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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This course examines the ways a changing media system is altering the dynamics of public discourse and democratic politics in the United States. Throughout the course we will critically analyze the ways in which scholars from a wide range of disciplines have studied the connection between media and politics, the methods they have employed, and the validity of their findings and approaches in the new media environment in which we now live. Prerequisite: MDST 2000 or instructor permission.