Core Modules

Foundation Year

• Digital Cultures

  This module will explore critical approaches to digital culture and its social and artistic impact. The module will explore different digital media (reconstruction, game, animation) and visual forms and styles from diverse cultures and geographies to develop skills in the close analysis of a wide range of digital media. The examples chosen will highlight different uses of digital media in games, education, and heritage, as well as some of the ethical issues raised by ‘gamification’ and digital culture. The module will consider how meaning changes across geographical locations and cultures and the role of new media in a globalised culture. The media to be studied will be selected to explore these issues and will rotate to connect with staff knowledge and current issues or ideas and the module will offer training in the creation and use of digital multimedia forms.

• Cultures of Thinking

  This core Foundation module offers an inter-disciplinary introduction to a range of concepts of global significance highly relevant for students progressing onto humanities, arts and social science subjects. The lectures, seminars and readings will approach each concept from a variety of humanities, arts and social science perspectives and will involve students exploring different epistemological approaches, including but also beyond, those of their own degree subject.

• Society on Screen

  This module explores the ways in which experiences, identities and social issues are represented in British film. It considers the ways that filmmakers engage with contemporary society and the extent to which films respond to, or act as a catalyst for, social change.

  Each week we will explore a different topic through the lens of a specific film. We will contextualise the representation offered and consider how it fits within the longer tradition of filmmaking on that subject.

  Since the very earliest days of the cinema, films have captured the public imagination and this module will explore the broader role of film in society. We will consider the cultural significance of film as a form of leisure and as a method of communication and education. We will explore the nature of the relationship between filmmakers and the audience, consider questions of funding and censorship, and place film within the broader context of today’s media.

• Textual Cultures

  In this module, students closely examine, compare and contextualise a range of texts that deal with the theme of learning. The core texts: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel Purple Hibiscus (2003); Willy Russell’s play Educating Rita (1980); and Alan Parker’s film, Fame (1980), will be accompanied by a range of extracts from a broad variety of text types, from poetry to philosophy to legal documents. Each week, we will consider a key issue raised by the core text under discussion alongside extracts from other texts. Students will be encouraged to use the methods of Critical Discourse Analysis in their close reading, comparison and contextualisation of the texts.

  The module aims to provide students with a flexible and adaptable framework that enables them to read, understand and interpret texts from any discourse area closely, analytically and critically. It will support their understanding of the ways in which different text types function and enable them to identify the way genres provide frameworks for audiences to comprehend discourse, assess the means by which apparently similar aspects of the world can be appreciated and understood from different perspectives or positions, and explore the ways in which discourse is used to constitute a sense of being and identity.

  The module will also provide opportunities for students to reflect on their own experiences of and beliefs about learning, and to consider their own learning methods and processes as the Foundation Year progresses. This will support the transition to their degree courses, giving them agency in the process as they think carefully about how they learn, how they might learn more effectively, and how that is affected by cultural, social and economic forces.

• Media/Drama Research Project

Year 1

• Introduction to Media Practice 1

  In this module you will develop an understanding of creative thinking across both fiction and non-fiction audio-visual content creation. You will look at the key creative roles in production, and work in small groups to make both a short documentary and undertake TV Studio production. You will participate in a range of creative and technical skills workshops, with sessions delivered by experienced professional as well our world-leading staff.

• Introduction to Media Histories 1

  These companion modules (Introduction to Media Histories 1 and Introduction to Media Histories 2) introduce students to media histories encompassing complementary accounts of film, television, video games, computing, the internet, and social media.

• Critical Theory and Textual Analysis

  In this module you will develop an understanding of the key debates in critical theory. You will look at a range of different methods in studying film, television and digital media, including artistic achievement and critical interpretation, close textual analysis, ideological analysis, national cinema, and psychoanalysis. You will examine the relationship between the intentions of individual film and programme-makers and wider processes. You will consider films and television programmes in close detail, analysing the relationship between how something is achieved and what it means.

• Introduction to Media Practice 2

  In this module you will develop an understanding of fiction filmmaking, producing two screenplays and collaborating on the production of two fiction films. You will look at the principles of story construction and the screenplay form. In production teams of six, you will select two screenplays from your group, and these will be produced in the summer term. The scripts will be used as the basis for film production workshops, introducing you to areas of production specialism, including producing, direction, cinematography, sound design, production design and editing.

• Introduction to Media Histories 2

  These companion modules (Introduction to Media Histories 1 and Introduction to Media Histories 2) introduce students to media histories encompassing complementary accounts of film, television, video games, computing, the internet, and social media

• Critical Theory and Creative Practice

Year 2

• The Creative Industries

  In this module you will develop an understanding of how creativity is constrained and enabled by the industrial logics of the creative industries. You will focus on film, television and digital media, exploring issues such as economics and financing, pitching and commissioning, policy and regulation, copyright, formats and global trade, ratings and audience measurement, branding and marketing, digital production logics, and production cultures. You will also consider a number of important industry-oriented research skills, such as interviewing, market/demographic analysis, locating and interpreting legal documents, and archival research.

Year 3

• Media Arts Dissertation

  A dissertation can be a sustained piece of writing about a single subject, person, theoretical field, or group of texts The dissertation is based primarily on students’ own course of independent study so will be a product of negotiation between the student and supervisor and will depend on the topic of research.

• Media Research Project

Optional Modules

Below is a taster of some of the exciting optional modules that students on the course could choose from during this academic year. Please be aware these do change over time, and optional modules may be withdrawn or new ones added.

Year 1

• All modules are core

Year 2

• Directing Screen Fiction
• Screen Documentary
• Cinematography
• Creative Interactive Media
• Animation and Visual Effects
• Screenwriting
• Producing Film and Television
• Creative Digital Arts
• Creative Social Media
• Creative Post Production
• Film Theory: Hitchcock and Point of View
• Post-Classical Hollywood
• Television Histories
• Modern European Cinema
• Contemporary Chinese Cinemas
• Exotic Cinema: Encounters with Cultural Difference
• Modernism and Avant Garde Film
• Beyond Bollywood: Indian Cinema in a Transitional Frame
• Digital Aesthetics

  In this module you will develop an understanding of the core concepts of the digital age, looking at how today's computer networks, devices and infrastructure underpin nearly all forms of aesthetic, cultural social and political life. You will consider the concepts of technicity, affective turn, digital subjectivity and extended mind, creative expression and participation in the digital era, amateur production, free software, fun and politics, self-organisation, media archaeology and sonic architectures. You will examine the systematic challenges brought about by digital change and critically interpret and analyse digital phenomena.

• The Creative Industries

  In this module you will develop an understanding of how creativity is constrained and enabled by the industrial logics of the creative industries. You will focus on film, television and digital media, exploring issues such as economics and financing, pitching and commissioning, policy and regulation, copyright, formats and global trade, ratings and audience measurement, branding and marketing, digital production logics, and production cultures. You will also consider a number of important industry-oriented research skills, such as interviewing, market/demographic analysis, locating and interpreting legal documents, and archival research.

• International Film 2: Readings and Representations

  The module is divided into two parts, the first exploring crucial issues of filmmaking, film studies and the ‘transnational’ from the perspective of largely contemporary Latin American cinema, the second focusing on a range of European films from the 1970s to the present. The introductory two weeks of the module will introduce students to these concerns; the final two weeks of the module will bring both parts together and establish some conclusions (for example, what, if anything, constitutes a ‘European’ or ‘Latin American’ or ‘transnational’ film).

• Cinema in France

  This year-long module examines key examples of French cinema from its beginnings to the present day, focusing on the avant-garde and surrealist films of the 1920s, social realist films of the 1930s, the New Wave which began in the late 1950s, and its ‘postmodern’ legacy in the 1980s followed by a return to realism in the new millennium. The module entails close, critical analysis of film style, though no prior knowledge of film theory is required.

• Representations of Childhood and Youth in Modern German Culture

  Childhood and youth - the formative periods in our lives - are obviously crucial for individuals, society and culture. They are also contested and controversial concepts. Children and adolescents have long been the subject of social, familial and educational pressures against which they have often rebelled in an attempt to assert their individuality and develop their own identities. This module introduces you to a range of literary and cinematic responses to the lives of children and young people in the context of the German speaking countries from the late nineteenth century to the present day. Drawing on a range of classic and recent texts and films, it explores the historical contexts of the theme and considers the social, political and ethical issues involved in the representation of young people and of institutions such as the school and the military.

• 20th-Century Mexican Visual Arts and Film

  During the module attention will be devoted to analysing samples from early Twentieth century Mexican visual arts. Students will study the Mexican Mural Movement and will analyse the work of its most prominent members. Attention will be paid to the works of Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros and José Clemente Orozco. The first part of this module will also cover the photographic works of Edward Weston, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Tina Modotti, Mariana Yampolski, Araceli Herrera and Graciela Iturbide. During the second part of this module students will be introduced to some of the most significant cinematic works from Mexico’s century of filmmaking. Students will analyse some of the most important filmic genres from a wide range of directors and periods in Mexican cinematic history. On this module students will be introduced to some areas of film theory and will learn how to apply theoretical concepts to a reading of Mexican visual arts and films.

• Constructing Identity in Contemporary Spanish Film

  In this module students will study films from the last twenty years in Spain. The films selected will in different ways express representations of identity in Spain. We will explore issues such as national and regional identities, linguistic diversity and national identity, Spanishness, cultural memory, history on screen, urban versus rural experience, cultural diversity, immigration and the portrayal of gender within new family paradigms.

• Rebels, Revolution & Representation in Latin America

  On this module students will examine the ways in which critical historical moments in Latin America have been represented visually in a global context. We will explore how political unrest in Latin America has been memorialised by both filmmakers and photographers, with the aim of re-thinking how global imaginaries concerning the rebel and revolution have been constructed in film and photography.

• Postwar Italian Cinema: the Auteur Tradition

Year 3

• Directing Screen Fiction
• Screen Documentary
• Advanced Screenplay- Major Project
• Producing Film and TV
• Cinematography
• Transmedia
• Creative Digital Arts
• Creative Sound Design

  This module will examine, through the employment of practical methodologies, the work of significant avant-garde sound/noise practitioners throughout the 20th century analogue and digital eras. It will examine the relationship between significant artworks and the technology of the era. For example, in the acoustic era of music capture, before the electrification of the signal in 1925 that allowed electro-magnetic microphones and soundboard input mixing, the capture of sound was facilitated through a static condensing horn. In order to create a mix balance, the musicians would physically move closer or further away from the horn. We call this kinetic mixing. One of the first exercises will be to recreate this process and then develop the concept digitally, within an installation paradigm, employing a multichannel sound source and a range of Bluetooth speakers, allowing the different sounds to be physically moved within a defined space – 21st Century kinetic mixing.

   

• Creativity, Entrepreneurship & Digital Marketing

  This module aims to give you as real an understanding and experience of working in the digital industries as is possible within the context of a university. This module will help you to gain an understanding of digital business modelling; from both a value building perspective, and also a relationship building perspective which is vital to your ongoing success.

   

• Contemporary British Cinema 1
• Television and Digital Cultures
• Film Aesthetics 1: Issues of Interpretation and Evaluation
• Psychoanalysis and Cinema
• Film, Television and the Holocaust

  In this module you will develop an understanding of how the destruction of European Jewry by the Nazis between 1933 and 1945 has been represented and responded to across a range of both fictional and non-fictional media. You will look at the specific theoretical debates surrounding how the Holocaust can or should (or should not) be represented in art and popular culture. You will consider the role of mass media in constructing both popular and elite relationships to historical experience, and in documenting history.

• Media Technologies
• See This Sound - Audiovisuology
• Cinephilia
• 360º Cinema
• Political Cinema: From Eisenstein to Youtube
• The Poetics of Contemporary Television
• Contemporary British Cinema 2
• Film Aesthetics 2
• Transnationalism, Diaspora and Globalisation in Contemporary Film

  This module explores cinematic representations of the transnational encounter between people, cultures and institutions interconnected by the forces of globalization. The topics covered range from (anti-)colonialism and revolution to neo-colonialism, postcoloniality and migration. Attention is paid to the ways in which the films deal with the themes of emancipation, hybridity, displacement, global capitalism and politics, and cosmopolitanism. The module covers the development of transnational cinema from its origins with Third Cinema and then goes on to explore postcolonial and migration cinema covering areas ranging from South America and Africa to Europe.

• Text and Image in France: from Cubism to the Present
• Ethics and Violence: Murder, Suicide and Genocide in Literature and Film

  The module examines murder and political uses of violence in twentieth-century French literary works and films, considering how far they can be explained or ever judged to be legitimate. The second half of the module studies some of the specific problems involved in understanding and representing the Holocaust.

• National Socialism and the Third Reich in German Film and Visual Culture from 1933 to the Present

  This module will introduce you to one of the most crucial and controversial subjects in modern German history, society and culture. You will study a broad range of examples of the visual representation of National Socialism as an ideology, a political movement and a 'national' phenomenon, from the 1930s to the present day. You will think about the changing ways in which Germany has sought to deal with the legacy and memory of Hitler's regime.

• Shooting History: Dictatorship, Terror and Crime in Italian Film

  The module brings together the study of the topics of fascism, organised crime and post-war and contemporary terrorism in Italy through film narrative. Students will be presented with the key ideological, social and political issues to be explored in films, that is, violence as a means to both assert and undermine State authority through dictatorial, criminal, and terroristic power. Students will study films such as Bertolucci’s Il conformista (The Conformist,1970), Bellochio’s Buongiorno notte (Good Morning, Night, 2003), Giordana’s I cento passi (The Hundred Steps, 2000), Garrone’s Gomorra (2008), Sorrentino’s Il divo (2008).

• Horror Cinema in the Hispanic World

  On this module students will explore the horror genre by exploring a broad range of films made in Spain and Latin America. Following an introduction to horror filmmaking, we will analyse texts in relation to horror’s numerous subgenres (gothic, physiological, psychological, science fiction, zombie etc.) and will learn both how to identify different types of horror film as well as to situate them in the history of horror filmmaking.

• Contemporary Mexican Cinema

  On this module students will learn how to identify some of the traits of contemporary Mexican cinema, a period of filmmaking which has been recognised as one of the most fruitful in cinematic history. The films selected for analysis on this module will be examined within the context of contemporary Mexico: an era rife with socio-political unrest. We will learn how political corruption, social violence and the recent Drug Wars have shaped the narratives of the films we will explore, and how these issues have dictated the emergence of new filmic genres. Students will learn about how youth culture and its manifestations are explored in film and will be able to place the films studied in their socio-historic contexts.

• Seducing the Nation: Spanish Film 1940s to 1980s