Cinema Studies summer courses are open to all majors! Course restrictions not enforced in the summer, and many satisfy Core Ed requirements. Initial registration begins May 6, 2024.
CINE Majors: Please visit the course list page for the complete list of summer courses and how they satisfy the major.
First Summer Session
CINE 381M*: Film, Media, & Culture >1 >GP >IP (4 credits)
ONLINE / Allison McGuffie
This course studies works of film and media as representational objects that engage with communities identified by intersectional categories including sex, gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, nation, class, and ability. It considers historical and contemporary effects of prejudice, intolerance, and discrimination on media and filmmaking practices and modes of reception, as well as alternative strategies that promote cultural understanding and a valuing of diversity. This course actively engages students in the ways the discipline of film and media studies has been shaped by the study of a broad range of identity categories and promotes an understanding of cinema as an art form intimately intertwined with its various social contexts. It enables students to develop scholarly insight into cinematic representational strategies.
CINE 399: Sp St South Park & Society (4 credits)
ONLINE / Andre Sirois
This class uses the animated cartoon as the launch point for understanding the representation of social issues in the media and critical cultural and social theories. In this course we will examine how South Park has represented or parodied labor/class, race, religion, capitalism, the media, gender, sexuality, patriotism, politics/democracy, celebrity, censorship, PC culture, etc. Because each episode was made the week before it was aired, we will also use the cartoon to examine the specific historical moment and social issues of that time in order to better understand the significance of each episode and its social critique.
CINE 399: Sp St American Animation (4 credits)
ONLINE / Colin Williamson
This course explores how American animated films by everyone from Winsor McCay in the early 1900s to Walt Disney and Tim Burton have shaped and been shaped by national and international visual cultures. Deeply concerned with the labor and vision of individual artists, American animation reflects essential questions about the medium’s potential as an art of movement and transformation, an art of time, and an art of dreams, all of which are wrapped up in broader discourses on American ideals and ways of life. Our goal is to understand how animators have grappled with these questions using innovative formal and stylistic techniques that bring inanimate materials – drawings, puppets, and other objects – to life. To do this we will examine the many contexts that have shaped a wide range of films, from early hand-drawn animations and experimental films to visual music films, realist animations, and contemporary computer animations. In the process, we will consider how American animated films intersect with the politics of race, class, and gender, as well as with other arts and media, including dance, painting, and comics.
Second Summer Session
CINE 110M*: Intro to Film & Media > 1 (4 credits)
Monday through Thursday, 12:00-1:50 p.m.
Stephen Rust
People respond to movies in different ways, and there are many reasons for this. We have all stood in the lobby of a theater and heard conflicting opinions from people who have just seen the same film. Some loved it, some hated it, some found it just OK. Perhaps we’ve thought, “What do they know? Maybe they just don’t get it.” Disagreements and controversies, however, can reveal a great deal about the assumptions underlying these various responses. If we explore these assumptions, we can ask questions about how sound they are. Questioning our own assumptions, and those of others, is a good way to start thinking about movies. In this course, we will see that there are many productive ways of thinking about movies and many approaches we can use to analyze them. These approaches include the study of narrative structure, cinematic form, authorship, genre, stars, reception and categories of social identity. Overall, the goal of this course is to introduce you to the basic skills necessary for a critical knowledge of the movies as art and culture.
This course will satisfy the Arts and Letters group requirement because it introduces students to modes of inquiry that have defined the discipline of film studies. These include such diverse approaches as studying narrative structure, authorship, genre, and reception. By requiring students to analyze and interpret examples of film and media using these approaches, the course will promote open inquiry into cinematic texts and contexts from a variety of perspectives. Previously taught as ENG 110; not repeatable.
CINE 260M*: Media Aesthetics (4 credits)
ONLINE / TBA
This course teaches the vocabulary required to formally analyze cinema and related media, with an emphasis on narrative, mise-en-scène, cinematography, editing, and sound. Students will learn to identify, define, and apply key vocabulary used to describe and analyze the aesthetics of media; this vocabulary anchors the analytical (ideological, historical, etc.) and production work of the Cinema Studies curriculum.
Third Summer Session
CINE 320: Beginning Screenwriting (4 credits)
SYNC WEB / Monday through Thursday, 10:00-11:50 a.m. / Alissa Phillips
This course examines screenwriting for short films. In order to learn the craft of writing for film, we will explore visual storytelling, structure, characterization, dramatization, dialogue, and screenplay formatting. The class will combine analytical and practical approaches. Through the analysis of internationally acclaimed short films and published screenplays, we will identify the elements that make a successful script. Building upon these insights, students will develop their own screenplays through writing exercises and the process of generating multiple revisions that will be critiqued by peers. By the end of the course, students will complete a polished script for a short film, develop the skills to give and receive productive feedback, and acquire an understanding of the scriptwriting process. Previously taught as CINE 399 & ENG 411 Begin Screenwriting; not repeatable.
CINE 230: Remix Cultures >1 (4 credits)
ONLINE / Andre Sirois
In “Remix Cultures,” students learn the historical, practical, and critical views of “intellectual property” (IP) by analyzing everything from the UO mascot to Jay-Z. The course highlights how “ideas” are part of a remix continuum: new ideas often remix the great ideas that preceded them and will themselves be remixed in the future. Students will deconstruct the relationship between politics and economics and interrogate the everyday ways that their lives are governed by (and often break) IP laws. As a group-satisfying Arts and Letters course, Remix Cultures provides students with a broad yet fundamental knowledge of how “IP” and “innovation” impact their lives: students of all majors engage with intellectual properties daily and may seek professions in fields that valorize intellectual property. By asking all students to actively and critically engage consumer media culture as intellectual property, the course provides a better understanding of how collaborative efforts are governed by laws that typically value and reward a singular author/genius.
CINE 268: US Television History >1 (4 credits)
ONLINE / Erin Hanna
This Arts & Letters course analyzes the history of television, spanning from its roots in radio broadcasting to the latest developments in digital television. To assess the many changes across this historical period, the course addresses why the U.S. television industry developed as a commercial medium (compared to television industries across the globe), how television programming has both reflected and influenced cultural ideologies through the decades, and how historical patterns of television consumption have shifted due to new technologies and social changes. By studying the historical development of television and assessing the industrial, technological, political, aesthetic and cultural systems out of which they emerged, this course helps you better understand the catalysts responsible for shaping this highly influential medium into what you view today. In this process, students will gain a basic understanding of various approaches used to analyze television history, including industrial history, technological history, formal history, reception history, and social/cultural history.
CINE 381M*: Film, Media, & Culture >1 >GP >IP (4 credits)
ONLINE / Rust
This course studies works of film and media as representational objects that engage with communities identified by intersectional categories including sex, gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, nation, class, and ability. It considers historical and contemporary effects of prejudice, intolerance, and discrimination on media and filmmaking practices and modes of reception, as well as alternative strategies that promote cultural understanding and a valuing of diversity. This course actively engages students in the ways the discipline of film and media studies has been shaped by the study of a broad range of identity categories and promotes an understanding of cinema as an art form intimately intertwined with its various social contexts. It enables students to develop scholarly insight into cinematic representational strategies.