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What is Film?

Film is one of the most versatile subjects in the arts and humanities, appearing in courses ranging from media studies and communication to sociology, psychology, and cultural criticism. What makes it academically compelling is its dual nature: film functions simultaneously as an art form with distinct technical and aesthetic conventions and as a cultural artifact that reflects the values, tensions, and relationships of the society that produces it. Students are asked to analyze specific works such as Mean Girls, Tough Guise, Sarafina, Wit, Menace II Society, and True Grit precisely because these films open up larger conversations about identity, violence, gender, race, and human behavior.

The papers archived here approach film from several directions. Some focus on technical and production elements, examining terminology, cinematography, and the conventions of silent film. Others take a sociological or psychological angle, using specific movies to explore addiction, domestic violence, and human behavior. Comparative essays place films side by side to highlight contrasting storytelling choices, while genre analysis papers examine why a film like The Hangover operates as comedy. Reflective and reaction-based writing also appears frequently, asking students to connect a film's scenes and story to real-world experience.

A strong film essay anchors its argument in specific scenes, dialogue, or cinematic techniques rather than plot summary. A well-scoped thesis makes a clear interpretive claim about what a film communicates and how it achieves that effect. Evidence drawn from the viewer's experience of particular moments carries more weight than general impressions. The most common pitfall is treating a film purely as a story to retell rather than as a constructed text where every choice — sound, framing, character relationship — contributes to meaning.

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Paper Doctorate

Spring Breakers and rape culture in contemporary American film

This paper discusses the film "Spring Breakers" and the concept of rape culture. According to this theory, the society tends to excuse and even encourage rape because of the underlying or overt oppression of women. In the film, women are sexualized and the violence that is perpetrated at them and by them is all reflective of the dying morality within the culture.

Research Paper Masters

Material self-interest and cultural decline in American cinema and criticism

Culture determines how members of a society act and relate. This is seen in the way some three authors have presented the ideas. This study shows the ideas of Morris Berman, Frank Capra, and David Fincher depicting a postmodern consumer society where the masculine identity is lost. Besides, the significance of the internet is making a reduction to our understanding ability to problems that are complex and interchange with connections of space to people who are connected to the net.

Paper Undergraduate

Love and escape in "It Happened One Night" and romantic comedies

Romantic comedies give viewers a way to divulge themselves into the story line of other individuals. It allows for an interpretation of an entire culture to be made based on the film itself. With "It happened one night" rash decisions were made in order to preserve the love between a couple, while "My big fat Greek wedding" showed how culture influences marriage and love.

Paper Doctorate

Racism and colonialism in the film Ten Canoes

This order explores racism and colonialism as it is represented in modern media. It first goes to explore the meaning of the terms and how they are still present today. Then, it explores the film Ten Canoes as a way to show how film can be a powerful tool in keeping the voices of the past alive. It helps show the world before the violence and oppression of colonialism.

Thesis Undergraduate

Narrative meaning-making in cinematic and real violence

¶ … violence: a study of narrative meaning" by Rachel Louise Shaw has as its basic premise the comparison of fictional violence, as experienced in film, with violence as experienced in real life.

Paper Doctorate

Gunilla Anderman's analysis of linguistics and translation history

Translation and Linguistics -- Using one to Decode the Other

Case Study Undergraduate

Surveillance and authority in Inception and Eternal Sunshine

The films Inception and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind are both characterized by unique perspectives on the human condition and on the human mind. Neither of these stories is told in a traditional manner.

Paper Doctorate

Carbon dioxide snow falling on Mars during winter

The research and mission reported by this article regards unique weather patterns occurring on Mars. According to data gathered by the Phoenix Mars lander and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter data, there are clouds of water vapor on Mars and there is the only known stance of carbon dioxide snow falling in this solar system. The research on this phenomenon was first published in the Journal of Geophysical Research. The CO2 snowfalls occur in the southern hemisphere, around the pole during the winters on Mars. The data shows that carbon dioxide stays frozen on the Martian surface year round on the south pole. Most of the data analysis is performed at the California Institute Technology of Pasadena.

Research Paper Undergraduate

Family identity dynamics in "Little Miss Sunshine"

The film "Little Miss Sunshine" can be viewed with a family systems theory approach. The film reveals different dynamics between family members. The units are a part of the whole. The film is a great one, but this paper does not analyze the film from a cinematography standing--just a psychological one using family systems theory as the basis of analysis. Peer-reviewed sources only.

Paper Undergraduate

Children's letters to Eleanor Roosevelt during the Great Depression

Censorship has been part of the human experience since people gathered together in communities. The idea of political censorship is designed to keep the public either unaware of certain situations or to use propaganda to influence their viewpoint. For instance, in war, it is often the task of the media to portray the enemy as "the other" or evil so that the population can be rallied against the cause. The very crux of the argument comes to the central point of censorship – who must be protected and why must they be protected? Ideas, political, social, or otherwise, may be the most dangerous form of literature ever.

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