UB Film Students Win Award
- Randy Laist
- May 4
- 2 min read
Updated: May 5
Students in FTDM 183, Special Topics in Film, were recently honored with an award for their scholarship in film studies. The entire class was recognized for their collective authorship of a research poster that their professor submitted to the “Faculty Competitive” poster category at 2025’s UB RISE, the University of Bridgeport’s annual research conference.
The class was devoted to the “special topic” of aliens in movies. Students in the class watched and discussed movies featuring aliens from outer space, including E.T., Avatar, and Megamind. The class analyzed the aliens in these movies from a variety of perspectives and theoretical frameworks.
Early on in the class, students read the introduction of Carl Gustav Jung’s 1958 book, Flying Saucers, which argues that UFO sightings are symptoms of a collective psychological disturbance. A few weeks later, when they watched and discussed the 1953 sci-fi classic The Day the Earth Stood Still, they observed compelling similarities between the film and Jung’s book.
These observations became the basis for the poster, which the class’s professor, Dr. Randy Laist, assembled out of the students’ insights. Dr. Laist also composed the class’s findings into an article, which was recently published in the well-known film studies journal Bright Lights, and submitted the poster to the UB RISE competition.
“This was a great opportunity to show students how ideas in academic discourse originate and evolve,” says Dr. Laist. “Participating in this process in real time – noticing something interesting, thinking into it, breaking it down, putting it together as a coherent argument, submitting it for publication, getting the article accepted for publication, and then winning the award – it was all very dramatic, and empowering.”
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