Film Studies and East Asian Studies BA (Hons)

The University of Manchester

The Joint Honours in Film Studies provides you with a thorough grounding in film theory and history, as well as the opportunity to develop specialist areas of interest alongside your education in East Asian culture and history.

Film Studies

• You will expand your experience of film through taught units and screenings that focus on both classical and contemporary films, covering a wide range of film cultures from around the world.
• You will study mainstream and non-mainstream films in order to broaden your understanding of the history of film, as well as the debates and issues that are informing and generated by current practice in film and shaping its future.
• As you enhance your skills of close analysis, you will also develop an understanding of how film engages with socio-cultural and political concerns, placing the films you study in their historical context as well as thinking about current debates and future challenges for cinema as a medium.
• The course emphasises historical and theoretical approaches to studying film rather than practical production.

East Asian Studies

• You will gain a critical appreciation of the complex contemporary realities in East Asian countries, as well as the changing position of these countries in an ever-changing international context.
• You will gain the knowledge and critical tools needed to understand East Asia in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, as well as an appreciation of the major historical events and social movements that have made East Asian countries what they are today.
• You will study East Asia both as an economically-connected region with overlapping histories, languages and cultural identities and as a diverse group of countries and peoples with divergent political systems and contemporary cultures.
• By the end of your degree, you will possess the socio-cultural understanding and analytical skills needed to embark upon more long-term professional or academic engagements with the East Asian region, and will have acquired a more international perspective on the world as it stands today and as it has developed over the course of history.
• You will have the option of learning some Chinese, Japanese or Korean language as part of your studies, although East Asian Studies is not a language-intensive degree programme.