Film and Media Studies

Professors: Bothwell, Chatton, Collazo-Llorens, Fong, Hahn, Haus, Heinritz, Kim, Koehler, Koenig, Latiolais, Lopez-Malagamba, Page-Wood, Pillai (Director), Powers, Pruis, Salinas, Sederberg, Sinha, Thomas, Weng, White

The Film and Media Studies concentration at Kalamazoo College offers an interdisciplinary, liberal arts approach to the study of film and other forms of media . We seek to engage critically with aesthetics, history, reception, race, gender, and class in production and consumption as well as issues of ethics, politics, and economics. We explore mainstream as well as oppositional forms and are investigators of film representation in the broadest sense: visually, aurally, and verbally. We ask how representations are used, what they communicate, and how they are constructed aesthetically and ideologically. Moreover, we examine how audiences or subjects are installed or positioned within the phenomena they view, often in ways that remain hidden to the unschooled eye.

Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) credit may not count toward the concentration but may be applied toward the total number of units needed to graduate.

Units from Study Abroad and Transfer Credit

Students may receive up to one unit of credit toward the concentration for a class taken on study abroad or at another institution. The course must first receive approval from the director of the concentration.

Requirements for the Concentration in Media Studies

Number of Units

Six are required.

Required Course

Students must take one of the following courses: ENGL 153 RTW: Classical Hollywood or RELG 170: Religion Goes to the Movies.

Elective Courses

Students need to pick five additional courses from any of the categories below. At least two of the five courses must have film as their primary focus. The courses with a film focus have been marked with an asterisk (*).

History/Theory/Criticism

  • *ANSO 295 Society on Film
    ARTH 215 History of Photography
  • ARTH 224 The 1960s
  • ARTH 227 Modern Art Museum
  • *ARTH 290 Art and Gender
  • ARTH 491 Ways of Seeing
  • * ENGL 262 Feelings and Sensations at the Movies
    ENGL 295 Special Topics (Topics: From Oz to Wicked: The Wonderful World of Oz Adaptations; Novels and Podcasts: The Victorian Roots of Serial Storytelling)
  • * ENGL 434 Advanced Film Theory
  • PHIL 208 19th Century Philosophy
  • PHIL 214 Philosophy of Art
  • PHIL 306 Philosophy of Language
  • PHIL 311 Postmodern Critical Theory
  • *RELG 132 Jedi, Sith, and Mandalorians: Religion and Star Wars
    *RELG/SEMN 236 Religion, Representation, and Avatar
  • THEA 270 Theatre of Illusionism

Applied

  • ARTX 110 Design Fundamentals
  • ARTX 115 Digital Photography
  • *ARTX 200 TV Studio Production (1/4 credit)
  • *ARTX 213 Digital Art: Animation and Video
  • ARTX/SEMN 214 Framing Difference
  • ARTX 230 Analog Photography
  • *ARTX 250 Introduction to Documentary Video Production
  • *ARTX 301 Advanced Documentary Video Production
  • ARTX 316 Intermediate Photography
  • ARTX 416 Advanced Photography
  • ENGL 205 Narrative Journalism
  • ENGL 207 Arts Journalism
  • MUSC 105 Introduction to Music
  • THEA 120 Fundamentals of Acting
  • THEA 210 Lighting Design
  • THEA 225 Developing a Character
  • THEA 255 Playwrighting
  • THEA 380 Directing I with Lab
  • THEA 420 Advanced Acting with Lab
  • THEA 480 Advanced Directing

 International Media

  • * CHIN 240 Chinese Text and Moving Image
  • * CHIN 245 Chinese Film and Culture
  • * ENGL 260 African Cinemas of Belonging
  • ENGL/SEMN 264 Global Shakespeares
  • *FREN 435/490 Adv Lit & Cultural Studies (Topics: Francophone Cult(ure) Movies; Space and Identity in French Cinema) (taught in French)
    *FREN 444 Cinema, a Modern Agora: Vivre-Ensemble In Contemporary Francophone Movies (taught in French)
  • *GERM 200 Myth of a Nation: German Film
  • *GERM 204 Advanced German II: German Stories and Histories (taught in German)
  • *GERM 491 Testimony and Memory: the Holocaust In Literature and Film (taught in German)
  • * HIST/RELG/SEMN 268 Jews on Film
  • * JAPN 240 Japanese Culture through Film
  • * JAPN 250 Manga/Anime and Gender in Modern Japan
  • * RELG 231 Religion, Bollywood, and Beyond
    * RELG 241 Princesses, Demonesses, and Warriors: The Women of the South Asian Epics
  • * SPAN 401 The Spanish Speaking World on Film (taught in Spanish)
  • SPAN 445 Visual Practices in Latin America (taught in Spanish)

Units from Study Abroad and Transfer Credit

Students may receive up to one unit of credit toward the concentration for a class taken on study abroad or at another institution. The course must first receive approval from the director of the concentration.

Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) credit may not count toward the concentration but may be applied toward the total number of units needed to graduate.

SIPs

The Senior Integrated Project or SIP should be viewed as the capstone experience of your studies at Kalamazoo College.  As a result, the SIP is undertaken within a department with a major or minor or as a non-departmental SIP. For their SIPs in the English and Religion Departments, some students have analyzed films (such as O, Crazy Rich Asians, To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before, Searching, and Black Panther), television shows (including The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Fleabag, Jane the Virgin, The Man in the High Castle, and Ramayan), and even video games like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. An example of a non-departmental SIP related to Film and Media Studies is Film and Media Studies concentrator Davis Henderson’s nineteen-minute-long documentary film BODEWADMI NDAW (I AM POTAWATOMI, 2025), which is available to stream on YouTube. Under the “Departmental SIP Pages” on the Registrar’s website, there is a list of faculty who may be willing to supervise non-departmental SIPs and the topics or subject areas they would consider.