Christopher Sharrett, Ph.D.

Professor Emeritus of Visual and Sound Media
College of Human Development Culture and Media

I have taught film history, theory and criticism at Seton Hall University since 1989, along with courses in visual theory and media studies, including mass communication and gender in film. I am most concerned with teaching students visual literacy and assisting them in close readings of films. My chief concern is to teach the importance of cinema as an art form, and to encourage the evaluation of specific works of the cinema. The cinema contains numerous social, economic and political trends of society, but it is first and foremost the most important and influential art form of the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries. It is important for students to establish criteria as they study film, to separate the important from the insignificant and to see why cinema, at its best, addresses basic questions of daily life.