Focusing on the study of the moving image, as well as sound, the program enables students to analyze how cinema creates meanings through particular forms, techniques, and styles; how industrial organization affects the way films are produced and received; and how the social context in which they are made and circulated influences our understanding of the medium.

At the same time, the goal is to situate the cinema and related media in broader contexts: modernity, modernism, and the avant-garde; narrative theory, poetics, and rhetoric; commercial entertainment forms and consumer culture; sexuality and gender; constructions of ethnic, racial, and national identities; and international media production and circulation.

Students focusing their studies in Cinema and Media Studies major will be trained in critical, formal, theoretical, and historical thinking and analysis. The curriculum fosters discussion and writing skills, and students will gain the tools to approach film history as well as today's media environment within specific cultural contexts and broad transnational perspectives.

Students wishing to major in Cinema and Media Studies should meet with the Director of Undergraduate Studies early in their second year to help construct their course plan going forward; this meeting should take place by the end of Spring Quarter of a student's second year. Participation in the major must be declared to the Director of Undergraduate Studies, and the subsequent approved paperwork will be sent to the student's College adviser for official registration.