MA Film Studies and Middle Eastern History
About this course
Film studies and Middle Eastern history is a combination that illuminates two important and interrelated domains of contemporary culture and global affairs. Film studies examines one of the most significant cultural forms of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, using critical, theoretical, and historical methods to understand how moving images create meaning, how they reflect and shape culture, and how they circulate within and across national and political contexts. Middle Eastern history provides rigorous engagement with a region of extraordinary complexity and global significance, developing skills in historical analysis, cultural interpretation, and evidence-based argument. Together, they produce graduates equipped to think carefully about representation, politics, and culture. At St Andrews this four-year full-time programme offers comprehensive study of global film cultures alongside the history of the Middle East across different periods and perspectives. In film studies you will examine cinema as both an art form and a cultural institution, engaging with a wide range of national and world cinemas alongside the critical frameworks needed to analyse them. In Middle Eastern history you will develop a deep understanding of the region's past, from the ancient world through the Islamic golden age, the Ottoman Empire, colonialism, and the postcolonial present. A year abroad is incorporated into the programme, giving you the opportunity to extend your learning in a different intellectual and cultural environment. Graduates from this combination go on to careers in journalism, broadcasting, publishing, international affairs, diplomatic and NGO work focused on the Middle East, cultural organisations, teaching, and postgraduate research. The critical and analytical skills developed through sustained engagement with both film and history are valued across a wide range of professional and academic contexts, and the Middle Eastern specialism is particularly relevant at a time when understanding this region is of heightened importance globally.
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