For a list of recent student documentaries produced in the Culture and Media Program click here.
For information on public programs at the Center for Media, Culture, and History, please visit the CMCH website.
Certificate Program in Culture and Media
The Departments of Anthropology and Cinema Studies offer a specialized joint course of study leading to a New York State Certificate in Culture and Media for NYU graduate students who are also pursuing their
The program’s philosophy takes a broad approach to the relationships between culture and media in a number of domains
This graduate program provides a focused course of studies integrating production with theory and research. Training in this program will enable students to pursue the following:
-Production work in state-of-the-art digital video based on their own research, resulting in a twenty-thirty minute documentary. Student works have shown in festivals worldwide, won multiple awards, and are in distribution. For a list of recent
-Ethnographic research into the social practice of media in a range of communities and cultures. Students from the program have done
-Teaching the history, theory, and production of ethnographic documentary and related issues.
-A career in media requiring an understanding of anthropology, such as specialized programming and distribution of ethnographic film and video, community-based documentary production, management of ethnographic film/video libraries and archives, or work in new media.
Each year, many of our student works are chosen to screen at prestigious film festivals, including the Margaret Mead Film Festival.
CORE FACULTY:
Anthropology
Tejaswini Ganti
Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology
Faye Ginsburg
David B. Kriser Professor of Anthropology
Director, Center for Media, Culture
Director, Certificate Program in Culture and Media
Cheryl Furjanic
Media Production Specialist & Filmmaker-in-Residence
Pegi Vail
Co-Director, Center for Media, Culture & History
Cinema Studies
Toby Lee
Assistant Professor, Cinema Studies
Co-Director, Program in Culture and Media
Robert Stam
University Professor, Cinema Studies
NYU Kanbar Institute of Film and Television
Alice Elliott
Distinguished Teacher
INTERNSHIPS
The program also arranges supervised internships for course credit, tailored to individual research and professional interests. Students work in a variety of programming and production positions for institutions, such
RESOURCES
The Anthropology Department has a film and video screening theater that seats up to forty. Our excellent and expanding study collection of over 2000 ethnographic/documentary film and video works -- from direct cinema to experimental genres -- includes most of the classics, important recent works, and a unique and comprehensive collection of works by indigenous media makers from all parts of the world.
The Department of Cinema Studies has a collection of over 38,000 videos and 3000 16mm prints at The George Amberg Memorial Film Study Center, and New York University's Avery Fisher Music and Media Center
THE CENTER FOR MEDIA, CULTURE, AND HISTORY
The program works closely with the Center for Media, Culture, and History, directed by Professor Faye Ginsburg. The Center sponsors fellows, screenings, lectures
The Center for Media, Culture, and History: cmchnyu.org
THE CENTER for RELIGION & MEDIA
The Center for Religion and Media, directed by Faye Ginsburg and Angela Zito, was inaugurated in 2003 as one of ten Centers of Excellence funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts; it seeks to develop interdisciplinary, cross-cultural knowledge of how religious practices and ideas are shaped and spread through a variety of media. For more information about the Center, visit the website. The Center for Religion & Media: crmnyu.org
CURRICULUM
Students cannot take courses in the Culture and Media program unless they are enrolled in the
(1) take the curriculum outlined below;
(2) design and complete a project in ethnographic film or video in the form of either
(3) complete their M.A. in Anthropology or Cinema Studies. Students wishing to pursue a Ph.D. can integrate the Certificate Program into their studies for the advanced degree in consultation with their Dissertation Committee. Students with prior training in media may be able to substitute other courses from the extensive curriculum offered in Cinema Studies, Anthropology, or media production – including other forms such as photography and new media.
ANTHROPOLOGY STUDENTS:
Courses [1] & [2] below can count toward their M.A., and courses [3] & [4] can count toward their
CINEMA STUDIES STUDENTS:
Students should contact Toby Lee at tobylee@nyu.edu.
All students are required to take the following courses:
[1] ANTH GA 1215 / CINE GT 1402
Culture and Media I; History and Theory of Ethnographic Documentary (Ganti/Ginsburg) 4 PTS
[2] ANTH GA 1216 / CINE GT 1403
Culture and Media II; ETHNOGRAPHY OF MEDIA (Ginsburg/Ganti) 4 PTS
[3] CINE GT 2001
Cultural Theory and The Documentary (Toby Lee) 4 PTS
[4] Recommended course or approved elective in opposite dept
[5]/[6] CINE GT 1998 & H56.0080
SIGHT AND SOUND DOCUMENTARY (Williams) 6 PTS
(Summer documentary production; mid-May to late June; 6pts.)
[7]/[8] ANTH GA 1218-19 & ANTH GA 1218-19
VIDEO PRODUCTION SEMINAR (Furjanic/Vail) 8 PTS
(Prerequisite: Sight and Sound Documentary or equivalent)
COURSE DESCRIPTIONS (REQUIRED)
CULTURE & MEDIA I (Ganti/Ginsburg)
This course offers a critical revision of the history of the genre of ethnographic film, the central debates it has engaged around cross-cultural representation, and the theoretical and cinematic responses to questions of the screen representation of culture, from the early romantic constructions of Robert Flaherty to current work in film, television
CULTURE & MEDIA II: ETHNOGRAPHY OF MEDIA (Ginsburg/Ganti)
In the last decade, a new field — the ethnography of media — has emerged as an exciting new arena of research. While claims about media in peoples lives are made on a daily basis, surprisingly little research has actually attempted to look at how media is part of the naturally occurring lived realities of people’s lives. In the last decade, anthropologists and media scholars interested in film, television, and video have been turning their attention increasingly beyond the text and empiricist notions of audiences, (stereotypically associated with the ethnography of media), to consider, ethnographically, the complex social worlds in which media is produced, circulated and consumed, at home and elsewhere. This work theorizes media studies from the point of view of cross-cultural ethnographic realities and anthropology from the perspective of new spaces of communication focusing on the social, economic and political life of media and how it makes a difference in the daily lives of people as a practice, whether in production, reception, or circulation.
The class will be organized around case studies that interrogate broader issues that are particularly endemic to questions of cross-cultural media including debates over cultural imperialism vs. the autonomy of local producers/consumers, the instability and stratification of reception, the shift from national to transnational circuits of production and consumption, the increasing complicity of researchers with their subjects over representations of culture, and the historically and culturally contingent ways in which images are read and used. These concerns are addressed in a variety of locations, from the complex circulation of films, photos, and lithographs, to the
CULTURAL THEORY AND THE DOCUMENTARY (Toby Lee)
This course considers the actual and possible forms of relation between theories of culture and society and the mode of nonfiction cinema known as
SIGHT AND SOUND DOCUMENTARY (SUMMER COURSE)
The intensive
VIDEO PRODUCTION SEMINAR (Furjanic/Vail)
A two-semester seminar that provides training and equipment for advanced graduate students to produce a media ethnography or short documentary. During the fall semester, in-class instruction, lab exercises, and readings introduce digital audio and video production, including shooting and editing with HD cameras, professional audio equipment, and Premiere Pro non-linear editing systems. Focusing on ethnographic media practices, students also address key representational, methodological, and ethical issues in the production of
THE SEMINAR IS RESTRICTED TO STUDENTS IN THE PROGRAM IN CULTURE AND MEDIA. IT IS LIMITED TO TEN STUDENTS AND REQUIRES PERMISSION OF THE INSTRUCTOR. Culture & Media I and Sight and Sound Documentary (summer session) are mandatory pre-requisites. There is no lab fee, but students are expected to provide their own videotapes. For a list of recent
SELECTED ELECTIVE COURSES/ CINEMA STUDIES and ANTHROPOLOGY
Culture, Meaning and Society ANTH-GA 1222 (Rogers)
This introduction to sociocultural anthropology is designed for graduate students working primarily in other
Documentary Traditions CINE GT 1400 (Bagnall)
Fourteen sessions are devoted to a comparison of current documentaries with those made in earlier decades to illustrate how the art has responded to social, political, and economic realities and to changes in technology and systems of distribution. Undergraduates who take the course for 3 points are required to keep journals in which they respond to each session and compare observations with those made when viewing at least one documentary of their choice seen outside class, as well as in response to critical essays provided at each session and references in the text. Those wishing to earn an extra point (register for one point of H56.1097 Independent Study) may write a substantial term paper based on a topic approved by the instructor.
French New Wave CINE GT 1513 (Stam)
This course offers
Topics in Documentary Film CINE GT 2002 (Lee)
The term "expanded documentary" points both to the ways in which traditional documentary practices have diversified and transformed over the last few decades, particularly with changes in media technologies, as well as to different ways we might re-examine other film, media and art traditions through the lens of documentary practice. In this course, we consider how the documentary impulse functions in film, video, animation, sound; in the gallery, in the archive, in public space, in cyberspace; in forms linear and nonlinear, online and off. We also investigate the role of documentation in relation to performance and social practice art. In tracing these variations of documentary practice over time, we approach these expanded forms of non-fiction media not as addenda to documentary traditions, but rather as opportunities to reflect critically on those traditions, to connect present developments to historical precedents, and to pry open our sense of documentary as form, endeavor and practice. (Cross-listed with CINE-UT 417)
Nonfiction Film History CINE GT 2307 (Streible, TBA)
This course introduces students to the study of nonfiction film. It explores the history and theory of nonfiction cinema, including—but not limited to—documentary film. The established milestones of the international tradition of
Adv. Sem. Paradigms of Globalization CINE GT 2835 (Choi)
This course examines multiple histories, structures, theories and key concepts of globalization, linking them with issues in the nation-state, post/modernity, post/colonialism, cultural imperialism, post/Fordism, empire, and trans/national identities. It brings together different forms of knowledge from anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, and political economy to bear on film and media studies troubled by geo-cultural uncertainty and convergence. ***Those students interested in taking this seminar should email JungBong Choi at jbc7@nyu.edu. The
Adv. Sem. Comparative Post-colonialism CINE GT 3207 (Stam)
Alongside and in the aftermath of the "culture wars" in the United States, many battle lines, national and transnational, have formed around such inter-related issues as "postcoloniality," "comparative imperialism,