Film Studies Minor

The film studies minor is an interdisciplinary minor which provides students interested in film study an opportunity to declare and document this interest. Studying film develops both visual literacy and language analysis skills. In a media-saturated culture, these skills are especially important ones for students to cultivate. Motion pictures are no longer confined to the big screen, but are viewed by millions of people worldwide on screens of all sizes. The advent of relatively inexpensive, highly portable, and user-friendly video cameras and editing equipment has vastly expanded the number of people worldwide who are making and distributing movies. The skill to analyze and comment intelligently on these ubiquitous cultural artifacts is essential to the liberally educated in the Twenty-first Century. The minor consists of five units.

Minor Requirements

Core Curriculum

Five units are required. In addition to ENG 254, which is required of all Film Studies minors, students must take at least 2 units from Group A and at least 1 unit from Group B.

Group A: Courses with a primary focus on film (minimum of 4 units)

Students may take a maximum of 2 film-focused Independent Studies (490), Directed Readings (491), or Apprenticeships (495) courses to fulfill this requirement.

CMLT 300 3 Cinemas of the Middle East
CMLT 321 East Asian Film
ENG 100 6 Narratives in Film and Television (.5 unit)
ENG 319 Screenwriting
ENG 300 x Topics in Film (to be proposed)
FREN 300 1 French Language Film (PRE)
GERM 300 1 Landmarks Films of the German Language (PRE)
JOUR 252 Video Production (.5 unit)
SOAN 365 Ethnographic and Documentary Film and Filmmaking
SPAN 190 5 Through the Spanish Lens: Contemporary Spanish Society and Culture Through
Cinema

Group B: Courses with a significant focus on film or skills relevant to film (minimum of 1 unit)

ART 355 Photography I (PRE)
CMLT 100 1 Space and Place in Literature and Film
CMLT 200 1 Cosmopolitanism in Literature and Film
CMLT 499 C Refiguring the Divide: The Arab Jew in Literature and Film
ENG 480 Advanced Creative Writing (Screenwriting) (PRE)
FREN 300 4 Contemporary Franco-Arab Cultural Exchanges: Exploring the Literature and
Film of French Expression from the Maghreb and Mashreq (PRE)
JOUR 300 2 Women and the Media
PHIL 190 6 Zombie 101
SOAN 117 Social Problems in The Wire
SPAN 300 10 Spanish Crime Fiction: Femmes Fatales, Murderers, and Other Outcasts (PRE)
SPAN 368 Special Topics in Hispanic Film and Literature (COR)
SPAN 370 The Child in Contemporary Latin American Literature and Film (PRE)
THEA 210 Beginning Acting

Cognate Courses

No more than one course from among the following will count toward the minor: ART 111 , ART 112 , ART 113 ; ENG 150 , ENG 226 (Westerns), ENG 484 (Shakespeare, Postmodernism, and Film); CMLT 250 ; MUS 105 ; SPAN 370 ; THEA 210 .