For the most up-to-date information on the Cinema and Media Studies Curriculum, please visit the CAMS Catalog.

Goals for the Cinema and Media Studies Major

Students in the CAMS major will acquire knowledge of cinema and media as 1) technological objects, with an emphasis on the relationship between technological affordances and modes of cultural expression; and 2) as aesthetic objects, with an emphasis on the relationship between aesthetic form and questions of representation, intersectionality, and globalization.

By completing the two courses at the core of our major, CAMS 201 “Technologies of Cinema and Media,” and CAMS 202 “Aesthetics of Cinema and Media,” students will be equipped with the tools for a rigorous critical understanding of the history and theory of the diverse media that structure modern life. These two courses serve as stepping stones for all majors and minors and will guide students’ scholarly and creative pursuits and create a community of shared knowledge. Our core courses and seminars likewise follow an approach that privileges comparative media studies and examines different audiovisual practices as participating forces in a media ecology. Course goals for students who complete the CAMS major. In conjunction with CAMS 201, 202, an interdepartmental offering of elective courses, and production-focused courses, CAMS majors and minors will develop a set of skills for the critical analysis of cinema and media which reflect the program’s core values.

Skills:

• Cultivate a set of critical and analytical tools for the study of cinema and media, from formal analysis to research methods.
• Acquire a broad-based contemporary and historical knowledge of global media cultures, including an awareness of the cultural, political, and economic role of cinema and media in modern societies.
• Engage in creative practice and critical making through projects in photography, video, digital imaging, or screenwriting.
• Develop a critical awareness of the historical developments of film and media, their emergence and uses, their social, economic, and environmental impact.

Values:

• Social justice. CAMS courses address the history and legacy of colonialism and imperialism at work in the aesthetic, technological, and industrial genealogies of cinema, telegraphy, television, and digital media.
• Environmental justice. Students critically assess the carbon print of media technologies and industries on our societies at a global scale, from hardware to digital waste.
• Active agency in the fight against censorship, misinformation, and surveillance that affect media production and consumption.
• A shared sense of community, enhanced by a common curriculum, critical peer assessment and collective projects.