Films to help shape your fall course
As You Plan for Fall
Summer may be in full swing, but the fall semester is already coming into view.
As you refine syllabi, update course materials, and think ahead to the coming academic year, we wanted to highlight a selection of MEF bestsellers, new releases, and featured films that can help spark classroom discussion, sharpen critical thinking, and connect course concepts to the world students are living in now.
These films show how media culture shapes public understanding of some of the defining issues students face today: gender and sexuality, race and representation, war and protest, climate and ecology, journalism and democracy, and the corporate and oligarchic forces driving economic inequality. Across these subjects, the films below help students examine how media and culture reinforce or challenge inequality and reveal how power works in everyday life.
We hope you’ll consider adding them to your syllabus, library collection, or campus programming as you continue planning for the fall semester.
Featured Films for Fall Courses
Body Parts
This clear-eyed look at sex and intimacy on screen reveals how Hollywood has long filtered women’s bodies through the male gaze and shows how actors and filmmakers are pushing back against old assumptions about power, consent, and representation.
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Breaking the News
An inside look at the launch of The 19th, a newsroom created by women to challenge who gets to define the news — and whose lives, voices, and experiences are treated as central to democracy.
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The Encampments
This immersive inside account of the 2024 Gaza solidarity encampments at Columbia University captures a defining flashpoint over protest, policing, media framing, and whose voices count in public debate.
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The Black Atlantic
Paul Gilroy revisits his landmark work on Black identity, slavery, empire, and modernity, showing how music, literature, memory, and culture have shaped Black political life across national boundaries.
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Theaters of War
Drawing on declassified documents, Roger Stahl reveals how the Pentagon and CIA have shaped Hollywood entertainment, turning war into spectacle while pushing its human costs out of view.
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Television Event
This extraordinary behind-the-scenes account of The Day After, the 1983 TV movie that forced millions of Americans to confront nuclear war, shows how mass media can break through denial, disrupt official narratives, and change public debate.
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Hazing
Byron Hurt takes a deeply personal look at hazing in fraternities, sororities, sports teams, marching bands, the military, and beyond, revealing how cultural norms and rituals of belonging can give way to violence, secrecy, and institutional denial.
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The Invisible Doctrine
George Monbiot exposes the largely unnamed ideology of neoliberalism and traces how market logic came to dominate politics, media, and everyday life while concentrating wealth and power in fewer and fewer hands.
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The Bystander Moment
Jackson Katz examines how dominant ideas about manhood help perpetuate gender violence, showing how media narratives and male peer cultures can normalize sexism and misogyny while fueling silence in the face of men’s abusive behavior.
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The Illusionists
This wide-ranging global critique of advertising and consumer culture reveals how media industries sell impossible beauty standards while turning insecurity about bodies, gender, race, and aging into profit.
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