Communications and Film & TV BA (Hons)

Some optional modules may be studied on the City campus.

Core modules

Mirror Mirror on the Wall: Explorations of Identity and Selfhood

Today the concept of ‘identity’ stands as a key term within many different academic disciplines, including geography, history and philosophy, as well as sociology and psychology. However, there is a considerable gap or discrepancy between common sense and more formal academic understandings of identity. This module aims to introduce you to these important debates, starting with our common sense and moving steadily towards more radical understandings of the nature of identity and selfhood.

Theorising the Screen

This module explores some of the key theories that have shaped our understanding of the screen. It draws upon classic works of film theory and television studies as well as theories that have adhered to more marginal and alternative screens, audiences, and industries.

Humanities in the workplace

This module will give you a taste of live industry experience. You will undertake a placement for a minimum of 37 hours and write a report around your experience, which will include clear work-based learning objectives.

Communications optional modules

Advertising, Public Relations and Journalism 1: The New Creativity

This module explores at a practical and theoretical level the new modes of creativity which are transforming working methods in the contemporary economy. You'll study the histories of advertising, public relations and journalism. You'll look at the intersections between economic developments, forms of communicative and media technology and the evolution of modern psychology and sociology that have resulted in a proliferation of new types of creativity.

Communications and Creativity Toolkit

On this module you'll learn new skills and discover new ways of expanding your understanding of communications and creative industries. You'll combine insights from a range of disciplines and creative practices to generate a 'toolkit' for both the intellectual understanding of communications and creativity, and the practical development of creative practices in various forms.

Gender and Sexuality

‘Gender’ and ‘sexuality’ are key terms within psychology, social theory and ordinary everyday life. They are terms with which all of us are familiar. However, as this module will show, despite this familiarity, these concepts are highly complex and, indeed, contested. During this module you'll look at the ways in which gender and sexuality have been theorised from a range of different social scientific perspectives.

Media, Communication and Culture in Asia

This module provides an insight into contemporary media development and cultural change in East Asia, placing this in the context of broader historical, economic and cultural debates. It will examine a wide range of media forms including print media, broadcasting, film and new media technologies, assessing their cultural impact in East Asian societies. It will explore contemporary issues of media development and policy and it will relate these to longer historical contexts.

Digital Identities: The Politics of Communication in the Globalised World

This module will develop your understanding of core themes in the study of communications and media. Four interlinking blocks of study take you from the formation of the communicating self through to further examinations of social, digital and global facets of contemporary communications.

Film & TV optional modules

British Cinema

This module examines British Cinema since the 1960s. It looks at a wide range of films to understand how British cinema represents issues such as nation, class, race and gender. It discusses key genres, movements and theoretical debates.

Analysing British Television

This module introduces you to key ways of understanding the development of British television. It examines the evolution of British television industries and institutions from their beginnings up to the present, looking at important factors and influences that have shaped the industry over time. It explores different accounts of ‘Britishness’ both in television shows or formats and in the relationship between television producers and audiences.

European Cinema and the City

This module starts from the dual observation that cinema is the art of the modern and that the city is the space of the modern. It builds on this to examine the interaction of cinema and the urban: how film has both represented and been shaped by the city.

Some optional modules may be studied on the City campus.

Core module

Dissertation

The final year dissertation module enables you to undertake a sustained, single piece of independently researched work on a topic of your choice, under expert supervision.

OR

Humanities Research Project

Explore your interests in a way that draws on both subject areas. Combine the knowledge and skills you have gained in each of your subjects to complete an interdisciplinary piece of research. You can deliver your project either as a written dissertation or through an alternative creative format such as a publication, film, podcast, website, or performance, supported by a shorter essay.

Communications optional modules

Advertising, Public Relations and Journalism 2: Convergence and Creativity in the Digital Age

This module continues to develop your appreciation of the history, practice and theory of advertising, public relations and journalism. An important recent evolution of these forms in the digital age is characterised by what is known as ‘convergence.’ This concept encapsulates the way individuals working in these sectors increasingly have to take on a variety of roles which cut across the traditional boundaries of each sector and learn to use a variety of working practices and technologies.

As well as continuing to study theoretical and critical academic perspectives on these developments, you'll take part in workshops to help you further develop the writing, digital literacy and image analysis/creation skills that are central to success in these areas.

Self in Crisis: Power, Prejudice and Otherness

This module brings together a range of debates in contemporary society about the nature of identity or selfhood that centre around claims that it is, in various ways, in a profound state of crisis. One part of this module will consider these ideas through a social-psychological examination of one of the most frightening crises of the 20th Century – the Nazi attempt to exterminate the Jews.

DJ Cultures: History, Theory and Technique

From obscure roots, the art of DJing has in recent decades exploded into the limelight as a major form of popular culture. No prior experience of DJing is required to take this module, which combines a basic ‘taster’ introduction to DJ technology and the practical techniques of DJ performance with a theoretical consideration of various styles of DJing, their histories, their related musical experiences and their wider cultural significance and influence.

Humanity in the Natural World

This module helps you to look at the relation between humanity and nature from psychological, cultural, and historical perspectives. You’ll examine questions such as: Is industrial civilisation simply an extension of nature? Is the 'environmental crisis' a symptom of a deeper alienation from the natural world? You'll also consider whether capitalism and technology are inherently destructive to nature, and will assess the possibility of 'greening' industrial civilisation.

Political Communications and Society

The module will look at the ways in which the political establishment, and individuals engage in politics, communicate with society in times of war and peace. You'll focus mainly on British and American politics but some light will be shed on other countries across the world.

What's New: the Future of Media Communications

This module looks at innovations and challenges that face media communications professionals as they look to the future. Using practical assessments such as blog writing, producing a radio advertisement and making an audio slideshow, students will advance their media skills in preparation for future employment as digital, multi-media producers. You will examine the issues, ideas and debates which contemporary journalism and marketing have to engage with, such as the funding and accessibility of news on the internet, the nature and trends of popular content, new styles and forms of presentation and the blurring of fantasy and reality in digital communications.

Film & TV optional modules

American Television since 1950

This module examines American television from the 1950s to the current moment. It moves from the emergence of the Classic Network Era through to the Post-Network era of digital television. It places American television in its historical, industrial and cultural context. It considers the formal and aesthetic properties of American television programmes and engages with the organization and history of network television (for example NBC) and cable television (for example HBO).

American Cinema since 1949: Margins and Mainstreams

This very popular module explores American cinema from 1949 to the present day by looking at different but interrelated areas of production, typically including Hollywood, the independent sector, and the experimental-underground cinema.

International Cinemas 2

This module considers a variety of subjects pertaining to the study of international cinemas. Issues and concepts such as slow cinema, New Wave cinema, Diasporic film-making and world cinema blockbusters will feature amongst case studies of European, South American and Asian cinemas. While it will pay due attention to film style and form and to the way films engage with socio-cultural and political contexts, it will also examine the policy and film industrial frameworks within which film is produced.