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. A short oral presentation and a short written analysis. No prior experience in film studies required; majors and non-majors welcome.

• Days/Times: MTTh 5:30PM - 8:00PM
• Instructor: Bucknell, Lucy
• Room:  
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 8/12
• PosTag(s): n/a

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.

• Days/Times: MTTh 5:30PM - 8:00PM
• Instructor: Bucknell, Lucy
• Room:  
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 2/9
• PosTag(s): n/a

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!

• Days/Times: MW 12:00PM - 1:15PM, Th 7:30PM - 10:00PM Screenings
• Instructor: Ward, Meredith C
• Room: Gilman 219
• Status: Reserved Open
• Seats Available: 2/25
• PosTag(s): n/a

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.

• Days/Times: W 3:00PM - 5:30PM
• Instructor: Roche, Jimmy
• Room: The Centre 216
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 1/8
• PosTag(s): FILM-PROD

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.

• Days/Times: M 3:00PM - 5:30PM
• Instructor: Yasinsky, Karen
• Room: Gilman 35
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/12
• PosTag(s): n/a

This course will encourage students, including non-majors and those in disciplines outside the humanities, to engage with film texts both critically and creatively. Through short written critical responses, short smartphone video exercises, and short creative storytelling exercises, students will explore the language of film from the inside out. In-class screenings of both classic and contemporary films, and an emphasis on discussion over lecture. No prior experience necessary; just bring your love of movies!

• Days/Times: T 5:00PM - 7:50PM
• Instructor: Bucknell, Lucy
• Room: Gilman 50
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 3/31
• PosTag(s): n/a

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.

• Days/Times: Th 12:00PM - 2:30PM
• Instructor: DeLibero, Linda Louise
• Room: The Centre 216
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 4/12
• PosTag(s): FILM-CRITST

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.

• Days/Times: M 2:00PM - 4:30PM
• Instructor: Stine, Kyle J.
• Room: The Centre 208
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 18/30
• PosTag(s): FILM-CRITST, MSCH-HUM

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.

• Days/Times: TTh 10:30AM - 11:45AM
• Instructor: Stine, Kyle J.
• Room: Krieger 306
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 2/15
• PosTag(s): FILM-CRITST, MSCH-HUM

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.

• Days/Times: M 7:30PM - 10:00PM Screenings, TTh 3:00PM - 4:15PM
• Instructor: Yasinsky, Karen
• Room: Hodson 303
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 4/12
• PosTag(s): FILM-CRITST

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: [email protected].

• Days/Times: M 3:00PM - 5:20PM, Th 7:30PM - 10:00PM Screenings
• Instructor: Bucknell, Lucy
• Room: Krieger 180
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 7/15
• PosTag(s): FILM-CRITST

For the past fifty years, scholars and cinephiles have been drawn to psychoanalysis as a tool for understanding the unconscious effects films have on their viewers. However, over the past twenty years, since the dawn of television’s Second Golden Age, there has been significantly less psychoanalytic engagement with television as a medium. Marxist theorists and critics, on the other hand, have long been interested in television. But until relatively recently, this was usually to bemoan it as an ideological product of the “culture industry.” This course draws on central texts of media studies, as well as key texts in psychoanalytic and Marxist theory, to ask some of the following questions: What is formally unique about the television episode? Are series works of art or commodities, or both? What is Prestige TV, and is it over? What role have streaming services played in the evolution of the medium? What is binge watching, and why do we both love and hate to do it? We will watch episodes of many of the most lauded serial dramas of the past few decades, such as The Sopranos, Twin Peaks, Mad Men, The Wire, Breaking Bad, and Succession, as well as critically acclaimed comedies like The Simpsons, Seinfeld, The Office (UK), and Peep Show. We will read theorists such as Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Laura Mulvey, Jason Mittell, Mark Fisher, and Todd McGowan.

• Days/Times: TTh 12:00PM - 1:15PM
• Instructor: Meyer, Marshall
• Room: Shaffer 202
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 1/12
• PosTag(s): n/a

What do films and philosophy have in common? Do films express, with their own means, philosophical problems that are relevant to our experience of ourselves and the world we live in? This term we will study such issues with a particular focus on questions of justice, truth, revenge, forgiveness, hope, hate, and fear.

• Days/Times: MW 12:00PM - 1:15PM
• Instructor: Marrati, Paola
• Room: Gilman 208
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 9/25
• PosTag(s): n/a

Students will produce several animations using hand-made techniques, including drawing animation, 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.

• Days/Times: Th 3:00PM - 5:30PM
• Instructor: Yasinsky, Karen
• Room: Gilman 35
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/8
• PosTag(s): n/a

The word “podcast” was coined in 2004 as a portmanteau of “broadcast” and “iPod.” As the name implies, podcasts were born when an old mode of audio transmission (radio broadcast) met a new technology (portable mp3 players like Apple’s iPod, or rather RSS feeds adapted to handle audio files). But even back then, “podcasts” were more than just time-delayed radio programs you could carry around in your pocket. They also included a wide range of born-podcast formats: free-flowing talk shows, scripted audio-essays, anthologies of audio-journalism, etc. In this course, we will study the historical origins and contemporary range of podcasts as a medium for writing and performance. We will consider how this medium has absorbed genres from other media (memoir, essay, drama, documentary, fiction, autofiction, etc.) and combined them in innovative ways. We will also explore genres made possible for the first time by podcasts—whether by their ability for on-demand playback, by their low cost of distribution, or by their openness to audio-experimentation. The primary skills taught by this course are careful listening and analytic writing. This is not a course in podcast production. It will, however, require students to analyze podcasts by “quoting” them in both text-based papers and audio-essays. As such, this course will teach some basic skills in editing audio, writing scripts, and mixing sound.

• Days/Times: TTh 12:00PM - 1:15PM
• Instructor: Grobe, Christopher Arthur
• Room: Gilman 381
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

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.

• Days/Times: MW 12:00PM - 1:15PM, Th 7:30PM - 10:00PM Screenings
• Instructor: Ward, Meredith C
• Room: Bloomberg 274
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/45
• PosTag(s): n/a

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.

• Days/Times: F 10:30AM - 1:00PM
• Instructor: Bae, Wonjung
• Room: The Centre 216
• Status: Approval Required
• Seats Available: 0/9
• PosTag(s): FILM-PROD

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.

• Days/Times: M 3:00PM - 5:30PM
• Instructor: Roche, Jimmy
• Room: The Centre 206
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 1/8
• PosTag(s): FILM-PROD

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 three 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.

• Days/Times: T 11:00AM - 1:30PM
• Instructor: Sharman, Russell L
• Room: The Centre 206
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/12
• PosTag(s): FILM-SCRWRT

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!

• Days/Times: T 4:00PM - 6:30PM, M 7:30PM - 10:00PM Screenings
• Instructor: Bucknell, Lucy
• Room: Maryland 201
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 1/15
• PosTag(s): FILM-CRITST

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.

• Days/Times: TTh 10:30AM - 11:45AM
• Instructor: Staff
• Room: Bloomberg 172
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/15
• PosTag(s): FILM-CRITST

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.

• Days/Times: W 6:00PM - 8:30PM
• Instructor: DeLibero, Linda Louise
• Room: Gilman 55
• Status: Approval Required
• Seats Available: 5/15
• PosTag(s): n/a

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.

• Days/Times: Th 10:00AM - 12:30PM
• Instructor: Roche, Jimmy
• Room: The Centre 206
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/8
• PosTag(s): FILM-PROD

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.

• Days/Times: W 11:00AM - 1:30PM
• Instructor: Mann, John
• Room: The Centre 216
• Status: Approval Required
• Seats Available: 1/6
• PosTag(s): FILM-PROD

Permission required. Production track students complete an independent project. Should must have completed one advanced level FMS production course (POS tag FILM-PROD).

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Mann, John
• Room:  
• Status: Approval Required
• Seats Available: 5/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

Permission required. Production track students complete an independent project. Should must have completed one advanced level FMS production course (POS tag FILM-PROD).

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Yasinsky, Karen
• Room:  
• Status: Approval Required
• Seats Available: 5/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

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

• Days/Times: T 1:30PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: Ward, Meredith C
• Room: Bloomberg 172
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/15
• PosTag(s): FILM-CRITST

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).

• Days/Times: W 1:30PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: Stine, Kyle J.
• Room: Hodson 301
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/15
• PosTag(s): FILM-CRITST, MSCH-HUM

This course will explore strategy and process for developing a short screenplay from pre-existing literary or journalistic source material (short story, news/feature article, etc.). By exploring several “case studies” — feature films and the source material that inspired them — students will identify the practical strategies employed by professional screenwriters with the goal of employing such strategies with their own screenplay adaptations. Bulk of class will focus on designing, writing, and rewriting a 20-30 page screenplay, and sharing multiple drafts with the class (and with the professor one-on-one) for critique over the course of the semester. Each student should have 2-3 pieces of material under consideration for possible adaptation by the start of class. Discussions from time to time will also touch on the business of screenwriting. (Scripts and clips often selected from American films spanning the 60s through the 2000s.) Students will be required to purchase a license for Final Draft screenwriting software for $99. Students are expected to have previously completed AS.061.205 or another lower level screenwriting class.

• Days/Times: W 2:00PM - 4:30PM
• Instructor: Rodgers, Adam F
• Room: The Centre 206
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 6/10
• PosTag(s): FILM-SCRWRT

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.

• Days/Times: T 11:00AM - 2:00PM
• Instructor: Rodgers, Adam F
• Room: The Centre 216
• Status: Approval Required
• Seats Available: 4/10
• PosTag(s): FILM-SCRWRT

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.

• Days/Times: W 4:00PM - 6:30PM
• Instructor: Yasinsky, Karen
• Room: The Centre 216
• Status: Approval Required
• Seats Available: 0/10
• PosTag(s): n/a

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.

• Days/Times: M 3:00PM - 5:30PM, Th 7:30PM - 10:00PM Screenings
• Instructor: Bucknell, Lucy
• Room:  
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 9/15
• PosTag(s): FILM-CRITST

In this course, you will create a 7-10 minute character-driven, observational, issue-focused documentary film that seeks to capture the unvarnished truth of the human condition. The theme for Spring 2025 is Transportation Justice. Throughout the semester, you will partner with a classmate to form a Maysles’ camera/mic unit, gain access to real people's lives, and complete intensive weekly production assignments while maintaining professional conduct in managing subject-observer relationships. Successful completion of both 100-level and 200-level digital production courses is required. It is strongly recommended that students take AS.061.162 Basic Interview and Shooting Techniques during Intersession before enrollment.

• Days/Times: Th 10:30AM - 1:00PM
• Instructor: Bae, Wonjung
• Room: The Centre 239
• Status: Approval Required
• Seats Available: 2/8
• PosTag(s): FILM-PROD, CSC-CE

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.

• Days/Times: Th 1:30PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: DeLibero, Linda Louise
• Room: The Centre 206
• Status: Approval Required
• Seats Available: 0/6
• PosTag(s): FILM-CRITST

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.

• Days/Times: F 11:00AM - 1:30PM
• Instructor: Mann, John
• Room: The Centre 206
• Status: Approval Required
• Seats Available: 4/8
• PosTag(s): FILM-CRITST

Permission required. Production track students complete an independent project. Should must have completed one advanced level FMS production course (POS tag FILM-PROD).

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: DeLibero, Linda Louise
• Room:  
• Status: Approval Required
• Seats Available: 4/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

Permission required. Production track students complete an independent project. Should must have completed one advanced level FMS production course (POS tag FILM-PROD).

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Ward, Meredith C
• Room:  
• Status: Approval Required
• Seats Available: 5/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

Permission required. Production track students complete an independent project. Should must have completed one advanced level FMS production course (POS tag FILM-PROD).

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Bae, Wonjung
• Room:  
• Status: Approval Required
• Seats Available: 3/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

Critical studies track students complete an independent research project.

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Staff
• Room:  
• Status: Approval Required
• Seats Available: 10/10
• PosTag(s): n/a

Permission required. Production track students complete an independent project. Should must have completed one advanced level FMS production course (POS tag FILM-PROD).

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Roche, Jimmy
• Room:  
• Status: Approval Required
• Seats Available: 5/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

Permission required. Production track students complete an independent project. Should must have completed one advanced level FMS production course (POS tag FILM-PROD).

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Bucknell, Lucy
• Room:  
• Status: Approval Required
• Seats Available: 5/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

From dancing skeletons and Mickey Mouse to nuclear-powered robots and Fritz the Cat, modernist visual culture is replete with iconic images of animated existence. This course surveys these diverse forms of "animatedness” emerging within the interconnected histories of special effects film and animated media, focusing on their entanglement with broader modernist practices, movements, and styles between the 1920s and the 1970s. Students will explore the shared origins of animation and special effects in the frame-by-frame manipulations of early trick film, the hopes and fears attached to machine aesthetics in German expressionism, French surrealism, and Soviet avant-garde cinema of the 1920s, and the ambivalent agency expressed by animated bodies in American and Japanese cartoons of the 1920s-40s. They will then assess the continuities and ruptures in the aesthetic and political commitments of interwar and postwar modernisms through case studies from North American, Central and Eastern European, and Japanese animation. By engaging with the diverse forms of “animatedness” and animated media presented in this course, students will develop critical theoretical, historical, and comparative frameworks for navigating the complex entanglements of organic life, emotional states, and machine technologies that increasingly define contemporary existence.

• Days/Times: M 1:30PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: Taylor, Chris Ross
• Room: The Centre 208
• Status: Open
• Seats Available: 11/15
• PosTag(s): MSCH-HUM

Permission required. Production track students complete an independent project. Should must have completed one advanced level FMS production course (POS tag FILM-PROD).

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Rodgers, Adam F
• Room:  
• Status: Approval Required
• Seats Available: 5/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

Permission required. Production track students complete an independent project. Should must have completed one advanced level FMS production course (POS tag FILM-PROD).

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Mason, Laura
• Room:  
• Status: Approval Required
• Seats Available: 5/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

The Archives is a documentary currently in production that visits Holocaust archives and Jewish cemeteries around the world, including in Austria, Germany, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Brazil, and the U.S. These hallowed places of Holocaust history are the searching grounds for four descendants seeking evidence of their interrupted family stories from the pre-second World War era. As the protagonists get closer to the truth with the help of archivists assisting them in their searches, they receive a measure of restitution. This course is an opportunity to participate in the latest documentary by Professor Bernadette Wegenstein as her team ends production and moves the film into post-production. Students will assist in the pre-production of final film shoots planned for March 2025 in New York and Baltimore. Interested students will be able to take part in these film shoots as credited production assistants. They will also learn how a documentary that has been made over the past three years will be prepared for post-production including writing a paper cut and working with animators. Students don’t need any formal knowledge of documentary filmmaking but should be interest in research, Holocaust history, and exile stories.

• Days/Times: T 1:30PM - 4:00PM
• Instructor: Wegenstein, Bernadette
• Room: Gilman 35
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/10
• PosTag(s): n/a

Permission required. Production track students complete an independent project. Should must have completed one advanced level FMS production course (POS tag FILM-PROD).

• Days/Times:
• Instructor: Stine, Kyle J.
• Room:  
• Status: Approval Required
• Seats Available: 5/5
• PosTag(s): n/a

We will examine modern Korean culture through short stories and a series of films associated with New Korean Cinema. One aim of the course is to gain a sense of history from which the literary and cinematic artifacts obtain their representative artistic status. A second aim is to inquire into the relationship between written and filmic texts in order to articulate what the limits and advantages are of that specific medium. No prior familiarity with Korean language is expected.

• Days/Times: TTh 1:30PM - 2:45PM
• Instructor: Rhee, Sharlyn
• Room: Mergenthaler 266
• Status: Waitlist Only
• Seats Available: 0/15
• PosTag(s): n/a