Screen and Cultural Studies
Our program examines the history and practice of contemporary culture and screen media. Our research looks at the production, aesthetics, circulation, consumption and uses of contemporary and historical screen media and cultures, global and local studies of sexuality, race, cities, migration, youth and cultural industries, and the environmental and social impacts and uses of cultural practice.
Screen and Cultural Studies at Melbourne
The Screen and Cultural Studies program focuses on cultural texts, sites and practices to explore cultures and screen media, analysing their evolution, politics, social function and embedding in everyday life.
Academic staff in the Screen and Cultural Studies program are published writers, industry professionals, and leading researchers in the following areas:
- Asian media (China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and South East Asia)
- Migration and media globalisation
- Critical fashion studies
- Critical television studies
- Digital media and new media arts
- Lifestyle and commodity cultures
- Feminist, queer, gender and intersectional theory
- Affect, trauma and psychoanalysis
- Youth, new media, and political subjectivity
- Colonialism, postcolonialism and the decolonial
- Film and media industries and cultural policy
- Film and media histories (Hollywood, Art, European, Australian)
- Ecocritical media and cultural studies
- Cultures of crisis
- Public humanities
- Film theory and aesthetics
The program has strong connections to the Research Unit in Public Cultures, Human Rights and Animal Ethics Research Network, Centre for Enlightenment, Romanticism and Contemporary Culture, Critical Fashion Studies research collective and the Melbourne Screen Studies Group.
Featured research and engagement projects
The Screen and Cultural Studies program has a successful record of receiving external and university funding for research projects, including from the Australian Research Council (ARC).
-
Italian Cinemas in Melbourne: From Post War Migration to The Movie Show (SBS)
This project aims to provide a comprehensive overview of ways in which Italian language cinemas contributed to the reception and distribution of Italian cinema in Melbourne from the Post-WWII and mass migration periods until the advent of SBS in the late 1970s.
-
Digital Photography: Mediation, Memory And Visual Communication
This project aims to address the social impact of major shifts in the production, distribution, viewing and storage of photographic images which have profoundly altered their everyday use.
-
Modernism, Cosmopolitanism And Consumer Culture
This project aims to investigate the department store as a significant site for the transnational dissemination of modernism and cosmopolitanism in the first half of the 20th century.
-
Remaking The Australian Environment Through Documentary Film And Television
This project aims to investigate how documentary film, television and online media have transformed our sense of the Australian environment since the 1950s.
-
Superheroes: Creative Force, Cultutral Zeitgeist And Transmedia Phenomenon
The project aims to explore the historic, creative and artistic development of comic book heroes across multiple media and their political and social significance.
-
Transforming Cultural Identity: Media Flows Between Australia And East Asia
This project examines East Asian media reach in to Australian audiences via new media, and Australian media industries reaching out to Asia via transnational co-productions.
-
Aesthetic Politics
This project sets out to establish terms for an ecocritical aesthetics for the 21st century in three thematic groups, Truth, The Good and Beauty.
-
Screening Ideas
Screening Ideas is a public program celebrating the power and influence of film. With a focus on work from emerging scholars and filmmakers, the series pairs free film screenings with live panel events, lectures, and conversations.
Learn about our research centres and units
-
Critical Fashion Studies
A collective uniting scholars, practitioners and industry to advance research on fashion sustainability and ethics.
-
Melbourne Academic Games, Play, and Interactive Entertainment (MAGPIE)
The Melbourne Academic Games, Play and Interactive Entertainment (MAGPIE) initiative supports interdisciplinary research, teaching, leadership and industry engagement in the field of game studies, including game design, play processes, player communities, narrative design, and creative technology industry cultures.
-
Asian Cultural Research Network
A collaboration researching the cultural effects of youth travel, migration and media between Asia and Australia.
Study with us
Screen and Cultural Studies graduates pursue careers in industries that include the not for profit sector, curatorship, cultural policy/cultural industries, media, government, education and academia.
Undergraduate
Graduate coursework
- Graduate Certificate in Arts
- Graduate Diploma in Arts
- Graduate Certificate in Arts (Advanced)
- Graduate Diploma in Arts (Advanced)
Graduate research
Meet our Screen and Cultural Studies staff
The Screen and Cultural Studies program is recognised nationally and internationally for innovative teaching, scholarship and research. Our staff are prominent researchers in their areas of expertise across our unique program.