Cinema Studies

Geoff Pingree, Director, Cinema Studies Program; Professor of Cinema Studies and English
E. Grace An, Associate Professor of Cinema Studies and French
Rian Brown-Orso, Associate Professor of New Media and Cinema Studies
William Patrick Day, Professor of English and Cinema Studies
Kyle Hartzell, Lecturer, Cinema Studies
Jeffrey Pence, Associate Professor of English and Cinema Studies
Joshua Sperling, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow

Visit the department webpage for up-to-date information on department faculty, visiting lecturers, and special events.

The Cinema Studies Program at Oberlin offers courses in both filmmaking, screenwriting, and critical studies. The major is not divided into separate tracks as we believe that knowing about how movies are made enhances critical work while a knowledge of the history and theory of cinema supports filmmaking.

Our program deals with cinema as an artistic practice and as a dynamic part of cultural and social history, placing cinema in the contexts of other media as well as cinema as part of a global network of the moving image.

As a program in a liberal arts college, we believe that studying cinema and making movies is an important way of learning about the world and how we live and act in it today. The moving image in all its forms and manifestations, from traditional theatrical movies, television, to digital streaming platforms, represents, mediates, and shapes our understanding of the world, our own experience, and our experience of others. Studying and creating cinema enhances our vision-in every sense of the term-of our world.

The Cinema major requires nine courses; students can count up to 4 courses from other College programs and departments among which are TIMARA in the Conservatory, Creative Writing, Theater Arts, Studio Art, English, Comparative Literature, Africana Studies, and East Asian Studies. Each student in the Cinema Major shapes their own program with the help of their adviser.

Students begin critical studies in Cinema with 100 and 200 level courses which are open without prerequisites; students interested in majoring in Cinema should plan to take Cine 290, Introduction to the Advanced Study of Cinema, by the end of their sophomore year, though the course is also open to students considering other majors.

The Program does not offer a general introductory course in filmmaking. We think students can begin learning to make movies by choosing the kind of filmmaking that most interests them from among the 300 level Cinema Workshops-The Short Film, Documentary and Journalism, First Person Cinema, Experiments in Sound and Vision, and Animation. These small enrollment courses have special tutorial sessions for students with little or no experience in filmmaking. Each of these courses may be repeated for full credit.

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Majors and Minors

Cinema Studies Major

Cinema Studies

Majors and Minors

Courses