Courses in Other Departments

This list contains courses that have been identified as reasonable petitions to count for elective credit to a Concentration or Secondary in AFVS.  Their subjects and syllabi engage substantially with methods and topics relevant to the practice and study of art, film or visual studies.  This list is by no means exhaustive and some departments (for instance History of Art and Architecture) offer many courses that may arguably be relevant to your path of study.   If you would like a course not found on this list to be considered, please contact the Director of Undergraduate Studies (AFVS-DUS@fas.harvard.edu) and share information about the course, ideally a syllabus.  Normally Concentrators may not count more than two non-AFVS courses for credit and Secondaries no more than one.

CONCENTRATORS and SECONDARY FIELD STUDENTS: If you are considering taking a course outside of AFVS for concentration or secondary field credit, e-mail Paula Soares (soares@fas.harvard.edu) before you take the course to determine how the course fits into to your overall plan of study and concentration requirements. After the course is approved on the departmental level, send a petition in my.harvard to have the course approved in your  Academic Advising Report. 

2026-2027- Courses in Other Departments 

Courses taught by AFVS faculty in other departments (e.g. through GenEd or First Year Seminars) generally can be counted for AFVS credit.

Most courses offered in the History of Art and Architecture will count for AFVS concentration credit. The following courses are recommended and pre-approved for History/Theory credit:

Fall:

HAA 10 Jeffrey Hamburger, Joseph Koerner, Cecile Fromont
                  Introduction to the History of Art

HAA 103 Francesca Bewer 
                  Art, Science and the Practice of Art History

HAA 173P Maria Gough 
                  Architectures of Cloth

HAA179K Ewa Lajer-Burcharth
                  Ten Trails: Drawing Outdoors

HAA179V Sarah Lewis
                  Vision and Justice (The Seminar)

Spring:

HAA 172V Sarah Lewis
                  Unseen Black Art

HAA 177M Jennifer Roberts
                  Art and Science of the Moon

HAA 177P Robin Kelsey 
                  The Language of Photography in the USA

All other HAA courses can likely count for the AFVS History/Theory or Elective requirements, but please check with the Manager of Academic Programs or the Director of Undergraduate Studies.

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The following courses are pre-approved for concentration Elective credit. 

Courses on this list taught by Faculty Affiliates of AFVS may be petitioned to count for History/Theory or Studio/Production credit, according to the course and up to the discretion of the DUS.

If you find a course in another department that is not on this list and that you'd like to petition to count for AFVS Elective credit, please reach out to Paula Soares (soares@fas.harvard.edu) or the DUS. 

FALL:

EAFM 151  Jie Li
                  Documenting China on Film

ENGLISH CLR Musa Syeed
                  Introduction to Screenwriting: Workshop

ENGLISH CSAS Sebastian Smee
                  Pictures into Words: Writing About Art

ENGLISH CTV Sam Marks 
                  Writing for Television: Developing the Pilot: Workshop

ENGLISH 189VG Vidyan Ravinthiran
                  Video Game Storytelling

GENED 1059  David Levine
                  Act Natural

GERMAN 117 Lisa Parkes
                  Sound, Story, Studio: The German Radio Play

GERMAN 154 Eric Rentschler
                  The Frankfurt School on Film and Mass Culture

HIND-URD 123 Richard Delacy
                  Bollywood and Beyond: Commercial Cinema, Language and Culture in South Asia

HISTLIT 90HO Chloe Hawkey
                  New York Modern

HUM 7 Lauren Kaminsky, Steven Biel, Raphael Allison
                  Culture in Context

MUSIC 281R Vijay Iyer
                  Black Sonic Avant-Gardes

ROM-STD 201 Jeffrey Schnapp John T. Hamilton
                  Questions of Theory

SLAVIC 193  Daria Khitrova
                  Introduction to Russian and Soviet Film

SPANSH 122 Raquel Vega-Duran (conducted in Spanish)
                  Spanish Film from Buñuel to Almodóvar

TDM 150 Julia Smeliansky 
                  Directorial Concepts and Set Design of the 20th and 21st Centuries

TDM 150VT Jeff Adelberg 
                  Visual Thinking and Creation for Theatermakers

TDM 155AI Marlon Kuzmick
                  Media Production in the Age of AI

SPRING: 

AFRAMER 118X Myisha Eatmon
                  The Black American Experience Through Film

AFRAMER 274 Sarah Lewis 
                  Art, Race, and Politics

ENGLISH CLR Musa Syeed
                  Introduction to Screenwriting: Workshop

GENED 1042 Tomiko Yoda
                  Anime as Global Popular Culture

GENED 1072 Karthik Pandian 
                  Video Commune

GEN ED 1156 Ewa Lajer-Burcharth, Maria Gough, David Joselit 
                  Modern Art and Modernity

FRENCH 74 Usha Rungoo
                  Moving Images: Global narratives in cinema and graphic novels

HISTLIT 10 Angela Allan, Raphael Allison
                  Introduction to Cultural Studies

HIST 131 Cemal Kafadar 
                  Medieval History and Cinema

SCAND 55 Agnes Broome 
                  One Hundred Years of Scandinavian Cinema

SLAVIC 114/ TDM 114K Daria Khitrova
                  Squaring the Circle: Russia, Art, Revolution

TDM 135B Kate Brehm 
                  Puppet Theater: Designing and Directing Visual Storytelling

TDM 154 Jeff Adelberg 
                  Designing with Light

TDM 167MV Katelyn Hearfield 
                   “Video Killed the Radio Star”: the History and Analysis of Music Videos