The College of Arts & Sciences and College of Communication launched a jointly administered program this fall that provides students enrolled in either college a unique and multifaceted education in film and media. The new major, Cinema & Media Studies (CIMS), “offers students a rigorous and comprehensive education in the history, aesthetics, theory, formal practices, and sociocultural dimensions of moving-image media,” according to the program’s website. CIMS also marks the first time a BA has been offered within COM. The program is also available as a minor for students enrolled in either college.

“Film studies were in two different worlds with two different cultures,” says Roy Grundmann, a COM associate professor of film and television and the program’s director. “We’ve been doing very similar things, but divided by Commonwealth Avenue.”

Until now, the bulk of BU’s film studies were offered at COM and emphasized instilling a professional and practical approach to film. But faculty from a range of programs within CAS, including classics, romance studies, writing, and even modern languages—were also venturing into cinema studies with course offerings like Anthropology and Film: Ways of Seeing, Italian Cinema, Holocaust Literature and Film, and Modern Korean Culture through Cinema. “Once you start to look, you see that all these CAS faculty are teaching film, have expertise in film, are publishing in film journals, and offering interesting classes but had not been formalized or brought together under one institutional banner,” says Grundmann. “This just really cried out for a cohesive program.” With more than 35 CAS faculty involved in the new CIMS program, students receive a strong grounding in American and global cinema—while simultaneously being able to take courses in the crafts of film production and screenwriting.

As with other liberal arts degrees, CIMS students gain a strong theoretical and academic orientation advantageous for anyone pursuing higher degrees or careers in academia. “The BA is a gateway degree toward more specialized tracks in the media world, a way to get students into this big emerging market,” says Grundmann, who notes that students graduating with the degree are able to pursue opportunities in many fields, including film and media programming and exhibition at museums, art houses, and film festivals; curatorial and preservation work; and arts journalism.

To complete the requirements for the major, students must complete 11 CIMS courses, covering a range of topics ranging from film aesthetics, theory, and history to genres, movements, and regional cinema. In addition, they must take at least one course focused on one, two, or several directors, producers, actors, writers, or cinematographers, and a course in television studies. “Students gain a more flexible focus on film,” says Leland Monk, a CAS associate professor of English and codirector of the CIMS program. “The ability to read the visual image, to study film, and to analyze what goes on inside a frame—those are very applicable skills, especially with so much of what’s going on in new media today.”

“Production majors are more focused on actual filmmaking, and I like the theory and critical part more,” says Ricardo Kalaidjian (CAS’15), one of the first students expected to graduate from the program. “I’m not exactly sure where I’ll end up, but it does prepare you well for any part of the [movie] business.”

The foundation of the CIMS major is a two-part introduction to the history of global film, open to all students. CI 101, History of Global Cinema 1, offered for the first time this fall by Monk, covers the history and aesthetics of film from its beginnings through the 1950s. The course focuses on technological developments, productions of the Hollywood studio system (especially genre films such as the Hollywood musical), and the development of cinema in Soviet Russia, Weimar Germany, India, Italy, Japan, and Scandinavia. The follow-up course, CI 102, to be taught by Grundmann this spring, will provide an overview of global cinema from the late 1950s (including the birth of the French New Wave movement) through today.

Students are also encouraged to take advantage of resources and opportunities off campus. Boston, with its numerous film festivals, indie houses like the Coolidge Corner Theatre and Brattle Theatre, and institutions like the Harvard Film Archive and Museum of Fine Arts, is the perfect backdrop for film studies, says Grundmann. “We want students to live in these institutions.”

The hope is that the program will expand to include a graduate-level degree as well, but for now, Grundmann and Monk say they’re pleased by the positive feedback the program is earning from students and faculty alike. “It’s great news that the program is finally happening,” says Monk. “CIMS is so much of what the ‘one BU’ idea is about.”