harvard phd in film studies

• Film and Visual Studies
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A student enrolled in a PhD program in the Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences may achieve formal recognition for completing a secondary field in film and visual studies. The following requirements must be met to complete this secondary field.

• Completion of four graduate-level courses in film and visual studies with honors grades of B+ or above.
• AFVS 272: Film and Visual Studies
• Three other courses must be selected from among graduate courses taught by faculty of the Graduate Committee on Film and Visual Studies. The director of graduate studies will make a list of approved graduate seminars available at the beginning of each academic year.

Examinations

Successful completion of an examination or alternative means of demonstrating mastery in the field of film and visual studies is also required. The particular form of examination or alternative means of demonstrating mastery will be agreed upon by the DGS in film and visual studies and the DGS in the student’s home PhD department. This demonstration of mastery might be part of a departmental general or field examination, or it might be combined with departmental requirements in some other way. One or more members of the Graduate Committee on Film and Visual Studies will conduct and adjudicate the portion of the preliminary examination devoted to film and visual studies, and the results will be reported to both DGSs.

Students interested in declaring a secondary field in film and visual studies should consult with the FVS DGS as early as possible. At this time, a plan of study should be prepared and submitted to the DGS, to be approved by the Committee on Film and Visual Studies as well as the student’s home department.

For further information contact [email protected] .

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• Art, Film, and Visual Studies

The Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies (AFVS) cultivates skills in both the practice and the critical study of the visual arts. Its components include photography, filmmaking, animation, video art, painting, drawing, printmaking and sculpture, as well as film and visual studies, critical theory, and the study of the built environment. Undergraduates may pursue a Concentration with Tracks and Secondary Fields in Film/Video Production, Film and Visual Studies, and Studio Arts.

Note that most of the courses offered in AFVS are limited to 10 or 12 students because many are “making” courses, meaning students create artworks or films. The optimal way to conduct these courses is in small groups. Some seminars are also limited-enrollment. Students should visit The AFVS web site's courses page as well as each course’s Canvas site to learn about course admission procedures.  

Director of Undergraduate Studies: Matt Saunders Manager of Academic Programs: Paula Soares

Gateway Courses

Spring 2024.

AFVS 12: Drawing 1: Drawing as a Visual Language Katarina Burin 

A studio course to build the skills of drawing incrementally and expand students’ visual vocabulary. Drawings will be made from life, photographs and invention. Emphasis will be placed on enhancing our observational sensibilities through life drawing and the figure, focusing on all aspects of technical development, particularly the importance of line. The aim of this course is to expand drawing skills with intention and purpose.

AFVS 40H: Introduction to Still Photography Patrice Helmar

This course serves as an introduction to photography. We will concentrate on the contemporary and historic nature of the medium through lectures, discussions, and visiting artists. Tutorials and workshops using programs from the Adobe suite will cover digital workflow and proper camera operation. These sessions will include image capture, file management, image processing, and digital printing. Weekly assignments will include photographic exercises, readings, and written responses. Structure of the course will alternate between technical instruction, lab days, and critique. The culminating assignment will be a final series of photographs akin to a well honed collection of songs.

AFVS 65: Photographic/Cinematic—Introduction to Lens-Based Practices Joana Pimenta

Introduction to lens-based practices. We will focus on the photographic principles of cinematography for filmmakers (camera, lenses, scale of shots, exposure, composition, lighting, among others), and work with a series of photography-based exercises for moving image, using both still and moving image cameras, and working across film and video. This is a foundations course for work in film/video, with a specific focus on cinematography, where students will learn through practice photographic fundamentals that will be central to their moving image work.

FYSEMR 63W: Vegetal Humanities—Paying Attention to Plants in Contemporary Art Carrie Lambert-Beatty

This class invites you to practice a new kind of plant-consciousness. Our guides will be contemporary artists and thinkers who are encouraging new relationships between human and vegetal life, or recalling very old ones. Suddenly, we have plant protagonists, gardens in galleries, and botany-based forms of philosophy, architecture, music and more. Following the lead of these culture-makers and their work, we will draw on the new science of plant communication and learning in this class; uncover plant-based histories and renew ancient understandings of human-plant relations. But plants themselves will also be primary sources, as each student follows a sequence of exercises to deepen understanding of a plant "interviewee"—one they'll grow at home from an unidentified seed. At the same time, we will ask critical questions: with climate crisis upon us, in a time of social inequity, poisonous politics, and mass dislocations, why this attraction to plants? Is the vegetal turn a diversion from tough human problems? Or is there reason to think a cultural change could, even now, change the fate of nature?

GENED 1156: Modern Art and Modernity  Maria Gough, David Joselit, and Ewa Lajer-Burcharth

What role do artistic practices play in the formation of modern culture and society, and how does art foster critical reflection and debate?How has modernity—understood as a socio-economic reality, technological condition, cultural discourse, and set of aesthetic practices—redefined the purpose and function of art over the past three hundred years or so?  What role has modern art played in the constitution of the modern experience of subjectivity?  Beginning in the early 18thC and concluding in the early 21stC, the course traces art’s transformation from a tool of power elites into an instrument also of broad public instruction and civic debate on controversial topics.  By learning about the diversity of ways in which modern artists have contributed to the production and critique of cultural and social life you will acquire the skills to make the most of your experience of art exhibitions and museums.  This knowledge of the long history of modern art will help you better navigate a cultural present characterized by the ever-greater importance in everyday life of the production and consumption of images. It will also enable you to gain a deeper awareness of how art participates in critical dissent and aesthetic speculation in today's troubled world.  

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Film Studies

Jorge Sánchez Cruz

Emmet von Stackelberg

Karen Huang

Vikrant Dadawala

Steven Biel

Lauren Kaminsky

Angela S. Allan

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• Ph.D. Candidates in East Asian Arts/Film/Cultural Studies

Carolyn Bell

Carolyn Bell studies the visual and material culture of premodern Japan, focusing on intersections between tea ceremony, the global textile trade, and...

Daniel Borengasser

Menglan Chen

Menglan Chen is a doctoral student of East Asian film and media studies at Harvard University. Her research focuses on rethinking modern and...

Leah Justin-Jinich

After obtaining a Master’s degree in Japanese literature at the University of Colorado, Boulder, Leah Justin-Jinich entered the Department of East Asian...

Mari Kishi is a queer film and media scholar from Japan. They received their BA in Law from Kyoto University and their MA in...

Janet Louie

Janet Louie specializes in the popular media cultures of Japan and Sinophone East Asia with a...

Alina Scotti

Alina Scotti studies the visual culture and media of modern China. She earned an MSt in Oriental Studies from the...

Yedong Sh-Chen

Shao-Hung (Tim) Teng

Jeremy Woolsey

Jeremy Woolsey received his M.A. from the Graduate School of Global Arts at Tokyo University of the Arts in 2019. His current research traces...

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Filmmaking Becomes a Classroom

• Posted April 4, 2024
• By Gabriela Dumancela
• Arts in Education
• Climate Change and Education
• Informal and Out-of-School Learning

Hollow Tree , a documentary by Learning, Design Innovation and Technology (LDIT) master's student Kira Akerman, follows three teenagers coming of age in their sinking homeland of Louisiana. For the first time, they notice the Mississippi River’s engineering, stumps of cypress trees, and billowing smokestacks, and their different perspectives — as Indigenous, white, and Angolan young women — shape their story of the climate crisis. In Akerman’s process of “filmmaking as a classroom,” she facilitates a learning experience for these three young women and involves them in a boundary-breaking learning journey. They ask questions and shape the narrative, challenging traditional, extractive storytelling methods. Through Hollow Tree — which was screened at HGSE this week as part of the Swamp Capitalism Event Series, an interdisciplinary project of History Design Studio Fellow Robin McDowell — Akerman inspires conversations about climate change, environmental justice, and historical awareness. 

Recently, Akerman discussed Hollow Tree , her passions for filmmaking and education, and the process of producing her recent project. 

How does your background in education intersect with your interests in filmmaking and climate change? For many years, I have worked with Ripple Effect , a New Orleans-based educational nonprofit dedicated to teaching "water literacy" in K–12 education. I am a storytelling consultant, and I recently made a short film to anchor a curriculum about New Orleans’ flooding. I also am a consultant for Tulane University's Center for the Gulf South (NOCGS) , an interdisciplinary, place-based institute that focuses on New Orleans and the broader Gulf South region. My films Station 15 and Hollow Tree evolved from my experiences of climate change in New Orleans and ask how we learn to live here, as the city continues to sink, and hurricanes and flooding increase. The executive directors of NOCGS and Ripple Effect have also been asking this question, as well as many of my other New Orleans friends, colleagues, and collaborators. My films emerged from this intellectual and existential engagement with my community, and model place-based, interdisciplinary, and intergenerational learning about water. 

In a Southern Cultures essay , you wrote about the concept of “filmmaking as a classroom.” What does this mean, and how does this inform your work? "Filmmaking as a classroom" describes my practice of documenting experiential learning and observation. My filmmaking team redistributes narrative power to the young women in the film via a process of co-learning. The young women's questions drive the film forward. Once the film is complete, the young women attend screenings and are part of Q&A’s. Hollow Tree is intended to be a widening circle of learning, and in turn, ever-widening actions.   I have attempted to create a filmmaking process for the young women in my film — and their communities — that benefits them. My process is, in part, an effort to remedy exploitative practices in art and politics like extractive storytelling — storytelling that doesn’t respect the humanity or needs of the community whose story is being told.  

How does the film explore the history and current environmental issues along the Mississippi River? Hollow Tree invites three young women, who did not previously know each other, to learn with me, my filmmaking team, and their respective communities. They travel to different sites along the Mississippi River, where they engage in dialogue with engineers, activists, and Indigenous leaders. As I encourage the young people in my film to notice their surroundings, they begin to imagine Louisiana's past — its history of slavery, Indigenous dispossession, and colonization — and, by extension, Louisiana's future. 

The film does not have a single message or tell you what to think. Instead, it models observing one’s environment and connecting with one's community, respecting that knowledge comes in many forms, and not just from academic spaces.  Master's student Kira Akerman

At Harvard, have you experienced any classes or meaningful moments that impacted your work as a filmmaker? The Ed School has helped me to find the language to translate my filmmaking into an educational space and to articulate the learning design of my films. As a student in LDIT, I have taken two courses with Professor Karen Brennan, both with an emphasis on learning design, and courses with Professor Jarvis Givens, and Harvard Professors Brandon Terry and Henry Louis Gates Jr. It has been an important exploration into how scholars and scientists teach climate change.  Serendipitously, Dr. Robin McDowell is a History Design Studio fellow at the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research this year. Robin is a friend from New Orleans, and she also appears as an expert in Hollow Tree . 

McDowell was part of the Hollow Tree screening at HGSE and also led a connected workshop, correct?   Yes. She led a pigment making workshop at the History Design Studio following the film screening. The pairing of a Hollow Tree screening and pigment-making workshop was piloted during our shared artist’s residency at Tulane University's Small Center. I often pair workshops along with Hollow Tree screenings — for example, in the Houma Medicine Wheel Garden, through climate storytelling, and pigment making — that deepen the learning experience of the film. It is meaningful that we are able to replicate this experience at Harvard — thank you Dean Long and the History Design Studio!  

How do you hope Hollow Tree will contribute to conversations around climate change, environmental justice, and historical awareness?  Hollow Tree is a model for communities everywhere to confront the climate crisis. The film suggests that if we can recognize the long colonial histories of injustice that persist today — and shape our own homeplaces and learning environments —we can begin to respond differently and with repair. 

What message would you like viewers to take away from Hollow Tree ? The film does not have a single message or tell you what to think. Instead, it models observing one’s environment and connecting with one's community, respecting that knowledge comes in many forms, and not just from academic spaces. That young women and young women of color can learn about their engineered environments and reimagine them. That infrastructure shapes our social and emotional worlds.  

Are you working on any new projects?  Yes. I’m evolving many of the ideas of Hollow Tree into a new project. Stay tuned!

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Art, Film, and Visual Studies

Undergraduate

The concentration in Art, Film, and Visual Studies (AFVS) cultivates skills in both the practice and the critical study of the visual arts. The modes of teaching combine the intensity of conservatory programs with the broad intellectual aims of a liberal arts college. Within AFVS, there are three different areas of focus—1) studio arts, 2) film/video making, and 3) film and visual studies—and each have slightly different requirements.

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Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies  

• AFVS congratulates Alum Lance Oppenheim on the recent premier of his second feature film, Spermworld, which is now streaming on Hulu, Disney, and FX

FX’s “SPERMWORLD,” a documentary feature directed by Lance Oppenheim, produced by The New York Times and Edgeline Films, and inspired by the Times’ article “ The Sperm Kings Have a Problem: Too Much Demand ” by Nellie Bowles, will premiere on Friday, March 29 at 10 p.m. ET/PT on FX and stream the next day on Hulu.

“SPERMWORLD” is a road movie set inside the new wild west of baby making – online forums where sperm donors connect with hopeful parents. Against the landscape of roadside motels, abandoned shopping malls and suburban bathrooms across the country, the film follows intimate encounters between donors and recipients as they exchange more than just genetic material. “SPERMWORLD” examines how our fantasies about partnership and parenthood shape our deepest desires. What emerges in this new feature-length documentary directed by Lance Oppenheim is an incisive portrait of the search for human connection in an increasingly alienating world. Read More.

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• AFVS graduate student Carolyn Bailey receives the 2024 Jonathan Kahana Graduate Student Writing Award in Documentary Studies
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• AFVS welcomes Walid Raad as the 2024 Solomon Fellow

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