Teaching Undergrad Courses with Majors and Nonmajors

One of the common problems of media studies that I’ve observed among advanced undergraduate students is that specialization can turn into a narrow perspective. In the Radio/TV/Film department at Northwestern University where I teach, rising seniors have already taken ten to twelve critical and production courses in the department. And they have likely taken some media-related courses in other departments, such as Communication Studies, or film classes in national language and literature departments. They have a true breadth of cinematic knowledge. From time to time, reports come back that RTF undergrads have outpaced the instructor in some other department’s “film” courses, which seem to be attempts to bolster enrollments by spicing things up with movies. (“Medieval Film” anyone?)

My own experience has been that team-teaching a course ideally allows fruitful interaction of different specialties and doesn’t simply bridge the gap but takes things to a new level. This happened when teaching a course on Hollywood musicals with my colleague from Theatre and Dance, Susan Lee. We combined RTF students and Theatre majors in a way that mutually benefitted both groups. In addition to her knowledge as a dance historian and her experience as a a professional dancer, Susan could easily demonstrate and explain, in advance of the screening, the moves that Powell, Astaire, Kelly, or Charisse would be doing. And the critical screenings included commentary by each of us on what was being seen and heard. Unfortunately, team-teaching is usually a luxury when administrators have their eyes on enrollment figures (even though our combined class was more than twice as large as what we would have been expected to enroll singly). And colleagues who haven’t tried it or wouldn’t be adept at it can suspect its value.

In relation to area studies and other topics, my RTF majors can be earnest but uninformed compared to their peers majoring in those other academic areas or having other knowledge and experience from life, culture, and family. Concomitant with this, when offering an advanced undergraduate class on a topic such as Latin American or Asian film, I’ve often been asked for permission to enroll from students with no previous film study. In my department, the common response has always been to direct the student to our introductory film studies course, which is a prerequisite and gateway into other critical/historical courses. While I agree with this, especially for sophomores and juniors, I’ve often waived it for non-major seniors after first interviewing them and explaining what the course entails.

My thinking is based on this: by the time students are seniors, they have “run out of time” to take prerequisites; they have developed strong critical and analytic skills; and if they seem to have a native interest and intelligence, they will probably work hard in the course and not be disturbed by the common “shoptalk” terms in my field. (How many polisci or chemistry majors would know “diegesis”?) I often suggest if they have no preparation that they buy a used copy of Bordwell and Thompson’s Film Art to pick up some basic terms and concepts over the break before the class begins. These non-RTF students can often bring interesting and unique perspectives to the course. I’ve had my share of international students who chafe at their parents’ expectations that they study pre-med, economics, or engineering when they really want to be film students. They are just as passionate about the cinema as the majors.

But there can be a significant gap between advanced majors and “newbies.” With attentive preparation and course design, the teacher can bridge that gap and create a terrain for open exchange. Let me elaborate by describing a course I offered on Hong Kong cinema.

The course was open to RTF department majors who had finished their required production and criticism courses and to non-majors who had taken the intro to film studies course. I sent descriptions of the course in advance to the heads of East Asian studies and Asian American studies, both of whom were interested in...