> > > the OSU Screen Studies Program welcomes you. . .
 
As one of six programs within the OSU English Department, the Screen Studies program incorporates film studies, television studies, and studies in new media. The program’s most distinctive feature is the special emphasis that we give to theoretical questions about the moving image—questions that do not in any way abandon historical reflection, but instead understand history and theory as necessarily related enterprises. As instructors and mentors, we are committed to the notion that the goal of the university should not be simply to lead students to knowledge, but to help them become capable of producing knowledge themselves.

Housed in historic Morrill Hall, Screen Studies offers courses at both the graduate and undergraduate level. Undergraduate students may elect the Screen Option as part of their Bachelor's degree in English, while graduate students may pursue both the Master's degree and the Ph.D. in English with emphasis in Screen Studies. Courses cover a wide array of moving image productions and contexts—both American and international, ficton and non-fiction, narrative and avant-garde—and focus on the history, theory and aesthetics of screen-based representations, as well as their cultural and political impact.  

At the graduate level, we seek students who want to immerse themselves in critical theory as a way of opening up new ways of thinking the moving image. In turn, we take seriously the idea that moving image theory itself should be better recognized as a form of social and philosophical reflection. We invite you to look at some selected recent graduate course offerings in Screen Studies.

Recent or ongoing theses and dissertations by graduate students in the Screen Studies program include:
 
     • A theory of cinematic quotation
     • Technological prosthesis
     • Artaud, the subjectile and the cinematic cut
     • Cinephilia and radical politics
     • Torture and the contemporary horror film
     • Bollywood cinema and heterogeneous stylization

Graduate students teach courses in the popular undergraduate Screen Studies track. Teaching assistantships and other forms of support (including tuition waivers) are available; they are awarded on a competitive basis.

The Screen Studies program is also home to a lively film series, exciterbulb, which is strictly devoted to screening avant-garde films and videos in their original formats. In conjunction with the series we regularly bring in avant-garde film and video artists to screen and talk about their work. Our graduate students are thus in a relatively unique position to work on avant-garde media and to cross the theory/practice divide by engaging in conversations with artists such as Michelle Citron, Ken Jacobs, Mary Beth Reed, and Phil Solomon.