This course provides the student with an introduction to film as an art form. The course presents a vocabulary for film analysis as well as the critical and analytical skills for interpreting films. The course examines the major aesthetic, structural, historical, and technical components of film. It considers how a film works, by looking internally at the multiple aspects that comprise the construction of a film, and externally at how a film affects the viewers. Students will watch a variety of feature films, primarily American, ranging in date from the 1940's through the 2000's. Clips from alternative films and foreign films will also be screened and discussed. Any artistic background in film, music, theatre, painting, sculpture, etc., is helpful, but no specific technical knowledge of film, video, or photography is required or expected.

This course provides an introduction to Visual Culture studies, an interdisciplinary field of study that explores the ways in which our lives are shaped through contact with, and consumption of, images, designed objects and visual forms of media, communication, and information. Students will develop a critical understanding of different aspects of contemporary visual culture as well as an awareness of its recent historical development.

In this tech-forward environment, students will gain hands-on media-production experience and exposure to innovative technologies to enhance their storytelling and media capabilities. Students will develop a project, business plan (where appropriate) and pitch for entry in campus competitions, and will learn how to concisely “sell” their innovative media ideas, and prototype, in a succinct and compelling way to possible funders. Students will also learn how to navigate funding opportunities that are internal to and external to RIT, how to identify gaps in the media-production landscape, and how to make themselves distinct from competitors. At the end of the course, students will have produced, and pitched, their own innovative media project ready for competition.

This course traces the historical development of women’s activism in the art world from the 1970s to the present. We will interpret how this art activism, which artists and scholars alike have referred to as the feminist art movement, has examined how gender informs the ways art is made, viewed, conceptualized in history and theory, and exhibited in museums and visual culture, in a range of cultural contexts. We will also analyze how current artists, critics, and curators continue to build on this history, in particular how they use the concept of gender intersectionality to develop a variety of new creative practices, theories, modes of exhibition and social engagement.

This course traces the historical development of women’s activism in the art world from the 1970s to the present. We will interpret how this art activism, which artists and scholars alike have referred to as the feminist art movement, has examined how gender informs the ways art is made, viewed, conceptualized in history and theory, and exhibited in museums and visual culture, in a range of cultural contexts. We will also analyze how current artists, critics, and curators continue to build on this history, in particular how they use the concept of gender intersectionality to develop a variety of new creative practices, theories, modes of exhibition and social engagement.