Department of Film & Media UC Berkeley

The Digital Media Studies course examines the ways in which digital media first developed and have come to shape our engagement with contemporary culture, with a particular focus on aesthetics, form, and politics. Goals of the course include helping students to identify, analyze, and describe themes in contemporary media and digital culture; to acquire a conceptual vocabulary necessary for the examination of digital media technology and to understand the advantages and limits of that approach; to understand the influence of digital media technologies on contemporary culture, including digital software, hardware, platforms, and interfaces; and to develop the research tools necessary for advanced undergraduate writing on film and media in the area studied in the course. Film 35’s curriculum will remain relatively fixed, as it is intended as a broad survey that covers key topics in the study of digital media today and serves as a gateway introduction to digital media studies for students interested in exploring later courses related to digital media in the department. The course positions students to take later courses in digital cinema, game studies, art and technology, and other courses related to digital media more broadly.