Course Details
Instructor: Saiyeed Shahjada Al Kareem
This course is designed to explore the language of audiovisual media, introducing students to the essential theoretical concepts while engaging them in practical exercises encompassing both visual and audio domains within the realm of audiovisual storytelling. Through a structured journey, students will engage with the theory and practice of film form, camera techniques, mise-en-scène, color basics, lighting principles, and the basics of sound. With practical exercises on editing principles and continuity, students will uncover the artistry behind cinematic storytelling. Moreover, the course offers insights into analyzing films, exploring various genres, and examining the cultural significance of national film languages.
This course focuses on the various modes used in narrative and non-narrative storytelling in fiction films, drama and television. It introduces students to the primary forms of writing for the screen, including features, shorts, drama and documentary, and web series. It explores the basic theory and formal aspects of story, structure, character, and dialogue, which are essential to all forms of screenwriting. The students critically review produced scripts and films from a screenwriter's perspective and produce a short film script individually.
Istructor: Saiyeed Shahjada Al Kareem
This course introduces students to the principles, practices, and politics of qualitative research within media studies. It blends theory and method to explore how meaning is produced, represented, and interpreted across texts, visuals, and digital platforms.
Through lectures and hands-on activities, students will engage with key research paradigms, data collection techniques, and analytical approaches—from thematic coding to multimodal discourse analysis. The course culminates in the development of a complete qualitative research proposal, equipping students with the tools needed for academic research, thesis writing, and publication.
Lead Instructor: Habiba Rahman
Co-instructor: Saiyeed Shahjada Al Kareem
This course discusses critical issues and methods of conducting qualitative research on television and film. Qualitative methods explored in this course include in-depth interviews, ethnography, semiotics, textual analysis, discourse analysis, critical discourse analysis, ideological analysis, and content analysis.
Lead Instructor: Amitabh Reza Chowdhury
Secondary Instructor: Saiyeed Shahjada Al Kareem
This course will explore in detail the role of the film director. It will introduce students to the process of filmmaking from a director’s point of view. Students will learn the directing techniques for working with the production designer, cinematographer, casts and crews, editor and producer. They will participate in hands on exercise on developing character, exploring subtext, scene studying and analyzing, breaking down a script to prepare for filming, location scouting and learn how a director works collaboratively with every sector of filmmaking to achieve his/her vision in storytelling.
TFP 502: New Media and Society
Instructor: Saiyeed Shahjada Al Kareem
It is assumed that we are living in an information society created based on a mutual constitution of digital technologies and social, political, economic, and cultural forces. This information society is global with its local and regional nuances and tensions. Digital technologies are in flux and shaping social infrastructures and challenging identity, politics, economics, and culture.
TFP 502: New Media and Society
Lead Instructor: Professor Dr. A J M Shafiul Alam Bhuiyan
Secondary Instructor: Saiyeed Shahjada Al Kareem
It is assumed that we are living in an information society created based on a mutual constitution of digital technologies and social, political, economic, and cultural forces. This information society is global with its local and regional nuances and tensions. Digital technologies are in flux and shaping social infrastructures and challenging identity, politics, economics, and culture.
TFP 506: Political Economy of Cultural Production
Lead Instructor: Professor Dr. A J M Shafiul Alam Bhuiyan
Secondary instructor: Saiyeed Shahjada Al Kareem
This course walks students through the issues and debates of political economy and the political economy of cultural production. It analyzes how, under what condition, and with what purpose media and cultural resources are produced, distributed, and consumed in a capitalist social formation.
TFP 507: Broadcast and Film Policy
Instructor: Saiyeed Shahjada Al Kareem
The goal of this course is to teach students about media policy principles, actors, institutions and processes in order to equip them to do policy analysis. This course is roughly divided in two sections. The first section deals with policy principles , actors and institutions. The second section analyze the policies guiding broadcasting and film in Bangladesh in comparison to other countries such as India, the UK, Canada, and the U.S.
TFP 705: Theoretical Approaches to Media Studies
Lead Instructor: Professor Dr. A J M Shafiul Alam Bhuiyan
Secondary Instructor: Saiyeed Shahjada Al Kareem
The objective of this course is to equip students to understand cinema and television in their social and political context through the use of various theoretical lenses. Students will be oriented with the major theoretical approaches to cinema and media studies so that they can critically assess cinema and media industries. The theoretical approaches include critical theory, political economy, cultural studies, apparatus theory, auteur theory, postmodernism, postcolonialism, feminist theory, and Marxism.
TFS 408: Television Journalism: Agriculture, NGOs, and Development
Instructor: Saiyeed Shahjada Al Kareem
The course focuses on learning about and covering the interplay of current issues in the food system in Bangladesh — its production, economic, environmental, social, political, and scientific aspects. Students will gain significant content knowledge about agriculture, climate change, and the role of women in farming, as well as significant practical experience producing stories for broadcast. This course will focus on a combination of classroom work (basic content knowledge, journalism theory, resource issues) and field-reporting practice. Much of it will focus on experiential learning —putting into practice what you have learned in a real-world setting.