Screen Studies

Screen Studies

From the cinema screen to widescreen televisions, video games to mobile phones and from laptops to 3G convergent devices, contemporary society is dominated by interaction with a huge diversity of screens. As the world is increasingly influenced by the cultural and communications industries, it is becoming clear that as spectators, consumers and citizens, our shared and contested understandings of the world are largely mediated in a visual form.

The Screen Studies degree component focuses on the academic analysis and scholarly understanding of such screen cultures. Our students will study and engage with many different aspects of screen culture – from the traditional approaches of film and media studies to new, cutting edge research into online identities, computer game technology and the popularity of sites like YouTube and Facebook.

A Screen Studies module can be taken with Broadcasting and Journalism or Media Communications - an excellent combination for those who intend to work within the communications industries as it naturally expands the students’ knowledge of the world of visual media.

Level 4 modules

Semester One
Virtual Worlds - Critical Approaches to New Media (HUM 414)

This module is designed to introduce and critically examine a diverse range of new and old media technologies and observe the altering processes of engagement and understanding within modern media environments. From video games to CGI, documentary forms and virtual existences, fan re-appropriation and engagement, the diverse nature and usage of such ‘virtual worlds’ will be explored within a flexible framework of critical and cultural understanding.
Tutor: Stephen C. Kenyon

Semester Two
Big Screen/ Small Screen – Critical Approaches to Film and Television Studies (HUM 413)

From Hollywood blockbusters to television news, from documentary auteurs like Michael Moore to soap opera stars, contemporary society engages and interprets the world through both the big and small screens. This module is designed to be an introduction to the academic and scholarly approaches to the study of film and television texts, providing a comprehensive overview of key historical contexts and an initiation into relevant theoretical developments.
Tutor: Delyth Puleston Davies and Stephen C. Kenyon

Level 5 modules

Semester One
National Cinemas: British & European Film Culture (HUM 518)

Encapsulating the best of British and European film culture, this module seeks to chart the many aspects that link films made in the UK with a wide diversity of films produced in mainland Europe – for example the strong links between British Social Realism and Italian Neo-Realism.  It sets out to examine and conceptualize the institutional, economic, social and political contexts within which British and European films have been made and viewed. Appropriate academic theories are applied in order to analyze the film texts with particular emphasis being given to significant eras, movements, genres, directors and societal concerns. Although the students are encouraged to approach the work as ‘cultural historians’, modern and contemporary films are also included in order to examine the changes and continuities in both film and socio-cultural history.
Tutor: Delyth Puleston Davies and Stephen C. Kenyon

Semester Two
World Cinemas 1: American Cinema (HUM 516)

This module offers the opportunity for in-depth study of the American film industry from the introduction of sound at the end of the 1920s to the global blockbusters of the early 21st century, from the Classical Studio System to contemporary independent companies. This huge subject is primarily approached via generic categorization with each genre examined in a broadly chronological way, following its development from introduction to contemporary status. For example, we will explore the development of the crime genre from the gritty Warner Brothers gangster films of the 1930s through Francis Ford Coppola’s celebrated Godfather trilogy to Quentin Tarantino’s cult films coming right up to date with contemporary examples.
Tutor: Delyth Puleston Davies

Life on Screen – Television Drama, Documentary Modes and New Media (HUM517)

This wide-ranging module will focus on the representations – both past and present – of ‘real life’ on the small screen. Although students will be actively encouraged to explore their own spectatorship/engagement with texts, the formal lecture sessions will concentrate on key television genres, significant global websites and crucial issues including regulation, censorship, privacy and social responsibility.
Tutor: Delyth Puleston Davies and Stephen C. Kenyon

Level 6 modules (2010 -2011)

Semester One
Gender, Sexuality and Representation (HUM 310)

This final year module builds on the knowledge and analytical skills you have developed and encourages you to use critical theories such as feminism and psychoanalysis to examine print advertisements, film texts and television programmes. Representations of gender and sexuality dominate our mediated view of the world and our considerations of how gender stereotypes operate or how patriarchal ideology can be defined both enrich and stimulate awareness and understanding of the media. From advertisements in contemporary men’s magazines to analysis of cross-dressing in comedies like The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert or the strong female characters in EastEnders, this module will encourage the re-evaluation of assumptions and expectations.
Tutor: Delyth Puleston Davies

Semester Two
Popular Cinema (HUM316)

This module examines how movies are marketed, sold and consumed. From effects laden blockbusters, to cult movies, international remakes and fan consumption and re-appropriation, we will analyse how the ‘popular’ is read and consumed.
Indicative content including; the Blockbuster, the films of Roger Corman, Digital Video Effects and their use, Cult movies, Asian Cinema.
Tutor: Stephen C. Kenyon

Level 6 modules (2011 -2012)

Identity, Gender and Sexuality in Screen Cultures (HUM 611)

This module explores and engages with an ambitious range of mass media texts to encourage the students to interact with a diversity of representations of identity, gender and sexuality. From ‘hard-bodied’ filmic masculinity to television stereotyping of the older woman, from avatars and their super-human roles to mis/representation of self on social networking sites, this module will provide the student with a sophisticated overview of screen studies representations and encourage them to focus on topics/media texts that are most relevant to their intellectual interests and career aspirations.  Drawing from an appropriately wide range of academic approaches including traditional (media studies, social sciences and anthropology) and the modern (critical approaches to digital interactivity and the realm of simulation), our study will provide an in-depth academic investigation of contemporary screen cultures.
Tutor: Delyth Puleston Davies

World Cinemas 2: Films from the Southern Hemisphere (HUM 612)

The module is intended to place under scrutiny specific areas of the cinema of the Southern Hemisphere, to allow continued application of critical theory, and relevance of social context within a worldwide cinematic base.
Specific areas for examination include; Post-war Japanese Cinema (Directors for study incl. Kurosawa, Ozu, Mizoguchi), Australian National Cinema (Peter Weir, Peter Jackson, Nic Roeg, Andrew Dominik), New Directors in Asian Cinema such as  Park Chan Wook, Kim Jee Woon, Tsai Ming-Liang. These sample areas will also be considered in a wider sense, as we tackle questions such as the notion of cross-pollination and East/West adaptation, the culture of the remake, and what happens when films cross the cultural divide?
Tutor: Stephen C. Kenyon

For more details on Screen Studies modules contact Delyth Puleston Davies at pulestond@glyndwr.ac.uk or Stephen C. Kenyon at s.kenyon@glyndwr.ac.uk.