The Media School
Minor in Black Cinema and Media Studies
The Minor in Black Cinema and Media Studies examines Black filmmaking and media within historical, artistic, formal, and national contexts. It is administered in consultation with the Black Film Center/Archive.
Requirements
The minor requires at least 15 credit hours, including the requirements listed below.
- Introduction to Black Cinema and Media Studies. One (1) course:
- MSCH-C 241 Watching Film
MSCH-C 241 Watching Film
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Introduction to the power, pleasure, politics, and possibilities of cinema. Opportunity to develop film literacy through a better understanding of how film is and has been constructed and experienced. Provides critical techniques for analyzing and appreciating the many forms film has taken.
- Advanced Black Cinema and Media Studies Electives.
- Media School Elective. Two (2) courses:
- MSCH-C 212 Screening Race and Ethnicity
- MSCH-F 204 Topics in Media, Culture, and Society (approved topics only; see academic advisor)
- MSCH-F 309 Images of War and Peace in Public Culture (approved topics only; see academic advisor)
- MSCH-F 311 History of Media and Culture
- MSCH-F 326 Authorship in the Media (approved topics only; see academic advisor)
- MSCH-F 336 Using Popular Culture
- MSCH-F 375 Race, Gender, and Representation
- MSCH-F 377 Cinemas of the Black Diaspora
- MSCH-F 391 Media Audiences (approved topics only; see academic advisor)
- MSCH-F 392 Media Genres (approved topics only; see academic advisor)
- MSCH-F 398 National and Transnational Cinemas (approved topics only; see academic advisor)
- MSCH-F 415 Contemporary Filmmakers (approved topics only; see academic advisor)
- MSCH-F 420 Topics in Media History (approved topics only; see academic advisor)
- MSCH-F 445 Media, Culture, and Politics (approved topics only; see academic advisor)
MSCH-C 212 Screening Race and Ethnicity
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Critically examines how race and/or ethnicity are mediated through screen and audio-visual media (including film, video, television, radio, internet) and their cultural contexts. Using humanities approaches, topics might focus on representations and debates within mainstream, art, or alternative media. May address histories of race, racism, and racial justice. Screenings may be required.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of CMCL-C 201 or MSCH-C 212.
- Fall 2026CASE DUScourse
- Fall 2026CASE SHcourse
MSCH-F 204 Topics in Media, Culture, and Society
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Relationship between communication media and a range of social institutions, practices, and beliefs. Course may focus on a particular medium and/or period (e.g., television and family, film and the Cold War, censorship and the media). Topic varies.
- Repeatability
- May be repeated with a different topic for a maximum of 6 credit hours in CMCL-C 204 and MSCH-F 204.
- Fall 2026CASE SHcourse
MSCH-F 309 Images of War and Peace in Public Culture
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Examines the cultural contestation of images of war and peace with a focus on the materiality of political images in a variety of verbal, visual, and acoustic media across a range of cultural forms such as film, literature, art, public memorials, and political texts.
- Repeatability
- May be repeated when the focus is on a different country or region for a maximum of 6 credit hours in CMCL-C 311 or MSCH-F 309.
- Fall 2026CASE AHcourse
MSCH-F 311 History of Media and Culture
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Historical development of media forms, institutions, and technology, from the origins of writing to digital media. Attention to characteristics of media, changes in media's role as a cultural force, transformations to media institutions, and the role of media in the development of public discourse. Considers continuity and change over time.
- Fall 2026CASE SHcourse
MSCH-F 326 Authorship in the Media
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Topic varies: in-depth analysis of directors, producers, or creative individuals in the media, viewed as 'authors.'
- Repeatability
- May be repeated with a different topic for a maximum of 6 credit hours.
- Fall 2026CASE AHcourse
MSCH-F 336 Using Popular Culture
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Critical exploration of the form, content, and uses of popular culture in everyday life.
- Repeatability
- May be repeated with a different topic for a maximum of 6 credit hours in CMCL-C 336 and MSCH-F 336.
- Fall 2026CASE SHcourse
MSCH-F 375 Race, Gender, and Representation
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Construction of race and gender identities across a range of media. Emphasis on the power of sound/image representations to shape and contest ideas about race and gender. Topic varies.
- Repeatability
- May be repeated with a different topic for a maximum of 6 credit hours in CMCL-C 412, JOUR-J 375, or MSCH-F 375.
- Fall 2026CASE SHcourse
MSCH-F 377 Cinemas of the Black Diaspora
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Examines filmmaking in the black diaspora as a formally innovative visual and narrative art form in world cinema. Studies select films for their political and cultural significance and shared themes. Topics include colonialism and postcoloniality; race, gender and sexuality; migration and exile; modernity; and the dislocating processes of globalization.
- Fall 2026CASE AHcourse
- Fall 2026CASE DUScourse
MSCH-F 391 Media Audiences
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Studies audiences in the context of film, television, new media, and other media forms. Topic varies, but may include a focus on theories of spectatorship, historical reception studies, ethnographic and/or empirical audience studies, global or transnational audiences, Internet communities, performance theory, fan cultures, and subcultures.
- Repeatability
- May be repeated with a different topic for a maximum of 6 credit hours in CMCL-C 391 and MSCH-F 391.
- Fall 2026CASE AHcourse
MSCH-F 392 Media Genres
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Topic varies. Analysis of typical genres, such as westerns, situation comedies, documentaries, etc. Problems of generic description or definition: themes, conventions, iconography peculiar to given genres.
- Repeatability
- May be repeated with a different topic for a maximum of 6 credit hours in CMCL-C 392 and MSCH-F 392.
- Fall 2026CASE AHcourse
MSCH-F 398 National and Transnational Cinemas
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Historical survey of major national cinemas. Subject varies. Topics include Brazilian cinema, British cinema, Chinese cinema, French National cinema, German film culture, Indian cinema, and Italian cinema.
- Repeatability
- May be repeated with a different topic for a maximum of 6 credit hours in CMCL-C 398 and MSCH-F 398.
- Fall 2026CASE AHcourse
MSCH-F 415 Contemporary Filmmakers
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Examines contemporary film authorship in collaboration with the IU Cinema. Students attend lectures by visiting filmmakers and attend screenings of their films and discuss film criticism and review.
MSCH-F 420 Topics in Media History
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Media historiography, topics in national media history, national and international movements and trends. Topic varies.
- Repeatability
- May be repeated with a different topic for a maximum of 6 credit hours in CMCL-C 420 and MSCH-F 420.
- Fall 2026CASE SHcourse
MSCH-F 445 Media, Culture, and Politics
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Examines the role of media in the political process. Topic varies and may include censorship and free speech, social movements, politics of representation.
- Repeatability
- May be repeated with a different topic for a maximum of 6 credit hours in CMCL-C 445 or MSCH-F 445.
- Additional Elective. Two (2) courses:
- Additional course from the Media School Elective list above
- AMST-A 200 Comparative American Identities
- AAAD-A 222 Black Women Artists
- AAAD-A 277 Images of Blacks in Films: 1903-1950s
- AAAD-A 278 Contemporary Black Film
- AAAD-A 330 African American Cinematic Experience
- AAAD-A 430 The Cinema of Africana Women
AMST-A 200 Comparative American Identities
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Examines the formation of legal, social, cultural, and economic identities within the United States and within U.S.-controlled territories. Who counts as "American?" To what ends have citizens and non-citizens assumed, claimed, or refused "American" identity? This course employs a comparative frame in considering elite and subordinated classes (and/or genders, races, ethnicities, sexualities); institutional and countercultural forms of self-definition; official history and alternative acts of collective memory.
- Fall 2026CASE AHcourse
- Fall 2026CASE DUScourse
AAAD-A 222 Black Women Artists
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Examines black female creativity in the United States from colonial times through the present. Studies art and creativity under slavery, nineteenth-century pioneering artists, racial and gender stereotypes in visual culture, the Harlem Renaissance, WPA art, civil rights and Black Power movements, feminist art, abstraction, conceptual and performance art, vernacular art, postmodernism, and black feminist futurism.
- Fall 2026CASE AHcourse
- Fall 2026CASE DUScourse
AAAD-A 277 Images of Blacks in Films: 1903-1950s
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Images of blacks in films, mainly American, from before "The Birth of a Nation" (1915) to the 1950s. Course will include segments as well as complete feature films (also "race films" when available), shorts, cartoons, and documentaries viewed in historical perspective.
- Fall 2026CASE AHcourse
AAAD-A 278 Contemporary Black Film
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Problems raised by proliferation of films acted, authored, directed, and/or produced by blacks. Exploration of legitimacy of "black film aesthetic" and its reception by various segments of the black community.
- Fall 2026CASE AHcourse
AAAD-A 330 African American Cinematic Experience
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Examines the historical and contemporary portrayals of African Americans in Hollywood and in independent narrative film focusing on the social and political functions of film, its legitimization of race, and its oppositional formations, interventions, and practices. Considers how film mediates and interrogates race and social relations in American society.
- Fall 2026CASE AHcourse
AAAD-A 430 The Cinema of Africana Women
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Historical and critical overview of films produced by African American women from the 1940s to the present. The course emphasizes how black women filmmakers combine their creative abilities with a desire to capture dominant issues that affect black women's lives in America.
- Fall 2026CASE AHcourse
- Media School Elective. Two (2) courses:
- Minor Hours and Minimum Grade Requirements.
- Minor Residency. At least 9 credit hours in the minor must be completed in courses taken through the Indiana University Bloomington campus or an IU-administered or IU co-sponsored Overseas Study program.
- Minor Upper Division Courses. At least 9 credit hours in the minor must be completed at the 300-499 level.
- Minimum Grade. A grade of C- or higher is required for a course to count toward a requirement in the minor.
Minor Area Courses
-
Unless otherwise noted below, the following courses are considered in the academic program and will count toward academic program requirements as appropriate:
- Any course at the 100–499 level with the
MSCHsubject area prefix—as well as any other subject areas that are deemed functionally equivalent - Any course contained on the course lists for the academic program requirements at the time the course is taken—as well as any other courses that are deemed functionally equivalent—except for those listed only under Addenda Requirements
- Any course directed to a non-Addenda requirement through an approved exception
- Any course at the 100–499 level with the
Exclusions
The following courses cannot be applied toward minor requirements:
- ANTH-E 422 Native American and Indigenous Media
- ENG-R 339 Freedom of Speech
ANTH-E 422 Native American and Indigenous Media
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- Study of contemporary Native American and global indigenous representation and communication, including oral performance and media. Explores the poetics and politics of media and performance in the context of indigenous histories, cultures, and experiences of colonization. Examines the use of performance forms as symbolic resources in literature, film, the Internet, music and television. Addresses intersections of gender, class and race in indigenous media worlds.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of ANTH-E 422 or CMCL-C 430.
- Fall 2026CASE SHcourse
ENG-R 339 Freedom of Speech
- Credits
- 3
- Prerequisites
- None
- Description
- An examination of the concept of freedom of speech as a historical, philosophical, legal, and rhetorical concept.
- Repeatability
- Credit given for only one of CMCL-C 339 or ENG-R 339.
- Fall 2026CASE AHcourse
This program of study cannot be combined with the following:
- Major in Cinematic Arts (Bachelor of Fine Arts) [CINEARTBFA]
- Major in Game Design (Bachelor of Science) [GAMEDSGNBS]
- Major in Global Media (Bachelor of Science) [GLBMEDIABS]
- Major in Journalism (Bachelor of Arts in Journalism) [JOURBAJ]
- Major in Media (Bachelor of Arts) [MEDIABA]
- Major in Media Advertising (Bachelor of Science) [MEDIAADVBS]
- Major in Public Relations (Bachelor of Science) [PBLCRELNBS]
- Major in Sports Media (Bachelor of Science) [SPTMEDIABS]
Exceptions to and substitutions for minor requirements may be made with the approval of the unit's Director of Undergraduate Studies, subject to final approval by the College of Arts and Sciences.