2025/2026 Undergraduate Courses

2025/26 Cinema Studies (CIN) undergraduate courses will take place in person except for two online synchronous courses: CIN240H1F - The Western, and CIN412H1F - The End in Cinema.

Group A: Foundations

CIN105Y1Y - Introduction to Film Study

Introduction to film analysis; concepts of film style and narrative. Topics include: documentary, avant-garde, genres, authorship, ideology, and representation.

Students must enrol in the Lecture (LEC), one Tutorial (TUT) and one Practicum (PRA). Please see Timetable Builder for the schedule of Tutorials.

Day and Time: Lectures on Tuesday 12:00 - 13:00; Practicums on Wednesday 10:00 - 13:00 or 13:00 - 16:00
Instructor: James Cahill
Exclusion: ENGB70H3, ENGB75H3, ENGB76H3, FLMA70H3, FLMB75H3, CIN101H5
Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Breadth Requirement: 1. Creative and Cultural Representations

CIN201Y1Y - Film Cultures I

Emergence of cinema from its start until the dismantling of the studio system and an emergent internationalism in the early 1960s. Examines the practices and theories underlying the development of cinema as a mass medium in the 20th century.

Students must enrol in the Lecture (LEC) and one Tutorial (TUT). Please see Timetable Builder for the schedule of Tutorials.

Day and time: Lectures on Tuesday 12:00 - 13:00, Thursday 10:00 - 13:00
Instructor: Grant Wiedenfeld
Prerequisite: CIN105Y1 Students must complete CIN105Y1 before taking CIN201Y1. 
Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Breadth Requirement: 1. Creative and Cultural Representations, 2. Thought, Belief and Behaviour

CIN301Y1Y - Film Cultures II

Examines film theory and practice from the 1950s onward, and the impact of media change on earlier film cultures and aesthetics.

Students must enrol in the Lecture (LEC) and one Tutorial (TUT). Please see Timetable Builder for the schedule of Tutorials.

Day and time: Lecture on Monday 15:00 - 16:00, Thursday 13:00 - 16:00
Instructor: Scott Richmond
Prerequisite: CIN105Y1, CIN201Y1 Students must complete both CIN105Y1 and CIN201Y1 before taking CIN301Y1. 
Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Breadth Requirement: 1. Creative and Cultural Representations, 2. Thought, Belief and Behaviour

 

Group B: Genre and Modes

CIN210H1F - Horror Film

Horror film as a genre, focusing on three types of international horror: the un-dead, body horror, and the supernatural. The genre's popular appeal, affective power, unique means of producing pleasure, and current global resurgence will be emphasized. Topics include: the aesthetics of gore and violence, technologies of fear, J-Horror, new French extremity, cult fandom and paracinema, and media convergence.

Students must enrol in the Lecture (LEC) and one Tutorial (TUT). When the 2025/26 Timetable is released, please see Timetable Builder for the schedule of Tutorials.

Day and Time: Lecture on Tuesday 9:00 - 12:00
Instructor: TBA
Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Breadth Requirement: 1. Creative and Cultural Representations

CIN211H1S - Science Fiction Film

This course is the study of science fiction films in their cultural and political contexts and the genre's narrative and conceptual components. The goal of the course is to familiarize students with science fiction films as popular genre texts, emphasizing the period between 1950 and the present.

Students must enrol in the Lecture (LEC) and one Tutorial (TUT). When the 2025/26 Timetable is released, please see Timetable Builder for the schedule of Tutorials.

Day and time: Lecture on Tuesday 9:00 - 12:00
Instructor: TBA
Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Breadth Requirement: 1. Creative and Cultural Representations

CIN212H1F - Cinema and Sensation I: Action/Spectacle

Action movies cement the dominance of commercial cinema, and they largely define the contemporary era of the blockbuster and CGI effects. This course examines the narrative modes and the extremes that action scenes reach, and it explores the commercial and social function of the genre. The course also traces Action's historic reach and global diversity to include its significant precursors and transnational forms that Action cinema takes on.

Students must enrol in the Lecture (LEC) and one Tutorial (TUT). When the 2025/26 Timetable is released, please see Timetable Builder for the schedule of Tutorials.

Day and time: Lecture on Tuesday 13:00 - 16:00
Instructor: TBA
Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Breadth Requirement: 1. Creative and Cultural Representations

CIN220H1S - The Cinematic City

More information to come.

Day and time: Thursday 10:00 - 14:00
Instructor: Alberto Zambenedetti
Prerequisite: CIN105Y1
Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Breadth Requirement: 1. Creative and Cultural Representations

CIN312Y1Y - Documentary Film

Critical and historical survey of documentary practice, including cinema verité, ethnographic experiments, and various hybrid forms, with emphasis on the rhetorical, aesthetic, and political dimensions of the "art of record." Topics include: the filmmaker/subject/audience nexus; historiography, hagiography, and performance; and how emerging technology and new media platforms, evinced in the rise of documentary-based webdocs, i-docs, and webgames, affect the actual production and style of linear documentary, as well as impact earlier models of documentary exhibition, distribution, and viewer engagement alike.

Day and time: Wednesday 17:00 - 20:00, Thursday 18:00 - 20:00
Instructor: Mike Meneghetti
Prerequisite: CIN105Y1
Exclusion: ENGD94H3
Recommended Preparation: CIN201Y1
Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Breadth Requirement: 1. Creative and Cultural Representations, 3. Society and its Institutions

CIN315H1F - Sound and Animation

This course aims to unsettle the privileging of the visual and of live action cinema in film and media studies. The founding impetus of the class is to counter the marginalization of two intertwined issues – animation and sound – in our field. This course takes seriously the suggestion of various scholars that animation is central rather than peripheral to film history and the rise of digital media. Reversing the usual dominance of live action over animation, Tom Gunning suggests that “all cinema can be approached as animation.” As Rebecca Coyle emphasizes, both sound and animation are difficult to analyze because neither can be captured by a freeze-frame: sound events depend on duration and movement, just as animation depends on “what occurs between frames.”

Day and time: Wednesday 13:00 - 17:00
Instructor: Bliss Lim
Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Breadth Requirement: 1. Creative and Cultural Representations

CIN320H1S - Sports Movies

More information to come.

Day and time: Monday and Wednesday 9:00 - 11:00
Instructor: Grant Wiedenfeld
Prerequisite: CIN105Y1
Distribution Requirement Status: Humanities
Breadth Requirement: 1. Creative and Cultural Representations

CIN321H1F - Special Topics in Genre and Modes II

More information to come.

Day and time: Monday 9:00 - 13:00
Instructor: TBA
Prerequisite: CIN105Y1
Distribution Requirement Status: Humanities
Breadth Requirement: 1. Creative and Cultural Representations

CIN322H1S - Cult Cinema

This course examines "cult" and "exploitation" cinema. It examines the growing popularity of cult/exploitation films as an emerging cinematic subculture that valorizes disreputable or "trash" cinema. A number of sub-genres within exploitation film, including teen films, educational/instructional films, sexploitation, and Blaxploitation, will be explored. The social politics of appropriating texts through ironic reading strategies will also be considered.

Day and time: Friday 9:00 - 13:00
Instructor: TBA
Prerequisite: CIN105Y1
Distribution Requirement Status: Humanities
Breadth Requirement: 1. Creative and Cultural Representations

CIN410H1F - Cinema and Labour

More information to come.

Pre-enrolment balloting for 400-Level seminars will start in late May to early June, opening roughly five weeks before the July enrolment period begins. More information on balloting procedures, the balloting form and the submission deadline can be found in Cinema Studies Undergraduate Forms.

Day and time: Thursday and Friday 11:00 - 13:00
Instructor: Mike Meneghetti
Prerequisite:  At least 10 full-course equivalents, including CIN105Y1 and CIN201Y1.
Corequisite: CIN301Y1
Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Breadth Requirement: 1. Creative and Cultural Representations

CIN412H1F - The End in Cinema

This course is a senior seminar intended to take a research and discussion format to explore two jaggedly aligned concerns: the formal properties involved in ending film and literary narratives and the thematic role played in the Western imagination of apocalypse (the concept of the end of time/history).

In contemporary cinema and TV apocalyptic motifs predominate and have taken on a nearly controlling force in several genres, notably horror and science fiction, and apocalyptic motifs have spun quasi-generic forms of their own, like the “Zombie Apocalypse” (e.g., World War Z; 28 Days Later, The Walking Dead) and ecological catastrophe movies (e.g., The Day After Tomorrow), as well as planet killing asteroids (e.g., Armageddon, Deep Impact). The course shuttles from formal narrative concerns to thematic and political issues. The course seeks ways to imbricate them by taking a quite prejudicial selection of films to explore these concerns.

In addition to apocalyptic films, we will also deal with the more recent discussion of “post-apocalypse.”

Pre-enrolment balloting for 400-Level seminars will start in late May to early June, opening roughly five weeks before the July enrolment period begins. More information on balloting procedures, the balloting form and the submission deadline can be found in Cinema Studies Undergraduate Forms.

Day and time: Tuesday and Wednesday 18:00 - 20:00
Instructor: Bart Testa
Prerequisite:  At least 10 full-course equivalents, including CIN105Y1 and CIN201Y1.
Corequisite: CIN301Y1
Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Breadth Requirement: 1. Creative and Cultural Representations

 

Group C: Social and Cultural Practices

CIN230H1 - The Business of Film

Cinema as a commercial enterprise. Production, distribution, and exhibition in the political economy of North American film culture.

The Business of Film will be offered twice in 2025/26; once in the Fall 2025 term (CIN230H1F) and once in the Winter 2026 term (CIN230H1S). 

Day and time: Friday 14:00 - 17:00
Instructor: TBA
Distribution Requirement: Humanities or Social Science
Breadth Requirement: 3. Society and its Institutions

CIN240H1F - The Western

The Western’s symbolic potency has never disappeared even as the genre’s popularity has waned; we see remnants of its iconography in television, music videos, and advertisements. CIN240H1F - The Western will explore the fraught relationship between Western films and North American history, the genre’s global popularity, and its social conscience. We will examine concepts such as mythology, nationhood, freedom, necessity, (so-called) civilization, nature, genocide, and settler colonialism within a genre that is constantly shifting in relation to its socio-political moment. This course will offer students the opportunity to familiarize themselves with the trajectory of the Western genre, get to know important critiques of it, and learn its potential for nuance and complexity.

Day and Time: Online Synchronous class on Tuesday 18:00 - 20:00, asynchronous screenings. 
Instructor: TBA
Prerequisite: CIN105Y1
Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Breadth Requirement: 3. Society and its Institutions

CIN330Y1Y - Feminist Approaches to Cinema

Gender politics of feminist film culture since the 1970s. Topics include: apparatus theory and its legacy, models of spectatorship, feminist historiography, the cinematic (re)production of identity, the relationship between social movements and cinema, "postfeminism."

Day and Time: Tuesday and Thursday 11:00 - 13:00
Instructor: Corinn Columpar
Prerequisite: CIN105Y1
Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Breadth Requirement: 1. Creative and Cultural Representations, 2. Thought, Belief, and Behaviour

CIN337H1F - Black Cinema

This course explores the cultural, aesthetic, technological, and political category of “Black cinema.” Across the diaspora, Black cinema is an artistic praxis that utilizes techniques like improvisation and collaboration in order to make and remake the cinematic archive. The films and filmmakers in this category intervene in cinematic histories by responding to exclusionary narratives, technologies, and critical discourse by imagining alternative stories, spaces, and temporalities. Thus, these films help articulate both the pervasiveness of anti-blackness in our visual culture and help us understand the difference (film) aesthetics can make (Chun, 2019).

Our goal is to 1) develop a critical language to discuss Black cinema (its techniques, its aims, and its political contexts) and 2) articulate research questions, methods, and arguments that consider what is happening inside and outside the frame in these films.

Day and Time: Monday 17:00 - 21:00
Instructor: Lauren Cramer
Prerequisite: CIN105Y1
Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Breadth Requirement: 1. Creative and Cultural Representations

CIN340H1F - Cinemas of Solidarity

This course investigates ways that lens-based media, film festivals, and art institutions have historically reinvigorated traditions of militancy and solidarity, and the role of media technologies in shaping the cultural production—or probing the possibility of—international, interclass, interracial, intergenerational, and interspecies forms of solidarity today.

Day and Time: Friday 10:00 - 14:00
Instructor: TBA
Prerequisite: CIN105Y1
Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Breadth Requirement: 1. Creative and Cultural Representations

CIN341H1S - Trans Cinema and Media

More information to come. 

Day and time: Tuesday 13:00 - 17:00
Instructor: æryka jourdaine hollis o’neil
Prerequisite: CIN105Y1
Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Breadth Requirement: 1. Creative and Cultural Representations

CIN431H1S - Hip-hop Cinema and Visual Culture

Hip-hop is an interesting cultural form because it is hard to define, but we know it when we see it… we also know when something isn’t hip-hop (see the iced-out Bee in the Cheerios commercial or that iconic “hip-hop dance”).

The preeminent hip-hop scholar Tricia Rose begins her iconic book Black Noise by defining hip-hop as “a black cultural expression that prioritizes black voices from the margins of urban America.” Like Rose, we will begin with the enduring question, “what is hip-hop?” To answer that question, this course will provide a survey of contemporary hip-hop cinema and visual culture (fashion, music videos, album art, etc.). We will address the entanglement of race, gender, sexuality, and technology in hip-hop. As the course proceeds, we will nuance and refine our research questions. Our primary objective will be identifying the cultural logics that make hip-hop, make sense.

Our focus will be hip-hop, identity, and visuality in a North American context; however, we will also explore issues of authenticity, commercialization, gender and sexuality, and appropriation in the global exchange of black American expressive culture. Each week will focus on questions/points of tension in hip-hop popular and scholarly discourse.

Pre-enrolment balloting for 400-Level seminars will start in late May to early June, opening roughly five weeks before the July enrolment period begins. More information on balloting procedures, the balloting form and the submission deadline can be found in Cinema Studies Undergraduate Forms.

Day and time: Tuesday and Thursday 13:00 - 15:00
Instructor: Lauren Cramer
Prerequisite: At least 10 full-course equivalents, including CIN105Y1 and CIN201Y1.
Corequisite: CIN301Y1
Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Breadth Requirement: 1. Creative and Cultural Representations

CIN432H1F - The Textuality of the Cinematic Body

More information to come.

Pre-enrolment balloting for 400-Level seminars will start in late May to early June, opening roughly five weeks before the July enrolment period begins. More information on balloting procedures, the balloting form and the submission deadline can be found in Cinema Studies Undergraduate Forms.

Day and time: Monday and Wednesday 13:00 - 15:00
Instructor: Corinn Columpar
Prerequisite: At least 10 full-course equivalents, including CIN105Y1 and CIN201Y1.
Corequisite: CIN301Y1
Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Breadth Requirement: 1. Creative and Cultural Representations

CIN440H1S - Non-Binary Media: Trans Genres, Trans Forms

More information to come.

Pre-enrolment balloting for 400-Level seminars will start in late May to early June, opening roughly five weeks before the July enrolment period begins. More information on balloting procedures, the balloting form and the submission deadline can be found in Cinema Studies Undergraduate Forms.

Day and time: Tuesday 15:00 - 17:00, Wednesday 13:00 - 15:00
Instructor: æryka jourdaine hollis o’neil
Prerequisite: At least 10 full-course equivalents, including CIN105Y1 and CIN201Y1.
Corequisite: CIN301Y1
Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Breadth Requirement: 1. Creative and Cultural Representations

 

Group D: Theory and Criticism

CIN260H1S - The Hollywood Renaissance

Hollywood filmmaking in the early-1970s has been characterized in contradictory ways. On the one hand, it is often described as an American “art cinema” of formal innovation, experimentation, independent production techniques, and maverick directors. On the other hand, critics point to the industry’s absorption by multimedia conglomerates during this period, its eventual focus on big budget filmmaking, and its growing affiliation with advertising as evidence of Hollywood’s uninterrupted dedication to profit-making. According to this view, very little about Hollywood actually changed in the 1970s. CIN260H1S THE HOLLYWOOD RENAISSANCE surveys this pivotal decade in Hollywood history (1967–1976) by highlighting its many innovations, while at the same time recognizing its deeper continuities with the old Hollywood studio system. We begin with an examination of Hollywood’s late-1960s Renaissance, its reconfiguration of a deficient movie industry, and its effort to align new cinematic forms with emergent social and political perspectives. We then turn to Hollywood filmmaking in the early-1970s: its stylistic novelty; its deliberate revision of the so-called “classical” genres; and the studios’ paradoxical emphasis on auteurs within a rapidly changing production culture. We conclude with a brief consideration of the Hollywood Renaissance’s significant post-1970s legacy and its contentious position as popular cinema.

Day and time: Tuesdays 13:00 - 17:00
Instructor: Mike Meneghetti
Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Breadth Requirement: 1. Creative and Cultural Representations

CIN352H1F - Issues in Film Authorship I: The Coen brothers and Paul Thomas Anderson

Advanced study of issues in film authorship through intensive examination of one or more major filmmakers.

Day and time: Wednesday 9:00 - 13:00
Instructor: Adam Nayman
Prerequisite: CIN105Y1
Exclusion: ENGD52H3, CIN206H5
Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Breadth Requirement: 1. Creative and Cultural Representations

CIN365H1S - Nonfiction Video Practice

This course is designed to introduce students to the basics of creative video production, with an emphasis on documentary and nonfiction film and video. Students will be introduced to the theory and practice of documentary filmmaking, including the creative, ethical, conceptual, and practical dimensions of artistic moving-image production. This is a hands-on course that will include off-site practical workshops and in-course group critique. Students are expected to have some prior technical knowledge of video recording and video editing, as technical skill-building will fall outside the purview of this course. We will explore the diverse approaches adopted by nonfiction filmmakers and video artists in order to consider what constitutes a cinematic practice. Students will work on creative assignments individually and in groups, coming up with conceptual ideas, creative treatments, and artistic methods for translating their ideas and questions into non-fiction moving image media.

Day and time: Tuesday and Wednesday 9:00 - 11:00
Instructor: Brett Story
Prerequisite: CIN105Y1, CIN201Y1
Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Breadth Requirement: 1. Creative and Cultural Representations

CIN369H1F - Critical Writing on Film

The practice of film criticism: studies of examples of journalistic and scholarly critical writing, practical sessions of process writing, and collaborative editing. Course includes regular film screenings. This course is offered biannually.

Day and time: Monday and Tuesday 9:00 - 11:00
Instructor: TBA
Prerequisite: CIN105Y1, and 1.0 additional CIN credit. Prospective students must submit an application form that will be found at Undergraduate Forms.
Exclusion: ENGB71H3
Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Breadth Requirement: 1. Creative and Cultural Representations

CIN451H1S - Film and Phenomenology

As a strand of philosophy, phenomenology locates meaning and value in the ebb and flow of lived (human) experience. Perception and embodiment become crucial vehicles for exploring the mind-body connection and the relationship between subjective experience and objective world. Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s writings will serve as point of departure for exploring the ensuing evolving relationship between phenomenological thinking and film, including how vectors of difference, e.g. gender, sexuality, race, and religion, have been taken up in the phenomenological writings of de Beauvoir, Young, and Butler. We then turn to scholars such as Sobchak, Chamarette, Marks, Richmond, and others who have theorized perception and film viewing from an embodied perspective, including how the camera and wider cinematic apparatus engage in sense-making that itself may be understood as a phenomenology, as reflecting on the bodily experience of perception. Weekly screenings of visual media from disparate historical eras, national contexts, and genres and modes will help us visualize the issues under investigation

Pre-enrolment balloting for 400-Level seminars will start in late May to early June, opening roughly five weeks before the July enrolment period begins. More information on balloting procedures, the balloting form and the submission deadline can be found in Cinema Studies Undergraduate Forms.

Day and time: Monday 17:00 - 19:00, Tuesday 11:00 - 13:00
Instructor: Angelica Fenner
Prerequisite: At least 10 full-course equivalents, including CIN105Y1 and CIN201Y1.
Corequisite: CIN301Y1
Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Breadth Requirement: 1. Creative and Cultural Representations

CIN460H1F - Beauty of the Cut

More information to come.

Pre-enrolment balloting for 400-Level seminars will start in late May to early June, opening roughly five weeks before the July enrolment period begins. More information on balloting procedures, the balloting form and the submission deadline can be found in Cinema Studies Undergraduate Forms.

Day and time: Monday and Wednesday 9:00 - 11:00
Instructor: Grant Wiedenfeld
Prerequisite: At least 10 full-course equivalents, including CIN105Y1 and CIN201Y1.
Corequisite: CIN301Y1
Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Breadth Requirement: 1. Creative and Cultural Representations

 

Group E: History and Nation

CIN370H1S - Canadian Cinemas: Experiments in Nonfiction

This course explores ideas of space, place and the nation-state across Canada’s nonfiction film history, from early treatment of colonization and European settlement, into today’s globalized political economy, sovereignty struggles, and continued re-invention of the nation.

Day and time: Wednesday 13:00 - 15:00, Thursday 9:00 - 11:00
Instructor: Brett Story
Prerequisite: CIN105Y1
Exclusion: FCS391H1
Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Breadth Requirement: 1. Creative and Cultural Representations

CIN378H1S - British Black Cinema

Industrial, economic, ideological, and aesthetic dimensions of the American studio era.

Day and time: Monday 13:00 - 15:00, Wednesday 11:00 - 13:00
Instructor: Kass Banning
Prerequisite: CIN105Y1
Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Breadth Requirement: 1. Creative and Cultural Representations

CIN381H1S - Philippine Cinema

More information to come.

Day and time: Tuesday 13:00 - 17:00
Instructor: Bliss Lim
Prerequisite: CIN105Y1
Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Breadth Requirement: 1. Creative and Cultural Representations

CIN471H1S - Local Film Cultures

This course will explore the socio-cultural history of filmmaking and moviegoing in Toronto, from the emergence of film societies and screening series, to the formation of film festivals and film and video cooperatives, to the changing ways people are now interacting with cinema. We will explore how local film cultures have changed and expanded, and will consider how local and international events and movements impact the way that people watch and make movies. Students will be exposed to historical film research using archives and newspaper databases.

Pre-enrolment balloting for 400-Level seminars will start in late May to early June, opening roughly five weeks before the July enrolment period begins. More information on balloting procedures, the balloting form and the submission deadline can be found in Cinema Studies Undergraduate Forms.

Day and time: Thursday 10:00 - 13:00
Instructor: Kass Banning
Prerequisite: At least 10 full-course equivalents, including CIN105Y1 and CIN201Y1.
Corequisite: CIN301Y1
Distribution Requirement: Humanities
Breadth Requirement: 1. Creative and Cultural Representations

 

Group F: Independent Studies

CIN490Y1Y - Independent Studies in Cinema

Independent research projects devised by students and supervised by Cinema Studies faculty. Open to advanced Specialist and Major students in the Cinema Studies Program. Submit applications to the Undergraduate Program Office: Fall 2025 courses by May 1, 2025, Winter 2026 courses by November 1, 2025, Summer 2026 courses by April 1, 2026. See Cinema Studies Undergraduate Forms for the application form. Not eligible for CR/NCR option.

Prerequisite: At least 10 full-course equivalents, including CIN105Y1, CIN201Y1, CIN301Y1.
Distribution Requirement Status: Humanities
Breadth Requirement: 1. Creative and Cultural Representations

CIN491H1F - Independent Studies in Cinema

Independent research projects devised by students and supervised by Cinema Studies faculty. Open to advanced Specialist and Major students in the Cinema Studies Program. Submit applications to the Undergraduate Program Office: Fall 2025 courses by May 1, 2025, Winter 2026 courses by November 1, 2025, Summer 2026 courses by April 1, 2026. See Cinema Studies Undergraduate Forms for the application form. Not eligible for CR/NCR option.

Prerequisite: At least 10 full-course equivalents, including CIN105Y1, CIN201Y1, CIN301Y1.
Distribution Requirement Status: Humanities
Breadth Requirement: 1. Creative and Cultural Representations

CIN492H1S - Independent Studies in Cinema

Independent research projects devised by students and supervised by Cinema Studies faculty. Open to advanced Specialist and Major students in the Cinema Studies Program. Submit applications to the Undergraduate Program Office: Fall 2025 courses by May 1, 2025, Winter 2026 courses by November 1, 2025, Summer 2026 courses by April 1, 2026. See Cinema Studies Undergraduate Forms for the application form. Not eligible for CR/NCR option.

Prerequisite: At least 10 full-course equivalents, including CIN105Y1, CIN201Y1, CIN301Y1.
Distribution Requirement Status: Humanities
Breadth Requirement: 1. Creative and Cultural Representations

 

Group G: Cross-Listed

Please contact the home department if you have any questions about Cross-Listed courses.

 

First Year Foundations

CIN196H1F - Story Worlds and the Cinema

Films create story worlds, imaginary environments in which characters live and act, and where events, large and small, transpire. Some story worlds are elaborate, fanciful constructs (think of Disney’s animated films). Others stay close to reality (think of “docudramas”). But across the spectrum, all of them are framed by and provided with rules of time and space, of believable or impossible. This course offers an examination of selected story worlds from several periods of film history. Emphasis falls on the expansive story worlds of contemporary corporately-run media-franchise “universes,” like the cross-media “DC Universe.” Restricted to first-year students. Not eligible for CR/NCR option.

Day and Time: Tuesday and Thursday 13:00 - 15:00
Instructor: Lauren Cramer
Distribution Requirement Status: Humanities
Breadth Requirement: 1. Creative and Cultural Representations

CIN197H1S - School Daze

This first-year foundation course is a survey of sound film (with a brief selection of silent shorts) on the topic of how popular cinemas have represented going to school. Looking at one film and one scholarly text a week, the course will offer an introduction to the close reading of film texts, reading and writing film criticism, and the fundamentals of film history. By engaging with only one film/reading per week, the course emphasizes depth over breadth. Texts for the course may include excerpts from Corrigan’s A Short Guide to Writing About Film, Sturken and Cartwright’s Practices of Looking, Staiger’s Interpreting Films, and Prince’s Movies and Meaning, along with selected criticism on the movies screened. Those films may include Zero for ConductAparajitoTom Brown’s School Days, Tea and SympathyIfRock and Roll High SchoolMean GirlsSchool DazeBlackboard Jungle, or Lady Bird. Restricted to first-year students. Not eligible for CR/NCR option.

Day and time: Tuesday and Wednesday 17:00 - 19:00
Instructor: Nicholas Sammond
Distribution Requirement Status: Humanities
Breadth Requirement: 1. Creative and Cultural Representations