Courses

Core Film Courses

FTT 20101/21101: Basics of Film and Television | Lab | Chris Becker (01) / Mary Kearney (02)

This class is designed to enhance your understanding and appreciation of film and television. It operates on the philosophy that the better we understand how film and television texts work, the more intelligently and perceptively we will be able to consume them, which is an invaluable skill to have in our media-saturated world. You will learn about the basic elements that distinguish films and television programs from other aesthetic forms, such as editing, cinematography, sound and set design, and how these components work together to develop stories and characters. We will also work with interpretive frameworks that uncover deeper meanings and patterns in film and television, such as genre theory, the idea of authorship, political economy, and ideological analysis. Finally, you will acquire the skills and tools needed to write your own educated analyses of film and television texts. The class screenings present a range of films, from Hollywood classics to independent and international films, as well as television shows both old and new. This course is required for all concentrators in Film and Television.

FTT 30202/31202: Global Cinema II | Lab | Ted Barron

Core Television Courses

FTT 20101/21101: Basics of Film and Television | Lab | Chris Becker (01) / Mary Kearney (02)

This class is designed to enhance your understanding and appreciation of film and television. It operates on the philosophy that the better we understand how film and television texts work, the more intelligently and perceptively we will be able to consume them, which is an invaluable skill to have in our media-saturated world. You will learn about the basic elements that distinguish films and television programs from other aesthetic forms, such as editing, cinematography, sound and set design, and how these components work together to develop stories and characters. We will also work with interpretive frameworks that uncover deeper meanings and patterns in film and television, such as genre theory, the idea of authorship, political economy, and ideological analysis. Finally, you will acquire the skills and tools needed to write your own educated analyses of film and television texts. The class screenings present a range of films, from Hollywood classics to independent and international films, as well as television shows both old and new. This course is required for all concentrators in Film and Television.

Core Theatre Courses

FTT 30015: Theatre Production Process — Marcus Stephens

FTT 30715: World Theatre II: Text and Performance Across Cultures — Tarryn Chun

Electives

FTT 13182-01: USEM: Film Noir – George Sikharulidze

Smoke. Night. Dark Alleys. Troubled men, dangerous women (femme fatales). Guns, cigarettes, alcohol and sexual innuendos. Private detectives, crime, murder, suspicion. Fear and anxiety. Witty banter, seduction, betrayal. Moral ambiguities and the dark underbelly of the American Dream. If you’ve ever wondered where these cinematic ideas come from, look no further than Film Noir (black/dark film in French), a timeless genre of American cinema that has permeated various aspects of American culture. Discover why and how these films and ideas captivate audiences to this day.

FTT 13182-02: USEM: History of Chicago Theatre – Marcus Stephens

In this class, we will look at the history of Chicago Theater, what goes into its creation, and who is involved. We will study the dramaturgical context for the creation of this American regional theater brand, and its critical/ popular reception. Students will research and write about instructor and self-selected topics related to these examinations. Ultimately, we will be creating a conversation about the American experience through the examination of one of its most famous theater towns.

FTT 21006: Acting Process - Siiri Scott

Acting Process introduces the student to the core techniques of acting for the stage. The course engages both the analytical and the creative mind as students use research and analysis to support their physical, vocal and imaginative approaches to creating compelling scripted and improvised scenes. Students will rehearse and prepare scenes outside of class (with a partner and solo) for in-class performance. All students must see two live theatrical performances and turn in a reflection for each.

FTT 21006: Playwriting — Anne Garcia-Romero

This course is designed to introduce students to creating original work for the theater. The course will explore the writing process as well as models from contemporary U.S. theater with the aim to present a variety of paths toward creating new, vibrant plays. This is primarily a writing course. In addition, by reading and discussing ten separate dynamic play texts, we will analyze dramatic writing. Weekly writing exercises, movement work, visual arts approaches, improvisation techniques and collaborative discussions will create resources for rich play material, which each student will eventually use in a final scene, presented in a public reading at the end of the semester.

*FTT 21101: Media and Identity — Mary Kearney

This course focuses on critical analyses of identities in media culture. Taking a cultural studies approach, we will interrogate theories and popular discourses of identity while exploring how particular identities are constructed, negotiated, resisted, and transformed within media culture. Our primary questions in this course are: What is identity? How do our identities inform our various relationships to media culture? And, how does media culture impact the construction of our identities? Our particular sites of analysis will be media representation (narrative, performance, aesthetics), media production (industries and political economy), and media consumption (reception practices and audiences). We will examine a broad array of media forms, including film, television, the Internet, games, and popular music. Traditional demographic identities, such as gender, age, race, sexuality, and class, will be central to the course, although other identities, including geographic and lifestyle identities, will be examined also. We will strive toward critical analyses that understand identities as constructed, not inherent, and intersectional, not autonomous.

CSEM 23102-37: Wrestling in America: The History of Professional Wrestling on Television – Terrance Brown

Through its transition from sport to pseudo-sport to sports entertainment, professional wrestling has long held the popularity to fill arenas and stadiums. This course takes a look at that popularity's effect on the medium of television. From its inception in the 1940s to the golden age of the 50s to the modern boom of the 80s and 90s to the streaming area of the present day, students will observe, analyze and critique the unique storytelling and production elements of professional wrestling that have made it such a television juggernaut and mainstay.

FTT 30002: Borderlands on Screen – Mattlyn Cordova

This course examines cinematic representations of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands from the 1920s to the present. Drawing on Gloria Anzaldúa’s concept of the borderlands as multicultural spaces shaped by historical trauma, students explore how films reflect the political, historical, and cultural contexts in which they were produced. Through lectures, film analysis, and discussion, students investigate changing representations of the border, the racialization of Latinidad and whiteness and consider how popular cinema has shaped U.S. perceptions of the border and Latin American migrants. Students will develop skills in film analysis, historical contextualization, and persuasive argument through scaffolded assignments culminating in an original research paper.

FTT 30020: Choreographing Violence for the Stage and Screen – Matt Hawkins

This course will expose you to basic stage combat while exploring physical risk and maintaining safety measures. We will engage in unarmed fight choreography, as well as practicing sword technique.

FTT 30030: Contemporary Global Cinemas – Jim Collins

This course focuses on some of the most influential art films of the twenty-first century. While each of them has been critically acclaimed, we’ll use a comparative approach to explore their points of contact and divergence. How do prestige or “indie” films function as a particular type of content in entertainment landscapes defined by streaming and transmediation? How can we use films to pose questions about the relationship between national and global cultures? Featured films will likely include: In the Mood for Love, Mulholland Drive, Spirited Away, Lagaan, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Moonlight, Roma, Before Sunrise/Before Sunset, Mustang, Grand Budapest Hotel, The Great Beauty, Timbuktu, Happy as Lazzaro, Faces, Places, etc.

FTT 30050: Film Curation - Ricky Herbst

This course explores how films are booked and exhibited and, moreover, how to best serve audiences through thoughtful, engaging, and provoking film curation. Students will collaborate to program Notre Dame Film Society's weekly screenings, which involves writing copy, recruiting discussants, and creating programs involving feature films, short films, and other media.

FTT 30080: Playing America — Matt Payne and Ashlee Bird

This course introduces undergraduates to the critical analysis of analog and digital games as dynamic works of art and creative practice, with special attention to how certain interactive entertainment represents America, its varied histories, and its diverse peoples. Students will develop the interpretive tools necessary to recognize a game’s formal dimensions—its play mechanics, visual and sonic aesthetics, narrative structures, etc.—and the complex ways that these commodities represent the United States. By engaging with games as dynamic, aesthetic expressions, students will explore how interactive art defines our identities and our world—including those inside and outside of our national borders. Through the interpretation of the production and reception of these works, students will reflect on how game design choices, and society’s understandings of nationhood interact. Ultimately, this course culminates in a critical act of making where students integrate their growing technical and conceptual skills to produce a final work that investigates how and why we “play American” in board games and video games.

FTT 30100: Robots, Reptiles and Reds – Brian Kilgour

Over the last few decades, science fiction and fantasy from East Europe and Russia have seen a boom in popularity across the globe. Franchises such as The Witcher, Metro, and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. captivate audiences through books, television, and videogames. This course explores the rich history of Slavic science fiction and surveys major writers and works in the Czech, Polish, and Russian contexts. We will position these works in their cultural-historical circumstances as well as note ways they contributed to science fiction as a world genre. To fully contextualize the works examined in this course, we will also watch key American films that inspired or were inspired by major works of Slavic science fiction – for instance, discussing Tarkovsky’s Solaris alongside Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. The course is taught entirely in English.

FTT 30119: A Glossary of Haunting – Haylee Chavanne

How do unburied histories linger in the landscapes we inhabit, and what do their specters demand of the bodies and memories we carry? In this course, we will examine how Afro-diasporic and Indigenous writers, thinkers, and directors engage with ghosts, haunting, and the supernatural to explore how systems of power, though pervasive, are often rendered imperceptible due to their historical persistence. By placing Afro-diasporic and Indigenous literatures in dialogue, the course traces how chattel slavery and settler colonialism operate as intertwined systems, uncovering how shared hauntings emerge across contested contact zones. Moving across plantation geographies, carceral lands, oceanic wake spaces, and Black-Native contact zones, we will unpack how writers use spectrality to interrogate issues of power, race, gender and sexuality, class, and memory. Together, we will build a critical vocabulary—a glossary—to examine what these intersections reveal about historical and state violence, identity, and future trajectories. Through a combination of discussion, reflective writing, and creative synthesis, students will deconstruct how these thinkers affirm, challenge, and negotiate ancestral survival and spiritual resistance.

FTT 30151: Game Day Media – Betsy Ross

Taught by former ESPN anchor, Emmy award-winning sports reporter, and President of Game Day Communications Betsy Ross, Game Day Media will delve into the preparation and performance of game day media opportunities: play by play personnel, color analysts, Public Address talent, news conference moderators and more. This is a 50/50 zoom and class will meet in person and over zoom/ class. Students will record play-by play/analyst segments from campus sports, conduct pre-game interviews and post-game news conferences and observe the intricacies of public address announcing.

FTT 30188: Sports and Media – Katherine Walden

From the Olympics to Formula 1, sports are a central part of global culture and everyday life. Our experiences of sport, however, are largely shaped—and often even constructed—by media. Rather than simply presenting sport, media play an active role in producing the values, identities, emotions, and conflicts we associate with it. This course examines the historical roots and current conditions of the convergence of corporate sport and corporate media. We will analyze how media—from early 20th-century newsreels to live Twitch streams—do more than distribute sport content; they shape its cultural meanings and social impact. Centering sport media as both an industry and a cultural practice, we will explore how it intersects with issues of gender, race/ethnicity, labor, nationalism, and globalization. By analyzing the forces shaping sport media production and consumption, we will consider the meanings audiences make of those messages, we will consider the ways sport media production and consumption might be reimagined. Assignments in the course include a variety of reflection and application projects, as well as larger research project.

FTT 30256: Beyond TikTok: Nonfiction Filmmaking for the Non-Major — Ted Mandell

In a world saturated with cameras, each one of us carrying one everyday, how do we capture meaningful content that goes beyond the performative world of social media? This course examines the online world of nonfiction based content and then challenges students to create their own short form documentary (in the traditions of cinema verite and direct cinema) using only their phones.

FTT 30345: Art, Gender, and Indigeneity – Carlos Tello Barreda

In this course, we will engage with the academic fields of Native American and Indigenous Studies, Performance Studies, and Gender Studies. Inspired by groundbreaking work of Indigenous scholars, artists, and activists, we will explore how the body has constituted (and continues to constitute) a site for Indigenous peoples to explore gender identities and gendered community roles. Throughout the course, we will engage with cultural productions by Indigenous peoples in various media, including literature, music, theatre, public performance, and film to learn about the fight of Indigenous peoples to reclaim sovereignty over their own bodies. Using this survey of Indigenous ideas about gender as a frame of reference, students will critically explore their own ideas and beliefs. The course’s geographic focus is the Americas, from the Canadian Arctic to Tierra del Fuego, the southernmost tip of the South American mainland.

FTT 30410: Intro to Film and TV Production – Cecilia Kim

An introductory course in the fundamentals of shooting, editing, and writing for narrative film and television productions. This is a hands-on production course emphasizing aesthetics, creativity, and technical expertise. The course requires significant amounts of filming and editing outside of class. Students produce three short film projects learning the basics of visual storytelling, including cinematography, lighting, sound recording, editing, sound mixing, and other post production techniques. These are all essential tools used to tell a story. The course challenges students not only to master basic skills but ultimately to craft compelling visual narratives.

FTT 30480: Televised Sports Production — Ted Mandell

The Game, as we experience it on screens big and small, is an ever evolving story. A human competition turned into a visual narrative by producers, directors, and broadcasters. How is that three hour ebb and flow of emotions turned into an engaging narrative for fans? How has that story evolved over decades? How has the evolution of technology changed that story? And has the televised broadcast changed the meaning of the game itself? From the Super Bowl to March Madness, ESPN Sportscenter to WWE Smackdown, we'll dissect the process, storytelling techniques and technology that form the American sports story on television, as well as experience the actual game production operation from inside the control rooms of Notre Dame Studios. Assignments include on-camera and off-camera production exercises, as well as written assignments deconstructing historical and current broadcasts. No prior television production experience required.

FTT 30505: The Mediated Climate: Critical Media Literacy & the Climate Crisis

This interdisciplinary course addresses the climate crisis as both a scientific challenge and a crisis of communication and culture. Team-taught by a climate scientist and a media historian, the course explores the underlying scientific research behind key topics of public debate, while also analyzing the media technologies, infrastructures, and cultures that have made it so difficult to act on an established scientific consensus. Our approach to climate media is not simply "science, illustrated", but rather a vigorous exploration of the climate crisis as a cultural knowledge, information, and policy problem. Students will work collaboratively to develop case studies that profile significant areas of public and scientific concern, including global climate modeling, global imbalances of political agency, public trust of science and scientists, the growth of AI data centers, and local and state case studies in environmental technologies.

FTT 30703: Digital Abstinence – Alexi Orchard

Digital technologies present many opportunities for people to work, play, and find community online, but there is a persistent desire to unplug and avoid social media, information overload, and surveillance. Abstaining from technology involves actively assessing how a given tool may enhance, detract from, or reconfigure one’s values, whether that be for reasons of privacy, health and wellbeing, leisure, or community. This will look different depending on the context: the traditional lifestyle of Amish communities, the neo-luddism movement, Catholic contemplative practices, and “digital detox” trends each have something unique to say about the potential to abstain from technology (even if only temporarily or unsuccessfully in some cases). We will consider topics including media and information literacy, social media addiction, influencer culture, and the intimacy economy from multiple disciplinary perspectives. We will conduct digital and analogue experiments to assess questions of mindfulness, agency, refusal, and connection to community and nature.

FTT 30706: Musical Theatre History – Patrick McKelvey

The intention of this course is to provide you with a context within which to understand the history of the American Broadway Musical, while cultivating your own opinions about the art form and how it relates to society. You will track the progression of the musical by studying its path through the Operetta, Minstrelsy, Vaudeville, Golden Age, Sondheim and the Concept Musical, the Modern Rock Musical, the Juke-Box Musical and the Post-Modern Era. This course is a research based course. Research topics are assigned by eras so that we may analyze and compare the material to the history of society. You will apply your growing knowledge of musical theatre history and context to intelligently observe and engage in discussion of the thoughts and presentations of your peers within a structured setting. Throughout the course there will be group discussions, group research, independent research, group presentations and weekly writing responses to prompts, which will require critical thinking and self reflection. There will be two papers due throughout the semester while ending in a one on one meeting with the instructor.

FTT 30707: Musical Theatre Dance – Abigail Zimmern

This course introduces the theory of movement in regards to musical theatre, and how it relates to style and character, while exploring physical and emotional risk. This class will be a physically rigorous approach towards body awareness with the study of dance, choreography and theatre movement for the musical. We will be engaged in a variety of iconic dance choreography from a variety of different musical styles, while working on overall movement for the musical stage. Throughout the course there will be exercises to explore our physicality as well as creating a physically based ensemble within the class through dance and movement. We will also gain experience in learning dance choreography and what it would be like to be in a rehearsal process for a musical. You will sweat.

FTT 30708: Performance Techniques: How to Act a Song – Matt Hawkins

The intention of this course is to provide you with a context within which to understand the techniques of musical theatre performance and the foundational skills needed to personally inhabit these techniques. This course will give you the tools to "act a song." You will work on analysis and performance of five songs from the following categories: Golden Age, Modern, Rock, Pop and any other kind of song you love. These songs are assigned by era sequentially so that we may simultaneously introduce the context of this material within the genre-at-large. You will also apply your growing knowledge of technique and context to intelligently observe and comment on the work of your peers within a structured setting. Throughout the course we will incorporate short group exercises to better explore performance technique and promote a deeper understanding of the differences between traditional script/text analysis and score/lyric analysis. There will be reflection papers due after the exploration of your songs.

FTT 30806: Building Cyberdecks for Artistic Research – Nicolas Aguirre

Students build a cyberdeck (a DIY micro-computer) and use it as an instrument for artistic research. Each begins with a subject that fascinates them (insects, textures, weather, the sky, among infinite possibilities) and designs a device to poetically investigate it. The semester runs in three cycles of fieldwork and revision, so the instrument evolves through use. Readings include Ernesto Oroza on technological disobedience and media archaeology. The work concludes in a public exhibition. No prior experience is required, though the course is demanding and students should arrive with a strength, whether critical, artistic, or technical.

FTT 30890: Media Industries – Chris Becker

"How do the contemporary film and television industries work? How can an analysis of the "business of entertainment" enable a greater understanding of contemporary media aesthetics and culture? This course will explore these questions by focusing on the structure, practices and products of America's film and television industries, and students will engage with academic readings, screenings, trade publications, current events, guest lectures, and written and oral assignments in order to understand the activities of the film and television industries. By the end of the course, students should be able to understand prominent practices employed by media conglomerates today; recognize the ways in which industrial structures and practices can shape media products; examine how television shows and movies are influenced by business strategies; and identify the potential impact that the media industries have on creativity, culture, and society. The course should be especially beneficial for students intending to pursue scholarly or professional careers related to film and television through its comprehensive overview of how these industries work, why they work as they do, and the broader practical and theoretical implications of media industry operations."

FTT 31006: Directing Process – Sarah Gitenstein

Directing Process is a class intended to help a director develop their own particular directorial voice or vision while encouraging their theatrical imagination. The class will focus on fundamental principles and tools in the fields of play analysis, acting, design, and staging.

FTT 31125: Acting Shakespeare — Siiri Scott

Acting Shakespeare is an active and participatory exploration of the works of the world's greatest playwright from the perspective of the actor. You will be acquainted with basic analytical, physical and vocal techniques for unlocking the meaning and emotional content of Shakespeare's texts. The structure of this course allows you the opportunity to create and present multiple roles through the performances of monologues and scenes.

FTT 31404: The Art of the Pitch: Half Hour Comedy – Chris Becker and Conor Hanney

1 credit course

You may have written a pilot script in another class, but almost every original half-hour comedy sale in the TV industry comes as the result of a pitch, not a screenplay. Pitching is to writing as auditioning is to acting: it's an entirely different skill set that you ironically need to master in order to do the actual job. This class demystifies and unpacks the art of pitching half-hour comedies into its component parts, teaching high-percentage moves while leaning into each writer's individual voice. Over eight 1.5-hour classes, each student will develop a 15-minute pitch to "sell" to the class, and we will also explore the nuances of pitching to producers and buyers, as well as pitching in writers' rooms beyond the sale.

FTT 31506: Personal Storytelling: Writing and Performing your Story – Stacy Stoltz

Personal Storytelling introduces students to the art of live storytelling and the craft of writing and performing true, personal stories. This course will examine different forms of autobiographical storytelling including The Moth Story Hour as well as diverse, theatrical solo performances. The course will include in-class writing and physical theatre exercises that ignite imagination and help students identify and generate the stories they wish to tell. Students will write and develop a 6-minute story, learn performance skills that explore depth and sincerity, as well as techniques to engage an audience. The course will highlight the vulnerability and power of sharing personal stories and the impact this can have on an audience, and will culminate in a public performance.

FTT 35502: Paths to Entertainment Industry – Chris Becker and Ted Mandell

1 credit course

It's commonly said that there is no set path to a career in the media and entertainment industries the way there is a path to working in, say, accountancy, law, or medicine. But a more accurate description would be that there are many paths because there are so many different jobs one could pursue in film and television, and each can have multiple routes of getting there. There are also arguably more paths than ever before due to technological transformations in the entertainment industry, from digital distribution to DIY production, as well as more interconnected pathways to adjacent industries like music and gaming. But this in turn can make it even more challenging for students to understand not only what paths they can do down but even what jobs exist at the end of those paths and what interests and skills they call for. This class is about helping students learn about paths to the entertainment industry through conversations with industry guests, primarily Notre Dame alumni. This version of the Paths to the Entertainment Industry class will focus on specific jobs in media and entertainment and how they’re evolving in a time of instability and even crisis in some sectors of the industry. Through conversations moderated by Dorothy Kozak Snoke, Career Development Regional Engagement Associate for Southern California, guest speakers will explain their roles in the industry, outline how they’ve changed as the industry itself has transformed in recent years, and propose steps students can take today to join their ranks tomorrow. Students enrolled in the class will be charged with preparing questions for speakers, taking notes during speaker sessions, and adding to a database of Paths to the Entertainment Industry resources that is made available to future generations of students for career discernment and development. Topics and job areas covered in the class may include: development, distribution, marketing, representation (agents and managers), live production, independent and studio production, production outside of LA and NYC, assistants, global media, AI, animation, acting, gaming, music, and brand partnerships.

FTT 40011: History of Video Games – Matthew Payne

This upper-division seminar explores the social history of video games from the 1950s to the present day. This course views games not as a fixed timeline of technological marvels, but as a shared investigation into the historical meaningfulness of the defining medium of the 21st Century. Drawing upon scholarship in game studies, media studies, American studies, gender studies, and other cognate fields, we will employ different analytical approaches when historicizing these wily objects of study. Students will seek out and will learn to offer multi-causal explanations for major historical developments including games as a byproduct of the military-industrial complex of the 1950s and 1960s, their mass commercialization in the 1970s, how home consoles domesticated video gameplay in the 1980s, and the popularization of casual-style mobile games in the 1990s and 2000s. Along the way, students will employ analytical methods to assess historical flashpoints and debates like the moral panics around sex and violence, the so-called “console wars,” and the identity politics of toxic gamer culture, among others. Students will gather and critically evaluate primary and secondary sources. As historians-in-training, they will engage in first-hand interactions with hardware, games, and ephemera drawn from Hesburgh Library’s growing “Legacy Tech Collection.” Ultimately, our primary educational focus remains on becoming literate practitioners of game history: grappling with the challenges of historiography (e.g., archival fragility, technological obsolescence, crafting narratives) to craft compelling social histories that embrace the inherent messiness and embodied pleasures of human play.

* FTT 40013: Disability and Performance – Patrick McKelvey

What role has theatre played in constructing longstanding and emergent ideas about disability? What performance techniques and strategies have disabled artists mobilized to challenge, revise, or otherwise reimagine these representations? What role do the performing arts play in disability justice activism? What is the relationship between accessibility and aesthetics in contemporary performance? This course examines a broad repertoire of performance practices, including commercial, experimental, and community-based theatre; performance art; screen dance; sound art; institutional critique; and political protest. We will engage these materials in conversation with the insights of critical disability studies, a field focused on disability as a social, cultural, and political—rather than exclusively medical—phenomenon. Our course will be grounded primarily in the entwined histories of U.S. performance and disability social movements since the 1960s, but we will make occasional geographical and historical detours from this itinerary. Students with interests in other periods and geographies will have ample opportunities to explore those interests. Throughout, we will pay particular attention to intersections among disability and race, gender, sexuality, and class. In addition to readings, screenings, and critical assignments, students will have the opportunity to experiment with writing audio description, open captions, and other access features. Potential artists and companies include John Belluso, Dark Room Ballet, Drag Syndrome, Jerome Ellis, Ryan J. Haddad, Jerron Herman, Molly Joyce, Christine Sun Kim, Carolyn Lazard, Kinetic Light, National Theatre of the Deaf, Park McArthur, Yvonne Rainer, Sins Invalid, and Finnegan Shannon. This course presumes no prior familiarity with disability studies or theatre and performance studies.

FTT 40027: From Prisms to Pantone: Color, Power, Technology – Lida Zeitlin-Wu

In this interdisciplinary and occasionally experimental course, we will take a deep dive into the rich, fascinating, and sometimes overwhelming topic of color as it relates to technology, aesthetics, politics, and culture. By doing so, we’ll open up a larger conversation about how art and technology shape our perception of the world and ourselves. We’ll pay special attention to the way philosophers, scientists, artists, and filmmakers have grappled with color’s slipperiness, as well as the complex ways in which color intersects with questions of race, gender, class, sexuality, and/or ability. Accordingly, a major conceptual thread of the course will involve examining how bias becomes embedded in purportedly "objective" color technologies from photography to biometrics. Course readings will be drawn from a wide range of fields, including film and media studies, the history of science and technology, literary studies, cultural studies, and the history of art, architecture, and design. Film and TV screenings, as well as other media objects like artworks, paint charts, and memes, will help us flesh out relevant theoretical and historical concepts. In-class activities such Bauhaus color theory exercises will also give you the opportunity to engage through hands-on learning

FTT 40125: Writing the Half Hour Comedy – Terrance Brown

This workshop focuses on the theory and craft of comedic writing as it applies to original half-hour screenplays. Through lectures, film viewing, group projects and weekly exercises, emphasis is placed on plot and story structure and the intentionally comedic expression of student ideas. Students will explore classic half-hour comedy pilots (script and screen) with an eye towards identifying and evolving the concepts of comedic character development and story arcs. Students should come to class with an expectation to write frequently and collaboratively in order to create two original half-hour television episode scripts.

*FTT 40234: Native American Theatre History — Ashlyn Baruti

This course traces the history and evolution of Native North American theatre and performance. Students will learn how Native American drama has been shaped by Native history in the United States and Canada. We will read plays and view performances by Native playwrights and artists to develop an understanding of a uniquely Native dramaturgy. Alongside our exploration of Native theatre, we will learn about key moments in Native history and discuss contemporary Native issues. Students will learn to recognize how Native artists use theatre and performance to unpack shared Indigenous experiences of coloniality, gendered violence, and structural inequality. This course will prioritize Indigenous cosmologies and an Indigenous ethos of mutuality, multivocality, and shared knowledge-construction.

FTT 40410 Intermediate Filmmaking – Bill Donaruma

Through hands-­on, field experience and critical analysis, we will explore the tools and techniques used to produce professional video and digital cinema projects in all genres. We will explore the use of composition, cinematography, color and editing to create a narrative structure. This class will also provide you with a technical knowledge of the tools required in professional filmmaking including a variety of lighting and grip equipment, lenses, filters, light meters, etc. Using RED Digital Cinema RED Raven 4K cameras and various support tools you will produce, shoot and edit short projects or "challenges" including your final short 3-5min film. This will be a non-­‐dialogue driven film based with a post-­‐produced soundtrack. No other digital formats are to be used outside of what we utilize for this class. We will also discuss various filmmaking techniques and current industry topics, including film in relation to digital cinema and current workflows. Post Production will be done using Davinci Resolve.

FTT 40412: Advanced Filmmaking – George Sikharulidze

This Advanced Filmmaking course will allow you to build on the knowledge you gained in Intro and Intermediate Filmmaking and take it to a new level by creating three complete short films as a class using the RED Raven DSMC2 cameras along with more advanced lighting, tools and techniques. Potential scripts will be chosen from the Writing the Short Film class. Each student will have the ability to pitch for a project to helm its production. Once we select three projects, the rest of the crew will be assembled and we will devote the semester to pre-production, production and post-production of these projects, so that by the end of the semester, the class will have produced three complete short films.

FTT 40442: Cinematography: Practice and Post – Bill Donaruma

Every frame is a decision. This course is about learning to make those decisions on purpose, from the moment light hits the lens to the final pass in the grade.

We’ll work with both film and digital acquisition, exploring how film emulsion and digital sensors each see the world, and how lenses, exposure, and camera movement shape the way a story feels. Along the way, we’ll dig into lighting: hard and soft sources, motivated and stylized setups, and the techniques cinematographers use to sculpt faces, build mood, and make a space feel real. We’ll also study how working cinematographers think and operate, looking closely at the choices behind iconic images and what they can teach us about our own work.

Projects put you behind the camera and in the colorist’s chair. You’ll design and shoot scenes, then take them all the way through post in DaVinci Resolve, where you’ll learn color-managed workflows, primary and secondary grading, and look development. Each project ends with a presentation of the finished frame, where you’ll show your work, explain your choices, and get feedback from the class.

By the end of the semester, you’ll be able to plan, light, shoot, and finish short-form work with a clear visual voice, and you’ll understand how every decision on set echoes in the grade.

FTT 40460: Video and Contemporary Media: Creative Dialogue with the Real World – Cecilia Kim

This course explores how video art has evolved over time. Starting with the magic lantern, we will study the early models preceding the slide and digital projector, and survey the history of video art since its birth. From the 1960s to now, video art has flourished over its relatively short history. We will also look at contemporary examples of video art and multimedia works by artists who traverse mediums of moving image, photography, and installation. The class includes a hands-on component to make your own creative projects, as well as studying scholarship on video and media art. A large component of this course will be composed of guest lectures from visiting artists, screenings, and exhibition visits, with various opportunities to directly engage with the artists and their work. This course is tied to the Arts Biennial visiting artist series, “Coexistence and Eco-futurism through Art.” As rapid technological developments lead to devastating environmental consequences, the series considers how artistic production shapes our actions and advances a future where humans coexist in balanced harmony with nature, expanding direct exposure and insight into artistic disciplines and processes through experimental, multimedia artworks.

*FTT 40470: Lying Flat 2.0 – Tarryn Chun and Wang Chung

This half-semester arts intensive class will provide a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to co-create the English-language premiere of the play Lying Flat 2.0 (Tangping 2.0) as part of the inaugural Notre Dame Arts Biennial in Spring 2027. Students will work with FTT faculty, guest designers, and a special guest artist-in-residence--a world-renowned experimental Chinese theatre director and playwright whose work has been performed in Europe, the US, and Australia, as well as in the PRC. The play, Lying Flat 2.0, premiered at the Wuzhen Theatre Festival (in China) in 2024, and is an immersive, participatory theatre work that integrates live-feed video projection and real-time use of AI in performance to interrogate pressing existential questions. Students in this class will take on production roles ranging from actors to videographers to assistant director, designers, and marketing team members. No prior knowledge or experience is necessary to apply.

FTT 40670: Gender & Sexuality in American Drama – Susan Harris

Ever since Nora Helmer walked out on her husband and slammed the door in Henrik Ibsen's 1879 play A Doll's House, modern drama has been closely connected with the struggles to redefine gender and sexuality that have shaped the twentieth and twenty-first century. In this course, we will look at how this story plays out on the American stage, as we examine the works of American playwrights who have participated in the many long-running debates about gender and sexuality in modern and contemporary America. We will read both canonical American playwrights - Eugene O'Neill, Tennessee Williams, Lillian Hellman, Arthur Miller, Edward Albee, Lorraine Hansberry, etc. - and a variety of contemporary American playwrights, including but not necessarily limited to Maria Irene Fornes, Tony Kushner, Sara Ruhl, and Susan Lori-Parks.