Spring 2020 Undergraduate Courses

SCRN Courses

Special Semester Electives

SCRN 2001: Intro to Screen Arts

In this introductory course, students can expect to get a taste of different aspects of filmmaking and video production as well study a variety of filmmakers, styles, and genres. Approaches and assignments will vary depending on instructor.

SCRN 3001-01: Experimental Film and Video, Patricia Suchy

Coinciding with the early years of the cinema, surrealist artists found perhaps their perfect medium when they began making films that broke the rules of narrative filmmaking even as they were just being formulated. From early Soviet cinema to mid-century avant-garde independents in the United States and now with YouTube, the possibilities for low-budget experimental filmmaking are endless. Through readings, discussion, and hands-on experimentation with select films, scenes, and styles, students will explore the history of experimental films, as well as learn to manipulate the cinematic vocabularies of the screen with a focus on alternatives to conventional narrative and classical style. Students will also design short video projects, inspired by course materials, that draw upon principles of visual communication in film as well as experimental methods of invention.

SCRN 3010-01: Cinematography, Glen Pitre

With this nuts-and-bolts, hands-on introduction to the art and technology of cinematography, students will learn, practice, and refine their skills in using a camera for on-screen storytelling: narrative, commercial, and documentary. Emphasis will be on how to control and manipulate lighting, framing, movement, and image qualities to shape mood, convey emotion, tell story, and create a coherent look. While there are no formal exams, each student will make four separate films as class assignments.

SCRN 3011-01: Film Editing, Paul Catalanotto

SCRN 3011explores editing theory and history as well offer students a chance to learn practical skills on the Adobe Premiere editing platform. The course functions as an in-depth study of the history, concepts, and skills involved in film and video editing techniques. Additionally, students will receive formal instruction and practice in non-linear editing software as a means to gain a better understanding of concepts such as montage, continuity, and narrative.

SCRN 3501-01: Middle-Eastern Cinema: Maghrebian Film, Touria Khannous

(Cross-listed ARAB 3501) This course is an introduction to contemporary Maghrebian cinema covering the period from after the 1970s to the present in countries including Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. We will examine the technological, aesthetic, cultures, and political developments which influenced Maghrebian cinema, its cinematic techniques and major genres, its distinctive national cinemas, and the composition of its film audiences. Students will gain not only an expanded knowledge of a broad range of films from the Maghreb but also an increased understanding of films' aesthetic approaches to issues such as mobility, identity, gender, masculinity, and violence. Students will read essays on the screened films as well as theoretical essays which serve to familiarize them with key theoretical concepts in film studies.

SCRN 3503-01: Intro to Japanese Cinema, Kathryn Barton

This course offers an introduction to the study of Japanese cinema. We will pay close attention to the languages and styles of films as well as the film-historical and socio-cultural contexts. An analysis and appreciation of major works and genres such as Jidaigeki (period/samurai films), Anime, and J-Horror will be explored, and directors such as Kurosawa, Ozu, and Kitano will be introduced. Through secondary readings, lectures, and discussions, students will critically examine how Japanese cinema as an institution both responds to and intervenes in the social, cultural, and political history of Japan. 

SCRN 4001-01: Global New Waves, Kalling Heck

This class is designed to introduce students to the function and form of "New Wave" filmmaking. It has, since at least 1959, been a tradition in the study of Global Cinema to label new--often youth oriented--films arriving from particular countries in a short span of time "New Waves," a title that seems to highlight their status as a departure from previous styles of filmmaking. But what makes a New Wave? And what is the use of labeling a new group of films as such? This class will explore these questions by examining the aesthetic and industrial configurations of four of these New Wave movements: those from France, Japan, the Czech Republic, and Brazil. Each of these New Waves took place in the 1960s, and each responds to a remarkably different context. The task of this class will be to map the similarities and differences between these various movements in the hope of understanding their respective impacts, but we will also examine what makes a New Wave, and why it might (or might not) be of use to label the disparate films that make up these movements this way. Through this process, students will gain an understanding of film history, as well as striking account of the effects and outcomes of transnational media flows.

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AAAS 3902-02: Black Religion and Film, Stephen Finley 

This course will use the genre of film to examine African American religion with particular attention given to race, class, gender, and sexuality. As a genre, film exists as an untapped resource for an understanding of the human condition and its various cultural identities, consciously and unconsciously incorporating elements of religious discourse and practice. This class will explore the innovative yet realistic ways that the film medium exposes unspoken and uncomfortable social realities that often reveal themselves in religion. Scholar and cultural critic bell hooks contends: “The emphasis on film is so central because it, more than any other media experience, determines how blackness and black people are seen and how other groups will respond to us based on their relation to these constructed and consumed images” (Black Looks: Race and Representation, p. 5). The goal of this course is for students to learn how to critically interrogate a director’s and producer’s perspectives and evaluate the cultural assumptions portrayed through their work.

ANTH 4028: Ancient Maya in the Media, Heather McKillop

Archaeology as communicated to various publics via film and related techniques (music, scoring, film techniques, etc.) that create and affect communication; documentary style as information and entertainment. Screening and discussion of films about ancient Maya, according to film techniques, sound, role of archaeologists, narrator, and others. Short written reviews and evaluations of National Geographic, History Channel, NOVA, and other independent films.

HNRS 2021: The Films of Alfred Hitchcock, Carl Freedman

Close readings of such masterpieces as The 39 Steps, Rear Window, North by Northwest, and Psycho by Sir Alfred Hitchcock, “the Shakespeare of cinema” and the undisputed “Master of Suspense” who was also—almost incredibly—a master of comedy and romance too.  Careful attention will be paid to both narrative and visual elements of Hitchcock’s work.  Study also of several fairly recent films about Hitchcock and readings in Hitchcock criticism.