BA Film and Media Studies

The Film and Media Studies (FMS) Program is committed to fostering visual literacy, promoting critical thinking and analysis, and encouraging students to engage meaningfully with a world in which images and screen-based media play an ever present and powerful role. Our program also embraces the inherently interdisciplinary aspects of film, serving students from programs and departments across the college (art, theater, English, psychology, sociology, history, philosophy, music, and so on). In addition to offering an interdisciplinary education that is faithful to the spirit of the liberal arts, the program addresses the specialized concerns of the field. We define and examine film and media broadly as a variety of modes (narrative, experimental, and documentary) and outlets or screens (cinema, television, video, social media, video games, and streaming platforms). In exploring the specificities of these media, the program attends to aesthetics, form, and textuality but always within a larger context (the historical, cultural, social, political, and so on), to address national and global audiences, economies, and histories.