Affiliated Programs
Film Studies
The Film Studies Program offers an interdisciplinary minor that teaches students to critically examine cinema as an art form shaped by cultural forces. Within a specific context, students gain knowledge of national film cultures, film history, aesthetics, and theory (including auteur, feminist, psychoanalytic, queer, and critical race theories). Specializing in small classes from departments across the campus, our program stresses developing critical reasoning skills, student-driven discussion, research, and critical writing.
Since its inception in the early 1980s, Miami’s Film Studies program has emerged as a prominent field study involving faculty and students from numerous departments including Black World Studies, Classics, English, French and Italian, German, Russian, and East Asian Languages, History, Latin American Studies, Mass Communication, Spanish and Portuguese, Theatre, and Women’s Studies.
Approximately 600-700 students enroll in the Film Studies program each year, 20-25 of whom graduate annually with a minor. Many minors have gained valuable practical experience as interns in the film industry and some have written their honor’s essays on film, while others have been awarded summer scholars projects in film. Other minors have gone on to successful careers in law, journalism, business, education, medicine, radio and television, and the film industry.
The Film Studies program has sponsored a series of lectures by internationally recognized film scholars and filmmakers. Speakers include scholars such as Linda Williams, Peter Bondella, Teresa de Lauretis, Mark Reid, David Rodowick, and Jack Valenti. Film Studies has also sponsored speakers who work in the film industry as producers,developers, and directors. In addition, guest filmmakers such as Julia Reichart, Jim Klein, Krishnan Hariharan, Satsuki Ina, and Ed Radtke have screened their films at Miami.
For more information, please visit the Film Studies Website