Department of Cinema Studies and Moving Image Arts
The Department of Cinema Studies and Moving Image Arts aspires to integrate the critical, historical and theoretical study of cinema, media and the visual arts, with artistic and commercial practices. Our program offers the BA and MA degrees in critical film studies, and BA, BFA, and MFA degrees in film and video arts. All of our students in the critical and production tracks complete a number of critical studies requirements including cinema history, film analysis, film theory, genres, documentary practices, directors, national and regional cinemas, the history of the avant-garde, the golden age of television, etc. These courses are all integrated with art-making students and critical studies majors mixing and matching their different expertise to make for a more engaging, deeper understanding of the subject of our studies.
We sincerely believe that it makes for better artists to know and understand the history, aesthetics and the major shifts in the development of their medium, and that it makes for better critical thinking for the historian or critic to know something about the technical and formal complexities of their object of study. Recent course offerings include “Cinema and Landscape,” “Horror Film,” “History of Russian Cinema,” “Avant-garde Film and the Arts,” “Environmental Cinema,” “Native American and Indigenous Film & Literature,” “The Hollywood Musical,” and “Lives of 007.” Furthermore we offer a vast array of courses in film and video production, screenwriting, producing, acting and directing.