Learning Goals in the Film Studies Major

Film Studies at Connecticut College approaches the study of moving images in a unique and comprehensive manner. The program integrates theory with practice and combines film scholarship with creative work in film production. Coursework is designed to educate students in the language of moving images while firmly framing the study within the traditions and goals of the liberal arts. As budding film scholars, students are asked to critically analyze the moving image in many forms, such as documentary, narrative (from Hollywood to numerous national cinemas), experimental film, animation, and television. Film Studies offers an array of production classes to give students the technical training and stylistic devices to author their own creative projects.

Film Studies Learning Outcomes

• Explore film, television, and other media texts through forms as varied as narrative, documentary, experimental, and animation and within cross-cultural and international contexts.
• Recognize and wield the formal aesthetic components of moving picture imagery which encompass mise-en-scène, cinematography, editing, sound, narrative structure and form, and narration.
• Examine cinema with both critical acuity and creative insight by utilizing theoretical and critical terminology specific to the discipline, while also building on critical skills and tools from other fields that connect dynamically to the construction of motion picture discourses. This interdisciplinary framework touches on multiple languages and disciplines that impact the production and interpretation of media.
• Create film and media works that convey artistic vision and expression with social sensitivity and responsibility, recognizing the intersections of cinema with modalities of race, class, ethnicity, gender and sexuality, and the global resonances of nationhood.
• Persuasively argue, in both verbal and written forms, for one’s critical interpretation of film and television texts through close textual and contextual analysis.
• Embrace the evolving nature of cinema by interacting with a variety of new technologies, understanding that the influence of digital media, web-based venues, social networking, and consumer technologies transform the discipline on a continual basis.
• Apply critical and interpretive skills to cinema and media outside the classroom, participating in a variety of intellectual and creative forums, and understanding media literacies as essential to student growth and development.
• Prepare students to engage with motion picture technologies in their future career endeavors, and also establish an intellectual and creative foundation for student’s future graduate work in film and media theory, criticism and moving image production.