Cinema & Media Studies

Academic Program Introduction

Cultivating media literacy skills is the core mission of our program. Our students examine media as systems of cultural production, distribution, and representation that span a range of technologies from camera obscura to photography, cinema to video games, and social media to AI. As citizens in a globally interconnected world, CAMS students are empowered to contribute their voices to critical discourses and creative practices invested in social justice, the fight against misinformation, and the campaign against cultural homogeneity.

Learning goals

Acquire a broad-based contemporary and historical knowledge of global media cultures, including an awareness of the cultural, political, and economic role of cinema and media in modern societies.
Engage in projects in photography, video, digital imaging, or screenwriting.
Develop a critical awareness of the historical developments of film and media, their emergence and uses, and their social, economic, and environmental impact.
Understand the history and legacy of colonialism and imperialism at work in the aesthetic, technological, and industrial genealogies of cinema, telegraphy, television, and digital media.

Programs of Study

Cinema and media studies major and minor

Students will develop agency in the fight against censorship, misinformation, and surveillance that affect media production and consumption.

Major requirements

Minor requirements

Course highlights

Introduction to the Moving Image

ARTS165

This introductory course explores video as an art form. Organized around a series of assignments designed to survey a range of production strategies, the course is a primer to the technical and conceptual aspects of video production and to its historical, critical, and technical discourse. Relationships between video and television, film, installation, and performance art are investigated emphasizing video as a critical intervention in social and visual arts contexts. Weekly readings, screenings, discussions and critique, explore contemporary issues in video and help students develop individual aesthetic and critical skills. Practical knowledge is integrated through lighting, video/sound production and editing workshops.

(ARTS 165 and CAMS 135 are cross-listed courses.)

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Film Festivals: Art House Aesthetics and Alternative Distribution

CAMS310

This course examines how the over 4,000 annual film festivals impact the economics, circulation, and aesthetics of cinema. Events like Cannes, Berlin, and Venice may be known for glitzy red carpet premieres but are also important nodes in the global film market; less well-known, local, or niche festivals bring communities together and raise awareness about social issues. Students will learn the history of major A-level festivals and examine their global geopolitical implications. Furthermore, academic texts from the new and burgeoning subfield of festival studies will help us consider film’s role in conversations about human rights, environmentalism, and LGBTQ+ identity. Students will compare festival histories, objectives, and programming to construct arguments about how festivals have impacted global film circulation. Students will also plan a hypothetical festival to think through the practical concerns of programming.
Technologies of Cinema and Media

CAMS201

This course investigates the technological, economic, and cultural determinants behind forms of media from the last 150 years, including the telephone, the telegraph, photography, and film, as well as new media like virtual reality and interactive media. If photography realized the desire to transcend mortality and early cinema fulfilled the dream to depict the world, their missions have been extended by technologies that seek to invent new worlds as well as material and virtual realities. Relying on a material theory of film and audio-visual media, the course examines both technologies of making and of circulation, exploring the commercial potential of the entertainment industry. The course will employ relevant texts, films, and other audio-visual artifacts.

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Places and spaces

Art Library. Our art and architecture library collections cover the history, theory, criticism, and practice of the visual arts. They include books, exhibition catalogs, periodicals, and access to the major databases for the visual arts
Book Arts Lab. Students learn typography, letterpress printing, hand bookbinding, and decorated papers techniques in the Book Arts Lab, home to the Annis Press imprint.
Collins Cinema. Featuring two 35 mm projectors and cinema seating with a capacity of 175, Collins Cinema hosts CAMS courses, special programs, and student Film Society screenings.
Digital fabrication studios. A number of digital fabrication processes, including 3D printing, laser cutting, vacuforming, and soldering, are available in the digital fabrication studios. Art students create prototypes, props, and works of art that combine digital rendering and preparatory processes with physical materials, exploring new ways of working in both 2D and 3D.
Lighting studio. In this dedicated studio space, students create flexible and customizable lighting setups for a variety of photography, video, and installation-based projects. The attached audio recording suite has a soundproofed room and a mixing and editing space.
Media Arts Lab. The Media Arts Lab contains Alienware computers with dual monitors and Wacom tablets, as well as high-quality printers, flatbed scanners, an HD projector, a 3D printer, and a vinyl cutter. A variety of software packages are installed on the machines, including Adobe Creative Cloud, Lightroom, Final Cut Pro X, and Autodesk Maya.
Photography darkroom. With enlargers, developing baths, and other equipment, the darkroom is home to analog photography classes and projects.
Video editing suites. These soundproofed rooms have permanently installed equipment to facilitate the editing of digital video, animation, and audio-based work.

Research highlights

In spring 2022, students in CAMS 225: Cinema in the Public Square created “Screening Wellesley,” a website about the history of cinema and media studies at the College.
Professor Codruța Morari is the author of The Bressonians: French Cinema and the Culture of Authorship (Berghahn, 2017), which examines film authorship in an era when the idea of the solitary, sovereign auteur has come under attack.

Beyond Wellesley

Many of our graduates work in film and television, journalism, publishing, tech, and education. They are writers, directors, cinematographers, camera operators, designers, editors, and studio executives. They work at talent agencies, game design companies, museums, film archives, and colleges and universities.

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