COMM 190 | Introduction to Film Studies: Transnationalism and Modernity

This course introduces the Communication Studies discipline through the interpretation and analysis of cinema across historical, geographic, linguistic, and cultural contexts. Students will come away with a foundational understanding of the power of visual media in the form of film, as well as a variety of critical approaches used in communication inquiry. The course begins by surveying introductory readings in the study of film. The course then transitions toward explorations of film as a vehicle of visual communication throughout 20th-century globalization. The course concludes by discussing the present and future of cinema in the Digital Age. Students are expected to engage in conversations that question contemporary global cartography in both the historical and technological development of cinema, as well as the implicit politics found in visual representations of other cultures.