Program Overview - Videographic Criticism

In our contemporary environment of highly mediated, digitized, and predominantly
audiovisual communication, our methods of teaching, presenting, and researching have
to answer to new demands. Both on the job market, as well as in the classroom
graduate students in disciplines such as Film Studies, Media Studies, or Screen Studies
are asked to think audiovisually in order to excel and sharpen their profile and career
marketability. Videographic Criticism as a new, booming field has in the last few years
gained a lot of attention internationally and proven itself as a best-practice example of
how to turn critical thinking into short shareable films and videos that attract broad
audiences. This graduate certificate will offer in-depth training to understand the theory
and the practice of this new field. Students will learn how to use and produce video
essays and will become scholars in this practice-based field of film and media research.
The University of Massachusetts Amherst is superiorly equipped to offer this certificate.
In recent years, UMass has become one of the major hubs of this new field worldwide.
Just to mention a few highlights, UMass hosted a very successful conference in
videographic criticism that attracted the best practitioners from around the globe, the
Film Studies Program offered workshops and classes taught by the most renowned
international video essayists, and several video essays produced by UMass faculty and
students were included in the list of Best Video Essays of 2022 and Best Video Essays
of 2023 by the prestigious film magazine Sight and Sound of the British Film Institute.
The University of Massachusetts Amherst is the ideal venue for this graduate certificate.

Online Certificate Overview

This is the first graduate certificate in this field in the US, and for that matter in the
world. Open to any students that meet UMass Graduate School eligibility, the
interdisciplinary Graduate Certificate in VideoGraphic Criticism is ideal for aspiring
scholars, teachers, researchers, and other film-related professionals. Students will have
the opportunity to work with renowned international faculty as they develop their
knowledge and critical and practical skills through courses exploring diverse theoretical,
thematic, historical, methodological, and international/intercultural examples and
perspectives. Students will acquire an understanding of videographic criticism as
cutting-edge research, teaching, and artistic interdiscipline with its own hybrid theories
and practices, and have the opportunity to make connections and applications within
their own disciplines or approaches. Students do not need to have a background in film
or video production or criticism.

Course of Study

To complete the Graduate Certificate in VideoGraphic Criticism, students must earn
12 credits (= 4 classes) from the list of required and elective courses below —without
any specific order.

For students with no previous skills in film editing, the online class Film-St 397 FE:
Video Editing and Film Montage is recommended. Please note that this class cannot
count for a certificate elective.

Required courses (both):

Film-St 650 Videographic Teaching: Pedagogy, Methods, Assessments (3 credits)
The course introduces students to videographic criticism as a tool for studying and
analyzing audiovisual material, as a presentation format to share knowledge, and as a
teaching method. Videographic Criticism is viewed throughout the course as a multiple
and hybrid format that speaks to the diversity of audiences as well as of audiovisual
culture. Students watch, work with, and assess video essays to develop an
understanding of how they can be used to diversify our understanding of audiovisual
material and decolonizing our gaze. Exemplary video essays are shown and their
strategies analyzed. Apart from that, students engage in their own little videographic
experiments that they will present in class.

Film-St 651 Videographic Practice: Techniques, Formats, Distribution (3 credits)
The course introduces students to the many practices of videographic criticism by
looking at different techniques and the diverse formats that can be used for video
essays and will learn about how to share and distribute them. Videographic research is
explored as a form of practical aesthetics or artistic research that combines hands-on
exercises and experiments with conceptual thought. Experimentation is used in order to
counter predominant aesthetic ideologies and expand our audiovisual vocabulary. In the
course of this class students make their own video essay by applying different
techniques they have encountered and will publish their video essays online.

Elective Courses (at least two):

Film-St 660 Working with Sound
This course explores the role of sound in the video essay. Students will learn about the
technical aspects of sound recording and editing, as well as the ways in which sound
can be used to create meaning, critical distance, and affect in visual media. Topics
covered will include the poetics and politics of the voice-over, the use of music, sound
design, use of silence, gender issues.

Film-St 661 Working with Editing
This course explores the history and the different techniques of editing and montage as
aesthetic, affective, and argumentative devices. Students will learn about the
technological and philosophical aspects of editing, as well as different editing modes
and styles, such as the split screen, the multiscreen, the spatial montage, and soft
montage. New forms of montage as they can be encountered on social media platforms
with their specific affordances are critically discussed and added to the palette of editing
tools as tools for thought.

Film-St 662 Working with the Body
This course explores our engagement with film material as not simply an optical but a
multisensory and embodied one. The bodies of viewer, researcher and video essay
maker are understood as sites of knowledge production. Students will learn how to use
videographic criticism as a performative practice in which not only the diversity of our
bodies can be used as tools but which conversely can change and expand our notion of
what a body is and can do.

Film-St 663 Working with Surfaces
This course explores screens, desktops, as well as other media surfaces and how they
can be made productive, be discussed, but also changed within videographic criticism.
Specific videographic formats such as the desktop documentary will be taught as critical
intervention into our post-pandemic visual culture in which we are more surrounded by
screens and media surfaces as ever before.

Applying for the Certificate in VideoGraphic Criticism

The Certificate welcomes applications from persons who meet the following criteria:
- Must have earned a baccalaureate degree (or international equivalent).
- Must have English language proficiency
- Must meet the same academic requirements as those defined for
degree-seeking students to remain in “good standing.”

Should a graduate certificate student subsequently apply and be accepted to a
degree-granting program, up to 15 hours of UMass Amherst credit earned as a
graduate certificate student may be applied to satisfy graduate degree requirements.
Any application of such credit must be approved by the program/department and must
be appropriate to the program.

Certificate Completion Requirements

To receive a graduate certificate:
- Students must successfully complete certificate requirements as established
by the university and the individual certificate program.
- The grade-point average for the courses counted toward the certificate must
be 3.0 or above.
- Students must meet the same academic requirements as those defined for
degree-seeking students to remain in “good standing.”
- Non-degree-seeking students are not required to be enrolled each semester
but must complete the certificate within 2 years.
- Students must submit a Certificate Eligibility Form to the Graduate Student
Service Center. Degree-seeking students must submit this form before
graduating from their degree program. Non-degree-seeking students must
submit this form no later than one semester after completing their certificate
course work.

Mode of delivery

Courses are offered online and asynchronously to allow complete flexibility.