>about filmstudies

With the launch of a doctoral program in Film and Visual Studies this fall, Film Studies at Harvard completes a remarkable, and remarkably swift, process of institutionalization. No other discipline has made such tremendous progress in Harvard’s recent history. Film Studies only found an official curricular home in the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies (VES) in 2004. In 2006 the department inaugurated secondary fields of study for both graduate and undergraduate students. The graduate secondary field was the first of its kind in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and its overwhelming success led to the rapid approval of a full PhD program. The first cohort will arrive on campus in the fall of 2009. Finally, as Harvard has intensified its program of study abroad, so has Film Studies, with a summer program in Paris at La FEMIS.

The integration of film studies into the Harvard curriculum has deep roots. Professor Hugo Münsterberg was a pioneer in film theory when he published The Photoplay: A Psychological Study in 1916. Since those earliest days, eminent theorists such as Rudolf Arnheim and Stanley Cavell, as well as makers like Chantal Akerman, Miklós Jancsó, Hal Hartley, Mani Kaul, Spike Lee, Dušan Makavejev, and Raoul Ruiz, have written and taught at Harvard under the aegis of numerous departments. The tradition continues with the current faculty.

The film studies courses gathered on this website generally fall into one of three groups: VES offers courses on the history and theory of film as a major medium of modern visual art and culture; language and literature departments, such as East Asian, English, German, and Sanskrit and Indian Studies, present film as a counterpart to literary works and an integral expression of cultural formations; cultural studies departments such as anthropology and sociology consider film’s social functions.

Any student may pick and choose from these modes, but undergraduate
concentrators in Film Studies must explore them all. After foundational training
in film analysis and the history of cinema, concentrators explore the breadth of
theoretical, analytical, and historical approaches to film—its place within larger histories and its relationship to other media. Students pursuing a secondary field in Film Studies follow a more limited itinerary through these offerings. Graduate students pursuing the Doctor of Philosophy degree begin with two years of intensive coursework and advance to candidacy with a qualifying paper and comprehensive examinations. With access to unique collections, support for ambitious and innovative research, and truly individualized advising and instruction, Harvard graduate students will emerge poised to reshape the discipline.Beyond the courses that compose the bulk of this brochure, Film Studies at Harvard benefits from a vibrant production scene. Recently renovated space in Sever Hall has brought makers and critics into closer cooperation. VES offers courses in film and video production, the Film Study Center supports the production of nonfiction film, and Boston remains a center of documentary and other modes of film production. The Harvard Film Archive (HFA) is the most important venue for screening classic and contemporary cinema in all of New England. Under director Haden Guest it has launched an ambitious program of renovation and preservation. Yet the resources, both human and material, for the study and making of film are not confined to Sever Hall and the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, or even to Harvard University, but extend out to the greater Boston area.