New Media Studies - Beyond Screen Representation, 7.5 ECTS

Second level

Description

Cinema Studies is much more than the study of film and television. This course is for you who are interested in contemporary culture and technology and want to know more about present debates in media theory. Exploring a wide range of media forms …

Cinema Studies is much more than the study of film and television. This course is for you who are interested in contemporary culture and technology and want to know more about present debates in media theory. Exploring a wide range of media forms from new perspectives, the course challenges the notion of what Cinema Studies really is.

The course offers critical and analytical tools for moving motion picture in today’s changing media landscape. Whereas scholarship in the fields of film and television studies have developed during the past decades a wide array of approaches to representation, aesthetics, spectatorship and media industries, the contemporary mediascape poses new questions that demand new critical vocabularies and theoretical perspectives.

During the course, we will survey ideas that emerged in recent years and that have proved crucial for adapting the field to the contemporary media age by way of posing inquires beyond the territory of screen representation. Among other issue, we will questions how do formats such as mp3 and PDF challenge established notions of medium specificity? How does theorizing software and hardware introduce new formulations of ideology and subjectivity? How do the infrastructures of fiber-optic networks operate and impact the environments? And how did the openness of today’s “network society” consolidate around the highly centralized platform economy?

Finally, we will explore how contemporary works have broadened the scope of the subjects that concern media scholarship, by looking at select case studies such as feminist critique of airport security systems, the visual culture of post-9/11 drones and facial recognition systems, the future of smart cities, and the possibilities of rethinking of media in broader frames that go beyond artistic and communication technologies.

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Area of interests: Arts and Humanities

How are different cultures created and how do they affect us? Arts and Humanities is an area of interest that includes a wide variety of subjects such as Archaeology, Philosophy, History, Religion, Ethnology, Literature, and Theatre and Performanc…

How are different cultures created and how do they affect us? Arts and Humanities is an area of interest that includes a wide variety of subjects such as Archaeology, Philosophy, History, Religion, Ethnology, Literature, and Theatre and Performance Studies. In one way or another these subjects are an expression of how culture affects human beings and society. As a student you will improve your analytical skills and learn to identify different lines of development, often in an interdisciplinary context. Studies within Arts and Humanities give you broad general competence that is very useful in the job market, where autonomy, analytical and communication skills are in great demand.

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Subject

Cinema Studies

Cinema Studies is the study of moving images and screen cultures centered around film, film experience, and phenomena surrounding films. Historically, it ranges from image cultures before film, to the screens and digital platforms of today. The field is broad and can be found at institutions around the world under the designations of Film Studies, Television Studies, Media Studies, Visual Arts, Cultural Studies, Film and Media History, and Moving Image Studies.

The objects of study can be specific films, production cultures, genre, auteur, intermedial and trans-medial relations, archives, circulation and distribution, reception (audience, critique), film culture, media industries, institutional frameworks (legal, political, economic), technological arrangements or streaming platforms.

Approaches and perspectives applied can be genre or narrative analysis, aesthetics, auteur criticism, reception studies, critique of filmic representations, post-colonial or gender perspectives, celebrity culture, or perspectives from political economy and cultural studies.

The field is informed by Literature, History and Philosophy, Cultural Studies, Anthropology, Linguistics, Psychology, Sociology, and Economics. Cinema Studies at Stockholm University is focused on historical perspectives and key medial moments of transformation, Ingmar Bergman, as well as contemporary film and mediascapes.

Cinema Studies