1022 - Introduction to Film Studies POPULAR!
What is a blockbuster? What is a cult film? What is digital cinema? Discover the answers to these questions and others in a broad introduction to the study of cinema. Students will learn the basic vocabulary of film studies and gain an informed understanding of the different critical approaches to film analysis. 1.0 course

2159A/B - Disney (Disney Dream Factory) POPULAR!
Benjamin Barber in The New York Times argued “whether Disney knows it or not, it is buying much more than our leisure time. It has a purchase on our values, on how we feel and think, and what we think about.” This course offers a closer look at Disney as one of America's most long-standing “dream factories,” examining the cultural narratives, industrial strategies, fantasies and ideologies that fuel Disney’s global impact in the 20^th and 21^st century. In addition to analyzing key Disney animated features, we will also look at the studio’s early cartoons, educational and advertising films, nature documentaries, live action films and propaganda shorts. We will study Disney’s relationship to art, politics and ecology and also examine the “invention” of childhood, notions of “family” entertainment and constructions of race, class and gender in Disney filmmaking. Films might include Bambi, Sleeping Beauty, Tron, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Song of the South, Steamboat Willy, Fantasia, The Lion King and Frozen. 0.5 course

2164B - Animation/Anime
This course explores the power of animation, with a particular emphasis on Japan. Students will study Japanese anime films and multimedia franchises as artistic expressions, as industrial products with relations to other cultural forms, and as objects through which consumers construct their social lives. This is a non-essay course, so the emphasis is on hands-on group work (analyzing images, putting together a sequence, researching anime's "media mix"), as well as regular forum posts and a final examination. The emphasis is on my own "otaku 1.0" history – science fiction, posthumanism, and apocalypse – but you will also have the opportunity to discuss your favorite contemporary animation. No prior knowledge of Japanese is required. 0.5 course

2191G - Special Topics in Film Studies: Bollywood Cinema
Topics vary. Course description tba. 0.5 course

2198A - Special Topics in Film Studies: Ancient Greeks on Film (cross-listed with Classics 2810A)
This course introduces students to epic films set in ancient Greece. In addition to detailed discussions of individual films, topics covered will include: how and why events are selected and portrayed in film; the differences between history and Hollywood mythology, history and fiction; how the portrayal of cinematic Greece has changed over time; and conventions of the Greek epic and the use of spectacle and hyperbole. 0.5 course

Fall 2025

2198A / 001

K. Olson

Syllabus

2212F - Adapting across Page, Stage, and Screen (cross-listed with English 2112F and Theatre Studies 2212F)
How does the shape an artwork takes contribute to its aesthetic and political power? When artworks flex across form and media how do their messages change? What did Marshall McLuhan mean when he said “the medium is the message”? How do genre and form shape social and political discourse? In this course, students explore these questions and more as they investigate texts that assume multiple cultural forms and represent a diversity of perspectives. 0.5 course

2230F - Critical Reading and Writing in Film Studies
This course will build on skills and knowledge acquired in Film 1022 to engage students in the critical practices involved in reading various genres of writing in Film Studies. In addition to writing their own film reviews, students will learn research skills that prepare them for writing critical essays on cinema. 0.5 course

2254F - Classical Hollywood Cinema
This course traces a history of American film from the silent period to the end of the studio era. Topics include the establishment of the Hollywood style, major directors/genres, as well as key industrial, technological, and cultural factors in the development of Hollywood cinema. 0.5 course

2259G - Indigenous Cinema
Indigenous Cinema has been creating Visual Sovereignty, resisting colonialism, revealing strategies for survival, and carving out a space in global cinema to speak to other Indigenous viewers and find the similarities between us. In this course we will reflect on Indigenous representations from outsiders, and the subsequent development of Indigenous Cinema by Indigenous people around the world. Through screenings, readings, discussions, and writing assignments, the students will gain an understanding of the unique histories and films of Indigenous people from North and South America, Australia, New Zealand, and Northern Europe. By the end of this course students will be able to articulate the similar ways colonization has affected Indigenous people, and the unique ways Indigenous filmmakers represent resistance, resurgence and resilience. 0.5 course

3311F - Special Topics in Film Studies: Pop.Sound.Cinema.
Topics vary. Course description tba. 0.5 course

3312F - Special Topics in Film Studies: Art and Mass Media (cross-listed with AH 2662F)
This asynchronous online course examines the complex relationships that have emerged since the mid-twentieth century between art and the mass media, particularly film and television. We will begin with an exploration of the theoretical discourses that help us analyze and contextualize image-making practices. Then, we consider the collaborations and conflicts that have marked the intersections between the art world and the worlds of cinema and television. Specifically, we will focus on how artists have engaged with the content and institutional structures of the mass media as well as how the mass media has represented, and responded to, artists and the art world. This course is lecture-driven. There is no final exam. 0.5 course

3316F - Special Topics in Film Studies: Film Festivals: Local and Global (cross-listed with ICC 3200F)
Topics vary. Course description tba. 0.5 course

3335G - Contemporary German Cinema (cross-listed with German 2261G)
This course introduces students to Contemporary German Cinema after unification. Topics include the "Berlin School" and transnational film production, Ostalgie, European identity, migration, and historical memory. The relationship to the auteurism of post-war New German Cinema will also be examined. 0.5 course

3340G - Japanese Natinoal Cinema
A survey of Japanese cinema from its prehistory to the work of contemporary transnational auteurs. Students will study films in their historical and aesthetic contexts, and in relation to specific topics in film studies. For example: traditional aesthetics; the war film and propaganda; postwar melodrama; J-Horror; and anime. 0.5 course

3352G - Queer Cinema (cross-listed with GSWS 3333G)
This course will explore the history, politics, and aesthetics of queer film, particularly the representation of queer culture and identity as well as the policing of non-normative sexualities. Course topics may include: Hollywood and the Celluloid Closet, queer independent cinema, and transgender film. 0.5 course

3357G - Science Fiction Cinema
This course explores the history and development of Science Fiction cinema from the silent period to today’s CGI-saturated spectacles. Major themes include: the aesthetics of science fiction, modernity and social change, utopias/dystopias, technophobia/technophilia, identity/otherness, biopolitics, afrofuturism, set design, special effects and the "cinema of attractions". 0.5 course

3360G - Topics in Film Genre: Medical Drama
This course examines a specific film genre or cycle, focusing on its historical contexts and development and its aesthetic, cultural and political significance. 0.5 course

3366F - Film Noir and the Crime Genre
David Lynch once said that film noir is "a mood that everyone can feel. It’s people in trouble, at night, with a little bit of wind and the right kind of music. It’s a beautiful thing." "Noir" is one of the most notoriously contentious film categories: is it a genre, a film style, a period, an aesthetic, a mood, a psychology, a philosophy, an associated set of themes, icons, character types, and/or narrative conventions? Film noir emerged as an identifiable phenomenon in the United States in the 1940s and continues to influence contemporary culture, from film and video to fashion, music, advertising, and social media. Our class will consider the history of film noir from the 1940s to the present, its distinctive representations of crime, the law, racial issues, ideas about masculinity and femininity, and the impact of American consumer culture. We will explore film noir through a variety of critical lenses, considering both classical exemplars and revisionist approaches to noir. 0.5 course

3368F - Film Production
This course will explore the stylistic functions of basic film elements, e.g., camera movement, editing, sound, and colour, through the analysis and production of films. 0.5 course

3371G - Film Theory
This course will investigate major writings in two areas of classical film theory: the realism-formalism debate and the auteur theory. Additional topics in film poetics and semiotics will also be discussed. 0.5 course

3374F - Documentary Film
This course will examine the development of film documentary, from Lumière in the 1890s to the modern docudrama. 0.5 course

4409E - Undergraduate Thesis
Individual instruction in the selection of a topic, the preparation of materials, and the writing of a thesis. Students who wish to take this course must apply to the Program Director. The course is restricted to students in fourth year of an Honours Specialization in Film Studies. 1.0 course

Fall/Winter

4409E / 001

Various

Consent Form / Evaluation Form

4495F/G - Film Academic Internship
Third or fourth year students enrolled in an honours, major or specialization in Film Studies, who have a modular average of 75% are eligible for an internship within an approved media-related organization. The student must find a faculty supervisor willing to oversee and grade his/her final paper. 0.5 course

Fall/Winter

4495FG / 001

Various

Internship Guidelines