The MA in Film Studies (Film, Culture and Society) programme emphasises the relationship between film and society while viewing the medium as a unique point of contact between culture, politics and social life. Core courses in film history and theory examine some of these relationships in general terms, while option courses allow students to focus on specific areas. The particular objectives of the programme are:
The course is a full-time degree taken over a twelve-month period (September 2010 to August 2011). The year is divided into two teaching semesters (September to December and January to April). The summer period will be used to complete a minor dissertation.
The programme comprises four core seminar courses during the academic year and a choice of 4 options (plus a research methods seminar) over two 12-week semesters.
ECTS weighting: MA-90 ECTS; PDip-60 ECTS
Programme fee, academic year 2007-08 E.U. students: €6,005 Non-E.U. students: €11,500*
*Subject to ratification
Please note: fees are correct at the time of online publication, but are subject to change (E&EO); non-E.U. fees must be paid in full prior to registration.
Application
Applications to this programme are made online via The Postgraduate Applications Centre (PAC).
Please click here to download the PAC user guidelines
Minimum entry requirements
The number of places is limited. You should have a level 8 honours primary degree (at least Second Class Honours in one subject, or a U.S. GPA 3.2). Students who do not meet the honours degree requirement may be admitted to the course, subject to appropriate arrangements such as a qualifying examination. These students will be required to register initially for a Postgraduate Diploma. Students on the Postgraduate Diploma may progress to the MA and undertake a dissertation if they achieve an average of at least 60% in all course work during the year.
Along with supporting documentation required with your application and listed on the PAC site, you should include a writing sample consisting of either a graded academic essay or a 1000-word review of a recent film.
Selection criteria
Applicants should be driven by a passion for film and its analysis. Potential participants may also be invited to attend for interview.
Examination arrangements
The course is assessed by a combination of exam and essay work. Some courses may include assessment by presentation.
Career opportunities
The MA programme is designed to enhance students' prospects for undertaking further research at PhD level, or for participation in a wide range of film-related careers, including teaching, programming and exhibition, curatorial work, and arts journalism.
Visitors and guest seminars
The Huston School hosts an extensive range of special events and guest seminars during the year, which students are expected to attend. Visitors since 2003 have included: Gabriel Byrne, Seamus McGarvey, Fionnula Flanagan, Lenny Abrahamson, Mark O'Halloran, James Cromwell, John Boorman, Roddy Doyle, Colin MacCabe, Laura Mulvey, Howard Rodman, Mike Figgis, Peter Sheridan, Liz Gill, Paddy Breathnach, Alan Gilsenan, Maryann DeLeo and others. Over the last three years the Huston School has also hosted a series of international conferences: Early Cinema, Women in the Picture, New Perspectives on the Quiet Man, New Scottish Cinema and several symposia on the topic of ‘Representing Sport'.
Programme content (subject to change)
Module ECTS Core courses:
Film History 1 10
The aim of this course is to provide an overview of American film history from its ‘classical’ period; (c. 1930-1960’). This overview will take as its organising principle the dominance of genre as a structuring principle for American film, exploring the concept and a number of genres in detail.
Critical Theory 1 10
This course aims to provide a critical understanding of classic and post-war film theories and their applications, assessing the impact of structural theories on debates about representation, concepts of film language and spectatorship. This semester’s course will focus on critical approaches to the question of how meaning is produced within/through the film text.
Film History 2 10
European Auteur Cinema
Modernity, Meaning and the Crises of Representation
The primary focus of each class in this course will be a screening followed by student-led discussion (presentation) relating to relevant films.
Critical Theory 2 10
This semester’s course will offer students an insight into the means by which meaning can be created outside the film text. It will assess the role played by the audience and the audience’s prior knowledge of the film canon in the creation of a film’s meaning. It will also engage with critical debates on the ways that digital technologies are transforming the means by which film creates meaning.
Options*:
Forms of Film 5
This course aims to explore a range of forms of signifying practice in different areas of film: shorts, fiction features and documentary making. It will look at creative work in film which attempts to re-invent and reconstruct modes of representation and perception that are systematically denied within the terms of current socio-political and cultural reality.
Vietnam Cinema 5
This course centres on representations of the Vietnam War, from both American and Vietnamese perspectives, and engages a range of themes including theoretical issues of translation, selectivity and knowledge consumption, and thematic issues such as neocolonial discourse, gender and postwar legacies.
Imagining Irelands 5
This course provides students with a historical survey of representations of Ireland in cinema. It examines the major themes apparent in these representations and considers the challenges Irish filmmakers face in attempting to articulate a distintive indigenous cinema with integrity.
Soviet Cinema 5
This course examines the history of Soviet and Russian cinema, focusing on the principal artists and works, and providing a critical understanding of the aesthetic, cultural and political movements that influenced their formation.
Pyschoanalysis,the Unconscious & Cinema 5
This module will introduce students to the study of film utilising psychoanalysis and other adjacent approaches to the understanding of the human psyche. Topics and ideas such as the representation of the unconscious and memory in film will be explored; the course will also discuss the work of individual directors such as Hitchcock, Resnais, Kieslowski and Tarkovsky in detail.
Screening Irish America 5
This course offers a broadly chronological introduction to key themes relating to cinematic representations of Ireland and the Irish in American Cinema and through theoretical frameworks such as cultural studies, new historicism, ethnicity and gender studies seeks to go beneath such representations to uncover symptomatic issues in American society.
Scéalta Scáileáin na Gaeilge/Screen Stories in Irish 5&
Tabharfaidh an modúl seo forléargas ar stair agus ar thábhacht na Gaeilge sna scannáin agus sna léirithe Gaeilge a rinneadh don scáileán ó 1920 i leith, na Scannáin idirnáisiúnta ina measc. Tabharfar léargas ar léirithe Bord Scannán na hÉireann agus TnaG/TG4 ó bunaíodh an stáisiún; déanfar iniúchadh ar ról Ghael Linn, na léiritheoirí neamhspleácha agus RTÉ chomh maith.
Research Methods - Minor Dissertation 30
*Not all options will be available in any given year.
& Beidh na léachtaí go léir don chúrsa seo á seachadadh trí Ghaeilge/All lectures for this course will be delivered in Irish.
PAC code: GYA09
NUIG code: 1FU2 (MA); 1FU3 (PDip) PAC code: GYA09 Mode of study: full-time
Duration: one year
Places available: 14
Closing date: DEADLINE EXTENDED
Commences: Sept 6th, 2010
Programme Director: Dr. Seán Crosson,
Huston School of Film and Digital Media, NUI Galway.
Tel.: 00 353 91 495687
E-mail: sean.crosson@nuigalway.ie
