“The major concern will be about tutorials,” Rentschler says.

Rentschler says concentrators will have room to pursue a wide variety of interests within film studies, but stresses the importance of crafting requirements.

“It’s going to be a concentration with a very clear-cut set of probably six [required] courses,” he says.

The committee is currently discussing the question of what common academic experiences all those graduating with a degree in film studies should share.

“We obviously as a concentration have to give people the nuts and bolts,” Rentschler says. Concentrators must learn the basic history of film and the theoretical tools necessary to “read” a film, he explains.

Many wonder how much film studies concentrators should be expected to know about film production—an area in which there is already a well-established track within VES. This resource, Connor notes, is finite: requiring film studies concentrators to take existing VES film production courses could take away valuable spots in those capped-enrollment classes.

Rentschler is also currently planning for a prospective graduate program in film studies, which Garber says would not be part of VES. Rentschler says that a proposal for the graduate program will be put together this winter, with the aim of offering two graduate courses each term next year.

It will be “a tall order to get [a proposal] through by spring,” Rentschler says, but he and his colleagues will “try our damnedest.”

The need for a graduate program is made all the more urgent by the large enrollments expected for the film studies concentration; one of the most important reasons cited for the concentration option by its supporters is also cause for some logistical concern.

Rentschler says the committee is paying special attention to how they will find enough qualified teaching fellows for the concentration’s most popular courses.

He says graduate students in film studies would provide a natural pool of potential teaching fellows for the undergraduate courses. In the meantime, Rentschler says he believes that the current film studies TFs—largely drawn from a graduate workshop on film studies taught by Rentschler to students from many departments and faculties—will be enough to sustain the courses this fall.

Along with the need for qualified TFs comes the question of professors.

Garber says that with so many interested faculty already at Harvard, new hires are not critical to getting formalized film studies track off the ground.

“Right now we would be doing this largely with faculty resources, and that’s not a hardship,” she says.

But Connor says there are still important gaps in the film studies faculty, citing Harvard’s lack of an expert on silent cinema. Such holes, he says, might be filled by visiting professors, but Connor worries that it will be a challenge to find experts on the constellation of specific niches that make up a field as diverse as film studies.