University of Texas

About RTF

The Department of Radio-Television-Film at The University of Texas at Austin offers a broad range of courses in the media arts leading to the Bachelor of Science, Master of Fine Arts, Master's and Ph.D. degrees. Consistently ranked as one of the top 10 programs in the country, it is one of the few departments offering degrees in both practical and theoretical areas -- i.e., in both media production and media studies.

There are currently approximately 900 undergraduate students, 160 total graduate students in the Department. There are 28 full-time tenured or tenure-track faculty, with approximately 25 part-time adjunct faculty hired each semester.

 The scholarly and teaching interests of the Studies faculty focus on the cultural, social, economic, policy, technological, political and discursive settings in which communication systems, industries, texts and audiences exist and operate. We examine national and international media institutions, technology and policy, global media studies, the role, development and impact of communication and information technologies, the production of media content, and the nature and form of media representations. We investigate how various audiences receive, interact with, interpret and produce media texts and have a special focus on studies of culture and the international dimensions of communication processes. The Studies faculty addresses these issues from a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches associated with the social sciences, cultural studies, and humanities.