The Master of Fine Arts in Film and Television Studies requires a minimum of 64 credits completed across four consecutive full-time semesters (fall/spring; fall/spring).
Our internationally recognized graduate faculty bring highly diverse research agendas to the seminar room. While the program maintains a world-class emphasis on international cinema movements, BU COM is also an academic hub for specialized Television Studies and foundational Horror Studies.
What you’ll learn here
The curriculum trains students to operate as rigorous media scholars, cultural critics, and institutional researchers. By completing this program, you will master the following core competencies:
Advanced critical analysis
- Deconstruct Media Artifacts: Conduct exhaustive textual, cultural, and industrial analyses of moving images using advanced theoretical and historical frameworks.
- Coherent Material Synthesis: Synthesize massive volumes of dense critical theory, media history, and cultural scholarship, translating complex ideas into polished oral presentations and professional arguments.
- Contextual Evaluation: Use historical milestones and contemporary industrial shifts to accurately critique the current state of global cinema and streaming television.
Research + Independent Scholarship
- Primary & Secondary Sourcing: Design and execute long-form, independent research projects utilizing specialized archival methods, digital databases, and trade journals.
- Case Study Methodology: Isolate and evaluate highly specific media texts or institutions to answer macro-level questions about culture, representation, and market power.
- Original Scholarly Contribution: Produce a peer-reviewed level piece of media scholarship that adds new data or critical perspectives to the field.
Academic Professionalization
- PhD Application Preparation (if applicable): If PhD study is your goal, build a competitive writing portfolio, master contemporary discourse, and acquire the seminar profile required for top-tier doctoral placement.
- Pedagogical Practice: Gain direct undergraduate classroom experience and teaching strategies through structured graduate teaching assistantships.
Curriculum Structure + Timeline
The MFA program is designed to be highly flexible. It features 16 credits of required core coursework, leaving the remaining 48 credits completely customizable through advanced seminars, independent studies, or professional field internships.
Core Requirements (16 credits)
The curriculum contains four required courses in history and theory, which must be taken in sequence within the first year of study. These foundational courses establish the critical and historical framework necessary for advanced graduate scholarship.
Program Electives + Specializations (48 credits)
The remainder of the program is composed of individual selections chosen from a wide spectrum of specialized upper-division courses (500-level and above) taught within the Film and Television Studies program. This elective flexibility allows you to tailor your degree to your specific research interests or career goals.
- Outside Electives: A student may petition to take a maximum of two electives (8 credits) outside the program. This option includes graduate-level courses in film/TV production and/or screenwriting, allowing you to complement your critical studies with hands-on media execution.
- Directed Study & Internships: The curriculum also offers distinct opportunities to work on customized, 1:1 directed study projects with the faculty, as well as the option to pursue a wide variety of credit-bearing professional field internships.
Recommended Course Progression
This sequential roadmap maps out the 64-credit requirement across four full-time semesters, ensuring core prerequisites are cleared in the first year before advancing to the thesis stage.
Semester 1: Fall (16 credits)
Begin the required historical and theoretical first-year core sequence. Students register for 8 credits of required Core courses alongside 8 credits of approved 500-level electives or specialized genre seminars.
As an omnipresent site of entertainment and information, "reality" and fantasy, "quality" and "trash," and commerce and the public interest, television requires an active, critical analysis of its texts, uses, and production of meaning. Students in this class will engage in such analysis, confronting television as a rich and contradictory site of entertainment, culture, politics, ideology, and signs. This discussion driven seminar sets aside evaluative considerations of TV in favor of theoretical and critical approaches that challenge widespread assumptions about the medium and expand our understanding of its role in our lives. These approaches, which constitute some of the dominant frameworks in Television Studies, include analyses of culture, industry, narrative, genre, images and sounds, liveness, and the television schedule. This course fulfills the additional TV Studies course requirement.
This course is designed to give you an aesthetic, conceptual, and practical understanding of the fundamentals of video production, digital editing, and storytelling specifically related to creating brand-driven content. You will learn to use a variety of motion picture equipment, including cameras, lenses, audio recorders & microphones, and lighting instruments. Class content will include concept development, production preparation and visualization, working with the camera, lighting, on-set techniques and procedures and, lastly, post-production, including editing, sound and music and deliverables. Projects will utilize sync sound via the double system. The goal of the course is to learn how to work collectively and collaboratively in the service of communicating a cohesive concept for a specific brand.
Semester 2: Spring (16 credits)
Complete the final 8 credits of the foundational Core sequence. Balance your schedule with 8 credits of advanced program electives while beginning initial exploratory conversations regarding your future thesis topic.
An introduction to classical and contemporary film and media theory. Topics include montage theory, realism, structuralism, post-structuralism, semiotics, psychoanalysis, phenomenology, and cultural studies. The course includes screenings of films that have contributed to critical debate and those that challenge theoretical presuppositions.
Semester 3: Fall (16 credits)
Deepen your specialized research footprint. Students enroll in 3 courses/12 credits of electives plus a 4-credit elective (or COM FT 953: Graduate Internship). By the end of this term, you will officially present your formal Thesis Prospectus to the graduate faculty for approval.
Semester 4: Spring (16 credits)
Devote your final term to original scholarship. Students register for 2 courses/8 credits of electives and the mandatory 8-credit capstone course: COM FT 852 Thesis Project, culminating in a full-length scholarly defense under close faculty mentorship.
Two-year elective course cycle
Note: This sample rotation illustrates the breath of topical seminars offered over a typical two-year cycle. Specific course selections vary by academic term, and certain courses require prerequisites not detailed here.
Spring I Course Offerings
- FT 536 FILM THEORY
- FT 549 THE PROFANE
- FT 554 TRUE CRIME
- FT 554 THE MUSICAL
- FT 554 RELIGION AND TV
- FT 557 AMERICAN INDEPENDENT FILM 2
- FT 570 UNCENSORED TV
- FT 708 ASIAN CINEMA
- FT 721 INTERNATIONAL MASTERWORKS
Fall I Course Offerings
- FT 500 WRITING FILM AND TV CRITICISM
- FT 520 TV THEORY AND CRITICISM
- FT 554 BROADCASTING HORROR
- FT 554 GLOBAL QUEER CINEMA
- FT 554 INTERNATIONAL THRILLER
- FT 558 AMERICAN INDEPENDENT FILM 3
- FT 722 AMERICAN MASTERWORKS
Spring II Course Offerings
- FT 530 BOLLYWOOD AND NOLLYWOOD
- FT 534 CRITICAL TV INDUSTRY STUDIES
- FT 541 TV GENRES AND FANDOM
- FT 543 TV COMEDY
- FT 546 NEW GERMAN CINEMA
- FT 554 UK COSTUME DRAMA
- FT 554 CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN FILM
- FT 559 AMERICAN INDEPENDENT FILM 4
- FT 567 FILM STYLES
- FT 721 INTERNATIONAL MASTERWORKS
Fall II Course Offerings
- FT 500 WRITING FILM AND TV CRITICISM
- FT 520 TV THEORY AND CRITICISM
- FT 536 FILM THEORY
- FT 554 INTERNATIONAL GENRE FILM
- FT 554 INTERNATIONAL FILM AND IDENTITY
- FT 554 STREAMING TV
- FT 554: TV AND THE HOME
- FT 722 AMERICAN MASTERWORKS
- FT 556 AMERICAN INDEPENDENT FILM 1
Academic Policies & Regulations
In addition to the University Bulletin, master’s students should refer to the College of Communication Graduate Handbook for a comprehensive guide to policies, academic regulations, and student resources.