Lower-Division

Taught by a working professional, lectures and workshop provide students with career-related information and insight into a specific profession in film, television, and digital media. Students research various aspects of a film, television, or digital media profession.

An introduction to the basic elements, range, and diversity of cinematic representation and expression. Aesthetic, theoretical, and critical issues are explored in the context of class screenings and critical readings. If space allows, restrictions may be lifted after priority enrollment.

Introduction to the basic forms of televisual presentation, including differing narrative structure from movies and situation comedies to soap opera, plus modes of direct discourse in news, advertising, sports, music, television, and other genres. Alternative forms and modes in electronic media, such as independent video art and documentary, public television, cable, and electronic networks are explored, with their potential for expressing cultural diversity set in relation to social, cultural, and political conditions. If space allows, restrictions may be lifted after priority enrollment.

Introduces fundamental features of digital media and examines the immense visual, social, and psychological impact of the digital revolution on our culture. Topics include the concepts and forms of the digital hypertext interface, Internet, and web, and the impact of digital media on conceptions of the self, body, identity, and community. If space allows, restrictions may be lifted after priority enrollment.

Introduction to the production processes of visual/aural, time-based, creative work. Students work on a range of creative projects: performed, written, photographed, and created digitally. Assignments emphasize imaginative problem-solving, collaboration, visualization, and critical media literacy. 

Students learn to understand how films reach the public through a collaborative, industrial, and artistic practice; how films work in a narrative sense; how they construct meanings for viewers; and how their formal techniques construct different possibilities for meaning and interpretation.

Examines the historical representation of Indigenous Californians and their histories in a diversity of films and visual media drawing on cultural studies, cultural history, and Indigenous studies. Course examines bad hollywood stereotypical films about California Indians as well as more recent films written by and created by California Indians themselves.

Long extinct species coming back to life from melting ice caps, humanity seeking refuge in manmade ecologies, and extreme weather events ravaging global landscapes. These all belong to the ecological imaginary of 21st century cinema/media. With the aid of new technologies and CGI, films increasingly stretch the boundaries of cinematic time and space across deep pasts, vast futures, and previously unmappable territories in order to project visions of humanity under constant threat by factors of its own making. This course explores what we can learn about human-nature relations and environmental concerns from moving images, differently from other disciplines. While the focus is mostly on eco-cinema, course also looks at broader eco-media and our ways of knowing the world.

Introductory study of animation as both art and industry, tracing its development from pre-cinematic origins to contemporary digital media. Through a combination of historical overview and critical analysis, students consider animation’s evolving aesthetic forms, technologies, and cultural contexts, with emphasis on Western traditions and the U.S. industry. Students engage with works from major studios as well as independent and experimental artists, deepening their understanding of the medium’s history and practice.

Introduces students to contemporary concerns, issues, and topics of media and media criticism. With an emphasis on visual analysis, students develop conceptual tools to think critically about photography, cinema, television, video, and print journalism.

Study of selected aspects of film, television, and/or digital media. Includes weekly screenings and historical/theoretical readings.

Examination of recent films classified as thrillers that approach technology (computers, robotics, biotech, the Internet, etc.) through suspense, anxiety, and paranoia. It will also address how technologically produced popular culture negotiates attitudes toward technological change.

Through aesthetic, medium-specific and critical theories of electronic games, course introduces histories, ideas, and debates that inform critical game studies. Themes include: games and cinema; race, class, gender, sexuality and representation; visual/cultural studies approaches; topical issues in games.

Examines the historical representation of sexual difference, orientation, and politics in film and video using cultural studies, political and economic historiography, and feminist and queer theory and paying special attention to intersections of U.S. political movements with filmmaking and reception.