Current Undergraduate Course Listings

PLEASE NOTE:

• Times and locations of courses are published in the Public Class Schedule.
• Official Calendar Course Descriptions are available in the Undergraduate and Graduate Calendars.
• Official Course Outlines will be distributed at the first class of the term.

Fall 2026-Winter 2027

First Year

FILM 1101A/AF Introduction to Film Studies – Fall Term

• INSTRUCTOR: Jake Pitre
• DESCRIPTION: This course introduces students to the main terms and concepts of Film Studies. We will analyze the basic formal elements of film as an art, while also considering the cinema as a social practice, a cultural phenomenon, and as popular entertainment.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBA
• READINGS: Textbook: Textbook and online readings.

FILM 1101B/BF Introduction to Film Studies – Winter Term

• INSTRUCTOR: Jake Pitre
• DESCRIPTION: This course introduces students to the main terms and concepts of Film Studies. We will analyze the basic formal elements of film as an art, while also considering the cinema as a social practice, a cultural phenomenon, and as popular entertainment.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBA
• READINGS: Textbook: Textbook and online readings.

FILM 1120A Seminar in Film Studies – Fall Term

• INSTRUCTOR: Gunnar Iversen
• DESCRIPTION: This seminar course is an introduction to Film Studies. We will look at film as a popular entertainment form, an art and a social phenomenon. In the course we will discuss different ways of interpreting and analyzing films, and the course will also introduce students to important concepts, ideas, issues and the vocabulary in Film Studies. This course is recommended for Film majors.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: Essays and seminar papers
• READINGS: Textbook: Timothy Corrigan and Patricia White, The Film Experience – An Introduction, Sixth Edition (Macmillan).

FILM 1130B Seminar in Film Studies II – Winter Term

• INSTRUCTOR: Gunnar Iversen
• DESCRIPTION: This seminar course builds on the knowledge and skills acquired in FILM1120A. It introduces and expands on important concepts, ideas, issues, theories and methodologies in the field of Film Studies, and places a particular focus on arguing, using sources and writing skills.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: Essays and seminar papers.
• READINGS: Textbook: Timothy Corrigan and Patricia White, The Film Experience – An Introduction, Sixth Edition (Macmillan).

Second Year

FILM 2001A Film Theory and Analysis I – Fall Term

• INSTRUCTOR: Katherine Morrow
• DESCRIPTION: This course introduces students to the main theories and methods of analysis that have been developed for the study of film. As we trace the history of film theory, we will consider both specific examples of film analysis and interpretation and broader accounts of the cinema as a medium and as an art form. We will view films from many eras of cinema history, representing various genres, styles, and national contexts.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: In-class Activities (25%), Midterm Exam (35%), Final Exam (40%)
• READINGS: All course readings will be available online.

FILM 2002B Film Theory and Analysis II – Winter Term

• INSTRUCTOR: Katherine Morrow
• DESCRIPTION: This course further explores the main theories and methods of analysis that have been developed for the study of film. Building on FILM 2001, students will explore theoretical topics in more depth, including questions of cinematic representation, film genre, viewership, and experience. We will analyse a range of significant films, chosen from throughout the history of the cinema and spanning various genres, styles, and national contexts.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: In-class Activities (30%), Midterm Exam (30%), Final Exam (40%)
• READINGS: All course readings will be available online.

FILM 2106A The Documentary – Fall Term

• INSTRUCTOR: Katherine Morrow
• DESCRIPTION: What does it mean to document, shape, and share real life? This course will provide a broad, historical overview of the evolution of documentary form and explore how documentary films present subjects and address viewers. We will begin with conventional definitions of the form to consider how filmmakers educate viewers and highlight social issues. Then we will focus on the problems and challenges of these conventional approaches including ethnographic misrepresentations, the ethics of intervention, and the limits of direct representation. Finally, we will look at inventive uses of the form to capture what cannot, or should not, be shown.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: In-class Activities (25%), Midterm Exam (35%), Final Exam (40%)
• READINGS: All course readings will be available online.
• CROSS-LISTED AS: JOUR2106A

FILM 2201B National Cinema: Transnational Hollywood – Winter Term

• INSTRUCTOR: Jake Pitre
• DESCRIPTION: This course will explore how American cinema functions on a global scale, paying particular attention to its transnational qualities by specifically focusing on filmmakers who began their careers in their home countries before turning to Hollywood. We will examine notions of cultural exchange, imperialism, globalization, and industrial theories of Hollywood’s perceived domination over global popular culture.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBA
• READINGS: TBA

FILM 2206A The Canadian Cinema: From Origins to the Present – Fall Term

• INSTRUCTOR: Tom McSorley
• DESCRIPTION: Largely unfamiliar to most Canadians, the Canadian cinema is famously described by film scholar Peter Harcourt as “the invisible cinema: a cinema that exists but is not seen.” This course is intended to illuminate the historical, cultural, and critical outlines of filmmaking in this country. More than simply making apparent the ‘invisible,’ however, the course will also investigate the backgrounds and contexts of film production in Canada from the silent era right up to the 21st century. This course will identify and explore the evolution of two major streams of film practice in Canada: documentary and experimental. In addition, the course will examine the troubled, tentative evolution of feature fiction filmmaking in both English, French, and Indigenous-speaking Canada, as well as the rich history of Canadian animated films. Our investigations will also explore various recurring themes in our multifaceted, multicultural national cinema: technology, alienation, marginality, identity, Indigeneity, memory, ethnicity, gender, and history. The works of renowned Canadian directors such as David Cronenberg, Denys Arcand, Atom Egoyan, Deepa Mehta, Alanis Obomsawin, Guy Maddin, Mina Shum, and many others will be presented.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: Short film analysis (20%); Essay (40%); Final Examination (40%)
• READINGS: Readings will be provided on Brightspace throughout the term.
• CROSS-LISTED AS: CDNS 3901A

FILM 2601A Film Genres: Science Fiction – Fall Term

• INSTRUCTOR: Gunnar Iversen
• DESCRIPTION: The course offers an introduction to science fiction cinema. We will explore the definitions of the genre and central themes and issues, such as representations of technology, surveillance, biopolitics, race and gender. We will also discuss the history of science fiction cinema as a genre from the silent period to today.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: Essays and seminar papers.
• READINGS: Readings will be posted on Brightspace when course starts.

FILM 2607B FILM 2607B History of World Cinema II – Winter Term

• INSTRUCTOR: Malini Guha
• DESCRIPTION: The objective of this course is to study some of the most salient developments in the history of world cinema from 1945 to the present day. We will examine cinema from around the world as a set of complex and overlapping circulatory practices that often remain grounded within a national context while also exceeding the nation state as a result of the inherently global nature of film production, distribution and exhibition.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBA
• READINGS: This course will use the same textbook used in FILM 2601 (, with additional readings posted on Brightspace.
• CROSS-LISTED AS: ENGL 2601A

Third Year

FILM 3301A Special Topics in Cinema, Gender and Sexuality: AIDS Film & Video – Fall Term

• INSTRUCTOR: Ryan Conrad
• DESCRIPTION: This course exposes students to a wide variety of AIDS film and video from European and American directors. The selection of films accompanying this course varies not just in content, but form, genre and each raises unique questions about desire, the body, trauma, loss, and survival. This selection of film and video ranges from the nearly forgotten no-budget/low-budget activist documentary videos of the early 1980s to sleek multi-million dollar award winning Hollywood features. It is necessary to focus on this diverse range of AIDS films and videos from the beginning of the epidemic through present day in order to learn how formal strategies, aesthetic choices, intended audiences, affective structures, and visual representations of people living with AIDS have changed along with the epidemic over the last forty years of film and video production. Critically engaging with this corpus illuminates how contemporary societies have, and continue to witness, frame, and make meaning of the ongoing epidemic through film and video.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: Attendance & Participation 25%; In-class Midterm Exam – 25%; Film Review – 20%; Final Exam or Research Creation in lieu of Final Exam – 30%
• READINGS: TBA
• CROSS-LISTED AS: FILM 3301 / WGST 3812

FILM 3609B African Cinema – Winter Term

• INSTRUCTOR: Aboubakar Sanogo
• DESCRIPTION: There has seldom been a better time to study African cinema. Indeed, cinema and media practices across the continent have been experiencing a tremendous growth and expansion in recent years. African films are winning major awards at major film festivals (Cannes, Berlinale, Venice, Toronto, FESPACO, etc.). Nollywood is now a ubiquitous presence around the world, securing 3rd place on Netflix global charts with over 20 million views across the world. The streamer is actively courting African filmmakers across the continent and across linguistic lines, creating its “Made in Africa Collection” with the tagline “Made in Africa, Streaming to the World.” The Criterion Collection has been releasing restored classics of African cinema through its partnership with Martin Scorsese’s The Film Foundation and the African Film Heritage Project. African banks and African States are increasingly investing seriously in film and media. According to a recent UNESCO report, the African film industry is worth at least 5 billion dollars. In short, there is something akin to a profound reconfiguration and renaissance in African cinema in the present moment. The project of this course is to seek to understand and explain these contemporary transformations by introducing students to African cinema through its history, some of its major and emerging filmmakers, its film movements, films and institutions, its political economy, its ecology, its key debates and challenges as well as its potential futures.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBA
• READINGS: TBA
• CROSS-LISTED AS: AFRI 3609B

FILM 3901A Digital Media Production for Emerging Arts Professionals – Fall Term

• INSTRUCTOR: Paul Jasen
• DESCRIPTION: This course is designed for emerging arts (and design) professionals in any field. Our focus is on developing fundamental skills in digital media production that will be of use to students planning careers in the arts sector or related industries. Through lessons, case studies, workshopping and collaborative production sessions, students will gain experience in the following areas: website design and development, image editing, audio recording and podcasting, digital photography, streaming video, designing for print, social media integration and writing for the web. Students will leave this course having developed a multi-faceted portfolio project related to their field, as well as confidence and demonstrated proficiency using current media production tools and platforms.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: In-class workshopping activities; small skill-building assignments; production of a multi-part media project on a topic related to your field or creative practice.
• READINGS: TBA
• CROSS-LISTED WITH: ARTH 3501A/MUSI 3201A

FILM 3901B Special Topics in Film Studies: “Small Screens, Big Spectacles: Film Studies through Television and Transmediality” – Winter Term

• INSTRUCTOR: Maki Salmon
• DESCRIPTION: This course explores cinema as both a formal object and cultural practice by asking how film changes as it moves through modern screen culture. Students use adaptation, seriality, and convergence as relational tools for analyzing how meaning forms across movement, recurrence, and circulation: cinematic material changes when it enters another medium, gains depth through return and variation, and becomes recognizable through the institutions, technologies, audiences, and judgments that assign value to it. In television, the course finds its central hinge, for how the medium reworks cinema’s relation to spectacle and screen experience, alters distribution patterns, and attends to how its domestic context, serial form and other characteristics alter perception, memory, and cultural recognition. Through weekly screenings, lectures, discussions, collective analysis, and assignments, students acquire a vocabulary and critical tools for examining image, narrative, performance, genre, and reception as parts of the conditions that make screen forms persuasive, meaningful and powerful for individual and cultural perception alike.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: Flexible Weighting Model and Various Assignment Styles
• READINGS: Online Readings through Brightspace

FILM 3901C Special Topics in Film Studies: The Future on Film” – Winter Term

• INSTRUCTOR: Jake Pitre
• DESCRIPTION: What will the future look like? Cinema itself was once seen as the technical embodiment of the future. The lens is an eye that can reveal possibilities we may never have dreamt of, a guide to or a warning of what may come. From the utopian to the dystopian, from paradise to apocalypse, this course will confront critical questions of aesthetics, production, distribution, and technology in the pursuit of envisioning the future onscreen. We will also reflect and speculate on the future of cinema itself at a time of great technological and industrial change, and the introduction of new aesthetics as potential harbingers of a future cinema. Drawing upon a broad range of scholarship, including film theory, communication studies, philosophies of the future, and critical future studies, this course considers contemporary and future audiovisual forms.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: Reading Reports: 25%
  Midterm: 25%
  Final Project: 50%
• READINGS: Online Readings

FILM 3901D Chinese Independent Cinema: The Politics and Aesthetics of Alternative Filmmaking in the PRC – Winter Term

• INSTRUCTOR: Katherine Morrow
• DESCRIPTION: Underground…Banned in China…Independent, these labels, among others, have been used to describe unofficial and unsanctioned production practices and viewing cultures that began to emerge in mainland China in the early 1990s. This course will examine significant examples of such filmmaking, both narrative and documentary, by Wu Wenguang, Zhang Yuan, Jia Zhangke, and Liu Jiayin among others. In addition to engaging with the films, students will consider what independence means for Chinese cinema through theoretical, historical and sociological lenses.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: In-class Activities (25%), Midterm Paper (25%), Choice of Final Paper, Creative Project, or Oral Exam (50%)
• READINGS: All course readings will be available online.

Fourth Year

FILM 4001A Research and Critical Methodologies – Fall Term

• INSTRUCTOR: Aubrey Anable
• DESCRIPTION:This course introduces students to a range of methodological approaches used in advanced film studies research. Students will critically examine individual methods — including textual analysis, historical analysis, genre criticism, auteurism, reception studies, archival research, and approaches grounded in race, gender, and decoloniality — identifying their particular strengths and limitations and considering how different methodological choices yield different research outcomes and conclusions.
  
  The course includes several hands-on research opportunities: a visit to Library and Archives Canada’s Gatineau Preservation Centre, where students will engage directly with archival research methods; a visit to the Experiential Learning Hub to explore questions of cinematic exhibition and technology; and opportunities to attend special screenings connected to the local film community. Throughout the term, students will apply methods to a range of films, from early cinema to contemporary works, and will conclude the course by reflecting on how film studies research translates into transferable skills for professional life and informed citizenship.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBD
• READINGS: No textbook. Readings will be made available through Ares

FILM 4301A Topics in Film and Philosophy: Cinematic Representation and the Problem of Depiction – Fall Term

• INSTRUCTOR: Marc Furstenau
• DESCRIPTION: We live in a world of pictures—of images, visual representations, or depictions—that are increasingly complex in form and function, combining various audio-visual components, distributed through a wide variety of means. In this course students are introduced to the concept of depiction, to the philosophical debates about the nature and effects of pictures, which can be traced back to the very beginnings of Western philosophy. The most basic debate is about the relation between the depiction and what is depicted, between the picture or image and the objects or events being represented—between visual representation and the world, image and reality. We will trace the history of these philosophical debates, considering photographic and cinematic depiction specifically, in relation to older forms such as drawing, painting, and sculpture, but also new ones, such as computer-generated images, virtual reality, and AI.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: Choice of various optional assignments: Reading Memos (10%); Reading Reports (20%); or Essay (40%).
• READINGS: Book chapters and articles.
• CROSS-LISTED AS: FILM 5901F

FILM 4002B Special Topics in Moving Image Culture: New Queer Cinema – Winter Term

• INSTRUCTOR: Ryan Conrad
• DESCRIPTION: This course offers an in-depth exploration of New Queer Cinema (NQC), the influential independent film movement that emerged in the early 1990s anglosphere and reshaped the possibilities of queer representation on screen. Through a close analysis of films by directors Todd Haynes, Cheryl Dunye, Isaac Julien, Gregg Araki, Derek Jarman, Shu Lea Cheang, and others, students will examine how NQC challenged dominant cinematic norms by embracing experimental aesthetics and unapologetically queer narratives. This course situates NQC within its broader cultural, political, and economic contexts, including the AIDS crisis, the culture wars, accelerated globalization, and shifting understandings of both sexuality and gender. This course highlights how filmmakers used cinema as a site of resistance, radical expression, and queer world-making. This course also introduces students to affect theory as a framework for understanding how the emergence of NQC marked a collective shift in consciousness and aesthetics.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: Attendance & Participation (15%); Podcast Episode Proposal (20%); Podcast Episode (35%); Podcast Peer Feedback (20%); Response to Podcast Peer Feedback (10%)
• READINGS: TBA
• CROSS-LISTED AS: FILM 5506 / WGST4812 / WGST5902

FILM 4901A Special Topic: Film and Labour – Fall Term

• INSTRUCTOR: Jake Pitre
• DESCRIPTION: This course aims to provide a robust summary of the many perspectives on the intersection of film and labour. Students will gain an understanding of how socioeconomic structures impact and shape the production, distribution, and consumption of film and media in the modern world. Keeping in mind questions of class politics and worker precarity, as well as the consequences of transnational networks, this course will pay particular attention to how the internet has transformed labour in these contexts, and how digital economies have substantial effects on labour power and film production/distribution/consumption. Throughout, we will watch important examples of films about class, labour, and workers that can help students to visualize these systems of economic power.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: Reading Reports (25% each)
  Midterm (25%)
  Final Project (50%)
• READINGS: Online Readings

FILM 4901B Capitalism and Critique in Film and Fiction – Winter Term

• INSTRUCTOR: Philip Kaisary
• DESCRIPTION: Debates over contemporary capitalism abound: in mass-market books, on television and radio, in the pages of such publications as The Financial Times and The Economist, in the reports of global management consultancies, and throughout social media and the blogosphere, discussion of contemporary capitalism’s stagnation, failures, manifold crises, and whether or not it can be fixed has become commonplace. As part of this broad debate, cultural forms – including, but not limited to, film, fiction, painting, and photography – have for long constituted a valuable resource for better understanding and articulating critiques of capitalism. An awareness of this deep history undergirds this course in which we will watch and discuss a corpus of fiction films, art films, and documentary films, produced between the 1990s and the present, that address the inequality, unevenness, and sacrifices that are part and parcel of world-wide or global capitalism. Key concepts and categories that will inform our endeavour will include the idea of ‘savage’ capitalism, techno-capitalism, petro-capitalism, capitalism and class stratified society, and capitalism and the contemporary global migrant crisis. In small groups, we will also read a sample of recent speculative fiction addressed to the concept of “techno-capitalism.” These readings will deepen our understanding and develop our project of critique. Reflecting capitalism’s global reach, our corpus of primary materials are drawn from locations including Argentina, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Korea, Mexico, South Africa, and the United States. To enrich our viewing of the films and our reading of the fiction, we will draw on various works of critical social and political theory.
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: Attendance and participation: 20%; Audio (podcast) assignment: 30%; Presentation: 20%; 2-hour, open-book exam: 30%
• READINGS: TBA
• CROSS-LISTED AS: FILM 5002/ENGL 5901

FILM 4901C Action Cinema, Gender and American Society – Fall Term

• INSTRUCTOR: Jake Pitre
• DESCRIPTION: This course will examine the American action film genre through the lens of gender and sexuality, focusing on how action films reflect shifting cultural values in American society at different points in history. Emphasis will be placed on deconstructing tropes common to the action genre through a critical feminist framework, incorporating other methodologies including psychoanalysis and queer theory. 
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: Attendance 10%, Quiz 20%, Essay 40%, Final exam 30%
• READINGS: Online Readings

FILM ####A – Term

• INSTRUCTOR: …
• DESCRIPTION: …
• METHOD OF EVALUATION: …
• READINGS: …

Previous years:

• 2025-2026 Course Listings (F/W/S)
• 2024-2025 Course Listings (F/W/S)
• 2023-2024 Course Listings (F/W/S)
• 2022-2023 Course Listings (F/W/S)