Undergraduate - Area of study Film and screen studies

Film and screen studies involve historical, textual and critical approaches to film and television, and related video and new screen technologies. Film and screen studies cover Australian, Asian and European national cinemas, earlier and contemporary popular Hollywood and its institutions, alternative film and video, documentary film, Australian television, popular television genres, online screen forms, and video practice.

Emphasis is given to a variety of historical, critical and theoretical methods of analysis appropriate to the study of the moving image, including formal, semiotic and psychoanalytic approaches, institutional, reception and cultural studies approaches, consideration of issues to do with the intersection of ideology and culture, the representation of gender, race and class, and questions concerning the relations between film and television and new technologies.

Students are encouraged to consider combining their film and screen studies with other relevant and compatible units and/or disciplines in the Faculty of Arts. Examples include:

• communicationscommunications (http://www.monash.edu.au/pubs/handbooks/aos/communications/)
• gender studiesgender studies (http://www.monash.edu.au/pubs/handbooks/aos/sociology/ug-arts-sociology.html)
• historyhistory (http://www.monash.edu.au/pubs/handbooks/aos/history/)
• literary studiesliterary studies (http://www.monash.edu.au/pubs/handbooks/aos/literary-studies/)
• theatretheatre (http://www.monash.edu.au/pubs/handbooks/aos/theatre/)
• and a range of relevant Asian and European languages.

Outcomes

Upon successful completion of the major, students will be able to:

• identify and evaluate screen theory and scholarly debates in relation to contemporary and historical screen media examples and methods (review/evaluation of critical debate or literature review)
• understand and apply advanced intermediate library and archival research skills (research essay)
• critically reflect on and synthesise screen theoretical approaches and communicate this in written, oral and audio-visual form (research essay and presentations)
• actively design collaborative modes of problem solving in a group project task (A/V response task/group work)
• undertake academically rigorous research, demonstrating skills in research project planning, design and writing, and production
• identify and describe a range of historical and new approaches and theories within the discipline of film and screen studies
• understand and apply a range of theoretical approaches to contemporary and historical narrative and non-narrative forms of film, television and online screen content such as psychoanalysis, queer theory, transnationalism and intermediality to a wide range of national cinemas and televisions in both scholarly and practical assignments
• critically engage with contemporary and historical practices of cinema and television criticism
• interpret and analyse forms of film and television critical and theoretical practices in the context of digital cultures.