The Film and Media Studies (FMST) minor enables students to engage in a critical study of film and visual mass media. FMST will provide students with a means of critically examining how film and visual mass media serve as powerful determinants of ideology, identity, and historical consciousness.
Courses offered in a range of departments and programs will constitute the FMST, recognizing that image based research cuts across disciplines and that images are called upon to function increasingly as icons and arguments, as well as data and documents.
It has been said that, collectively, the visual mass media represent the most important and widely shared context for the receipt of information and ideas in contemporary experience.
FMST recognizes the centrality of visual experience to everyday life and questions the consequences of our passive consumption of visual media as both entertainment and information.
The goal of the FMST minor will be to develop in our students the critical skills necessary to analyze representation and experience as they are constructed by new and emerging visual technologies. The program seeks a balance between history, theory and practice.