The study of film is primarily concerned with motion picture history, theory and criticism. These areas are approached through intensive critical analysis of individual films, through research into the primary documents of filmmakers and the film industry, and through the construction of theoretical models of film forms and styles, national cinemas, film genres, and the economics of the film industry. Film production is meant primarily for students studying history, theory and criticism as a way to enhance their understanding of the practical decisions filmmakers confront. The program is not designed for students whose sole interest is in film production.
Recent and forthcoming graduate level seminars include:
- Globalization and French National Cinema (Professor Kelley Conway)
- Agnès Varda (Conway)
- Metacritical Poetics (Professor Ben Singer)
- Documentary Theory (Professor Vance Kepley)
- Film Stylistics (Professor Lea Jacobs and Emeritus Professor David Bordwell)
- Film and Allegory (Professor Jeff Smith)
- Cognition, Emotion, and Evolutionary Aesthetics (Singer)
- Film Historiography (Kepley)
- The Hollywood Blacklist (Smith)
Recent and ongoing dissertation topics have examined:
- Creating a Movement: An Institutional History of New Queer Cinema (Chelsea McCracken)
- An Aesthetic of Contradictions: Jacques Demy, Choreography, and the Musical Genre (Jenny Oyallon-Koloski)
- Marketing the Real: The Creation of a Multilayered Market for Documentary Cinema (Nora Stone)
- Science Fiction and the American Film Industry (Brad Schauer)
- The Hollywood Social Problem Film (Pearl Latteier)
- Robert Altman before M*A*S*H (Mark Minett)
- Stalinist Cinema in the Soviet Union (Maria Belodubrovskaya)
- The Cinema of Errol Morris (David Resha)
- The Invention of Robert Bresson: Style and Taste in the French Cultural Market for Quality Cinema, 1934–1959 (Colin Burnett)
- Eastman Color: Technology and Aesthetics (Heather Heckman)
- The Experience of Video in American Art of the Seventies (Eric Crosby)