Master of Arts - Cinema Studies

San Francisco State University

Program Description

The Cinema Department was founded during the political activism and artistic experimentation of the 1960s. In 2014, the department became the School of Cinema. Today, in an era of new technologies and new opportunities, the School continues to encourage and celebrate cinematic expressions that challenge social and artistic norms. Cinema faculty are committed to providing students with a liberal arts education focused on three intertwined values: creative expression, critical thinking, and social engagement.

The Master of Arts in Cinema Studies offers students the opportunity to pursue graduate research in cinema and media scholarship. The School of Cinema considers “cinema” to refer to all moving image media, from early films to emerging digital media forms. The M.A. program emphasizes not only the study of cinema history, theory, and criticism but of all “cinematic” media and the theories related to them. The M.A. curriculum allows students considerable freedom to choose from a wide variety of course offerings, building toward the writing of a thesis that emphasizes focused research on a specific topic related to their interests, under the direction of a thesis advisor.