芝加哥大学

For more than a century, and across widely different cultures, film has been a primary medium for storytelling; it has served to depict and explore the world, to engage and shape the human senses and emotions, memory, and imagination. We live in a time in which the theatrical exhibition of films to a paying public is no longer the primary venue in which motion pictures are consumed. But cinema seems to survive, even as it is being transformed by television, video, and digital media; these media, in turn, are giving rise to new forms of moving image culture.

The major in Cinema and Media Studies provides a framework within which students can approach the history of film and related media from a variety of historical, critical, and theoretical perspectives. Focusing on the study of the moving image, as well as sound, the program enables students to analyze how cinema creates meanings through particular forms, techniques, and styles; how industrial organization affects the way films are produced and received; and how the social context in which they are made and circulated influences our understanding of the medium.

At the same time, the goal is to situate the cinema and related media in broader contexts: modernity, modernism, and the avant-garde; narrative theory, poetics, and rhetoric; commercial entertainment forms and consumer culture; sexuality and gender; constructions of ethnic, racial, and national identities; and international media production and circulation.

Students graduating with a Cinema and Media Studies major will be trained in critical, formal, theoretical, and historical thinking and analysis. The program thus fosters discussion and writing skills. Students will gain the tools to approach film history as well as today's media environment within specific cultural contexts and broad transnational perspectives.

Students wishing to enter the program should consult with the Director of Undergraduate Studies no later than Spring Quarter of their second year. Participation in the program must be declared to the Director of Undergraduate Studies before registration.

Honors

Students who have earned an overall GPA of 3.25 or higher and a major GPA of 3.5 or higher are eligible for honors. To receive honors, students must also write a BA research paper that shows exceptional intellectual and/or creative merit in the judgment of the first and the second readers, the Director of Undergraduate Studies, and the Master of the Humanities Collegiate Division.