Welcome to the Graduate Program
The Department of Radio-Television-Film includes both a Media Studies area and a Production area. Candidates may seek an M.A. or Ph.D. in our Studies area or an M.F.A. in Film & Video Production or Screenwriting. Graduate students are challenged in their professional and intellectual growth, and are provided with assessment and guidance in planning careers and in the development of their talents. We encourage students to plan a program of study suited to their individual needs, designed to take best advantage of the mixture of subjects and the various opportunities offered in the Department and other academic programs on campus. The Department currently has twenty-eight faculty members who provide an environment in which graduate students receive optimal opportunity for study, research, teaching and the production of creative work.
MEDIA STUDIES
The scholarly and teaching interests of the Studies faculty focus on the cultural, social, economic, policy, technological, political and discursive settings in which communication systems, industries, texts and audiences exist and operate. We examine national and international media institutions, technology and policy, global media studies, the role, development and impact of communication and information technologies, the production of media content, and the nature and form of media representations. We investigate how various audiences receive, interact with, interpret and produce media texts and have a special focus on studies of culture and the international dimensions of communication processes. The Studies faculty addresses these issues from a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches associated with the social sciences, cultural studies, and humanities.
The Media Studies Ph.D. focuses on media technology and policy, film and television studies, global media, new media, media literacy, and ethnic and gender issues. It builds equally on humanities and social science roots, with students taking theory and methods or tools courses in both. Students also work with extraordinary faculty across the university in foreign area studies, cultural studies and a variety of issue and methods strengths.
CLICK HERE FOR A LIST OF RECENT DISSERTATION TITLES
PRODUCTION & SCREENWRITING
Our Production and Screenwriting faculty are working directors, writers, producers, editors, cinematographers, composers and sound designers. The Department's M.F.A. programs are designed to help students become filmmakers and screenwriters capable of producing professional-caliber work in the fiction, documentary, experimental and digital media arenas. Our M.F.A. students have an outstanding record of award-winning student work in festivals, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and various broadcast outlets, including PBS.
On the set of MFA student Miguel Alvarez’ thesis film, Mnemosyne Rising
Current faculty projects include an award-winning documentary about an Iraq War veteran paralyzed from a bullet to his spine - wounded after serving in Iraq for less than a week; a production rewrite for Gary Sanchez Productions (Will Ferrell, Adam McKay) and Paramount Studios of a comedy inspired by the true story of the “Traffic Czar” who was hired to straighten out the traffic in Baghdad during the early days of the Iraq war; a documentary about life in post-Katrina New Orleans; a commissioned screenplay about Austin-based and scandal-plagued Acceleration, at one time the country's largest producer of electric vehicles; a documentary about River City Tattoo Parlor in Killeen, Texas, home to America’s largest military base; an animated sci-fi romantic comedy about the planet, astronauts falling in love and disobedient robots; a documentary about the economic and creative redemption of a traditionally African-American neighborhood in Houston; an interactive experiment in advanced computer vision, cybernetics, and the cinema-theory concept of the gaze designed for gallery installation, in which fifteen oscillating electric fans swivel randomly until a person walks by, whereupon all the fans turn around to "look at" that person; a period romantic comedy based on Bernard Shaw's "Man and Superman;" a multi-media documentary about the history of Austin, Texas; "Yankee Tavern" and "Becky's New Car", new plays that will each receive numerous professional productions this coming season; commissioned plays for the Guthrie Theater (Minneapolis) and Steppenwolf Theatre (Chicago); a large-scale commissioned work for the Paul Dresher Electronic Ensemble in San Francisco; a documentary which looks at immigration and the loss of U.S. factory jobs as two sides of globalization; a documentary that uses the dying Cajun, Zydeco, and Swamp Pop dance halls of Southwestern Louisiana and Deep East Texas as a lens into the threats currently facing the Gulf Coast and its many cultures; a feature film adaptation of the prize-winning James Welch novel “Winter in the Blood”; a commissioned screenplay adaptation of the best-selling Herbie Brennan fantasy novel “Faerie Wars;” an award-winning film about a young kid who escapes life on the streets of New York City by stealing video cameras with his friends and retreating into the footage he's found; and a documentary about Trinidad, Colorado’s transformation from Wild West outpost to “sex change capital of the world."
Visit the Production & Screenwriting Overview for more information.
RELATED INFORMATION
Graduate Student Forms
Graduate and International Admissions Center (GIAC)
