Media Studies

This course is a survey introduction to the complex and increasingly pervasive impact of mass media in the U.S. and around the world. It provides a foundation for helping you to understand how mass media -- as a business, as well as a set of texts -- operates. The course also explores contextual issues -- how media texts and businesses are received by audiences and by regulatory bodies.

This course explores the world of cinema through storytelling, technique, and cultural influence. It covers key concepts in film analysis, including cinematography, editing, sound, and lighting, helping students understand how filmmakers craft powerful narratives. Students exploring how films reflect societal values and address complex issues. The course traces the history of cinema and offers hands-on experiences in writing and production.

Democracy is in trouble today. Why? This course explores the growing threats to democracy in the United States and globally. Topics include: the impact of xenophobia, racism and radical nationalism on democracy; the rise of far-right media; the appeal of ethno-nationalism; the growth of White Power militias; legal barriers against voting, immigration and citizenship; as well as the impact of social media and cyber-based disinformation.

Students will learn the practical components of podcast production including: audio recording and editing, sound mixing, script writing, interview techniques, and the final production of a podcast. In addition, students will critically analyze the components of radio/podcast features. The course includes a lecture component and lab time where the instructor will consult with students about their projects.

This course will provide practice-based learning opportunities for students in various forms of media, including video, podcasting, film, etc.

This course provides the opportunity to offer a new course in the subject of Media Studies.

This course will cover all manner of media as it relates to sports journalism. Students will analyze published work across various mediums, learn the tools for reporting and writing different types of coverage, including features, profiles, long-form, game stories and more. Students will write articles, interview subjects, analyze sports journalism, participate in peer reviews and hear from some of the most prominent figures in sports journalism.

Introductory course in news writing, emphasizing editorials, features, and reporting.

An introduction to the art and craft of screenwriting through the writing and discussion of short scripts. Will involve study of screenplays and films, and focus on the basic elements of screenwriting, including story structure, creation of character, and formatting. Prerequisite: Media studies major or instructor permission.

Which mediated performances of Blackness do we find acceptable, and which do we scorn? How have Black Americans worked to assert their value in a culture marked by respectability politics? We will examine how media has worked to inform "respectable," exceptional Black self-presentation versus the deficient. Topics include: Donald Glover, the NAACP, Serena Williams, situation comedy, Tyler Perry, Bill Cosby, Sesame Street, horror, Lena Waithe.

A course in visual thinking; introduces film criticism, concentrating on classic and current American and non-American films.

Writing about film or television for the media provides a platform to both engender and enter into a cultural and aesthetic dialog by way of shared experience. This course explores what's required for thoughtful, informed and engaged non-academic film criticism, including the obligation to understand the historical and contemporary landscapes of film, to write well and develop an individual voice, and to entertain and connect with a readership.

This course introduces students at the beginning of the major to theoretical and critical literature in the field. Topics range from the psychological and sociological experience of media, interpretation and analysis of media forms and aesthetics, theories of audience and reception, anthropological approaches to media as a cultural force, and contemporary theories of media from humanities and social sciences perspectives. The goal of the course is to provide a foundation for thinking critically about media and to give them a sense of media studies as a critical and theoretical field. Restricted to Media Studies majors.

This is a hands-on introduction to global media history. The course situates technologies, industries, texts and programs in the context of social, cultural, and political changes. Students will acquire basic competencies in historical research and writing: developing research questions, evaluating secondary sources, selecting archives, querying databases, managing notes, citing sources, sharing resources, and communicating findings as a team.

This course is designed to introduce students to critical analyses of media texts, media industries, and media audiences that help explain the social, political, economic, and cultural locations of Latinas/os in America.

This course uses audio, video, and text to explore the basics of media law: copyright; privacy; libel and defamation; and free speech. Students will be able to describe the tension between efforts to sustain an informed public and protect rights of expression; identify legal agents in the global system; identify powers and responsibilities of agents; grasp the basics of the 1st Amendment; and prepare for deeper analysis of these areas of law.

Media representations of food across time and place offer a lens through which we can understand the cultural politics of food production, preparation, consumption and commercialization. Studying a range of food media genres, this course explores media storytelling around food, along with the racial, ethnic, gendered, class, and trans/national complexities that characterize our food narratives. A word of advice-do not to come to our class hungry!

Black horror is a primer on the quest for social justice. What can such a boundary-pushing genre teach us about paths to solidarity and democracy? What can we learn about disrupting racism, misogyny, and anti-Blackness? If horror is radical transgression, then we have much to learn from movies such as Candyman, The First Purge, Get Out, Eve¿s Bayou, Blacula, Attack the Block, Demon Knight, Tales from the Hood, Sugar Hill, and Ganja & Hess.

The course explores Breaking Bad through study of the show's narrative, characters, and formal design. Topics examined include: socio-economic anxieties and spiritual longings in contemporary America; the political and religious implications of addiction to speed (technological and pharmacutical); the show as revisionary Puritan narrative and revisionary Western; the problem of being bugged; the desire to get away with it; the poetry of W.W.

In this seminar, we will investigate Star Wars as an ongoing media franchise. Students will explore media franchises as cultural, social, and economic phenomena that cut across multiple media (from films to theme parks to toys), interrogating them from media history, industrial analysis, textual analysis, and audience analysis approaches. Students will create written papers and video essays that allow them to explore media franchising scholarship and final projects on topics of their interest.

Basic Multimedia Reporting teaches the hands on skills required for professional level news reporting, news production and short documentaries. Students may choose to specialize in Written Journalism, TV Journalism or Production. However, all students learn proficiency in research, news writing, ethics, camera use, video editing, and where requested, broadcast presentation skills.

The 1950s has been written about variously as the age of innocence, the height of the Cold War, a decade of great economic prosperity, the decade in which television first became a mass phenomenon, and the decade of the baby boomers which produced youth culture in its first mass incarnations. How was the experience of gender and race distinctive in this decade?

In this course, we will explore the obstacles confronting the news industry -- disinformation, declining trust in institutions, eroding business models, inequitable practices -- but we won't dwell on what's gone wrong. Instead, we'll focus on what can be done about it. We'll define the role of journalism in society, we'll examine emerging models of solutions-based journalism, and we'll envision new models for community-minded news-sharing.

This course considers how animation and cartoons have historically been translated into the media of cinema and television. Focal points will be: Disney in traditional cinema animation, Hanna-Barbera in the broadcast television cartoon, Nickelodeon in cable television cartoons, and Pixar in digital cinema animation. Students will also practice creative and technical processes involved in making animation, individually and collectively.

Video gaming is the fastest growing form of media: Americans spend twice as much on gaming as on recorded music and it is estimated that young men average over 670 hours a year playing video games. Yet we know relatively little about the broader social and political impact of this new medium. This class will sample the existing literature and explore ways of understanding the political implications (broadly defined) of gaming.