Fall 2026 Courses

Any course on this list may count as an elective for the Global Cinema Minor or the Film Studies concentration in English and Comparative Literature. Some of these courses, however, will not automatically count, and in those cases you will need to request a Tar Heel Tracker adjustment.

***Also keep in mind that some restrictions may apply to production courses. Be sure to check Connect Carolina for specifications by the department offering the course.

For those following the Film Studies Concentration:

Foundational

ENGL 142 Film Analysis (Flaxman)

Survey II

ENGL 323 American Cinema of the 1970s (Warner)

ENGL 378 Film Criticism (Johnson)

ENGL 380 Film History (Johnson)

Depth

CMPL 280 Film Genres: Science Fiction (Berland)

CMPL 280 Film Genres: Film Noir (Veggian)

ENGL 287 Black Horror and the Moving Image (Tinnin-Gadson)

CMPL 463 Cinema and Surrealism (Warner)

Writing-Intensive

ENGL 323 American Cinema of the 1970s (Warner)

ENGL 378 Film Criticism (Johnson)

ENGL 380 Film History (Johnson)

ENGL 391 Storytelling in Film and Television (Cohen)

Research-Intensive

CMPL 463 Cinema and Surrealism (Dr. Warner)

ENGLISH AND COMPARATIVE LITERATURE

CMPL 144 Engaging Film and Media (001 – LEC)*

Controversy: Films and Pop Culture of the New Millennium

MoWe 4:40PM – 5:30PM

Daelena Tinnin-Gadson

“Controversy…what controversy?” This course explores films, popular culture, television, and social media that have become the center of intense, spectacular, and sometimes history defining controversies of the 2000s and 2010s. How are films, popular culture or even singular celebrities deemed shocking, provocative, or dangerous in ways that compel loud and dramatic expressions of disapproval? We will consider the arguments issued in response to films and pop culture that span genres and generations and the intense social, political, and cultural feelings that ideas, images, and historic events can produce. Using controversy as a lens we will draw our attention to the history of contentious media and popular culture to reveal the complex interplay between cultural politics, aesthetic taste, the forces of media production, and the image makers who rise or fall in their attempts to meet the “moment.” From celebrity mishaps to reality television and academy award winning films, controversy reveals deeper cultural pressures surrounding issues of race, class, gender, sexuality and more.

Films, Media, and Pop Culture likely to be shown or discussed: Crash (Paul Haggis), Juno (Jason Reitman), The Interview (Seth Rogan & Evan Goldberg), Joker (Todd Phillips), Superbowl XXXVIII Halftime Show, Hurricane Katrina, America’s Next Top Model, The Real Housewives Franchise, and more.

Join us to learn why controversy matters and how it reflects what, how and who we watched at the dawn of a new millennium. FC-AESTH; FC-WAYS OF KNOWING; First-Year Appropriative; Visual or Performing Arts; GL- Global Issues

*Students enrolled in CMPL 144 are required to register for a recitation (REC) slot.

CMPL 144 Engaging Film and Media (601 REC)

Fr 1:25PM – 2:15PM

TBD

This viewing-intensive course introduces students to topics and traditions in film and other media.

CMPL 144 Engaging Film and Media (602 REC)

Fr 2:30PM – 3:20PM

This viewing-intensive course introduces students to topics and traditions in film and other media.

CMPL 144 Engaging Film and Media (603 REC)

Fr 2:30PM – 3:20PM

TBD

This viewing-intensive course introduces students to topics and traditions in film and other media.

CMPL 144 Engaging Film and Media (604 REC)

Fr 3:35PM – 4:25PM

TBD

This viewing-intensive course introduces students to topics and traditions in film and other media.

CMPL 220 Global Authors: Jane Austen

MoWe 4:40PM – 5:55PM

Inger Brodey

Fulfills a major core requirement. This course examines the fiction of Jane Austen and her literary and cultural influence across the globe. We will see echoes of Austen in novels and films from around the world and explore how her work transcends generational, cultural, and geographical boundaries. What is the secret of her global appeal?

CMPL 280 Film Genres (001-LEC)

MoWeFr 1:25PM – 2:15PM

Henry Veggian

This course introduces students to the methods of genre theory and analysis as they pertain to cinema. The course may either provide a survey of several different genres or examine a particular genre in depth as it has evolved historically. National and/or transnational dimensions of popular genres may be emphasized.

CMPL 280 Film Genres (002-LEC)

TuTh 2:00PM – 3:15PM

Nicole Berland

CMPL 463 Cinema and Surrealism

TuTh 2:00PM – 3:15PM

Rick Warner

While focusing on cinema, this course will examine the emergence of surrealism as an inter-art movement in the years between the two World Wars of the 20th century. Our discussions will begin by considering the avant-garde origins of surrealism in France. From there, we will trace the aesthetic, political, and philosophical legacy of surrealism in contemporary international film and television. To some extent, we will compare surrealist cinema to surrealist developments in painting, literature, and photography, observing how surrealism’s historical evolution has been an intermedial project. We will cover a variety of genres and production modes along the way, including experimental short films, animation, documentaries, art films, and even mainstream, big-budget feature films. Considering examples from a wide range of cultural and transnational contexts, we will examine how surrealism has continually sought to reinvent itself by straddling avant-garde and commercial impulses as it makes its way into thrillers, comedies, horror, science fiction, and other popular genres. Several theorists and critics will guide our conversations, from leading surrealist intellectuals themselves to later writers devoted to reimagining the importance of surrealism. We will continually try to describe not only the conceptual conundrums posed by surrealism but also the emotional, visceral, and multisensorial effects of surrealism. To that end, we’ll consult texts from Freud’s “The Uncanny” through to phenomenological film theories that emphasize the affective, tactile, and atmospheric dimensions of film spectatorship. Our study of surrealism will also take us into concerns of gender and sexuality, and notions of the posthuman. We will also examine Afrosurrealism and its challenge to established canons of surrealism that neglect (or exploit) Black experience. Our purpose will be to work toward an understanding of surrealist cinema that is flexible enough to accommodate its many mutations over time, but firm enough to retain a special significance not to be confused with the merely bizarre. Our films and readings will increasingly force us to question many of the basic assumptions at the heart of our habitual ways of thinking and perceiving: the binary distinctions between self and other, mind and body, subject and object, human and animal, animate and inanimate, rational and irrational, dream and reality, and so forth.

***NOTE: some of the films we will examine necessarily feature disturbing and/or provocative scenes. This content is vital to the artworks and to the course as a whole; please enroll only if you plan to engage such representations in a responsible, critical manner with an eye toward nuance and complexity. Content warnings will be given for sexual violence, self-harm, and especially graphic violence should any of these issues arise in the films we watch.

ENGL 71 First-Year Seminar: Healers and Patients

MoWeFr 2:30PM – 3:20PM

Jane Thrailkill

This course explores the human struggle to make sense of suffering and debility. Texts are drawn from literature, anthropology, film, art history, philosophy, and biology.

ENGL 87H First-Year Seminar: Jane Austen, Then and Now

TuTh 9:30AM – 10:45AM

Inger Brodey

Student must be an honors first-year (or transfer who completed <24 post-HS college course credits at another institution) to qualify. Students may only enroll in one (1) First-Year Seminar or one (1) First-Year Launch during their time at UNC.

ENGL 142 Film Analysis (001-LEC)*

MoWe 4:40PM – 5:55PM

Gregory Flaxman

This course offers an introduction to the technical, formal, and narrative elements of the cinema.

*Students enrolled in ENGL 142 are required to register for a recitation (REC) slot.

ENGL 142 Film Analysis (001-REC)

Fr 10:10AM – 11:00AM

TBD

This course offers an introduction to the technical, formal, and narrative elements of the cinema

ENGL 142 Film Analysis (002-REC)

Fr 11:15AM – 12:05PM

TBD

This course offers an introduction to the technical, formal, and narrative elements of the cinema.

ENGL 142 Film Analysis (003-REC)

Fr 12:20PM – 1:10PM

TBD

This course offers an introduction to the technical, formal, and narrative elements of the cinema.

ENGL 142 Film Analysis (004-REC)

Fr 1:25PM – 2:15PM

TBD

This course offers an introduction to the technical, formal, and narrative elements of the cinema.

ENGL 142 Film Analysis (005-REC)

Fr 2:30PM – 3:20PM

TBD

This course offers an introduction to the technical, formal, and narrative elements of the cinema.

ENGL 142 Film Analysis (006-REC)

Fr 3:35PM – 4:25PM

TBD

This course offers an introduction to the technical, formal, and narrative elements of the cinema.

ENGL 143 Film and Culture (001-LEC)

TuTh 3:30PM – 4:45PM

TBD

Examines the ways culture shapes and is shaped by film. This course uses comparative methods to contrast films as historic or contemporary, mainstream or cutting-edge, in English or a foreign language, etc.

ENGL 143 Film and Culture (002-LEC)

MoWeFr 10:10AM – 11:00AM

Joseph Telegen

ENGL 287 Black Horror and the Moving Image

MoWeFr 12:20PM – 1:10PM

Daelena Tinnin-Gadson

This course explores Black horror as a cinematic universe held together through the logics, sounds, and aesthetics of anti-blackness, violence, nostalgia, Black trauma, and themes/tropes from horror media. We will consider the relationship between horror and Black modes of expression focusing on the various ways Black filmmakers, writers, and artists have attempted to visualize the haunting connections between the body, the flesh, and the cultural geography of America and the Black Diaspora.

ENGL 323 American Cinema of the 1970s: New Hollywood and Beyond

TuTh 11:00AM – 12:15PM

Rick Warner

From the mid 1960s through the 1970s, American cinema went through one of its most chaotic and adventurous periods, both formally and politically. Due in large part to an economic crisis within Hollywood as the classical studio system fell into decline, filmmakers were granted an unprecedented degree of creative freedom, and the films they made ushered in a short-lived “auteur renaissance” in which aesthetic experimentation often went hand in hand with social consciousness. We will investigate this period through a number of interpretive lenses and in relation to a variety of cultural and critical contexts. We begin by examining the breakdown of classical Hollywood cinema as it plays out in key genres. Considering a range of factors—such as the influence of European New Waves, the emergence of a bona fide youth culture, the rise of new performance styles, and demands for new representations and opportunities in the wake of Civil Rights and Second Wave feminist movements—we will study the development of a post-classical American cinema. We will consider concepts of film authorship; the preponderance of anti-heroic characters; challenges to conventional gender roles and identities; queer cinema; cult cinema and the midnight movie phenomenon; independent and avant-garde films; blaxploitation; and reconfigurations of genres including melodrama, the musical, the road movie, conspiracy thriller, film noir, art cinema, horror, western, dark comedy, heist film, and the war film. We will examine how the introduction of new technical resources, from Dolby multichannel stereo sound to advances in cinematography, expanded and informed the aesthetic possibilities of filmmaking. We will also take up questions of media change, namely film’s evolving relationship to (and its heated competition with) television. We will repeatedly consider the distinctive cultural moods of this tumultuous era as they imbue the styles, narratives, and atmospheres of our films. In many ways, American cinema of this period requires us to understand its peculiarities in atmospheric terms, at the level of look, feel, and sound, as the films channel the defining national and cultural moods of the time.

ENGL 378 Film Criticism

TuTh 9:30AM – 10:45AM

Martin Johnson

An introduction to the history and practice of film criticism.

ENGL 380 Topics In Film History: Animal Films

TuTh 12:30PM – 1:45PM

Martin Johnson

From the horses, pigs, and birds that appear in the early film experiments of Étienne-Jules Marey and Eadweard Muybridge to the animated menageries that populate films like Zootopia and Finding Nemo, animals have long been part of the cinema. But despite their popularity, we rarely consider the cultural, social, and ethical dimensions of animal films. In this course we will explore animals in the cinema, cutting across historical periods, national cinemas, and genres, not to mention species and breeds. Through screenings, readings, and discussions we will explore a wide range of issues related to animals and film, from questions of animal acting and stardom to animal rights to the relations between humans and animals.

ENGL 391 Storytelling in Film and TV

MoWeFr 12:20PM – 1:10PM

Marc Cohen

This course is dedicated to the study of key concepts of storytelling through theoretical readings and the media of film and TV. To learn the concepts, students will engage in analyses of filmed scenes and screenplays, and they will write scripted scenes. At the end of the semester, students will have written three 5-page analytical essays, an outline for a 4-scene act, and four contiguous screenplay scenes that, together, make up an act. For the final exam, students will present their revised four-scene act as a portfolio and will read an excerpt to the class.

GENERAL COURSE LIST

AAAD 59 Queer Black Film and Fiction

WeFr 5:05PM – 6:20PM

Kevin Irakoze

This course studies the intersection between Blackness and Queerness using film and literature written by and/or about Queer Black people in Africa and the African diaspora. We will seek to understand this intersection in the various modes of living and self-expression depicted in the films and written works assigned. Students will be invited to read/watch, appreciate, as well as analyze films and works of fiction. We will ground ourselves in the study of Queer Blackness to understand key concepts and contexts before delving into the heart of the course through assigned materials and classroom activities.

AAAD 250 The African American in Motion Pictures: 1900 to the Present

Mo 3:35PM – 6:05PM

Charlene Regester

This course will analyze the role of the African American in motion pictures, explore the development of stereotypical portrayals, and investigate the efforts of African American actors and actresses to overcome these portrayals.

AAAD 389 The Caribbean Anticolonial: Caribbean Literature, Film, Aesthetics, and Politics

TuTh 12:30PM – 1:45PM

Petal Samuel

This course will examine literature, film, art, and music from the Caribbean that illustrates and critiques the past and present impacts of colonial rule in the region. What role has anticolonial Caribbean literature and art played in shaping the region’s present and future, and in shaping global anticolonial politics?

AMST 498 Advanced Seminar in American Studies

MoWe 2:30PM – 3:45PM

Kelly Alexander

Graduate or junior/senior standing. Examines American civilization by studying social and cultural history, criticism, art, architecture, music, film, popular pastimes, and amusements, among other possible topics.

ARTS 106 Video I (LEC 002)

MoWe 1:25PM – 3:20PM

Sholeh Asgary

This foundation course introduces students to narrative and non-narrative moving image art through video, sound, and various software programs. Students will learn video production by filming and editing video. Through readings, discussions, screenings, and engagement with artists, projects are designed to develop an understanding of dialogues pertaining to the use of video in contemporary art. Foundation requirement for studio majors.

ASIA 231 Bollywood Cinema (LEC 001)*

TuTh 5:00PM – 6:15PM

Afroz Taj

This course explores the development of the Indian cinema, with particular emphasis on the Hindi-Urdu films produced in Mumbai (Bollywood).

*Students enrolled in ASIA 231 are required to sign up for a recitation (REC) slot.

ASIA 231 Bollywood Cinema (REC 601)

Fr 9:05AM – 9:55AM

TBD

This course explores the development of the Indian cinema, with particular emphasis on the Hindi-Urdu films produced in Mumbai (Bollywood).

ASIA 231 Bollywood Cinema (REC 602)

Fr 11:15AM – 12:05PM

TBD

This course explores the development of the Indian cinema, with particular emphasis on the Hindi-Urdu films produced in Mumbai (Bollywood).

ASIA 231 Bollywood Cinema (REC 603)

Fr 12:20PM – 1:10PM

TBD

This course explores the development of the Indian cinema, with particular emphasis on the Hindi-Urdu films produced in Mumbai (Bollywood).

ASIA 235 Israeli Cinema: Gender, Nation, and Ethnicity

TuTh 2:00PM – 3:15PM

Yaron Shemer

The course explores major periods and trends in Israeli cinema. Focus is given to issues pertaining to gender, ethnicity, and the construction of national identity.

CHIN 332 Old, Queer, and Poor: Bad-Aging in Chinese-Speaking Worlds

TuTh 2:00PM – 3:15PM

Keren He

This course examines cases of “bad aging” (aka “badass” aging) in the PRC, Taiwan, and Hong Kong through contemporary Chinese-language films and literature. We will explore the logic Chinese biopolitics that constructs “good” aging around longevity, hetero-happiness, and rigid geopolitical belonging. We will also examine how diverse forms of “bad” aging-especially for the queer, the disabled, the poor, and immigrants-can be understood as a resistance against the normative life trajectory. Students will approach old age as an intersectional analytical nexus that illuminates the operation of crisscrossing hierarchies in the Sinosphere and beyond.

DRAM 245 Acting for the Camera

TuTh 11:00AM – 12:15PM

Samuel Gates

Prerequisite, DRAM 135 or 150; permission of the instructor for students lacking the prerequisite. The process of acting and its relationship to the technical and artistic demands of television/film production. Problems of continuity and out-of-sequence filming. Concentration and thinking on camera.

DRAM 370 Exploring Costumes in Film

TuTh 11:00AM – 12:15PM

Pamela Bond

This course introduces the costume design theory and processes used by professional designers.

EURO 492 Diversity in the European Union

TuTh 3:30PM – 4:45PM

Priscilla Layne

In this course, students will learn to conduct close readings of a variety of media, ranging from essays, novels, and poems to films and a musical, which all depict diverse populations in the EU and various Member States, including Spain, France, Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands. Examining the specific topic of Diversity in the EU, this course will give students the theoretical tools and historical context to engage with intersecting issues such as race, gender and class, religion, disability, citizenship, and immigration. Readings and class discussions in English.

FREN 315 Imposteur!: Faking and False Identities in French and Francophone Drama and Film

TuTh 9:30AM – 10:45AM

Ellen Welch

Prerequisite, FREN 255, 260, or 262; Pre- or corequisite, FREN 300; permission of the instructor for students lacking the requisites. Examines how French-language plays and films explore questions of identity through stories of imposture, disguise, cross-dressing, and mistaken identity. Authors studied include Molière, Marivaux, De la Chenelière, and others.

GERM 301 Advanced Spoken German: Vielfalt in Media

TuTh 2:00PM – 3:15PM

Gabriel Trop

Prerequisite, GERM 204; permission of the instructor for students lacking the prerequisite. An advanced language course for developing oral communication skills by examining and discussing contemporary German media (film, radio, literature). In addition to strengthening their command of German language skills, students will create their own media broadcast (podcast, video, interview, etc.) that engages cultural difference between North American and German societies.

GERM 462 Modernism and Modernity

TuTh 12:30PM – 1:45PM

Tobias Wilke

We all have an understanding of what the term “modern” means. But what is “modernist”? This course examines the multifaceted and complex relationship between these two concepts during the first half of the 20th century. It introduces students to modernism as a broad literary, artistic, cinematic, and philosophical phenomenon and interrogates its development against the back-drop of the rise of modernity since the 19th century. Placing its focus on the German and Austrian tradition from Nietzsche to Walter Benjamin, the course asks how modernism took shape in radical innovations across numerous genres, art forms, and media.

GSLL 492 Diversity in the European Union

TuTh 3:30PM – 4:45PM

Priscilla Layne

HIST 66 First-Year Seminar: Film and History in Europe and the United States, 1908-1968

MoWe 3:35PM – 4:50PM

Donald Reid

This course will examine major films in Europe and America from 1908 to 1968 in terms of how they shaped the medium and reflected important social trends.

ITAL 333 Italian Film and Culture (001-LEC)*

TuTh 2:00PM – 3:15PM

TBD

Analysis of films from World War II to the present. Lectures and discussion in English. Films in Italian with English subtitles. Readings in Italian for majors, in translation for nonmajors.

*Students enrolled in ITAL 333 are required to register for a recitation (REC) slot.

ITAL 333 Italian Film and Culture (001-REC)*

Tu 3:30PM – 4:45PM

TBD

Analysis of films from World War II to the present. Lectures and discussion in English. Films in Italian with English subtitles. Readings in Italian for majors, in translation for nonmajors.

JAPN 489 Women, Margin, Writing, and Transnational Japan

MoWe 3:35PM – 4:50PM

Yurika Tamura

This course explores literary and media art produced by women from various political and social margins of Japan, voiced from their transnational subjectivities. The transnational situations include: immigration, colonialism, diaspora, and international coalition as well as globalizing feminist alliance. By focusing on literature, film, and performance, this course takes an interdisciplinary approach to women’s creative political statements.

JWST 235 Israeli Cinema: Gender, Nation, and Ethnicity*

TuTh 2:00PM – 3:15PM

Yaron Shemer

The course explores major periods and trends in Israeli cinema. Focus is given to issues pertaining to gender, ethnicity, and the construction of national identity.

*Combined section with ASIA 235 and PWAD 235

PHIL 381 Philosophy and Film

MoWe 3:35PM – 4:50PM

Rory Hanlon

Prerequisite, one previous PHIL course. An examination of how philosophical issues are explored in the medium of film.

PORT 387 Brazilian Religious Movements through Film and Literature

MoWeFr 12:20PM – 1:10PM

Nilzimar Vieira Hauskrecht

Literary and cinematic representations of Candomblé, Sebastianism, Positivism, and Spiritism from late-19th through the 20th century. Focus on the penetration these forms of religiosity into mainstream Brazilian culture. Taught in English; credit for Portuguese major/minor if readings and work done in Portuguese.

PORT 388 Portuguese, Brazilian, and African Identity in Film

MoWeFr 11:15AM – 12:05PM

Pedro Lopes de Almeida

Study of the literary and cultural film production of the Portuguese-speaking world on three continents. Films in Portuguese with English subtitles.

PRSN 306 Persian Language through Literature and Film

MoWeFr 1:25PM – 2:15PM

SHAHLA ADEL

Prerequisite, PRSN 204. Students will study literary writings and filmic texts from traditional literature to contemporary media (including plays, film, television, etc.). Students will engage in various communicative activities focusing on all language skills and building vocabulary and idiomatic expressions. Literary and filmic texts will also improve students’ cultural awareness.

PWAD 235 Israeli Cinema: Gender, Nation, and Ethnicity*

TuTh 2:00PM – 3:15PM

Yaron Shemer

The course explores major periods and trends in Israeli cinema. Focus is given to issues pertaining to gender, ethnicity, and the construction of national identity.

*Combined section with ASIA 235 and JWST 235

RUSS 283 The Film Factory: A History of Russian/Soviet Cinema

TuTh 3:30PM – 4:45PM

Trevor Wilson

This course traces the rich history of Russian/Soviet cinema, from its origins in the late Russian empire, through the Soviet era, up to contemporary, post-Soviet cinema. Students will study the creation of experimental film editing in Soviet cinema (montage/cutting, long shots, etc.) and practice using these techniques in their own media assignments. The course provides a thorough introduction to the historical development of Russo-Soviet cinema as well as analyzes the specific creative process of film as a medium.

WGST 489 Women, Margin, Writing, and Transnational Japan

MoWe 3:35PM – 4:50PM

Yurika Tamura

For those following the Film Studies Concentration:

ENGLISH AND COMPARATIVE LITERATURE

GENERAL COURSE LIST

FILM STUDIES

Concentration in ECL Major | Global Cinema Minor
Department of English and Comparative Literature