BA Film Studies and Middle Eastern Studies

BA Film Studies and Middle Eastern Studies aims to develop your understanding and awareness of the rich possibilities of this creative medium and encourages you to approach the study of film from a range of historical and theoretical perspectives.

You will also gain an in-depth understanding of the Middle East, a large region that is of central importance in the contemporary world.

Film Studies

You will expand your experience of film through taught units and screenings that focus on both classical and contemporary films, covering a wide range of film cultures from around the world. 

You will study mainstream and non-mainstream films in order to broaden your understanding of the history of film, as well as the debates and issues that are informing and generated by current practice in film and shaping its future.

As you enhance your skills of close analysis, you will also develop an understanding of how film engages with socio-cultural and political concerns, placing the films you study in their historical context as well as thinking about current debates and future challenges for cinema as a medium.

The course emphasises historical and theoretical approaches to studying film rather than practical production. 

Middle Eastern Studies

The course takes into account the fact that the study of the Middle East has grown into a multi-disciplinary and cross-cultural academic phenomenon, attracting strong interest for political, cultural and social reasons.
It takes on board academic developments in fields such as globalisation, cultural identity, diaspora and migration studies, gender studies, and post-colonial studies, all of which are based on techniques in the analysis of evidence across several Middle Eastern languages, and uses original sources in English translation as well as secondary sources in English.
The interplay of disciplines and skills involved in achieving a balanced view of the history, literatures, cultures, and religions of the Middle East is broad and complex.
Language skills are useful in achieving an advanced understanding of this balanced view, but not the only route. This degree, therefore, allows the study of language(s) up to level 2, but does not make language study compulsory.
The course will equip you, through core course units and a wide range of optional course units, with the ability to acquire a thorough and sufficiently specific, but language-independent understanding of the Middle East, alongside key contemporary methods in the study of culture, religion, literature and history.