Courses
The courses listed below are provided by Student Information Services (SIS). This listing provides a snapshot of immediately available courses within this department and may not be complete. Course registration information can be found at https://sis.jhu.edu/classes/.
Please consult the online course catalog for cross-listed courses and full course information, including courses that are offered on a rotating basis.
- AS.061.599 - Internship-Film & Media
Credits: 1.00
Instructor: Mann, John
Term: Summer 2018
Meetings:
Status: Open - AS.061.599 - Internship-Film & Media
Credits: 1.00
Instructor: DeLibero, Linda
Term: Summer 2018
Meetings:
Status: Open - AS.061.148 - Storytelling for Film and Fiction
Through the analysis of narrative films, short fiction, myths, fairy tales, and ghost stories, and through the workshopping of their own creative writing, students will explore the art and science of "a good story well told." This course is an essential primer for upper-level screenwriting.
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: Bucknell, Lucy
Term: Summer 2018
Meetings: MWTh 4:00PM - 7:00PM
Status: Canceled - AS.061.222 - Analyzing Popular Culture Online
This course provides an introduction to the critical analysis of popular culture through the major theoretical paradigms of media and cultural theory. The teaching method uses a combination of media studies and sociology to explore popular culture and is designed to encourage students to become more active critics. The course presents a range of media from contemporary popular music to film and television. Smaller subjects include the teen "pop" love song, the politics of representation, and the forming of subcultures.
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: Ward, Meredith C
Term: Summer 2018
Meetings:
Status: Canceled - AS.061.265 - Comedic Storytelling for Page and Screen
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. 220.105, 220.106, or 061.148 recommended. This course satisfies the Film and Media Studies screenwriting requirement.
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: Bucknell, Lucy
Term: Summer 2018
Meetings: MWTh 4:00PM - 7:00PM
Status: Canceled - AS.061.596 - Ind Stdy-Film & Media
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: Mann, John
Term: Summer 2018
Meetings:
Status: Open - AS.061.596 - Ind Stdy-Film & Media
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: DeLibero, Linda
Term: Summer 2018
Meetings:
Status: Open - AS.371.303 - Documentary Photography
In this course, we will explore different genres of documentary photography including: the fine art document, photojournalism, social documentary photography, the photo essay and photography of propaganda. Field trips offer opportunities to work in the field. Students will work on a semester-long photo-documentary project on a subject of their choice. Camera experience is a plus, but not a prerequisite. Students will be loaned a digital SLR for the semester.
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: Berger, Phyllis A
Term: Summer 2018
Meetings: MWTh 2:00PM - 5:00PM
Status: Open - AS.220.204 - Introduction to Dramatic Writing: Film
Screenwriting workshop. This course will look at the screenplay as both a literary text and blue-print for production. Several classic screenplays will be analyzed. Students will then embark on their own scripts. We will intensively focus on character development, creating "believable" cinematic dialogue, plot development, conflict, pacing, dramatic foreshadowing, the element of surprise, text and subtext, and visual story-telling. Several classic films will be analyzed and discussed (PSYCHO, CHINATOWN, BLADE RUNNER). Students will learn professional screenplay format and write an 8-12 page screenplay that will be read in class and critiqued.
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: Lapadula, Marc
Term: Summer 2018
Meetings: MW 1:00PM - 6:00PM
Status: Canceled - AS.061.145 - Introduction to Digital Video Production: Visual Language
This course is a study of the visual language used to create a moving picture. Through screenings and discussion of films, videos, and related readings, students will develop a visual critical facility and will demonstrate this facility in a few response papers to screenings and video projects. The course will focus on image construction, including composition, framing, movement inside the frame and use of light. Students will learn to be attentive to rhythm and tempo in picture editing and sound. In-class video assignments included, in which students will work in small groups of three. Lab fee: $100
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: Yasinsky, Karen
Term: Fall 2018
Meetings: W 12:00PM - 2:20PM, T 7:30PM - 10:00PM Screenings
Status: Open - AS.061.140 - Introduction to Cinema, 1892-1941
This course explores the fundamentals of film analysis and encourages students to embark on an exploration of the first half of our first century of movies. It teaches the basic elements of film form, as well as their use in films across the globe from the turn of the twentieth century through the start of World War II. Movements discussed include the silent comedy of Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Harold Lloyd, moody German Expressionism, the playful anarchy of Surrealism, the fundamentals of editing with Soviet Montage, the beauty of French poetic realism, the rule-breaking of Pre-Production Code cinema, the work of the young Alfred Hitchcock, and, of course, highlights of classical Hollywood filmmaking. Students must attend one screening weekly: either on Friday afternoon or Thursday evening. Lab fee: $50
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: Ward, Meredith C
Term: Fall 2018
Meetings: MW 12:00PM - 1:15PM, F 12:00PM - 2:30PM Screenings, Th 7:30PM - 10:00PM Screenings
Status: Open - AS.061.152 - Introduction to Digital Video Production
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 and in groups to produce several video projects. For their final projects students will pitch an idea and develop a more complex film. Lab fee: $100
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: Roche, Jimmy
Term: Fall 2018
Meetings: Th 1:00PM - 3:50PM
Status: Approval Required - AS.061.156 - Lights, Camera, Action: On Location
This mini-course will explore the role of place in film; location not merely as setting, but as character, condition, mode of thought. Real and imagined, found and constructed worlds will be considered. Are all cinematic worlds virtual? In-class screenings and an emphasis on discussion over lecture. This 1-credit course will be graded Pass/Fail. Perfect attendance required. Class meets September 19, 26, October 3, 10.
Credits: 1.00
Instructor: Bucknell, Lucy, Mann, John
Term: Fall 2018
Meetings: W 4:30PM - 7:30PM
Status: Open - AS.061.221 - Special Topics: Producing the Independent Film
This class will guide students through the process of producing an independent film in the United States. The chronology of lectures and coursework will follow the lifeline of a project, from conception through financing and development, production, postproduction, marketing, and exhibition. Students will learn how to package and pitch projects, budget and schedule a screenplay, develop a financing plan, supervise production and post-production, and mount a viable festival and distribution strategy. Lab Fee: $50
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: Porterfield, Matthew
Term: Fall 2018
Meetings: T 4:00PM - 6:20PM, W 7:30PM - 10:00PM Screenings
Status: Open - AS.061.226 - Special Topics: Writing About Film
A workshop that focuses on writing critical and analytical essays about movies recent and classic. Students will write progressively longer and more complex essays– submitting working drafts and making revisions– and participate in critiques and discussions of one another’s writings. Fulfills Film and Media Studies expository writing requirement. Lab Fee: $50
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: Mason, Laura
Term: Fall 2018
Meetings: T 10:00AM - 12:30PM, M 7:30PM - 10:00PM Screenings
Status: Open - AS.061.105 - Freshman Seminar: The Films of 1968
1968 was a year of protest and revolution around the globe, and a new audience of youthful cinephiles was hungry for movies that reflected the changing political and cultural landscape. The films of 1968 rose to the challenge, comprising a remarkable document of the times that collectively upended cinematic traditions and old ways of viewing with bold new forms and content. This course examines those cinematic visions—from classics like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Once Upon a Time in the West and Night of the Living Dead to influential groundbreakers like John Cassevetes’ Faces, Jean-Luc Godard’s La Chinoise and Lindsay Anderson’s If . . . –looking closely at individual films and examining both their contemporary contexts and their relevance today. Films will be viewed and discussed in class.
Credits: 2.00
Instructor: DeLibero, Linda
Term: Fall 2018
Meetings: T 11:00AM - 12:20PM, M 7:00PM - 8:00PM Screenings
Status: Open - AS.061.211 - Intermediate Film Production: First Person/Third Person Essay Film
Each student shoots an essay film (16mm color and/or black and white) written either in first person or third person, or perhaps, both. The third person essay incorporates the ideas of various authors while the first person film is written chiefly from personal experience. Each film should run between 4-8 minutes. Lab Fee: $200. This course satisfies the Intermediate Film Production requirement.
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: Mann, John
Term: Fall 2018
Meetings: W 12:00PM - 2:20PM
Status: Approval Required - AS.061.234 - Intermediate Digital Video Production: Experimental Forms
This Production course focuses on key movements in both Experimental Film and Video Art. Production assignments will arise from: Structural Film, Performance Art, Lyrical Film, Psychedelic Video, and Experimental Ethnography. Students will explore how these movements developed outside (and at times in opposition to) the mainstream, and became integral to the aesthetics of contemporary art, film, and television. Students will think critically about the personal and societal function that video artwork serves, and gain insight into the history of Experimental Film. At the end of this course, students will have a more nuanced understanding of contemporary media art, and they will be more proficient in video editing and cinematography, which they can apply to future work on: commercials, music videos, webcasts, and feature films.
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: Roche, Jimmy
Term: Fall 2018
Meetings: T 1:30PM - 3:50PM
Status: Approval Required - AS.061.205 - Introduction to Screenwriting
In this course we will explore the basic principles of visual storytelling in narrative film as they apply to the design and execution of a screenplay. During the course of the semester, each student will work on different writing exercises while they search for their specific story and the best way to approach it. We will study different narrative tools and methods of screenwriting by analyzing films to ascertain how they work or fail to do so at script level. Through in-class critiques, group discussions and one-on-one sessions, students will apply these techniques to their own work as they undergo the process of designing, breaking down, outlining and writing a screenplay for a short film. In-class analysis and debate on the strengths and challenges posed by the students' work will help shape the thematic emphasis of the second half of the course.
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: Staff
Term: Fall 2018
Meetings: F 3:00PM - 5:50PM
Status: Waitlist Only - AS.061.244 - Film Genres
A survey of American genres: the Western, the Gangster Film, Science Fiction, Horror, Comedy, Melodrama, and others. Twice-weekly screenings. Short film responses and a final paper. $50 lab fee.
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: Bucknell, Lucy
Term: Fall 2018
Meetings: W 1:30PM - 3:50PM, M 7:30PM - 10:00PM Screenings, T 7:30PM - 10:00PM Screenings
Status: Open - AS.061.150 - Introduction to Film Production
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. Lab fee: $200
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: Porterfield, Matthew
Term: Fall 2018
Meetings: T 1:00PM - 3:20PM
Status: Approval Required - AS.061.309 - Advanced Video Production: Influence and Anxiety
This is an advanced production course focusing on artistic influence. Each student will be working with and around a filmmaker who greatly inspires and influences their work. The evolution of style will be considered. The work will include screenings, readings, and short projects all feeding into a final movie. This course fulfills the advanced production requirement. Students should have completed a Introductory and Intermediate Digital Video Production course prior to enrollment. $100 Lab fee.
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: Yasinsky, Karen
Term: Fall 2018
Meetings: M 12:00PM - 2:20PM
Status: Approval Required - AS.061.441 - Senior Capstone Project: Critical Studies
Critical studies track students complete an independent research project.
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: DeLibero, Linda
Term: Fall 2018
Meetings:
Status: Open - AS.300.312 - Imagining Revolution and Utopia
What form should revolution take, and what should society look like after the revolution? What would happen to the state, family, home, status of women, human interrelations, and everyday life? These questions consumed radicals in 19th century Russia and Europe, and their answers helped to shape the political culture of the 20th century. This course examines theories of revolution and utopia and responses to them in literature, art and film. Primary case study is Russia and the Soviet Union, with a comparative look at influential European works.
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: Eakin Moss, Anne
Term: Fall 2018
Meetings: W 1:30PM - 4:00PM
Status: Open - AS.300.399 - Cinema and Philosophy
Do movies have anything to say about philosophical problems? Why is contemporary philosophy so interested in cinema? What are the most productive ways of bringing films and philosophy into conversation?
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: Marrati, Paola, McCreary, Michael D, Staff
Term: Fall 2018
Meetings: MW 3:00PM - 4:15PM
Status: Open - AS.371.303 - Documentary Photography
In this course, we will explore different genres of documentary photography including: the fine art document, photojournalism, social documentary photography, the photo essay and photography of propaganda. Field trips offer opportunities to work in the field. Students will work on a semester-long photo-documentary project on a subject of their choice. Camera experience is a plus, but not a prerequisite. Students will be loaned a digital SLR for the semester.
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: Berger, Phyllis A
Term: Fall 2018
Meetings: F 10:00AM - 12:50PM
Status: Approval Required - AS.371.303 - Documentary Photography
In this course, we will explore different genres of documentary photography including: the fine art document, photojournalism, social documentary photography, the photo essay and photography of propaganda. Field trips offer opportunities to work in the field. Students will work on a semester-long photo-documentary project on a subject of their choice. Camera experience is a plus, but not a prerequisite. Students will be loaned a digital SLR for the semester.
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: Berger, Phyllis A
Term: Fall 2018
Meetings: F 2:00PM - 4:50PM
Status: Approval Required - AS.061.506 - Internship-Film & Media
Perm. Req’d. S/U only Allows students to gain professional experience in film and/or media along with their academic development. Internship must be approved by academic advisor.
Credits: 1.00
Instructor: DeLibero, Linda
Term: Fall 2018
Meetings:
Status: Approval Required - AS.061.506 - Internship-Film & Media
Perm. Req’d. S/U only Allows students to gain professional experience in film and/or media along with their academic development. Internship must be approved by academic advisor.
Credits: 1.00
Instructor: Ward, Meredith C
Term: Fall 2018
Meetings:
Status: Approval Required - AS.061.413 - Lost & Found Film
This course explores various elements of film production and filmic expression through a somewhat nebulous field typically described as lost films. Lost films (or as they are sometimes called, "orphan" films) can be generally described as films that have, for a variety of reasons, fallen out of the public view. They frequently come from educational, scientific, medical, or industrial films from the 1950s and 1960s. Using these films as source materials, lost film filmmakers explore and expose cultural conventions, visual icons, and historical value materials. Each week, students are responsible for re-editing sources found on an internet archive site. The assignments follow thematic concerns related to film editing. Students complete a final project (4-8 minutes). All editing for the course is accomplished with non-linear software, generally Adobe Premiere or Final Cut. This course fulfills the FMS advanced production requirement. $100 lab fee.
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: Mann, John
Term: Fall 2018
Meetings: F 1:30PM - 3:50PM
Status: Approval Required - AS.061.409 - The Films of The Films of P. T. Anderson: Innovation and Influences
This course will investigate Paul Thomas Anderson’s stylistic and narrative innovations, as well as cinematic influences such as Altman, Kubrick, Scorsese, and Welles. $50 Lab fee.
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: DeLibero, Linda
Term: Fall 2018
Meetings: Th 3:00PM - 5:20PM, T 7:30PM - 10:00PM Screenings
Status: Waitlist Only - AS.061.322 - Women in Popular Film and Television
A survey of female beauty, villainy, comedy, and humanity in film and television from the silent era to the present. $50 lab fee.
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: Bucknell, Lucy
Term: Fall 2018
Meetings: M 3:00PM - 5:20PM, S 7:00PM - 9:00PM Screenings, Th 7:30PM - 10:00PM Screenings
Status: Open - AS.061.440 - Senior Capstone Project: Production
Permission Required. Production track students complete an independent film project.
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: Mann, John
Term: Fall 2018
Meetings:
Status: Approval Required - AS.061.502 - Independent Study:Film & Media
For students who wish to explore an aspect of film studies not covered by existing courses. The course may be used for research or directed readings/viewings and should include one lengthy essay or several short ones as well as regular meetings with the adviser. Permanently required: Lab Fee: $100 (if production related)
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: DeLibero, Linda
Term: Fall 2018
Meetings:
Status: Approval Required - AS.061.440 - Senior Capstone Project: Production
Permission Required. Production track students complete an independent film project.
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: Porterfield, Matthew
Term: Fall 2018
Meetings:
Status: Approval Required - AS.061.348 - Acting and Screenwriting for Narrative Productions
This pre-production course brings together student filmmakers from Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) and Johns Hopkins University (JHU), providing intensive training in the crucial aspects of preparing to shoot a successful narrative film. Students work with a professional screenwriter, allowing students to hone and improve their existing screenplays, practice the elements of writing for film, and learn how to do a script breakdown. Workshops on working with actors, taught by a professional actor, will teach students the ins and outs of casting and directing. Supplemental workshops will cover elements of pre-production such as budgets, production schedules, call sheets, and legal issues. Film screenings will train students to see films with an eye towards what constitutes exciting, innovative filmmaking. Students who wish to enroll in this course should have a prepared treatment, outline or script for a short film that they wish to develop during the semester. This course may be taken independently or as the prelude and prerequisite to Narrative Productions in the spring. Be advised that students who wish to enroll in the production course, Narrative Productions MUST have first completed Acting and Screenwriting for Narrative Productions.
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: Beller, Kathleen
Term: Fall 2018
Meetings: M 4:00PM - 8:00PM
Status: Approval Required - AS.211.222 - Italian Cinema: The classics, the Forgotten and the Emergent.
This course traces the history of Italian cinema from the silent era to the new millennium, highlighting its main trends and genres, and reflecting on the major transformations modern and contemporary Italian society experienced over the twentieth and twentieth-first centuries. We shall examine iconic films such as Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves, Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’Avventura, and Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Mamma Roma, that received international recognition and influenced other national, cinematic productions. We shall also look at the work of less famous, or independent filmmakers who received less critical attention. While this class takes an historical approach, it also includes a theoretical component and introduces students to the specificity of the cinematic language, examining films in relation to the mise-en-scène, frame composition, camera movements, editing, and sound. This class is taught in English.
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: Di Bianco, Laura
Term: Fall 2018
Meetings: MW 1:30PM - 2:45PM
Status: Open - AS.211.480 - Religious Themes in Film and Literature
This course would be of interest to anyone who would like to learn about the intersection of religion and modern culture. At the center of the course will stand a close study of the representation of religious themes and their role in modern literature and cinema. The works which we will deal with are not considered religious and yet they include religious themes as part of their narrative, images, language or symbolic meaning. We will trace in various works from various countries and genre, themes such as: divine justice, providence, creation, revelation, the apocalypse, prophecy, sacrifice and religious devotion. We will also study the ways in which Biblical and New Testament stories and figures are represented in these works. The course will have a comparative nature with the aim of learning more about the differences between the literary and cinematic representations.
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: Stahl, Neta
Term: Fall 2018
Meetings: TTh 12:00PM - 1:15PM
Status: Waitlist Only - AS.061.502 - Independent Study:Film & Media
For students who wish to explore an aspect of film studies not covered by existing courses. The course may be used for research or directed readings/viewings and should include one lengthy essay or several short ones as well as regular meetings with the adviser. Permanently required: Lab Fee: $100 (if production related)
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: Mann, John
Term: Fall 2018
Meetings:
Status: Approval Required