Online - Graduate Certificate in Videographic Criticism
The Online Graduate Certificate in Videographic Criticism has just been approved by the University of Massachusetts Graduate School and Faculty Senate.
It will be launched in Fall 2024. Enrollment will open soon. Please check back for more information. If you are interested, please contact Professor Barbara Zecchi: bzecchi@umass.edu
THE CERTIFICATE AT-A-GLANCE
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 in 2021, 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, and the UMass Inquiry Videographic Lab, are the ideal venues 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, directed by Professor Barbara Zecchi, is ideal for aspiring scholars, teachers, researchers, and other film-related professionals. Students will have the opportunity to work with renowned international videoessayists 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 (3 credits)
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 (3 credits)
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 (3 credits)
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 (3 credits)
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.”
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.”
- 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. 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.
Certificate Cost
University+ at UMass Amherst administers registration and payments for the graduate certificate.
Tuition details
Tuition is currently (AY 2023-24) is $656/credit. Students also pay a registration fee of $85 per term or semester.
Tuition for each 3-credit course is $1,968 plus applicable fees.
Contact the Bursars Office at bursar@admin.umass.edu or call 413-545-0337 for questions about tuition, fees, payments, and discounts.
Tuition Waivers
Eligible Massachusetts state employees receive a 50% discount on tuition for University+ courses. For more information on tuition waivers, visit the University+ website or talk to your HR or union representative.
Financial Aid
Financial aid is not available for certificate programs.
Instructions for Enrolling in Classes in SPIRE
Create a student record. (You should not need to do this step if you took a course in the previous semester) Go to spire.umass.edu. On the right hand menu, under Apply/References click on Non-Degree Enrollment Application and fill out the form there. You will receive an email with your NetID and password (this may take up to 3 days.)
- Create an enrollment appointment. Once you have received your NetID and password you can create an enrollment appointment by logging in to SPIRE (spire.umass.edu) with the NetID and password you received. Once logged in, navigate to Main Menu > Enrollment > Summer/Wntr/Non-degr Enroll Appt and follow the instructions. (It can take up to one day for SPIRE to recognize your NetID, so if you do not see these navigation options try the next day.)
- Register for classes. The enrollment appointment should be available immediately. Register for the class by logging in to SPIRE (spire.umass.edu) and navigate to Main Menu > Enrollment > Add Classes.