Undergraduate Study
Film Studies
Film Studies has developed as an academic discipline since the 1950s. It draws on a continuously expanding body of research and investigation and an extensive body of scholarly books and periodicals.
Film Studies is broad, ranging across the history of film and the study of world cinema, through the structures of film genres and star systems; but it also goes deep, closely analysing the grammar of shots, lighting, editing and sound, and examining specific film texts, film scenes - even at the level of individual frames.
As an academic subject, Film Studies emerged from cross-disciplinary approaches. This means that Film Studies draws on other, related disciplines such as history, sociology, media studies and languages, and from such major intellectual perspectives as feminism, postcolonial theory, semiotics and psychoanalysis. In the 21st century, cinema must be studied within its contemporary contexts - as part of a network of meaning that includes trailers, promotion, reviews, internet sites, DVD extras, fan tributes and TV programmes.
Television and New Broadcasting Media
Television Studies is still a comparatively new discipline, but it has already established a vibrant culture of scholarly research into TV texts, production and audiences - drawing (like the related discipline of Film Studies) on existing theoretical approaches such as sociology, ethnography, feminism, literary criticism, political economy, psychoanalysis and post-colonialism.
Kingston's degree programme studies the various forms that "television" now takes in the 21st century - rather than just a box in the corner, a focal point of the living room and a part of the furniture, television is experienced in a variety of different settings, through a range of technologies such as DVD box sets, PC downloads and streaming, and portable formats like the iPod. Television shows now "overflow" across dedicated internet sites, discussion boards, videogame adaptations and Alternate Reality Games, and our experience of watching television extends to the discourses around TV shows and stars in journalism and magazines. Television no longer exists in isolation - it is part of a range of media that in turn are part of our everyday life.
