Transfer Coursework at the 1000 level. Department approval may be required.

Transfer Coursework at the 2000 level. Department approval may be required.

Transfer Coursework at the 3000 level. Department approval may be required.

Internship Studies course for the Cinema Studies program.

Independent study on film topic. Approval of Director required.

Independent study on film topic. Approval of Director required.

Transfer coursework at the 4000 level. Departmental approval required.

Honors Thesis.

For especially qualified seniors with approval of the faculty director and the Office of Academic Enrichment. Students must have a minimum of a 3.400 overall grade-point average and a 3.500 grade-point average in the major.

This course will enable students to integrate knowledge about the specific nature of film as a medium and the history of theoretical debates that have shaped the study of film and of cinema. It will also provide students with an opportunity to apply the formal and theoretical knowledge gained from the two required courses for the major to consider new theoretical problems about cinema, revisions, and reassessments of earlier debates in film studies and related fields, questions of national cinema, and/or new developments in filmmaking. Notes: This course, which carries 0 credit, is combined with a capstone designated course (3 credits) or a special topics course that is designated as a capstone (3 credits). Consult the Cinema Studies catalog page for approved courses.

Junior year abroad. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

Junior year abroad.

Historical survey of international cinema focusing on political, social, economic, technological, and aesthetic factors. Major film movements and historical developments from 1895 to the present are covered including U.S. silent cinema, Soviet montage, German expressionism, French impressionism and surrealism, the transition to sound, classical Hollywood cinema, the impact of WWII, Italian neorealism, the French New Wave, art cinema, new German cinema, and new Hollywood cinema.

This course is an introduction to the study of television as a unique audio-visual culture with its own history, aesthetics, and meaning production. Students will learn about the television industry, its audiences, and its programming. Examples from television programming from the 1950s to the present will supplement readings.

This course introduces students to the terms, analytical techniques, and interpretive strategies commonly employed in cultural studies. Emphasis on interdisciplinary approaches to exploring how cultural processes and artifacts are produced, shaped, distributed, consumed and responded to in diverse ways. This course follows Cultural Studies from its inception at the Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies in Birmingham in postwar Britain, to its present loosely defined formation. As students become more familiar with how the scholars of previous generations used Cultural Studies, they will develop the skills to begin develop their own cultural studies research agenda.

We are living in an increasingly globalized world and the media have a significant role in the process of globalization. In today’s world, communication students need to be thoroughly knowledgeable about the communication systems in different parts of the world, media institutions, and the larger processes that affect the global, regional and national media systems. In this course we are going to discuss the concept of media globalization from various perspectives, look into the history of global communication and analyze different theoretical perspectives that aim to explain this complex process with its actors and institutions. Throughout the course we will have different case studies that exemplify the current controversies and issues in the field of global media and communication studies

An investigation of the histories and theories associated with the Internet and other forms of new media. The main course objectives are to learn how to analyze Internet settings and employ new media methods. Conceptions of new technologies and newness will be theorized and examined. We consider how new media technologies are identified as tools and the ways they are critiqued for producing gendered, racial, and sexual identities. Topics include Afrofuturism, cyber feminism, science fiction, the web, social networking, fan fiction, hypertext, Internet authorship, and surveillance.

This course is designed for students who have grown up in a rapidly changing global multimedia environment and want to become more literate and critical consumers and producers of culture. Through an interdisciplinary comparative and historical lens, the course defines "media" broadly as including oral, print, theatrical, photographic, broadcast, cinematic, and digital cultural forms and practices. The course looks at the nature of mediated communication, the functions of media, the history of transformations in media and the institutions that help define media's place in society.

Introduction to theories and models of interpersonal communication, which enhance understanding, and development of interpersonal relationships. Course content covers topics such as listening behavior, intrapersonal processing, dyadic interaction, conflict management, intercultural, intimate and nonverbal communication.

A survey of theories, empirical research, and critical analysis of contemporary political communication processes in the United States. Topics may include the role of the media in electoral campaigns, strategies of presidential communication, as well as the relationship between media and political institutions, including Congress and the Courts. News coverage of social movements and political protest will also be discussed. The course covers a variety of political communication genres, such as journal ism, political advertising, talk shows and political websites.

This class examines the interrelationships between crime, criminal justice, and Media, Television, film, newspaper and electronic/internet media intersect with crime and the criminal justice system in a number of important ways. The point of this course is to explore how the media represents influences, distorts, and/or filters crime and justice issues. Also, the media is used as a mechanism to explore issues (e.g., political ideology, corrections policy, causes of crime) that are central to the study of crime. The impact of media images of crime and violence on individuals, groups, and public policy will be considered. Issues regarding the future of crime, criminal justice, and mass media also will be discussed. In addition, the course requires 20 hours of service learning. Students will work with local community organizations involved with criminal justice.

This course focuses on specific film movements in international cinema, with an emphasis on understanding stylistic and aesthetic innovations in their social-historical context. Topics may include European film movements, Chinese cinemas and others. Notes: May be repeated for credit up to 2 times if different topic with the permission of the Film Studies Director.

Asian media industries have played a crucial role in shaping the global mediascape. This course employs comparative and transnational approaches to media studies to examine the transnational character of Asian media in relation to media cultures and practices in other global regions. Topics include the international circulation of genres and aesthetic innovations, the transnational political economy of media production and distribution, and spectatorship across national contexts and cultures. The media examined (e.g. film, television, radio, digital media) as well as specific national and regional contexts may change with different iterations of the course

This course introduces students to the research about gender, race, and class in the media. We will cover the main concepts, theories, methods, and debates in media and communication scholarship about multiple forms of inequalities. We will explore the intersections of gender, race, and class and how different types and technologies of media (television shows, news, movies, magazines, commercials, digital media etc.) reinforce, challenge or re-shape existing power differences in society. The course explores these topics by focusing on the institutional structures of commercial media, representations, and audiences. Throughout the course, we will examine a broad range of media texts as examples.

This class investigates various social issues that emerge from an examination of films produced in the United States, Europe and the developing world. Students consider societal forces such as class, race, gender, youth, family, prejudice, education and homelessness. The cinematic depiction of these factors as well as the connection between cinematic language, syntax, structure and a films ultimate meaning or message are explored.

Studies federal and state regulation of both print and broadcast media in the United States to understand how legal mandates and constraints have defined the roles of media in society. Historical and contemporary analyses include laws in areas such as libel, privacy, free press versus fair trial, access to government information, regulation of advertising and regulation of broadcasting.

This course examines the history and theory of visual communication and its application in a variety of cultural contexts. Topics include the transition from print to visual media, the development of visual literacy and the role of emerging technology. Students will complete applied projects using photography, video and electronic media, digital imaging, and web-based visual technology.

This course focuses on the relationships between reproductive politics, popular and social media, and movements for reproductive rights and justice in the United States. Students will learn key concepts and theories related to reproductive rights and justice, as well as media studies and analysis. The course covers historical and contemporary portrayals of reproduction within popular and alternative media with a focus on their racial, sexual, class, and gendered dimensions. Students will also learn about various ways in which television, film, and new media technologies function within government and nonprofit advocacy around reproductive issues. In sum, this course maps the intersections between reproductive politics and media technologies, while helping students develop their analytical prowess, communication skills, and knowledge of media, culture, and social inequity in the United States.

The course examines contemporary and historical U.S. popular media texts for how they represent dominant notions of childhood, sexuality, and racial and gender politics. Students read scholarship that examines the socially and historically contingent construct of childhood. They also read about and practice media analysis, applying ideas about the social construction of childhood to media they consume in their everyday lives.

This course examines the rise of political icons in modern and contemporary Latin American societies. In particular, it highlights the intersections between historical context, individual biographies and mass media. The course emphasizes how symbolic representations have been mobilized to construct and challenge the iconic status of political actors and explores some of the most important political movements and conflicts that have shaped Latin America's history, including nationalism, populism, and revolution.

Special topics course as designed by visiting or permanent Communication department faculty. For description, consult the department. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours under separate title. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

Special Topics in Communication.

Special Topics in Communication.

Special Topics in Communication.

Special Topics in Communication.

Special Topics in Communication.

A detailed study of particular issues, problems and developments in the history, theory and criticism of communication. Topics may be drawn from any of the departmental areas of concentration, for example, the concept of invention, the rhetoric of religion, non-verbal communication, mass media and culture and similar themes. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

A detailed study of particular issues, problems and developments in the history, theory and criticism of communication. Topics may be drawn from any of the departmental areas of concentration, for example, the concept of invention, the rhetoric of religion, non-verbal communication, mass media and culture and similar themes. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

A detailed study of particular issues, problems and developments in the history, theory and criticism of communication. Topics may be drawn from any of the departmental areas of concentration, for example, the concept of invention, the rhetoric of religion, non-verbal communication, mass media and culture and similar themes. May be taken twice for credit on different topics.

A detailed study of particular issues, problems and developments in the history, theory and criticism of communication. Topics may be drawn from any of the departmental areas of concentration, for example, the concept of invention, the rhetoric of religion, non-verbal communication, mass media and culture and similar themes. May be taken twice for credit on different topics.

A detailed study of particular issues, problems and developments in the history, theory and criticism of communication. Topics may be drawn from any of the departmental areas of concentration, for example, the concept of invention, the rhetoric of religion, non-verbal communication, mass media and culture and similar themes. May be taken twice for credit on different topics.

A detailed study of particular issues, problems and developments in the history, theory and criticism of communication. Topics may be drawn from any of the departmental areas of concentration, for example, the concept of invention, the rhetoric of religion, non-verbal communication, mass media and culture and similar themes. Course may be repeated unlimited times for credit.

A detailed study of particular issues, problems and developments in the history, theory and criticism of communication. Topics may be drawn from any of the departmental areas of concentration, for example, the concept of invention, the rhetoric of religion, non-verbal communication, mass media and culture and similar themes. Course may be repeated unlimited times for credit.

Students complete a service activity in the community in conjunction with the content of a three-credit co-requisite course. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

A critical examination of communication in intercultural, interethnic and international contexts. An overview of models and approaches designed to explain cultural differences in communication with emphasis on the dimensions of symbolization, acculturation, prejudice, stereotyping and ideology. Conceptual frameworks are applied and tested within a range of cultural populations as defined by race, ethnicity, gender, physical disability, sexuality, socio-economic class and geographic location.

Introduction to film analysis designed to help students develop a visual literacy with regard to film and a critical understanding of how films produce meanings. Focus is on formal analysis of film including elements such as narrative, mise-en-scene, editing, camera movement, sound and on key critical and theoretical approaches such as neoformalism and psychoanalysis. Classical Hollywood cinema and avant-garde and independent filmmaking traditions are studied in order to focus on the politics of form required film journal helps students develop analytical and critical skills. Required course for the film studies minor.

The study of the structure of technology industries and their properties based on humanistic and social science approaches. Theorizes history and major trends in technology ownership and governance: the function of materialities and their infrastructures in reinforcing or altering societal relations: and the effects of this political economy on users and citizens. Familiarizes students with research methods for analyzing technology in society.This course fulfills a core course for Communication majors in the area of Structures and Institutions and a Social and Behavioral Course in the Core Curriculum.

The description, analysis, interpretation and evaluation of persuasive uses of language. Emphasis on classical, situational, generic, dramatistic and ideological methods of criticism. Judgments about aesthetic, pragmatic, logical and ethical dimensions of rhetoric.

The study of the structure of media industries and their contents based on humanistic and social science approaches. Theorizes major trends in industry ownership and practices; the effects of political economy on textual symbols, discourses and genres; the function of media programming in reinforcing or altering perceptions of ideas, events, and people. Familiarizes students with research methods for analyzing media.

Questions of authorship and of genre are two key paradigms of film criticism. This course examines the aesthetic and theoretical bases for notions of authorship and genre in the cinema including romantic theories of art, auteur criticism, structuralism and post-structuralism. It also considers the historical development of the oeuvre of individual directors as author e.g. Hitchcock) and of particular film genres both in Hollywood cinema (e.g. film noir) and in non-mainstream and non-U.S. cinema. Genres and directors studied will change. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

What is feminist activism? Words like “feminism” or “activism” often carry socialized meanings beyond their textbook definitions. Advocacy and feminism are about action, and students will learn about the many different kinds of social change activities available to them. Students will learn tactics and strategies to communicate their persuasive messages to stakeholders, including clients, news media, and decision makers

This course will introduce students to critical thinking through the theories of cultural studies, ranging from culturalism, Marxism, psychoanalysis, gender and sexuality, and postcolonialism to postmodernism. Theories of cultural studies critically contextualize, examine and theorize culture as it influences and shapes our everyday lives and social structures. Students will learn about the various approaches to analyzing culture based on the canonical works of cultural study theorists and how to apply their critical theories to contemporary examples.

In this course, we study key issues in contemporary new media studies and engage in close textual analysis. We focus on the multi-layered textual aspects of the Internet and computer. These texts are some combination of images.

This course is a critical examination of the ever-growing roster of reality television programs. It is impossible for us to consume and analyze every reality television show or sub-genre this term. Instead, we will study the contours of the genre and critically engage with a sample platter of reality televisual offerings. Through scholarly readings, lectures, group discussions, in-class and at-home episode screenings, and creative projects, we will study reality television's history; its deep ties to neoliberalism and surveilance culture; its role as a celebrity-making apparatus; and the voyeuristic experience of watching and being watched. Moreover, we will pay particular attention to the intersection of gender, race, class, sexuality, and citizenship in reality TV representations and reception, as well as depictions of New Orleans and Louisiana culture on reality TV.

This course examines the ever growing-roster of reality television programs focused on the disabled body and mind. Bridging critical disability studies of reality television together we will explore the politics of ability in reality televisual texts with emphasis on representations of disability and their intersection with gender, race, class, sexuality, and citizenship. This course contextualizes our analysis in a broader history of disability as a site of public spectacle and the emergency of reality television as a genre. Students will interrogate the social function and consequences of these televisual texts as well as critically consider their own relationships to them.

This course examines British contemporary multicultural society through the field and method known as cultural studies, which also has its intellectual roots in Britain. This course will introduce students to the terms, analytical techniques, and interpretive strategies commonly employed in cultural studies. Emphasis is on interdisciplinary approaches to exploring how everyday cultural processes and cultural artifacts are produced and how meaning is shaped through contestations of race, class and gender, and national identity. Through discussion, research, and writing, class members investigate these varied dimensions of British multiculture; learn to understand them in their broader historical, aesthetic, and political contexts.

The purpose of this course is to provide an understanding and analysis of communication processes used in defining environmental issues and shaping environmental policies. Topics include defining nature and environment; diverse audiences and environmental messages; developing strategies for risk communication; and creating effective environmental campaigns. Case studies of successful and unsuccessful environmental communication will be examined.

This course focus on the relationship between cinema and politics as it pertains to formal, historical, and institutional ways of analyzing film. Topics will include environmentalism and contemporary eco cinema, sexual representation and pornography, and social problem films during the progressive Era in the United States Hollywood, silent cinema, global and national cinemas will be included as they are relevant to the topic covered.

This course examines the history of animation within the field of film studies. The shift to digital cinema has encouraged historians and theorists to revise distinctions between animation and film and to reckon with the pervasiveness of moving image media created through diverse techniques. To understand the implications of this shift and the significance of animation within media history, this course analyzes animation genres, techniques, and styles and investigates theories of animation as they developed from the late 19th century up to the present.

The films to be studied in this course are selected from the spectrum of documentary film practice from the 1920s to the present. Concentration will be on specific topics as well as an historical overview. Consideration placed on the developing and shifting conception of documentary film practice, social issues, political and propagandistic values, and documenting other.

This course is rooted in building community engagement journalism practice as well as examining media coverage of underrepresented histories through a social justice lens.

Digital Civic Engagement is a course that studies, analyzes, and teaches how citizens engage communities online to improve public knowledge and civic dialogue. The connectivity created by digital platforms to foster citizen engagement is one of the most important and distinctive organizing features of contemporary political life. Dispersed knowledge and community engagement helps define and deconstruct boundaries of the social and political community while redefining, and at times erasing, divisions that are founded on inequity and exclusion. Given largely asynchronously with synchronous check-ins, students choose how they apply this knowledge by serving a digital nonprofit through one of five service projects: content creation, content curation, media archiving, development/fundraising, online research.

A service-learning, praxis-oriented course in which students develop analytical and reflective skills by critiquing and creating feminist documentation in various media. Study of history and theory of feminist documentary filmmaking and new media will be complemented with learning production and post­production skills. Weekly volunteer work will be done with an organization serving women and girls in New Orleans.

In this class, we will explore the relationship between disability and media. Our analyses will span film, television, advertisement, new media, social media, media technologies, and other cultural mediums across history and into the present. The beginning of the course will introduce students to the field of disability studies and its relevance to media studies. Through an interdisciplinary lens, students will consider how people with disabilities were and are represented in the media with particular attention to how disability intersects with gender, race, sexuality, and class identity. Beyond themes of representation, our course deeply interrogates disability media access. We will consider how people with disabilities have responded to inaccurate and inaccessible media and innovatively used media outlets to represent themselves and produce culture on their own terms.

This interdisciplinary course examines the intersections of race, politics, and environmental and biological disaster. We will look at how ideas about race in the U.S. have shaped and been shaped by social policy, global politics and economics, and U.S. foreign policy, and investigate how certain populations within and outside the U.S. become disproportionately vulnerable to wide-scale disaster. Readings and discussions focus on the human-made dimensions of biological disasters, such as typhus, the bubonic plague, HIV/AIDS, the cholera outbreak in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake, and the current COVID-19 crisis. In thinking about how vulnerability is created and maintained according to a racial logic, we will interrogate the following questions: How is the construct of “nature” framed in opposition to “humanity”? How do claims to objective knowledge about nature operate in political realms? In what ways has the nature/humanity binary informed the construction of racial categories and racism? How do ideas of nature serve to obscure the complex intersections of environmental and social factors in our daily realities? How do discussions of crisis and disaster (in other words, exceptional situations) serve to authorize extreme measures? How do certain versions of international humanitarianism deny the global interconnectedness of nation-states and the culpability of those giving aid in the dire circumstances of those receiving it?

This course introduces students to the history of digital cinema and examines the cultural and political implications of our evolving digital media environment. The transition to the everyday use of digital technologies has been theorized as remediating, relocating, and converging earlier media forms. This course explores the place of film history and theory in this transition and it considers whether this transition marks the end of cinema.

This course investigates historical changes in film audiences, film exhibition and film reception from the silent to the contemporary period as well as the issue of cultural memory and cinema. Issues focusing on who the audience for cinema has been during different historical periods, that changes have taken place in the venues in which films have been shown and cinema reception as cultural history are explored. The course also theorizes questions of reception and memory in terms of psychoanalysis, oral history and the public sphere. This course includes an optional service learning component. COMM 3150, Film Analysis, is recommended but not required.

Special Topics in Communication. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

Special Topics in Communication. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

Special Topics in Communication. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

Special Topics in Communication. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

A detailed study of particular issues, problems and developments in the history, theory and criticism of communication. Topics may be drawn from any of the departmental areas of concentration, for example, the concept of invention, the rhetoric of religion, non-verbal communication, mass media and culture and similar themes. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

A detailed study of particular issues, problems and developments in the history, theory and criticism of communication. Topics may be drawn from any of the departmental areas of concentration, for example, the concept of invention, the rhetoric of religion, non-verbal communication, mass media and culture and similar themes. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

A detailed study of particular issues, problems and developments in the history, theory and criticism of communication. Topics may be drawn from any of the departmental areas of concentration, for example, the concept of invention, the rhetoric of religion, non-verbal communication, mass media and culture and similar themes. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

A detailed study of particular issues, problems and developments in the history, theory and criticism of communication. Topics may be drawn from any of the departmental areas of concentration, for example, the concept of invention, the rhetoric of religion, non-verbal communication, mass media and culture and similar themes. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

A detailed study of particular issues, problems and developments in the history, theory and criticism of communication. Topics may be drawn from any of the departmental areas of concentration, for example, the concept of invention, the rhetoric of religion, non-verbal communication, mass media and culture and similar themes. May be taken twice for credit on different topics.

A detailed study of particular issues, problems and developments in the history, theory and criticism of communication. Topics may be drawn from any of the departmental areas of concentration, for example, the concept of invention, the rhetoric of religion, non-verbal communication, mass media and culture and similar themes. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

Students complete a service activity in the community in conjunction with the content of a three-credit co-requisite course. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

Students complete a service activity in the community in conjunction with the content of a three-credit co-requisite course. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

Throughout the twentieth century, African American cultural producers used international travel to see beyond the limits of racial discrimination in the U.S. Traveling abroad allowed these authors to imagine new configurations of race, gender, and class back at home. This course will trace the vibrant, ongoing tradition of black internationalism, focusing on its often utopian undercurrents—in particular, its frequent crossing of racial and sexual hierarchies. In so doing, this course will address the relationship between internationalism as a unifying movement of resistance and nationally enforced oppressions; between a solidarity of what Richard Wright termed “scattered but kindred spirits” and enfranchisementat home. Our course will investigate black internationalism as a diverse appropriation of socialist thought as developed by key theorists and activists of the African Diaspora.

This course focuses on three key aspects of contemporary Hollywood cinema, namely, the film industry, film form and style, and the production, distribution, and reception of films in the digital age. Key topics include conglomeratization of the film industry, the blockbuster film, films as a franchises, the rise of independent cinema, and independent films, digital distribution, the role of film festivals, and ·pop-up cinema. The course concludes with how the film experience is changing in the era of digital distribution and multiple screens.

This course offers a survey of Chinese-language films made from mid-1980s to early 2000s. The class will focus on three aspects of contemporary Chinese cinema: its artistic features, historical context, and socio-political implications and tackle the following questions: What is a Chinese" cinema? How do contemporary Chinese filmmakers inherit

This course covers major formal, industrial and cultural issues in the history of cinema in the United States from 1895 to the present Course topics include the formal distinctiveness of the early period, the emergence of continuity editing and the classical Hollywood style, post-classical cinema. Monopolistic industry practices, exhibition venues, the studio system, synchronized sound. Contemporary independent production, and the relationship between film and commodity culture. Case studies on censorship, the representation of race and black radical politics, and female spectatorship integrate formal, industrial and cultural analysis.

The development of cinema in Latin American from its arrival as an imported technology to the present. Films studied in relation to the sociopolitical environment and emphasis placed on close analysis as well as a contextual understanding of the material. Topics include the struggle to create national Film industries, the art film and New Cinema movements, and recent trends in countries such as Mexico and Argentina.

This is the second semester of a two-semester course that introduces students to media literacy--what it is, media education, and basic media pedagogy. In the second semester, students put to use the media literacy knowledge gained in the first semester by applying those pedagogical considerations in the classroom, assessing student outcomes, and effectively teaching media literacy concepts.

This course considers how contemporary science fiction, new technologies and critical writings about feminism, gender, identity and the body interconnect. Topics under consideration include differently gendered worlds, horror, alien invasions, parasitical relationships, cyborg embodiment, and the gendering of computer and Internet settings.

An investigation of how human bodies communicate cultural identities and relations historically and across spaces. May repeat under a different topic. May repeat under a different topic (COMM 4260, 4261) for credit.

While science fiction forces us to see what is familiar in new and surprising ways, imagining the unfamiliar also builds upon the familiar. This makes sci-fi a good ‘venue’ to study the widespread assumptions about human nature in different settings. This course interrogates how we negotiate these basic human categories through various science fiction films and theoretical essays. Reflection on these topics will hopefully provoke fascinating and difficult philosophical questions about the nature of reality, the limits of human knowledge, the notions of personal (racial, ethnic, sexual) identity, and the nature and foundations of universality of these categories.

This course examines race and ethnicity in American television from the 1950s to the present. More specifically, it explores the social, political, historical and institutional contexts that have shaped representations of Asian/Americans, Latino/as, and African Americans on television. By analyzing racial and ethnic images within the development of television, students will gain a deeper understanding of the complex histories that shaped the formation of each ethnic group. While the focus of the course centers on the politics of representation, it moves the discussion beyond the question of stereotypes to explore how concepts such as Orientalism, whiteness, multiculturalism, and post-race contribute to our understanding of racial politics in the United States.

This course examines the relationship between media, society, and political discourse as they manifest in the complexities of cultural production beyond US borders. As such, it will be framed around issues pertaining to historical formation and broader political dynamics. This course presumes familiarity with methods of film or media analysis. May repeat under a different topic (COMM 4301, 4302) for credit. Notes: Fulfills capstone requirement for FMST. For capstone credit, students should register for FMST 5110 with 0 credits.

This course examines the role of the mass media in contemporary Latin American democracies. In particular, it investigates whether communication institutions and practices have contributed to promote or to curb the regions’ process of democratization, especially in terms of the quality of political representation and political accountability. The course also examine the impact of social and political democratization on the region’s media systems.

Explores the position of women in Hollywood and other cinemas by studying the evolution of women's cinema and of feminist film theories from the 1920s to the present. The history of feminist film analysis, focusing on theoretical­ sociological, psychoanalytic, semiological underpinning of feminist critiques of both commercial and independent avant-garde film practices.

This course will serve as an introduction to the concept of “space” as it applies to theories of technology, emerging media and communication. Students will be exposed to the foundational theorists in each of these areas as well as the threads connecting them. Students will be asked to take these models and apply them to the rich media landscape that surrounds them. They will be asked to evaluate the changing relationship between theory and practice as well as the problem of increased technological advancement

This course explores theories of and debates about the public sphere, with a particular focus on the role of media in shaping power an democracy. Taking canonical theorists such as Hannah Arendt and Jürgen Habermas as our starting point, we explore the rich potential and the limitations of classic conceptualizations of the public sphere for understanding contemporary politics. We consider the role played by dynamics such as public debate, gender, sexuality, race, crowds, mass culture, political paranoia, and fake news in shaping twentieth and twenty-first century political ideals and practices, examining the similarities and difference in how these dynamics work in global contexts from capitalism to state socialism, in the Global North and in the Global South. We also consider what insights might be gained by an interdisciplinary approach to questions of the public sphere.

In this course, we consider how ethnographers have adapted to new 21 st century methodological challenges, what new challenges are posed by COVID-19, and how ethnography can shed light on a range of pressing topics in media studies, including the politics of infrastructure, representations of the self, labor and the information economy, media piracy, fan cultures, fake news, and contemporary social movements. As part of the course, students also conduct their own ethnographic research project on a digital media topic of their choosing.

Critical race theory was a term that was coined to refer to an area of legal studies developed by African American, Latino, and Asian American scholars to address questions of racial injustice. However, the broader field of critical race theory today incorporates multi-disciplinary scholarship that works to create critical knowledge about social inequalities and racialized power relations.

This course analyzes the dynamic interactions between television, culture and power in Brazil. It emphasizes the role of television as one of the central institutions that mediate the constitution of hegemonic values and meanings in Brazilian society, with an emphasis on the dominant media company (TV Globo) and on the most popular TV genre (telenovelas).

This course will challenge the student to apply intelligently the principles, methods, and skills that they have learned in academic settings to the practical experience of an internship with a nonprofit, social service organization. Topics include learning about communication within a complicated political and cultural context, how context affects rhetorical strategies, adaptive communication among diverse social groups, and how these experiences work to prepare the student for a career in a communication field. Provides combination of academic work, and practical experiences in communication with specific service learning organizations. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

This course will challenge the student to apply intelligently the principles, methods, and skills that they have learned in academic settings to the practical experience of an internship with a nonprofit, social service organization. Topics include learning about communication within a complicated political and cultural context, how context affects rhetorical strategies, adaptive communication among diverse social groups, and how these experiences work to prepare the student for a career in a communication field. Provides combination of academic work, and practical experiences in communication with specific service learning organizations. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

This course will focus primarily on how fears spread, become a major public concern, and turn into a social and political crisis. We will look at controversies, panics around issues such as pedophilia, drugs and terrorism, and analyze the processes that elicit alarm about perceived threats to society and produce ‘folk devils’ (enemies of society).

A detailed historical, thematic, and stylistic analysis of individual national cinemas in Latin America (Cuban cinema, Brazilian cinema, Mexican cinema, for example). Emphasis will be placed on understanding the development of national cinema industries and movements in the context of other social, economic, political, and aesthetic forces. Notes: May be repeated for credit if the national cinema studied is different. COMM 4190, Intro to Latin American Cinema, is highly recommended, although not a prerequisite.

This course examines representations of Asian/Americans in American film, video and television, from the silent era to the present, situating them within their social, cultural, political, and historical contexts. The course will address a series of key questions including but not limited to: Orientalism. Yellow Peril, the Model Minority myth, masculinity, and Asian American aesthetics. By critically exploring these issues, we will gain a deeper understanding of the complex history that has shaped Asian/American experiences and identity formations. The course further expands beyond the question of stereotypes to situate Asian/American media in dialogue with concepts such as Third Cinema. diaspora, identity politics, and racial performance.

This course explores the intersections between political economy and culture in the formation and sustainability of creative economies and creative production. Topics to be covered in this course may include: creative and cultural policy, creative classes, cultural labor, specific cultural industries, and film and media economies. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours. Topics courses may be repeated for credit under different topic titles, such as: Creative Cities, Creative Labor, and Creative Industries. At the undergraduate level, this course fulfills the tier-2 service learning requirement. It is one of the possible 4000-level electives for the major. At the graduate level, this course fulfills an elective in programs in the School of Liberal Arts. Please consult your program advisor for the course's commensurability with your area of study.

This course will explore the conceptual frameworks and theories that are essential to an understanding of modern media, a succession of new media including photography, film and digital media. We will focus on theories of semiotics, ideology, psychoanalysis, narrative, modernism, and postmodernism, which have formed the bases for analyzing forms of reproduction from the mechanical to the digital. We will consider the interrelationships, linkages and ruptures, between different media and the process of remediation in which the content of a new medium is the older medium that it has replaced. We will end by examining digital media in the context of social/cultural/political formations, gender, race, community, public sphere and global flows.

This course analyzes theoretical construction of media audiences and media producers historically and in contemporary contexts. Liberal, Marxist and feminist paradigms will be explored along with a variety of research methods used in audience and producer studies.

Special Topics in Communication. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

Special Topics in Communication.

Special Topics in Communication.

Special Topics in Communication.

A detailed study of particular issues, problems and developments in the history, theory and criticism of communication. Topics may be drawn from any of the departmental areas of concentration, for example, the concept of invention, the rhetoric of religion, non-verbal communication, mass media and culture and similar themes. May be taken twice for credit on different topics. This course satisfies the capstone requirement. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

A detailed study of particular issues, problems and developments in the history, theory and criticism of communication. Topics may be drawn from any of the departmental areas of concentration, for example, the concept of invention, the rhetoric of religion, non-verbal communication, mass media and culture and similar themes. May be taken twice for credit on different topics. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

This course investigates the spectacular nature of cinema and the function of spectacle and visual/special effects in the history of cinema. Filmic expressions of spectacle are studied in dialogue with philosophers and theorists equally interested in spectacular aesthetics and concepts ranging from the sublime and uncanny to commodity fetishism and attention economy.

This course focuses on cinema as a site for interrogating historical, textual, institutional and theoretical issues about the archive. Topics include tropes of archive, the media/ted archive, films as cultural memory, histories of cinema archives, the electronic archive, theories of the archive, and archives in relation to power and knowledge. Film examples are drawn from contemporary Hollywood cinema, silent cinema, classical Hollywood cinema, experimental documentary, and independent and avant-garde cinema.

Focus on cinema as a cultural practice during the early and late periods especially as it has shaped perception and experience. Films are assessed for the way they reenact the logic of key technologies and for the way they represent technologies. Cinema is also viewed as a technology of vision in its own right. In particular, 19th century optical toys, the railroad, photography , the computer and cinema are assessed in relation to shifting conceptions of space and time, modes of experience, the terms of everyday life, and the status of mass culture and reproduction in the modern and postmodern periods.

An advanced course focusing on contemporary French, British and U.S. film theory. Topics include realism and phenomenology, Russian Formalism, neoformalism, structuralism, narratology, Marxism and ideology, psychoanalysis, cinema semiotics, feminism and poststructuralism. Debates covered assess film as a text; the relationship between film and the spectator; and the implications of cinema as a historical phenomenon, including the status of digital cinema. Early, classical Hollywood, contemporary, and avant-garde films screened. A required film journal helps students develop analytical skills. Required for the Film Studies major or minor.

Students complete a service activity in the community in conjunction with the content of a three-credit co-requisite course. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

Open to qualified juniors and seniors only. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

Open to qualified juniors and seniors only. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

This course will enable students to integrate knowledge about the specific nature of film as a medium and the history of theoretical debates that have shaped the study of film and of cinema. It will also provide students with an opportunity to apply the formal and theoretical knowledge gained from the two required courses for the major to consider new theoretical problems about cinema, revisions, and reassessments of earlier debates in film studies and related fields, questions of national cinema, and/or new developments in filmmaking. Fulfills capstone requirement for FMST when approved as film topic. In this case, students should also register for FMST 5110 with 0 credits.

For especially qualified seniors with approval of the faculty director and the Office of Academic Enrichment. Students must have a minimum of a 3.400 overall grade-point average and a 3.500 grade-point average in the major.

The zero credit add-on that designated an approved upper-level course to satisfy the capstone requirement. Consult the department for this list of courses.

Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

An intensive study of a specific issue or set of issues in rhetoric and public address, interpersonal communication, or mass communication (e.g. propaganda, legal communication research), or of an individual theorist (e.g. Aristotle. Kenneth Burke), or genre of discourse (e.g. ideological argumentation, the rhetoric of social movements). Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

An intensive study of a specific issue or set of issues in rhetoric and public address, interpersonal communication, or mass communication (e.g. propaganda, legal communication research), or of an individual theorist (e.g. Aristotle, Kenneth Burke), or genre of discourse (e.g. ideological argumentation, the rhetoric of social movements). May be taken twice for credit on different topics. This course satisfies the capstone requirement. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours.

This course explores the intersections between political economy and culture in the formation and sustainability of creative economies and creative production. Topics to be covered in this course may include: creative and cultural policy, creative classes, cultural labor, specific cultural industries, and film and media economies. Course may be repeated up to unlimited credit hours. Topics courses may be repeated for credit under different topic titles, such as: Creative Cities, Creative Labor, and Creative Industries. This course fulfills an elective in programs in the School of Liberal Arts. Please consult your program advisor for the course's commensurability with your area of study.