Film studies regards cinema as both a vital art form and a set of cultural artifacts that can be rigorously analyzed. Although they draw on literary and artistic traditions, films have always had their own identifiable properties and conventions. The courses listed below pay particular attention to the history, analysis, and interpretation of cinema as a key form of modern culture. Film studies courses provide students with background in the theory and criticism of moving images, because without some knowledge of how filmmakers create images, we miss both a deeper level of enjoyment and the opportunity to explore the technical, stylistic, and rhetorical devices that films employ to create and convey meaning.
Film studies invites interdisciplinary approaches. Course offerings in film studies at Lawrence University are drawn from various language departments: Chinese, English, French, German, Russian, and Spanish; there are also film courses in the Departments of Anthropology, Art and Art History, History, and Theatre Arts and in the Conservatory of Music. Students taking courses in film studies have access to a wide range of interpretive methodologies, national cinemas, film styles, and genres, and they can combine an interest in film with almost any discipline in the liberal arts.
