Media Studies

Paying particular attention to how race and ethnicity intersect with the phenomenon of celebrity in the media, this highly student-driven class will investigate celebrities of color through both historical and analytical lenses. In examining the increasingly self-aware culture associated with celebrity, we will discuss the ways in which celebrity is conceived, constructed, performed, and discussed, as well as how it shapes notions of identity.

A capstone seminar, this course offers students a supervised opportunity to pursue original research in media studies. Related to a theme selected by the instructor, the project will entail design of a research question, extensive collection and analysis of literature and data, and completion of a 15-20 page paper that provides new, critical insight or information on the subject examined.

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

This course examines a number of American detective films and how the portrait of the hard-boiled private eye dramatizes concerns about class, race, gender relations, urbanization, the rationalization of experience, the limits of self-knowledge, the blurring of boundaries between bodies and machines, and the collapse of distinction between private life and public life.

The course will draw from multiple genres and time periods to present an overview of how cinematic projections of whiteness have served to reinforce white supremacy. Equally important, students will examine films that counter the medium's terrifying consecration and preservation of white privilege, films that hold up whiteness for critical inspection.

This course turns a critical eye towards media's relationship to everyday life. It conceptualize media, such as cell phones, television, and YouTube for example, as central forces in representing, demarcating and franchising the ordinary. We will explore the construction of ordinariness in media as well as the ways in which audiences engage with media in daily life to achieve `taken for grantedness'. Prerequisite: MDST 2000

We will look at playful media (games, role play & other interactive experiences) not for how they entertain but for how they challenge social, economic & political systems in the world. We will address: Games for coping with trying times, for promoting systems thinking (including modeling, interrogating, & disrupting these systems), as well as world-building & "the civic imagination." No experience with games is necessary.Requisite: MDST 3704 or MDST 3712 OR instructor permission

This course is designed to allow students to pursue independent research and study of a topic that is not contained within the course offerings of Media Studies. This course will not fulfill the capstone requirement

Writing of a thesis or production or a project with appropriately researched documentation, under the supervision of the faculty DMP thesis readers or project supervisor.

Students examine Succession to critically assess contemporary networks and creatures fueled by a will to power and operating amidst ¿the ruins of neoliberalism.¿ They also examine the toxic effects of this will to power by sifting patiently through the ruins of the Roy family: the relationship between parents and children; the relationship between/among siblings; their fear of abandonment; their desire for recognition; their desire for love.

This course will offer critical perspectives on selected contemporary issues related to new media. Topics may include media in industry, education, politics, culture, and socio-economics. This course is open to undergraduate and graduate students.

This course provides the opportunity to offer a new course in the subject of Media Studies. If offered, topics will be listed on the course offerings page for the particular semester.

In an era of AI-generated content, deepfakes, and algorithmic bias, documentary media plays a crucial role in interrogating the politics of truth. This seminar explores how documentary engages with truthmaking and emerging technologies. Through key studies and films, students will examine how filmmakers expose and hide infrastructures of control, while provoking ethical dilemmas.

Content analysis is a fundamental method, combining qualitative interpretation with quantitative data analysis. Content analysis enables individuals and teams to systematically transform a large corpus of media artifacts into a set of standardized observations suitable for exploratory data mining, statistical analysis, and critical inquiry. This course covers core concepts, practical applications, and ethical considerations of the method.

Feminist Media and Cultural Studies focuses on contemporary theory, criticism and research in the field, with an orientation to critical race feminisms, trans and queer studies, and disability studies within feminist literatures and research. We examine questions of technology, social networks, gaming, surveillance, online oppressions, media activism, feminist making, and the role of emotion and affect in feminist media analysis, among others.

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

This graduate seminar will explore the ways that large-scale data collection, algorithmic processes, and artificial intelligence enhance or detract from the core values and practices of democracy. The course will cover the basics of data science, surveillance, algorithms, and artificial intelligence.

Media and Everyday Life turns a critical eye towards media's relationship to the everyday. We will conceptualize media as central forces in re-presenting, demarcating and franchising the ordinary. This course is designed to examine how media is produced as ordinary and universally intelligible (production), how it represents the everyday (texts), and how audiences phenomenologically engage with media in everyday life (reception and use).

This survey course introduces students to the political economy of media. Central themes include political economy's historical development, its usefulness to the study of media & communications, & its contemporary applications in scholarly research. Students will be introduced to the power dynamics & institutional forces that impact media institutions, industries, ownership, cultural production, consumption & distribution in the US & elsewhere.

Computers are universal media. Our intimacy with computers shapes how we think about our communities, histories, cultures, society, and ourselves. Learn to program these "thinking machines" as an act of philosophical inquiry and personal expression, challenging your beliefs about creativity, intelligence, randomness, and communication. Students with no previous experience are especially welcome!

This is a core course that surveys key texts in Media Studies. The course takes a historical approach to the development of the field, but also surveys the various developments in the social sciences, the humanities, and film studies relevant to the interdisciplinary study of media.

In this course, students learn about the development of media technologies and infrastructures: how and why they were built, how they were shaped by regulation, and the social and political concerns driving both technological development and regulation. Students will read and assess primary and secondary literature, gaining an understanding of historiographical methods and employing those methods to produce original historical research.

This class teaches students the logics, ethics, and techniques of qualitative research in media studies.

Students meet as a cohort to translate their intellectual interests into a specific thesis project through iterative development, critique, and refinement of their research questions and proposed methods. Students will read and critique published work, gaining a sense of best practices in research design. This course is heavily reliant on peer feedback and collaboration. The culmination of this class is a thesis proposal.

In this course, students form a writing community to foster accountability and confidence in conducting, writing, and sharing original research. Instruction will address developing a regular writing habit, writing for different audiences, communicating in visual and multimedia formats, and the practices of placing work in academic journals, policy venues, or popular online and print publications. This course is heavily reliant on peer feedback.