Ph.D. in Film and Digital Media

The Ph.D. program in Film and Digital Media challenges the traditionally conceived borders between creative and critical practice. The program enables potential dialogue between creative practice and theoretical knowledge as related forms of intellectual work. It provides the conditions for students to realize a wide range of possible projects, including those across the traditional divides of critical studies and production. Focusing on a diverse range of cultural production that includes a cinema, television, video art, and Internet-based media, the Ph.D. program participants interrogate the historical, aesthetic, political, ideological, and technological aspects of these media forms across a range of international contexts, investigating their points of connection and convergence as well as their relationship to broader cultural and historical change. The program thus prepares students for intellectually informed creative practice and theoretical and critical production in a range of environments, not limited to traditional academic contexts.

Offering creative and critical studies of art and culture at the undergraduate and graduate levels. At UC Santa Cruz, instruction in the arts inspires and develops the capacity for individual and collaborative creative inquiry, analysis, and action within and beyond the university. Our faculty includes artists, historians, critics, performers, and theorists working across the arts globally.