SCHOOL OF HUMANITIES

FILM AND MEDIA STUDIES

We live in a world in which we are surrounded by electronic media in the form of images and sounds. Whether printed on roadside billboards or broadcast into our homes via television, the media greatly influence our sense of who we are and how we live. Yet so much of our exposure to the sights and sounds of film, TV, video, advertising, and new technologies is taken for granted. Those sights and sounds are so pervasive, and in many cases so enjoyable, that we rarely pause to consider how they act upon us and how we interact with them. An undergraduate education in Film and Media Studies provides students with an opportunity to explore the appeal and to begin to understand the operation of these complex meaning-producing machines we call cinema, television, and new digital technologies, and to interrogate the inter-relationships of visual media and sound and music as forms of media.

The course work for the B.A. degree program in Film and Media Studies trains students to read and understand the audio-visual languages of modern media and new technologies and to analyze images from socioeconomic, political, aesthetic, and historical perspectives. Learning these critical viewing skills involves learning new ways of seeing. The Film and Media Studies curriculum is systematic and comprehensive; upper-division courses have between 20 and 70 students and are typically taught by regular faculty. During the 2005-06 academic year, there were more than 275 Film and Media Studies majors enrolled at UCI.

The Department of Film and Media Studies familiarizes students with the history, theory, and art of cinema and other media. Courses focus on a range of topics, including directors, period styles, genres, national cinemas, the history and criticism of television, sound theory and popular music, and developments in new technologies. Additional courses offer students hands-on experience in video production and screenwriting. The program provides its majors with a thorough appreciation of the modern media's roles in contemporary society. Regular course offerings are complemented by film and video screenings and series at the School of Humanities Film and Video Center. Film and Media Studies, in cooperation with other units at UCI, regularly invites scholars, digital artists, directors, producers, and screenwriters to campus to share their work and perspectives with students.

Film and Media Studies at UCI is unique in its concentration on the history, theory, and criticism of cinema, television, popular music and sound, and new technologies. The faculty has published books and articles on topics that include fantastic cinema, avant-garde directors, ethnographic film, film and postmodernism, horror cinema, hip-hop and cinema, television performance, and new technologies.

Film and Media Studies students can complete professional internships in the fields of film, television, or digital media production, distribution, writing, and related areas for elective course credit.

Film and Media Studies students also have the opportunity to spend their junior year in France studying at the Inter-University Center for Film and Critical Studies in Paris, through the University's Education Abroad Program. Information is available both in the Film and Media Studies Office and the Education Abroad Program Office.

A degree in Film and Media Studies will provide students with a variety of opportunities leading to a career choice or to further education at the graduate or professional level. Graduates from the program have gone on to a host of different careers. Some have pursued graduate work in critical film studies at leading institutions such as the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of Iowa. Others have entered M.F.A. programs in production at places like the University of Southern California, UCLA, or San Francisco State University. Many are now at work in various sectors of the entertainment industry as feature film editors, executives in film and video distribution companies, network television producers, and independent filmmakers.

- From the 2007-2008 UCI General Catalogue