Film Media Theater

Undergraduate

We offer an innovative, project-based curriculum that integrates two practices of learning and knowing in the presentational and representational arts. One practice focuses on the critical study of film, media, and theater, while the other focuses on production and performance.

Program Overview

The flexible curriculum offers both writing-intensive courses in the history of and theoretical approaches to the cinema, media, and theater, as well as moving image production and performance courses in new, state-of-the-art production spaces. Students majoring in FMT combine creative, critical thinking with the practice of making theater, film, and other media-based communicative forms through the major requirements and production-based opportunities, as well as those offered across multiple disciplines in the arts, humanities, and social sciences.

Independent study in Film Media Theater

You may opt to do an independent study to explore course work that is not offered at the Five Colleges.

To initiate an independent study, you need to contact the faculty member with whom you wish to work during the advising/preregistration period of the semester before you intend to begin your independent study. You will need to secure a faculty member's permission to proceed, based on the project and your qualifications for doing the project. After receiving permission to move forward, you will be required to submit a 500-word prospectus or an equivalent document. The prospectus must include a working title, a description of the project, the questions that will be addressed, and an annotated bibliography/filmography. A transcript should be attached. The prospectus will be circulated among the department faculty for final approval.

If your project is approved, you will meet with your supervisor once a week for the duration of the Independent Study. You and your supervisor will refine your prospectus and create a timetable for research. Your project must be turned in to the supervising faculty member during the examination period of the semester it is completed.

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Courses and Requirements

Students majoring in FMT combine critical and creative practices through the major requirements and production-based opportunities, as well as those offered across multiple disciplines in the arts, humanities, and social sciences.

Learning Goals

Students majoring in Film Media Theater will:

  • Understand and be able to explain, as well as engage -- as thinkers and as makers -- with the global histories, languages, theories, and practices of film, media, and theater.
  • Think and write critically about images, sound, performance, and text-based media, dissecting the arguments they make, how they ask us to see the world around us, and why.
  • Develop skills required to conceive and produce creative projects, including interdisciplinary innovative projects that reimagine existing practices.
  • Identify, critique, and engage with how these forms are embedded within and respond to global structures of power, including racism and other forms of oppression.
  • Understand the relationships among critical and production practices in film, media, and theater, and how they mutually inform one another.

Contact us

The Department of Film Media Theater oversees an innovative, project-based curriculum that integrates practices of critical study with production and performance in the fields of film, media and theater.

Next steps

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Mount Holyoke seeks intellectually curious applicants who understand the value of a liberal arts education and are driven by a love of learning. As a women's college that is gender diverse, we welcome applications from female, trans and non-binary students.

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