Introduced in September 2008, the PhD in Film and Moving Image Studies is a unique and innovative program that emphasizes original work in research.

As an academic field of inquiry, Film and Moving Image Studies draws from several other disciplines, including art history, literature, communications, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, drama and semiotics, making it a highly interdisciplinary domain of study whose parameters are continually shifting. The program aims to highlight this interdisciplinarity with courses and research that reflect and even define the field's disciplinary shifts all the while situating Film and the Moving Image within the globalization of culture, knowledge and industry.

The PhD in Film and Moving Image Studies encompasses a broad range of research interests that are organized strategically and conceptually under four areas of specialization:

1. Film and Moving Image History

The main objective of this research area is to equip students with the methodological and intellectual tools for future work as film and moving image historians. Research in film and moving image history includes studies in historical approaches to topics such as early and silent cinemas, film and new media institutions, economic and technological history of the moving image, historical approaches to national cinemas, film movements, styles and genres, performance, history of film representations, and film and new media archiving.

2. Film and Moving Image Aesthetics

The main objectives of this research area are to locate film and moving images within the discourses and practices associated with the fine arts and to train students in the advanced investigation of these artifacts understood as fine arts. Research in this area includes philosophical approaches to art and aesthetics applied to film and moving images as well as research into film style, criticism and critical appreciation, relationships between moving images and other art forms, film adaptation, formal and textual analysis.

3. Film and Moving Image Theory

The main objectives of this research area are to train students in the rigours of the classical and contemporary theoretical traditions and approaches found in film and moving image studies and to encourage the development and application of new theoretical methodologies and approaches. Research in film and moving image theory includes studies of classical and contemporary film theories, investigations into the history and epistemology of film and moving image theory, the study and development of critical methodologies and frameworks such as semiotics, narratology, various philosophical approaches (phenomenology, structuralism and post-structuralism, pragmatism), psychoanalytic theory, reception theory, film interpretation and hermeneutics, and anthropological theory.

4. Film, Moving Image and Cultural Theory

The main objective of this research area is to train students in the advanced study of film and moving images from the socio-cultural perspective. Research in film, moving image and cultural theory investigates how the medium interacts with changing national and international cultural contexts since the latter part of the 19th century - modernity, postmodernity, globalization - and considers its place within different economic and social formations. This includes studying film and moving images, their social imaginary and representations, from various theoretical perspectives including feminist and queer theory, Frankfurt School social and political theory, and post-colonial theory.

Student Work

Find out more about what current PhD students are doing on the Student Work page.