left-arrowleft-arrowright-arrowleft-arrowAsset 9
Logo
'

Media History

LIT 131 CM-01: Film History I (1925-1965)

  • Instructor: Morrison, James
    • Tuesday/Thursday, 2:45-4:00 PM
    • Room 15 (Roberts North)
    • Media History

This course surveys the history of cinema as art and mass medium, from the introduction of sound to the rise of the “New Hollywood.” Topics such as cinematic response to World War II, the decline of the studio system, and “new waves” of European filmmaking are studied in social, cultural and aesthetic perspectives.

LIT 134C CM-01: Special Studies in Film – Spy Films

  • Instructor: von Hallberg, Robert
    • Tuesday/Thursday, 4:15-5:30 PM
    • Room 105 (Roberts South)
    • Media History

A seminar designed to explore the aesthetic achievement and social impact of film as an art form. Subjects for study include such topics as specific film genres, the work of individual filmmakers, and recurring themes in film. Each year the seminar concentrates on a different area – for example, “Film and Politics,” “The Director as Author,” or “Violence and the Hero in American Films.” Repeatable for differing topics. The topic for spring 2024 is “Spy Films”. This course focuses on spy-thrillers. The films are entertainments, but they deal directly with political subjects; they imagine ways of being a patriot, an effective agent, a reliable civil servant, and of pursuing the interests of a state beyond lawful, acknowledged procedures. We will emphasize interpretations that engage these concerns, and look to some essays by political philosophers to guide our analyses.

MS 072 PO-01: Representing Britain

  • Instructor: Long, Andrew
    • Monday/Wednesday, 1:15-2:30 PM
    • CR Room 08 (Crookshank Hall)
    • Media History

This course is about the intertwined representation of immigration, race, and class in post-World War II Britain, a tracing which gives us insight into the present Brexit moment. Specifically, we will address how these issues were represented and understood separately and then together from the arrival of the passenger ship the HMT Empire Windrush in 1948 followed by immigration from South Asia, the Troubles of Northern Ireland, all the way to the Parliamentary Brexit vote of 2020. We will discuss and analyze films, literature, pop music, and television from this near 60-year period, though we will build towards and follow from Britain in the 1970s.

MS 088 PZ-01: Mexican Visual Cultures

  • Instructor: Lerner, Jesse
    • Tuesday/Thursday 11:00-12:15 PM
    • West Hall Q120
    • Media History

Survey of both popular and elite visual arts in Mexico from the time of Independence to today, including painting, prints, murals, sculpture and, more recently, film and video. Emphasis will be placed on the interchanges between media and the understanding of visual culture as a reflection of social changes.

MS 090 PZ-01: Ecodocumentary

  • Instructor: Talmor, Ruti
    • Tuesday/Thursday, 9:35-10:50 AM
    • West Hall Q120
    • Media History or Media Theory or Int./Adv. Production

In recent years, as the Anthropocene has become a central framework within the academy, the subfield of ecocinema has developed within media studies. This course will focus on ecodocumentary. Topics include environmental/manmade catastrophe, industrialization, anthropogenic climate change, interspecies relations, ecojustice, environmental racism, consumerism and waste. Readings will draw from a range of fields including ecocriticism and ecocinema studies. Supported by the Robert Redford Conservancy (RRC), this course will teach students the history, theory and production of ecodocumentary. By the end of the course, student teams will have collaborated with RRC partners in the Inland Empire to create short documentaries.

MS 124 PZ-01: K-Pop and Digital Culture

  • Instructor: Acosta, Andrea
    • Wednesday, 2:45-5:30 PM
    • West Hall Q120
    • Media History

This course will explore K-pop as a global popular media genre that must be placed at the center of our ongoing conversations on contemporary digital culture, art, and media. From artist production and multimedia performance to online fan communities and affective response, Kpop prompts changing ideas of what digital media and its audiences can look like in the contemporary era. Pairing formal analyses of K-pop productions with broader considerations of the social, political, racial, and intercultural dimensions of the genre and its fandoms, we will explore K-pop as a phenomenon that asks useful questions of any media student.

MS 125 SC-01: Critical Games Studies

  • Instructor: Moralde, Oscar
    • Monday/Wednesday, 2:45-4:00PM
    • Steele Hall, Room 101
    • Media History or Media Theory

This course engages with Western practices of looking, exhibiting, and evaluating the natural world. Over the course of the semester, students will examine Western representational practices (film, TV but also museums and other institutions) and how they work to create and reinforce specific attitudes towards nonhuman entities. Structured as a seminar, the class will create a space in which students will engage with relevant scholarly work, discuss, and analyze these practices, and create tangible, non-language-based responses through artmaking.

MS 153 PO-01: The Original Television Series

  • Instructor: Klioutchkine, Konstantine
    • Tuesday/Thursday, 2:45-4:00 PM
    • MA Room 5 (Mason Hall)
    • Media History

The Original Television Series from “The Sopranos” to “Mad Men.”. The course examines the original television series, a prominent development in U.S. television and, more broadly, in American culture during the last decade. We discuss representative texts in this genre, among them The Sopranos, The Wire, and Mad Men, and examine the genre’s distinctive features. We also look at how television series engage with American culture. Prerequisite: One of the following: 49, 50, 51, 91.

MS 183 PO-01: Cinema and AI

  • Instructor: Wynter, Kevin
    • Tuesday/Thursday, 2:45-4:00 PM
    • Thursday, 7:00-10 PM
    • CR Room 10 (Crookshank Hall)
    • Media History

This course provides students with a survey of representations of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Hollywood cinema and beyond. Through close engagement with select films supported by weekly readings, we will explore the emergence of AI in the context of narrative cinema and examine the evolving dynamics between humans and machine intelligence on screen from Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey to present day films like The Creator and Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning. As we track the development of AI across film history, we will ask why dystopic themes and the threat of human annihilation or replacement tend to recur in AI related films. How does the role of AI shift in narrative cinema as technological advancements in machine learning develop? How do relationships between AI and humans change across genres? How has Hollywood envisioned, and continues to envision, a future where AI is integral to everyday life? In this course, students will be asked to utilize AI and machine learning programs throughout the semester to engage with the questions raised in class.