News feedsWelcome to Film Studies at Southampton
Southampton earned first place in The Guardian's University Guide 2009.
In the subject category of 'Media studies, communications and librarianship', Southampton achieved a perfect teaching score, the most generous expenditure per student, and the most favourable staff-student ratio.
Film staff also came top of the medals in the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise.
Over the past decade, Film Studies at Southampton has established a distinctive identity for itself, consolidated by the leadership of Professor Pam Cook, author of The Cinema Book, one of the most influential texts in the discipline (and recently voted best film book in a BFI Readers' poll).
View our Film Studies newsletters for a full round-up of our events and achievements over the last two years.
Film Studies is a separate disciplinary group within the School of Humanities, but has close intellectual and staffing links with other groups, including English, Modern Languages and the Centre for Transnational Studies.
Research
Our Film Studies staff cover a wide range of different research interests and expertises. However, our approach towards film and television can be defined as being specifically focused on issues of cultural transfer and exchange, and on the strong perception of visual media as transnational and global, rather than purely national phenomena. This emphasis is reflected in our individual research activities and publications, and in our collaborative efforts, such as major international conferences:
- Anglo-French cinematic relations since 1930 in 2007
- German-speaking Émigrés in British Cinema, 1925-1950 in 2005
- The Charles Chaplin Conference in 2005
- Nights to Remember: Memory, Modernity and Myth of the Titanic in 2000
Teaching
In addition to our wide-ranging portfolio of undergraduate courses, Film Studies offers an MA programme and MPhil/PhD which spans cinema from its beginnings to the present day, and intersects with fields as diverse as history, gender studies, television and cultural studies.