In 1916, with movie-going exploding across the country and debates about the impact of movies on society heating up, the Department of Political Economy and Sociology at the State University of Iowa approved the first academic thesis on film in the English language: A Social Study of the Motion Picture by Ray Leroy Short. Short's thesis coincided with other early academic work on film, such as The Photoplay by the Harvard-based experimental psychologist Hugo Münsterberg (also published in 1916). One can find a few examples of contemporaneous doctoral work happening in other countries, such as Emilie Altenloh's dissertation On the Sociology of Cinema, completed in Heidelberg in 1914, but Short's thesis was the first of its kind in the United States.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the State University of Iowa was heavily involved in the movement for Visual Education, and by 1920, the University President, the Director of the Extension Division and the Dean of the Education College all sat on the board of the newly formed Society for Visual Education. Within this context, the university's extension division became a key supplier of educational films to the region. This led to the founding of Department of Visual Instruction (later renamed Bureau of Audio-Visual Instruction) and Motion Picture Production Unit, which produced dozens of educational films for national circulation from the 1930s onward. (You can see a sample film catalogue from the Extension Division here.) Iowa's Motion Picture unit would continued producing educational content well into the 1980s, often with grants from the NEH, such as the 1981 documentary about Grant Wood, Door in Turner Alley.

In 1932, the university constructs an experimental television station. The first educational television station in the world, and the first television station anywhere West of the Mississippi, channel W9XK broadcast between 1932 and 1939 using a Nipkow disk system. Weekly broadcasts included lectures on Art, Astronomy and Botany, as well as drawing lessons and student-produced radio plays.

In 1947, members of the University Film Producers Council met in Iowa City and founded the University Film Producers Association, better known today as the University Film and Video Association. The new association quickly exploded with participation from departments all around the country. Iowa figures like cinematography instructor John Mercer and Vernon Putnam of the university's Motion Picture Unit were heavily involved in those founding years, and UI faculty would hold positions of president, treasurer, journal editor and more.

In 1952, foreseeing the rapid expansion of television in the post-WW2 era, the University of Iowa founded an academic film and television production program: the Division of Radio, Television and Film. Housed in the Department of Speech and Dramatic Art, the Division served both graduate and undergraduate students. The founding coincided with the construction of advanced film & television studios, which were housed in the famous Old Armory building until the 1980s. During the 50s and 60s, the Division trained numerous television personnel and produced content for film and television across the region. The founding of this division in 1952 made Iowa one of the few universities in the country at the time to offer advanced degrees in Film and TV Production.

In 1957, film production student John Bennett Kuiper drew on the aesthetic impetus of the film society movement to craft an MA thesis titled Pictorial Composition in the Cinema, followed in 1960 by his PhD dissertation: An Analysis of Four Silent Films of Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein. With their focus on the aesthetic analysis, these graduate projects served as pioneering models for what would later become known as "Film Studies." Graduate students in RTF would produce further dissertations on film aesthetics through the 1960s, focusing on filmmakers such as Harold Lloyd and Ingmar Bergman; film theorists including Vachel Lindsay and Hugo Münsterberg; and movements such as German Expressionism.

In 1964, the Society of Cinematologists, familiar today as the SCMS (Society for Film and Media Studies), held its fifth annual conference in Iowa City. This was the first conference ever in the Midwest. John Kuiper, who had become an Assistant Professor for Film at Iowa, organized and hosted the two-day event, which included various papers; roundtable discussions of research, archives and copyright; a screening of new UI acquisitions from the MOMA circulating collection; a dinner at the Amana Colonies, and a closing reception at the Kuipers' residence. Kuiper went on to become president of the Society of Cinematologists in 1966, followed by a distinguished career as Head of the Motion Picture collections at the Library of Congress and Director of Film Collections at the George Eastman House. Iowa would retain a central place in the SCMS with four presidents coming from our faculty and alumni (John Kuiper, Raymond Fielding, Patrice Petro and Barbara Klinger), as well as several career achievement winners. A second conference SCMS conference was held in Iowa in 1989.

In 1971, having just completed his dissertation in the English Department on film theorist André Bazin, Dudley Andrew is hired as an instructor of film aesthetics in the Department of Speech and Dramatic Arts. This marks the beginning of a phase of intense disciplinary formation, in which Iowa shapes the field of Film Studies as we know it. Under faculty such as Andrew, Rick Altman and Lauren Rabinovitz, a legion of field-defining scholars come through our graduate program, including David Bordwell, Mary Ann Doane, Aaron Gerow, Henry Jenkins, Barbara Klinger, Patrice Petro, David Rodowick, Thomas Schatz, and more, with visitors including the likes of Thomas Elsaesser and the legendary theorist Christian Metz. Many of these faculty and students now grace the list of Career Achievement award winners at the Society of Cinema and Media Studies. At the same time, Iowa strengthened its reputation as a center for experimental filmmaking under the leadership of Franklin Miller.

In 2002, Cinema joined the Department of Comparative Literature before becoming an independent unit—the Department of Cinematic Arts—in 2014.  The new department, now one of the five core units in the visual and performing arts, has grown quickly over the past decade, reaching over 500 majors and minors today. It continues to be a national leader in Film Studies and Film Production, which mutually inform the work of students in our Cinema BA. Faculty in Cinematic Arts have won numerous awards and shown their work in venues from Cannes to the Whitney Museum and beyond.

In 2019, the university regents approved a new BA program in Screenwriting Arts, housed in Cinematic Arts alongside the BA in Cinema. Having just celebrated its 5th anniversary, Screenwriting is now one of the fastest-growing programs at the university and a rising powerhouse within Iowa City's already legendary creative writing scene. Screenwriting students at Iowa have the unique advantage of residing between top-notch university programs in both creative writing and cinema, and there is never a shortage of major literary events to attend.

With the integration of Screenwriting, the Department of Cinematic Arts now offers a comprehensive education in film arts to rival that of larger, privately funded, film schools. Our graduate and undergraduate students enjoy a range of degree pathways (in production, screenwriting, history and theory) that is still rare among our Big-10 peer institutions. We also collaborate closely other units in arts, writing and communications and share a long list of high-profile alumni in the film & TV industries. Students in Cinematic Arts have won academy awards, shown in festivals such as Cannes, and gone on to do pioneering work in both film studies and film production. We seek to continue empowering our current students to become the distinguished alumni of the tomorrow. 

We're also keenly aware that we remain the only public university film school in Iowa, and we strive to serve the students of this state and beyond with a world-class film education. For over a century, Iowa has led the way for film & television in American higher education, and student demand for advanced university training in these areas has never been higher than today.