Cinema and Screen Studies

302 Marano Campus Center • 315-312-2595
www.oswego.edu/cinema

The Bachelor of Arts degree in Cinema and Screen Studies is an interdisciplinary program designed to prepare students to become, through criticism and creation, active participants in and shapers of the culture and society of moving images. The major in Cinema and Screen Studies combines a rigorous course of study in the theory and history of moving images with an equally rigorous course of study in technical and creative production. The dual emphases of the program are designed to prepare students for a number of possible postgraduate options, ranging from media production to graduate study of theories and histories of visual culture.

Moving images increasingly belong to the very texture of our lives. The Cinema and Screen Studies program engages with this texture, examining the “big screen” of cinema to the “small screen” of television to the “new screens” of computers, ATMs, cellular phones, iPods, and the myriad other screens with which we regularly interface.As such, courses in the program are inherently interdisciplinary, touching on concerns across the humanities as well as the fields of business, education, political science, information technology and more.As virtually every career must engage with moving images in some form—marketing, public relations, organizational communications, education, etc.—the Cinema and Screen Studies program can augment traditional career preparation majors in fundamental ways. The major is in keeping with the College’s mission in that it “prepares graduates to live and work in a technologically sophisticated, culturally diverse world of changing opportunities.”

The major in Cinema and Screen Studies includes thirteen courses divided into two components: core requirements, and approved electives. The core requirements are comprised of critical studies and production courses. The critical studies courses address histories and theories of moving images. The production courses focus on screenwriting and film and video making. The approved electives give students an opportunity to develop a particular emphasis of their course of study and enable them to take full advantage of the interdisciplinary elements of Cinema and Screen Studies. For example, a student might use this group of courses to fashion an emphasis in: acting and design, media archaeology, visual anthropology and documentary, computer animation, gender and visual culture, race and representation, media literacy/education, technology and society, digitality and information science, natural sciences and visual technologies, psychology and visual culture, physics of screen technologies, etc.

The completion of the major is marked by a senior thesis course that includes a public exhibition of a film, research, screenwriting or video project. By the conclusion of a course of study in Cinema and Screen Studies, a student will be able to:

1. Deploy a technical, conceptual vocabulary to describe, categorize, analyze and create moving-image artifacts.
2. Recognize, apply and transform the historical frameworks through which moving-image artifacts are received and created.
3. Use and deploy appropriate technologies to both analyze and create moving-image artifacts.
4. Write for the screen in multiple ways and for multiple audiences.
5. Collaborate on moving-image projects in a variety of capacities and in the service of shared vision.

Programs

Major

• •  Cinema and Screen Studies Major – B.A. Degree

Courses

Cinema Screen Studies

• •  CSS 235 - Introduction to Cinema Production
• •  CSS 335 - Intermediate Cinema Production
• •  CSS 360 - Studies in National Cinemas
• •  CSS 385 - Children’s Literature and Film
• •  CSS 391 - Film Practicum
• •  CSS 395 - Special Topics
• •  CSS 396 - CSS Teaching Assistant
• •  CSS 485 - Experimental Filmmaking
• •  CSS 487 - Advanced Studies in Film Theory
• •  CSS 491 - Location-based Filmmaking
• •  CSS 496 - Senior Thesis