Interested in learning more about the Cinema Studies major? Explore CINE's fall term CORE ED courses below. Cinema Studies offers many courses that are open to all majors and satisfy Core Ed requirements.

Already a Cinema Studies major? Learn more about the interesting TOPICS courses offered fall term below. Visit the course list page for the complete list of spring courses and how they satisfy the major.

Did You Know? Cinema Studies now offers both B.A. and B.S. degree options! Cinema Studies is building connections across new disciplines and is now offering both a Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Science degree option to engage with students wherever their academic training is taking them. Whether you're an IRES major, business major, or studying in a STEM field, consider Cinema Studies as a double major to tell your story at the intersection of science and cinema. To declare the major, simply submit the brief online form. 

Priority registration begins May 16, 2022.

CINE 111: How to Watch TV >1 (4 credits)
Tuesday/Thursday 8:00-9:50 a.m.
Instructor TBD

With the rise of viewing practices like “binge-watching,” the increased respectability of “quality” television, new content producers like Netflix and Amazon, and technology that allows you to watch your favorite programs on anything from a 5-inch smart phone to a 50-in HDTV, how we watch television is rapidly changing. It’s easy to get swept up in these changes, but one thing will always remain the same: the need for media literate viewers who can talk, think, and write intelligently about what they see on-screen. This course will teach you how to be a critical and informed television viewer, even as the very concept of television is being redefined. In doing so, you will deepen your understanding of specific television texts by using formal and ideological analysis and you will learn to situate those texts within different contexts of history, industry, technology, and reception.

CINE 151M: Intro to Korean Cinema >1 >GP >IC (4 credits)
Tuesday 4:00-7:20 p.m.
Instructor:  Dong Hoon Kim

This course is a survey of Korean national cinema, from the earliest days of the medium to the present. By exploring a range of issues that have come to define the concept of Korean national cinema, this course will not only serve as an introduction to Korean cinema, but more importantly as an in-depth case study that challenges and expands the discussions of national cinema. Films will be screened with English subtitles. No specific knowledge of Korea/Korean or prerequisite is required. Previously taught as KRN 151; not repeatable.

CINE 230: Remix Cultures >1 (4 credits)
Tuesday/Thursday 10:00-11:50 a.m.
Instructor:  André Sirois

In "Remix Cultures," students learn the historical, practical, and critical views of "intellectual property" (IP) by analyzing everything from the UO mascot to Jay-Z. The course highlights how “ideas” are part of a remix continuum: new ideas often remix the great ideas that preceded them and will themselves be remixed in the future. Students will deconstruct the relationship between politics and economics and interrogate the everyday ways that their lives are governed by (and often break) IP laws. As a group-satisfying Arts and Letters course, Remix Cultures provides students with a broad yet fundamental knowledge of how "IP" and "innovation" impact their lives: students of all majors engage with intellectual properties daily and may seek professions in fields that valorize intellectual property. By asking all students to actively and critically engage consumer media culture as intellectual property, the course provides a better understanding of how collaborative efforts are governed by laws that typically value and reward a singular author/genius. 

CINE 265: History of Motion Picture I: The Silent Era >1 (4 credits)
Thursday 2:00-2:50 p.m + ASYNCH WEB.
Instructor:  Michael Aronson

CINE 265 (Previously ENG 265) is the first in a three-part chronological survey of the evolution of cinema as an institution and an art form. CINE 265 moves from the origins of cinema in the late 19th century through World War II. The primary texts for the course are the films themselves, but supplementary readings will also be assigned. The aim of the course is to develop interpretive skills relevant to the study of film by examining the history of major movements in Hollywood and world cinema. As a broad introduction to interpretive, theoretical, and institutional issues that are central to the study of film, CINE 265 satisfies the university's Group Requirement in the Arts and Letters category. The courses in motion picture history, CINE 265, 266, and 267 may be taken individually or as parts of an integrated sequence. Previously taught as ENG 265; not repeatable.

CINE 381M*: Film, Media & Culture >1 >GP >IP (4 credits)
Monday/Wednesday 10:00-11:50 a.m.
Instructor:  Allison McGuffie

This course studies works of film and media as aesthetic objects that engage with communities identified by class, gender, race, ethnicity, and sexuality. It considers both the effects of prejudice, intolerance and discrimination on media and filmmaking practices and modes of reception that promote cultural pluralism and tolerance. It historicizes traditions of representation in film and media and analyzes works of contemporary film and media to explore the impact and evolution of these practices. Classroom discussion will be organized around course readings, screenings and publicity (interviews, trailers, etc). Assignments will supplement these discussions by providing opportunities to develop critical /analytical /evaluative dialogues and essays about cinematic representation. CINE 381M satisfies the Arts and Letters group requirement by actively engaging students in the ways the discipline of film and media studies has been shaped by the study of a broad range of identity categories, including gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, and class. By requiring students to analyze and interpret cinematic representation from these perspectives, the course will promote an understanding of film as an art form that exists in relation to its various social contexts. CINE 381M also satisfies the Identity, Pluralism, and Tolerance multicultural requirement by enabling students to develop scholarly insight into the construction of collective identities in the mass media forms of film and television. It will study the effects of prejudice, intolerance and discrimination on mainstream media. Students will study the ways representational conventions, such as stereotypes, have resulted from filmmaking traditions that have excluded voices from varying social and cultural standpoints. The course will also consider filmmaking practices and modes of reception that promote cultural pluralism and tolerance. Previously taught as ENG 381; not repeatable.

CINE 440: Top Canadian Cinema >GP >IC (4 credits)
Monday/Wednesday 2:00-3:50 p.m.
Instructor:  Erin Hanna

This course offers a survey of Canadian cinema history with an emphasis on its relationship to politics, culture, aesthetics, and media industries. We will explore the role of cinema in defining national identity, both locally and internationally, while also highlighting approaches to Canadian cinema that capture the diversity of the nation and its cultures. In doing so, we will discuss English language, French Canadian, Indigenous, and diasporic cinema, and examine the transnational relationship between Canadian and US media cultures.

CINE 399: African Cinema (4 credits)
Monday/Wednesday 12:00-1:50 p.m.
Instructor:  Allison McGuffie

Are you interested in other countries and cultures? Curious about media production in Africa? Are you a cinephile hungry for new and interesting directors and filmmaking styles? African cinemas provide a wealth of diverse, fascinating, politically engaging, and beautiful films to watch and discuss. In this introductory course, students will learn about the history, aesthetics, and politics of films made in Africa. Diverse modes of production and styles will be addressed, including documentary, art, popular, and educational films. No previous knowledge of African history or filmmaking required.

CINE 399: Film Style and Technology (4 credits)
Tuesday/Thursday 2:00-3:50 p.m.
Instructor:  Ari Purnama

The development of film style, or film aesthetics, is tied with the development of technology in cinematography, production design, editing, and sound. Technology has an enormous impact on movies' looks and sounds, from the adoption of carbon arc lighting fixtures in the silent era to the recent experimentation with LED walls that project 3D environments in real-time behind actors, as demonstrated by Disney's production of The Mandalorian series. In this course, we will explore this interplay between filmmaking technology and film style by tracing the development of film style through the lens of technological invention and innovation historically. Simultaneously, we will look toward the future and project probable scenarios about the effect of current filmmaking technology on the evolution of film style.

CINE 410: Cinema and Censorship (4 credits)
Tuesday/Thursday 12:00-1:50 p.m.
Instructor:  Peter Alilunas

In this course, we will explore the connections between the histories, practices, and policies of cinema censorship, and in particular the role that sex and sexualities have played in those histories, practices, and policies. This course will examine significant events in media history as they pertain to these topics—including the development of various technologies; the regulatory responses both internal and external to the film industry; the various laws and court decisions that have defined the legal landscape central to this history; and the changing depictions and representations created by the film industry. We will consider how the film industry has both created and participated in various dynamics of power and privilege, and how those in regulatory positions have exercised their own power and privilege. Topics will include LGBTQ histories and representations, pornography, censorship, feminism, queer theory and media, and the intersections of race, sex, and sexualities. We will also examine historical debates and controversies surrounding these issues, as well as the defining theories and movements within the various academic fields associated with these topics.

CINE 410: Slapstick Comedy (4 credits)
Tuesday/Thursday 10:00-11:50 a.m.
Instructor:  Michael Aronson

In this course, we will study why a well thrown pie to the face is funny. That is, this course is about slapstick, an important (and often hilarious) subgenre of comedy that has been around since the fifteenth century, but which arguably found its fullest form in American cinema. In particular, this course will focus on slapstick’s practitioners; from well- known actors like Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Laurel & Hardy to other important, but now lesser-known performers, such as Mabel Normand, Carole Lombard and Monty Banks. We will concentrate on the form and its stars' importance in the silent era, but trace the genre’s popularity from 19th century vaudeville all the way through Something About Mary.

CINE 490: Top Global Blockbusters
Monday/Wednesday 12:00-1:50 p.m.
Instructor:  HyeRyoung Ok

This course explores one of the most visible, yet least critically discussed forms of popular culture: the movie blockbuster. We will endeavor to evaluate or re-evaluate the cultural significance of this often easily dismissed cultural phenomenon by positioning it at the intersections of such discourses as globalization, transnationalism, film historiography and genre. At the same time we will trace the genealogy of the movie blockbuster and examine its shifting definitions and generic conventions. In particular, challenging a myopic perception that blockbusters are the exclusive products of Hollywood, this class will survey the global dissemination of the movie blockbuster and focus on blockbusters, spectacles or “event movies” from Asia, including, but not limited to, China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, and India. In addition to looking into the formal, aesthetic, and industrial elements of blockbusters across nations, the analysis of films will lead us to interrogate cinematic and cultural constructions of history, nation, gender and sexuality.