers, Gamechangers and Showrunners in the History of American Television (4 Credits)
While the #TimesUp and #MeToo movements have recently brought the problems of sexism, misogyny and the lack of representation to the forefront, the U.S. television industry has long struggled with providing space to women on and behind the screen. Despite the attempts to confine them in the roles ascribed by patriarchal society, women have challenged norms and changed television at the same time. This course explores the history of American television to understand how “unruly women” transformed television by challenging hierarchies of power. Restrictions: Not open to students who have taken FYS 135. {A}
Fall, Spring, Variable
FMS 237 The Documentary Impulse (4 Credits)
The drive to represent reality has animated film makers throughout history. In the service of this urgent, impossible ambition, documentarians have produced some of film’s most complex works. This course examines how they have done so, concentrating on different approaches to documentary--observational, ethnographic, autobiographical, historical and archivist. Throughout the semester, students interrogate the boundaries of the documentary mode; the unique ethical considerations of doing documentary work and the social, cultural, and technological factors that shape documentary’s history and current practice. Enrollment limited to 28. {A}
Fall, Spring, Variable
FMS 238 Crime on Screen (4 Credits)
By exploring crime films and crime shows, this course surveys how representations of crime on screen have changed since the beginning of the crime genre. While studying how culture affects the representations of crime on screen, the course raises critical questions regarding representation of gender and race. Selected readings and screenings move between films and TV shows and their socio-political context of production for a better and more comprehensive understanding of the evolution of crime genre.
FMS 239 The Curious Case of Online Streaming: Online Streaming, Sharing, and Piracy in the Digital Age (4 Credits)
By providing viewers from different parts of the world easier access, new online streaming services also familiarize global audiences with quality programming. Emerging local streaming services mimic this model and aim to produce such shows to attract viewers to their platforms by applying the same standards to their originals. A close look at these new online streaming models reveals the complicated relationship between online sharing, piracy and online streaming. While moving between theory and case studies, this class explores this complicated relationship. {A}
Fall, Spring, Variable
FMS 242 Pop Docs: Documentary Influence in Popular Media (4 Credits)
Pop Docs examines how documentary techniques that originated in art house and experimental film have migrated into mainstream entertainment media. The class studies popular forms of non-fiction media: blockbuster documentary films, true crime streaming series and podcasts, reality TV, and documentary content on social media. What core tenets of documentary work do these forms discard and retain? How do these evolutions impact the ethics of recording real people and their lives? Why are audiences drawn to “reality” content, and how savvy are they about the distance between what appears on screen and the lived experience of those recorded? Prerequisites: FMS 150 or FMS 237. {A}
Fall, Spring, Variable
FMS 245 Colloquium: Melodrama and Power: Genre, Gender and Race (4 Credits)
Associated with female viewership, melodramas and soap operas are seen as low-quality content in the U.S. market. Melodramas and soaps originating from different parts of the world bear a similar mark of "non-quality." This coupling of geographical origin and genre hierarchies to emphasize the difference of "the West" from "the rest" is also relevant for the ways in which peripheral content is categorized as "soap operas" and "telenovelas." By exploring melodramatic films and TV shows, this course surveys the roots of melodrama as a genre and analyzes the power hierarchies around it with reference to gender and race. {A}
FMS 247 American Film and Culture from the Depression to the Sixties (4 Credits)
This course explores the relationship between film and culture during some of the most crucial decades of "The American Century." It looks at the evolving connection between films and their audiences, the extent to which films are symptomatic of, as well as influential on, historical periods, major events and social movements, and the ways in which film genres evolve in relation to both cultural change and the rise and fall of the Hollywood studio system. Discussions include: How did the Depression have an impact on Hollywood film style and form? How were evolving ideas about American motherhood puzzled out in American cinema of the period? What were some of the important differences between the way mainstream U.S. cinema and European film represented World War II? How did Civil Rights and the Red Scare become appropriate topics for Westerns? Did the lighthearted veneer of the fluffy sex comedies of the sixties actually hide some serious questions about labor, independent female subjectivity and heteronormativity? Particular and sustained attention is paid to relations among gender, genre, race and class. {A}{L}
Fall, Spring, Variable
FMS 248 Women and American Cinema: Representation, Spectatorship, Authorship (4 Credits)
A survey of women in American films from the silent period to the present, examining: 1) how women are represented on film, and how those images relate to actual contemporaneous American society, culture and politics; 2) how theoretical formulations, expectations and realities of female spectatorship relate to genre, the star and studio systems (and other production and distribution modes), dominant and alternative codes of narration and developments in digital and new media modes; and 3) how women as stars, writers, producers and directors shape and respond to, work within and against, dominant considerations of how women look (in every sense). {A}
Fall, Spring, Variable
FMS 251 A Global History of Television (4 Credits)
Television has long been associated with domestic--both in terms of home and the nation--consumption. However, digital technologies have challenged this confinement. Following the lead of satellite technologies and the global wave of economic liberalization, television content has become more mobile, and spread of digital technologies has further contributed to this mobility. This course examines the global journey of television starting from its conception and ending in the current digital era. {A}
Spring
FMS 261 Video Games and the Politics of Play (4 Credits)
An estimated 65% of Americans play video games regularly, and game sales routinely exceed film box office figures. As this medium grows in cultural power, it is increasingly important to think about how games make meaning. This course serves as an introduction to Game Studies, equipping students with the vocabulary to analyze video games, surveying the medium’s genres, and sampling this scholarly discipline’s most influential theoretical writing. The particular focus, though, is on the ideology operating beneath the surface of these popular entertainment objects and on the ways in which video games enter political discourse. Enrollment limited to 25. {A}
Spring, Alternate Years
FMS 262 Television Without Borders: TV Flows Across the World (4 Credits)
Desperate Housewives in Argentina? The O.C. in Turkey? Sherlock in the United States? Television defies national borders more than ever. Although TV has travelled around the world for a long time, the rules have changed since the early 2000s. The increasing popularity of format adaptations, new centers of production, new technologies of circulation--such as online streaming platforms--open up new waves of television flows. As television globalizes, content creators try new ways to export and adapt content. By providing exposure to a diverse television content "flowing" around the world, this course helps students gain insight into the globalization of popular culture. {A}
Fall, Spring, Variable
FMS 265 Film in the Digital Age (4 Credits)
Film, a dominant entertainment form in the twentieth century, has faced sweeping changes in the twenty-first. Digital technologies have widely replaced film cameras and projectors, theatrical exhibition continues to decline as audiences watch movies on ever-smaller screens, and the list of other entertainment forms competing for the public’s attention grows longer each year. Appropriating Peter Greenaway’s provocation, "Cinema is dead, long live cinema," this course considers the challenge digital media present to film’s primacy, but also the ways in which film has survived and thrived during this and previous periods of dramatic technological change. Prerequisite: FMS 150. {A}
Fall, Spring, Variable
FMS 271 Colloquium: Understanding Media Industries (4 Credits)
Media studies approach media industries as sites of power struggles in which hierarchies of power in the modern world are reproduced. This course explores these power struggles and the scholars’ on-going attempts to understand them by examining the economic, political and socio- cultural implications of industrialized media ecosystem. The aim is to understand the past and the present of this industrial system and to survey the future possibilities. In this context, students study theoretical approaches and research examples from the field of media industries studies to analyze the production, distribution and consumption processes. Enrollment limited to 20.
FMS 280 Introduction to Video Production (4 Credits)
This course provides a foundation in the principles, techniques and equipment involved in making short videos, including: development of a viable story idea or concept, aesthetics and mechanics of shooting video, the role of sound and successful audio recording, and the conceptual and technical underpinnings of digital editing. Students make several short pieces through the semester, working towards a longer final piece. Prerequisite: FMS 150 (may be concurrent) or its equivalent. Enrollment limited to 12. Application and instructor permission required. {A}
Fall, Spring, Annually
FMS 281 Screenwriting Workshop (4 Credits)
This course provides an overview of the fundamentals of screenwriting. Combining lectures and script analyses, students focus on character development, story structure, conflict and dialogue featured in academy award-winning screenplays. Students begin with three creative story ideas, developing one concept into a full-length screenplay of their own. Through in-class read-throughs and rewrites, students are required to complete ~30 pages of a full-length screenplay with a detailed outline of the entire story. Cannot be taken S/U. Prerequisites: FMS 150 or ARS 162. FMS 150 strongly encouraged. Enrollment limited to 12. Application and instructor permission required. {A}
Fall, Spring, Annually
FMS 282ap Topics in Advanced Moving Image Production-Advanced Production (4 Credits)
Through conventional filmmaking aesthetics and techniques, this advanced course includes hands-on trainings and workshops geared toward creating a feature-length project. Developing a long-form narrative, experimental, documentary or episodic project, students write thirty pages of a full-length screenplay, while also producing, directing and editing a ten-minute sample clip. This course features DSLR digital video production, lighting and sound exercises, editing techniques and various distribution strategies. Prerequisites: FMS 150 and FMS 280 or ARS 162. Application and instructor permission required. Enrollment limited to 10. {A}
Fall, Spring, Annually
FMS 283 Directing Actors (4 Credits)
This course approaches motion picture directing through conservatory-style studio practice with a focus on directing actors. Through structured in-class exercises, assigned readings and out-of-class assignments, students develop and practice working methods including script and scene analysis and annotation, rehearsal techniques and supporting performance through camera placement and movement. Through theatre games, scene-work and projects, students explore story, dramatic structure, emotional relationships and interpretation within the visual framework of the moving image. Prerequisite: FMS 280. Enrollment limited to 12. Instructor permission required. (E) {A}
Fall, Spring, Variable
FMS 290 Colloquium: Theories and Methods of Film and Media Studies (4 Credits)
This course is designed to give FMS majors and minors a solid grounding in the primary methods of the field. In other words, what are the broad approaches scholars have taken to the study of media, and what specific methodological strategies have proved most effective? The class begins with theory as one such method--one that zooms out to ask broad questions about the essential nature of a medium. The history unit shifts the focus to how media are impacted by and implicated in the progression of time and culture. Finally, the criticism unit features strategies for analyzing individual media objects. Priority given to FMS majors and minors. Prerequisite: FMS 150. Enrollment limited to 15. Instructor permission required. {A}
Spring
FMS 310 Seminar: Whose Quality Is It? Quality TV After Digitalization (4 Credits)
The notion of quality is neither objective nor global. The much disputed definition of quality programming is further complicated by the increase in transnational flows of formats and programs as well as the globalization of online streaming models associated with quality programming. This course explores the elusive definition of the Anglo-American quality programming in light of the following questions: Is it possible to talk about an ongoing globalization of that definition? What is the role of digital technologies in this transformation? What does this transformation mean for the pre-existing hierarchies of power in global TV market? Priority given to FMS majors and minors. Prerequisite: FMS 150. Restrictions: Juniors and seniors only. Enrollment limited to 12. Instructor permission required. {A}
Fall, Spring, Variable
FMS 311 Seminar: Media Fandom, Participation and Fan Studies (4 Credits)
Trending their fandom’s names on Twitter, funding the big screen adaptation of their favorite shows via Kickstarter, and in some cases, getting out on the streets for physical protests--Media fans and fandoms have become more visible in the digital age. However, fan practices pre-date the widespread use of the internet. This course explores the past and the present of media fandom alongside the ways in which fans have been represented and studied. While surveying the history of fandom and fan studies, the course studies the notions of participation, engagement and activism in connection with fan practices. Priority given to FMS majors and minors. Prerequisite: FMS 150. Restrictions: Juniors and seniors only. Enrollment limited to 12. Instructor permission required. {A}
Fall, Spring, Annually
FMS 312 Seminar: Approaching Queer Media (4 Credits)
Approaching Queer Media considers the recent proliferation of LGBTQ+ representations in popular culture from historical, technological, commercial, social and legal perspectives. Approaching queer media as a historically specific yet shifting and-relational object of study, the course uses a critical framework of trajectories to consider disparate movements of queer media across historical periods, national boundaries, physical spaces and ideological assumptions, asking: What counts as queer? Is there a queer canon? A queer gaze? How is queer media history done? This course asks students to critically engage with a wide variety of moving images and intertexts from pre-code silent cinema to TikTok. Prerequisite: FMS 150. Enrollment limited to 12. Restrictions: Juniors and seniors only. Instructor permission required. (E) {A}
Fall, Spring, Variable
FMS 340ip Seminar: Topics in New Research in Film and Media Studies-Identity, Representation and Media (4 Credits)
This topic focuses on the latest models for thinking about the politics of representation in media, moving beyond the binary of positive and negative images and outmoded ways of measuring "diversity." With particular emphasis on critical race studies and queer and trans studies, the course explores three different approaches to designing a major research project: "Close-up: Practicing Detailed Analysis," "Wide Angle: Conceptualizing a Broad Study" and "Jump Cut: Disrupting Reader Expectations." In what ways is difference visible operating at a structural level in media forms, alongside its more traditional representations through characters and stories? How do concepts like race, gender and sexuality undergird the very systems of film, television and video games, and how do they challenge conventional understanding of those media? Prerequisite: FMS 150. Restrictions: Juniors and seniors only. Enrollment limited to 12. Instructor permission required. {A}
Fall, Spring, Variable
FMS 345 Seminar: Violence, Mortality and the Moving Image (4 Credits)
If cinema is, as André Bazin writes, "change mummified," violence and death are among the most dramatic physical changes it can "mummify." This course studies the long, complex relationship between cinema and these bodily spectacles. How has censorship impacted the way violence has been screened? How can cameras make the internal processes of death externally visible? What are the ethics of filming "real" violence and death in a documentary mode? How are cultural attitudes toward violence and death reflected in and shaped by films? As a cautionary note, this course necessarily includes graphic representations of violence and death. Prerequisites: FMS 150. Restrictions: Juniors and seniors only. Enrollment limited to 12. Instructor permission required. {A}
Fall, Spring, Variable
FMS 350sd Seminar:Topics-Questions of Cinema-Film and Visual Culture from Surrealism to the Digital Age (4 Credits)
This class investigates the moving image and its relationship to the rest of 20th and 21st century art, especially visual culture. Working with the premise that film has been arguably the most influential, powerful and central creative medium of the age, the course examines how film has been influenced by, and how it has influenced, interacted with, critiqued, defined, and been defined by other media. The course examines how film has moved from a marginal to a mainstream art form, while still maintaining a very active avant-garde practice. The course looks at how cinema and other moving images have consistently and trans-historically grappled with certain fundamental issues and themes, comparing the nature of cinematic investigations with those of other media. Over the course of the semester, students attend to the idea of “film” in relation to the larger category of “moving image.” Does not fulfill ARH research seminar requirement. Restrictions: Juniors and seniors only. Enrollment limited to 12. Instructor permission required. {A}
Fall, Spring, Variable
FMS 400 Special Studies (1-4 Credits)
Instructor permission required.
Fall, Spring
FMS 430D Honors Project (4 Credits)
A thesis on a film and media studies topic or a creative project. 8 credits for the full-year course. Department permission required.
Fall, Spring
Crosslisted Courses
AMS 235 American Popular Culture (4 Credits)
This course offers an analytical history of American popular culture since 1865. We start from the premise that popular culture, far from being merely a frivolous or debased alternative to high culture, is an important site of popular expression, social instruction and cultural conflict. We examine theoretical texts that help us to read popular culture, even as we study specific artifacts from a variety of pop culture sources, from television shows to Hollywood movies, the pornography industry to spectator sports, and popular music to theme parks. We pay special attention to questions of desire, and to the ways popular culture has mediated and produced pleasure, disgust, fear and satisfaction. Alternating lecture/discussion format. Enrollment limited to 25. {H}{S}
Fall, Spring, Alternate Years
ARH 290ss Colloquium: Topics in Art History-Swords and Scandals (4 Credits)
Since the beginning of cinema, the decadence of the ancient Romans has been a subject of fascination. Starting with HBO's Rome (2005-2007) and Ridley Scott's Gladiator (2000), this course explores the multiple sources of the visual tropes used to construct this universe and seeks to analyze it in aesthetic, historical and ideological terms. Their twentieth-century counterparts from films of the silent era to Hollywood epics like Spartacus (1960) and Cleopatra (1963), as well as cult classics like Caligula (1979), are scrutinized in order to gain an understanding of how Romans function cinematically as cultural signs in varying historical contexts. Restrictions: ARH 290 may be taken for credit a total of 4 times with different topics. Enrollment limited to 20. {A}{H}
Fall, Spring, Variable
EAL 253 Korean Cinema: Cinema and the Masses (4 Credits)
This course offers a survey of Korean film history in light of cinema's relationship to the masses. As a popular art form, cinema has always been in close contact with its audiences. Cinema has contributed to the emergence of modern masses. By examining how cinema has shaped its audiences and vice versa, this course charts the development of Korean cinema as a popular entertainment as well as an art form during the last hundred years. This course starts from the globalization of Korean cinema and its transnational audiences and chronologically harks back to the colonial period. Enrollment limited to 35. {H}{L}
Fall, Spring
EAL 273 Colloquium: Women and Narration in Modern Korea (4 Credits)
This class explores modern Korean history from women's perspectives. It charts the historical and cultural transformation in modern Korea since the 1920s by coupling key terms of modern history with specific female figures: (1) Colonial modernity with modern girls in the 1920s and 30s; (2) colonization and cold-war regime with "comfort women" and "western princesses" from the 1940s to the 1960s; (3) industrial development under the authoritarian regime in the 1970s with factory girls; and (4) democratization and multiculturalism with rising feminists in the new millennium. {H}{L}
Fall, Spring, Variable
EAL 281 Colloquium: Revising the Past in Chinese and Taiwanese Film and Literature (4 Credits)
This colloquium explores how China and Taiwan recollect, reflect and reinterpret their past and how multifaceted traditions are represented in a new light on the world stage. The class reflects on perceptions and receptions of the past through close readings of films and literature from China and Taiwan. The course explores what aspects of the past are erased, re-packaged or re-imagined, and why. These preeminent figures and events – in history or fiction – presented in film and literature include, but are not limited to, Confucius, the First Emperor of China, Mulan, Qiu Jin, and Nie Yinniang. All readings are in English translation. Chinese text is provided upon request. Enrollment limited to 20. {L}
Fall, Spring, Variable
FRN 252cl Topics in French Cinema-Cities of Light: Urban Spaces in Francophone Film (4 Credits)
From Paris to Fort-de-France, Montreal to Dakar, this class studies how various filmmakers from the Francophone world present urban spaces as sites of conflict, solidarity, alienation and self-discovery. How do these portraits confirm or challenge the distinction between urban and non-urban? How does the image of the city shift for “insiders” and “outsiders”? Other topics to be discussed include immigration, colonialism and globalization. Works by Sembène Ousmane, Denys Arcand, Mweze Ngangura and Euzhan Palcy. Course taught in French. {A}{F}{L}
Fall, Spring, Variable
FRN 392sc Seminar: Topics in Culture-Stereotypes in French Cinema (4 Credits)
In this seminar, students look at films that make a deliberate and often caricatural use of stereotypes in order to make a statement, whether it is to provoke, examine, question, or simply illustrate some aspects of French culture or national consciousness. The stereotypes students consider include cinematic genres (comedies), as well as themes or topics (tradition versus modernity, ‘Frenchness’, racial and class differences). In doing so, students pay particular attention to the way these stereotypes are staged, what their modes of inquiry are, and what conversations, if any, they promote. Films by Renoir, Tati, Buñuel, Jeunet, Ozon, and Sciamma among others. Weekly or bi-weekly film viewings. Readings in film criticism and relevant fields. In French. Restrictions: Juniors and seniors only. Enrollment limited to 12. Instructor permission required. {A}{F}
Fall, Spring, Variable
GER 231wc Topics in German Cinema-Weimar Cinema (4 Credits)
During the brief period between the fall of the Kaiser and the rise of the Nazis, Germany was a hotbed of artistic and intellectual innovation, giving rise to an internationally celebrated film industry. With an eye to industrial, political, and cultural forces, this course explores the aesthetic experience of modernity and modernization through formal, narrative, and stylistic analyses of feature films from the "Golden Age" of German cinema. Films by Wiene, Lange, Murnau, Pabst, Ruttmann, Sternberg, Sagan and Riefenstahl. Restrictions: GER 231 may be repeated once with a different topic. Conducted in English. {A}{H}
Fall, Spring, Variable
GER 300vk Topics in German Culture and Society-Vom Krieg Zum Konsens: German Film Since 1945 (4 Credits)
This course investigates German film culture since the fall of the Third Reich. Included are works by Fatih Akin, Michael Haneke, Werner Herzog, Margarethe von Trotta and Wolfgang Staudte. Students learn to analyze film and conduct basic research in German. Discussion addresses aesthetic and technical issues; portrayals of race, gender, class and migration; divided Germany and its reunification; and filmic interventions into the legacy of Nazism. Conducted in German. Prerequisite: GER 250 or equivalent. {A}{F}
Fall, Spring, Variable
POR 202 Barriers to Belonging: Youth in Brazilian Film (4 Credits)
This course will serve as an introduction in English to Brazilian Cinema through the theme of youth, identity, social barriers, and a search for belonging. Course materials, films and class discussions will address such topics as migration, belonging and displacement, coming-of-age challenges, discovery and adversity, self, society and sexuality, family and loss. Selected readings and screenings will highlight the work of Brazilian filmmakers such as Walter Salles, Ana Muylaert, Sandra Kogut, Fernando Meirelles, and others. Student assignments will encompass both critical and first-person memoir essays; students may also respond via work-and-image production (videos; digital narratives; and comics. Taught in English. {A}
Fall, Spring, Variable
RES 273/ WLT 273 Cosmic Cold War: Russian and Western Science Fiction in Political Context (4 Credits)
Offered as RES 273 and WLT 273. How did the "final frontier" of space become a "front" in the Cold War? As the US and USSR competed in the Space Race, science fiction reflected political discourses in literature, film, visual art and popular culture. This course explores Russian and Western science fiction in the contexts of twentieth-century geopolitics and artistic modernism (and postmodernism), examining works by Bogdanov, Kubrick, Tarkovsky, Butler, Haraway, Pelevin and others. The survey considers science fiction’s utopian content and political function, as well as critical and dystopian modes of the genre. No prerequisites or knowledge of Russian required; first-year students are welcome to enroll. Enrollment limited to 40. {A}{H}{L}
Fall, Spring, Variable
RES 275 Avant-Garde as Lifestyle: Cinema and Socialism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe (4 Credits)
Explores the avant-garde film traditions of Eastern and Central Europe, including works from the Soviet Union, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. The course focuses on how avant-garde filmmakers engaged with the socialist project in the USSR and Eastern Bloc, and its call for new forms, sites and life practices. The course investigates how avant-garde cinema represents everyday life amidst the public and private spaces of socialism. In approaching the relationship between cinema and space, students consider examples of architecture (Constructivist, Functionalist, Brutalist), as well as theoretical writings by and about the avant-garde. Conducted in English, no prerequisites. {A}{H}{S}
Fall, Spring, Variable
SAS 201 Mother-Goddess-Wife-Whore: Female Sexuality and nationalism in South Asian Cinema (4 Credits)
This course examines the relationship between female sexuality and nationalism in South Asian cinema, focusing on the crucial role that gender plays in the formation of postcolonial national identities, both on screen and beyond. The class considers diverse forms of cinematic resistance, especially the work of directors who challenge gender norms. Students look at films from Bollywood and from Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan and Afghanistan. The class includes guest-lectures by South Asian activists and filmmakers. (E) {A}{H}{S}
Fall, Spring, Variable
SOC 270 Media, Technology and Sociology (4 Credits)
The mass media are an important social institution that reflects and shapes norms and values. But the processes governing media production and reception are often taken for granted, immersed as society is in a highly mediated social world where preconceived notions about "the media" and its effects hold sway. This class will challenge conventional wisdom about how media and communication technologies work by critically exploring the history of media institutions, assessing the media's powers of persuasion, focusing on media as an occupation and examining the struggles over media representation by marginalized groups across traditional media and new digital platform. Prerequisite: SOC 101. Enrollment limited to 35. {S}
Fall, Spring, Annually
SPN 245fw Topics in Latin American and Peninsular Studies-Latin American Films Made by Women (4 Credits)
An overview of films made by women in Latin America since the early 2000s. The class will study works representing various countries in the region, both from well-established and emerging directors. Students will learn about the general conditions in which these women made their films, reflecting on the various ways in which gender informs the content and determines the production of those films. With the support of theoretical readings, the work of these filmmakers will offer opportunities to reflect on issues of gender and sexuality in Latin America. Restrictions: SPN 245 may be repeated once with a different topic. Enrollment limited to 20. {A}{F}
Fall, Variable
SPN 255 Colloquium: Muslim Women in Film (4 Credits)
Focusing on films by and about Muslim women from Africa, the Middle East, and Europe, this transdisciplinary course will explore one question: What do Muslim women want? Students will watch and study critically films in Farsi, Hebrew, French, Spanish, Dutch, Italian, and different Arabic dialects. Class discussion and assignments will be primarily in Spanish. Enrollment limited to 25. {A}{F}{L}
Fall, Spring, Variable
SPN 373pl Seminar: Topics in Cultural Movements in Spanish America-Embodied Politics in Latin American Films (4 Credits)
This course examines recent Latin American films in their portrayal of bodily identities and practices that carry political weight. Students interrogates these films' attention to issues of race, gender and sexuality, as well as their portrayal of people's interaction with the spaces they inhabit. Most of the films are from Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Peru but are studied within the broader regional film landscape. By the end of the semester students have a general understanding of that landscape and of the way in which films dealing with embodied histories encourage political reflections. Restrictions: Juniors and seniors only; SPN 373 may be repeated once with a different topic. Enrollment limited to 12. Instructor permission required. {F}{L}
Fall, Spring, Variable
THE 360 Production Design for Film (4 Credits)
Filmmaking is storytelling. This story can be told by the actors or by its visuals. Every film employs a production designer who, with the director and cinematographer, is in charge of the visual design of the film. Students learn how a production designer breaks down a script to determine which scenes should be shot on location and which should be built as sets. Each student makes design choices for the entire script. Whether picking out locations or creating sets to be shot on a soundstage, this class examines what makes one design choice better than another. Students also learn the basic skills to communicate their designs through storyboards, photo research and drafting. Enrollment limited to 12. Instructor permission required. {A}
Fall, Spring, Alternate Years
THE 361 Screenwriting I (4 Credits)
The means and methods of the writer for television and the cinema. Analysis of the structure and dialogue of a few selected films. Prerequisite: THE 261 or THE 262 or equivalent. Enrollment limited to 12. Writing sample required. Instructor permission required. {A}
Fall, Spring, Variable
THE 362 Screenwriting II (4 Credits)
Intermediate and advanced script projects. Prerequisite: THE 361. Enrollment limited to 12. Instructor permission required. {A}
Fall, Spring, Variable
WLT 266md Colloquium: Topics in South African Literature and Film-Modern (4 Credits)
A study of South African literature and film with a focus on adaptation of literary texts to the screen. The course pays particular attention to the ways in which the political, economic and cultural forces of colonialism and apartheid have shaped contemporary South African literature and film: for what purposes do South African filmmakers adapt novels, biographies and memoirs to the screen? How do these adaptations help us visualize the relationship between power and violence in apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa? How do race, class, gender, sexuality and ethnicity complicate our understanding racial, political and gender-based violence in South Africa? Enrollment limited to 18. {L}
Fall, Spring, Variable
Faculty
Resources
Sign Up for Our Newsletters
Contact Department of Film & Media Studies
Hillyer Hall 102
Smith College
Northampton, MA 01063
Phone: 413-585-3103 Email: jmalkows@smith.edu
Administrative Assistant: Jeanette Wintjen
Chair: Jen Malkowski