All 2024/25 Cinema Studies (CIN) undergraduate courses will take place in person. The only exception is CIN410H1S - Story Worlds, which will be online synchronous.
Group A: Foundations
CIN105Y1Y - Introduction to Film StudyIntroduction 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 Practicums and Tutorials. Day and Time: Lectures on Wednesday 9:00 - 10:00 |
CIN201Y1 - Film Cultures IEmergence 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 15:00 - 16:00, Wednesday 15:00 - 18:00 |
CIN301Y1Y - Film Cultures IIExamines 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: Monday 12:00 - 13:00, Wednesday 12:00 - 15:00 |
Group B: Genre and Modes
CIN210H1F - Horror FilmHorror 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 2024/25 Timetable is released, please see Timetable Builder for the schedule of Tutorials. Day and Time: Tuesday 12:00 - 15:00 |
CIN213H1S - Cinema and Sensation II: SexErotic images and sounds have long featured in filmic pleasure and, for just as long, excited controversy. This course examines how sex is articulated on screen and how its regulation suggests broader themes and ideas. Topics include: obscenity laws and the history of film censorship, the eroticized aspects of conventional movies, art cinema, and "adult" erotic films. Students must enrol in the Lecture (LEC) and one Tutorial (TUT). When the 2024/25 Timetable is released, please see Timetable Builder for the schedule of Tutorials. Day and time: Monday 15:00 - 18:00 |
CIN215H1S - Fantasy FilmThis course examines the development of the Fantasy imagination in cinema from the start of film production (i.e., Georges Méliès) through the classical era (i.e., Wizard of Oz) to the contemporary proliferation of Fantasy cinema (i.e., Lord of the Rings, Snow White and the Huntsman). Course includes study of Asian, European, and South American Fantasy films. Students must enrol in the Lecture (LEC) and one Tutorial (TUT). When the 2024/25 Timetable is released, please see Timetable Builder for the schedule of Tutorials. Day and time: Tuesday 12:00 - 15:00 |
CIN320H1F - Music Video VanguardThis course is a survey of an innovative, iterative, and largely undertheorized audiovisual object—the music video. In this class, we’ll ask what makes the music video a historically, technologically, and aesthetically distinct form. At the same time, we’ll address the ways this hybrid-media informs our understanding of other audiovisual objects like film, television, video games, fine art, and digital visual culture. As we seek to understand the complex relationship between sound and image—a pairing in need of “couples therapy” according to theorist Carol Vernallis—this class will elaborate upon familiar topics in film/media studies: industry practices (e.g. modes of global production and distribution); fandom; aesthetic value and the importance of ‘originality;’ and sensory experience among many others. Addressing the music video as both an object of study and as a method, a way of thinking about media, this course will encourage students to identify their key interests as media theorists and develop original research projects that contribute to a field of study that is (after almost a half-century) still emerging. Day and time: Monday 15:00 - 17:00, Wednesday 17:00 - 19:00 |
CIN321H1F - The War FilmThis course tracks the war film, as a genre, across historical and national contexts, examining the cultural contours of war as spectacle, narrative, and ethical and political crisis. Day and time: Tuesday 11:00 - 15:00 |
CIN322H1F - Cult CinemaThis 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 13:00 - 17:00 |
CIN410H1S - Story WorldsFilms create story worlds, imaginary environments in which characters live and act and where events both small and large transpire. Some story worlds are expansive and elaborate, other plain and sparse, some are fanciful, others stick close to reality. But, across the spectrum of story types, all of them are framed by and provided with rules of time and space, and whether believable or implausible, all story worlds solicit the receiver (viewer, reader, or listener) to enter them and to accommodate herself or himself to a story world. 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: This course will be online synchronous. Tuesday and Wednesday 19:00-21:00 |
CIN411H1S - Creepypasta: Networks of Contemporary Horror MediaThis course will examine how creepypastas (modern urban legends copied and pasted on various internet forums) and other internet/social media horror as a cultural phenomenon have impacted cinematic horror form – from replicating the scrolling, screenlife, non sequitur rhythms of social media horror fiction sites – to iterative adaptations of the content and interactive story worlds. 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 9:00 - 13:00 |
Group C: Social and Cultural Practices
CIN230H1 - The Business of FilmCinema 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 2024/25; once in the Fall 2024 term (CIN230H1F) and once in the Winter 2025 term (CIN230H1S). Day and time: Friday 15:00 - 18:00 |
CIN240H1F - The ThrillerThis course examines the proliferation of the cinematic thriller from it’s emergence in silent cinema to its development in the hands of Alfred Hitchcock to its more recent iterations. In inquiring into the thriller we will place a particular emphasis on understanding dramatic story telling which seeks to provoke anticipatory and anxiety-laden responses from spectators who witness the gradual exposure of a secret – what we will learn to call the thriller's "known unknown" – and we will do so by attempting to understand this aesthetic device (and the genre more broadly) as a response to or symptom of the capitalist mode of production. We will also focus on what separates its particular instances by looking at some sub-genres: the political thriller, the erotic thriller, the police thriller, the heist thriller etc... Doing so will allow us to consider how the thriller as a form can naturalize dominant ideologies just as much as it can compel us to interrogate those ideologies, raising a range of philosophical and conceptual questions along the way. Films might include: North by Northwest, Rear Window, Single White Female, The Parallax View, State of Siege, Strange Days, The Handmaiden, Trouble Every Day, and Thief. Topics covered include: knowledge, the secret, technology, journalism, envy, feminism, violence, the state, capitalism, democracy, identity politics, utopia, colonialism, eroticism, love, labour, private property, and debt. Students must enrol in the Lecture (LEC) and one Tutorial (TUT). When the 2024/25 Timetable is released, please see Timetable Builder for the schedule of Tutorials. Day and Time: Monday 15:00 - 18:00 |
CIN340H1F - Cinemas of SolidarityThis 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: Thursday 11:00 - 15:00 |
CIN341H1S - Trans Cinema and MediaMore information to come. Day and time: Thursday 10:00 - 14:00 |
CIN349H1Y - ScreenwritingStudents will develop screenwriting skills under the guidance of a renowned Canadian screenwriter through a combination of writing workshops and individual consultations. Like the course, the appointment of the Universal Screenwriter-in-Residence occurs biannually. Prospective students must submit an application form that will be found at Cinema Studies Institute Undergraduate Forms and provide a creative writing sample to the Cinema Studies Undergraduate Office by email to cinema.studies@utoronto.ca by Monday, June 3, 2024 at 9:00 ET. A screenplay (or excerpt) is preferred, but a submission that the students feel best expresses their talent is also acceptable. The course instructor and/or Associate Director, Undergraduate will assess student potential based on the writing samples to determine student eligibility to enrol in the course. Enrolment priority will be given to upper year Cinema Studies program students. Day and time: Friday 10:00 - 13:00 |
CIN431H1S - Films That Don't WorkThis course explores how cinema has historically absorbed and reflected the boundaries between work and play, and how these questions also reflect anxieties about constructing and maintaining boundaries between race, class, and gender. Students will track cinema’s rise to the status of a medium worthy of analysis inside and outside the classroom; examine cinematic depictions of downtime and leisure; explore various independent film movements’ relationship to the art of making cinema as acts of labor or devotion; consider recent non-productive formal and ethical approaches to cinema such as the slow cinema movement and recent queer/crip critiques of ableist cinema. The course will also consider whether, in the age of communicative capitalism, we are ever really off-the-clock. 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 11:00 - 15:00 |
CIN433Y1Y - Sensory Ecologies: Theory and Praxis in Environmental Media StudiesPractitioners of environmental filmmaking struggle with a fundamental challenge: how to represent the dimensionality, and immersivity of the so-called natural world within the flat space and linear temporalities of the cinematic medium. These challenges resonate with larger questions about loss, extinction, and degradation; one cannot capture what is now disappeared, elusive, or destroyed. What then, should the role of media be amid a period of environmental ruination? This experiential learning course seeks to investigate these questions, and more. Through a combination of praxis and theory, students will collaborate with community partners on a series of applied learning outcomes. 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 9:00 - 13:00 |
CIN440H1F - Cinematic Aquatics: The Black Atlantic, Migration and the PlanetaryInspired by Kamau Braithwaite’s neologism tidalectics, this 400-level seminar adopts the ocean as its central analytic. While maritime life worlds and beasts from Leviathan to Moby Dick have served as generative metaphors for our mutable relationship with the watery depths, this seminar is organized around three thematic clusters –slavery and “hydro colonialism,” migration, and the planetary – through the distinctive lens of “wet ontologies.” Recent “blue humanities” inquiry highlighting reciprocal relationships between marine environments and the human culled from literature, postcolonial studies, cultural geography, black and indigenous studies, ecocriticism, and feminist new materialism will be placed in conversation with feature films, experimental documentaries and artists’ moving image installations. We will “think with water” to formulate novel oceanic worldviews suggestive of aquatic “spacetime mattering” (Barard) beyond Sigmund Freud’s infamous treatise on oceanic feeling. Authors to be studied include Paul Gilroy, Karen Barard, Herman Melville, Jane Bennett, Philip Steinberg & Kimberley Peters, Rachel Carson, Peter Linebaugh & Marcus Rediker, Édouard Glissant, Kamau Braithwaite, Ian Baucom, Dionne Brand, Astrida Neimanis, among others. 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 11:00 - 15:00 |
Group D: Theory and Criticism
CIN352H1S - Issues in Film Authorship I: Todd Haynes and Jane CampionAdvanced study of issues in film authorship through intensive examination of one or more major filmmakers. Day and time: Tuesdays 13:00 - 16:00, Thursday 14:00 - 15:00 |
CIN361H1S - Time Travel CinemaThis course explores this entanglement, investigating the overlap between the time travel narrative and the cinema. While we will privilege narrative time travel films, the course expands beyond to consider the myriad ways cinema’s relationship to time amounts to a form of time travel, one way or another. Day and time: Tuesday 17:00 - 19:00, Wednesday 17:00 - 19:00 |
CIN365H1S - Studies in Cinema and Media PracticeThis course uses research creation, critical making, digital humanities, videographic criticism, or other practice-based methods to the humanistic study of cinema and moving-image media. Students will pursue substantial research projects grounded in these approaches. Topics and methods vary by semester and instructor. Day and time: Tuesday 11:00 - 13:00, Wednesday 15:00 - 17:00 |
CIN451H1F - Cinemas of HIV/AIDSThe HIV/AIDS epidemic produced a radical wave of film and video practice that profoundly influenced the direction of health activism and the aesthetic legacy of documentary and experimental cinema. As countless people fell ill and passed to the indifference of national administrations, amateur and established artists took up the camera at the brink of life and livelihood to provide grassroots education and representation and illuminate the interconnections between illness, power, community, activism, and art. The epidemic transformed how we understand pandemic today, and the communities of practice that formed around the need to address the crisis would create new ways of dealing with stigma and loss. Queer communities across the globe inherit the epidemic as a constitutive part of their history, and the many communities who were and continue to be affected are still looking to the moving image to bear witness to their history and address the ongoing need for recognition. New advancements in medication and accessibility to treatment have led some to describe the contemporary as being “after AIDS,” and while the epidemic still exists far beyond the archive, the very notion of “coming after” has impacted the reception of the “AIDS film” in the present and describes a unique way in which seek to bear witness through film. In this class we will explore the film and media theory that has sought to take account of the cinema of the epidemic and we will examine how film and video establish and interrupt relationships to others founded upon representation, education, grief, afterness, intimacy, and rage. The film of the epidemic can teach us how health becomes a source of discourse and how film is mobilized for social provision. Together, we will study the stakes of this archive and its emergence as part art, part activism, part monument, and part love. 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 15:00 - 17:00 |
Group E: History and Nation
CIN370H1S - Canadian Cinemas: Experiments in NonfictionThis 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: Monday 15:00 - 17:00, Wednesday 9:00 - 11:00 |
CIN374Y1Y - American Filmmaking in the Studio EraIndustrial, economic, ideological, and aesthetic dimensions of the American studio era. |
CIN380H1F - Global Screen WorldsHow does a film create a world? Focusing on geopolitical film worlds and the politics and aesthetics of movement and migration, this course explores screen-based media that create communities and develop cinematic nations. Day and time: Wednesday 9:00 - 12:00, Thursday 10:00 - 11:00 |
CIN381H1S - Love, Desire and Cinema in the Indian SubcontinentThis course will serve as an extensive introduction to a mix of classical, modern, and contemporary films from India spanning across its various regional output and stylistic variety; we will look at both sets of popular and critically acclaimed films from Tamil, Hindi (“Bollywood”), Bengali, Marathi, Telugu, and Malayalam languages. Day and time: Friday 13:00 - 17:00 |
CIN471H1F - Local Film CulturesThis 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: Friday 13:00 - 17:00 |
ITA341H1F - Gender and Genre in Italian CinemaThe course looks at Italian cinema from the perspective of gender and genre studies. While the focus will be primarily on film, the course will also engage with different media and discuss how these have informed and influenced Italian notions of masculinity and femininity throughout the Twentieth Century. The emphasis on genre will provide the structure to organize a discourse that will embrace very diverse and multifaceted texts, and will enable students to develop their analytical and critical skills in the field. This course includes a component designed to enhance students’ research experience. (Given in English) Distribution Requirements: Humanities |
ITA345H1S - Cinema of the Italian DiasporasThis course will examine how several filmmakers of Italian descent engage with the representation of their diasporic identity. Particular emphasis will be placed on Italian-Canadian and Italian-American cinema, as well as on Italian cineastes working in Argentina, Brazil, and Australia. The course will analyze films that span from silent to contemporary, from the formation of the stereotypical images to the re-appropriation of archetypes on the part of “ethnic” filmmakers. This course includes a component designed to enhance students' research experience.(Given in English) Distribution Requirements: Humanities |
Group F: Independent Studies
CIN490Y1Y - Independent Studies in CinemaIndependent 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 2024 courses by May 1, 2024, Winter 2025 courses by November 1, 2024, Summer 2025 courses by April 1, 2025. 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. |
CIN491H1F - Independent Studies in CinemaIndependent 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 2024 courses by May 1, 2024, Winter 2025 courses by November 1, 2024, Summer 2025 courses by April 1, 2025. See Undergraduate Forms for application form. Not eligible for CR/NCR option. Prerequisite: At least 10 full-course equivalents, including CIN105Y1, CIN201Y1, CIN301Y1. |
CIN492H1S - Independent Studies in CinemaIndependent 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 2024 courses by May 1, 2024, Winter 2025 courses by November 1, 2024, Summer 2025 courses by April 1, 2025. See Undergraduate Forms for application form. Not eligible for CR/NCR option. Prerequisite: At least 10 full-course equivalents, including CIN105Y1, CIN201Y1, CIN301Y1. |
Group G: Cross-Listed
Please contact the home department if you have any questions about Cross-Listed courses.
EAS243H1F - Japanese Cinemas II: Film Form and the Problems of ModernityThis course investigates how film aesthetics relate to the most profound socio-historical problems of Japanese modernity. It also considers how various film makers employ cinematic form to engage the social problems of their moment. Part II focuses on the 1960s - present. Exclusion: EAS237Y1 |
EAS249H1F - Sinophone Cinemas: Revolution of the Sensible WorldMore information to come. |
EAS431H1S - Advanced Seminar in Japanese CinemaThe focus ranges from the examination of cross-cultural theoretical problems (such as Orientalism) to a director-based focus, from the examination of genre (such as documentary or the category of genre itself) to the way film intersects with other cultural forms and technologies (such as video and new media). Prerequisite: EAS209H1 and EAS242H1/ EAS243H1 |
ITA425H1F - The Mediterranean Noir: A Transnational ApproachThrough the exploration of a variety of literary and cinematic works this course will grapple with questions arising from the repositioning of film noir in a transnational and global context. We will study films from Mediterranean cinemas (primarily Italian, French, and Spanish) understanding the permeability of noir to ideas and styles from many cultures. Ultimately, this course traces an alternative history of noir, one that engages with dark shadows and rainy North American cityscapes as well as with the sunny landscapes and blue hues of the Mediterranean basin. ITA425H1 is also designated as a graduate course, ITA1820H, and can be counted towards the 400-Level Seminar requirements for the Cinema Studies Specialist and Major programs. Please request an exemption at cinema.studies@utoronto.ca to have ITA425H1 count towards the Cinema Studies POSt. To enrol, prospective undergraduate students must write Prof. Alberto Zambenedetti to explain why they would like to take this course. Prerequisite: Completion of 7.0 credits. |
JSU325H1S - Queerly CanadianThis course focuses on Canadian literary and artistic productions that challenge prevailing notions of nationality and sexuality, exploring not only how artists struggle with that ongoing Canadian thematic of being and belonging, but also celebrate pleasure and desire as a way of imagining and articulating an alternative national politics. Prerequisite: SDS255H1/ SDS256H1/ CDN267H1/ CDN268H1. Students who do not meet the prerequisites are encouraged to contact the Department. |
SLA226H1S - Polish CinemaThe Polish School in cinema, its predecessors and successors, their artistic accomplishments, major theoretical and thematic concerns, and their place on the map of European cinema. Films of Ford, Wajda, Polanski, Konwicki, Borowczyk, Has, Kawalerowicz, Zanussi, Kieslowski, and of the new generation of Polish film makers. Films and discussions in English. (Offered every three years) Distribution Requirements: Humanities |
SLA234H1F - Russian and Soviet CinemaA survey of the Russian cinematic tradition from its beginnings through the first decade following the disintegration of the USSR. The course examines the avant-garde cinema and film theory of the 1920s; the totalitarian esthetics of the 1920s-1940s and the ideological uses of film art; the revolution in film theory and practice in the 1950s-1960s; cinema as medium of cultural dissent and as witness to social change. Students also acquire basic skills of film analysis. Taught in English, all films subtitled in English. Day and time: Thursday 15:00 - 17:00 |
SLA333H1S - Animated Film in EuropeTrends in the history of European animated film, focusing on Central and Eastern European cinematic traditions. Aesthetics of animated image and peculiarities of animation as an art form. Films are analyzed in their artistic, cultural and political contexts. Taught in English, English subtitles. Exclusion: SLA233H1 |
SLA425H1S - Docufictions: Cinema, Authenticity, TheoryThis seminar will investigate how filmmakers and theorists have related the categories of fact and fiction to the production of films in Russian and (post-) Yugoslav cinemas. At the center of our inquiry will be the history and theory of cinematic authenticity, historical referentiality, and reality effects. Course work includes film viewings outside of class meeting times. Jointly offered with a graduate level course, SLA1700HS. Day and time: Tuesday 15:00 - 17:00 |
SPA275H1S - 21st Century Latin American CinemaThis online course examines the social, political, and cultural contexts of recent Latin American Hispanic cinema. Topics include race and indigeneity; poverty, precarity, and inequality; gender and sexuality; and memory and trauma. The representation of these themes in Latin American cinema of the 21st century has contributed to an increase in its transnational and cosmopolitan reception. Asynchronous online lectures in English. Students choose in-person tutorials in Spanish or English or Portuguese. Portuguese tutorial: Monday 13:00 14:00 Spanish tutorial: Monday 14:00 - 15:00 English tutorial: Monday 15:00 - 16:00 or Monday 16:00 - 17:00 Instructor: Carolina Sá Carvalho |