The Film Study Center

The Film Study Center (FSC) supports work from the ethnographic to the experimental that interprets the world in images and sounds and expands the expressive potential of audiovisual media. To this end one of its central endeavors is to provide annual fellowships for Harvard-affiliated practitioners of film, video, sound, or photographic nonfiction work. Those eligible to apply for FSC-Harvard fellowships are Harvard graduate students, faculty, staff, postdoctoral and research fellows, and teaching assistants. Applicants are expected to be experienced practitioners; for graduate students, such experience may be acquired in film/video practice-based courses offered at Harvard. Fellowships include modest funds as well as access to production equipment, postproduction facilities, and advanced technical support. Fellows also participate in regular meetings of the Nonfiction Workshop, which provide opportunities for fellows to screen their works-in-progress, from rushes to rough cuts, and to receive feedback and critiques from other fellows, as well as from visiting artists. FSC-Harvard fellowships can thus complement graduate students’ course-work and dissertation research.

Media Anthropology Lab

The Media Anthropology Lab (MAL) at Harvard is a unique collaboration between the Department of Anthropology and VES. The aim of MAL is to support innovative combinations of aesthetics and ethnography, with original nonfiction media practices that explore the bodily praxis and affective fabric of human existence. MAL provides an academic and institutional context for the development of work that is itself constitutively visual or acoustic—and which may thus complement the human sciences’ traditionally exclusive reliance on the written word. The instruction offered through MAL is thus distinct from other graduate visual anthropology programs in the United States in that it is practice-based. MAL offers intensive training in ethnographic media and hypermedia production. At its core is an intensive year-long course in “Sensory Ethnography.” Over a calendar year, students receive instruction in ethnographic media practices, producing a variety of original digital video and sound works. Advanced graduate students are also provided with training and equipment to produce substantial media ethnographies in conjunction with their written doctoral dissertations. In addition the Department of Anthropology now offers a PhD in Social Anthropology (with Media) for students who wish to make substantial ethnographic use of audiovisual media in their doctoral work.