Through variations on realism in global cinema cultures -- such as social, magical, and documentary realism -- students examine how artists from diverse social backgrounds have rigorously expanded what reality is and how it can be represented on screen. Students will use this knowledge to make short films linking the personal and the social in the vein of their version of realism for the final project that culminates the course.

An interdisciplinary study of the history and politics U.S. film through an immersive exploration of New York City; a dynamic landscape where different peoples, interest groups, political movements, and other forces vie for power, wealth, recognition, and representation. For each topic, we will examine key films in the history of New York City filmmaking. Program Fee of $3500. Trip dates are 10/26/23 - 11/15/23.

An introduction to Freudian psychoanalytic theory with forays into object relations theory, self-psychology, Lacanian theory, intersubjective psychoanalysis, and complexity theory. Course sessions will meet regularly at the Contemporary Institute for Psychoanalysis (Los Angeles), including Q&As with practicing analysts and therapists about their research and techniques.

Explore Berlin as a global city through its long-standing vibrant film culture! This course offers a journey through Berlin’s fascinating cinematic history and examines its far-reaching effects beyond borders and across time. IN addition to our select films and readings, this journey will take us all over the city with visits to filming locations, historical landmarks, film infrastructures, and institutions of cinema to trace the lasting impact of film history on the makeup and identity of Berlin today. This course fulfills the Equity & Power graduation requirement.

This course presents a global introduction to horror and invites students to explore the tenets of the genre in praxis. Particular attention will be given to recent surge of horror films that are conscious of the genre’s gender, sexuality, and race-based biases. Students will be trained to deconstruct these biases in the films they make as part of their final project for the course.

This course offers a broad overview of the study of comedy and politics in contemporary U.S. popular media, electioneering, and governance, drawing expansively from methodologies in the critical Humanities and Social Sciences, including Critical Theory, the Frankfurt School, British Cultural Studies, and contemporary Critical Race Theory, among others. The concept of ‘ideology’ will serve as a lynchpin in the course. We will examine how the structures and appeals of comedic performance, both as a means of commenting on politics and as a device employed by politicians, have shifted over time in ways that resonate with similar shifts in academic definitions of ideology (i.e., ideology as a product of the culture industry, ideology as irrationality or reification, ideology as practice rather that cognition, ideology as affect, etc.)

This course is an introduction to the field of cultural studies by way of media theory. Through our theoretical readings, students develop critical frames of analysis to examine our experience of culture in units clustered around globally momentous media(ted) events in the recent. Topics may include the so-called AIDS crisis, 9/11, War on Terror, and BLM, among others.

An interdisciplinary study of the history and politics U.S. film through an immersive exploration of New York City; a dynamic landscape where different peoples, interest groups, political movements, and other forces vie for power, wealth, recognition, and representation. For each topic, we will examine key films in the history of New York City filmmaking.