After an extensive, three-year long planning process and the launch of their new program this term, the faculty members who created the University’s new cinema studies major are discovering just how much students want the degree.
Michael Aronson, associate director of the cinema studies program and associate professor of English, said about 100 students already declared cinema studies their major during the first five weeks of its existence, setting the pace to completely clobber the faculty’s original goal: 75 declared majors within the first three years.
University freshman Sabrina Gimenez is one of them.
“I came to the UO because of the cinema studies major,” she said. “It’s new, and we can put our foot in the door.”
Kathleen Karlyn, associate English professor and director of the cinema studies program, saw students’ excitement from the beginning.
“Students are extremely enthusiastic,” she said. “The first night my colleagues and I held an informal advising session, we expected 20 to 30 students to show up. There were around 100.”
Aronson said the idea for the major “came from both students and faculty across campus with shared interests and passions in making and understanding moving images.”
But before it could become a major, a team of UO faculty known as the Executive Committee for Cinema Studies had to form the curriculum and obtain approval from the state.
The cinema studies major offers classes from such diverse disciplines as English, journalism, humanities, digital arts and foreign language.
As a part of the major, students can participate in a variety of classes that help them develop certain skills and explore theory useful to their field. An important part of the new curriculum is the opening of classes from other departments that were previously only available to those departments’ majors.
University sophomore Molly O’Connor, a pre-marine biology major, said she was interested in the cinema studies program and that she hoped it would be offered as a minor before she graduated.
“When I came to this school, I was sad that they didn’t have a cinema studies program,” she said. “But now as a sophomore, I think the new major will benefit the school and provide more opportunities for students.”
Art history assistant professor Kate Mondloch, a member of the Executive Committee for Cinema Studies who teaches courses in moving image and screen-based production in contemporary art, said cinema studies majors were opening themselves up to a wide range of future opportunities.
“I think it’s really important to emphasize that ‘cinema’ is in no way limited to commercial Hollywood cinema,” she said. “The category also includes experimental film and video, new media art, independent film and a whole array of cultural activities that have been defined in relationship to cinema.”
Journalism professor Janet Wasko, who teaches courses about the political economy of film, said she thought students would benefit from the variety of classes in the cinema studies curriculum.
“The cinema studies major will offer students an excellent opportunity to study film from different perspectives, as the program is truly interdisciplinary,” she said.
Before cinema studies was declared a major, students interested in film could obtain a film studies certificate. This certificate, however, did not offer as many classes as the new major does and was more like a minor.
Aronson, who teaches the popular History of Motion Picture sequence, said he thought the major would grow and progress in the future because cinema is an important force in today’s culture.
“Careers in media, education, entertainment, the arts and sciences increasingly require the skills to understand, use and produce materials containing moving images,” he said. “Today, we live in a very visual world, and so it’s critical that our students be literate in media like cinema.”
And students at this University have a unique opportunity that is unlike those offered at other campuses, Aronson said.
“Today, there are no other research institutions between the Bay Area and Vancouver, B.C., that offer a cinema studies program that so fully integrates the history, theory and production of cinema, and as a result we believe the program has considerable potential for sustained growth,” he said.
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