Film Studies faculty in the English Department participate in an interdisciplinary program offering the B.A. degree through either the College of Liberal Arts or the College of Fine, Performing, and Communication Arts. Film faculty also oversee M.A. and Ph.D. theses in the English Department's graduate program. The Film Studies Program brings the study and appreciation of cinema to multiple audiences: students, faculty, and community members. At the same time, it supports research in film criticism and theory, writing and production, film history, and audience reception. The program draws faculty and students from various departments in the Colleges of Liberal Arts and of Fine, Performing, and Communication Arts. It provides a collegial focus for scholarly thinking about cinema at Wayne State by establishing cross-listing of courses and bringing together faculty interested in film through coordination of lectures by Wayne State University faculty and by sponsoring external speakers, including distinguished scholars and filmmakers for the annual Dennis Turner Memorial Lecture.

The Film Studies curriculum offers students the opportunity to examine cinema as a visual and narrative art form, as an increasingly global social force, as an industry, and as a technology-intensive communications medium. Its various courses introduce the study of cinema to a broad student audience (thereby fulfilling General Education requirements), serve as requirements for the Radio-TV major, and offer advanced work for those who wish to major or minor in Film Studies, to complement other majors, or to concentrate on the cinema while pursuing graduate degrees. The Program sponsors such activities as a student film festival and assists students in securing internships. It maintains and seeks to improve facilities for the teaching and study of motion pictures: 16 mm prints, videos, projection and sound equipment, film rentals, library collections of books and visual materials. It establishes scholarship support for students majoring or concentrating in Film Studies.

In the Detroit Metropolitan area, Film Studies faculty regularly serve as speakers and advisors to community groups, to other educational institutions at all levels, to the Detroit Institute of Arts, and to local mass media. Within the larger scholarly community, faculty serve on editorial boards and as manuscript readers, as officers of such professional associations as the Society for Cinema Studies, and as evaluators of grant applications, tenure cases, and other professional endeavors. Among faculty whose primary area of scholarship is in film, the record of publication and participation in conferences, colloquia, and international teaching exchanges continues to be strong