In the fall of 2020, FMS 220: Introduction to Film, a course normally taught every fall, will go on a one-semester hiatus as I accept a Faculty Fellowship at the Center for the Humanities at Washington University in St. Louis.

The course will return in the spring of 2021 and resume its normal schedule in the fall of 2021.

In the meantime, whether you are hoping to pursue a major or minor in Film & Media Studies or are simply looking to “dip your toe,” I would highly recommend that you consult our Guidebook for the courses on offer in the fall of 2020: Download Guidebook. Here’s a brief preview of what you’ll find there!

For students who have completed FMS 220: Introduction to Film in the past, we offer FMS 225: Making Movies, in which you shoot and edit your own films, learn how to work with actors and in crews, and exhibit your projects on the “big screen” at our end-of-semester showcase.

Equally “hands-on” are the two creative writing courses we have for you, FMS 352: Introduction to Screenwriting and FMS 353: Writing Episodic Television. What is it like to actually put pen to page and develop a characters and stories from scratch, for movies and TV?

A wonderful place to begin if you are looking to pursue a major or minor is another fall 2020 course, FMS 340: History of World Cinema. This offering allows you to tour the globe and discover what it means to study cinema as a national and transnational phenomenon—in various contexts, from East Asia to Europe to Latin America.

The bread and butter of our program has always been our upper-level studies courses. This is where we really get to focus in like a laser on a specific topic and investigate, in smaller groups, the fine-grained theoretical and historical aspects of particular forms and media.

If you’re invested in studying media other than film, consider FMS 349: Media Cultures and FMS 423: Histories of Media Convergence. In FMS 349, students learn how to study culture and media from an interdisciplinary perspective, and seek answers to such fundamental questions as, what is popular culture? what is the role of the audience in meaning-making? and how do media shape social formations and identities? In FMS 423, we look at one of the most important phenomena in the development of media, convergence—the coming together of film, music, TV, radio and other media and the effects of this on audiences and the development of technology, the industry, and regulation.   

Other upper-level courses emphasize cinema, and you have courses on popular and alternative forms to choose from. Courses on popular cinema, like FMS 443: Memory, Tears, and Longing: East Asian Melodrama Film and 450: American Film Genres, encourage you to think about the myriad ways cinema and culture are intertwined. In FMS 443, for instance, you will see how Japanese, Korean, and Chinese-language films negotiate questions of modernity, gender, sexuality, and the family.

Finally, if FMS 368: Contemporary Women Directors cuts across the popular and alternatives to the popular, looking at women filmmakers from across the globe and in various spheres, from blockbuster to documentary film, FMS 465: Theory and Practice of Experimental Film asks a different question: how have filmmakers, both today and yesterday, imagined alternatives to mainstream storytelling practices?

I hope, then, that you will join us in the fall of 2020!

Regards,

Prof. Colin Burnett