The Media and Cinema Studies Program is offering three brand new courses between the Spring and Summer quarters:
MCS 331 TOPICS IN DOCUMENTARY STUDIES: IMPACT AND SOCIAL JUSTICE FILMMAKING
Faculty: Judith McCray
Spring Quarter 2017
Mondays/Wednesdays, 1:30-3:00pm, Loop Campus
This course explores the how, what and why of “Impact” media and “Social Justice” documentaries that are intended to inform, uplift or inspire social change. Sourcing contemporary issues and change agents takes much more than having a good idea and preliminary vision. This course will cover the nuts and bolts of what makes a compelling impact film—how to develop an idea into a concept; how to expand a concept into a story with a viable message; how to secure expert sources and supporting subjects; how to determine and manage the conflict that is inherent in a social issue and necessary for good storytelling; and how creativity and audio/visual elements enhance the storytelling and messaging. Students will examine and critique Chicago-based and other long-form media, while developing a concept and structure for their own social justice film.
MCS 351 TOPICS IN TELEVISION STUDIES: “QUALITY” TV
Crosslisted with AMS 395
Faculty: Molly Schneider
Spring Quarter 2017
Tuesdays/Thursdays, 9:40-11:10am, Lincoln Park Campus
This course will be a survey of the concept of "quality" TV, exploring the ways the term "quality" has emerged and circulated at different periods in television history. The course will begin with early discourses of quality and progress through the political wave of the 1960s, the “quality” sitcoms of the 1970s and 1980s, police and legal dramas of the 1990s, the explosion of “quality” cable dramas in the late 1990s and 2000s, and, finally, the move to critically-acclaimed web-based series from Netflix and Amazon. We will address the notion of TV quality from industrial, cultural, and textual standpoints. What makes a program “quality” television, and who decides? How has the term changed and/or evolved? What textual and aesthetic strategies are associated with quality? What does it look like? What does it sound like? What are the commercial implications of quality? Who makes quality TV? Who watches quality TV, and who is depicted on quality TV? What are the limits of quality as a designation? Students in the course will address these critical questions as they explore quality as a important and complex topic in television studies.
MCS 353 TOPICS IN MEDIA STUDIES: HISTORY OF DISNEY
Crosslisted with MCS 522: TOPICS IN CINEMA/MEDIA STUDIES: HISTORY OF DISNEY
Faculty: Jason Sperb
Summer II, 2017 (July 17 – August 20)
Tuesdays/Thursdays, 5:45-9:00pm, Loop Campus
This course will focus on the many ups and downs over the decades of Disney’s slow aesthetic, economic, and cultural growth, providing a foundation for better understanding the company today. In addition to analyzing particular Disney texts (some well-known and many not well-known), special emphasis will be paid to the many facets of the studio’s first critical and commercial success in the 1930s, its struggles with bankruptcy throughout the 1940s, and its hugely successful re-branding as a prominent component of a new post-war leisure culture in the 1950s and 1960s. Extensive attention will also be paid to the company’s considerable revival and expansion under the “Team Disney” leadership of the 1980s and 1990s, as well as some reflection on the recent investment in once-competing brands such as Pixar, Marvel and Lucasfilm.
