Screen Studies Courses
Undergraduate Courses
ENGL 2453: Introduction to Film and TV
This course is an introduction to the formal analysis of moving images—film, television,
and new media—in aesthetic, cultural, and political contexts. Students discuss and
write about films and other moving images screened in class.
ENGL 3263: Film and TV Criticism
An inquiry into the major concepts and debates of mass-media theory. Issues addressed
include the nature of the relation between images and reality; the psychological and
cultural significance of style in film, television, and new media representations;
and the role that mass-media play in the organization of social and political relations.
ENGL 3353: Film and Literature
The theory and practice of the relationship between verbal and visual texts, including
adaptation of literary works for the screen, and examinations of the aesthetic, industrial,
and cultural relationships between visual and literary media.
ENGL 3433: Topics in Television Studies
A focused examination of one aspect of television culture, technology, history, and/or
style. While the particular topics to be considered vary, and include everything from
TV genres to TV theories, in each instance the course gives students an in-depth understanding
of how television shapes the social and political world in which we live.
ENGL 3443: Studies in Film Genre
A comparative study of film genres, both in and outside the Hollywood system. The
course will provide students with a focused knowledge of the history and aesthetics
of selected genres, along with a sense of the economic imperatives that necessitate
generic "contracts" between film producers and viewers. Genres likely to be taught
include the film noir, the romantic comedy, and the horror film.
ENGL 3453: History of American Film
This course examines the history of cinema in the U.S. from its beginnings until the
present, addressing such issues as: the origins of cinema, the coming of sound, American
film genres, the Hollywood studio system, censorship, the challenge of television,
the new American cinema of the 1970s, the politics of independent film production,
and the rise of computer-generated imagery.
ENGL 3463: History of International Film
Introduction to the history of international cinema and the principal eras in film
history, focusing on the moments when different national cinemas flourished.
ENGL 4263: Moving Image Aesthetics (formerly "Aesthetics of Film")
Prerequisite: ENGL 2453. A historical and theoretical examination of the stylistic
and affective dimension of moving images, including questions of beauty and ugliness,
cuteness and the graphic, enjoyment and disgust, high and low culture. Screenings
will vary from semester to semester, but may include examples of realism, lo-fi production,
prestige pictures, documentary, music videos and cult cinema, and will include material
from both American and international contexts.
ENGL 4350: Contemporary International Cinema
Examines major trends in contemporary international cinema of the last fifteen years.
National cinema may include France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, China, Taiwan,
India, South Korea, and Russia, amongst others.
ENGL 4450: Culture and the Moving Image
Prerequisite: ENGL 2453. An advanced class that examines in depth the relation between
moving images and a particular cultural phenomenon, including mass media and the production
of violence, the moving image as common culture, television and the construction of
domestic life, to name only a few possibilities.
Recent Graduate Courses
Graduate seminars in the Screen Studies Program are taught under a variety of course headings, and reflect the diverse interests of our six faculty members. The specific courses listed below may or may not be taught in the future; however, this list will provide a sense of the kinds of graduate research and instruction supported by the OSU Screen Studies program
ENGL 5363: Critical Approaches to Screen Studies: Theory and History (Offered Regularly)
This introductory graduate course is designed to provide students with an overview of the basic theoretical and historical models in the fields of film and television studies. Students will encounter not only fundamental texts in the discipline, but also very recent work in the field. Our aim here is to see that students understand the traditions and approaches employed by screen studies scholars and also have a sense of how certain discourses, theoretical and historical, are developing. Students should leave the course with a sense of what it will require to make an intervention in the field. Moreover, this course will help students to understand not only the differences between theory and history, but also the very important ways in which they intersect. Likewise, students will become acclimated to doing close readings of theory, history and the moving image. The course should have the added benefit of enabling students to come to some understanding of their own scholarly inclinations, which they can continue to pursue and develop in a more explicit fashion. (Note: this course is offered regularly).
ENGL 5360: Cinema and the Non-Human (Dr. Uhlin, Spring 2023)
Drawing from recent scholarship in film/media studies and the environmental humanities, this course considers how cinema and other moving-image media creatively produce perceptions or experiences that are non-human, post-human, or otherwise more-than-human. We start from the assumption that cinematic worlds do not privilege the human, giving rise to non-anthropocentric perspectives. The course will consider depictions of animal, vegetal, fungal, and elemental agencies across a range of mainstream genre films, modernist cinema, and experimental film. Emphasis will be placed on the relevance of these non-human depictions to the ongoing climate crisis, theories of the Anthropocene, and new forms of environmental media.
ENGL 5360: Marxism and Movie Form (Dr. Menne, Spring 2021)
In this seminar we will read key works in the tradition of Marxist cultural criticism, particularly as that tradition has intersected with the emergence of movies as a dominant cultural form. The key sites for us will be the Frankfurt School; the tradition of political economy; Marxist hermeneutics; the Birmingham School and Cultural Studies; and Third Cinema. We will read such thinkers as Adorno, Benjamin, Braverman, Hall, Jameson, Lukács, Kracauer, and Spivak, but we will also read quite recent work by such scholars as Anna Kornbluh, Luka Arsenjuk, and Salomé Aguilera Skvirsky. We will also bring this theoretical tradition to bear on a set of movies that are appropriately paired to the weekly readings.
ENGL 5360: Theories of Popular Culture (Dr. Takacs, Spring 2020) his course will introduce students the basic theories, and debates, in the study of popular culture. From Horkheimer and Adorno to Henry Jenkins and Suzanne Scott, we will cover the key approaches to industrial analysis, representation and identity, convergence culture, and fan studies. How have approaches to popular culture changed; what is still useful about old methods, and what no longer seems adequate to the times? Texts will include: Laurie Oullette, The Media Studies Reader; David Hesmondalgh, The Cultural Industries; Suzanne Scott, Fake Geek Girls: Fandom, Gender, and the Convergence Culture Industry, plus essays available via Canvas and examples to be determined.
ENGL 5360: French Cinema Between the Wars (Dr. Uhlin, Fall 2018)
This course looks at French cinema following World War I, which marked the decline of the French film industry relative to an ascendant Hollywood, until its occupation by German forces in World War II. The period is characterized by: visual and literary art movements such as symbolism, Dada, and surrealism; cultural exhibitions of and “civilizing missions” to the French colonies; and pacifism and communism, culminating in the short-lived Popular Front. We will examine the ways that interwar French film intersected with these social and historical developments, as well as attend to the specificities of film industry at this time (as, for example, with the transition to sound). We will consider such filmmakers as Abel Gance, Jean Epstein, Marcel Pagnol, Rene Clair, Julien Duvivier, Marcel Carne, and particular attention will be paid to Jean Renoir.
ENGL 5360: Hollywood Southwest: New Mexico (Dr. Menne, Summer 2018)
The exploration of key aesthetic issues of analysis and evaluation as they pertain to film criticism.
ENGL 5360: Post War Media Artists (Dr. Menne, Fall 2017)
This seminar surveys the frenetic experimentation in “media” forms in the postwar years, with a stress on the late ‘50s, the ‘60’s, and into the mid-‘70s. In this period, the term “media” connoted a sense of revolution in the sensorium, as Marshall McLuhan would understand it, and it had an urgent appeal in the postwar moment because such a revolution seemed to be in the making. In our retrospective appraisal, it might seem that to the extent this occurred, it did so in the displacement of verbal media by visual media—of the word, that is, by the image. Roland Barthes’ semiology, as elaborated in 1957’s Mythologies, signaled that the protocols in place for literary interpretation might be needed for the extra-linguistic signification of the commodified world, the final expression of which, Guy Debord would say, was the image. Artists of different stripes applied themselves to this glossy realm, whether that was in Ray and Charles Eames’ molded plastic chairs; or Andy Warhol’s silk-screened soup cans; or the high-design Saul Bass brought to Alfred Hitchcock’s movies; or the “media environments” and “happenings” staged by Allan Kaprow and Robert Watts; or the experiments in computer graphics; or even efforts in the academic humanities to understand these dizzying changes and renovate its curriculum accordingly. In this seminar we will assess some of the most important artists of the era, the movements they formed (Pop Art, Fluxus, New Bauhaus, etc.), and the succession of new media they developed including expanded cinema, video, and the digital arts.
ENGL 6360: Indie Cinema (Dr. Uhlin, Fall 2024)
This course assesses the current state of American independent cinema by providing an account of its recent history, since its mainstreaming in the 1990s. The focus will be on what is generally called the Sundance-Miramax era, referring to the emergence of a developed institutional context for the production and distribution of indie filmmaking. This will include a consideration of studio specialty divisions and the rise of mini-majors; the role of film festivals as an alternative distribution platform, including Sundance and SXSW; new exhibition platforms like Netflix and Amazon and new companies like A24; prominent genres and cultural sensibilities; and the impact of digital technologies on film form and narrative. The aim will be to identify and examine the significant industrial, aesthetic, and technological conditions and characteristics that define indie cinema as a distinct mode of US filmmaking, and to speculate about its future directions.
ENGL 6360: Postwar French Cinema & Thought (Dr. Uhlin, Spring 2022)
The period between the German Occupation and the French New Wave is often overshadowed by its more prominent bookends. This course primarily examines French cinema of the Fourth Republic (1946- 1958) as it intersects with the philosophical and socio-political trends of that historical moment. It emphasizes movements in philosophical thought (existentialism, phenomenology, “engaged” writing), contemporaneous film criticism (Andre Bazin, Edgar Morin), cultural shifts (modernization, leisure, gender relations), and political developments (the Cold War, decolonization). Major filmmakers and cinematic movements of the period are highlighted, especially those films that reflect the ethos of the Fourth Republic.
ENGL 6360: Queer Culture, Queer Theory (Dr. Uhlin, Spring 2020) This course surveys the extensive cross-pollination between queer theory and queer cultural production. It offers an sustained engagement with the foundations and subsequent developments in queer theorizing, including questions of authorship and reading strategies, publics and counter-publics, the “anti-social thesis” and queer futurity, affect (shame, failure), queers of color critique, regionalism and queer diasporas, transgender surveillance, and queer world-making. In examining these theoretical questions, the course privileges queer aesthetics and cultural production, framing examples from film and television as mediated responses to these social and political issues. Screenings will be draw from popular cinema, contemporary television, global art cinema, and social media productions.
ENGL 6360: Hollywood History (Dr. Menne, Fall 2019) In this seminar we will consider the ways that Hollywood history can be told by organizing our inquiries around a series of problems: the problem of scale, the problem of Irving Thalberg, the problem of marriage, the problem of machine vision, the problem of race, and so on. We will view everything from D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance (1916) to Kogonada’s Columbus (2017), and alongside our viewing we will tease out the methodological assumptions of pioneering historical studies by Stanley Cavell, J.D. Connor, Michael Gillespie, Miriam Hansen, Kara Keeling, and D.N. Rodowick among others.