About

The Department of Film and Media Studies at UC Santa Barbara is one of the leading international centers for education and research in our field. Founded as a small interdisciplinary program in 1973, and elevated to the status of an autonomous department in 1996, Film and Media Studies is now academic home to roughly 500 undergraduate majors and 30 graduate students. Within a broad framework of liberal arts education, the Department’s undergraduate BA curriculum offers courses on the history and theory of film and media practices around the world; fiction and nonfiction filmmaking; video games, interactive, and web-based digital media production; screenwriting; archival and curatorial practice, and more. While the graduate core focuses on history, theory, and critical analysis, the MA-PhD program nurtures innovative research projects with an eye to the future of the field. The research of our distinguished faculty, which has helped define the discipline over time, is currently shaping new sub-fields around environmental media, media industry and policy, risk and media, data visualization, sound studies, and global and emergent media. 

The University of California renews its commitment to the full realization of its historic promise to recognize and nurture merit, talent, and achievement by supporting diversity and equal opportunity in its education, services, and administration, as well as research and creative activity. The University particularly acknowledges the acute need to remove barriers to the recruitment, retention, and advancement of talented students, faculty, and staff from historically excluded populations who are currently underrepresented.