The MFA in Film and Television Studies program consists of a minimum of 64 credits
What You’ll Learn Here
- Think creatively and critically about images, messages, institutions, and consumers
- Closely and coherently analyze written and audio-visual material
- Synthesize large amounts of dense material and present that information to a group
- Conduct original research using online databases
- Answer big-picture questions by selecting and analyzing pertinent case studies
- Construct cogent arguments and support those arguments with evidence
- Use historical and contemporary contexts to evaluate the state of film and television
- Make an original scholarly contribution to the field of Film and Television Studies
- Conduct a thorough analysis of media artifacts/institutions using a clear theoretical framework
- Craft long-form, independent research projects using primary and secondary sources
- Synthesize key media studies scholarship and apply it to specific case studies
- Prepare for a PhD program
- Gain experience as a teaching assistant
Four Semesters (Fall, Spring and Fall, Spring)
Core Requirements 16 credits (cr)
The curriculum contains four required courses in history and theory. These are to be taken in sequence within the first year of the course of study. The remainder of the program is composed of individual selections among a wide spectrum of specialized upper-division courses (500-level and above) taught within the Film and Television Studies program. In addition, a student may petition to take a maximum of two electives (8 credits) outside the program. This includes courses in production and/or screenwriting.
The curriculum also offers an opportunity to work on directed study projects with the faculty, as well as the option to pursue a wide variety of professional internships.
Fall Semester
COM FT 520: Television Studies
4 credits
Undergraduate Prerequisites: (COMFT303) - As an omnipresent site of entertainment and information, "reality" and fantasy, "quality" and "trash," and commerce and the public interest, television requires an active, critical analysis of its texts, uses, and production of meaning. Students in this class will engage in such analysis, confronting television as a rich and contradictory site of entertainment, culture, politics, ideology, and signs. This discussion driven seminar sets aside evaluative considerations of TV in favor of theoretical and critical approaches that challenge widespread assumptions about the medium and expand our understanding of its role in our lives. These approaches, which constitute some of the dominant frameworks in Television Studies, include analyses of culture, industry, narrative, genre, images and sounds, liveness, and the television schedule. This course fulfills the additional TV Studies course requirement. Pre-req: FT303.
COM FT 722: Practical Production
4 credits
This course is designed to give you an aesthetic, conceptual, and practical understanding of the fundamentals of video production, digital editing, and storytelling specifically related to creating brand-driven content. You will learn to use a variety of motion picture equipment, including cameras, lenses, audio recorders & microphones, and lighting instruments. Class content will include concept development, production preparation and visualization, working with the camera, lighting, on-set techniques and procedures and, lastly, post-production, including editing, sound and music and deliverables. Projects will utilize sync sound via the double system. The goal of the course is to learn how to work collectively and collaboratively in the service of communicating a cohesive concept for a specific brand.
Spring Semester
COM FT 536: Film Theory and Criticism
4 credits
Undergraduate Prerequisites: Undergraduate pre-req: FT250 - An introduction to classical and contemporary film and media theory. Topics include montage theory, realism, structuralism, post-structuralism, semiotics, psychoanalysis, phenomenology, and cultural studies. The course includes screenings of films that have contributed to critical debate and those that challenge theoretical presuppositions.
Fall Semester
- Three electives (12 cr)
- Fourth elective or COM FT 953 Internship* (4 cr)
Spring Semester
- Two Electives (8 cr)
- COM FT 852 Thesis Project (8 cr)
Curriculum Offerings of non-required courses
These courses are not offered every semester.
COM FT 500: Writing Film Criticism
4 credits
This course examines the art of film and television criticism and gives students extensive practice in writing about film and TV in a way that balances informed, insightful analysis and lively writing. Students write several film and TV reviews, each covering a different type of film or TV show, as well as a longer think piece. Students will review films currently playing in local theaters and TV shows currently available on broadcast, cable or other internet platforms, such as Netflix, Hulu, Amazon and the like. Key critics discussed include James Agee, Andrew Sarris, Pauline Kael, Roger Ebert, Emily Nussbaum, Matt Zoller Seitz, Anthony Lane, Manohla Dargis and A.O. Scott. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Aesthetic Exploration, Critical Thinking.
COM FT 533: Producing the Social Purpose Short
4 credits
Film is both an art and one of the most powerful communication tools available. In this class, students will produce impactful narrative fiction short films that challenge thought, inspire conversation, and engage meaningfully with the pressing issues of the day. Graduate MFA writer/directors are chosen based on scripts developed in FT 720 Writing the Social Purpose Short. Undergraduate and graduate students who did not take FT 720 may apply to the class as producers, cinematographers, editors, sound designers, ADs, or production designers. The class will form production teams dedicated to the creation of exceptional short films for festival submission. Students will gain hands-on production experience, as well as high level instruction in directing, producing, and narrative technique.
COM FT 549: The Profane
4 credits
Explores a wide variety of topics concerning censorship, feminist theory, feminism, psychoanalytical theories, pornography, voyeurism, repression, homosexuality, rape, body image, and national identities as exemplified through a large selection of films considered "Profane"/scandalous/ "X-rated", touching upon uncanny regions in which one is "never at home". Further discussion will include an examination of the cultural and historical factors that serve as background for the themes explored and presented in the selected films.
COM FT 560: The Documentary
4 credits
Surveys the history of the documentary and the changes brought about by the advent of television. Examines the outlook for the documentary idea in national and international markets. Periodic highlighting of special areas such as the portrayal of war, historical events, drama-documentary, and propaganda. Students develop critical and professional skills. Lectures, screenings, discussions.
COM FT 563: French New Wave
4 credits
Studies the great 1960s movement in filmmaking that has stayed forever fresh and challenging and has influenced all filmmaking since. The class will view and discuss films of Resnais, Malle, Truffaut, Godard, Chabrol, Rohmer, Varda, and others. We will consider the directors' innovative production practices and film styles, their attitude to their times and to life in general, and what their films finally achieve as works of art. We will talk about this movement's influence and what has developed out of it. Readings will include writings by the filmmakers, many of whom were prolific as film critics and theorists.
COM FT 567: Film Styles
4 credits
The style of a stylized film is its strangest, most mysterious, and, often, most wonderful quality. Style begins where realism and representation end. It is all those things a film can do to reprogram our brains that have nothing to do with putting the world we see and hear in our ordinary lives on screen. It involves narrative distortions, weird photographic, editorial, and acoustic effects, strange events, and eccentric characters--all in the service of attempting to alter our definition of "reality." We will look at some of the most bizarre movies ever made, along with a few apparently (but only apparently) "normal" films that have more insidious designs on our consciousnesses, that aspire to change our understandings of experience in subtler ways. No prerequisites and no permission required. (this course fulfills the foreign cinema requirement)
COM FT 569: Holocaust on Film
4 credits
Holocaust on Film examines the aesthetics of filmic texts which place the experience of the Holocaust at the center of their investigation.
Select Film & TV Studies Courses
Spring 2018 Course Offerings
Global New Wave Cinemas – Decker
Explores the interconnected production and reception of selected European, African, and Asian New Wave cinemas of the mid-1940s through the early 1970s. These films experimented with form and style to challenge classical Hollywood norms.
Feminist TV Studies – Jaramillo
A discussion-driven seminar designed to accomplish two things: to introduce students to the development of feminist television scholarship and to employ that scholarship to analyze how television has located and defined women and femininity.
Uncensored TV – Jaramillo
The lack of government regulation of cable TV and streaming content has led to scripted series that push boundaries long held in place by broadcast networks. Examines history and current state of non-broadcast series via industry, genres, auteurs, and more.
Religion and TV – Howell
A critical engagement with religious representation on television, focusing especially on American fictional television since the 1980s as it is shaped by television’s history, ideology, industry, culture, and reception.
American Independent Film 2 – Carney
A survey of cinema from the past three decades originating outside of the studio system. Filmmakers to be examined include Elaine May, Barbara Loder, John Comsavetes, Robert Kramer, Mark Rappaport, and Charles Burnett, among others.
International Masterworks – Carney
An eclectic and unsystematic survey of a small number of the supreme masterworks of international film created by some of the greatest artists of the past eighty years. The focus in on cinematic style. What does style do? Why are certain cinematic presentations highly stylized? What is the difference from realistic, representational work? We will consider the special ways of knowing, thinking, and feeling that highly stylized works of art create and devote all of our attention to the function of artistic style and form to create new experiences and ways of thinking and feeling.
Gangster Films – Hall
Gangster Films explores the genre’s roots, such as its depiction of a violent alternative to the American Dream amid the Great Depression. It also examines the genre’s evolution, due to censorship forces, social changes and our desire for vicarious violence.
Fall 2018 Course Offerings
Bollywood and Nollywood – Decker
Course details TBD.
TV Theory and Criticism – Jaramillo
This course will set aside evaluative considerations of TV in favor of theoretical and critical approaches that challenge widespread assumptions about the medium and expand our understanding of its role in our lives. Such approaches include, but are not limited to, critical political economy, cultural studies, semiotics, genre theory, and narrative theory. Students will emerge from the course with a thorough understanding of how to perform television-focused research and analysis. As students discover the critical and theoretical foundations of the study of television, they will learn how to apply those foundations to crucial developments in television (in their midterm exam) and to expound upon them (in the form of a scholarly final paper).
Broadcasting Horror – Jaramillo
Examines the censorship of horror; horror’s relation to sound; the aesthetics of TV horror; horror and genre mixing; the serialization of horror; broadcast vs. cable horror; and the violence of horror.
TV Genre and Fandom – Howell
TV programs have huge fan bases, whether cult audiences, fanboys and fangirls, or X-Philes and Trekkies. In this course, scholarship on reception theory and fan studies is used to explore multiple television genres and their connections to enduring varieties of fandom.
American Masterworks – Grundmann
Subjects vary with instructor. Directors include: D.W.Griffith, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, King Vidor, Frank Borzage, Victor Fleming, Howard Hawks, Frank Capra, Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford, John Huston, Elia Kazan, George Cukor, Orson Welles, Robert Altman, John Cassavetes, and Woody Allen.
Queer Cinema – Grundmann
Course details TBD.
American Independent Film 3 – Carney
A survey of cinema from the past three decades originating outside of the studio system. Filmmakers to be examined include Elaine May, Barbara Loder, John Comsavetes, Robert Kramer, Mark Rappaport, and Charles Burnett, among others.
Film & TV Criticism – Hall
Course details TBD.
Spring 2019 Course offerings
TV Industry Studies – Jaramillo
Whether you want to work in the television industry or focus your research on it, your connection to it will be incomplete without a critical interrogation of its history and processes. TV Industry Studies is a scholarly reading and discussion-driven seminar that conceptualizes the U.S. television industry as a complex site of negotiation between producers and audiences, labor and management, creativity and commerce, and government and corporations.
TV Comedy – Jaramillo
Course details TBD.
Comic Book TV – Howell
Course details TBD.
Contemporary American Film – Grundmann
Course details TBD.
Avant-Garde Cinema – Grundmann
Survey of American and international avant-garde film and experimental media from the 1920s to the present. Explores film, video, and digital video as mediums of unadulterated artistic expression resulting in daring, experimental forms and controversial contents.
International Masterworks – Carney
An eclectic and unsystematic survey of a small number of the supreme masterworks of international film created by some of the greatest artists of the past eighty years. The focus in on cinematic style. What does style do? Why are certain cinematic presentations highly stylized? What is the difference from realistic, representational work? We will consider the special ways of knowing, thinking, and feeling that highly stylized works of art create and devote all of our attention to the function of artistic style and form to create new experiences and ways of thinking and feeling.
Fall 2019 Course offerings
NBC: Anatomy of a Network – Jaramillo
NBC has the distinction of being the first national network on the air, and at various points in its history it has stood for corporate stodginess, quality programming, enviable target audiences, and abject failure. In this course students will analyze the different stages of TV’s development by using NBC as a case study, approaching the network’s history from various vantage points, including those of the larger industry, network executives, and early audiences. Driven by primary sources (NBC’s back-office documents, industry trade articles, and NBC’s radio and television programs) and scholarly literature, this course will explore the ways “America’s network” has navigated the transition from radio to TV, monopolistic trends, inter-network competition, programming decisions, conglomeration, and competition with cable and the Internet.
TV Theory and Criticism – Jaramillo
This course will set aside evaluative considerations of TV in favor of theoretical and critical approaches that challenge widespread assumptions about the medium and expand our understanding of its role in our lives. Such approaches include, but are not limited to, critical political economy, cultural studies, semiotics, genre theory, and narrative theory. Students will emerge from the course with a thorough understanding of how to perform television-focused research and analysis. As students discover the critical and theoretical foundations of the study of television, they will learn how to apply those foundations to crucial developments in television (in their midterm exam) and to expound upon them (in the form of a scholarly final paper).
Streaming TV – Howell
Focuses on differing ways of watching television beyond the television set. Explores ideas of on-demand television and its effects on how television is made and marketed, what audiences are targeted, and how outlets like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon are changing the television industry.
The City in Film – Grundmann
This course explores the relationship between the moving image and urban spaces in the 20th and early 21st century.
American Masterworks – Grundmann
Subjects vary with instructor. Directors include: D.W.Griffith, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, King Vidor, Frank Borzage, Victor Fleming, Howard Hawks, Frank Capra, Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford, John Huston, Elia Kazan, George Cukor, Orson Welles, Robert Altman, John Cassavetes, and Woody Allen.
American Independent Film 1 – Carney
A survey of cinema from the past three decades originating outside of the studio system. Filmmakers to be examined include Elaine May, Barbara Loder, John Comsavetes, Robert Kramer, Mark Rappaport, and Charles Burnett, among others.
Film & TV Criticism – Hall
Course details TBD.
Streaming TV
Broadcasting Horror
NBC: Anatomy of a Network
Comic Book TV
Television Industry Studies
Feminist Television Studies
Religion and TV
International Horror Film
Nollywood and Bollywood
American Independent Film
Film Criticism
The Documentary
The French New Wave
The Profane
New Scandinavian Cinema
Holocaust on Film
Silent Cinema
History of the Avant-garde (4 survey courses; sequence not required)
The City in Film
British Cinema
African American Representation
Queer Cinema
American Film in the Sixties
American Film in the Seventies
Gender and Horror
Asian Cinema
Antonioni and Bergman
Bresson and Tarkovsky
Four Non-fiction Filmmakers
Creative Non-fiction Film
Women and Film
The Cinema of Michael Haneke
Renoir and Buñuel
Classical Hollywood Romantic Comedies and Melodramas
Uncensored TV: Original Programming on Cable Television
Some courses have prerequisites which are not listed above. All Film & Television requirements, prerequisites and course descriptions are listed on the Boston University Academics website.