MPhil in Film and Screen Studies by Advanced Study

The MPhil in Film and Screen Studies at Cambridge provides advanced training in the study of the theory and history of film and other screen media in a vibrant interdisciplinary context. The moving image is explored in relation to the development of modern and contemporary culture, and to the history and theory of other media (literature, music, the visual arts, architecture, the digital). Students are immersed in a research environment that emphasises work on geopolitics, early cinema, art cinema and the avant-garde, theory, aesthetics, and gender and sexuality. The MPhil is offered by the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics (MMLL) as a nine-month full-time period of research and introduces students to research skills and specialist knowledge.
The course aims:

• to give students with relevant experience at a first-degree level the opportunity to develop a historically and theoretically informed approach to the study of screen media in their cultural contexts, both in taught classes and through closely supervised individual research;
• to give students the opportunity to develop a distinctive interdisciplinary approach to the study of film and screen, by exposure to the different kinds of enquiry undertaken in a variety of disciplines;
• to give students the opportunity to acquire or develop skills and expertise relevant to their research interests; and
• to provide foundations for continuation to PhD research in film and screen studies.

These aims are achieved by:

• giving students the experience and guidance necessary for them to be able to formulate a feasible research proposal, and to prepare for submitting written work based on such a proposal to a clearly defined timetable;
• providing a broad foundation for the proper understanding of the issues which have shaped a given field of study, and thus for a critical assessment of existing scholarship;
• encouraging students to develop insights which might form the basis of an original contribution to that field of study;
• developing students’ competence in bibliographical method (including the use of computer technology); and
• giving students the experience of attending and contributing to a postgraduate research seminar, and in particular of presenting their own work and discussing the issues that arise from it with an audience of senior and junior members of the participating departments and faculties.

In addition to these subject-specific skills, the following general transferable skills are also acquired:

• The relatively intense timetable of the MPhil demands that students develop exemplary time-management skills. They work in collaboration with their supervisors to devise appropriate plans of study and have to ensure that they meet all deadlines, both formal and informal.
• Students are expected to make regular presentations in seminar situations. This develops their oral presentation skills.
• Written work is assessed on the basis of a demonstration of scholarly research and critical analysis. That is, students are expected to present a lucid, coherent and carefully substantiated exposition of a critical viewpoint. Writing must be in clear, grammatically correct, continuous prose, and must function as a single, comprehensible, persuasive, cumulative demonstration, not as a series of disconnected insights. The organisation of the argument of the essay or dissertation and its prose style are of crucial importance.