Media Arts & Culture

At Occidental College, the Media Arts and Culture Department (MAC) unites film, media theory, and hands-on production. The program helps you tell meaningful stories, think critically about media, and create work that connects art, culture, and social impact on Occidental’s LA-based campus and beyond.

Earn Your Media Arts and Culture Degree from Oxy

The Occidental College Media Arts and Culture undergraduate program is a distinctive liberal arts experience that combines creative film/media production with critical analysis in the heart of Los Angeles. You will learn to interpret, design, and produce media in a variety of forms and genres, including fiction, documentary, experimental video, animation, television, social media, video games, video essays, participatory media, AR/VR, and digital and motion design. Through intellectual inquiry, creative experimentation, and community engagement, you will become an active participant in the rapidly changing media landscape.

As a Media Arts and Culture major at Occidental, you will explore how visual and digital media shape culture, politics, and identity. Courses span media history, theory, and production, giving you both creative fluency and analytical depth. Through internships and collaborative projects, you will connect creative practice to real-world experience in film, television, and digital industries. Graduates of the program leave Oxy with original portfolios, technical expertise, and the confidence to innovate in today’s evolving media environment.

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Media Arts and Culture program at a glance

6
tenured faculty
20+
courses offered each semester
100+
MAC majors & minors annually

What You’ll Learn as a Media Arts and Culture Major at Occidental

Media Arts and Culture (MAC) students at Occidental College working with a camera

Where creativity meets critical thinking

The Media Arts and Culture Department at Occidental College helps you merge creative expression with cultural understanding. You will explore film, television, digital media, and interactive forms through an interdisciplinary lens, developing the ability to analyze, create, and communicate across audiences and mediums.

Explore Courses & Requirements

You can shape your MAC studies around your creative and academic interests

  • Critical Media: Focus on film and media history, visual and digital culture, and emerging forms of digital scholarship such as video essays and GIS-based projects.
  • Media Production: Learn hands-on production techniques across fiction, documentary, experimental, and interactive forms. 

Both concentrations integrate theory and creative practice to prepare you for a wide range of media careers.

MAC faculty are active filmmakers, media creators, and scholars whose work reaches audiences around the world. They have directed feature films and shorts, produced experimental and participatory projects, and created videographic scholarship featured at festivals and institutions such as IDFA, HotDocs, SXSW, Sundance, Sci-Fi London, Comic-Con, Beyond Fest, Fantastic Fest, the Venice Biennale, BFI Flare, USC Pacific Asia Museum, Hammer Museum, LACMA, Dome Fest West, and PBS. Their writing includes books published by leading academic presses and articles that shape conversations in transnational media studies, videographic criticism, participatory media, transmedia storytelling, and documentary studies.

In your final year, you’ll complete your senior comps project, which will bring together everything you’ve learned. Projects may include scholarly essays, short films, animations, video installations, screenplays, or interactive works that demonstrate your creative voice and critical understanding of media.

Media Arts and Culture connects naturally with disciplines like Art and Art History, Theater & Performance Studies, Computer Science, and Critical Theory and Social Justice. Pairing MAC with another major or minor lets you explore how media intersects with culture, technology, and social change. Many students also expand their perspectives through study abroad, gaining global insight into media practices and storytelling across different cultures.

Jay Ward headshot white tshirt, brown hair
One of my favorite things about attending Oxy is the rapport I am able to establish with my professors. My MAC professors have gone out of their way to foster a supportive community within the department and to connect students to career, academic, and artistic opportunities!
Jay Ward
MAC major, religious studies minor; Loveland, CO
More from Jay

Courses You Might Take

View All Courses & Requirements
Introduction to Digital Design
Learn core digital design tools and concepts, including color, typography, image editing, vector graphics, and basic web/app principles, while completing hands-on projects in platforms like Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator.
Introduction to Visual & Critical Studies
Analyze film, television, social media, games, and advertising while learning key visual theory concepts through close reading, discussion, and writing. Build critical tools for understanding how images and media shape culture and power.
Artificial Intelligence Film & Media Creation
Experiment with generative AI tools to create cinematic media while examining their creative potential, technical limits, and ethical implications around labor, deepfakes, intellectual property, environmental impact, and authorship.
Creating & Writing TV/Streaming Series
Develop an original live-action or animated series concept, write a professional pitch, and practice verbal pitching while analyzing existing shows and exploring how streaming and distribution trends influence storytelling, representation, and audience engagement.
The Politics & Poetics of Documentary
Study how documentary film and media shape ideas of truth, power, and social change through readings, screenings, writing, and group work focused on ethics, representation, and diverse documentary forms and strategies.
Animation Fundamentals
Explore the foundations of animation through analog and digital methods, including stop-motion, compositing, and keyframing, while practicing timing, sound design, visual composition, and pre-production planning across experimental and character-based projects.
Transnational Cinemas: Borders, Walls, Difference
Examine films from around the world through the lens of migration, national identity, race, and globalization, developing skills in critical viewing, discussion, and writing about transnational cinema and its politics.
Media Activism through Participatory Video
Learn how participatory video can support media activism by collaborating with communities, studying documentary ethics, and creating a final project that includes public workshops, screenings, or exhibitions.
The Video Essay
Think and write with moving images by studying the history and theory of the video essay and producing your own scholarly video projects that analyze film, media, or popular culture.
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Occidental student using a professional video camera

Learning Media Arts and Culture in LA

Studying media at Occidental places you in the heart of Los Angeles, the global hub for film, television, and digital storytelling. The Occidental campus offers small classes and direct mentorship while giving you access to internships at world-class studios, nonprofits, and emerging media companies across the city. You’ll learn from faculty with both professional and scholarly expertise who connect creative practice to cultural impact.

What Our Graduates Are Doing

Fulbright Research Fellow in Documentary Production, Italy

Liisa Halloran
2024

Master's Program, Library & Information Science, UCLA

Lewis Vidaña
2023

PhD Program, Cinema & Media Studies, USC

Francesca DiBona
2023

MS Program, Digital Social Media, USC

Louis Nguyen
2022

Junior Editor, Paramount+

Tatiana Garnett
2021

Master’s, Int'l Affairs & Human Rights, Hertie School, Berlin

Tala Ismail
2020

Field Producer, Casting Agent, and two-time Emmy winner

Emma Choate
2020
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Director of Entertainment Marketing, Riot Games

Cindy Tang
2009
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Director, Writer, Producer, Actor, and Cannes Award winner

Michael Covino
2008
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Meet Our Faculty

All Program Faculty

FAQs

MAC combines creative practice and critical study in a liberal arts setting, located in one of the most important media cities in the world. Graduates of the Occidental College Media Arts and Culture Department work across creative industries and cultural institutions. They are filmmakers, editors, producers, media strategists, and scholars—leading with both creativity and purpose.

Yes. Students create films, digital projects, and interactive works while completing internships and collaborative productions in Los Angeles. There are also opportunities for students to create media with and for community partners in Los Angeles and abroad, i.e. Nepal.

Yes. Many students participate in study abroad programs that expand their global perspective on media and culture.

Occidental Media Arts and Culture graduates work across film, television, games, digital media, museums, and the arts. They create, produce, and research stories that shape culture while building careers in creative industries, marketing, higher education, or graduate study.

No prior experience is required. The program welcomes students from all backgrounds and provides both technical and creative training.

Contact Media Arts & Culture
Weingart 109
Phone: (323) 259-2749

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