Film, TV, and Media Studies Courses

Fall 2024 Offerings

  • Course Description  

    In Art of Cinema, we explore the following: how does a film communicate information and meaning to its audience? What are the expressive components of cinema?

    Cinema is a key component of our cultural landscape and how we understand ourselves and the world. This course is aimed at developing a deeper appreciation for film by developing critical thinking and reading skills. We will explore how audiences make meaning from artistic and thematic cinematic strategies by examining its core communication elements. Moreover, we will examine how cinematic developments have been influenced by technology, cultural trends, and time.

    During the first half of the course, we will break down the aesthetic components of cinema. (Cinema refers broadly to film, video, and digital time-based works intended for screening before a mass audience.) We will examine each element’s function in the production of meaning in a text, and in doing so, generate a shared vocabulary through which we can all speak and write with intelligence, confidence, and specificity about the ways in which a work affects us.

    In the second half, we will discuss film history and genre by examining movie genre classifications. We then move into specific film topics that concern broader possibilities for cinematic expression. These topics include avant-garde and animation films that explore the medium’s relationship to reality and deviations from traditional storytelling. Therefore, during the second half of the course, we will use the language and grammar of cinema developed in the course’s first half, linking our aesthetic and technical understanding of film codes and language to generic and other formats -- in the larger cultural context.

     Course modality – In-person lecture and screenings. Separate 50-minute discussion section also required.

     Learning Outcomes – At the end of course, students will:

    • Know the aesthetic components of cinema, including their historical development and the ways the function in the production of meaning, and be able demonstrate this knowledge in their exams and writing assignments.
    • Know a shared vocabulary that enables scholarly and critical film discourse and demonstrate this knowledge in their discussion and writing.
    • Understand the relationship between cinema’s aesthetic language and the cultural, technological, and economic conditions that determine it and demonstrate this knowledge in their discussion, exams, and written assignments.
    • Value the diverse perspectives we bring to our understanding, interpretation and emotional response to cinema.
    • Value the diverse approaches that filmmakers have taken to their art form as well as the stories they tell.

    FLAG: Writing

    Separate discussion required, see PROWL for times

     

     

  • Course Description

    Stories matter. They help us find our way through a confusing and complicated world while providing us with positive and powerful images of ourselves. They can help us understand and empathize with others, especially those whose experiences are different from ours. They can reinforce our cultural attitudes and values or they can challenge us to think about difference differently. Through stories, we can better understand the ways that power and privilege impact different communities; compare the experiences of people from varied racial, ethnic, gendered, neurodiverse, class, and faith/religious groups; and gain an appreciation for the ways that race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexual orientation, religion and disabilities intersect to form complicated personal and collective identities. This course investigates the ways that television, video games and content created for the web use and transform the elements of film language to create worlds and populate them with compelling characters in order to tell stories that shape and reflect cultural values and attitudes, especially those circulating in and around diverse and varied identities, including race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, class, faith and religion, and disabilities.

    Learning Outcomes

    By the end of the semester, you will…

    • Know the history and development of television, the internet, and study of video games
    • Understand and be able to analyze the aesthetic aspects of an array of televisual, internet-based, and game texts with a specific focus on the ways that gender, race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, faith and religion, and disabilities can be constructed through them
    • Understand the ways that media scholars analyze and discuss texts and be able to apply scholarly discourse in their own writing and discussion

     By the end of the semester you will be able to...

    • Expand, deepen, and apply your critical thinking and reading skills
    • Develop a shared vocabulary for analyzing media texts
    • Do a close reading of a media text--Refine your ability to construct and support an effective analytical and argumentative essay--Be able to reflect on your own learning and use these reflections to deepen learning

     By the end of the semester you will value...

    • The contributions that marginalized groups have made and respect the continuing challenges they face to tell their stories in complicated and diverse ways
    • Multiple perspectives and ways of expressing ideas creatively, analytically, and in scholarship
    • The importance of informed discussion and debate to challenge, expand and clarify thinking
    • Scholarly discourse and participation in a community of learning

     Instructional Methods

    This course will have a blend of in-class and out-of-class elements. Every week there will be work you do on your own and we will convene on Wednesdays to go over it together, have screenings and discussions. We’ll start in a lecture/discussion mode, then shift to a student-led mode in which you will present materials and I will guide discussions. There will be a midterm and final exam as well.

     

  • Course Description

    This course examines some of the most important industrial and artistic developments, and some of the most pressing and relevant thematic issues, in cinema worldwide from 1895 to 1955. Although we consider cinema culture today to be “global” in its various dimensions, the notion of a global cinema culture is fairly recent, having been preceded, first, by the codification of cinematic practices and conventions in the early 20th century. This course will consider world cinema in the “national” context of the World War era. As film industries in Europe and Asia respond to, and are threatened by, the outbreaks of war in their home countries, filmmakers struggle to maintain their positions, even as they innovate cinematic styles. At the same time, American studios establish their dominance in the domestic and global marketplace through powerful distribution networks and the popularization of “Hollywood style” narrative and audiovisual design. The films, filmmakers, and topics covered here will reflect on this broad period as a national, pre-global era of world cinema.

    Student Learning Outcomes

    Upon successful completion of this course, students will…

    • know some of the most important aesthetic developments in world cinema during, between, and immediately after the First and Second World Wars, which will be traced to specific countries and filmmakers responding to these major conflicts.
    • gain an understanding of cinema in a national context, where barriers of foreign language, culture, and government restrictions determine much of the content as new production and distribution methods are established.
    • learn and make effective use of important terms and concepts derived from cinema practices of the wartime period (e.g. Russian formalism, German Expressionism, etc.) that are still in use today.
    • embrace the varied approaches that filmmakers use in cinema, the wide array of stories they tell with it, and the way they inspire, and are inspired by, filmmakers of other nations and cultures.
    • value the diverse perspectives we bring to understanding, interpreting, and responding to cinema.
    • be able to demonstrate the above through discussions, exams, and written assignments.

    Class Format – In-person lecture and screenings.

    Work Expectations: 

    Midterm and Final Exams

    Two analysis papers

    Participation 

     

  • Course description:
    This course is a critical and historical survey of some major developments, trends, movements, filmmakers, and industries in world cinema from 1955 to 1990 and beyond. Because it is impossible to exhaustively cover over thirty-five years of global filmmaking in a semester, we’ll focus our attention on some central themes and countries that demonstrate the differences between foreign and U.S. film by exploring the concepts of first, second, and third cinema, tracking the influence of World War II on global filmmaking, and examining particular national and auteurs’ styles.


    Learning outcomes:
    This course will enable students to:
    ● Identify major trends in global filmmaking after World War II
    ● Appreciate the political and social contexts influencing these films’ production
    ● Track different artistic and political goals for and theorizations of filmmaking across the globe
    ● Develop critical thinking and writing skills about media and culture

     

  • Course description:

    Globally, television is one of the strongest forces in culture, reshaping our values, helping to construct our identities (personal, familial, cultural) and our place in the world. It is also one of the greatest triumphs of the art of blending the creative spirit with business acumen. Visual texts include scripted series such as I Love Lucy, Game of Thrones, Squid Games, as well as unscripted, such as 60 Minutes and American Idol.

     

  • Course Description 
    While digital media and culture may be guilty of eroding traditional conceptions of documentary, it also provides a useful framework for better understanding the history and legacy of nonfiction media. This class surveys the major movements and theoretical debates of documentary film through the glass darkly of a digitally defined contemporary moment – we take as an assumption that documentary media has always been virtual, always existing in the gray zone between truth and fiction. In screenings, lectures, and case studies, we will focus on documentary media that resists definition and examine what happens to nonfiction when it takes the form of database films, computerized evidencing technologies, social media self-documentation, AAA video games, and virtual empathy machines. 

     

  • Engages critical perspectives and discussions of current movies and media, joined frequently by classroom encounters with media creators as well as actors, writers, producers and others engaged in contemporary media creation. Practical discussions of the creative process plus examinations of current professional trends are a focus; aesthetic analysis is a regular weekly feature. Professor Greene is a working TV producer and documentary filmmaker, and will draw on his own professional experience to delve deeply and specifically into the projects presented and the topics raised.

    It is the intention of this course to demystify the contemporary media landscape by close conversations with working professionals as well as a free-ranging discussion of the themes and stylistic approaches represented by a wide-ranging slate of works. The course can serve to educate aspiring filmmakers about both professional realities and different creative approaches. For the casual filmgoer, the course is designed to challenge pre-existing viewing assumptions and open up different perspectives on media and how it talks to and about the wider world. There is also a strong writing component intended to focus and intensify our weekly classroom experiences through related prompts, and it is the intention of this course to help every student improve their writing.

    Participation in class discussion and other class activities; weekly writing exercises; two analytical papers examining any film of the student's choice; and a multipart and
    essay-based take-home final exam. A weekly asynchronous writing assignment based on a relevant prompt posted to Brightspace is also a core feature of this course.

    Meetings: See PROWL for meeting days/times 

     

  • Course Description: In this course, we'll explore the writings of Jane Austen, direct adaptations of those writings, and media inspired by her works. We'll look at films, television programs, and web-based series; we'll analyze Regency-era adaptations and modern-era updates in our quest to understand the continued relevance of Austen's literature. Screenings may include both the BBC and Joe Wright versions of Pride and Prejudice, Emma Thompson and Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility, and Whit Stillman's Love & Friendship (2016), as well as Bridget Jones' Diary, Emma., Clueless, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Austenland, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, and Bridgerton. If you are willing to duel on a moor at sunrise over which Mr. Darcy is superior, this is the class for you.  If you'd prefer to exchange sprightly dialogue over tea and biscuits, this is also the class for you. 

  • FTVS 3220 Video Game Theory and Analysis

    Meeting day and time: T 3:05-6:20

    Meets LMU Core Interdisciplinary Connections

    Instructor Dr. Sue Scheibler

    Course description: Over the course of the semester we will play, analyze, discuss video games as a technology, art form, business, and cultural artefact, with a focus on why we play games, what we look for in games, how to study games, and how games can be used to engage with social justice issues.

    Workload expectations: Group projects, engagement with gameplay in class, short reflection exercises, seminar paper.

  • In the contemporary era of real-time production, Unreal Engine, AI-generated art, and multiverse storytelling, one may say that all media are now immersive – their modes of creation and consumption increasingly require a deep sense of commitment. Exposing the theoretical and historical roots of immersive media, this class critically examines the illusory property of “immersion” in storytelling and media technology, from painting to literature, film to video games. We will use a theory-practice approach to survey the tools and techniques of immersive storytelling while foregrounding the theoretical and ethical concerns of an increasingly mediated existence.

  • An introduction to the theoretical paradigms that underpin film and/or media studies. The course may be offered as a historical survey or focus on a minimum of two distinct theoretical traditions and the historical developments within them (e.g., psychoanalysis/theories of representation and ontological/realist film theory). Alternately, it may focus on introducing the work of a minimum of four dominant film theorists from different decades. Refer to the specific semester description.

    Prerequisite: FTVS 1010 or FTVS 1020.

     

  • COURSE DESCRIPTION: 

    Benito Martínez Ocasio, better known as Bad Bunny, is breaking musical records, breaking gender stereotypes, and centering his homeland of Puerto Rico in everything he does. What does it mean for an all-Spanish-language act from Puerto Rico to be biggest musical artist in the world? Bad Bunny has been the world’s most-streamed artist on Spotify for two consecutive years, has the longest-running Spanish-language album at the top of the Billboard chart, and in 2022 became the only artist in history to stage two separate $100 million-grossing tours in less than 12 months. As we examine his impact on global popular music and culture, we will consider what Bad Bunny can teach us in Latinx Studies. Through film, popular media, and interdisciplinary academic texts, we will explore his role in the mass 2019 protests in Puerto Rico, what these protests and ongoing struggles in Puerto Rico teach us about U.S. colonialism and Puerto Rican politics, and what Bad Bunny’s increasingly anti-colonial stance says about the current state of resistance in Puerto Rico (particularly among Puerto Rican youth). We will also pay particular attention to the politics of race, gender, and queerness in Bad Bunny’s performance, and how these politics disrupt dominant Latinx media representations. Overall, this course will explore these topics by closely situating Bad Bunny’s work in relation to key texts in Latinx Studies regarding colonialism, race, resistance, gender, and sexuality.

     

  • Course description coming soon.

  • An in-depth examination of film censorship in American cinema from its origins to the present day. We will explore the foundation of the Motion Pictures Producers and Distributors of America, the so-called Pre-Code period, the Production Code Administration, and the origins of the MPA's film ratings system. 

  • This course explores a selection of key films produced in Italy since the 1940s, placing them in historical perspective. The selected films encompass several broadly conceived historical and social themes, including Fascism and WW2, the economic boom, Italian migrations, and the evolution of organized crime. Additionally, we examine issues of film language, genre, and audience address, reflecting on how cinema both reflects and shapes understandings of national identity, historical memory, and discourses of family, gender and sexuality.

     

  • Scholars such as Teresa de Lauretis have contextualized cinema – as a medium of representation – as a privileged social technology for the construction (and deconstruction!) of gender and sexuality. In this class, our approach to Japanese cinema will take this idea as our starting point. We’ll watch iconic films like Funeral Parade of Roses (Matsumoto Toshio, 1969), animated works like Perfect Blue (Satoshi Kon, 1997), and confections like Kamikaze Girls (Nakashima Tetsuya, 2004) to think together about how gender and sexuality have been constructed in and through Japanese cinema and how they relate to global imaginaries of Japan. You should anticipate weekly readings to support our screenings that will generally emerge from feminist, queer and trans* analytical contexts.  

  • Course Description:

    This course examines contemporary Chinese-language films produced in Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, the United States, and other countries. By situating Chinese filmmaking in local, national, as well as trans-regional and transnational contexts, the course explores topics such as women and gender, memory and trauma, class and postsocialist development, migration, urbanization, ecology, ethnic minorities, (post)colonialism, and globalization. Through readings and discussions, students will understand Chinese cinema as both an art form and a powerful social and political intervention.

  • Course Description

    This course examines the evolutions in Sub-Saharan African cinema (aka Black African cinema) from its emergence to the present. By highlighting the major trends (political, stylistic, ideological, etc.) that have emerged since the birth of this regional cinema, and by closely analyzing how the inner workings of the African film environment have shaped the art and business of African  films, this course will enable students to fully appreciate the challenges associated with film production on the African continent. The goal is to help students expand their perspective on African cinema by discussing aspects that were once neglected in African film scholarship (such as financial viability, film genre, fandom, spectatorship, etc.) and by giving them a better understanding of the circumstances and events that have influenced the diverse types of films created by African filmmakers.

     

  • Course description coming soon.

  • This class provides a rigorous introduction to Bombay cinema from its origins to the present. We will focus in particular on the history and transformation of post-independence Bombay cinema— produced out of Bombay, India’s film capital. The class looks at film genre, aesthetic conventions and key movements to understand Bombay Cinema’s unique standing in world cinema: its styles of production and systems of address—including songs and this cinema’s distinct idioms of realism (emotional, technological & artistic).

     

     

     

  • This course will examine how the great Asian directors Ang Lee and Bong Joon-ho are two of contemporary cinema’s exemplary global auteurs who are setting new standards for film form, style and technical innovation through their manipulation of genre, art cinema and great entertainment fare.

  • Course Description

    In Global Film Authors, we will examine two of the most well known directors of Japanese animation: Hayao Miyazaki and Satoshi Kon. At first glance, their films may appear to be of different genres and intended audiences, but a closer look shows how deeply each of them is invested in the power of fantasy as a driving force of their characters. We will look at how both Miyazaki and Kon have struggled against the challenges and conventions of the Japanese animation industry to make expressive works that have captured a worldwide audience

  • This course is a historically situated, theoretically anchored and transnational study of the psychological thriller, a subgenre of films grounded in the unstable and ambiguous psychological and emotional motivations of characters who are often in the process of losing their grip on reality, lying or being duped.  This often produces and sustains suspense, fear, horror, and/or titillation for viewers while affecting the film’s story structure as protagonists prove themselves to be unreliable narrative guides.

  • Course Description

    This course will explore how contemporary reality dating shows gamify romantic social scripts. From The Bachelor’s “marriage plot” structure to testing whether “Love is Blind,” reality dating television transforms the narratives and idioms of romance into competitions where contestants compete to find love. Much of the drama results from individuals struggling against the rigid structures that confine who one can love, how one can find love, and how many people a person can love at one time. By examining this genre of television, we will analyze the way romantic scripts regulate gender norms, sexuality, and monogamy. At the same time, we will question whether the moments when reality breaks through the highly-produced artifice of television can expose the contradictions, harm, and fallacies of the romantic norms they seek to perpetuate. Possible shows include: The Bachelor, The Bachelorette, Love is Blind, F Boy Island, Married at First Sight, 90 Day Fiancé, Love Island, Too Hot To Handle, Perfect Match, Couple to Throuple, and The Ultimatum.

  • FTVS 4617 Queer TV

    Meeting day and time: Thursday 3:05-6:20

    Meets LMU core: Interdisciplinary Connections

    Instructor Dr. Sue Scheibler

    Course description: Over the course of the semester we will use tv theory, queer theory, disability theory, among others, to explore the question of what does it mean to queer TV?

    Workload expectations: Group creative project, collaborative terms, short reflection exercises, seminar project.

  • FTVS 4700 leads students through the foundational stages of conceptualizing a capstone topic, choosing a project, and developing a research strategy to write a thesis-style undergraduate paper. The capstone experience prepares FTVS students to graduate with the necessary skills and opportunities to explore their own interests in the field of Film and Media Studies, be it for graduate school, any other professional degree, or career of their choice.
     
    Ideally taken in the Senior year, the Capstone is a four-credit course that emulates a small, graduate-level class where students utilize their critical analysis and research skills to produce a semester-long research project.
     
    Course topics will emphasize the advanced study of the historical, cultural, and aesthetic analysis of film, television, and new media technologies that continue to transform how we understand and write about the screen in its ever-mutating forms.

    Meetings: See PROWL for meeting days/times 

     

     

     

     

  • This course offers a broad overview of the history of American television, from live television broadcasting to online streaming. We will examine television as an entertainment industry, a technology, a form of cultural communication, and a social practice. This course asks questions about how television presents, challenges, and/or reflects American ideals and values.

     

    Graduate SFTV majors only.

    Meetings: See PROWL for meeting days/times 

     

     

  • Course description coming soon.

  • This course is a historically-situated investigation of New Korean Cinema, a transnational film culture that begins in the late 1990s and whose phenomenal success can in part be explained because it is according to scholar Chris Berry, a “full-service cinema”, excelling in the production of not only art films and documentaries, but popular genre films, action blockbusters and other commercial entertainment fare.

  • Course description coming soon.

  • COURSE DESCRIPTION:
    Mixing nonfiction and fiction is obviously not a new impulse, but the exuberance with which modern filmmakers embrace the creative possibilities of such a challenge is.Today’s filmmakers no longer hold fast to the once rigid divide between fiction and non-fiction. Many, in fact, go to great lengths to gleefully erase/smudge/ even explode those boundary lines. In the process, documentary realism finds its way into works of comedy (Borat, The Office, What We Do in the Shadows), horror (Blair Witch, Cloverfield), serious drama (Close-Up, Nomadland, The Rider, I Carry You With Me), the experimental art film (Mysterious Object at Noon) and even musicals (A Hard Day’s Night, Spinal Tap!, O Lucky Man, Fear of a Black Hat). Meanwhile documentarians embrace fictive tools/techniques to embellish and intensify their real-world narratives: Dick Johnson is Dead, Flee, American Splendor, Man on Wire, Act of Killing, to name just a few. Mockumentary, DocuDrama, Faux Docs, Found-footage docs, historical reenactments, film pranks, deep fakes and hoaxes: hybrid forms abound, but just how far can the envelope be pushed?

    This class investigates that question as students are urged to probe the meaning of fiction, question the foundations upon which truth is perceived, constructed (and manipulated) and assess the artistic value of blurring fact and fabrication. It’s as much about questions as it is about answers.