E58.2001 | Media, Culture, and Communication Core Seminar (for MA students only) sample syllabus Examines theoretical approaches that are central to the study of media, culture and communication. Provides students with a historical and critical framework for understanding the literature and research traditions within the field of media studies with an emphasis on media and communication as institutional actors, technological artifacts, systems of representation and meaningful cultural objects. |
E58.2100/2101 | Seminar in Media Criticism I and II sample syllabus Analysis of the media environment from a variety of critical perspectives. Emphasis on writing as well as reading media criticism. |
E58.2130 | Topics in Digital media sample syllabus Computers, especially in their networked dimension, have sparked a series of ethical, political, and social debates that often revolve around a series of : control and freedom; pleasure and exploitation; creativity and constraint. In this course we will approach topics in digital media via an historical angle that squarely addresses these dualities. The course primarily concentrates on computers and networks and is roughly chronological, starting with the first digital computers and ending with our digital present. Particular topics we address are: cybernetics and liberalism; networks and the cold war; personal computers and online communities; hackers, the free software movement and intellectual property; labor, development, and computers; peer-to-peer knowledge production and remix culture; computer gaming; and counter-globalization and computer networking. |
E58.2134 | Media Archaeology sample syllabus Over the last decade or so, scholars in several disciplines have embarked on a series of media-archaeological excavations, sifting through the layers of early and obsolete practices and technologies of communication. The archaeological metaphor evokes both the desire to recover material traces of the past and the imperative to situate those traces in their social, cultural, and political contexts - while always watching our steps. This seminar will examine some of the most important contributions to the field of media archaeology and, most importantly, provide an ongoing research studio in which participants undertake archaeological projects of their own. |
E58.2135 | Media, Memory and History sample syllabus This seminar will focus on introducing participants to the basic theory and core methods of visual culture studies in a variety of disciplines, including ethnography, social history, urban studies, cinema studies, social geography, art history and media studies. |
E58.2136 | War and Media Theory sample syllabus Communication studies traditionally focus on how war is propagandized by mass media. In contrast, this seminar proposes that war is an encompassing mode of political communication in which media is militarized and violence is mediatized. We will examine how modern warfare has generated new visual cultures and new media networks. This seminar proposes that the visual technology of war and the technologies of event dissemination are linked problems in the political history of representation. The triangulation of person, place and time as the basis of perceiving history can only be accounted for by a history of mediated perception-a history increasingly characterized by military technologies and military visual culture, and their fashioning of the modern sensorium. The seminar will examine the thesis that the "informationatization" of contemporary consciousness can only be understood through a media theory of war. |
E58.2145 | Methods in Interpreting Popular Culture sample syllabus This course provides an introduction to the fundamental methods for understanding the construction of meaning in film, television, popular music, and advertising, tracing the study of popular culture through film theory and mass media analysis to cultural studies. Recent theoretical analysis of popular culture has examined the notion of the popular, spectatorship, methods of reading audiences, global popular culture, and the concept of cultural practices. This course surveys methods of analysis such as structuralism, semiotics, genre analysis, psychoanalysis, socio-historical analysis, ideological analysis, discourse analysis, political economy, reception theory, feminist method, and ethnography as tools through which to understanding popular culture in depth. It will include screenings of excerpts of film and television in class. Readings will include works by Roland Barthes, Pierre Bourdieu, Michel de Certeau, Umberto Eco, Dick Hebdige, George Lipsitz, Toby Miller, Tania Modleski, David Morley, Janice Radway, Ellen Seiter, Lynn Spigel, and Raymond Williams, among others. |
E58.2146 | The Sitcom sample syllabus This course examines the history and politics of television’s most enduring genre, the situation comedy. The sitcom occupies a particularly important place in U.S. cultural hierarchies. Both lauded as an innovative, quintessentially televisual form and denigrated as the epitome of mass media’s formulaic cultural dross, the genre is a discursive locus in which U.S. preoccupations with class, race, gender, and other forms of difference are negotiated. |
E58.2150 | The Origins of Modern Media: 1880 – 1950 sample syllabus Examination of the sociopolitical, technological, aesthetic, & institutional development of media from 1880-1950. Emphasis is placed on telegraphy, telephony, sound-recording, & amplification devices, radio (both point-to-point & broadcast) & film. Students are introduced to a variety of historiographical techniques & are encouraged to reflect upon the relationship between origins of the mass media & current technological institutional, sociopolitical & aesthetic dynamics of media. |
E58.2157 | The Communications Revolution and Culture in America sample syllabus An examination of the nature of the communications revolution in the 20th century & its impact on American cultural life & institutions. First semester focuses on the political economy of media from a critical perspective; second semester focuses on current developments in the communications industry & their impact on the U.S. & global culture, from an industry perspective. Either half may be taken independently. |
E58.2165 | Transnational Communities and Media Cultures This course examines the emergence of transnational communities, recent patterns of migration, and the role of media forms and practices in redefining culture and national belonging. We will explore how media practices define culture and identity for diasporic groups within the landscape of global cities. What role do media play in the (re)imagining of cultural politics, nationalism, and everyday life in the context of global relocations? How do technology and media enable new configurations of cultural resistance and identification within (and between) different immigrant groups? What does this mean in terms of negotiating the global and local in various aspects of immigrant lives? Through field trips, field work, discussion, and lectures, students will be exposed to contemporary issues and research. |
E58.2166 | The Global City and Media Ethnography: Practice-led Transcultural Media Research sample syllabus The course focuses on the theories and methods of media/sensory ethnography, visual culture, media archeology, through the linked topics of transcultural and trans-local processes, diaspora identities, the post colonial and human rights. The curriculum is aimed at graduate students from diverse disciplines who want to explore creative media practice as a research methodology. This course provides students with theoretical and practical grounding in multi-sited action research in trans-cultural and transnational settings. Through social historical and trans-cultural ethnographic perspectives practice-led pedagogy promotes a self- reflexive contextual and critical understanding of the use of media for the conduct and dissemination of research and the creation of social knowledge through participatory cultural production. Practice-Led Media Research is the theory, social history pedagogy and circulation of social science and humanities research through the production of film, video, internet, visual arts and other screen/audio based media. Practice-led research overcomes divisions between social theory and action-research, and between creative practice and evidence-based research. An important focus is the use of visual media to convey ideas and distinctive understandings about the world. There is a strong emphasis on comprehending visual phenomena in cross-cultural perspective and on the multifarious roles played by media in processes of identity and cultural formation in the world today. |
E58.2170 | Communication and Persuasion: Film Classics of Propaganda sample syllabus Viewing and analysis of the cinematic and persuasive techniques used in classic propaganda films (features and documentaries) to shape their viewers' constructions of reality. |
E58.2173 | Research for Communication Professionals sample syllabus This course is intended to familiarize you with the types and methods of research conducted, assessed, and applied by professionals in the communication industries and to foster critical thinking about contemporary issues in public opinion and consumer research. Students will conduct a research project. |
E58.2175 | Political Communication sample syllabus Communicative aspects of American government, including the preparation of candidates, the electoral process, political advertising & public relations. The use of strategic communication to influence political agendas, the formation of public policy, & the process of political debate. |
E58.2182 | Communication Processes: Gender, Race and Cultural Identity sample syllabus Course examines past & current studies on language, communication theories, speech perception, & other aspects of verbal & nonverbal behavior. Students relate these studies to how gender, race, culture & sexual orientation are developed & reflected in society in both personal & professional relationships. |
E58.2184 | Comparative Media Systems sample syllabus How does journalism differ around the world? And to the extent that it does, why? Beyond the personal idiosyncrasies of individual journalists and media owners, which factors play the greatest role in shaping "national news cultures": professional values and traditions, level and type of commercialism, government regulations, bureaucratic pressures or organizational dynamics, and/or audiences? Too much of our media criticism proceeds from hunches and assumptions, rather than real evidence, for the simple reason that it limits itself to a single national context (and often a single time period). Adequately sorting out the factors that shape our media environment can best be accomplished via comparative research. This course offers a conceptual roadmap to such a project as well as a close empirical look at the news media in a variety of national contexts. After a general consideration of the factors that structure news media systems and the roles that media play in democratic societies, the course incorporates (1) a survey of comparative methodologies: surveys, ethnographies, news content analyses, etc., and (2) national and comparative case studies, representing the major types of Western European journalistic "models" as well as some important non-European variants. |
E58.2185 | Critical Issues in Conflict Resolution sample syllabus Students examine transformations in the communication processes that influence conflict management as manifested in diverse contexts. Issues will be explored from the perspectives of gender, culture, & ethnicity. |
E58.2190 | The Languages of Communication: From Cave Painting to Print sample syllabus The historical development of various non electronic media--language, painting, writing & print & their consequences for consciousness, information processing, & sociopolitical structures. |
E58.2191 | Print, Media and Modernity sample syllabus This seminar will explore the evolution of print technology and culture since Gutenberg's first experiments with movable type. Our objective will be to arrive at an understanding of how print media have formed and transformed essential features of the culture of capitalism. Themes will include the rise of the bourgeois individual, public/private spheres, production of difference, erotics of reading, urban space and spectacle, high/low culture, bureaucracy. Although the emphasis will be on the history of the book, the course will also examine newspapers, paper money, identity documents, and other printed matter. |
E58.2200 | The Mass Mind sample syllabus An inquiry into those forces in our technological society, especially those of the mass media, that significantly influence our beliefs, attitudes & actions. |
E58.2210 | Globalization and Gender sample syllabus This course examines how definitions & practices of gender & sexuality are reproduced in the context of globalization & transnational flows. Engaging key texts in feminist/global cultural studies, discussions will address issues of citizenship, global labors flows, migration, & media representations. |
E58.2215 | Social Experiences in Consumer Culture sample syllabus Over the years, there have been pervasive and profound transformations in the way mass media have shaped culture and society. This class examines, systematically, the specific condition in which mediated imagery has the power to shape a participant’s sense of self and common sense understandings of the social world; the forms of power that are most influential; the condition in which that power is deflected, opposed & transformed both by individuals and groups; and the ways in which new capabilities of self and forms of cultural practice emerge in participant’s handling of media, technology, and the goods of consumer society in everyday life. |
E58.2220 | Communication and the Culture Industries sample syllabus An examination of the ways the entertainment industries exercise their communicative power. Provides a wide-ranging overview of theoretical & empirical research on the industrial manufacture of popular culture, focusing on sociologies of production & on the ongoing processes of digitization & globalization. |
E58.2225 | World Communication: Principles, Politics and Law sample syllabus Examines the legal, regulatory, & political mechanisms, both national & supranational, that affect the flow of media, information, & cultural products across borders & the interplay between these mechanisms & the conduct of global communication. |
E58.2251 | Communication Environments: Macroanalysis sample syllabus Inquiries into “the business behind the box”: the economic & decision-making structure of broadcast television. |
E58.2260 | Rhetorical Criticism sample syllabus Studies of major contributions to rhetorical knowledge; analysis & influence of basic concepts & issues; principles of rhetoric applied to criticism of speeches from the classical to the modern period. |
E58.2265 | Communication and Persuasion: Sociological Propaganda sample syllabus A series of analyses of the history, theories, techniques, & results of propaganda in society with special focus on the relationship between interaction (sociological) propaganda & communication in our increasingly technological society; case studies drawn from public relations, commercial advertising, social movements, & the mass media. |
E58.2270 | Communication and Political Propaganda sample syllabus A series of analyses of the history, theories, techniques, & results of propaganda in society with special focus on the relationship between agitation (political) propaganda & communication in our increasingly technological society; case studies drawn from national & international sources. |
E58.2275 | Middle East Media and Cultural Politics sample syllabus Examines developments of culture, politics, & media in contemporary Middle East through an historical & cultural lens. Course is organized by theoretical theme & geographic location & addresses culture as a site of struggle; the impact of globalization on Arab mass media; the connections between civil society, democracy & Islam; & gender, national & diasporic identities. |
E58.2282 | Information Law and Policy sample syllabus Examines the emergence of a specific body of laws & public policies that influence the production, distribution & use of information technologies, with a focus on issues of privacy, online speech, intellectual property, the creative commons, computer crime, & governance in general. |
E58.2284 | Religion and/as Media sample syllabus Bertrand Russell long ago declared that religion belonged to the infancy of human history, in a statement that expressed the secular self-understanding of an enlightened European of his time. By comparison, at least from the time of Alexis de Tocqueville, it has been clear that in a country like the United States, religious affiliation has not diminished with the advance of historical time. If anything the movement has been in a contrary direction, with religion having increased in social and political influence, with effects that reverberate across the globe today. The disparity between Continental and American perceptions reflects a failure to understand the place of religion in modern society, and to relate changes in religious practice to historical change. It is not simply in traditional, backward or disadvantaged societies that religion thrives, but in the very heart of modern society, so to speak. The legislative approach to sequester religion and keep it in its place, widely practiced, rarely has the desired results. Religion turns out to be mediated in new ways, to sacralize new forms of connection, to mark out new relations between the sacred and the profane. |
E58.2285 | Integrating Media Education in School and Community Work sample syllabus Hands-on video production, media literacy program design, readings, & reflection on approaches & strategies educators can use to incorporate media education into their schools & community-based organizations. |
E58.2286 | Young People & Media Cultures sample syllabus In this course students explore the debates and issues raised by various media environments as these relate to young people's growth and experiences. Students investigate how young people actually use, value, and find meaning in multiple media in different social contexts, and discuss the social, cultural, and political implications of these situations. Finally, students propose how to deal with the issues raised by the readings and discussions. |
E58.2290 | Interpersonal Communication sample syllabus The application of various systems of communication analysis to specific behavioral situations. Through case-study method, students apply communication theories & models to practical, everyday situations. |
E58.2295 | Values Embodied in Information and Communication Technologies sample syllabus Studies social, political & ethical values embodied in computer & information systems, & new media. Students examine work in the philosophy & social study of technology to understand the rich & sometimes troubling relationship between values & technical design. Course will ask: Is technology neutral? Who should make key decisions? What is the role of scientists & engineers? The course examines specific cases, such as, the Internet, search engines, web-cookies, & data mining from philosophical, empirical, & technical perspectives. |