MA courses

MA Course Descriptions 2024-2025

Note: 600-level indicates MA, 800-level indicates PhD. Several courses are offered to both MA and PhD students.

FALL

FMST 601 Methods in Film and Moving Image Studies I

Instructor: Luca Caminati
Monday 1:15pm-5:15pm

This is a mandatory course in the Film Studies MA Program. It is designed to help students develop research, writing and presentation skills appropriate to the discipline of film studies. In addition to technical and practical matters, the course helps students develop productive and original research questions by examining notable issues in the field. Course materials examine the ways that film history, criticism, and textual analysis have been and can be written, encompassing a range of ways of seeing, interpreting and understanding cinema and the moving image.

FMST 620 Topics in Non-European Cinemas: Decolonial Science Fiction

Instructor: Masha Salazkina
Tuesday 8:45am-12:45pm

This course will examine the intersection of speculative fiction and decolonial politics, focusing primarily on recent cinematic productions from Africa, Asia and Latin America. Weekly screenings will be complemented with readings in de-, post- and anti-colonial cultural theory, as well as occasional works of literary fiction. The goal of the course will be to explore the alternative cinematic imaginaries of the world - such as Afro-futurism, Indigenous futurism, transhumanism, and others - as a mode of generating insights into today's geo- and acqua-politics.

FMST 630 Topics in Film Theory: Classical Film Theory

Instructor: Martin Lefebvre
Thursday 1:15pm-5:15pm

This seminar will focus on some of the major figures of what is now referred to as "Classical Film Theory". The course is addressed first and foremost to students interested in the history of film theory and the development of ideas about film from the silent period to the 1960s.

Classical Film Theory concerns a period in the study of the cinema that pre-dates the full-blown emergence of a discipline of films studies; one that, for the most part, precedes the development of a film studies curriculum in universities, the emergence of specialized academic journals, the rise of professional film studies associations, etc. Thus film theory was left to a group of individual thinkers often initially trained in either philosophy, psychology, art history, sociology, or other disciplines within the Humanities, and in some instances to filmmakers themselves, who worked in isolation, but whose vision nonetheless introduced some of the most important and lasting debates about the nature of film and its relation to reality and the other arts.

The course will center on the writings of 5 important figures of Classical Film Theory: Hugo Münsterberg, Sergei M. Eisenstein, Rudolf Arnheim, André Bazin and Siegfried Kracauer. Students will be asked to read the works of these theorists which will then be discussed in class. Lectures will situate the different theories in their intellectual context. And since film theory doesn't develop out of "thin air", but in relation to films, films and film excerpts will be screened so as to contextualize and/or exemplify the work of each of the theorists considered.

FMST 635 Topics in Aesthetics & Cultural Theory: Women's Film Festivals

Instructor: Rosanna Maule
Tuesday: 1:15pm-5:15pm

This seminar investigates the diverse and growing roles of women in film festivals as organizers, participants, programmers, and dedicated audiences or communities.
In highlighting women’s diverse and growing contributions to this prominent sector of film culture, it brings attention to the conditions of gender disparity that have historically marked the film industry.
The course will acquaint students with women’s contributions to film festivals from a feminist, intersectional framework of analysis.
Weekly screenings and special guests.  

WINTER

FMST 602 Methods in Film and Moving Image Studies II

Instructor: Marc Steinberg
Monday 1:15pm-5:15pm

This is a mandatory course in the Film Studies MA Program. It is designed to help students develop research, writing and presentation skills appropriate to the discipline of film studies. In addition to technical and practical matters, the course helps students develop productive and original research questions by examining notable issues in the field. Course materials examine the ways that film history, criticism, and textual analysis have been and can be written, encompassing a range of ways of seeing, interpreting and understanding cinema and the moving image.

FMST 605 Topics in English Canadian Film: Regional Cinemas

Instructor: TBD
Wednesday 8:45am-12:45pm

FMST 645 Topics in Film Genres: Global Film Noir 1947 and 1951-52

Instructor: Peter Rist
Thursday 8:45am-12:45pm

Although the instructor’s interests mainly lie with Film Noir as a genre or as cycles of films with stylistic, narrative and thematic traits, this seminar has been designed to open up to consider connections with political and social aspects of the post-World War II period as well as restraints of censorship. Although it may not be evident from the seminar title, only two or three years of film noir will be studied, while the scope will be global. (We don’t believe that Film Noir should only be considered as a U.S. cycle of films between 1940 and 1959.) 1947 has been chosen as a peak year for both U.S. and British Film noir, and the first half of the semester will be devoted to those two industries, as well as France (and, perhaps, a rare Quebec film noir), The second half will focus on 1951-52, and begin with films from Mexico and Argentina, then Germany, and end with a return to Hollywood (possibly considering the “cold war” and the effects on film noir of HUAC: the House Un-American Activities Committee).

FMST 660 Topics in Film Directors: Investigations in Film Style

Instructor: John Locke
Tuesday 1:15pm-5:15pm

Does a filmmaker’s style remain consistent between early and mature works? Discussing this question is one way of understanding the concept of Style. Style is rarely the focus of Film Studies research and adds an additional dimension to your understanding of film.

Works of 5 filmmakers will be considered. Surely you know the story of every narrative film you see, but can you identify their style? Does a filmmaker have a consistent style, or a style that matures or reinvents itself, or even a filmography with some films which seem stylistically out of place? Do you now notice a film’s style? Think of this following the next films you watch.

Each of you has one or two favorite or most influential films. After a discussion with the instructor, one will be selected, and you will do a stylistic analysis of this film as the focus of your term work.

Usually, it is a variety of factors (story, performance, moral or political positions) which lead a viewer to select a film as particularly important to them. Rarely is style of primary significance. Remembering that film is a visual art, how can a film’s style influence or impact your perception of it being a “favorite”, “most influential”, or “of central importance” without understanding and considering the role of style in your thinking. A film is not just words and sentences on paper like a script nor is it just a performance like in theatre.