Colgate University

First-Year Course Offerings — Fall 2019

FMST 200   Intro to Film & Media Studies
Credits1
RestrictionsNo 2020 Instr perm req during Drop/Add
Pre-Requisites
Co-RequisitesFMST-200L
Core Area
Area of InquiryHuman Thought and Expression
Liberal Arts Practices

From the films we watch to the personal profiles we maintain online, media saturates our lives. Film and mass media can be powerful determinants of ideology, identity, and historical consciousness. This course is a historical survey of media technologies and environments, combining course readings with a required weekly film screening. The theoretical concepts introduced in this course enable students to critically approach the visual culture around them: just how immersed are we in the virtual, and what are the strategies for engaging with or disengaging from virtual worlds? Students learn to respond to film and media as proactive, critical, and articulate viewers. Students also acquire the vocabulary, conceptual strategies, and interpretive skills necessary to closely analyze the form and content of film and media, as well as the ability to set their own relation to the ideologies all representations convey.