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Affiliated Programs

Film and Critical Studies in Paris

The University of Iowa is one in a consortium of 21 colleges and universities associated with the Council on International Educational Exchange (CIEE), which sponsors the Film Studies Program and the Contemporary Criticism and Culture Program. These are two unique academic opportunities offered at the Centre Universitaire Américain du Cinéma et de la Critique à Paris.

The Film Studies Program is designed to explore film theory and analysis--not to train filmmakers or technicians. The curriculum provides courses and seminars in film theory, formal structures, history, and ideology. Participants study the relationships between film and other art forms, film culture, film and language, and film and psychoanalysis. Students discuss the evolution of the early cinema; the silent films of Griffith, Lang, Eisenstein, and Keaton; the classic Hollywood film; French cinema during and after the transition to sound; and European and American avant-garde cinemas. Participants study the works of Metz, Freud, Barthes, Lacan, Althusser, Foucault, and others to gain an understanding of contemporary French culture, mass media, and the visual arts.

The Contemporary Criticism and Culture Program focuses on recent developments in French political thought and social institutions, linguistics, social sciences, and literary theory. It draws on recent theoretical concepts in the fields of linguistics, psychoanalysis, anthropology, history, and philosophy to analyze verbal and audiovisual representations in literature, painting, photography, film, and television. The interdisciplinary nature of this program makes it relevant not only to French majors but also to students of other disciplines concerned with the problems of criticism and culture. It is of particular value to those who want to explore the applicability of modernist French theory to a variety of disciplines.

The program also permits specialization in history, characterized by the application to historical research of insights from other fields, such as linguistics, cultural geography, anthropology, sociology, and economics. Particularly distinctive in the French historical approach has been a preoccupation with the long-term evolution of populations and the social, economic, and cultural development of groups of ordinary people, seen in their urban or regional contexts.

Students may concentrate in one of these programs entirely or develop an individual program combining elements from both study center components.

Participating students are registered in the University of Paris III--Censier and are eligible to take selected courses within the University of Paris as well as those sponsored directly by the center. The program is open to both undergraduate and graduate students from The University of Iowa. For more information, contact the Department of Cinema and Comparative Literature.
 

Office of Graduate Ethnic Inclusion

The Office of Graduate Ethnic Inclusion (OGEI) is dedicated to providing academic assistance to graduate students from underrepresented populations across graduate programs; to helping build a sustainable practice of inclusion that nourishes and attracts underrepresented graduate students campus wide; and to helping build community through individual and group activities focused on successful academic progress.

OGEI's specific goals are to increase numbers of underrepresented ethnic minorities in graduate programs; increase the number of doctoral students among U.S. ethnic minorities in graduate programs at Iowa; create a department-centered effort of graduate ethnic inclusion; offer support to University of Iowa departments and programs that are interested in building, extending, or sustaining their practices of ethnic inclusion; support faculty-based efforts for recruiting top graduate scholars who are underrepresented ethnic minorities; provide mentoring and support for students throughout their degree programs; and provide information on grant opportunities for departments and programs that are pursuing graduate ethnic inclusion.

Women in Science and Engineering

Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) is dedicated to expanding and improving educational and professional opportunities for women in STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). The program aims to provide academic support, promote professional development, facilitate research opportunities, engage in community outreach, and encourage global cooperation.

WISE provides academic support by promoting activities that motivate and encourage undergraduate and graduate students to complete degrees and pursue careers in scientific and technical fields. It supports the recruitment and retention of women students, staff, and faculty and the full participation of women and precollege girls in gender-equitable educational programs that focus on science and engineering. The program facilitates professional development by promoting activities that empower women scientists, engineers, mathematicians, and health professionals to achieve success and assume leadership positions in their careers.

WISE encourages global cooperation by supporting activities that prepare women to enter the international STEM workforce, that support academic partnerships with foreign institutions, and that encourage scholarship and professional development of foreign women in STEM disciplines on the University of Iowa campus.

For more information on WISE goals and activities including the WISE learning community, WISE ambassadors, the Eunice Beam WISE travel grants, professional development workshops, and the WISE library and newsletter, visit the Women in Science and Engineering web site (http://www.uiowa.edu/~wise).